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A recluse is a person who lives in voluntary seclusion from the public and society. The word is from the Latin recludere, which means "shut up" or "sequester". Historically, the word referred to a hermit's total isolation from the world. Examples are Symeon of Trier, who lived within the great Roman gate Porta Nigra with permission from the Archbishop of Trier, or Theophan the Recluse, the 19th-century Russian Orthodox monk who was later glorified as a saint. Celebrated figures who spent, or have spent, significant portions of their lives as recluses include Virgil, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Emily Brontë, J. D. Salinger, Bobby Fischer, Emily Dickinson, Gustave Flaubert, Paul Cézanne, Nikola Tesla, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, H. P. Lovecraft, Marie Curie, Marcel Proust, Howard Hughes, Greta Garbo, Mina Mazzini, Jackson Pollock, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Glenn Gould, Jean-Luc Godard, Thomas Pynchon, John Swartzwelder, Paul Allen, Layne Staley, Richard Proenneke, Syd Barrett and Michael Jackson.

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