ASCETICISM AS A WORD also arose in ancient Greece, albeit in different form. The root of the word is the Greek askein, which means “to exercise,” as an athlete would when training for an event, a word that grows into the Greek word asketes, which means “a monk or hermit,” the sort of person who would either withdraw from the world or who, because of the rigors of endless training, might well seem to. The old saw about boxers, that they wouldn’t expend a certain kind of energy before a bout — sexual energy, which would need to be hoarded if the fighter wanted to be at peak strength — aligns nicely with this notion, one in which the ascetic isn’t starving herself so much as harnessing her powers, because power is a finite thing.

We might think of Arthur Rimbaud, the poet who produced almost all of his lasting work as a teenager, beloved by Jim Morrison and Patti Smith and Bob Dylan. At 17, Rimbaud declared, famously, to his boyhood friend Paul Demeny, in an 1871 letter, his desire to become a great poet, which he defined as “a seer,” describing as well the means to such an end. “The poet makes himself a seer,” he writes, as I translate it, “through a long, involved and sober derangement of all the senses.” Here, we meet up with the artist who must be, in some way, out of his head to make the kinds of things that cause readers to go out of their minds. This is how the line has been received, but this isn’t quite how Rimbaud seems to have meant it. Though “derangement” is a common English rendering of Rimbaud’s dérèglement, this translation, like the others (“disordering,” “disorganization,” “dissolution,” “disturbance”) is misleading. In French, you can use dérèglement for a watch that won’t keep time, or a digestive system that’s acting up, or seasons hotter or colder than usual, or human behavior off the moral rails. For a poet to make himself a seer, as Rimbaud is insisting, to inspire that quality of artistic vision, all those irregularities must be chosen. Note that Rimbaud says “makes.” Note his “long, involved” and his “sober.” The word “deregulation” gets closer to the activity, a thing you could actually undertake: a rewriting of the rules, rules that govern how we see, hear, speak.

Or think of Rainer Maria Rilke. After all, didn’t his “Duino Elegies” (1923), among the best poems of any century, come to him as he stood on a promontory in 1912, beneath a castle, in a storm? Didn’t the lines just pour from him while his hand raced to set them down? While there is truth to that dramatic story — Rilke is our source for this report — it fails to include the decade that followed the fevered composition of those “inspired” lines, years that the poet is no less frank about in his correspondence, years during which Rilke struggled to complete the poem, years during which he reports that he worked like a dog — reading, mostly: working to take in the language that would allow him to produce the language, his own, that he couldn’t yet imagine. Years, spent working.

WORK CONSUMES WHAT the artist forgoes. Adrian Piper, the conceptual artist and analytic philosopher whose Museum of Modern Art retrospective closed this summer, is said to have, by 1985, abstained permanently from alcohol, meat and sex. Ottessa Moshfegh, whose new novel is “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” is said to have risen at 5 a.m., had a banana and a cup of coffee and gone to the boxing gym for three hours before setting down to write her first novel and stories. We should appreciate that this sort of asceticism, no less than Rilke’s, isn’t a recipe for happiness; rather, productivity. “She had become this kind of weapon,” Moshfegh’s literary agent has said. “She seemed not to need anyone or anything.”

For the artist, not needing is a need. Glenn Gould ate one meal a day, to maintain focus. Georges Simenon would consult his physician before beginning one of his (roughly 400) novels, and then lock himself in a hotel room and work around the clock until it was done (10 to 12 days, typically). Sophie Calle for a time only ate foods of a certain color. Marina Abramovic only ate vegetables while performing “The Artist Is Present.” Agnes Martin isolated herself in New Mexico. Donald Judd was fond of the empty Texan desert. Beyoncé went vegan before Coachella, part of her mental preparation. Yayoi Kusama checked herself into a mental hospital. And so forth. What we might see from the outside as eccentricities, as mannerist flourishes without a foundational need, is really all function: Why think about what doesn’t need to be thought about? Why not remove choice from all those things that don’t reward choice? Why not wear the same turtleneck every day if that means you don’t have to waste time thinking about what to wear, every day, ever again? Why not live on air?