'A Time to Keep Silence'

      A short post on a short but rather fascinating and atmospheric book by, favourite of this blog, Patrick Leigh Fermor, the English travel writer. Published in 1953 by the Queen Anne Press and illustrated by Fermor's friend the Neo-Romantic artist John Craxton, 'A Time to Keep Silence' forms a meditation on the monastic life - mainly Western - with one short chapter on the abandoned rock-hewn Orthodox monasteries of Cappadocia, 'this cruel and flaming territory', in south-eastern Anatolia. In the two proceeding chapters he gathers together his experiences of a number of functioning monastic houses in France, where, over the years, Leigh Fermor retreated to write far away from exigences of the Modern World.

     What unifies this rather awkward and unequal yoking together of East and West is that search for the ....well, not quite the spiritual for I don't think of Leigh Fermor as conventionally religious after all he was in many respects a man of the world, unable, as Michael Duggan quoted in his excellent article in the Catholic Herald, to resist 'the soft hiss of the soda syphon'.  Then what?  

     The answer is perhaps difficult to fully explain, but at the end of that third chapter 'in the land of the basilisk and the cockatrice, of the Panic terror and the Noonday Devil' Leigh Fermor and travel companion 'peered into a deep valley, green with the foliage of plum trees and wild apple, overshadowing the winding track of a rivulet.  The sides of the canyon, too, were covered with the straggling descendant of a vineyard; the last seedlings of the vines and orchards planted here by the monks of a millennium ago'.  In an arid terrain the monks created a mimetic representation of Eden. A glimpse of heaven. A place of order and calm in a hostile environment. A place of shade and rest under the fierce glare of the sun; a sort of treasure trove, a schatzkammer. A repository of culture, learning and liturgical & artistic riches.

     It is only now on an early Sunday morning as I type out Leigh Fermor's elegant phrases I realise that what all the monasteries in this book have in common is ruin. At one point in their history they have either been deliberately destroyed or have been left to decay by an indifferent and ignorant people. And Leigh Fermor sees this a sort of Fall.  Some of the Western ones have been rebuilt, but the Eastern ones still await resurrection. 

'The Broken Road', Patrick Leigh Fermor

     Last week I finished reading 'The Broken Road - from the Iron Gates to Mount Athos' by Patrick Leigh Fermor, or rather to be accurate, written by Patrick Leigh Fermor and assembled and edited by Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron.  It is the third and final book describing the journey the eighteen year old Leigh Fermor made on foot in the year 1933 from London to Constantinople - one imperial capital to another.  The first two books - 'A Time for gifts' and 'Between the Woods and the Water' were published in 1977 and 1986 respectively.  

     This third instalment never appeared in Leigh Fermor's life time, finding it difficult and then - as age over took him - impossible to complete.  I have to confess I read this sort of trilogy in a funny order starting with the second book (bought at the superb 'Byzantium' exhibition at the R.A.) before reading the first book - alas I have yet finish, losing him somewhere in Austria.  Another reason for this post is to show you some work by John Craxton - the book covers for those first two books.  I presume the two men must have known each other living in Greece, certainly they shared a love for the place.

   The cover for 'The Broken Road' has been designed by Ed Kluz, who just so happens to be one of my favourite contemporary artists.  The publishers, Murray, couldn't have chosen better.

   The three books are a outstanding literary achievement, evoking a world that has almost vanished, a world destroyed by totalitarianism, war and Modernity.  A sense of loss, a poignancy, unsurprisingly, pervades the books, and I detect the influence of Chateaubriand's 'Memoires d'outre-tombe'.  That remarkable journey also marks a change in Leigh Fermor's life, from a directionless teenager, expelled from several schools, to living a life that we mere mortals can only dream of; an interesting War, and then a life living on the Greek isles writing travel books.
   'The Broken Road' starts with Leigh Fermor crossing the Danube into Bulgaria and follows him as he explores the landscapes - he has a keen eye for the natural world - and culture. All three books, it has to be said, are full of the most fascinating details. He travels south into the valley of the Maritza before heading north back over the Danube to Bucharest - the cosmopolitan life there is much to his liking, so much so he would return there later to live for four years with Princess Balasha Cantacuzino, a member of an ancient Byzantine noble family who had one member ascend the Imperial throne.

   However back to the narrative: with the onset of Autumn Leigh Fermor resumes his journey returning to Bulgaria and the Black Sea Coast. He visits Mesembria, and is nearly drown on his journey south from there. The continuous narrative finishes abruptly at Burgas.
   As he travelled Leigh Fermor kept a notebook/diary and the editors have used that to complete the journey to the Imperial City.  However, as the they themselves readily admit, the notes Leigh Fermor took of his time in the city are scanty; there is no record, for instance of the impressions made on him by the architecture. The narrative does not however end there.  With a letter of admittance from the Ecumenical Patriarch Leigh Fermor travelled into northern Greece and the great monastic republic of Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain, one of the most important centres of Orthodox spirituality. I think it is telling that the most complete section of the diary covers the time he spent on the Holy Mountain.  It is tempting to see his journey as one of faith, a sort of pilgrimage, perhaps one not conventionally religious (I'm not sure whether Leigh Fermor converted to Orthodoxy, but I would like to think he did) but a search for the Pre-Modern