This review was also published as a Work In Progress on the Far West
Editions website,
at http://www.farwesteditions.com/works_progress_2.htm
.
©2008,
R. Hodges
A Life Worth
Examining: a review of
A Time To
Keep Silence
by Patrick Leigh Fermor
The unexamined life is not worth living
Socrates
The unlived life is not worth examining
(variously
attributed)
Patrick Fermor was one of those rare men who
make a mark at everything they put their hand to. What kind of man was he?
First of all he was a man of action. In World War II he was a British
intelligence agent in
In
Fermor may have been born a man of action but, perhaps from his Irish blood,
was also a born writer. He wrote several highly regarded books of travel, and
also a novel, all of which stood not only upon his dramatic adventures and
graceful storytelling but also on an uncanny gift of description: it almost
defies comparison how he makes mere words evoke a place, an atmosphere, and the
personal character of the actors in his stories.
But there is one thing he came to only later in life: a kind of mystic
sensitivity. This is the subject of A Time To Keep Silence. Possibly
driven by some inner need for penance—there is a suggestion of this in the
book—or, as he says, primarily to find the solitude to write undisturbed by the
many people who always sought him out, he undertook an extended stay in St. Wandrille, a historic French Benedictine monastery. With no
monastic vocation, even no conventional faith, he managed to convince the prior
to grant him a guest cell.
He was permitted, if he wished, to take part in the observances of the
monks. He did wish, and resolved to attend all the daily offices, at the
considerable inconvenience of waking hours before dawn, and standing and
kneeling through rituals of which he had only the slightest concept. He writes
that this was a very difficult personal trial, but having resolved his plan, he
would not be put off it. At first he found life in the monastery inconceivably
tedious, a mere going-through-motions that had no meaning for him.
But gradually, it dawned that the monks had a deep love for the offices
and the atmosphere they created, and this began to penetrate his own hard
shell. He now found himself in a new situation. He attended the events of the
monastic day with interest and an increasingly attuned curiosity. But it
evidently drained him, and in the intervals between offices and meals he mostly
slept in his cell. He was unable to rouse the interest and will to do the
writing he had come there for.
Still, he stuck with it; and gradually the situation changed again. He
found an increasing lightness and inner peace which seemed to put him perfectly
in tune with the brethren. He now had little need of sleep, and though he still
wrote little he often availed himself, as did many of the monks, of study and
meditation in the vast library of St. Wandrille which
contained old and rare works of spiritual traditions not only Christian.
He now understood something of what called the monks to their life so
contrary to that of the world. This did not affect his faith: he still had
none; but he never spoke or was asked about this and it did not cause any
problems in his relations with the monks.
Finally the time came to leave. The monks waved a cheery goodbye, but
forgot him instantly once he was no longer a part of their world. His first
weeks back in
Later he was to return many times to St. Wandrille,
and to monasteries of other rules. The book also tells of his time in La Grande
Trappe. Conditions in Trappist life were much more severe than the Benedictine,
reading and study were unheard of, conversation was possible only with the
prior and guest master who were, as required by their duties, excused from the
rule of silence. He was not allowed to join the monks in their austere and
lengthy offices, but sometimes he could watch from a distance. Still, his
awakened sensitivity allowed him to taste the sublime atmosphere that existed
there.
In a conversation with the Trappist prior, he was told something that
he was now able to understand: that there is a reason why such places exist on
Earth, which is to create and emanate just this vibration of ineffable peace
and joy. This is an understanding of the meaning of the existence of centers of
esoteric practice that is both eminently practical and not often spoken about.
What are we to understand of the meaning of the existence of people
like Fermor? When we hear of an extraordinary man, we
often ask “why am I not like him”? A hundred flaws of character are revealed in
the way we usually ask this question, which very flaws are most of the reason
we are not like him: our envy titillates itself with his biography, seeking
perhaps to discover that he possessed some advantage of birth or fortune that
we do not have; our laziness makes us tremble before idle fears of what trouble
we might cause for ourselves if we ever truly followed, as did Fermor, the wise counsel of Ecclesiastes 9:10:
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with
thy might, for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the
grave, whither thou goest
And our self-contempt poisons at the root that precious individual
“whim” that Emerson tells us, in his essay Self Reliance, is the seed
of genius.
We don’t want to fall under
the hypnotic influence of these flaws and the impulses they suggest, but how
indeed to respond to the stories of such men? It would of course be foolish and
impossible to emulate them externally. Internally though? What we lack may be
the very courage to be what we are, to know what we want, and to carry through
with what we conceive, that are such leitmotifs of Fermor’s
self-account. Is the individual need to search for this courage what his life
is trying to tell us about, and the lives of certain other remarkable men? Is
this what he set out to achieve in his writing, not the minor fame (which he
claims to have had little need of) that attends literary success? And can we
wish to respond to this call? If so, then this life, a life well-lived, may
indeed prove to be a life worth examining.
[1] This was recounted to me by James
George, later Canadian Ambassador. He got this version from Canadian naval
commander Bob Young who was involved in extracting Fermor’s
unit with its important captive from Crete. A different story not involving a
girlfriend is told in other accounts of this well-known exploit; see the recent
book by Rick Stroud Kidnap in Crete: The
True Story of the Abduction of a Nazi General.