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3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Time to Keep Silence

A Time to Keep Silence

Paperback

Series: New York Review Books Classics

Religion General Travel WritingGeneral Europe

Publisher Price: $15.95

ISBN10: 1590172442
ISBN13: 9781590172445
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: Oct 30 2007
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.33
Height: 0.38 Width: 5.08 Depth: 7.98
Language: English
While still a teenager, Patrick Leigh Fermor made his way across Europe, as recounted in his classic memoirs, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. During World War II, he fought with local partisans against the Nazi occupiers of Crete. But in A Time to Keep Silence, Leigh Fermor writes about a more inward journey, describing his several sojourns in some of Europe's oldest and most venerable monasteries. He stays at the Abbey of St. Wandrille, a great repository of art and learning; at Solesmes, famous for its revival of Gregorian chant; and at the deeply ascetic Trappist monastery of La Grande Trappe, where monks take a vow of silence. Finally, he visits the rock monasteries of Cappadocia, hewn from the stony spires of a moonlike landscape, where he seeks some trace of the life of the earliest Christian anchorites.

More than a history or travel journal, however, this beautiful short book is a meditation on the meaning of silence and solitude for modern life. Leigh Fermor writes, In the seclusion of a cell--an existence whose quietness is only varied by the silent meals, the solemnity of ritual, and long solitary walks in the woods--the troubled waters of the mind grow still and clear, and much that is hidden away and all that clouds it floats to the surface and can be skimmed away; and after a time one reaches a state of peace that is unthought of in the ordinary world.

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Leigh Fermor, Patrick

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General Europe