The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor

The journey concluded

Upon finishing The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor, I felt both a sense of accomplishment for having finished a trilogy of books, but also a sense of loss, for having completed this reading journey. I would be losing a delightful traveling companion. The trip was a joy; the parting, wistful.

But all readers of Fermor’s trilogy should be thankful that we have a final volume. For after publishing the second installment, Fermor was unable to write this final volume. Perhaps the Saturnalian drags of aging, such as the death of his spouse, declining energy and memory, and homesickness robbed him of the necessary vitality to complete his task. However, a fortuitous event allowed this project to go forward, with the participation of Fermor before he died in 2011 at age 96. In short, Fermor began writing about his journey in the 1960s, but he set aside this initial account that focused on the final leg of this journey. The discovery of this manuscript, along with the recovery of some of his diaries, allowed this book to be completed. The editors, Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron, detail how the book came to publication in their Introduction. We are fortunate to have this volume, although the circumstances of its coming into existence distinguish it from its two predecessors, making it different in intriguing ways.

The account of the last leg of Paddy’s journey is different from the first two because this work is not completed by Fermor. The prose in this work isn’t as highly polished as that in the first two installments. But this lack of polish isn’t at all detrimental to the work. The narrative moves more quickly, and one gets a stronger sense of Fermor’s first impressions. For writers and curious readers, the comparison of this work with its two predecessors provides intriguing insights into Fermor’s meticulous writing, which results—when fully polished—into exquisite, almost Baroque prose. Yet this less polished gem has stands well on its own.

Of special interest to me was the fact that a great deal of this volume recounting the final leg of Fermor’s journey involves Romania and Bucharest, in particular. I was delighted to learn of Fermor’s great time in Bucharest because I am finding it a very amiable and beautiful city. Bucharest in the 1930s was lively and prosperous, and Fermor makes the most of it. He befriends both prostitutes and diplomats, deploying his usual charm and displaying his admirable ability to move easily between social classes. Of course, descriptions of Calea Victoriei (a main thoroughfare in the Bucharest), just a block away from our apartment, furthered my enjoyment of his account.

After leaving Bucharest, Paddy once again heads south across the Danube into Bulgaria, where new adventures await him. Here he recounts some of the tough times that he had, unlike most of the account  of his journey. For instance, he describes a scuffle with a friend that seems to rise out of nowhere, and he describes becoming lost and hurt as night falls along the Black Sea coastline. These unexpected dangers remind us that while Fermor enjoyed great fun and adventures along the way, his trip was not without its challenges.

Fermor’s account stops midsentence just a few days from his eventual arrival in Istanbul (or Constantinople as he insisted on calling it). The editors provide some account of his time there by use of his diary, but I feel a bit let down not having the benefit of Fermor’s full account of his initial entry and observations of this great city. But while Istanbul gets shortchanged, the reader is in for one final treat.

The editors include entries from Paddy’s diary of his trip to Mount Athos, the holy land of Greece filled with Orthodox monasteries and where no women are allowed. Fermor went there after about two weeks in Istanbul. The use of Paddy’s diary provides a less mature reflection on his surroundings and even less polish in his prose. But the sense of immediacy compensates for the reduction in reflection and polish. We only get the 20-year-old Paddy in this account, not the mature Fermor. We experience first-draft observations about the monastic traditions, icons, and people that Paddy encounters, as well as his descriptions of the natural beauty of the stony, forested land and the shining Aegean Sea. We experience Paddy’s growing comfortable in the monastic routine. I only wish he had been more forthcoming about what he thought of these cloistered men and the lives that they lead. We also learn that Paddy traveled there after famed British travel writer Robert Byron and Byron’s friend David Talbot Rice had done so in the 1920s.  Paddy notes having received a gift of Byron’s The Stations: Travels to the Holy Mountain, about Byron’s visit, given to Paddy by one of the monks described in the book and who’d received this inscribed copy from Byron. Paddy’s description of his enjoyment of Byron’s book makes me want to read it, as well.

So it ends. We might well have been stranded at the end of Between the Woods and Water, but through some good fortune and the efforts of Cooper and Thubron, we have a satisfying—surprisingly satisfying—conclusion of this marvelous journey. It has been a pleasure.

Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Those who’ve read my blog or who’ve been around me, know of my enthusiasm for the writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor, especially his most famous work, A Time of Gifts. After learning about this author and his work at JLF (Jaipur Literature Festival), I read A Time of Gifts. After our second visit to JLF, where I heard his biographer, Artemis Cooper and her husband, Antony Beevor, both speak about Fermor, I bought the remaining two books of this trilogy for my Kindle.

But I didn’t read them. Why not?

          For some time, if you’d have asked me I would have attributed this to my fickle reading habits—so many books, so little time—I’m like a kid in a candy shop. Plus, one enthusiasm gives way to another with changing circumstances and then I’m off down another path. All of this is true, but I don’t think it quite captures the deeper motive for my procrastination. After all, am I not too old to suffer the comparison to a kid in a candy shop? (Well, not really.) But after further reflection, I’ve come to a different conclusion. I was savoring the anticipation of the next installment, Between the Woods and the Water. I needed the right occasion, as one does for the enjoyment of a fine wine kept for years in the cellar. (Or, as our modest circumstances dictate, a pretty good wine for a couple of months in the cupboard.) I needed the right occasion to partake once again of Fermor’s enchanting—and may I say? —intoxicating prose. And this summer the right occasion arrived.

          The occasion arrived because we were moving t0 Bucharest, Romania. Not long after arriving in Bucharest, we traveled to Budapest, Hungary, returning to Bucharest by train through Transylvania, an itinerary that roughly matched that of Fermor (although he doesn’t visit Bucharest until the third and final volume of his account). The perfect occasion presented itself, and I once again could savor the superb vintage of Fermor’s prose. 

Passport photo of the dashing young vagabond

          For those that don’t know the backstory, young Patrick Leigh Fermor—Paddy to his friends—set off at age 18 to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (as he insisted on calling Istanbul). In 1977 he published the first installment of his account of that adventure, A Time of Gifts, and in 1986 he published this, the second installment, Between the Woods and the Water. (The third and final volume stalled and was published posthumously through the efforts of Artemis Cooper and Colin Thubron.) In each volume he recounts his walk, taking his time along his and the reader’s way to elucidate about the countryside, the history, and the people with whom he inevitably makes an easy but lasting bond. Paddy sleeps in elegant Budapest homes, in gypsy camps, and in old Transylvanian estate houses; in other words, with those at the pinnacle of society and those at the bottom. Paddy’s fabled charm and easygoing manner allow him to bond at every level.

The man of memory & imagination

          For us to have just recently visited the grand environs of Budapest and the dark forests and sunny valleys of Transylvania adds a unique—but not necessary—vividness to his tales. With Fermor’s graceful and vivid prose, transports the reader to his remote and enchanted world via the written word. Between the Woods and the Water is not a diary—although he kept diaries and drew upon what he had available to him so many years later—and so we have the perspective of both the young Fermor and the mature, reflective Fermor in these pages. A double treat, a two-for-the-price-of-one.

          Fermor can describe nature scenes as few others can; for instance, watching an eagle preen itself takes the better part of a page. He also details the history and architecture of the regions, cities, villages, and estates that he visits. And not least among his skills are his descriptions of the gypsies, shepherds, aristocrats, bon vivants, and beautiful women that he befriends, and his adventures with them. His powers of observation, imagination, and memory are astonishing. Perhaps his power of invention is most impressive of the three, as one doubt that anyone’s memory could be so fine as his, but no matter—the beauty of his prose patches all into one seamless cloth of beauty that disarms any quibbling about the veracity of memory.

          Except for riding horseback across the Hungarian plain and motoring around Transylvania as a part of a clandestine threesome, Paddy walked the full journey.

          Fermor also delights in language, picking up bits of Hungarian and some Romanian along his way after having earlier mastered some German. (I believe he came pre-loaded with French and Latin. The Latin, by the way, came in handy in a later adventure.) He delights in the local languages as he does the local architecture and history.

          Fermor’s book is a joy to read, even more so given my recent acquaintance with some of the lands he traverses in this installment. He ends Between the Woods and the Water with “to be concluded” similar to the “to be continued” that ended A Time of Gifts, but as you’ll learn, it almost didn’t come to pass.  

A Time for Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

In December 1933, a young Brit picked up a freighter to Holland from London to begin a walk across Europe to Constantinople (Istanbul). He'd knocked about in school, never quite fitting into to the routine, although clever and widely read. He held no express goal for this journey except to complete it. After a brief stint traversing Holland, he crossed into Germany and began trekking up the Rhine Valley. After achieving southern Germany, he turned east, picking up the Danube, following the river’s course into Czechoslovakia. He concludes this portion of his journey at a bridge crossing from Czechoslovakia into Hungary. It will take him until January 1935 to reach his goal of Constantinople and a lifetime to complete the three volumes that recount his journey. The final installment, The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos won’t be published in the U.S. until March 2014.

Three traits make this book so impressive. The journey across Europe, poised roughly midway between its two great 20th century cataclysms, puts the reader in a time machine with young “Paddy”. Fermor begins his youthful journey in the year that Hitler came to power, and he encounters Brown Shirts in beer halls and an exuberant thug who’s sloughed off his Communist trappings—physical and mental— to dive headlong into the Nazi movement. As Fermor journeys forward towards his destination, he moves backward in time. He sleeps under the open stars, in barns, in taverns, in hostels, in homes, and in castles. Fermor's youth and charm seem to provide an open sesame to ordinary folk, to the middle class, and to the fading aristocracy. He develops a web of connections among the well-to-do that opens doors as he travels into the next town or castle. He moves from pauper to prince and back with elegant ease. He deftly portrays the characters and scenes that he encounters, often providing digressions on history, flora and fauna, and landscape as he makes his way. A brief side journey to Prague elicits a short foray into the Defenestration of Prague. 

The second factor that adds luster to this work arises from the fact that he wrote this first installment over 40 years after his journey. Invited to write a magazine article about the virtues of walking, Fermor instead wrote this book (published in 1977). Thus, except from some brief excerpts taken directly from his journal, we have the work of a mature, worldly, and erudite man reconstructing his adventures as a very young man. The exuberance of youth mixes with the perspective of age, although the narrative is uninterrupted and of a single voice. We meet two selves speaking through one voice.  

Finally, Fermor's prose exceeds poetry in its beauty and grace. Fermor's work supports my contention that prose can exceed poetry in its beauty, fueled by more extended metaphors, descriptions, and narratives—if penned by the hand of a master such as Fermor. Poetry mimics music in its fleeting melody and open suggestions. Prose, like painting, is more plastic and invites detailed consideration, revealing nuances of meaning as the text retards time of allow a deeper contemplation of the scene created. Others, like William Dalrymple, praise Fermor as one ofthe great English prose-stylists. I concur. Fermor paints verbal portraits and landscapes that rival a Turner or Constable in beauty. 

My brief review does not indicate a lack of merit or enthusiasm for this book; quite the opposite, my ability is inadequate to do real justice to this gem. I’ll leave you with a quote from a passage of the book to provide you a better representation of what Fermor accomplishes with his prose. The setting is at the end of the book, as Fermor stands on the bridge over the Danube between Czechoslovakia and Hungary on Holy Saturday evening: 

I too heard the change in the bells and the croaking and the solitary owl’s note. But it was getting too dim to descry a figure, let alone a struck match, at the windows of the Archbishopric. A little earlier, sunset had kindled them as if the Palace were on fire. Now the sulphur, the crocus, the bright pink and the crimson had left the panes and drained away from the touzled but still unmoving cirrus they had reflected. But the river, paler still by contrast with the sombre merging of the woods , had lightened to a milky hue . A jade-green radiance had not yet abandoned the sky. The air itself, the branches, the flag-leaves, the willow -herb and the rushes were held for a space, before the unifying shadows should dissolve them, in a vernal and marvellous light like the bloom on a greengage. Low on the flood and almost immaterialized by this luminous moment, a heron sculled upstream, detectable mainly by sound and by the darker and slowly dissolving rings that the tips of its flight-feathers left on the water. A collusion of shadows had begun and soon only the lighter colour of the river would survive. Downstream in the dark, meanwhile, there was no hint of the full moon that would transform the scene later on. No-one else was left on the bridge and the few on the quay were all hastening the same way. Prised loose from the balustrade at last by a more compelling note from the belfries, I hastened to follow. I didn’t want to be late.

TO BE CONTINUED

Fermor, Patrick Leigh (2010-10-10). A Time of Gifts (Kindle Locations 4710-4721). John Murray. Kindle Edition.

And continue I shall with Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Middle Danube to the Iron Gates, the next installment. As a little added bonus, I’m very much looking forward to hearing his biographer, Artemis Cooper, speak @ #JLF about her Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure published in 2013.