texts & pretexts :: Solvitur ambulando

:: Solvitur ambulando
June 02, 2006

An article on Patrick Leigh Fermor (“An Englishman Abroad”, by Anthony Lane) in the May 22 issue of The New Yorker ends with Lane recalling a moment eight years ago when Leigh Fermor was returning on the overnight ferry from Crete to Athens.

I offered at least to book him a cabin, since the night could be cold. (This to a man who knows as much as anyone alive about sleeping under the stars.) He smiled and replied that he would prefer a chair on deck, adding, “My dear boy, I have a bottle of red wine and a copy of Persuasion. What more could I possibly need?” Within that question lay the two competing virtues that have fed his prose and fuelled his inimitable life: a settled wisdom, plus the itch to be elsewhere. Here he was, at eighty-three, taking ship in the company of Jane Austen, one of his few peers in the art of the imperturbable. I could well imagine the pair of them at close of day: side by side, exchanging compliments, taking a little wine, and watching the old world slip away.

The New Yorker article is not available online, but The Guardian did another extensive profile of Leigh Fermor a year ago, which is (in the Guardian piece we learn that Leigh Fermor’s motto — later adopted by Bruce Chatwin — is, aptly, “Solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking”).

Leigh Fermor has been one of my favorite travel writers ever since I read A Time Of Gifts (1977), which describes the first part of his journey on foot across Europe in 1934, walking from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (as Istanbul was then known) with a rucksack and a copy of Horace’s Odes.

Polymath, autodidact, intellectual and man of action, Leigh Fermor is attractive to women and envied by men. He continues the account of his wanderjahr in Between the Woods and the Water (1986), which takes him (and us) up to the Yugoslav border. The third and concluding volume in the series has been anticipated — eagerly, patiently — by his fans for twenty years, and with each passing year we get increasingly anxious. Five years ago I wrote to John Murray, Leigh Fermor’s UK publisher, to ask for any news about the third volume, and was surprised to get a reply:

I am sorry to say that the third volume of his travels as a young man has not yet been published, as he is still in the process of writing it. PLF is now in his eighties and it is beginning to seem increasingly unlikely that this final volume will be completed any time soon, if at all. I think the pressure he feels from people’s expectations of him may well have slowed his progress.

You can imagine how discouraging it was to hear his publisher say things like “increasingly unlikely” and “if at all.” But where there is life, there is hope; when Lane asks about the third volume in this recent New Yorker piece, Leigh Fermor says “I’m absolutely longing to get at it”; and from last year’s Guardian profile we have the following update:

He writes in a small studio apart from the main house. Dictionaries, volumes of Proust, books of verse in various languages and back issues of the TLS occupy every surface. Asked if he has a title in mind for the promised last volume of his European trilogy, he looks suddenly pained and answers no. He describes himself as “a very slow writer”. His pages are laboriously revised and readers who revel in his florescent style may be surprised to learn that the finished sentences are pared down from something the author considers “too exaggerated and flowery and overwritten”. Murray says: “It’s rather like a musician: each time he changes a word, he has to go back and change all the other words round about it so that the harmony is right.” Murray recalls “seven versions of A Time of Gifts being submitted to my father. And each one would be written-over, with bubbles containing extra bits. The early manuscripts are like works of art themselves.”

As he is writing, Leigh Fermor thinks of one or two friends “that it might amuse. How would they respond? Where would they sneer?” He refers to his old notebooks for things like dates and place names, but relies on memory for a clearer vision of the walking boy and the snows. “I’ve written quite a large amount. For some reason, I got a sort of scunner against it several years ago. I thought it wasn’t any good. I always think that. But now I think I was wrong. I’m going to pull my socks up and get on with it.”

Yes please; after all Leigh Fermor is now 91, an age when procrastination is a luxury that few can afford.

• • •




	home archives paris bike email about rss / atom	« Hot off the podium :: Litter-ature » :: Solvitur ambulando June 02, 2006 An article on Patrick Leigh Fermor (“An Englishman Abroad”, by Anthony Lane) in the May 22 issue of The New Yorker ends with Lane recalling a moment eight years ago when Leigh Fermor was returning on the overnight ferry from Crete to Athens. I offered at least to book him a cabin, since the night could be cold. (This to a man who knows as much as anyone alive about sleeping under the stars.) He smiled and replied that he would prefer a chair on deck, adding, “My dear boy, I have a bottle of red wine and a copy of Persuasion. What more could I possibly need?” Within that question lay the two competing virtues that have fed his prose and fuelled his inimitable life: a settled wisdom, plus the itch to be elsewhere. Here he was, at eighty-three, taking ship in the company of Jane Austen, one of his few peers in the art of the imperturbable. I could well imagine the pair of them at close of day: side by side, exchanging compliments, taking a little wine, and watching the old world slip away. The New Yorker article is not available online, but The Guardian did another extensive profile of Leigh Fermor a year ago, which is (in the Guardian piece we learn that Leigh Fermor’s motto — later adopted by Bruce Chatwin — is, aptly, “Solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking”). Leigh Fermor has been one of my favorite travel writers ever since I read A Time Of Gifts (1977), which describes the first part of his journey on foot across Europe in 1934, walking from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (as Istanbul was then known) with a rucksack and a copy of Horace’s Odes. Polymath, autodidact, intellectual and man of action, Leigh Fermor is attractive to women and envied by men. He continues the account of his wanderjahr in Between the Woods and the Water (1986), which takes him (and us) up to the Yugoslav border. The third and concluding volume in the series has been anticipated — eagerly, patiently — by his fans for twenty years, and with each passing year we get increasingly anxious. Five years ago I wrote to John Murray, Leigh Fermor’s UK publisher, to ask for any news about the third volume, and was surprised to get a reply: I am sorry to say that the third volume of his travels as a young man has not yet been published, as he is still in the process of writing it. PLF is now in his eighties and it is beginning to seem increasingly unlikely that this final volume will be completed any time soon, if at all. I think the pressure he feels from people’s expectations of him may well have slowed his progress. You can imagine how discouraging it was to hear his publisher say things like “increasingly unlikely” and “if at all.” But where there is life, there is hope; when Lane asks about the third volume in this recent New Yorker piece, Leigh Fermor says “I’m absolutely longing to get at it”; and from last year’s Guardian profile we have the following update: He writes in a small studio apart from the main house. Dictionaries, volumes of Proust, books of verse in various languages and back issues of the TLS occupy every surface. Asked if he has a title in mind for the promised last volume of his European trilogy, he looks suddenly pained and answers no. He describes himself as “a very slow writer”. His pages are laboriously revised and readers who revel in his florescent style may be surprised to learn that the finished sentences are pared down from something the author considers “too exaggerated and flowery and overwritten”. Murray says: “It’s rather like a musician: each time he changes a word, he has to go back and change all the other words round about it so that the harmony is right.” Murray recalls “seven versions of A Time of Gifts being submitted to my father. And each one would be written-over, with bubbles containing extra bits. The early manuscripts are like works of art themselves.” As he is writing, Leigh Fermor thinks of one or two friends “that it might amuse. How would they respond? Where would they sneer?” He refers to his old notebooks for things like dates and place names, but relies on memory for a clearer vision of the walking boy and the snows. “I’ve written quite a large amount. For some reason, I got a sort of scunner against it several years ago. I thought it wasn’t any good. I always think that. But now I think I was wrong. I’m going to pull my socks up and get on with it.” Yes please; after all Leigh Fermor is now 91, an age when procrastination is a luxury that few can afford. • • • Other Patrick Leigh Fermor links: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/19/jan01/downing.htm — 2001: Philhellene’s progress http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3482547.stm — February 2004: Leigh Fermor knighted [with a brief audio clip] Wikipedia article last year’s Guardian profile « previous :: next »
	© 2006 Michael Hayward