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A Time to Keep Silence

by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Karen Armstrong (Introduction)

3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 · rating details · 326 ratings · 69 reviews

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...more

Paperback, 112 pages

Published October 30th 2007 by NYRB Classics (first published July 5th 1989)

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Nov 16, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Eric

Shelves: 2011, drunk-book-reviews, essays, french-francophone, in-by-of-england, non-fiction, reviewed, overshare

Edit: A reading of this review may be found here, a part of Brian's Big Audio Project

I am moody and reflective and still a bit drunk so I caution readers now that this is going to be one of those reviews; the kind you write on dark nights when the windows can still be opened and the wind is strong and the leaves are giving up their hold on reality. I walked back from the T (that's the subway to those not in the Boston-know) after finishing these three essays on monasticism and monasteries. It's...more Edit: A reading of this review may be found here, a part of Brian's Big Audio Project

I am moody and reflective and still a bit drunk so I caution readers now that this is going to be one of those reviews; the kind you write on dark nights when the windows can still be opened and the wind is strong and the leaves are giving up their hold on reality. I walked back from the T (that's the subway to those not in the Boston-know) after finishing these three essays on monasticism and monasteries. It's a beautiful walk, past gloomy Victorian houses and spoiling autumn gardens and the air smells like the very beginning of leaf mold: damp, soil-ly, and crisp. It is the kind of night I long for all summer long. When will it be fall?

It reminds me of my first semester in Aberdeen and the stillness as I walked through that long, dark park that separated the old city from our very modern and very ugly dorm complex. I loved the silence of those walks. The wind created the only noise other than my footsteps. It was soothing, peaceful, calm. I went through a horrible bout of something, which we can call homesickness for lack of a simple explanation, in those first few months, and those walks, and walks along the hill above the north sea, not far away, were among the times when I could let everything go and just enjoy being there, love being there, and all the other stuff didn't matter at all.

Created silence, and the deliberate choice to seek it out, is appealing. I search it out in darkened, late night flights, wrapped in a book, or walking home. Fermor writes about it beautifully, and I'm fascinated by this study of monasteries and their orders. I wouldn't haven't have expected the young man jauntily making his way through Nazi-infested Germany in A Time of Gifts to enter (and remain) in a monastery, even as a guest, for as long as he did. He strikes me as a social creature, a very social creature, and the silence, the discipline, the constraints of the monastery seem unlike him. They were, of course. He describes his first days there as difficult and how he felt uncomfortable and unhappy and what certainly sounded a great deal like detox (he was deeply chagrined to discover that his monastery of choice did not serve wine with dinner).

For me, the book is more interesting in its concept than its execution. It's a travel book and he does not become reflective on his own life nor does he grow literary, at all. One of the things I liked so much about A Time of Gifts was the literary reflection, the snatches of poetry, the discussion of first reading Proust, the books that came to him as he walked. That is absent here. This book describes, better than anything else I've read in non-fiction, the experience of living as a monk, a modern one that is, and it gives an excellent, brief history of some monasteries and monastic orders. I'm sorry this wasn't part of the assigned reading in college when we were subjected to The Rule of Saint Benedict.

The book has made me reflective though. I'll spare you much more of it. It's one of those books that you read to think about. What I mean is that it provides a starting point, maybe more than just a starting point, to think about why people join communities like this, why the appeal of this life continues into present day. Is it more appealing now than fifty years ago? Are the requirements too much for a modern person? Does it appeal to me?

It does not, in fact. It never has, since the first requirement is faith, and I have never had it. The appeal of retreating from the world for a little while though, that appeals. After a week of constant meetings and too many emails and texts and IMs, and calls beginning at 6:30 am, and still checking in after dinner, with more people from work, getting out of the whole thing sounds more than appealing, it sounds like the only way to keep my sanity. But it isn't the only way. Interesting that Fermor chose this path. I chose reading. This book lead me back to that. Walking up the hill I thought about the silence around me as I read this book on the crowded T. The light and noise of it and how I almost missed my stop; I had become absorbed, focused, on my reading. How many times does that happen? What is it about reading, and what I read, that creates that kind of space. I found myself more interested in those questions, I'm sorry to say, than the contents of the book itself, although I am grateful to it for raising them, or helping me to do so. I like Fermor's ability to do that. It seems to be just under the surface of his books. A lovely gift to his readers.(less)

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Feb 07, 2011 Jacob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nyrb, i-own, travel, 2011

When one thinks of Wisconsin, the Dalai Lama (probably) doesn't come to mind. Imagine His Reincarnatedness milking a cow or drunkenly cheering whatever our football team is called, cheesehead clashing with his robes. But it's true! The Wisconsin bit, I mean: there's a Buddhist monastery near Madison, about an hour's drive from where I live, and the Dalai Lama stops by occasionally to crash on their couch.

(Man, that guy needs to get a job, or else our new Lord Governor might not let him back int...more When one thinks of Wisconsin, the Dalai Lama (probably) doesn't come to mind. Imagine His Reincarnatedness milking a cow or drunkenly cheering whatever our football team is called, cheesehead clashing with his robes. But it's true! The Wisconsin bit, I mean: there's a Buddhist monastery near Madison, about an hour's drive from where I live, and the Dalai Lama stops by occasionally to crash on their couch.

(Man, that guy needs to get a job, or else our new Lord Governor might not let him back into the state. Wisconsin: ~~Open for Business~~ Bring Money!)

I discovered this monastery, Deer Park Buddhist Center, back in the spring of 2006. At the time, I wanted to run away and become a monk. I’m still not sure why, really--I mean, the economy was somewhat decent, and Sarah Palin hadn't yet ridden down from the frozen North upon her gilded war-grizzly to rape and pillage the Lower 48, so things weren't that bad yet--but I had this great, deep desire to hide away from the world and to dedicate my life to silence and solitude and poverty and, yeah, even chastity (which in those days was hardly a struggle). I wanted to disappear, but not completely--I’m too hopelessly incompetent to survive as a forest-dwelling hermit--so I figured finding a place with like-minded people would work better. But not a Christian place; I was hopelessly agnostic at that point, and had no interest in dedicating my life to a god I wasn't sure existed--and although I wasn't spiritual either, I figured Buddhism was worth a try. Imagine my surprise when I found a Buddhist monastery in my state, and less than a hundred miles away. The Dalai Lama had already come and gone, but I noticed on their visitor's page that another monk, possibly a lama but maybe not, was visiting soon, and was holding a class on peace or serenity or whatever Buddhism was about. Seemed like an opportunity, so I decided to visit...

I got lost on the way there. I got lost on the way back. Even when I found the place, I was still lost: somehow it hadn’t ocurred to me, in all the time I spent thinking about visiting, that I should probably learn a thing or two about Buddhism before showing up. In between all the bowing and the kneeling and the meditating and the listening to the tiny old Tibetan-or-maybe-Nepali monk speak about I-can't-remember-what, I was completely, shamefully, hopelessly, embarrassingly lost. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't belong there.

Monasteries: apparently not for me.

Not so for Patrick Leigh Fermor. L. F., the Dalai Lama of travel writing (and the New York Review of Books' favorite Buddha), may have felt a little lost and confused when he visited the Abbey of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle in Northern France, when he journeyed from Solesmes to La Grande Trappe, and when he went to the abandoned rock monasteries of Cappadocia while travelling through Turkey--but while I slunk away in embarrassment and never went back, he wrote this beautiful little book instead.

And what a book. A Time to Keep Silence is an exploration of some of Europe's oldest monasteries, a history of some of the monastic orders and their ways of life, and a meditation on the nature of silence and solitude--all in 96 pages. The stark, almost brutal beauty of the places and lives Leigh Fermor describes is almost--almost--enough to make me reconsider my fear of monasteries, but I would probably benefit more from rereading (and rereading again, and again, and again) this little book. And the rest of Patrick Leigh Fermor's travel writing. Most of it's been published by the New York Review of Books, so it's not like I need an excuse...
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Jun 14, 2011 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1950s, buildings, walks

By the mid 1950s, Patrick Leigh Fermor was living in France, drinking abundantly, enjoying the company of friends, and reading everything he could get his hands on – all of which severely distracted him from the real task at hand: writing a book. In ‘search for somewhere quiet and cheap to stay’, he retreated to the abbey of St Wandrille, a Benedictine foundation in Normandy known for its hospitality, the purity of its plainsong, and most importantly, its vow of silence. The book that emerged fr...more By the mid 1950s, Patrick Leigh Fermor was living in France, drinking abundantly, enjoying the company of friends, and reading everything he could get his hands on – all of which severely distracted him from the real task at hand: writing a book. In ‘search for somewhere quiet and cheap to stay’, he retreated to the abbey of St Wandrille, a Benedictine foundation in Normandy known for its hospitality, the purity of its plainsong, and most importantly, its vow of silence. The book that emerged from this sojourn, A Time to Keep Silence (1957), may not be the book Leigh Fermor intended to write when he entered the abbey; but this short, sober meditation, drawn mostly from letters he wrote during his stays at St Wandrille and other monastic communities, remains a favourite with many readers who delight in its gentle insights on the rigours and rewards of the cenobitic life.

‘A novice advanced with a silver ewer and a basin; the Abbot poured a little water over our hands, a towel was offered, and our welcome, according to Benedictine custom, was complete’. In spite of this warm welcome, Leigh Fermor can’t at first shake a painful feeling of living in a catacomb: silence and insomnia torment him, followed by regret and boredom. After a few days, though, his mind begins to clear of worries, his system starts to dry out, the distractions of life outside the abbey’s walls gently drift away; and refreshed by deep, uninterrupted sleep, he finds that his work has become a pleasure. For the next couple of months he lives among the abbey’s residents, rising with them in the early morning hours appointed for the Divine Office, dining with them in silence while the lector reads aloud in Latin from the Martyrology, and studying extensively in the abbey’s excellent library (even calling occasionally for books from Enfer, a depository of works considered ‘damaging to monastic life’ – alas, he names no titles).

A short time later, seeking a more severe monastic experience, Leigh Fermor takes a ‘plunge into the depths of a Trappist monastery’ known for its ‘fierce asceticism, cloistered incarceration ... abstinence, fasting, humiliation, the hair shirt, the scourge’. The dip leaves him a little more bewildered than refreshed. Unimpressed by the Cistericians’ emphasis on physical asceticism and intellectual simplicity, he goes so far as to describe his stay there as fruitful only insofar as he took ‘masochistic enjoyment’ in its ‘sad charm’. A third monastic visit, this time to the abandoned subterranean churches and hermitages of Cappadocia, likewise proves almost as perplexing as inspiring. Unable to determine who exactly the former inhabitants were or what their mode of spiritual exercise entailed, he at least finds some philological satisfaction when he notes that, judging from the inscriptions on the frescoes, the 11th-century community there pronounced Greek in much the same way as a modern Athenian.

While A Time to Keep Silence is a book about the quiet, contemplative life, it is also to a surprising extent a book about words and their use. During his long walks with the Benedictine abbot, Leigh Fermor confesses to feeling a ‘spasm of delight’ whenever the abbot slips into the ‘Latin of the Vatican’. This delight in arcane, foreign, and unusual words (noctambulism, giaour, villeggiatura are a few I had to look up) reverberates throughout the book in a way that would have made Corvo green. ‘Dans le monde hors de nos murs, on fait un grand abus de la parole’, the abbot opines. Leigh Fermor may have nodded in agreement at the time, but this book, like much of his work, is nevertheless best read with a thick dictionary and a set of encyclopaedias at your side.

‘The secret of monastic life, that entire abdication of the will and the enthronement of the will of God which solves all problems and trials and turns a life of such acute outward suffering into one of peace and joy, is a thing that is given to few outside a cloister fully to comprehend’. Leigh Fermor never claims to have been one of the lucky few. Even thirty years after writing the book and after countless other visits to monastic communities scattered across Europe and the New World, he felt himself ‘unqualified still to deliver a verdict on the conditions and possibilities of life in that hushed and wintry solitude’. What he does come to understand, though, is his own ‘capacity for solitude’ coupled with an undeniable sorrow for the sight of empty monasteries. Not exactly earth-moving revelations. And to be sure, A Time to Keep Silence isn’t a profound spiritual autobiography, or even a particularly religious book. But it does offer a brief, interesting look at the world of mid-century monasticism; and in the end, you’ll probably take away not only a greater sympathy for those who have chosen to pursue the conventual life, but also a deeper appreciation of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s geniality, humanity, and wit.(less)

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Feb 24, 2013 Ash rated it 4 of 5 stars

A Time to Keep Silence is about Patrick Leigh Fermor's travels to four monasteries: three in France and one in ruins in Turkey. At the first one, Abbey of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle, Fermor, at first, finds it difficult to cope with the startling silence. He feels loneliness and depression. He is self-medicating with alcohol. However, Fermor grows used to it, so much so, that when he leaves and returns to the outside world, he generalizes it as a world full of debauchary, crooks, sluts.

The seco...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Roger rated it 4 of 5 stars

Patrick Leigh Fermor, even if he never wrote a word, would still be known for his daring wartime work with the Special Operations Executive, where he played a vital part in the daring kidnap of a German General, Heinrich Kreipe on the island of Crete in 1944.

Fortunately for us he did write, and write beautifully. Known as a travel writer, he was far more - his works are full of not only travel, but history, philosophy, art and an overflowing evanescence of language.

A time to keep silence is a co...more Patrick Leigh Fermor, even if he never wrote a word, would still be known for his daring wartime work with the Special Operations Executive, where he played a vital part in the daring kidnap of a German General, Heinrich Kreipe on the island of Crete in 1944.

Fortunately for us he did write, and write beautifully. Known as a travel writer, he was far more - his works are full of not only travel, but history, philosophy, art and an overflowing evanescence of language.

A time to keep silence is a collection of three - should we call them essays? - perhaps meditations might be a more exact term - written by Fermor in response to sojourns at two Abbeys in France, and a journey to the deserted cathedrals and cells for the Basilian monks in Cappadocia.

The work is sourced mainly from letters Fermor wrote at the time to his future wife, worked up for publication. In his introduction he points out that he is in no way an expert on religion or monasticism, and in fact not really fit to describe the monastic life in any complex way. And yet the book is a fascinating account of the life and times of the great Abbeys. The first 'meditation', written from the Abbey of St. Wandrille De Fontanelle, is Fermor's first introduction to such an institution - he has travelled to the Abbey as he thinks the peace and seclusion of the location will help him with his writing.

At first Fermor has an aversion to everything in the Abbey: the monks seem cadaverous, the location grim, and the solitude lead-heavy, like being "by mistake locked up in a catacomb". After a few days however, he begins to fall into the rhythm of the Abbey, and feels wonderfully refreshed. He writes "The two ways of life [monastic and secular] do not share a single attribute; and the thoughts, ambitions, sounds, light, time and mood that surround the inhabitants of a cloister are not only unlike anything to which one is accustomed, but in some curious way, seem its exact reverse."

He gives a history of the Abbey, which, far from being a millenium-long island of peace, coped with many periods of dis-establishment, despoilation and despair; in fact as recently as 1901 the monastry was dispersed, and passed to a new owner who roller-skated down the cloisters followed by his various hounds! The power of the life of prayer for those who chose to follow it is wonderfully evoked by describing all the hurdles these communities have overcome to just be able to devote their lives to their Lord.

As he delves further into the life and belief of the monks who share this space with him, he realises "the dominating factor of monastic existance is a belief in the necessity and efficacy of prayer; and it is only by attempting to grasp the importance of this principle - a principle so utterly remote from every tendency of modern secular thought - to the monks who practise it, that one can hope to understand the basis of monasticism." Fermor directly asked one of the monks ..."how he could sum up, in a couple of words, his way of life. He paused a moment and said, 'Have you ever been in love?' I said 'Yes.' A larger Fernandel smile spread across his face. 'Eh bien,' he said, 'c'est exactement pariel...'".

From the contemplative surroundings of St. Wandrille De Fontanelle, Fermor then moves, with a quick detour via Solesmes, to La Grande Trappe, the headquarters of The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.S.C.O.), or Trappists. Fermor quickly describes the much stricter rules of this house (no separate cells for monks, no talking at all, very vigorous daily labour, prayers beginning at about 2am after a mere five hours sleep), and then proceeds to try to understand why these monks would submit to such a labour. The following quote is long, but neatly encapsulates the way of Trappist thought - "To understand these Cisterican rigours, we must dismiss modern accomodations and rationalistaions and seek to return to the uncompromising literalness of the early Christians. Prayer for the redemption of mankind is the basis of Benedictine monasticism; and in the Cisterican branch of the Benedictine family the principle of prayer has been supplemented by the idea of vicarious penance........A Cistercian Cloister is a workshop of intercession and a bitter cactus-land of expiation for the mountains fo sin which have accumulated since the Fall. A Trappist career is a long-drawn-out atonement, a protracted imitation of the Wilderness, the Passion, the Agony in the Garden, the Way of the Cross, and the final sacrifice of Golgotha. By fierce asceticism, cloistered incarceration, sleeping on straw and rising in the darkness after a few hous' sleep, by abstinence, fasting, humiliation, the hair shirt, the scourge, the extremes of heat and cold, and the unbroken cycle of contemplation, prayer and back-breaking toil, they seek, by taking the sins of others on to their own shoulders, to lighten the burden of mankind."

Fermor is allowed no contact with the monks at La Grande Trappe, which frees him for his writing, but leaves him wondering how a person can chose this life; he falls back on conversations with someone who has left the order to try and gain insights into the psychology of a Trappist, a problem he grapples with in this section of the book.

The final section is a description of a trip taken by Fermor and a friend to Urgub, in Cappadocia. These few pages are mostly given to marvellous descriptions of the cells and churches cut into the living rock, with a wonderful evocation of the life that must have once been lived there, centuries ago, and, when Fermor was there, all but forgotten by the modern world.

A short postscript describes the growing monastic movement in Fermor's home country England.

At 96 pages, this is a book that is short in length, but long in what it gives the reader - highly recommended for those who are interested in finding out more about the monastic life without too much religion thrown into the mix, or those who love magnificent evocative writing - it has encouraged this reviewer to read more of Fermor.
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Jul 16, 2011 Colleen Clark rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

To me this was the least interesting of the Patrick Leigh Fermor books that I have read. He assumes the reader's familiarity with the Catholic daily monastic schedule, but I am not familiar.

I was taken by the cover photo of Cappadocia in central Turkey. The landscape was well known before the Christian era, described both by Herodotus and Xenophon, according to the Blue Guide to Turkey.

As a visitor to the area in the 1960's and 70's I was unaware of the use of the caves as monasteries rather th...more

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Apr 19, 2011 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: religion, travel-classics

With every book by Patrick Leigh Fermor that I read, I become saddened that there are so few left for me to read, especially as what remains were written so many years ago. Fermor's effortless erudition and flights of verbal fancy are without equal in our time. Take, as an example, this description of a Cistercian service at La Grande Trappe:

In church there was a kind of minstrels' gallery from which the guests, like Moslem ladies in a zenana, gazed down at the Trappists. The Victorian Gothic ar

...more With every book by Patrick Leigh Fermor that I read, I become saddened that there are so few left for me to read, especially as what remains were written so many years ago. Fermor's effortless erudition and flights of verbal fancy are without equal in our time. Take, as an example, this description of a Cistercian service at La Grande Trappe:

In church there was a kind of minstrels' gallery from which the guests, like Moslem ladies in a zenana, gazed down at the Trappists. The Victorian Gothic architecture of the church had none of the Romantic splendour of Solesmes; it was a great, dark north-Oxford nightmare, a grey sepulchre in the depths of which, hour upon hour, the chanting monks stood or knelt. The glaucous light was drained of colour. Fathoms below, columns of beard and brown home-spun, were the foreshortened lay-brothers. Beyond, their white habits and black scapulars covered by voluminous cowls, evolved the choir-monks. Each topiaried head was poised, as it were, on three cylinders of white fog: the enveloped body flanked by two sleeves so elongated and tubular that their mouths touched the ground, flipping and swinging, when the monks were in motion, like the ends of elephants' trunks.

Ostensibly, A Time to Keep Silence is about visits to four monastic communities over a three-year period in the 1950s: St Wandrille de Fontenelle, Solesmes, La Grande Trappe, and finally, the remains of the Byzantine tufa rock monasteries of Cappadocia in present-day Turkey. Fermor provides some interesting comparisons between the Benedictine (St Wandrille and Solesme) and Cistercian (La Grande Trappe) orders of Catholic monks and the former Byzantine monks.

I was astonished when I came to the end of this book in something less than an hour and a half. The concluding "Postscript," which covers the remaining monasteries in Britain, expresses profound regret that so little remained after the ravages of Henry VIII of what Fermor considers to be a profound and viable religious life completely divorced from the noise and distractions of the 20th century.

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Feb 20, 2011 Ken marked it as to-read

This piece on NPR made me want to add this book to the To Read list - and go to a monastery - and it's a nice, short book too.

...I stopped to see a friend, and when he heard the purpose of my trip — to step outside the daily round of distraction and obligation — he pulled a book off his shelf and suggested I might want to take it along for the journey. It was called A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor, and I quickly fell under its spell.

At a mere 95 pages, it is a short read, yet no

...more

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Sep 24, 2010 Douglas Dalrymple rated it 4 of 5 stars

I fiercely loved Fermor’s ‘A Time of Gifts’ and ‘Between the Woods and Water’ –two volumes recounting his 1930s jaunt across Europe on foot. Anyone with an interest in western culture, history, literature or the arts, should read them. If this brief little book isn’t so expansive as those, it isn’t intended to be. Here Fermor recounts some of his experiences and impressions visiting and staying in monasteries in France, the UK and Asia Minor. Though by his own admission Fermor lacks certain pre-...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

A thoroughly delightful read! This is what I was expecting when i picked up Peter Levi's "Frontiers of Paradise". The book is divided into three parts. The first part records his impressions while staying at the Abbey of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle, a Benedictine abbey in France. The second part tells about his stay with the Trappists and the third is a small description of Cappadocia.

Fermor's stay in St. Wandrille was his first exposure to monastic life and the experience was quite raw and a bi...more

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May 07, 2011 Diane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: religion

During the 1950's looking for a quiet place to write, Fermor goes to the Benedictine Abbey of St. Wandrille de Fontanelle as a guest. The first 40 or so pages of this little book is about what he finds there. It is a beautiful story and I was captivated. I am not a contemplative person and do not find meditation activities at all relaxing or rewarding, but I have had a long fascination for Benedictine discipline and the importance of the quotidian. I loved the story he tells of his time at St Wa...more

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Mar 04, 2012 Patty rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, spiritual-journey, spiritual-writing, spirituality, silence, non-fiction, memoir, travel, turkey, contemplation, community, france, monastery

I have been encountering this book and the author, Patrick Leigh Fermor, in my reading for more than a year. I seemed destined to read this book. So when I was doing a book order and needed one more title to get my free shipping, this was the reasonable candidate. That got the book in my house, but not to the top of the to-be-read pile.

Then I decided to add silence to my day for Lent. I have not been keeping up with my journal and I am hoping that adding a bit of silence before writing will enco...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Kendra rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: faith-christianity, mfa-recommendations, nonfiction

I love monasticism. I love reading and writing about it, and I love encountering it. Not that I'm a monk, or the sort of ascetic self-denier who would be willing to dispense with all my creature comforts on a whim. (I have yet to hear of any tea connoisseurs living under the thumb of Saint Benedict.) There's little chance I'll ever become a monk (and still less, a nun), but I enjoyed my collegiate visits to Subiaco Abbey very much, and hope to go back. (A point of interest: Patrick Leigh Fermo...more I love monasticism. I love reading and writing about it, and I love encountering it. Not that I'm a monk, or the sort of ascetic self-denier who would be willing to dispense with all my creature comforts on a whim. (I have yet to hear of any tea connoisseurs living under the thumb of Saint Benedict.) There's little chance I'll ever become a monk (and still less, a nun), but I enjoyed my collegiate visits to Subiaco Abbey very much, and hope to go back. (A point of interest: Patrick Leigh Fermor mentions a visit to Subiaco in his introduction.)

I have blogged about Subiaco before (here and here), so I won't burden you with yet another reflection on its many virtues. That monasteries and monastic living foster solitude and repose and reflection is a given; but knowing these things and experiencing them are two very different things. The first couple of hours at a monastery are too full of observations to be truly useful. The gilding, the stained-glass, the vestments have to be admired and dissected and worn, heretic-fashion. The grounds have to be wandered, the hay bales climbed, and the first prayers for peace and progress have to be uttered, the first night spent in spare lodgings, before isolation even snuffles at the door. There's simply too much fun to be had.

The second day is better. And I'll be honest--I haven't ever spent more than a couple days in a row at Subiaco. So I can really only ever speak for first, second, and third days. I was in college, after all. But I have two advantages over Patrick Leigh Fermor: I was a believer long before I first entered a monastery, and I am not by nature a social person. The first advantage meant that I had already studied the tenets of faith and accepted them as true, and didn't have to struggle to reconcile with the ideas of monasticism as well as their physical manifestations. The second advantage means that I could quite happily lock myself away from social media and cell phones and conversation for a good long spell. Not to mention, I like working in gardens and farms, stables, and schools. Subiaco, like most monasteries, is self-sufficient because of the industry of their monks in these areas.

As far as a monastery in Arkansas is like a monastery in France, I can point to marked similarities between my experience at Subiaco and Fermor's at the Abbey of St. Wandrille. And yet, Fermor was not tethered to his own experience; A Time to Keep Silence is an exploration not just of his own memory, but of monastic living in general. He weaves together the history, philosophy, theology, and activity of the monastic movement. It is a slim volume, but he digs deep and sweeps wide. For being so slender, this is a remarkably comprehensive and even-handed volume. An excellent, if brief, introduction to an institution that is, by and large, forgotten by or at odds with life in the modern West. Fermor reminded me of why I fell in love with monasticism in the first place, and of every good memory I keep from my second and third years of college.(less)

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Feb 24, 2013 Newengland rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished-in-2013, nonfiction

Some books require special approaches and conditions. This would be one of them. Although it can be downed in one sitting, A Time to Keep Silence is no lightweight and cannot be underestimated. I suggest you find a quiet spot in a place where you know the silence will hold. Ironically, a monastery would serve nicely, but you probably don't have one out back, so consider your house when everyone else (spare the dog) has gone a-malling. That's what I did.

Also, if you have great expectations, leave...more Some books require special approaches and conditions. This would be one of them. Although it can be downed in one sitting, A Time to Keep Silence is no lightweight and cannot be underestimated. I suggest you find a quiet spot in a place where you know the silence will hold. Ironically, a monastery would serve nicely, but you probably don't have one out back, so consider your house when everyone else (spare the dog) has gone a-malling. That's what I did.

Also, if you have great expectations, leave them at the door. Like its monkish subject, this book is simplicity itself -- chiefly description and history. If the thought of getting away from it all as a guest at a monastery appeals to you as much as it does to me, you might even expect more than this slim volume is capable of delivering. Bad idea.

In his introduction, Patrick Leigh Fermor states that this book was based on letters he wrote to his future wife. Thus, his purpose was to be an erudite fly on the wall, simply providing narrative snapshots of the monastery's architecture and surroundings as well as short descriptions of the monks' daily rituals. It stands to reason, then, that on a ledger between Romanticism and Realism, this 97-pager is going to land deep in the land of realism.

And there's the rub. With his impressive vocabulary (typically 1-3 words every 5 pages that I do not know or fully know) and established track record as a travel writer nonpareil, Fermor might leave you hungering for more of the Romantic angle. You know, Fermor in his cell, for instance, writing feverishly, stopping to look out at the lush evergreen woods and a single path disappearing in the firs, musing about life, solitude, love, sadness, regret, nature, and so forth. All that good stuff. Well, you get some nature description (albeit brief), but you'll be sadly disappointed if you seek more. It's just not there.

Instead of adopting the role of vicarious soul partner, you are left instead to be a student. PLF teaches us about the histories of the Abbey of St. Wandrille, Solesmes, and La Grande Trappe. The first is the most thorough and thus satisfying. It also represents the Benedictines, who come across as more approachable than the Trappists. In addition to the history, PLF shares the daily ritual, the prayer services, the chants, the allegiance to silence, obedience, chastity.

He's disappointed the first night at St. Wandrille. He sits at the dinner table expecting red wine to wash down his supper with and finds instead a pitcher of water. Interestingly, he describes a severe period of getting used to life in a monastery -- the loneliness, the doubt, the depression even -- and how it dissipates after four days or so. Then, suddenly, with the weight of the world washed away, he begins to sleep more soundly. Similarly, when he leaves St. Wandrille after an extended stay, he finds trouble in "decompressing" in order to function again in modern society. Entering and leaving monastic life seemed reminiscent of falling into and then struggling out of certain forms of addiction -- a definite struggle:

"If my first days in the Abbey had been a period of depression, the unwinding process, after I had left, was ten times worse. The Abbey was at first a graveyard; the outer world seemed afterwards, by contrast, an inferno of noise and vulgarity entirely populated by bounders and sluts and crooks. This state of mind, I saw, was , perhaps, as false as my first reactions to monastic life; but the admission did nothing to decrease its unpleasantness."

I also enjoyed Karen Armstrong's introduction. She took issue with PLF on one count: he stressed the importance of belief in the monasteries, whereas she holds the emphasis lies in behavior. Her final paragraph speaks to me and perhaps to the reason I bought the book in the first place:

"I sympathize with Leigh Fermor, when he remarked one day to the Abbot what a blessed relief it was to refrain from talking all day long. 'Yes,' the Abbot replied; 'in the outside world, speech is gravely abused.' Our world is even more noisy than it was in the 1950s when Leigh Fermor wrote this book: piped music and mobile phones jangle ceaselessly, and silence and solitude are shunned as alien and unnatural. We expect instant communication and seek knowledge at the click of a mouse. We are also living at a time of competing certainties and religious stridency. It is important to realize that there are more profound and authentic ways of being religious. Very few of us can be contemplative nuns or monks, but we can learn to appreciate their way of experiencing the sacred and integrate something of this gentle, silent discipline into our own lives. This gem of a book can help us to do just that."

To which I can only say: "Amen."(less)

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Mar 06, 2011 Tom Ireland rated it 4 of 5 stars

I came to Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time to Keep Silence through Susan Hill's excellent book, Howard's End is on the Landing. In the book, Fermor writes about his time visiting various monasteries and reflects on the way of life in them.

Initially hostile to the "odour of sanctity" he finds, Fermor comes to have a great respect for the communities he describes and there is even a hint of jealousy in his prose. Whether or not I am correct in that, his respect for "the anonymous well-wishers who red...more

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Mar 06, 2009 Lois rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction-other

This is a very interesting and frustrating book. Frustrating primarily because it was not what I expected. The bits about how living at the abbey affected the author's mental and emotional well-being were tantalizing. Instead of delving further into that area, the author discusses the history of the abbeys - also very interesting - and describes ways of life in other abbeys.
The description of the stone spaces at Cappadocia was very intriquing. I'd like to learn more about them and find out if th...more

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May 05, 2012 Patti K rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

This short travel book was originally published in 1959 and reprinted in 1982.
Fermor visited two Benedictine monasteries in France and wrote about his
experiences there. He gives a detailed portrayal of their daily offices and
activities as well as architectural and historical information. Although it
was a somewhat difficult transition at first what with the silence vows, Fermor
adjusts and finds himself some peace. He also writes of the ruins of a church
in Cappadocia in Turkey. It was carved out o...more

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Dec 13, 2009 g rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: ecclesiastics

A thoughtful and elegant description of the narrator's visits to four monasteries, including histories of each (where known). At first put off by the alien atmosphere, Fermor becomes increasingly awed and affected by the monks' ordered existence. Since I'm unfamiliar with the subject, this book was eye-opening, and I'm eager to learn more, especially about the parallel experiences of female orders.

Be warned: many of the reviews describe this as a meditation on the meaning of silence in contempo...more

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Jun 25, 2011 Rdonn rated it 4 of 5 stars

When Patrick Leigh Fermor died recently I realized I'd read none of his books. I got this slight volume on Inter Library Loan. It is really three essays on the life of a monk, Benedictine, Cistercian, and lastly a small essay on the monasteries of Cappodocia. The effect of silence and the strictness of discipline are a shock to a man of the world. But the effect of, especially, the Benedictine monastery he chose was phenomenal, once he'd gotten over the shock of such silence. he went to write in...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Fermor's short book on his monastic visits provides a brief taste, too brief to be enough. The short accounts did not reveal enough about either the author or the monastic life. The hints were wonderful, but they felt like describing the scenery, establishing setting, and not full stories. Fermor also likes to use obscure words - something the previous reader of my used copy highlighted quite obsessively in the first pages of the book. Karen Armstrong's introduction was mostly self-indulgent/con...more

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Feb 28, 2010 Christy rated it 3 of 5 stars

A short look at monasticism in which the author visits several communities: three Roman Catholic monasteries in France and the ruins of a desert monastery in Cappadocia. Fermor, a non-believer, is a kind and observant guide to the briefly explored oddities of monastic life. Aside from being an elegant and insightful read - vintage Fermor - I was baffled by his immense vocabulary and had to read it alongside a dictionary. This included words like coenobitical, demesne, and glebe, which I must now...more

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Aug 22, 2011 Amy Cockram rated it 4 of 5 stars

For a full review, please visit my blog http://cornishamy.blogspot.com/2011/0...

This is a beautifully written, descriptive piece of travel writing about Patrick Leigh Fermor's time spent in retreat as a guest in monasteries. This short book is a collection of three pieces. The first piece deals with a stay at a Benedictine monastery, the Abbey of St Wandrille de Fontanelle, the second with a brief sojourn at Solesmes and a longer stay at Cistercian abbey La Grande Trappe and the final, shorter,...more

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Aug 23, 2007 Hugh rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People in large, loud cities

This is a short book about the author's time visiting a monestery and the profound sense of peace and serenity that it gave him. I read this on the subway and so it had a great appeal--I locked the door of my office and refused to answer e-mails or the telephone that day.

The book also supplied me with one of my favorite stories about sleep. The author spent the first several days in the monestery sleeping (there was nothing else to do). Afterwards, he felt rejuvinated and was able to work on a b...more

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Dec 12, 2012 Cathy rated it 5 of 5 stars

WWhen I read a book by a favourite author I read very slowly, sometimes aloud, savouring the flow of words, and teasing out the meaning. In this account of an unusual ascetic retreat the cadence of Fermor's fine prose echos the simplicity of the plainchant; the great silence is not empty, but resonant with the free flow of thought. It is unsurprising then, that Fermor, war hero,great romantic and generous lover who "everyone fell in love with" should seek the sanctuary of the monastery to write...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Sue rated it 2 of 5 stars

I was hoping this would be more of an introspective journey than it was, so it was a disappointment to me.

Fermor provided historical information about each of the "monasteries" he visited, including leaders/abbots and church events. I was unfamiliar with them and would have learned more if he delved more rather than running through an outline.

This guy has an incredible vocabulary, challenging my ability to understand via context.

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Sep 24, 2011 Kim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

A wonderful slim volume about the authors sojourns in various Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries. The reader "checks in" to a monastery on occasion to recuperate, to write, to recharge. A lovely look at the unexpected benefits of a "community of solitude" with some fascinating history thrown in (such as, how did cappucino get its name?). Can be read in one sitting.

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Jan 04, 2010 Larafi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As usual, had to consult my Shorter OED a number of times when reading this, which is always good when the words are used appropriately and to enrich the text, not to obscure it. I read this book and came away with a deeper understanding of religious devotion, human difference and the ways people find peace. I also seem to have become a Patrick Leigh Fermor addict.

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Jul 10, 2011 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars

A sweet little book telling of an authors travels to various monasteries in Europe. He is not looking for a retreat, but for a place of quite to write. He tells of the different monastic traditions, and how at first he was taken aback by the spiritual settings, but then came to find the beauty of these places of solitude.

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Jan 16, 2009 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

A Time of Silence keeps with the transcendant prose of PLF's other titles. The book follows a meditative path, making the reader long for the simple profound silence PLF describes in the monastaries of France and Cappodocia. Much too short. like just a nibble of a magnificent meal suddenly pulled away.

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Jan 20, 2013 Conrad rated it 3 of 5 stars

An interesting little book about monastic life and the history thereof. The author's time spent in a monastery (as a guest) to get away from the noise of the world and concentrate on his writing gives an uncommon perspective to the busyness of our everyday lives. I would probably have rated it higher if the Latin and French quotes were translated into English also - but that is my deficiency and not the author's.

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About Patrick Leigh Fermor

Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor DSO OBE was a British author, scholar and soldier, who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Battle of Crete during World War II. He was widely regarded as "Britain's greatest living travel writer".

At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He set off on 8 December 1933, after Hitler ha...more Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor DSO OBE was a British author, scholar and soldier, who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Battle of Crete during World War II. He was widely regarded as "Britain's greatest living travel writer".

At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He set off on 8 December 1933, after Hitler had recently come to power in Germany, with a few clothes, the Oxford Book of English Verse and a volume of Horace's Odes. He slept in barns and shepherds' huts, but also in the country houses of Central Europe with the landed gentry and aristocracy. Along the journey, he listened to the many stories and dialects he came across. Two of his subsequent travel books, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, detail this journey. Written decades later, they benefit from his scholarly learning, giving a wealth of historical, geographical, linguistic and anthropological information as the narrative proceeds. A planned third volume, intended to follow the journey to its completion in Constantinople, has not yet appeared. Leigh Fermor arrived in Constantinople on 1 January 1935, then continued on to travel around Greece. In March, he was involved in the campaign of royalist forces in Macedonia against an attempted Republican revolt. He was fascinated by Greece and its language. In Athens, he met Balasha Cantacuzène (Bălaşa Cantacuzino), a Romanian noblewoman, with whom he fell in love. They shared an old watermill outside the city looking out towards Poros, where she painted and he wrote. They moved on to Băleni, the Cantacuzène house in Moldavia, where they were living when World War II was declared.

Leigh Fermor joined the Irish Guards, but due to his knowledge of Greek he was commissioned in the General List and became a liaison officer in Albania. He fought in Crete and mainland Greece. During the German occupation, he returned to Crete three times, once by parachute. He was one of a small number of Special Operations Executive officers posted to organise the island's resistance to German occupation. Disguised as a shepherd and nicknamed Michalis or Filedem, he lived for over two years in the mountains and led the party that captured and evacuated the German Commander, General Heinrich Kreipe, in 1944. The episode was immortalised in the book and later film, Ill Met by Moonlight, in which Leigh Fermor was portrayed by Dirk Bogarde. He was awarded the DSO, was made Honorary Citizen of Heraklion and later of Kardamyli and Gytheio. The National Archives in London holds copies of Leigh Fermor's wartime dispatches from occupied Crete, in file number HS 5/728.
In 2005, a documentary film on the Cretan resistance movement entitled The 11th Day was released. The documentary, produced by filmmakers Christos and Michael Epperson, contains extensive interview segments with Leigh Fermor, filmed in 2003. He recounts in great detail his service in the S.O.E. and his activities on Crete, including the capture of General Kreipe.

In 1950, Leigh Fermor's first book, The Traveller's Tree, was published about his post-war travels in the Caribbean. The book won the Heinemann Foundation Prize for Literature and established his career path. He went on to write several further books of his journeys, including Mani and Roumeli of his travels on mule and foot around remote parts of Greece. Many critics and discerning readers regard his 1977 A Time of Gifts as one of the greatest travel books in the English language. He translated the manuscript, The Cretan Runner, written by his former subordinate on Crete during the war, the dispatch runner George Psychoundakis, and had it published. He also wrote a novel, The Violins of Saint-Jacques, which was adapted and set to music as an opera by the composer Malcolm Williamson.
Leigh Fermor's extraordinary charm and gift for bridging the cultural divide between the Uni(less)

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