'For now the time of gifts is gone -
O boys that grow, O snows that melt.'
Louis Macneice
Believe it or not this all started with a reread of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd.
Then I picked up The Gifts of Reading by Robert Macfarlane. I'd read his introduction to Nan's book and I was in the mood for more of the same. I'd read it countless times so who can know why I hadn't picked up Robert's reference to A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor...
'If you haven't read A Time of Gifts, may I urgently suggest that you buy a copy as soon as possible... filled with gifts and acts of giving - it is a book, we might say, that is rich with generosity. Among its gifts is the gift of time...'
I didn't even have a copy on my shelves, things were seriously amiss here so I did order a copy that very minute. I had read A Time to Keep Silence and The Violins of St Jacques, but not A Time of Gifts or its sequels Through the Woods and the Water and The Broken Road, and suddenly I was in just the right mood to walk across Europe in 1933.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, of whom I know only what he has told me himself, seems to have had a fairly dysfunctional upbringing and education by the time he is 'sacked' from the system and decides on his grand trek at the age of eighteen. For all that he might be a rebel Patrick seems to be a congenial, polite and well-mannered young man. He makes friends with ease, pays his debts and does no harm, the true innocent abroad in a pair of hob-nailed boots, whilst being (it would seem) entirely capable of looking after himself.
The journey starts by boat from London to Rotterdam on December 9 1933. Hitler has come to power in Germany and trouble is brewing in Europe but all this will be seen as unremarkable by the gauche eighteen-year old. But what makes A Time of Gifts exceptional is that 'gift of time' that Robert Macfarlane mentions, because Patrick Leigh Fermor is writing the book forty-four years later...
' and a result of that long and thoughtful delay is a narrative voice which possesses both the joyful wonder,of youth, and the wisdom and perspective of later age.'
The consequence is a book that reads both as innocent observation and the ability to walk with no anxiety, in a state of unknowing, all tailored with glimpses of hindsight and I was enthralled.
The young Patrick might have flunked his education but not without learning a thing or two about art, his journey through Germany like walking through a gallery of European landscape painting history, his lonely stretches on the road peppered with lengthy recitations of poems and plays learned by heart...
'Some passages demand an empty road as far as the eye can see before letting fly.'
History will come alive too as he walks the territories of the Thirty Years War. I had to look it up...1618-1648 a ridiculously convuluted conflagration, no wonder I couldn't remember much about it from school history lessons beyond Mother Courage and Her Children, the play by Brecht.
Nor is the architecture neglected. The young Patrick always leaping up a cathedral tower to get the best view of the landscape and describing what he sees with riveting prose. Of huge poignancy is the fact that much of what he sees will be laid waste in the war that it is to come, but for now Nazi salutes 'flicker about the pavement like a tic douleroux' with little sense of the anguish that will follow.
The landscape is delineated with an eye for colour and mood that is, at times, quite breathtaking...
'Then rooks fell silent; the pink afterglow faded on faraway peaks; the light dwindled over the grey fields; and life ebbed with a shudder like a soul leaving the body.'
Whilst clothing and costume get a good airing too, no detail escapes young Patrick's eye...there's a lot of loden and leather along the way, breeches, clay pipes and beer steins, and scenes from Peter Brueghel paintings come to life.
..and there was a moment that seemed to describe the book for me too...
'I felt that I had been let loose among a prodigality of marvels and the thought was made more exhilarating still by the illusion of privacy.'
It's an illusion that held me in the book's sway; the sense that Patrick is escorting me, and only me, on his journey. We share moments of great hilarity and I come away with a list of books that have flitted into my mind as we have walked. I'll share those another day.
I am in agreement with many. A Time of Gifts is a book that makes you want to up-sticks and go walking across Europe, and no surprise that I have Walking the Woods and the Water by Nick Hunt lined up because he does exactly that. And even though that particular adventure might not be possible for many of us, it is a welcome reminder that there are still plenty of options out there.
I'm sure I am the only person who hadn't read A Time of Gifts, you will all know it well, so please do add your thoughts in comments. I am aware that the book was written with the benefit of many years of hindsight none of which seemed to detract from the pleasure so I feel sure I will read it over and again.
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