A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (New York Review Books Classics)

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 CONTINUEDFermor, 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.

“My chopping-mate was a Saxon from Brunswick and he was heading for Aachen, where, after he had drawn blank in Cologne, Duisburg, Essen and Dusseldorf and combed the whole of the Ruhr, he hoped to find work in a pins-and-needles factory.” There is snow and lemon colored light. The Danube is never far out of sight. Many nights, at least those spent on the move, Patrick Leigh Fermor lands on a bed. A Time of Gifts is romanticism in its most genuine form. Trust and indifference are perhaps the two most important elements for successfully walking across continents without any visible means of support, plans, or friends. Fermor must have had an incredible English charm for making friends. He is clear from the beginning that both “English” and “student” ingratiate him to all of Western Europe, especially Germans. There is no antisocial stance in his wandering. He is simply blessed with curiosity and a quick study in languages. I have started this entry on page 39 of the book, in a workhouse in January of 1934. Already known by me as a man who could infiltrate Nazi-occupied Crete in 1942, the author is very well at home on foot and on the road. Nothing much needs to have changed 99 pages later: “There was plenty to think about as I made my way through snow-bound monastic orchards … When no buildings were in sight, I was back in the Dark Ages.” Fermor is a drinker, an adapter, a painter, and at the age of 18 not a lover. His heart was turned to solitude with oases of random characters at castles and barns along the way. As an adapter without much complaint, the journey never approaches anything resembling work; he is never off put, as aware of Western Europe’s charm as any student of history would be. Sometimes, the desire to soak of historical scenes translates into the most poignant historical reference, such as this on page 194: “I felt like Fabrice in La Chartreuse de Parme, when he was not quite sure whether he had been present at Waterloo.” Teasing references like this, hidden in the cracks of some extended more forgettable chronicles of the steps he was taken, make me feel as though Fermor is a man so many would admire in theory, but not so many could emulate in actual practice. He has low defenses, so incredibly good-natured, but has clearly earned the credentials to proselytize like Emerson. Tycho Brahe loses his nose in a duel on page 240. The narrative moves east to carnival types, gypsies and mobile Jews and agrarian oddities, leaving behind the different “ethnicities” in Germany. What are they again? Swabia, Westphalia, Bavaria, Alsace, not to mention Prussia and others. The young Nazis are merely energetic and idealistic. Towns features those neat, starkly colored swastika flags at every corner, accompanied by choral singing of “The Horst Wessel” song and the clashing of beer mugs. Writing in 1977, 43 years after the adventure and 31 years before his death, the author reminds me of William L. Shirer in his meticulous notations and measurements of foreign notions of pride and vengeance while sitting poker-faced right across the table.

I was captivated from the opening lines and held spellbound throughout. I’m very pleased there are two more volumes in this trilogy. Fermor’s writing hints at his genius, and you experience this vast swath of history and geography of Europe between the two world wars. I’d recommend highly.

This is an adventure book , the first a a long line of incredible books written by an incredible man, based on his travels and experiences.His masterpiece, and writing in the English language, has in my opinion not been bettered.His command of the English language is second to none.

A mon avis il s'agit d'un angle mort de la littérature. Patrick Leigh Fremor a suivi l'exemple donné par Laurie Lee.

excellent read for reading pedantskept saying just get on with it.

Este libro de viajes autobiográfico, por parte de un personaje tan fuera de lo común como PLF, es un regreso a un período, el de entreguerras, cuando Europa del Este que luego estuvo medio siglo borrada de la Historia, era un lugar encantador, acogedor, diferente...