Between the Woods and the Water

By -
Between the Woods and the Water, by Patrick Leigh Fermor


I've been putting this book off for a while.  I loved the first book of the three, A Time of Gifts, so much, but it also filled me with longings for travel (in Europe, in the 30s); so I was really looking forward to this one, but also saving it for a treat.  And it really was a treat.  It was a lovely vacation of a book.

Fermor spends the whole book in Hungary and Romania.  It's summer and he spends weeks at Hungarian manors, soaking up history, friendship, language, and fun.  Sadly, at 19 he felt that this was kind of cheating on his trip's rules, and he didn't keep his journal as assiduously as he should have, but he recreates a beautiful summer with lovely and interesting people.  All the while, the reader knows that within a very few years, Hungary will be conquered and all of this ruthlessly stamped out.

In Romania, Fermor tramps through endless forests, meeting all sorts of people and thinking about ancient Romans, Crusaders, and other historical figures.  This is just as wonderful-sounding as Hungary, in a different way. He ends by seeing some cities by boat and then traveling down the Danube to the Iron Gates, which are these huge stone cliffs on either side of the river.  All the wilderness he saw there is now drowned under a water reservoir built for Yugoslavia, though.  And Bulgaria is where he'll go next.

Romania, Iron Gates
 He's always describing all the different people he meets, who belong to all these different groups and religious sects and races.  And there's a lot of history, just sketched in so you know a bit of what's happened in the past.  It's all so beautifully rendered and sounds so wonderful.  You want to go and see it, and at the same time you feel terrible for all the awful things that have happened since.  Much of it just isn't there anymore.  But it's good to read about what once was and know.


Comments

  1. CleoApril 8, 2015 at 8:34 AM

    I just borrowed A Time of Gifts from the library, but book and other responsibilities make me fear that I'll have to take it back before I can read it. :-) Rats! I was so looking forward to vicariously traveling to Europe since it's not going to happen in real life any time soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BooksPleaseApril 16, 2015 at 10:57 PM

    I enjoyed A Time of Gifts, some lovely vivid descriptions of a time and places that have changed so much!

    Straight after I finished it I bought Between the Woods and the Water, but haven't read it yet. Your post is a timely reminder for me to read it soon.

    Margaret@BooksPlease

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more