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Ladataan... A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries, and ReclusesTekijä: Isabel Colegate
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Kirjaudu LibraryThingiin nähdäksesi, pidätkö tästä kirjasta vai et. Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta. This was an interesting book. Upon picking it up I was expecting a text that centered upon what it meant to be a solitary and instead what the author writes is more about the lives of specific recluses divided up by regions time and scenery such as a desert or the forest. It is from these sketches we can draw some assumptions. Colegate's writing is wonderful and discussions of the recluses interspersed with her own travels really made this book worthwhile to me. I did regret the lack of depth but I think I'm a bit closer on understanding solitude's draw I picked up this book after searching my library’s catalogue for Isabel Colegate’s works, and was curious about this non-fiction work of hers (ok I was curious about all her works as I have yet to read her fiction). This is a book about the solitary, about hermits and recluses, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I felt compelled to search it out, but I did, and I took it home and it sat on my shelf for a little while, as I sought out what I felt to be the more interesting books in my recent Library Loot. Then I finally picked up A Pelican in the Wilderness, and I was pleasantly surprised. This book is less a scholarly treatise than a collection of thoughts, a wandering, a pondering of a subject that is so obviously dear to Colegate. Her passion for this topic is very affecting. So while at first hesitant, I grew to understand her ardor. What makes a person leave society behind and live on their own? Why do some of these hermits naturally attract a following? What is living all alone like? Colegate delves into the lives of the well-known and the obscure, often quoting from literary sources such as Somerset Maugham, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alexander Pope. She discusses the lives of Thoreau, J.D. Salinger, Lao-Tse, St Anthony, and many more. But if you are truly looking for answers about becoming a hermit, this isn’t exactly the book for you. Instead, this book is a little more like an exploration, a revaluation of the solitary, a kind of selection of character sketches (although character sketch doesn’t seem to be the right word – it sounds too vague). Colegate’s journey is a meandering one, and at times disjointed which can occasionally frustrate, but A Pelican in the Wilderness is a wonderful voyage through a surprisingly refreshing topic, with Colegate’s passionate voice as a rather suitable tour guide. “The idea of the hermit’s life – simplicity, devotion, closeness to nature – lurks somewhere on the periphery of most people’s consciousness, a way glimpsed, oddly familiar, not taken. It is like one of those tracks you sometimes see as you drive along a country road, a path leading up a hill and disappearing into a wood, almost painfully inviting, so that you long to stop the car and follow it, and perhaps you take your foot off the accelerator for a couple of seconds, no more. Most of us wouldn’t like it if we did walk up the hill, we’d become bored, depressed, uncomfortable, take to drink. But the idea is still there: the path we didn’t take.” ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu
A man that studies happiness must sit alone like a sparrow upon the house top, and like a pelican in the wilderness - Thomas Traherne. Isabel Colegate here explores the lives and works of those who've followed the call of solitude, from Lao Tzu and the Desert Fathers to Wordsworth and Thoreau. Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
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What you will find is a kind of Eurocentric (including USA), certainly British roundup of people who have been notable recluses; often unkempt or characterised by religious zeal, filth, suffering, and/or madness. There are certainly some interesting characters. Who would not be intrigued by Isabelle Eberhardt? or indeed, the wealthy William Beckford whose manifold talents (marred by sexual indiscretion) included tower building. I wondered if the privileges of the mid-18th century British upper classes who had the means to realise their eccentric imaginings was worth the darker colonial exploitations and slavery that financed them.
Although I found many passages of interest, this is a poorly designed book. Not that the binding has failed (there are a few typos indicative of a lack of care) but it's annoying to have the chapter headings omitted from the contents page, the illustrations have no captions and the alternating use of unattributed line drawings of trees and what may be a hermitage in the author’s garden (charming as they are) serves no function other than to confuse the reader.
By the end, I felt as if the author was on a kind of quest (pilgrimage) to uncover her inner solitary. She certainly travelled and read widely but without a central thesis the book tends to feel scattered and unstructured. She writes unevenly but clearly loves words, and often sent me to my dictionary for the unfamiliar: coenobitic, yashmack, eremitic, syneisaktism, apophatic, dilatory, catamite, accidie. ( )