4.0
Mani
ByPublisher Description
Join a classic adventurer on his travels throughout southern Greece, where he explores remote villages, swims in the Aegean and Ionian seas, and finds history wherever he goes.
The Mani, at the tip of Greece’s—and Europe’s—southernmost promontory, is one of the most isolated regions of the world. Cut off from the rest of the country by the towering range of the Taygetus and hemmed in by the Aegean and Ionian seas, it is a land where the past is still very much a part of its people’s daily lives.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has been described as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Graham Greene,” bridges the genres of adventure story, travel writing, and memoir to reveal an ancient world living alongside the twentieth century. Here, in the book that confirmed his reputation as one of the English language’s finest writers of prose, Patrick Leigh Fermor carries the reader with him on his journeys among the Greeks of the mountains, exploring their history and time-honored lore.
Mani is a companion volume to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s celebrated Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece.
The Mani, at the tip of Greece’s—and Europe’s—southernmost promontory, is one of the most isolated regions of the world. Cut off from the rest of the country by the towering range of the Taygetus and hemmed in by the Aegean and Ionian seas, it is a land where the past is still very much a part of its people’s daily lives.
Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has been described as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Graham Greene,” bridges the genres of adventure story, travel writing, and memoir to reveal an ancient world living alongside the twentieth century. Here, in the book that confirmed his reputation as one of the English language’s finest writers of prose, Patrick Leigh Fermor carries the reader with him on his journeys among the Greeks of the mountains, exploring their history and time-honored lore.
Mani is a companion volume to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s celebrated Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesMani Reviews
4.0
teacher.gabi.reads
Created almost 3 years agoShare
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“One of the pleasures of the annual Christmas/New Year break is the leisurely reading of designated "vacation reads." These are books meant to be read S-L-O-W-L-Y, each musical sentence savored over a sip of coffee rolled unhurriedly around the tongue (although this book might be better off paired with retsina or ouzo, hehe). There's no pressing plot to turn pages excitedly for, no stressful life deadline threatening to cut off the sheer hedonism of a full morning or afternoon immersed in Greek splendor.
If ROUMELI (1966), which I read up in the mountains a week ago, was about the Northern Greeks and the mental/emotional divide between the Byzantine and ancient Greek heritage, then MANI (1958) is about the South, and the legacy of ancient Sparta.
Both are widely considered to be among the best travel books of all time. However, to this reader, MANI most especially is less a travelogue than a literary painting, less of a chronicle and more of an extended reflection on History and Time. It takes very little to trigger Paddy Fermor, as the sight of a rock or the face of a shepherd sets him off pages and pages of romantic flights of fancy that are deeply rooted in the sociolinguistic patterns of history.
"Countries are only great if they can produce wise men, and if they have the sense to elect them. Otherwise the individuals, however good and brave and sensible they are, are like noughts, vast quantities of hollow, round valueless noughts. Place a statesman at their head, and it is like the digit in a written figure, it gives value to all the noughts... take away the digit, and the noughts are noughts again, and they can be blown away or dispersed by any chance wind," says a random villager in a taverna a stone's throw away from where ancient battles turned into blockbuster movies were fought.
What must it be like to live with history so close, so tangible? To be able to swim to where the ancients believed was the entrance to Hades, or to be able to visit islands that Homer wrote about, where Paris and Helen trod? This wonder-full book's every chapter is the result of this dizzying height of emotion.
But for this reader, the most fascinating chapters were the ones inspired by ikons, that uniquely Orthodox religious art form. In Fermor's hands, what could have been art criticism became a transcendent piece touching on theology and the visible difference of Western Christianity from the East after the Schism of 1054.
"Western Christs expose their wounds; Eastern Christs sit enthroned in ungesticulating splendor... religious art in the East sought to bring man to God's level, and in the West, bring God to man's; each laying stress on a different half of Our Lord's nature... Knowing that the representation of Christ as God was as impossible a task as uttering the ineffable, they tried to indicate the immediately assimilable incarnation of Christ in such a way that it gave wings to the mind and the spirit and sent them soaring through and beyond the symbol to its essence, the Transcendent God, with whom, as they themselves had defined, He was consubstantial... in the foredoomed task of indicating the unfathomable mystery of Godhead in visible terms, the Greek ikon-painters chose the hardest way. They sought ingress to the spirit, not through the easy channels of passion, but through the intellect."
It was also fascinating to read of the syncretism of the ancient Greek pantheon merged with Christianity, as this fusion of prehispanic religion and Catholicism is also present in this reader's culture... how Hermes became the archangel Michael, Athena became the Blessed Virgin, Helios became the prophet Elijah, and so many others!
All told, this book and its sequel are wonderfully written tributes to Time and how she carves out man's destiny, and how there are traces of our historical beginnings everywhere, if we would only peel back the film from our eyes and gaze at our world with wonder, the way Paddy Fermor did.”
Steve Quinn
Created over 3 years agoShare
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TexasErin
Created almost 6 years agoShare
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About Patrick Leigh Fermor
Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was an intrepid traveler, a heroic soldier, and a writer with a unique prose style. After his stormy schooldays, followed by the walk across Europe to Constantinople that begins in A Time of Gifts (1977) and continues through Between the Woods and the Water (1986), he lived and traveled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago. His books Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966) attest to his deep interest in languages and remote places. In the Second World War he joined the Irish Guards, became a liaison officer in Albania, and fought in Greece and Crete. He was awarded the DSO and OBE. He lived partly in Greece—in the house he designed with his wife, Joan, in an olive grove in the Mani—and partly in Worcestershire. He was knighted in 2004 for his services to literature and to British–Greek relations.
Michael Gorra is the author of, among other books, The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany and Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches English at Smith College.
Michael Gorra is the author of, among other books, The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany and Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches English at Smith College.
Other books by Patrick Leigh Fermor
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