The poet Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) took a Buddhist vow of silence after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, speaking publicly only a decade later when, at an art center in Palo Alto, California, he recited lines from T.S. Eliot and read some of his own work: “All those ships that never sailed.…Today I bring them back.”
It’s unlikely that anyone today would go to such extremes over a political calamity, but some might find solace in a bit of quietude and seclusion. As it happens, several new books explore the virtues of a contemplative life. The most prominent among them is Aflame: Learning From Silence (Riverhead, Jan. 14) by Pico Iyer. The author’s most recent book is about the Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California, where he has stayed scores of times over more than three decades. The silence of the setting, high above the Pacific Ocean, allows the author to focus his thoughts, as do the grand views toward the horizon. The monastery is a perfect spot for not dwelling on anything, as Zen practice would have it. “A lovely complement to the monastic writings of both Thomas Merton and Patrick Leigh Fermor,” our reviewer writes, “Iyer’s book speaks well to the qualities of those who live both outside and firmly within the daily world and the wisdom, rough and refined, that monks have to offer.” The starred review calls it “essential reading for anyone interested in the monastic tradition and those who follow it.”
For those who’d like to dig deeper into that monastic tradition, there’s Andrew Jotischky’s The Monastic World: A 1,200-Year History (Yale Univ., Jan. 14). An English medievalist, Jotischky guides readers through an epic survey of monasteries—“the engine rooms of medieval society.” In his view, they “offer valuable perspectives on how to live under constrained conditions.…Those who still choose such a life today often speak of the freedoms provided by an apparently restricted life.”
One monastery that truly embraces silence is the Grande Chartreuse, the remote Alpine institution that gave its name to the divine herbal liqueur. Jérôme Sueur, director of the eco-acoustic laboratory at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, writes about the monastery in Natural History of Silence (Polity, Jan. 28), translated by Helen Morrison. He details how he learned that a 1975 decree protects the monastery’s “zones of calm and silence” by prohibiting noise in the area. “A considerable amount of research has shown the beneficial effects of contact with natural environments,” Sueur notes. “The psychological benefits lead to a reduction in negative emotions such as anger, fatigue or sadness.”
Such a sense of calm is what kept the Finnish author Tove Jansson and her life companion, Tuulikki (“Tooti”) Pietilä, attached to their modest house on a “fierce little skerry,” which she celebrates in the posthumous Notes From an Island (Timber, Oct. 22).
And then there is the tranquility afforded by getting lost in one’s books. In The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (Princeton Univ., Dec. 3), Andrew Hui examines his subject—“a sanctuary for self-cultivation”—as “an intimate healing place of the soul.” Books, too, are a balm.
John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.
