Page 15, 16th January 2009

16th January 2009

Page 15

Page 15, 16th January 2009 — Splendid isolation
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Locations: Durham, Oxford

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Splendid isolation

A Book of Silence
BY SARA MAITLAND GRANTA, £17.99
There is a paradox at the heart of this book, which its author readily acknowledges: “Writing a book about silence has a certain built-in irony.” It certainly involved being very active and busy, talking to friends, doing research on famous ordeals by silence and, of course, discovering remote places in order to write about the sensations of being cut off from conventional means of communication.
Sara Maitland came late to silence. One of six children, she grew up in a noisy, confident, middleclass household where individual opinions were encouraged and verbal skills were paramount.
At Oxford in the Sixties she discovered socialism, feminism, friendship and Christianity: “I smoked my first joint, lost my virginity and went on my first political demonstration.” She made friends with a personable young American Rhodes scholar who also smoked joints; we know this because he later became famous for pleading “but I didn’t inhale”.
Many subsequent years were spent in noisy dinnertable conversations which Maitland relished; she even has a word for it: “deipnosophy”.
In her 40s this vigorous life of writing novels and being involved in the women’s movement, as well as being wife to an Anglican vicar and mother of two children, started to unravel. Maitland’s marriage came unstuck – she is still not sure why – the creative flow paused, she became a Catholic and began to take stock of her life so far.
The feminist in her thinks there is a possible menopausal connection here. The upshot was that she moved to a cottage in Northamptonshire to live on her own. “Silence and solitude have been very closely linked”, she says.
Yet the wish for ever greater silence grew; in 2000 she moved further north, to a cottage on the moors in County Durham, to deepen her “growing sense of the reality of God”. During this period she rented a holiday home in a remote part of Skye, in order to do her own version of a 40-day retreat: no phone calls, no e-mails and no neighbours.
Her description of the effects of this radical isolation is fascinating: an intensification of physical sensation (porridge tasted wonderful), fear of madness and a vulnerability to emotional rollercoasters, experiences of intense joy as well as more negative emotions.
There is also an interesting discussion on the phenomenon of hearing voices. Maitland lost the sense of time passing, prompting the realisation of “how clock-obsessed we have all become”.
Back on the English moors after this extreme immersion in silence she had, not surprisingly, withdrawal symptoms: a severe attack of accidie, the “noonday demon” of the Desert Fathers, a kind of spiritual torpor.
But she is not done with her investigations; she visits a Zen monastery, situated conveniently near her cottage, attends Quaker meetings, hikes around desolate Scottish islands and joins a pilgrimage to the Sinai desert.
Finally, she uproots herself (again) to return to her childhood roots in Galloway, where she finds a derelict shepherd’s cottage. Now renovated into one large living space with a separate bedroom and walled garden, it is her current cheerful hermitage.
Maitland has written a highly readable but slightly exasperating book. During this quest her mother dies – the silence of death itself. Yet she hardly pauses in her stride. Again, although she tells us that she prays for three hours daily, we are not told what this involves: Lectio Divina, meditation, vocal prayer or what. There is also very little mention of God, who lies at the heart of silence.
Perhaps this is understandable as Maitland remains a talker rather than a listener; her book, which addresses the reader rather than, in the manner of the saints, God himself, is full of lively digressions about mountaineers, ocean sailors, Arctic explorers and others who, for one reason or another, have been driven into the wilderness. Some returned; others didn’t.
Maitland herself remains a (mellowed) feminist, although I was somewhat startled at the sentence: “In the Christian tradition Satan has always been hampered by her inability to create anything new.” I thought that in feminist thinking men played all the villainous roles? And what is an avowedly Christian writer doing, using the terminology “BCE”?




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