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# 2025-05-16 - To A High Place by Teo Savory | |
I picked out this book from the Little Free Library. It was | |
published in 1972. The book jacket includes an endorsement from | |
"the Vietnamese poet Nhat Hanh." | |
> To A High Place is a novel in which a botanist named Reginald | |
> Elphinstone tells the story of a lady poet named Teo Savory. She | |
> has taken all the sufferings of her times to be her own, and one | |
> morning she discovered a world of dazzling pureness [and] learned | |
> to view this world "from a new angle." I do not think she | |
> discovered her wonderful world just by viewing /this/ one. She | |
> lives in /that/ world in the most real way, and that is why her | |
> eyes and her heart shine with the dazzling pureness that | |
> characterize her new world... I notice that once she got into the | |
> boat and took the oar, she found herself immediately on the other | |
> shore. When you look back, you are already there... | |
> --[Thich] Nhat Hanh | |
> Designed by Alan Brilliant. Typeset by Eric Smith and printed by | |
> Rudy Villanueva, bound by Patricia Field and Danci Mock; all by | |
> hand at Unicorn Press. | |
My kind of publishing! | |
> Although the novel is not based on the life of any botanist, the | |
> search for plants having been used symbolically, the author wishes | |
> to acknowledge the use of certain phrases, in the latter sections | |
> of the book, from the works, in particular The Rainbow Bridge and | |
> On the Eaves of the World by Reginald Farrer. | |
On The Eaves of the World, Volume 1 | |
On The Eaves of the World, Volume 2 | |
The Rainbow Bridge | |
I read this book in two sittings. I found it a beautifully pure and | |
poetic experience. The reading is deceptively light and easy. The | |
tone is whimsical yet profound. It left me dwelling on my | |
simultaneous sensations of the lingering sweetness of dreams and the | |
poignant pain of reality: the bittersweet joys and sacred | |
melancholies of life itself. | |
Spoiler warning! | |
The protagonist could have been a Victorian English equivalent to | |
Edward Scissorhands. Born disabled, his mother rejected him the hour | |
of his birth. None of his family accepted him, except for his sister. | |
Yet he kept his chin up and disregarded familial and social sleights. | |
Oppression rolled off him like water from a duck's back and he barely | |
seemed to even take notice of it. | |
What follows are interesting quotes from the book. | |
The feeling I had in France, that something had been unleashed in the | |
world which may not be caged again for centuries, returns to me here. | |
A misconception of the purpose of man (always mysterious and | |
obscure) has occurred--where when started one could not, without | |
knowing more of history than I, be able to say. But one might say | |
that the misconception extends to the meaning of freedom and that no | |
freedom, but only total destruction, will come out of the fury | |
blowing over this earth. | |
The understanding of the One--and the Many, begun in India and | |
continued in this high place in Tibet, leads me away ever further | |
from the West... Could I but build a bridge from East to West, what | |
spiritual riches would flow over the old Silk roads, the East India | |
Company's seaways; spices for the mind and heart... But I can only | |
make a prismed bridge, colored by poppy and primrose, iris and | |
gentian, and the golden rose... Or, when I find again the heavenly | |
gentian, send a piece of Asian sky to instruct our misty one. Here, | |
the base of my searched-for bridge climbs higher into the Tibetan | |
alps. Higher and higher I climb, as the plants do, for--Meg, do you | |
know?--whenever the invading foot treads over them, the plants flee | |
up the maintain. Poppies and asphodel which have lived at peace for | |
centuries with encamping priests, or roving woodcutters, or shepherds | |
in their season, are no longer to be seen on the screes and the | |
slopes I used to visit. They have fled, now, up to the very eaves of | |
the world, where only the mountains and the monasteries look down | |
from their heights of peace onto the warfare close below. | |
author: Savory, Teo, 1907-1989 | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Teo_Savory | |
LOC: PZ4.S268 To PS3569.A85 | |
tags: book,fiction,travel | |
title: To A High Place | |
# Tags | |
book | |
fiction | |
travel |