Sara Maitland

A book that explores how forests, the Wood, shape our lives and our stories? That delves into different types of woodlands and ties those places to faery tales that reflect them? What a remarkable, clever premise. I can only hope that someday someone does it justice, because From the Forest most assuredly did not.

I wanted very, very much to enjoy this book...and I couldn't even finish it. And it wasn't the long paragraphs of dry botany lessons. Or the intricate, detailed descriptions of show more twigs and buds and leaves and branches. Or the exclusive, and excluding, expression of British culture. Or the flat recital of historical events. Or the unnecessary and wholly unconvincing justification of the book's thesis. Or the sneering digs at Tolkien, Andersen, and even Wilde.

No. Though that is more than enough to have to wiggle around and slog through and clamber over, none of that was what finally made me sigh and shut the book. That is entirely due to the fact that From the Forest has no purpose. What could've been a clear, elegant expression of land and peoples and the stories that connect them is instead a cluttered jumble of repetitive, self-indulgent essays and faery tales that...somehow?...tie into them.

Maitland meanders from travelogue descriptions of the forests into memoirs of her own experiences, lapses into emphatic critiques of Things She Doesn't Like, somehow drags some history and/or botany into justifying her opinions, states (and restates and states again) that forests must mean important things for faery tales, and tosses out a story. All without ever saying anything important or insightful or thought-provoking or, come to think of it, about forests and people and faery tales.

She talks around those things quite adeptly and certainly seems to think they're important, but she never actually connects to them. Instead, she opines that beech trees are wicked step-mothers and birches are princesses and insists that Forest Law birthed tales of the heroic tailor, servant girl, and soldier, but these are very clearly her own interpretations. They do not open themselves to my own, or any other reader's, experience, and they do not, really, show what the forest might have meant to those long ago tale-spinners.

In fact, where the book does its best work is precisely in those elements which invite us to participate in experiencing the forest and the stories as those tale-spinners might have. Adam Lee's photographs are lovely and evocative, even absent all the colors Maitland mentions in her descriptions. And Maitland's faery tale retellings are frank and earnest and funny and poignant. It's unfortunate that the remainder of the book lacks the same humility and clarity of purpose. show less

This is a sort of cross between a memoir and a book of essays, a little bit like Margaret Atwood's Payback: debt and the shadow side of wealth (although Maitland is more intense and less witty). It's about silence, which turns out to be a surprisingly complex subject. Even a definition is trickier than you might think - is it the absence of speech, of human sounds, of any noise at all?

Maitland's contention is that silence is not merely an absence, but can be an active and positive show more experience, a "rich space" of heart and mind. Yet in our modern world we are not only ever further away from silence, but also somehow scared of it, as if afraid of what being in silence would make us think or feel.

Maitland examines silence through her own experiences - renting a cottage in Skye where she would be silent for forty days, travelling to iconic silent places like the desert, forest and mountains, meditating in a Zen monastery and engaging in silent prayer (she is Catholic). She also reads about the experiences of people who spent time in silence, willingly or otherwise (for example, lone explorers, kidnap victims, hermits).

During her forty days of silence she concludes that there are several things which she experienced and which also feature in the literature of extreme solitude:

- an intensification of both emotional and physical sensation, such as taste and even hearing: "One evening I noticed that I was suddenly able to separate the different wind noises and follow their relationship to each other - like an orchestra."

- a disinhibition from internalised social rules

- auditory hallucinations (which she interprets as the brain trying to interpret the background sounds into spoken language)

- moments of intense joy

- a sense of oneness with the universe, or losing a clear sense of the boundaries of your self

- "an exhilarating sense of peril", which she comes to believe is a sort of "sacred terror"

- "ineffability", or the fact that it's hard to recall or explain how it felt when you are no longer experiencing the silence

(Interestingly, Maitland also describes the negative sides of these experiences. In Skye, where she had chosen to experience silence, these experiences led her to a sense of bliss. But in a situation where the silence is not chosen voluntarily, such as a prisoner in solitary confinement, the same experiences can be incredibly negative, experienced almost as psychotic episodes. Oneness with the universe might feel like a terrifying slipping away of the self; a sense of peril is experienced as paranoia; oversensitivity to the sort of noises you might hear in prison is very different from suddenly feeling that you heard all the noises of the wind).

It's important to note that Maitland enjoys sociability, and enjoys talking. She does not see her seeking of silence as, in any way, running away from anything; and is critical of the sense that in the modern world, only our interactions with other people are valued. However, as well as enjoying silence for itself, Maitland started exploring silence in the hope that she would be able to both pray and write better as a result. She concludes, though, that silence to create and silence to pray are very different. You seek silence for prayer as a way of losing your self and being conscious of what is greater than you. You seek silence to create as a way of finding your self, separating it out from the worldly noise that would otherwise distract you from your artistic vision.

I found much of this book fascinating, and am strongly tempted by the idea of a lengthy period of strict silence (although I too like talk and sociability). Being entirely unspiritual myself, my attention did drift during the long discussions of the desert hermits or the impact of silence on prayer. But I do feel richer for having read this.

The more and the longer you are silent the more you hear the tiny noises within the silence, so that silence itself is always slipping away like a timid wild animal. You have to be very still and lure it. This is hard; one has only to try to quieten one's mind or body to discover just how turbulent they are. show less

I have been reading this one for close to two months. A memoir, it is also a meditation and as such, I found I needed to read it in sips, contemplating each morsel, each concept and discovery.

Sara Maitland finds herself increasingly in need of and drawn to places of quiet. At first she thought it was because she is a writer so she was searching out that perfect quiet in which to create. She moves to live separately from her High Anglican clergyman husband, leaving London to move to a quiet show more village. But as she progresses in her study of silence, she finds the village isn't quiet enough as its daily noises and interruptions intrude. So she rents a place on the Isle of Skye for several months, which forms the real leaping off point for her further explorations.

She reads constantly throughout her "journey", which takes her on explorations of moors, forests, mountains, the desert, lone walks through Scottish hills, and eventually back to southwest Scotland, her birthplace, where she builds a home to embrace the need for that silence which her soul seems to need. At times I was astonished at her fearlessness as she embarked on this and that method of exploring silence, for she is not a young woman and she did it alone. And while I do not share her religious perspective, it never intrudes to make one uncomfortable nor does she proselytize, despite her in-depth look at religious hermits, saints and the like because when she discusses things of that ilk, she does so from a basis of research and history.

This isn't a polished book of pat conclusions but very much a work in progress, as she thinks and works her way through ideas and emotions. As she says herself, she didn't know how to end the book because she didn't feel that she is at the end of anything. But it is a book with a rare honesty and certainly an erudite, critical mind at work in it. I felt at times that I would like to discuss, even argue about, the concept of silence with her. Most of all she left me with a profound admiration for someone who acknowledged an aspect of herself and rather than leaving it unexplored, stood up to the challenge of it, taking herself off to look into it as thoroughly as possible. Not for her the unexamined life, the faint niggling sense of a self dissatisfied and shoved to the background.

When she finds her place at last, I couldn't help a pang of envy:
"Like Anthony, here was the place that fed my 'appetite for the absolute' that would place me, as his wood and pond had placed Thoreau, in a 'naked condition in front of the universe'..."
I think this book would speak powerfully to anyone still searching out that place where their soul feels at home, as a guide and a record of one woman's journey to find hers. show less

Винаги, когато чета някакви съвременни неща, посветени на "културната война" или опити на сравнително млади автори да разсъждават над човешката природа, света и всичко останало, оставам удивен от това колко плитки и плоски са тия им опити. Неизменно референциите им са към show more модерната поп-култура, от която те вадят изводи за историческото състояние на човечеството и жените.

Прекалено са вторачени в ставащото в момента, в реакциите на другите хора към ставащото в момента и в изразяването на своите реакции към реакциите на другите към ставащото в момента... Всичко това създава невъобразимия шум, който представлява съвременния медиен живот, ако не можеш да се откачиш съзнателно от него. Прекарването на живота, потопен в туитър, други социални медии, интернет и гледане на телевизия като че ли не спомага за дълбок поглед върху каквото и да е за повечето хора и думата, която ми идва на ум за тях е "oversocialisation".

Ролята на тишината в живота на човека никога не е била особено голяма, погледнато еволюционно и исторически, защото винаги сме живели на общества и винаги и непрестанно сме общували помежду си. Но тишината винаги е имала значение за определени хора и точно те имат голямо влияние върху религиозното и културно наследство на човечеството.

Съпоставена с гореописаната повърхностна какафония от смислени и безсмислени гласове, Книга за тишината на Сара Мийтланд е като съзнателно изключване от матрицата и пропадането в дълбокия, тих кладенец на историята и човешкото познание и себепознание.

Освен феминистка, Сара е и дълбоко религиозна и търси вдъхновение от древните текстове на различни християнски отшелници и други хора, посветили живота си в търсенето на тишината, за да я намери и тя най-накрая в малката си къщичка на гъза на географията в шотландските полета.

Книга за тишината е едно пътуване в света на сакралното - както в смисъла на търсенето на бога, така и в търсене на сакралното в душата. И двете са дълбоко лични, а не обществени дейности и голяма част от практиката им е свързана с търсене на тишината и самотата (защото Сара накрая открива, че тишината е непостижима без самотата и тя става част от живота й). show less