Recently we remembered Patrick Leigh Fermor whose birthday on the 11th of February marked 103 years (he lived to 96). In a special feature of a 2014 Salmagundi, we published a selection of writers on Fermor and offered even more pieces online including “Constantinople” from which the following excerpt comes:
“My plan was vague. Like Fermor and Lee, I wanted to get away from the small town I had grown up in, to get out and to find, as Fermor put it, ‘A new life! Freedom! Something to write about!’ I wanted to be lost and to taste the loneliness of sleeping on trains. I wanted to flirt with the edges of safety and cross thresholds, borders and edges. I knew I was looking for a hyper-awareness of place and for landscapes to insert myself into and I was interested in exploring the bridge between the dream-spaces of the books I was reading and the real places I was physically moving through.”
More here
Photography of Leigh Fermor on his terrace at Kardamyli courtesy of Beatrice Monti
