The Violins of Saint-Jacques

by Patrick Leigh Fermor

On an Aegean island one summer, an English traveller meets an enigmatic elderly Frenchwoman. He is captivated by a painting she owns of a busy Caribbean port overlooked by a volcano and, in time, she shares the story of her youth there in the early twentieth century. Set in the tropical luxury of the island of Saint-Jacques, hers is a tale of romantic intrigue and decadence amongst the descendents of slaves and a fading French aristocracy. But on the night of the annual Mardi Gras ball, catastrophe overwhelms the island and the world she knew came to an abrupt and haunting end. The Violins of Saint-Jacques captures the unforeseen drama of forces beyond human control.
Originally published in 1953, it was immediately hailed as a rare and exotic sweep of colour across the drab monochrome of the post-war years, and it has lost nothing of its original flavour.

Genres: Fiction, Travel, Historical Fiction, Classics, Literature, Novels, British Literature

139 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Sir Patrick Michael Leigh Fermor, OBE, DSO was of English and Irish descent. After his stormy schooldays, followed by his walk across Europe to Constantinople, he lived and travelled in the Balkans and the Greek Archipelago acquiring a deep interest in languages and remote places.

Fermor was an army officer who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Battle of Crete during World War II. He lived partly in Greece in a house he designed with his wife Joan in an olive grove in the Mani, and partly in Worcestershire. He was widely regarded as "Britain's greatest living travel writer".

Reviews

[Lynne King · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Serindan house was not only the biggest in Plessis, but the highest perched. It was islanded among ascending and descending terraces, and the balustrades were adorned with posturing graces and marble nymphs. Beyond their elegant barrier, the forest began: a huge wilderness of tangled ceibas and balisiers and tree-ferns that only halted a slanting six miles beyond at the jagged crater of the Salpetrière. The day had ended in a flaunting sunset so apocalyptic – a Last Judgement, an apotheosis, an assumption, one could have thought – that each falling ray seemed a ladder for the descending Paraclete, and Berthe almost expected to see long-shafted trumpets advance along the slanting beams from the gold and crimson clouds. Then it suddenly died away into night. The volcano had been burning for the last week or so with unaccustomed vigour. Now it hung in the dark like a bright red torch, prompting the island wiseacres, mindful of the terrible eruptions that had coincided over a century ago with the fall of the Bastille to shake their heads. But such renewals of activity and such gloomy presages recurred every few years. Each minor overflow of lava, heralded invariably by showers of ashes and an overpowering heat, was always halted by those intervening canyons known as "les chaudières" - a grey desert region of fumeroles and volcanic gas and half fossilised trees. “Ga’dez Salpetwière!” the negroes said joyfully to each other; “li pas faché”, li fait bomba pou’ Ma’di Gwas, comme nous”, and the carnival drums beat vigorously all over the town. There had been not a drop of rain for many days – a rare event even in this dry season – and the trade winds had ceased altogether. The heat was appalling.

Now what do you look for in the blurb of a book? Presumably, unless you are eclectic of course, you will stay within your own genre? Is it the title that intrigues you or the cover? A known author? A review on the blurb by an unknown author that unexpectedly appeals to your psyche?

Well I consider myself an eclectic reader. I love biographies, travel books, fiction, reference books and dictionaries but I like to be a wildcard from time to time as it appeals to my adventurous and curious side.

This book for me has three things in its favour:

Firstly, the title: Now what is the significance of the violins? Surely there has to be some mention of it in this one hundred and thirty nine page novella? Mentioned rather vaguely a couple of times yes and then a few pages from the end of the book, it is explained and my, did it bring tears to my eyes.

Secondly, well the cover showed a painting by the English painter John Craxton of a volcano, with smoke billowing out from it (I don’t think that they are flames), with a port at the bottom and many people cavorting around. There are several palm trees to the right and a schooner can also be seen. It is sunset. John Craxton was sometimes called a neo-Romantic artist but he preferred to be known as a “kind of Arcadian”. Plus there is a tiny review added under the title by Simon Winchester which succinctly states: This little masterpiece is a perfect tour de force, with which I agree wholeheartedly.

Finally, the fact that this book was written by Patrick Leigh Fermor, He was widely regarded as Britain's greatest living travel writer during his lifetime. I was interested to read in a bio on him that he was a good friend of one of my favourite authors, Lawrence Durrell; truly a case of what goes around comes around. And it then set me wondering if I could obtain a signed first edition of this travel writer’s only novel. Imagine…

The plot actually reads like a romance and I’m certainly not of that inclination but when you have an acclaimed travel writer, whose descriptive prose is heavenly and then to match it with unsurpassed fiction, well you have it all in my opinion.

Basically, it is the story of a French impoverished aristocrat called Berthe de Rennes, who is recounting the story of her youth there in the early twentieth century to a young Englishman, who she met on an Aegean island one summer. I should mention that Berthe was now a woman of seventy and still a remarkable individual.

In the 1890’s she was offered the position, which she readily accepted, as governess to the children of distant cousins of hers, the Serindans, and spent six years living on the fictitious island of Saint Jacques in the Caribbean. The Count and his wife were a charming couple, as were the children, but it soon becomes apparent that this is a tale of romantic intrigue and decadence amongst the descendants of slaves and a fading French aristocracy.

But there are delightful quirky instances studded throughout this novella: the untranslated French sentences; the fact that the local Creole population, including the Serindans, could not pronounce the “R” in the words; the ash from the volcano known as white snow; a stumbling block proving to be an armadillo, to quote just a few.

At the Mardi Gras ball, it all happens here and the drama, so superbly written, begins to gradually unfold and from this point on I found I couldn’t wait to turn to the next page. Then lepers came into the equation, which rather took me aback. But then being as contrary as ever, when I arrived at the penultimate page I had no desire to turn it as I wished to continue savouring this work.

The only negative aspect of this book that I can comment on is that it is far too short!

Nevertheless, when I read the final sentence of this remarkable gem of a book, a feeling of elation swept over me. I had never believed in miracles before but now I know they exist. I don't exaggerate either I can assure you. I had finished my fourth perfect novel within a month, the other three being those by the inimitable John Williams.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oct 26, 1015am ~~ Review asap.

Oct 28, 1115am ~~ I learned about this exquisite little book when I read the non-fiction book Volcanoes by Peter Francis. At the beginning of a section about the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee, Francis says that the event inspired an opera, which was based on a novel by Patrick Leigh Fermor, who, according to Francis,
"...wove a complicated plot of romance and intrigue against the background of a sultry Caribbean town in the midst of a hectic carnival. . . Mount Pelee is thinly disguised as the volcano Salpetriere, while the real town of St. Pierre appears as St. Jacques. However, the real events of Thursday 8 May 1902 were so dramatic, and the tragedy so complete, that it is unnecessary to dress up the facts in a romanticized account."

Well, naturally this made me curious so off I went to spend more book money. Found The Violins Of Saint-Jacques and ordered it, and here we are today.

This 1953 title was Fermor's second book and according to the back cover, his only novel. I thought the book was exquisite. And I want to babble on and on about it, but the GR blurb, taken from the back cover, says enough about the plot.

All I can say is that sometimes mere facts and figures about historical events do not allow a person to really comprehend the scope of a disaster. It is so easy to read that in the space of mere minutes in 1902 28,000 people died. Of all the people in St. Pierre at the time of the eruption only two survived. Fermor takes those facts and weaves a human story around them. The reader knows what will happen, but is so involved with the lives unfolding on each page that when the inevitable happens, it is as much a shock as it must have been in real life.

I still have one foot in this book, and probably will for quite some time. I still want to cry when I think about the final pages, where we learn the reason for the title; it was an inspired touch of beauty. I have been reading a little about Fermor, and have ordered his first book and a biography. If this was truly Fermor's only novel, it is a crying shame he did not write any others.

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this I've added a new shelf - sheer delight.

Exuberant, joyous, fantastical tale of a Mardi Gras Ball on Caribbean volcanic island Saint-Jacques, which sweeps all up in the colour, fun and romance of the night, then ends with a mighty bang. I know, this is a really bad pun - the volcano erupts and the entire island sinks beneath the sea, leaving one survivor. .

I see it's a book that friend Ted wanted to read. I think he would have enjoyed it.

[Al Bità · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a masterpiece of fiction which still reverberates vividly in my mind.

Fermor has created a world complete unto itself, so to speak, yet intensely linked to the dying days of the colonial experience. Set in the Caribbean, the author fills this short work with a plethora of exotic characters in one of the most exotic locations of the world. The language scintillates with rich, vivid and florid descriptions, many of which are daring in their audacity. One example, from relatively early on in the work:

"The day had ended in a flaunting sunset so apocalyptic — a Last Judgement, an apotheosis, an assumption, one could have thought — that each falling ray seemed a ladder for the descending Paraclete, and Berthe almost expected to see long-shafted trumpets advance along the slanting beams from the gold and crimson clouds. Then it suddenly died away into night."

There are many more.

More importantly, Fermor makes us care about the various characters, with all their foibles and their cares, their intrigues, their loves: we become concerned for them — it is not so much that we love them, but that they are so real and identifiable: we become caught in their machinations; we wonder what will happen, how they will be resolved. It is precisely because we are concerned about them that the astonishing climax of the novel has such devastating power, creating a reverberation that lingers perhaps forever in the mind. The last few pages, from wherein the title of the work is taken, further cements this astonishing world in our minds, as a meditative piece of great beauty and sadness.

The writing and the descriptive power of the English language (only slightly tainted for modern sensibilities with its occasional use of untranslated French) manages not only to capture all this wondrous creation, but also to be infused with hints and omens, perhaps a prophesy, of what is to come. Thus it also works on the level of metaphor, perhaps as a symbol for all human constructs.

Thanks, Wayne, for introducing me to this work.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

3* for the story, which is a simple enough tale, rather sensational and romantic in its elements, including love interests found and lost, political tensions, a Mardi Gras ball, threats of a duel, and an elopement. Leigh Fermor's writing comes alive, though in his descriptions of the island of Saint-Jacques, which readers of his travel book The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands will recognize as a composite of his descriptions of different Caribbean islands that he visited after WWII. Those descriptions elevated this novel to a 3.5*-4* read. It's charming, if a bit predictable. Its interest for me lies in how Leigh Fermor took and shaped his travel experiences into this work. I strongly recommend that interested readers read The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands first, as an engaging entryway into the novel.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't pretend that I shaped my thoughts at the time even as coherently as this. But they were the half-conscious ideas, I think, composing the anodyne of fatalism and despair that carried me through the first pains of this amputation.

Fermor gave us a novel which appears obliquely as a Balzac tale of the tropics. It is impossible to broach the plot without spoiling matters, though the cover does a fair job of such. I was indeed moved by this somewhat simple yet fantastic account. The characters appear slightly enhanced but the vivid description of Carnival is as captivating as possible in under 150 pages. There are modernist edges but they aren't extended. This is worth most people's time as the lament itself remains poignant without qualification.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The volcanic Mt Pelee on the Caribbean island of Martinique began erupting on 23 April 1902. On 8 May the mountain exploded sending a cloud of incandescent lava particles downslope at hurricane speed. In its path about 6 miles south was the town of Saint-Pierre. Everyone there, about 28,000 people, were killed. Only 2 survived.

The only novel of renowned British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Violins of Saint-Jacques, is a fictionalized account of Mt. Pelee's eruption. Fermor sets his novel on the invented island of Saint-Jacques overshadowed by the mountain called Saltpetiere. He uses the island's Mardi Gras masked ball at Government House as a vehicle for exploring the rich texture of the island's society of French aristocracy, peasants, Dominicans, and local politicians, all of it told many years later to an Englishman in Greece by one of the lucky survivors, Berthe de Rennes. So the whole is a story within a story, both compelling and seductive because, despite the end-of-the-world quality there's little sense of tragedy in Fermor's writing. This short novel has more of a sense of discovery about it than loss.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of the Late Richard Fermor’s travel writing. I knew that The Violins of Saint-Jacques was his one attempt at fiction. It was heavily inspired by the real eruption of Mt. St Pelee which in 1902 almost completely killed the entire population of the nearby town of Saint Pierre. The result is a typical Fermor exposition on things architectural, heraldic, fashion related and whatever his always detail oriented eye may happen upon. This makes for a very rich (as in rich food) novella. I rather liked it. I cannot recommend it as the best of Fermor. The conundrum is that you have to like his exquisite vocabulary and over embellishments to like this book. At barely 140 page this is a sampler, whereas his travel books tend to have more spaces between the recondite allowing you to ease in, but will require more of your time.
Of the plot, we pretty much know how things are going to end. This is a variation of Titanic or Pearl Harbor type fiction. The literary problem is: can we become sufficiently interested in the people and the specifics of the story if we know in advance what has to happen. Fermor knows how to spin a good romance. The four stars is my yes vote.

The Violins is a first-person narrative, in the form of an as told to story. The book opens with a brief but detailed history of the fictional Island of Saint-Jacques, in the Antilles Islands in the Caribbean. Several aspects of its colonial, national and native history will flavor the plot. We meet our narrator, a young male visitor to an Island in the Mediterranean. There he meets Berthede Rennes a gently aging woman and survivor of the events that make the story of the book. She will tell her story to the narrator who will tell it to us.

This story begins as she arrives on the Island. Like us she arrives unschooled in the particulars of the people and society into which she will be an actor and observer. She has been hired to be something of a teacher, nanny, and companion for the children of the grandee, old line family, many generations on and influential in the small world of Saint Jacques. Everything she has to tell us will culminate on the night of his annual, must attend, height of the season Mardi Gras celebration.

Fermor combines romance, racial, personal, social, , class-based relations and interior design and politics in a very small space. There is no sex or violence, but a lot of simmering, potential love affairs, dueling and some satire. A lot for your few reading hours.

If you have the vocabulary, The Violins of Saint-Jacques is a better than average beach read. Almost capital ‘L’ literature. I found myself making regular trips to the dictionary and looking up on line to see certain styles and products. Maybe something you can beach read if your e book reader smoothly facilitates this kind of multi-tasking.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

July 2017 NYRB selection

This is the first book by Fermor that I have read, though I have a few of his books on my TBR pile mountain.

Fermor's only work of fiction is a tale of passion that reminds one of the Brontes and foreshadows in many ways Wide Sargasso Sea.

The plot of the short novel, novella really, is pretty simple and easy to call in many ways for most seasoned readers. The serious flaw is the depiction of former slave owners; it is very simplstic but considering who is telling the story not that surprising. The beauty of the novel is in the writing, in particular in the descriptive writing. Not only in the sense of the characters but also in the description of the island. The pacing of the novel, too, matches the plot.

[Numidica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was reading The Fire Next Time at the same time I was reading this, and that makes it even harder than it would otherwise be to ignore how badly this book from 1953 has aged. Typical early Twentieth Century stereotypes of Blacks, and a tacit endorsement of droit du seigneur are two examples found in the book. I'm sorry to say this has affected my overall view of Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose travel writing I have enjoyed.

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Others have said it better in their reviews. It was close to a 5 star read for me but just missed. Mainly because of the style in which it is written. Free flowing without breaks over the top descriptions in a creole / fading aristocracy flamboyance. Short length, yes- but this took me twice as long to read for the copy count. Sentences became twisting and endless snakes. Rereading almost necessary. And the more French or French based patois you know, the better.

It's feeling and decadence approaches visual arts in some senses, IMHO.

This absolutely took you to another time and place. Real or beyond wild imagination? Both seemed possible.

Somehow or other, and I don't know why- this also beyond the delights in mid-ball reality, also made my skin crawl a few times. Others don't seem to feel that?

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book by Patrick Leigh Fermor, very early in his career, and his only work of fiction, as far as I can tell.
The narrator retells the story of an elderly woman he meets in the Aegean, a tale of her early life in a (fictional) Caribbean island, just east of Guadeloupe and Dominica.

The writing style is very... extravagant. It is very wordy, very descriptive, and very flamboyant. It is a bit much for me, and until the crises (no limiting to a single crisis in this book, there are many) begin, the story doesn't grip me, and it was heading to two stars. Once the narrator gets in to the swing of things the unnecessary (to me, I am a simple man) falls away and the story is well told.

An interesting book, much more highly acclaimed by other than me, but interesting nevertheless.

[Φερειπείν · Rating 5 out of 5]

Τα βιολιά του Σαιν Ζακ. Πάτρικ Λη Φέρμορ
📖📖📖
“Θα πρέπει να υπάρχει μια πονόψυχη κατάσταση ηλιθιότητας, κάτι σαν λυσίπονο αναισθητικό που κουρνιάζει μέσα στο ανθρώπινο κεφάλι σε ώρες σαν αυτή και περιορίζει τη δύναμη της αντίληψης μόνο σε όσα κατορθώνουν να συλλάβουν η όραση, η ακοή και η αφή”
📖📖📖
Με λόγο πυκνό ο Φέρμορ παρατάσσει μπροστά στα μάτια του αναγνώστη μια έκταση ποικίλων πληροφοριών ιστορικών, γεωγραφικών, πολιτικών, εικαστικών, καλλιεργώντας και αισθητικά την αναγνωστική αδηφαγία, καθώς τα μάτια σου αγγίζουν άπληστα το πλούσιο υλικό του. Γι’ αυτό και μόνο το λόγο δεν θα το χαρακτήριζα εύκολο ανάγνωσμα, γιατί απαιτεί γνώσεις που πιθανό ο μέσος αναγνώστης δεν διαθέτει, ωστόσο, χτίζει τη βάση μιας σοβαρής ευκαιρίας να αποκτήσει. Το ύφος του πλούσιο, “επεκτατικό” στις περιγραφές του, ακολουθεί την περίτεχνη γλώσσα του, γεμάτη από τους χυμούς μιας “εύσαρκης” έκφρασης, επίγειας στην κοσμική της (γραμματική και συντακτική) πληρότητα, που αναδεικνύεται και από την μεταφραστική προσπάθεια της Μαίρης Βοσταντζή. Αυτό θεωρώ πως αποτελεί και το χαρακτηριστικό της γραφής του οπότε η πειθαρχημένη ανάγνωση γίνεται προαπαιτούμενο. Ως εκ τούτου δεν θα το πρότεινα, αν βρίσκεστε σε φάση “ανάγνωση με σκοπό τη χαλάρωση”. Σίγουρα όμως πρόκειται για κείμενο που ταξιδεύει, διαγράφοντας κύκλους νοσταλγίας με την αφηγηματική τεχνική του δημιουργού του, ακόμα κι αν σε προσωπικό επίπεδο όσα περιγράφονται δεν σου είναι διόλου οικεία.
Η αφήγηση βρίσκεται σε μια κατάσταση μεταφυσικής ζωντάνιας, προκύπτει αγόγγυστα από τις λεπτομερείς -μέχρις εξαντλήσεως των αποθεμάτων υπομονής – περιγραφές που σημαίνει πως αν αρέσκεστε σε τέτοιου είδους κείμενα θα βρείτε το άλλο σας μισό, αν πάλι σας κουράζουν να είστε προετοιμασμένοι με το απαιτούμενο ψυχικό σθένος. Μην περιμένετε να πάρετε ανάσα μεταξύ των κεφαλαίων, γιατί απλά τούτο το λογοτεχνικό τέχνασμα δεν υφίσταται. Ολόκληρο το κείμενο παρατίθεται ενιαίο, με ξεκάθαρη κλίση στον μακροσκελή λόγο αλλά και πάλι πώς αλλιώς; Οι εκδόσεις της Εστίας μας συνηθίζουν σε αναγνώσματα απαιτητικά όχι μόνο ως προς το περιεχόμενο αλλά και ως προς τη φόρμα τους.
Μια ιδιότυπη δημιουργία με ξεχωριστό χαρακτήρα, που πειραματίζεται ακόμα και με τη γλώσσα και, τουλάχιστον σε ό,τι με αφορά, προτιμώ τέτοιου είδους πειραματισμούς -για την ακρίβεια με ενθουσιάζουν- που προκαλούν τις δυνατότητες της γλώσσας και την προτρέπουν σε εξέλιξη, παρά πειραματισμούς στη φόρμα που με φέρνουν σε αμηχανία και με βάζουν σε σκέψεις τύπου "δουλειά δεν είχε ο διάβολος...".
Συχνά καλλιεργείται η εντύπωση πως δύο διαφορετικά είδη ύφους συνυπάρχουν κάτω από την ίδια στέγη, το ίδιο αυτόνομα αλλά με συνεργατική διάθεση στο μεταξύ τους κενό διάστημα. Η κυρίως πλοκή εκδηλώνεται με μια ρυθμική εγρήγορση, περισσότερο λιτή στην έκφραση, οι λεπτομέρειες εξοικειώνονται με μια στακάτη απόδοση, σε αντίθεση με τα περιγραφικά του μέρη που αναδεικνύουν όλο το γλωσσικό και εγκυκλοπαιδικό εύρος γνώσεων του δημιουργού. Αν του επιτρέψετε μια γνωριμία με σεβασμό και υπομονή, θα συναντήσετε μια μοναδική γλωσσική καλλιέπεια και αυτή η αποζημίωση είναι μονάκριβη και απαραίτητη στην επαφή μας με τη λογοτεχνία.

Fermor’s writing is a feast. Historical, geographical, political, and artistic details spill across the page, pulling the reader into a world both vast and vivid. This is not casual reading—Fermor expects a reader who comes prepared—but the rewards are immense. His style is expansive and lush, alive with precision and colour. Reading him requires patience, but it’s a journey well worth taking.

The narrative pulses with life, emerging effortlessly from painstakingly detailed descriptions. There are no breaks, no shortcuts, no chapters, just a continuous, flowing prose that invites—sometimes demands—full immersion. This is not a book for light relaxation; it is a book that travels, looping through nostalgia, culture, and memory, even in places that may feel completely unfamiliar.

Fermor experiments with language in ways that delight, stretching expression and inviting the reader to follow him. Two registers coexist: a lean, rhythmic plot and rich, encyclopaedic detail. The interplay between them is subtle, sophisticated, and endlessly rewarding.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1902, the volcano Mount Pelée in Martinique erupted. The pyroclastic flows from the volcano engulfed the town of St. Pierre and killed some 30,000 people.

Some seventy-five years later, Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote a short novel entitled The Violins Of Saint Jacques about a Creole society that mounted a huge Shrove Tuesday ball on the island of Saint-Jacques -- a ball that reached a crescendo just as the volcano Saltpetrière blew its stack, and the lovely island and all its people sank forever into the Caribbean.

Left alone to tell the tale was a young woman who happened to be aboard a sailing ship looking back at the island's demise.It is she, who from the Greek island of Mitylene recounts the tale of the years she spent on Saint-Jacques, and of the island's weird fate.

As with everything of Fermor's that I have read -- and I have to date read all but one of his books -- there is a singular gemlike beauty to his prose. He is the author of sentences whose end you never hope to arrive at. There are exotic lists, words of great rarity and beauty, all put together to form this picture of a society that vanishes in one night, just as a spectacular fireworks display is answered by rumbles from Saltpetrière. Berthe, the narrator, muses on the disaster:

I remember wondering, too, if there were any supernatural purpose in the island gathering its own together -- Sosthène, for instance, and Gentilien and the three Jacobean [that is to say, inhabitants of Saint-Jacques] sailors -- for this culminating holocaust; while the Caribs and I were allowed to escape.... In fact, there was no lesson, no consoling moral to be drawn. Except, perhaps, that although there may be a curious mutual magnetism between people and the things that happen to them in ordinary circumstances, these great tragedies (whether brought on by human agency or what is sometimes called the hand of God) spare and condemn with a lack of purpose that no law, divine, human or natural, can possibly rationalise. They are irrelevancies.

Within a page or two, the author/narrator -- presumably Fermor himself -- says that Saint-Jacques did not quite vanish without a trace:

Last year when I was in Dominica and Guadeloupe, fishermen told me that anyone, crossing the eastern channel between the islands in carnival time, can hear the sound of violins coming up through the water. As though a ball were in full swing at the bottom of the sea.

Berthe had never heard this and is curiously gratified by the anecdote.

Fermor has written so few books -- all of them great -- that I am delaying finishing reading his oeuvre for a while yet. Because, when I do finish, I know I will have to start all over again. He is perhaps the greatest unrecognized author writing in English in the Twentieth Century.

[ladydusk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This took me a while. It took me a while to find my bearings: narrator, setting, etc. Once I did, the story Berthe told drew me in and carried me along with a whoosh.

The collapse of a civilization in disaster and the sole survivor's story were moving, thought provoking, and hard to set down. The author's lush vocabulary and syntax were, at times, all enveloping. At other times, I had to look up definitions or translations that weren't always apparent - or translateable.

I had never heard of Fermor or this book, but I'm glad I gave it a shot as my Literary Life Podcast #19in2021 challenge book "obscure work mentioned by Thomas Banks." I think I'll dwell on it for a while.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book hard going at first--unsatisfying in the tale and nothing gripped my attention. But, I persevered anyway and was rewarded. The ending to me makes the book, not because it's a surprise or anything like that but the way it is written and the reflection on the "meaning of the universe" impact of the tragedy redeems what originally just seemed like an insipid and rather contrived story construction (having Berthe telling the narrator a tale of the past . . . ).

[Sophia Eck · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Violins of Saint-Jacques is primarily the ultimately brutal but personally romanticized twinings of an old Frenchwoman named Berthe of her younger years working and living at the Caribbean port of Saint-Jacques, situated inopportunely at the base of a volcano, where she forayed briefly as a caretaker for some quite distant adolescent relatives, young members of this related family who resided in and whose parents were the owners of the most monstrous mansion located on the island. I found that the beginning of the novel often fell victim to overwhelming info-dumping, lengthy lists of locations, tangential names and their statuses, and partook in a continuous dropping of countless slang phrases or off hand foreign language, basically all untranslated, aside from a few in the index, and I found all of these aspects to often be quite overshadowing of the larger tale being told here, bombarding the reader with endless purely contextual information before even exploring the text and its main focuses first, before you feel invested enough to want to be exhaustively googling and translating all of these terms. I don’t find that approach to exposition to always be frustrating, it’s definitely common in the Fantasy genre to provide a lot of world exposition right from the jump, but I think this novel, with its short length and lesser reader commitment, could’ve been improved with some intermittent footnotes. The story goes on to expose the darker sides and motivations of luxury and lavish lifestyles and events, the duplicitousness ever-present in those of any semblance of power, and has many interesting and sinister angles on class and racial discrimination in the environments present. Towards the end, being the “end” in more ways than one, the stakes and circumstances escalate rapidly, definitively for the worse, and this is really the major redeeming portion of the book, the very quick disintegration providing an addictive sensation in your mind, somewhat redeeming the extremely partialized beginning. The personal storytelling of Berthe is by far the highlight of the novel, and I found myself being most captivated when the novel was primarily in her thrall, and I think this novel honestly should’ve been edited down to simply her exposition, and wish it would have prioritized emotional perspective over pedantic context.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I was not able to give this book its due. Exhausted and distracted, I found it hard to focus on the first fifty pages that form the foundation. There was a smattering of French, generally not a problem for me. The vocabulary (the most extensive I've read in a long while) was a hurdle. Here's a sampling for you to match up: the definition isn't the one on the same line.

orgulous--------------------not having a coat of arms

impavid---------------------haughty

unarmigerous-----------------water pipe

nargileh----------------------fearless

Once the action starts, the storyline picks you up and carries you across the pages. This is a book that made me dig into the history behind the fiction. Wow! PLF is known for being a travel writer. I have several of his travel books on my shelf; I'm eager to start reading them.

This quote, describing a person going through trauma, resonated with me.

There must be a merciful kind of stupidity, almost an anaesthetic, that settles on one's brain at moments like this and limits the range of one's understanding to the bare faculties of sight and sound and touch.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is sustained from start to finish by great story-telling which never loses momentum. The setting is a fictitious Caribbean island and most of the action takes place on Shrove Tuesday during a ball. Oblivious to the ominous signs of an impending volcanic eruption, all the characters frenetically pursue their immediate goals: Count Agénor de Serindan and Governor Sciocca try to effect a reconciliation while, unbeknownst to them, the governor's son, a ruffian and married to boot, plans to elope with the count's lovely daughter Joséphine. A delicious twist to the tale is that it is told by Berthe, the only survivor of the final cataclysm, who was herself in love with Joséphine. I don't recall many utterly sympathetic lesbian characters in fiction of the 1950s and it adds contemporary relevance to this slim but charming book.

[Joseph Murtagh · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75/5

hard to believe this all takes place over the course of one day essentially. evocatively written and filled to the brim with detailed descriptions of joie de vivre in this fictional caribbean island. it all clicks a bit more when you read it was published in the 50’s.

maybe didn’t see the point so much of the destruction of the island outside of being a 50’s adventure novella caper, berthe even philosophises as much towards the end. oh well

also i have grown a dislike for the aristocratic french much the same for dislike of the aristocratic english

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn going into that book blind is the way to go cause wow

Also i just learned its all made up like wtf that felt so real

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Replete with unreconstructed colonial nostalgia, but has probably my favorite volcano eruption scene of any book I’ve read

[Al Maki · Rating 4 out of 5]

An early work, a novella and the only piece of published fiction I know of by Leigh Fermor. It's a bit like Arsenic and Old Lace: the first part slowly creates a complicated situation that doesn't seem very interesting and then around half-way it turns into a Nantucket sleigh-ride, while structurally it's like a little old lady recounting the Book of Job to Conrad's Marlowe. It includes a very good description of despair.

[David Partikian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Purchased on a whim due to the reputation of the “nyrb classics” imprint and the blurb on the back cover by the inestimable Simon Winchester—who knows a thing or two about volcanoes—this gem of a novel did not disappoint. It has the elegant narrative complexity of “Heart of Darkness” and a lexicographer’s attention-to-detail as in the sumptuous repast in James Joyce’s “The Dead.” However, instead of intricate and savory depictions of a holiday dinner, there is an otherworldly glimpse into a bacchanal Mardi Gras ball attended by a dissolute, fading French aristocracy and slave descendants on a fictitious Caribbean Island replete with a duel challenge, an eloping couple, and masked leper masque-gate crashers. The entire drama unfolds under an ash sputtering volcano that the oblivious revelers grossly underestimate in their carnal, celebratory oblivion.

Patrick Leigh Fermor’s The Violins of Saint-Jacques—slightly more than a novella at 140 pages—is a little-known masterpiece. The language is every bit as bizarre, in this case peppered with French Creole pronunciation and archaic slang, as anything Cormac McCarthy ever wrote. The tone is non-judgmental and apolitical in an aloof Nick Carroway manner, although describing a highly stratified society with former slaves (who share the same features as the owners thanks to “droit de jambage”), Creoles, Caribs (the Native Americans Columbus happened upon), lepers and various Jacobin French. The lushness of the setting and language is slowly immersed in ominous dread. At the simplest level, The Violins of Saint-Jacques is the tale of a bygone era and culture wiped clean by a volcanic eruption. But the depth of observation, nuance of descriptions, overall ambiance of decadence and—ultimately—the juxtaposition with a festive ball and petty, worldly concerns amidst Mother Earth with severe indigestion make this slim novel much more. It can be savored as a disaster genre novel with the reader eagerly awaiting the come-uppance of the oblivious revelers amidst pitch-perfect descriptions of French dances that substitute for the music in the movie “Jaws.” The description of the volcanic eruption—a climax worthy of the 116 page wait—rivals the last 10 pages of Joyce’s “The Dead” and includes an epiphany of Mankind’s utter insignificance amidst Nature in all her horrifying glory, all told in Marlow-like fashion from the remote Aegean island of Lesbos, far-removed from the action which quite literally erupts and swallows the World.

This slim novel is perfect and will leave anyone with the discipline to study it flabbergasted. It was made into an opera. Why on earth it hasn’t been made into a film?

Loosely based on the 1902 volcanic eruption on Martinique that wiped out the entire society, this book on the West Indies and Antilles culture is not to be overlooked by adventurers, travelers, literature lovers, Francophiles, anthropologists, and word-loving geeks.

[Antenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this short novel, written in a continuous chapter-free flow, an elderly artist name Berthe recounts to the narrator the dramatic climax of her time spent fifty years previously on the Caribbean island of Saint-Jacques, ruled as a benevolent dictatorship by the aristocratic expatriate French Count, by whom she was employed as a governess but came to enjoy the status of a respected virtual member of the family, his “confidant and counsellor”. It took me a while to grasp that the island is outlined so sketchily on the map provided, because it is imaginary. This enabled me to overlook some of the worrying geographical inconsistencies (for a travel writer) of having lush forest grow so close to the active volcano forming the core of the island.

Although many devotees of the travel writer Patrick Leigh-Fermor may be delighted by the only novel he ever produced in a prolific writing career, I abandoned it mid-way and had to force myself to finish it. I concede that the second half is better, since it contains more dramatic action, when all the “hazards and sorrows ahead ” begin to crack the surface of the idyllic bubble of exotic privilege which the author has inflated with his literary flourishes at full spate in the first half, largely devoted to the preparations and conduct of a grand Shrove Tuesday ball, no expenses spared.

I understand why some readers revel in Leigh-Fermor’s Rococo prose, which I admit once aroused my curiosity to visit what proved to be the remarkable Austrian monastery of Melk. However, in this context, the verbosity is just too much to take. In the course of a lengthy description of the Count’s background, Leigh-Fermor turns to the memorial slabs of his dead ancestors, the Serindans: “The orgulous record of their gestures…..their impavid patience in adversity…..the splendour of their munificence and their pious ends was incised with a swirling seventeenth-century duplication of long S’s and a cumulative nexus of dog-Latin superlatives which hissed from the shattered slabs like a basketful of snakes”. The “Serindan cognizance” crops up again: “ a shield bearing three greyhounds passant on a bend on a field of cross-crosslets within a tressure flory-counter-flory”. I found myself irritated by the author’s continual flaunting of his erudition and addiction to flamboyant verbal excess, rather than sincerely seeking to create three-dimensional complex characters for whom one might feel real empathy.

The frequent inclusion of Latin tags, and dialogues in French, often with a Creole patois, plus an imitation of the Count’s weak “r”s which the local people have innocently copied, often seem both pretentious and irritating if one cannot understand them. I may be underestimating his intention to write tongue-in-cheek as in the passage about ancient tree trunks, each “half following the spiral convolutions of the other like dancing partners in a waltzing forest; the rising moon entangled overhead in the silver and lanceolate leaves, had frozen these gyrations into immobility.” – A “highly literary simile" which he attributes to Berthe. Perhaps I should excuse the dated character of a book written more than sixty years ago about a period now more than a century past. Yet, in his creation of a dawn of twentieth century period when privileged people still lived complacently in the conspicuous consumption of untrammelled luxury served with unquestioning loyalty by contented slaves, I have the uneasy impression that Leigh Fermor does not question the morality of all this – it reads like a lost world for which he feels a sentimental nostalgia. An extreme example of this is the jovial acceptance of the Count’s practice of “droit de jambage”, a Leigh-Fermor conceit for “droit de seigneur”.

Perhaps, I am taking it too seriously, and should simply laugh at a guest dressed as a swordfish, and a heroine in flight falling over an armadillo.

[MT Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Violins of Saint-Jacques by Patrick Leigh Fermor
GEOG 4950-Natural Hazards

Patrick Leigh Fermor published most of his work in the few years following the end of WWII and was highly regarded as one of Britain’s greatest travel writers during his lifetime. His experience in the many places he travelled during his lifetime and the knowledge he had about each of them show throughout the novel. Only about 140 pages long, this short novel tells the story of a man visiting one of the Lesser Antilles Islands when he meets and befriends an older resident of the island who begins to tell him a short history of her life, including the devastating volcanic eruption that happened on her island and disrupted the lives of her and her family.

Unlike many of the other writings listed on the approved book list, The Violins of Saint-Jacques reads more like a fictional novel (which it is) than an informative textbook detailing the science behind whichever natural disaster it focuses on. In fact, the hazard here (a prominent volcano on the island of Saint-Jacques) is almost a supporting character rather than a focal point of the book. Meaning, rather than spending chapters outlining the causes and effects of volcanic eruptions and how they have affected individuals and communities globally, it acts as a major contributing factor in the back story of one of the main characters, Berthe de Rennes. Because of this lack of scientific background and in-depth analysis of the hazards that volcanoes present, I wouldn’t say that there is too much information that is usable by present or future societies, especially considering that this book was published in 1953 and the advances in our knowledge about volcanoes as well as the technology we use to study them has been substantial.

Any details of the event are told through Berthe and her memories of experiencing the volcanic eruption on the island where she lives during the middle of the Mardis Gras Ball, the most extravagant annual tradition of the island’s culture. As far as being well-written and enjoyable, I thought it was both. Although I’m not often a fan of romance novels, the style in which the book was written made the reading go by really quickly. I would definitely recommend this book to someone looking for a short, fictional story to read for fun. However, if you are looking for a book that gives detailed scientific information about volcanoes or maybe even how to survive a volcanic eruption if one should happen in your area, I would go with a more scholarly source.

[Jim Leckband · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahoy matey! Thar be spoilers ahead!

By exceedingly obvious divine intervention, my random book selection from my pile of unread books chose this book right after The Bridge of San Luis Rey. God does not play dice with MY book reading universe. In God's inscrutable ways, he wants to make sure to me that even though in all other aspects of life on this earth it seems there is no reason, he can have a sense of humor and irony.

Because this book and Thornton Wilder's book are concerned with people surviving and sometimes questioning why. Fermor and Wilder do not at all think that this is the "best of all possible worlds" - in fact, it is a messy and random world where the only arrow besides time is the love and memories we humans collect.

Fermor's tale is somewhat Conradian, where the Marlow framing narrator is talking to a mysterious older woman on his Greek island. We learn about her hermit ways and finally takes the narrator into her confidence, telling her story for the first time. By then the reader is captivated too.

Her story involves being orphaned in late 19th century France, in a noble family, and being farmed out to a relative's compound on the Caribbean island of Saint-Jacques (fictional). We hear about the intrigues of this ancestral slave-holding family and the island's residents - natives, nobles, and other not entirely wholesome characters. The tale centers around a Mardi Gras ball where a bunch of intrigue comes to a volcanic end.

The Frenchwoman was forever changed by her time on the island and has only her memories, paintings and a souvenir left. Like the earthquake in Lisbon provoked Voltaire to write his satire on God's plans in Candide, the volcano of Pelee is the instrument of God's wrath and inscrutability - God essentially meaning "random events to which we ascribe meaning."

Like the people dying on the bridge in "San Luis Rey", it is not the horrible destruction of the island that sticks with me, it is the human capacity for love, forgiveness and memory I'm left with. The haunting image of the violins playing under the Caribbean sea is a poignant motif of this capacity.

[Eyejaybee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was another serendipitous acquisition as I had never heard of it until I saw it on one of the display tables in Daunt Books. I had been intrigued by Patrick Leigh Fermor’s accounts of his journey by foot, undertaken at the age of eighteen, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul (which was probably then still known as Constantinople throughout Western Europe). These were published, more than forty years after the journey was concluded as A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, to great critical acclaim. I hadn’t been aware that he had also written novels.

This book takes the form of conversations between the narrator and Berthe, an elderly French lady whom he meets while on holiday on one of the Greek Islands. As they come to know each other better, she recounts various episodes from her life, including the time she had spent on an island in the Caribbean. It had been a French colony, and in the early years of the twentieth century was still administered by a French Governor. Berthe had been born in Paris, but after being orphaned had moved to the volcanic island of Saint-Jaques to live with her cousin’s family, acting as governess to the younger children.

She enjoyed a privileged existence there and recounts a life of ease and luxury, passing from one social event to the next. Such Elysian existence can only last so long, and on the night of a wonderful ball held by Berthe’s cousin, social, political, emotional currents come into powerful juxtaposition, and in a manifestation of extreme pathetic fallacy, the volcano that dominates the physical form of the island lurches into life.

I enjoyed reading this novella, although looking back now from the vantage point of a couple of weeks of reflection, I do feel that it might have been a little overloaded with potential crisis. Still, it was engagingly written, and proved an entertaining distraction over a Bank Holiday weekend.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patrick Leigh Fermor’s novella The Violins of Saint-Jaques is a haunting postwar masterpiece that caught me by surprise. I absolutely loved it and found it to have such an emotional ending. It’s written with luxurious prose about a former French imperialist settlement in the Caribbean, the island of Saint-Jacques, that is inhabited by descendants of slaves, French aristocrats, and indigenous Carib people with a looming volcano above the busiest part of the island.

Berthe de Rennes is an elderly French artist in her seventies living on an island in the Aegean Sea when she meets our English narrator who is traveling through Europe. They strike up a friendship and he becomes intrigued by one of her paintings of Saint-Jacques and the volcano, la Salpetrière. Berthe takes us back in time to fifty years prior when she was in her twenties, at the turn of the century, during an opulent Mardi Gras ball on the island.

“The day had ended in a flaunting sunset so apocalyptic — a Last Judgement, an apotheosis, an assumption, one could have thought — that each falling ray seemed a ladder for the descending Paraclete, and Berthe almost expected to see long-shafted trumpets advance along the slanting beams from the gold and crimson clouds. Then it suddenly died away into night. The volcano had been burning for the last week or so with unaccustomed vigour. Now it hung in the dark like a bright red torch.”
— Patrick Leigh Fermor

This novella richly handles catastrophe, colonialism, and philosophizing on mankind versus nature all in a mere 140 pages. Unbeknownst to me was the very real historical destruction of Saint-Pierre, in Martinique, in 1902 for which this story is based. In his only novel ever written, Leigh Fermor brilliantly fictionalized and brought to life the events of Saint-Pierre’s ruin — a place, like Saint-Jacques, that ceases to exist any longer.