BOOK REVIEW: DAN HORAȚIU POPESCU, "LAYERS OF THE TEXT & CONTEXT: PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR & FRIENDS", ORADEA, EDITURA UNIVERSITĂŢII DIN ORADEA: PARTIUM, 2020, 258 P.

Abstract

In the autumn of 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor was only eighteen years old when he set out on a journey to Europe after a complicated and rebellious adolescence: having disembarked from his homeland, England, in the Netherlands, he planned to cross the continent on foot until reaching Istanbul. Thus begins the account of a life-long travel adventure, where the icy plains of the Netherlands parade before our eyes, and German taverns, excellent libraries, friendships born on the street, offer the most varied hospitality that one could get: rooms rented by boatmen, acquaintances of acquaintances who offer young Fermor a room, young Central Europeans who have fun with him, Transylvanian manor houses and Magyar nobles who spoil him. Moreover, we read the author’s brilliant reflections on heraldry, demography, and linguistics. The book written by Dan Horațiu Popescu is more than a new biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor. It is an invitation to a new reading of Fermor’s Between the Woods and the Water from the perspective of the Romanian scholar, who identifies different layers of meaning in the pages of the British traveler’s memoirs.