AS I WALKED OUT ONE MIDSUMMER MORNING

by Laurie Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 1969

In A Rose for Winter (1957) Mr. Lee brought his wife minstrelling in Spain, but this is the tale of his first, solo, passionate knowledge of the country in 1935-6. On a ""fine bright morning in June,"" young Mr. Lee set off from rural Gloustershire with violin, exhilarated but also a bit abashed by his freedom. After tramping, laboring and loitering through parts of England, Spain seemed as good an answer as any to the question: ""So where should I go?"" His second morning in Vigo, Spain, was an affirmation: ""...to look out on a world for which I had no words, to start at the beginning, speechless and without plan."" Lee begins his year's pilgrimage from north to south, living rigorously (sometimes walking twenty miles a day) and content to play for his suppers. He served as a divertissement for clusters of spare and mainly primitive people in cities and villages--a complement to ""great gold plains, the arid and mystical distances."" Travelling with a timeless receptivity to stark beauty and muted pain, Lee reaches the end of his journey during the beginnings of civil upheaval. At the last he is picked up by a British ship, as a farewell chorus of villagers sees him off. The time is now for reader as well as author. A splendid journey, lush and lovely, and not since Keats' St. Agnes Eve buffet have the pleasures of the senses received so eloquent a transubstantiation.

Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1969

ISBN: 1567923925

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION