Monday 1 June 2020

'A gift that cannot move loses its gift properties!...'

The Gifts of Reading | Book

A gift that cannot move loses its gift properties,

says Hyde, Lewis Hyde, in his motivational book titled, The Gift.

[you may want to read our past post on The Gift here].

In simple terms, if say, for example, I share a gift - (could be a book!) ;-) - with my friend, and my friend in turn shares it with their friends, who in turn shares it with their friends, the gift thus shared has a great transformative appeal to it, enriching and enlightening manifold times, both the receiver and the sender in the process!

Now, let’s quick fast-forward together, to this last past week, May 2020! 

Well, I was reading my way through Robert Macfarlane’s book titled, Underland: A Deep Time Journey, [again, gifted to me by my lovely cousin], a book that’s touted to be ‘an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself’.

After having done with reading through this delightful book, I was busy checking out on more of Macfarlane, Robert Macfarlane’s books, for the weekend, when I chanced upon a priceless little treasure that he’d written, exclusively for charity sake!

And it’s titled, The Gifts of Reading.


‘This story, like so many stories, begins with a gift. The gift, like so many gifts, was a book – and the book was given to me by a man called Don, with whom I became friends in Beijing during the autumn and winter of 2000’,

he begins the book, and adds,

A book was given to me by a man called Don, with whom I became friends in Beijing during the autumn and winter of 2000. Don and I were working as English literature teachers in a University.

Don had been his able ‘friend, philosopher and guide’ during his pretty little stint at a University in Beijing. Now, after his tenure in Beijing is up, Robert Macfarlane heads back to Cambridge to work on his PhD in Victorian Literature.

Interestingly, Don comes over to Cambridge to visit Robert on a short sojourn of sorts. And while departing, he leaves behind a few presents for Robert Macfarlane on his table. The presents include, a copy of Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End, and a paperback copy of a book by Patrick Leigh Fermor titled, A Time of Gifts!

Says Macfarlane, Robert Macfarlane on the book –

A Time of Gifts is filled with gifts and acts of giving – it is a book, we might say, that is rich with generosity. Among its gifts is the gift of time:

Leigh Fermor did not publish it until 1977, forty-four years after beginning his walk, and a result of that long and thoughtful delay is a narrative voice which possesses both the joyful wonder of youth, and the wisdom and perspective of later age.

And among those wisdoms is its reflection on the nature of gift: what it might mean to give without expectation of recompense, and what types of kindness might stand outside the reciprocal binds of the cash economy.

One of the first things Leigh Fermor is given in A Time of Gifts is a book: the first volume of the Loeb edition of Horace. His mother (‘she was an enormous reader’) bought it for him as a farewell present, and on its flyleaf she wrote the prose translation of an exquisite short poem by Petronius, which could hardly have been more appropriate as a valediction to her son:
Leave thy home, O youth, and seek out alien shores … Yield not to misfortune: the far-off Danube shall know thee, the cold North-wind and the untroubled kingdom of Canopus and the men who gaze on the new birth of Phoebus or upon his setting.
The journey of A Time of Gifts is set going by the gift of a book – and it is a book that has in turn set going many journeys,

says Robert Macfarlene.

Reading through A Time of Gifts, was an invigorating experience, he adds.

‘It made me want to stand up and march out – to walk into adventure’. The comforting rhythm of his journey – exertion, encounter, rest, food, sleep; exertion, encounter, rest, food, sleep – rocks its readers into feelings of happiness and invulnerability. I could do this, you think, I could just start walking and keep going for a day or two, or three, or four, or more.

Again, poring over Lewis Hyde’s The Gift was a transformative experience, says Macfarlane –

I was given a copy of Hyde’s The Gift – and I don’t have that copy any longer, because I gave it to someone else, urging them to read it. Gifts give on, says Hyde, this is their logic. They are generous acts that incite generosity. He contrasts two kinds of ‘property’: the commodity and the gift. The commodity is acquired and then hoarded, or resold. But the gift is kept moving, given onwards in a new form.

I am particularly moved by his deep interest in what he calls ‘the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us’. 

The outcome of a gift is uncertain at the time of giving, but the fact that it has been given charges it with great potential to act upon the recipient for the good. 

Because of the gratitude we feel, and because the gift is by definition given freely, without obligation, we are encouraged to meet it with openness and with excitement. 

Unlike commodities, gifts – in Hyde’s account and my experience – possess an exceptional power to transform, to heal and to inspire, 

says Macfarlane.

Today, Macfarlane is known the world over, for his enthralling books on landscape, language, nature, places and people.

However, it was the sweet impact of that one book gifted to him by his friend Don, that had quite turned his life a full 360 degrees for the better - for a richer and a fuller life! 

Exactly what Lewis Hyde says, about the power of the gift

Only when the increase of gifts moves with the gift may the accumulated wealth of our spirit continue to grow among us, so that each of us may enter, and be revived by, a vitality beyond his or her solitary powers.

Yes!!!

So let me put it this way, this simple way –

Patrick Leigh Fermor was gifted the first volume of Horace: Odes and Epodes, by his mother, which acted his spontaneous spur and immediate impulse to become one of the best known travel writers from around the world.

Robert Macfarlane was gifted a book on Patrick Leigh Fermor by his friend Don, and titled, A Time of Gifts, which in turn had motivated him to develop an engaging and rewarding relationship with the landscape.

Rufus (me) ;-) was gifted this Robert Macfarlane’s book titled, The Underland, by my cousin, which in turn motivated me bigtime to write this post!

And.... well... the gift moves on and on and on!

So yup!

Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the ‘present’.

How have you been using/sharing your gifts?

Remember, Lewis Hyde says: A gift that cannot move loses its gift properties!

So why wait?

Start using your gifts!

Right away at that!

Before it loses it properties! ;-)

Bonne chance!
image: amazondotcom