Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life

In Catholic parochial school, writes Hampl ( A Romantic Education ), she learned the virtue of contemplation: "Pondering was the highest vocation. . . . Pondering was a special kind of thinking. It was not done in the mind, that chilly place, but in the heart, where the real mystery of intelligence--intuition rather than thought--lay catlike and feminine, ready to pounce." Accordingly, as she seeks the meaning of faith--by visiting several Catholic pilgrimage sites in Europe and a California-based Cistercian women's monastery, and by musing over her religious upbringing in Minnesota--she exercises her observational skills with a fury. She describes the wildflowers of Umbria and the quirks and passions of English agnostic travel companions; she relates how, in Assisi, touring Franciscans "spoke of Francis and Clare as of people who had just left the room for a moment"; in Lourdes, she is overwhelmed by a crowd of supplicants, many of them in wheelchairs; and in the California monastery, she probes the meaning of silence. But for all its prettiness and earnestness, Hampl's prose is finally prolix and enervating.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hampl, a poet, professor (English/Univ. of Minnesota), and MacArthur Fellow, peers into her soul and finds the Church. A rambling, radiant travelogue-cum-memoir, a sequel of sorts to the author's acclaimed autobiography, A Romantic Education (1981). Raised by devout Catholic parents, schooled by nuns, Hampl nevertheless finds that ``most of the time I'm so removed from belief I confuse it with having an opinion.'' To resolve this dilemma, she heads to Europe to ``see the old world of Catholicism.'' Most of her time is spent in Assisi, scrambling up holy mountains, kneeling in crypts, sifting her past, recording the chatter of priests, nuns, and other seekers. Just about all of it is passed on to us: encounters with fellow travelers whose passions and prattle fill up too much of the text; superb memories of a Catholic childhood drenched in dogma, instructed by nuns who radiated ``a bracing coolness''; gems of theological insight (``it was integral to the fundamental inspiration of Christianity that Jesus was poor. He was nothing and nobody, and therefore he could be a metaphor from minute one. He was the Word made flesh''); too many passages that sound like warmed-over Annie Dillard (on an airplane, ``wrinkles of terror run over the soles of my feet. My toes curl towards earth''). Over all hovers the kindly presence of St. Francis; beneath all runs the urgency of Hampl's quest, driven by the realization that ``God was not at stake....prayer was the real question.'' A tentative answer comes, oddly, not in Assisi but in a tacked-on visit to a Cistercian monastery in California. Much like a High Mass: rich, beautiful, boring, elevating. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"People like me, fused by fascination to their past, find themselves taking planes to distant places," observes Hampl, whose A Romantic Education ( LJ 2/1/81) reported on growing up Czech in America. To sort out her feelings about the Catholicism she rejected as a young woman, Hampl heads for Europe--the past of dusky cathedrals and centuries-old monasteries where her religion was forged. But along the road to Assisi, at the Poor Clare monastery on the Borgo San Pietro, and at Lourdes, she encounters not religious exaltation but vapid tourists and an American nun who is singularly unwilling to share her feelings. Only at a retreat in Mendicino, California, where religion is being remade, does she find true spirituality, learning to accept rather than to impose. Poet Hampl's prose is beautifully incisive, delivering her cascading reflections and sardonic asides on some loutish fellow pilgrims with equal vigor. Unfortunately, the reflections don't quite cohere--it's hard to follow the development of her thought--but her beautiful scattering of ideas is still well worth reading.
- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.