‘El amigo del desierto’: The Wisdom of the Desert
A review of ‘El amigo del desierto’, by Pablo d’Ors; Galaxia Gutenberg, 2013.
For as long as there have been human beings there have been those among us who are drawn, inexorably, to the void. We intuit that in this nothing there is also everything, for in silence there is an absence of division; and so we seek it out in the hope that we might, if you like, drink from the well. So it is with Pavel, the narrator of this slim novella, who learns from the back cover of a book about a man in Brno who has travelled the world’s deserts, and decides to seek him out.
This is how El amigo del desierto begins: with one man’s impulsive decision to find another man who likes deserts. Finding him turns out to be easy; what is difficult is comprehending and sustaining his motivation for seeking him out, and for joining him in his pursuit of the arid and the empty. The Friends of the Desert group, which gives its name to the title (and to the network of Christian meditators which d’Ors has founded), is as inscrutable as whatever is pulling at Pavel: not a cult or ideology, but an ‘institution in service of an ideal’ made up of people who have responded, one way or another, to the call of the desert. Pavel’s experience with this group elicits more questions than answers — answers, it seems, that can only be answered in the silence of the desert.
The Friends of the Desert group is as inscrutable as whatever is pulling at Pavel: not a cult or ideology, but an ‘institution in service of an ideal’.
In common with his other work, including the masterful Biografía del silencio, the central theme of El amigo del desierto is the search for the absolute, which can only be found in the forgetfulness of self (the verbatim title of d’Ors’ fictionalised memoir of one of his spiritual heroes, Charles de Foucauld). This search is never straightforward, and progress is seldom, if ever, ‘harmonious and linear’, as d’Ors has written in his mystical interpretation of the Gospels, Biografía de la luz. What begins in enthusiasm — Pavel’s decision to seek out the desert-seeker — fades swiftly into confusion, frustration, doubt, and a loss of faith in the meaning of a search which is evidently spiritual, but never described as such. D’Ors decision to leave gaps, as it were, reflects the ambiguity which characterises all spiritual journeys, and can only be banished through faith.
What begins in enthusiasm — Pavel’s decision to seek out the desert-seeker — fades swiftly into confusion, frustration, doubt.
The problem presented to the novelist in a book such as this one is that the kind of journey to the interior that d’Ors seeks to portray does not lend itself freely to fiction. There are no dragons to slay, no treasures to find. Such a quest as Pavel’s is marked instead by absence: a lack of signs, of encouragement, of affirmation. To make such extreme sobriety, which manifests as a kind of narrative asceticism, not only work but engage is further proof of the author’s considerable talent and of his fidelity to the story. Such a spare tale is always tempting its teller to add, the way an unfurnished home greets its new owner. But d’Ors is interested not in adding layers, either to life or his fiction, but in shedding them, so that the authentic core might be revealed. The effect of this in The Friend of the Desert is to leave the reader mesmerised.
Pablo d’Ors is a Catholic priest with an interest in Zen, and though El amigo del desierto is not shot through with explicitly Christian themes, the mystic and saint Charles de Foucauld looms in the background as a kind of ideal: one who finds spiritual solace in the desert, and who follows his own path without consideration of convention. The imagery of the book, however, and the eclecticism of those whom, with Pavel, seek to experience the intense sobriety of the world’s deserts, points to the universality of the human need — and for some, desire — for silence and stillness. This is all rendered in sharp but unaffected prose, over a little over 100 pages. There is a great deal of wisdom packed in this short book.
