Tag: Pendo

Robert Lax’s Patmos House Today

Robert Lax’s Pendo books on a shelf in his Patmos house. The photograph shows those who traveled with him when he left Patmos for the last time in 2000. (Photo by Michael N. McGregor)

Almost 40 years have passed since I first set foot in Robert Lax’s small house above the port town of Skala on Patmos. Three months ago, I had a chance to return for the first time in 18 years and stay in it, thanks to the kindness of those who own it now.

I went back to Patmos because I’m writing a book called An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life (forthcoming from Monkfish Publishing, spring 2025). Much of the book is about the two months I lived on Patmos in 1985 when I was 27. I spent the first in total solitude and the second in a modified solitude that included time with Lax.

My purpose in returning was to see how different living in that kind of solitude would be as an older man. (I’m only three years younger now than Lax was when I met him.) Staying in the house of a man who lived every day in solitude was a bonus. Few of Lax’s things remain there, but one wall of the small main room is still lined with his books.

Looking through his shelves brought several thoughts to mind:

  1. Lax was more interested in simply getting his writing out into the world than in worrying about how big his publisher was.
  2. He collaborated with an astonishing number of people on small books and limited press runs, and he was friends with most of them.
  3. The books on his shelves that weren’t his own (which means the books he read) fell into five main categories: a. books by friends, b. books on religion or philosophy, c. books of poetry or on the craft of poetry, d. dictionaries for the languages he spoke (English, French, Italian, and Greek), and e. books people had given him.
  4. Because he lived without a television and used his radio primarily to listen to the BBC for half an hour once a day, his books represent the ideas and knowledge he filled his mind with.
  5. He drew from a wide variety of traditions as he sought to improve his consciousness and deepen his faith.
The front door of Robert Lax’s house on Patmos. (Photo by Michael N. McGregor)

I was glad to see that Lax’s house had changed in the 24 years since his death. These days, a painter stays and works in it for much of the year. It’s a living space where creativity still takes place. But it was good to see his books there too, to find his spirit in them. The one other obvious reminder of him was a poster on the wall with his lovely face above one of his best-loved poems:

turn
ing

the

jun
gle


in
to

a

gar
den


with
out

des
troy
ing


a

sin
gle

flow
er

–Michael N. McGregor

Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaraguan Poet and Translator of Lax’s THE CIRCUS OF THE SUN, has died at 95

(Photograph from ndbook.com)

Robert Lax became acquainted with Ernesto Cardenal through Thomas Merton, who served as Cardenal’s novice master when he was studying to be a monk at Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky. Cardenal eventually left the Trappists and returned to his native country, where he served as Minister of Culture from 1979 to 1988, a tumultuous time in Nicaragua’s history. A celebrated poet, he did the Spanish translation for the multilingual version of Lax’s The Circus of the Sun, published by Pendo in 1981.

You can read more about Cardenal’s extraordinary life on his Poetry Foundation webpage.

And in his obituary from the The Guardian.

You’ll find many of Cardenal’s books in English and Spanish at Amazon, including a collection of his correspondence with Merton.