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

Solitude, Survival & Imagination

It’s a quiet time in the realm of Robert Lax. Philip Glass’s opera based on The Circus of the Sun was supposed to go on a world tour after its premiere at the Malmö Opera House last May, but Covid forced the premiere online and the tour has yet to be rescheduled. I know of no new Lax books coming out. And any forthcoming creative works based on his life or poems are still percolating in secret. Even the internet search I always do before putting this newsletter together yielded nothing fresh.

Which seems just fine for the end of winter, when nature pauses before offering the fireworks of spring. In Lax’s later years on Patmos, when visitors arrived from spring through fall, winter was often the only time he was truly alone. The wind would blow and the rain would pelt his modest house, where it could be quite chilly inside as well as out. He’d dress in two layers of clothes, pull a watchcap over his ears, and sit on his bed, sometimes under the covers, with a small pad in one hand and a pen in the other.

There, he’d write poems to the wind and the rain, just as in summer he’d write them to the sun and the green on the hills. He understood that acquiring both wisdom and greater awareness of the presence of God meant being fully alive to every moment, every emotion, and even every hardship. He once wrote:

     to be wise is to know, for one thing, which way the wind blows…

     knowing how to stay alive & healthy (well-fed & with adequate air
     and sleep) in all kinds of conditions is also a part of wisdom

     the wisdom of survival.

     wisdom for survival.

     he who is imbued with the wisdom of survival is not only fit for “sur-
     vival” himself, but for teaching it to others. (even to generations of
     others.

     “the survival of the fittest”–not of the fiercest, not of the fastest–
     the fittest, among men, may, after all, be the wisest.

In the same year he wrote these lines, 1969–a time when he was still growing used to living in the islands full-time–he also wrote:

     as a child (it seemed) he had played alone in the living room most of
     the time, dancing to records on the gramophone and performing in
     an imaginary theater.

     (now it was only when he was quite alone that his imagination began
     to come alive.)

     what he needed was not only quiet, but solitude: a solitude that honed
     itself against solitude.

It seems, of course, that we’re about to exit not only the quiet of winter but also the quiet of these lockdown years. In these final days of relative solitude, of conditions I would not normally choose, I ask myself if I’ve grown wiser in the ways of survival during this time–wise enough to teach others down the line, as Lax did. I ask, too, if I’ve put my fears and anxieties aside long enough for my imagination to come alive–to be like a child again, dancing to a gramophone.

In winter, when Lax was alive, I’d often picture him sitting placidly on that bed in that room with the wind and the rain making their assault outside. There was little to envision really–a man in a watchcap on a bed, writing on a cheap pad–but that image always made me more comfortable and more courageous with my own aloneness–my own attempts to create or discover something valuable, wise, and true.

(The quotes used here are from pp. 216 & 243 in Love Had a Compass by Robert Lax.)

This post originally appeared in the February 2022 issue of The Robert Lax Newsletter. To sign up for this free bimonthly publication, click here and enter your email address on the left-hand side of the page.

Three Short Videos of Michael N. McGregor Talking About Robert Lax

Oxford University Press, which is handling distribution for Michael N. McGregor’s Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax, has produced three videos in which McGregor talks about Lax’s friendships with Thomas Merton and others, his love of solitude, the relationship between his poetry and his simple life, and why he settled on the Greek island of Patmos.