A Motto from Koblenz

Glaub, was wahr ist;
Lieb, was rar ist;
Trink, was klar ist.

This New Year's resolution is from A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor. This bright little narrative, along with its companion volume Between the Woods and the Water, constitute Fermor's 1933 trek from the hook of Holland all the way through the girth of pre-WWII Europe to Constantinople.

Here are the circumstances that surround this glittering pearl:

... simply by sipping one could explore the two great rivers below [i.e., the Rhine and the Mosel which converge at Koblenz] and the Danube and all Swabia, and Franconia too by proxy, and the vales of Imhof and the faraway slopes of Wurzburg: journeying in time from year to year, with draughts as cool as a deep well, limpidly varying from dark gold to pale silver and smelling of glades and meadows and flowers. Gothic inscriptions still flaunted across the walls, but they were harmless here, and free of the gloom imposed by those boisterous and pace-forcing black-letter hortations in the beer-halls of the north.

And the style was better: less emphatic, more lucid and laconic; and both consoling and profound in content; or so it seemed as the hours passed. Glaub, was wahr ist,* enjoined a message across an antlered wall, Lieb, was rar ist; Trink, was klar ist.

One simply cannot write better than this. When I grow up, I want to write like Fermor: "less emphatic, more lucid and laconic; and both consoling and profound in content."

*Believe what is true; love what is rare; drink what is clear.

Comments

[D. I. Dalrymple]

By happy coincidence, I just finished reading A Time of Gifts. It only required the first few pages (the 'Introductory Letter to Xan Fielding') to turn me into a fervent Fermor devotee. I've picked up a copy of the second volume, but can't yet bring myself to open it, wanting the spell to last a while longer.