Kathryn HulmeRezensionen

> MA CONVERSION, de Gurdjieff Au Catholicisme, de Kathryn Hulme - Ed. Stock, 1967, 230 pages. — Kathryn Hulme est un auteur célèbre: son livre Au risque de se perdre — l’histoire d’une religieuse rentrée dans le siècle — a été lu dans le monde entier. Aujourd’hui, renonçant à la fiction, elle nous donne son autobiographie. Quel livre étonnant! Ce n’est pas le côté anecdotique - très captivant pourtant — qui intéresse le plus. Ce livre commence ainsi: J’ai toujours éprouvé le besoin — un besoin aussi urgent que de manger ou de boire — de vivre par l'esprit… Au cours d'un séjour à Paris, j'eus la chance de trouver un maître. Ce maître était Gurdjieff.
Une grande partie de l’ouvrage est consacré à Gurdjieff. Ces pages sont d’un intérêt considérable et éclairent singulièrement le visage de celui à qui Louis Pauwels a consacré une étude, il y a quelques années, et qui a encore, par delà la mort, de nombreux disciples.
Une fois Gurdjieff disparu (Que faire maintenant? Où aller? Je n'étais pas la seule á implorer le Maître. Il y avait dans la salle une telle ferveur qu'elle était presque palpable…), Kathryn Hulme nous dit que sa vie intérieure fut comme morte. Pourtant, ajoute-t-elle, sa voix me parvint: — Tant que nous poursuivrons le même idéal, nous ne serons pas séparés. Et, un jour, elle retrouva le chemin de la vie intérieure en se convertissant au catholicisme.
Ce document humain d’une beauté rarement atteinte ne souffre pas le commentaire. Il faut le lire.
—Planète, (36), Sept./Oct. 1967, (p. 185)

Very to glad to have found an affordable copy of this memoir of the post WW II Displaced Persons saga. Very well written and illuminating. It was referenced by other books that I read about this period of time.

NA

I read this in college when I was reading all of Hulme's books that I could find, and have wanted to re-read it but it's out of print. So I was glad to find a Kindle edition.

For five years she was an administrator at several camps for displaced persons in Germany. When I read it the first time I didn't know much about post WWII stuff, just that there were a lot of refugees and some came to the US. She goes into the politics of how people were sent to various places, and how the US was quite late in accepting people. But it's her interesting in people's stories and her obvious concern and love for them that really makes it.

I also know more about Hulme, who was a devotee of Gurdjieff in Paris in the 30s. The nurse on her team is the former nun whose story she later told in her best-seller, and they were lovers. A fascinating person.

657. The Nun's Story, by Kathryn Hulme (read 4 June 1961) I have a good memory of this book, though I did no post-reading note thereon.

Rescued from the discards at the used book store this remarkable true story of a well-to-do young woman who becomes a nursing nun but struggles all along with the obedience her order requires was an amazing read detailing life in a convent and in a teaching hospital in the Congo. . When her superior asks her to deliberately fail a nursing test to overcome her pride Sister Luke begins to question the practices of the order. As a nurse she is dedicated to welfare of her patients and hesitates when the rules contradrict their needs. But one thing leads to another and Sister Luke eventually acts on her hypocracy. I recommend it to Catholics and others who are especially interested in inspirational stories.

Fictionalized memoir about her grandparents’ devoted marriage. Her grandfather was a sea captain whose career went from sail to steam.

I got a huge kick a few years ago when I was photographing gravestones at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland and found their graves.

Her spiritual autobiography. She grew up in the Bay Area, then lived in Paris where she was student of Gurdjieff. Later she was a welder in the Kaiser shipyards, and later still ran a huge displaced person camp in Poland. She wrote about her experiences at the DP camp in The Wild Place which I read in college; now it's impossible to find and I'd like to read it again. I own Annie's Captain, the story of her grandparents. Finally she wrote the book that made her famous, The Nun’s Story. It was about the spiritual struggle of her longtime partner. That's the book of hers I first read, in junior high, because I'll read anything about nuns. Quite a fascinating person.

When I read this in college I totally missed that she was a lesbian, despite things like her talking about her family of her “friend” and their pets.

a superior beautifully written book about displaced persons after WW II. The author was deputy director of two UNRRA run refugee camps

This is the story of a young girl's life after she enters the convent, and how she finally makes a decision to leave. It's been a long time since I read this book, but i remember it as being mesmerizing. Now that I've found the book, I'll read it again. By the way, the book was much better than the movie.

Deemoediger,oprechter en nobeler werd een religieus conflict zelden behandeld, en even zelden het zo ontroerend en met zo grote schoonheid beschreven.

The story of a woman who decides to take the veil when she is young. She is determined to serve God with her best. As she ages and matures, so does her faith. She travels to some of the most difficult areas in her quest to serve God and her faith is severely challenged during WWII.

One of my all time favourites½

De Belgische Gabrielle van der Mal kiest na langdurig wikken en wegen niet voor haar verloofde Jean, maar voor het kloosterleven.
Tijdens de zes maanden postulaat in het moederhuis te Brussel wordt Gabrielle onderworpen aan een streng regime van onverbiddelijke tucht en discipline, waar haar karakter zich uit alle macht tegen verzet. Doch de jonge novice zet door en behaalt ondertussen haar verpleegstersdiploma.

Voordat zuster Luc's heimelijke wens om als missiezuster te worden uitgezonden in vervulling gaat, wordt haar nederigheid zwaar op de proef gesteld. Moedig schikt de non zich echter naar de wensen van haar almachtige superieuren en verdient tenslotte haar felbegeerde benoeming overzee.

In het voorjaar van 1932 legt zuster Luc haar eeuwige geloften af en vertrekt naar de Kongo. Aldaar moet ze wederom een uiterst zware teleurstelling wegslikken als blijkt dat niet het oerwoud haar post zal worden, maar een beschaafd Europees ziekenhuis, onder de bezielende leiding van de aantrekkelijke Italiaanse geneesheer-directeur. Dokter Fortunati wordt zuster Luc's zwaarste beproeving...

(#31 in the 2006 book challenge)
Another excellent find at the used book store! It's a "true story" kind of thing that follows a young woman who becomes a nun and then ends up as a missionary in the Congo in the 1930s. She returns to a convent in Belgium just in time for the Nazi invasion. Completely melodramtic yet full of fascinating details about convent life. It probably goes without saying that the Congo stuff in particular is very much of its time. My goodness, I would last about two hours in a convent.

Grade: B+
Recommended: Heartily, for the obsessed with nuns set. Other folks, not so much. It's no "In This House of Brede," that's for sure.

NA

ninth printing