Newsletter 5/2002

Inside a question,
Works of Henriette Lannes

Paul H. Crompton Ltd, London, 2002
ISBN 1 874250 56 1

Paul H. Crompton Ltd has published a book with talks of Henriette Lannes to her students.
Henriette Lannes was a personal pupil of Gurdjieff and guided the work in the english Gurdjieff Foundation for over thirty years. We have been looking forward to this book and consider the availability of Henriette Lannes' words a major event.

Her book has also been reflected upon in the new essay :' Fourth-way literature and the problem of 'Form ' by Pauline Tiben and Wim van Dullemen


Fourth Way books and the problem of Form

The building was so large that it looked like an exaggeration of the laws of perspective and in its womb, a labyrinth of corridors, dining halls, dormitories, class and study rooms, I spent a large part of my youth. I was entrusted to the care of the Jesuit Brotherhood who hammered, one energetic blow after another, mathematics, ethics, languages and literature into my head. When I left, I was like a cat jumping out of a dark storehouse into the bright sunlight, finding out how alive life can be. I forgot what I had learned. Most of it, but not all. Some phrases stayed with me, like a compass in the bag of a traveller.
One of those came from an old ascetic, tall and thin as a needle, whose body was ravaged in a Nazi concentration camp, but whose spirit radiated endless curiosity and intelligence. During a lesson devoted to Malraux' L'espoir, he said: "If you want to tell something, you need a literary form capable of transmitting this. Without a solid form, even the truth stops being true."
These words reflect the eternal question: form versus content, a question that in its turn evokes a multitude of other questions. Perhaps all these can be reduced to the main question that each of us has to face: what is the relation between my inner life and my outward manifestations?
The old Jesuit was undoubtedly right. For writing a love poem, it is certainly not enough to be full of emotion yourself, the aim is to recreate these very feelings in the reader! For this, you need tools: literary ability, skill, and originality. Not to forget the genuine thing itself, the feeling of loving someone in this case, otherwise all the skills in the world will do nothing but force a dead horse to a few more steps.
Of course, most writers of love letters do not heed the old Jesuit's words, nor those of any other old ascetic, for that matter. They simply write how deeply in love they are and that life without their lover makes no sense. Those receiving these letters can be touched to the very bone reading these words and their life can be totally transformed. They are in the know of the situation and so understand what is meant. To other people these letters, apart from arousing a certain curiosity, can never have any real significance. In fact, lover letters provide the most boring reading imaginable, with their endless repeating of the same phrases in random sequence and, as humiliating as it is true, men's most inner and precious feelings become, once translated into words, monotonous and predictable.
Fourth Way literature is no exception to this rule. Many books rely so completely on the code language established in 'In Search of the Miraculous' and its scions, that any original thought or concept seems to be wiped out, if there were any to begin with. For, in addition to being a highly skilled writer, Ouspensky's story had what the Turks call 'Baraka'.
If a person is telling a story from his own experience of the event in question, his story has 'Baraka'. When the story, as happens to the good ones, is repeated by someone else, it has inevitably lost its 'Baraka', i.e. the radiation is entirely different.
Perhaps the rapidly diminishing interest in books about Gurdjieff's teachings reflects not so much the insensitivity of a new generation of readers, but rather the inability of most authors to express themselves in an accessible form, and a lack of "Baraka', a genuine experience, exploration of their own.
All these thoughts crossed my mind reading the talks of Henriette Lannes, recently published under the title 'Inside a Question'. But those who interpret this a negative criticism are wrong. Friends have described Henriette Lannes to me as a saintly being and reading her words was worthwhile. It was as if, caught in the wilderness of my own illusions, I heard a distant call. But it could very well be that I heard this only because I have been emerged in the same discipline, and what's more, during the same period of time as those who listened to her words. I know what is meant, because I am familiar with the situation.
'Inside a Question' is an important book for people like me and will no doubt be a real treasure for those who knew Henriette Lannes personally. In just a few decades from now, however, there will be nobody left with personal memories of her, or of her discipline at that particular time. And will her words then have the power to speak for themselves? My doubts about this result from the paradox that the most enduring books about Gurdjieff and his teaching were written by those with the strong sense of independence to explore for themselves and who were literary gifted: Ouspensky, Peters, Hulme, Bennett and Daumal. I do not mean to make too literally a comparison with these authors, if only because Henriette Lannes never meant to be an author. Her words were guiding a community.

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