I give you all this research because I have discovered over this past year that Murdoch’s books not only improve when read in company, but furthermore they improve with knowledge. The two things I took out of Burnside’s discussion of Milarepa – to be kept in mind as I read – was that the spiritual life led ‘ not to transcendence, but to a fuller expression of one’s true nature‘ and ‘we cannot change ourselves utterly we can only change how we are in the world: how we see, how we act, how we tell our stories.’ Milarepa was a Tibetan poet mystic who managed to achievement Enlightenment in one lifetime. He also alerted me to the fact that Charles Arrowby, our flawed protagonist, had bought into the whole ‘ Romantic, theatrical myths‘ idea of retreating, hermit-like to the coast to ponder his life, to get back to nature and surrender his ‘ worldly powers‘.īurnside warned me about the negative view of marriage that permeated the entire book before going off on an excursion into Milarepa country at the end.

He focused on the seventies provenance of this book and the ‘ spiritual awakening‘ happening at that time in the Western world – the interest in Eastern philosophies and ideas about ‘ mercy, compassion and right action‘. My edition of The Sea, The Sea was the 1999 Vintage one with an Introduction by John Burnside. Although I’m tempted to source Jackson’s Dilemma before December so that I can be in at the end. There are now only seven more books to go – of which I have only one on my TBR pile – The Book and the Brotherhood. The Sea, The Sea was my fifth book in Liz in Reading great Iris Murdoch Readalong, where she is reading (or more accurately rereading) ALL 26 of Murdoch’s books in chronological order over a 2 year period.

The sea the sea iris