Idiots in Paris

In 1949, JG Bennett was engaged in, with Gurdjieff's help, a titanic struggle with his own nature, which he describes in these diaries. However Elizabeth's entries, which make up the bulk of this book, give witness to conditions in Gurdjieff's circle... Read more

In 1949, JG Bennett was engaged in, with Gurdjieff's help, a titanic struggle with his own nature, which he describes in these diaries. However Elizabeth's entries, which make up the bulk of this book, give witness to conditions in Gurdjieff's circle at the end of his life—an impartial description with very little "self" in it. In 2012, when there are few people left alive who met and worked with the Armenian mystic philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff (d. 1949), it is all the more important to have such an honest eyewitness account as the one Elizabeth Bennett presents here. Elizabeth's original introduction, included in this new edition, and the diaries themselves, outline far better than any later commentator can the conditions in which Gurdjieff's pupils lived as satellites revolving round a brilliant sun. This edition contains new material: unpublished entries from Elizabeth Bennett's personal Paris diary, and a 2008 Foreword by Elizabeth and John Bennett’s son, George Bennett Less