Jun 29 2010
The Land
As I struggled with its difficult verbose style at times, ages ago in a small room of my own in Paris, Vita Sackville-West’s The Land became an unwanted axis of a thesis that I would have fancied more gossipy, had gossip been accepted as a literary genre in those days. Perhaps today it should, and people would write far funnier theses.
It must have been that Orlando had been brilliantly coded by Mrs Woolf to give Vita some form of ownership after her beautiful childhood home of Knole was repossessed by the male family line. It must have been that her larger loss of a home with English ancestry bleeding from every wall paradoxically mirrored my minimal family betrayal at the hands of a brother. It must have been the “land” inside the word Orlando, the modern history of Vita as Woolf re-wrote it and installed it as a classic of all times, or simply the fact that I miss those days of piecemeal research and the promise of a finding, somewhere, that would give the work its originality.
Regardless of the remoteness or lucidity of these memories, today it all came back to me, as it can happen at times when some episodes of one’s own soap opera become bad karma. It must be that, years later, I still do not own the land that is rightfully mine, but I do have the vision.
The country habit has me by the heart,
For he’s bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision,
Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves
with sun.
(“Winter”, from The Land)
By the way, for those who want a peak (or an “ear”?) of Vita’s voice, here’s an excerpt of this poem, read by the authoress herself.
W: oHHHHH my dear dear dear….gracias por el regalo que nos da a vuestros pequeños lectores, no conocia el video/audio y me ha parecido fantastico, disfrutable a fondo!!! que sonrison para este dia caramba!
ADemás y desocntando que es un placer leerla siempre, tan precisa y no se ofenda pero tan… ratita de biblioteca.
Cordialmente la saludo!
Dearest Emi,
To be fully honest with you, I did not know of the existence of such a recording either, and I was thrilled to find it on an occasional google search. I’m glad you enjoyed it as much as I did. As to my library proclivities, there is not much I can add, except that it was a while ago…another me, more innocent, or less inclined to venture into the world. You know, libraries are safe, organized enclaves where there is never enough time to find oneself or discover books.
I’m sending you a kiss, my dear, a little renewed after a storm that rocked my boat as much as Hurricane Alex is threatening to strike against the shores of nearby coastal towns. I just hope I don’t get carried away to a land where I am no longer myself. It’s good to be safe on firm ground, and yet so difficult when the sea is so tempting…
Thank you for stopping by, and for being there, always.
My warmest regards
W.