Acquisitions (96): Vita Sackville-West

Vita Sackville-West: The Land & The Garden (1989)

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Vita Sackville-West: Vita Sackville-West (1915)



Vita Sackville-West: The Land & The Garden (1989)
[Finally Books - Hospice Bookshop, Birkenhead - 18/7/2023]:

Vita Sackville-West. The Land & The Garden: A New Edition. 1927 & 1946. Illustrated by Peter Firmin. Introduction by Nigel Nicolson. Exeter, Devon: Webb & Bower (Publishers) Limited, 1989.

Vita Sackville-West: The Land (1926)

The Land

As we were watching Christopher Nolan's brilliant new movie Oppenheimer the other day, I noticed a copy of T. S. Eliot's Waste Land among the books piled on the angst-ridden young physicist's bedside table.

T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land (1922)

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain ...

They're probably the best-known lines in twentieth-century poetry.

Mind you, these cinematic pans over the shelves to establish the credentials of a protagonist as an all-round brainbox are a fairly familiar device: the one in Apocalypse Now, where Colonel Kurtz's books are shown to include well-thumbed copies of Frazer's Golden Bough and Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance, is justly famous.

Christopher Nolan, dir.: Oppenheimer (2023)

Christopher Nolan is (imho) right not to despise these humble tools of the historical filmmaker. It makes sense in context, and fits in with the emphasis on Sanskrit - also extensively referenced in Eliot's poem - later on the film.

What struck me about it most, though, was the date. Eliot's poem first appeared in 1922, when it caused an immediate sensation. Vita Sackville-West, whose long pastoral poem The Land I bought a copy of the other day in a Hospice Shop, wrote most of it in exile in Persia, where her husband Harold Nicolson's diplomatic posting had taken the young couple.

I'm not, it would appear, the first to spot the resemblance between the two books:

Some critics have read Sackville-West’s poem as a response to the bleaker outlook and modernist style of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which was published four years prior. Where Eliot’s work is famously difficult, pushing the boundaries of form, Sackville-West’s turn to tradition can be seen as an act of literary conservatism.

- Wikipedia

Hers begins (not quite so catchily):

I sing the cycle of my country's year,
I sing the tillage, and the reaping sing,
Classic monotony, that modes and wars
Leave undisturbed, unbettered, for their best
Was born immediate, of expediency ...

Virginia Woolf: Orlando: A Biography (1928)

Despite the defiant conservatism - and rather forced classicism - of her poetry (she admitted later to not having read Virgil's Georgics - the obvious prototype for The Land - until she was halfway through her own epic), within a couple of years of its publication Vita Sackville-West would inspire what her son Nigel Nicolson called "the longest and most charming love letter in literature": her friend (and lover) Virginia Woolf's strange, history-bending, gender-fluid novel Orlando - perhaps more familiar to many of us from Sally Potter's 1992 film adaptation:

Sally Potter, dir.: Orlando (1992)

So there you have it - on the one hand, a fussily dressed, bowler-hatted banker, soon to turn gentleman-publisher, whose private life was a long struggle against the anarchic disorder represented by his first wife Vivienne:

‘My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.’

I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

On the other hand, we have an androgynous, bisexual rebel, married to a closeted homosexual diplomat and politician. Who's the maverick now?

Brian Gilbert, dir.: Tom & Viv (1994)

Putting it another way, any attempts which have so far been made to dramatise T. S. Eliot's private life have foundered on the fact that most people would rather read him than read about him. He's just not that interesting once you get him off the page. It's the discordant, jazz age cacophany of Eliot's nightmarish vision of London in the First World War that counts - not the sad details of his admittedly tempestuous marriage.

Stephen Whittaker, dir.: Portrait of a Marriage (1990)

Vita, by contrast, is rather dull on the page - despite her immense industry as a novelist, biographer, and writer about gardens (her true passion, we're told) - but riveting to read about. The epigraph to the miniseries above - based on Nigel Nicolson's bestselling book about his parents - says it all: "They both took lovers - of either sex ..." Who wouldn't want to hear about all that?

Sarah Raven: Vita Sackville-West's Sissinghurst: The Creation of a Garden (2014)

And then, of course, there's Sissinghurst, the magnificent garden these two ill-assorted people created together. That, rather than The Land, is probably their true legacy - and the best tribute they could pay to the eternal verities of the English countryside. It's now run for the National Trust by Adam Nicolson, Vita and Harold's grandson, in partnership with his wife Sarah Raven, author of the book above.

Adam Nicolson: Sissinghurst: An Unfinished Story (2009)

Clearly authorship runs in the blood, as Adam too has written a book on the subject.

Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters (3 vols: 1966-68)

Once you get started on collecting books about the Sackville-West / Nicolson axis, though, it soon becomes apparent that there's no real end to it. Another recent find in a local secondhand shop was the three volumes of Harold Nicolson's diary, edited - like Portrait of a Marriage - by his long-suffering son Nigel. I haven't yet read it, but it's said to be one of the great twentieth-century diaries, if only for its insider's view of British politics before, during and after the Second World War.

In the meantime, the Virginia Woolf connection alone continues to spawn theses and books by the cartload, as the cartoon below attests:

Summer Pierre: The Love Letters of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West (2021)

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William Strang: Lady with a Red Hat (1918)

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, The Hon Lady Nicolson
[Vita Sackville-West]
(1892-1962)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Peter Firmin: Illustration for The Land & The Garden (1989)

Poetry:


1. Timgad (1900)
2. Constantinople: Eight Poems (1915)
3. Poems of West & East (1917)
4. The Land (1926)
   • The Land. 1926. Windmill Library. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1933.
   • Included in: The Land & The Garden: A New Edition. 1927 & 1946. Illustrated by Peter Firmin. Introduction by Nigel Nicolson. Exeter, Devon: Webb & Bower (Publishers) Limited, 1989.
5. King's Daughter (1929)
6. Invitation to Cast Out Care (1931)
7. Sissinghurst (1931
8. Collected Poems (1933)
9. Solitude: A Poem (1938)
10. The Garden (1946)
    • Included in: The Land & The Garden: A New Edition. 1927 & 1946. Illustrated by Peter Firmin. Introduction by Nigel Nicolson. Exeter, Devon: Webb & Bower (Publishers) Limited, 1989.
11. Lost poem (or A Madder Caress) (2013)

Fiction:


12. Heritage (1919)
13. The Dragon in Shallow Waters (1920)
14. Challenge (1920)
15. Orchard and Vineyard: Stories (1921)
16. The Heir: A Love Story (1922)
    • Included in: Seducers in Ecuador & The Heir. 1924, 1922. Introduction by Lisa St Aubin de Terán. Virago Modern Classics. London: Virago Press Limited, 1997.
17. Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel (1923)
18. Seducers in Ecuador (1924)
    • Included in: Seducers in Ecuador & The Heir. 1924, 1922. Introduction by Lisa St Aubin de Terán. Virago Modern Classics. London: Virago Press Limited, 1997.
19. The Edwardians (1930)
20. All Passion Spent (1931)
21. Family History (1932)
22. The Death of Noble Godavary (1932)
23. Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour, and Other Stories (1932)
24. The Dark Island (1934)
25. Grand Canyon: A Novel (1942)
26. Devil at Westease: The Story as Related by Roger Liddiard (1947)
27. Nursery Rhymes (1947)
28. The Easter Party (1953)
29. No Signposts in the Sea (1961)

Children's Books:


30. A Note of Explanation [written for Queen Mary's Dolls' House in 1924] (2017)

Plays:


31. Chatterton: A Drama in Three Acts (1909)

Biographies:


32. Aphra Behn, the incomparable Astrea (1927)
33. Andrew Marvell (1929)
34. Saint Joan of Arc (1936)
35. Pepita (1937)
36. The Eagle and the Dove, a Study in Contrasts: St. Teresa of Avila and St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1943)
37. Walter de la Mare and The Traveller (1953)
38. Daughter of France: the life of Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, 1627-1693, La Grande Mademoiselle (1959)

Guides & Travel-Books:


39. Knole and the Sackvilles (1922)
40. Passenger to Teheran (1926)
41. Twelve Days: An Account of a Journey across the Bakhtiari Mountains of South-western Persia [aka Twelve Days in Persia] (1927)
42. [with Beverley Nichols, Compton Mackenzie, & Marion Dudley Cran] How Does Your Garden Grow? (1935)
43. Some Flowers (1937)
44. Country Notes (1939)
45. Country Notes in Wartime (1940)
46. English Country Houses (1941)
47. The Women's Land Army (1944)
48. Exhibition Catalogue: Elizabethan Portraits (1947)
49. Knole, Kent (1948)
50. In Your Garden (1951)
51. In Your Garden Again (1953)
52. More for Your Garden (1955)
53. Even More for Your Garden (1958)
54. Joy of Gardening: A Selection for Americans (1958)
55. Berkeley Castle (1960)
56. Faces: Profiles of Dogs. Photographs by Laelia Goehr (1961)
57. Garden Book (1975)
58. Hidcote Manor Garden, Gloucestershire (1976)
59. Une Anglaise en Orient (1993)

Translations:


60. Rainer Maria Rilke. Duineser Elegien: Elegies from the Castle of Duino. Trans. V. & Edward Sackville-West (1931)

Edited:


61. Another World Than This ..: An Anthology (1945)



Nigel Nicolson: Portrait of a Marriage (1990)


Letters:


62. Dearest Andrew: letters from V. Sackville-West to Andrew Reiber, 1951-1962 (1979)
63. The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Ed. Louise A. DeSalvo & Mitchell A. Leaska (1984)
    • The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Ed. Louise DeSalvo & Mitchell A. Leaska. 1984. London: Virago Press Limited, 1992.
64. Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (1992)
    • Vita & Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, 1910-1962. Ed. Nigel Nicolson. 1992. A Phoenix Paperback. London: Orion Books Ltd., 1993.
65. Violet to Vita: The Letters of Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, 1910–1921. Ed. Mitchell A. Leaska & John Phillips (1991)
66. Portrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson. Ed. Nigel Nicolson (1973)
    • Nicolson, Nigel. Portrait of a Marriage. 1973. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., 1990.
    • Nicolson, Nigel. Portrait of a Marriage. 1973. Illustrated Edition. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., 1990.
67. [with Virginia Woolf] Love Letters: Vita and Virginia. Introduction by Alison Bechdel (2021)

Secondary:


68. Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. 2 vols. 1972. A Paladin Book. Frogmore, St. Albans, Herts.: Triad Paperbacks Ltd., 1976.
69. Glendinning, Victoria. Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
70. Nicolson, Harold. Diaries and Letters 1930–1939. Ed. Nigel Nicolson. 1966. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1967.
71. Nicolson, Harold. Diaries and Letters 1939–1945. Ed. Nigel Nicolson. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1967.
72. Nicolson, Harold. Diaries and Letters 1945–1962. Ed. Nigel Nicolson. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1968.
73. Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. 1928. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1945.
74. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Anne Olivier Bell, with Andrew McNeillie. Introduction by Quentin Bell. 5 vols. 1977-84. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979-85.
75. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Nigel Nicolson, with Joanne Trautmann. 6 vols. London: The Hogarth Press, 1975-1980.
    1. The Flight of the Mind: 1888-1912 (Virginia Stephen) (1975)
    2. The Question of Things Happening: 1912-1922 (1976)
    3. A Change of Perspective: 1923-1928 (1977)
    4. A Reflection of the Other Person: 1929-1931 (1978)
    5. The Sickle Side of the Moon: 1932-1935 (1979)
    6. Leave the Letters Till We're Dead: 1936-1941. 1980 (1983)

Virginia Woolf & Vita Sackville-West: Love Letters (2021)

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• category - English Poetry (post-1900): Alphabetical

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