Two Books where Place is a Main Character
Setting is an essential element to any story.
In two books I read recently the setting was so prominent that it could have been considered one of the characters itself.
The books are different, one a fictional narrative, and the other a mix of personal experiences, poetry and lessons from history.
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim is the story of four distinct women in 1920s England who are brought together for the month of April in an old castle on the Italian coast through their responses to an advertisement in the paper for those “who appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine”.
Each with their reason for escaping London each with a reason for the needed respite and healing.
Italy itself, the remedy.
It’s a light, playful read.
The book was written 101 years ago, and considering there historically has not been a glut of female writers, it was nice to get a refreshing perspective on what self-reliance and independence looked like generations ago.
Caesar’s Vast Ghost: Aspects of Provence by Lawrence Durrell combines Durrell’s personal reflection of the decades he spent living in Provence and insight into some of the history to give insight into the magic that Provence possesses and how that has morphed through the passing of time. A “compendium of poetic inklings,” he says. The title is indicative of the lasting impact that the Roman Empire had on the region of Provence.
Of the two I think there were stronger passages within Caesar’s Vast Ghost, but truthfully I got a bit lost in it at times. Not the lost where I couldn’t pull myself out of it, but lost as in I wasn’t 100% sure what was happening, but that may just be a symptom of reading on public transit.
A selection of my favourite excerpts from each:
The Enchanted April
“But Fairy Tales are more realistic than is often believed. Joy, mirth, sympathy and kindness are magical in their effects, and it does not harm in our cynical and materialistic age to be reminded what we have it in us to enjoy these states of mind and exercise these powers - and that this might have modestly miraculous consequences.” — Sally Vickers, Introduction
“But then, you see, Heaven isn’t somewhere else. It is here and now. We are told so.” pg 12
“And added to the restlessness.. she had a curious sensation, which worried her, of rising sap…Yet oftener and oftener and every day more and more, did Mrs Fisher have a ridiculous feeling as if she were presently going to burgeon… Sternly she tried to frown the unseemly sensation down, Burgeon, indeed. She had heard of dried staffs, pieces of mere dead wood, suddenly putting forth fresh leaves, but only in legend. She was not in legend. She knew perfectly what was due to herself. Dignity demanded that she should have nothing to do with fresh leaves at her age; and yet there it was — the feeling that presently, that at any moment, she might crop out all green.” pg 160
“Old friends, compare one constantly with what one used to be. They are always doing it if one develops. They are surprised at the development. They hark back; they expect motionlessness after, say, fifty, to the end of one’s days… She had nothing against further ripeness, because as long as one was alive, one was not dead — obviously, decided Mrs Fisher; and development, and change, were life. ” pg 161
“Was it not better to feel young somewhere than old everywhere?” pg 181
“It’s because the immortals [Shakespeare, Keats and the like] somehow still seem alive don’t they - as if they were here, going to walk into the room in another minute - and one forgets that they are dead. In fact one knows perfectly well they’re not dead - not nearly as dead as you and I even now.” pg 30
Caesar’s Vast Ghost
“The magical primacy of wishing” pg 2
“The great artist looks beneath the flux of everyday reality and sees eternal, unchanging symbols… he takes ephemeral events and relocates them in an undying atmosphere… This is why not only the sculptors but all great artists of classical Greece, wishing to ensure the perpetuation of every contemporary memorial to victory, relocated history in the elevated and symbolic atmosphere of myth.” pg 16
“Secretly, everyone felt that to take to the road was an act of romantic glory and philosophic insight” pg 23
“[Provence] Drawing a girdle around her, they established a dichotomy of language: the north of the langue d’oïl and the south of the langue d’oc. Above the human girdle are the head and the heart, below the digestive and sexual apparatus - a fair analogy between the human organism and the French Geography.” pg 25
“The secret of the French attitude is simply that cooking is included among the fine arts and accorded the same respect as a gift for painting. But the pleasure and enrichment for an artist living in France is the feeling that the whole population is subtly in the same debate with itself - namely, how to turn living into something more than just existing.” pg 30
“Pérennité des choses, the feeling that all history is endlessly repeating itself, perpetuating itself, not in the form of chronological ribbon, a linear form, but in momentous simultaneousness. The form may change but the content hardly seems to vary.” pg 37
“The Roman world was falling into its long-announced decline. The real flashpoint of the new civilization was a basic principle, an article of philosophic belief which one can sum up as monotheism — but this after decades of religious skirmishing and bitter debate over alternative paths of conduct.” pg 81
“The idea of individual religion and private religious field of understanding and operation was literally shocking to the Roman — perturbing even, for it bred sects which categorically refused to have anything to do with the formal worship of the people.” pg 135
“No, the black bull’s death is not a wanton stroke, or fortuitous and without sense; it is as deliberate as it is purposeful. It evokes the earth-magic of full thunder, the tellurian electricity housed is the blood which flows into the red sand of the arenas, staining it like a draught of wine.” pg 138
“For the Roman there was no act one could commit which did not fall within the orbit of some god’s influence. In other words, one could do nothing which was not shadowed by a deity. Man lived his life completely permeated by the influences of nature, and his gods and goddesses.” pg 139
“And as the great pagan civilization of Rome went down in slow ruin like a prize bull, the remnants of the Roman metaphysic — the gods and nymphs who up till then controlled the natural world with other old haunting presences - begin to reflect a Europe plunging down into full dispersion, broken up by contesting claims of different creeds and races.” pg 163
“Yes, the idea of history as a linear progression of events is in doubt, for history proceeds in little clicks of realization, intuitions.” pg 202
