Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings

by Vita Sackville-West

  The very idea of stagnant repose being execrable, one repudiates it without further consideration. Thus one is left exiled at Qaleh Madrasseh with an army of facts waiting to be drilled into order. Facts—that incongruous assortment which accumulates—snippets of knowledge, fragments of observation, fleeting theories no sooner formed than discarded, ideas as self-contradictory as proverbs—at last one would have time to marshal all this into some sort of formation. An army indeed; and every unit as complicated as the soldier himself, as intricate and capable of as many interpretations. Personal conceit, however, suggests that one would deal successfully with the matter; so successfully that at the end of the thirty years one would emerge upon the world crying with a voice as the voice of a prophet.

  XVI

  I observe, however, in some dismay, looking back over these pages, that I have given an entirely wrong impression of the Bakhtiari mountains. I have, unintentionally, represented them as over-built and populous; I have mentioned villages; I have mentioned a merchant on his horse, a man ploughing, the son of the Il-Khani, the keepers of a chai-khaneh. All this, in the aggregate, must I fear have given the impression of a walking-tour through some part of Europe, with never more than a few niggardly miles intervening between one reminder of civilisation and the next. Nothing could be further from the truth. By the very use of the word village, with its associations in an English mind, I have probably evoked a picture of something much larger, more orderly, and more definite than is justified by the few poor hovels of Naghan or Do-Pulan. For the rest, our path lay along miles of country where not so much as a mud hut was visible. The merchant, the man ploughing, were figures so isolated and so exceptional that I have recorded them as it were greedily, for the sake of having something human to record. They were—let me emphasise it—isolated instances; and, as such, they made an impression on us which in the swarming countries to which we Europeans are accustomed they would not have made. No, the dominant impression was one of isolation. True, we were on the Road; we met an occasional traveller; we met the migrating tribes; but we knew that to the left hand or the right lay utter solitude; the solitude of nature, which draws us and holds us with a primitive, an indefensible attraction, all of us, however sophisticated we may be. And it was a double impression: of isolation and anachronism. Not only had we gone far away in distance; we had also gone far back in time. We had returned, in fact, to antiquity. We were travelling as our ancestors had travelled; not those immediate ancestors who rolled in their coaches between London and Bath, or between Genoa and Rome; but as Marco Polo had travelled, or Ovid going into exile, or the Ten Thousand hoping for the sea. We learnt what the past had been like; and what the world had been like when it was still empty. Time was held up and values altered; a luxury which may be indulged today by anyone who travels into the requisite parts of Asia. More: we knew that had we not elected to travel the Bakhtiari Road at that particular time of the year, we should not have met even the tribes, but should have had the mountains all to ourselves, eccentric invaders of majestic desolation. No merchant would have overtaken us beneath the oaks, no peasant groaned behind his plough. We should have topped the pass above Deh Diz and seen not only the lonely range of the Kuh-i-Mangasht, but known that in the whole of that valley no human being drew breath. Those whom we did meet were as transient as ourselves; the only permanence was in the hills and in the rivers that coiled about their base.

  XVIII

  A disagreement arose next morning between us and our muleteers. From notes which we had accumulated from other travellers we had decided to make for a place called Murdafil. The muleteers, however, denied the existence of any such place, and declared, moreover, that we should find no water except at the place they wished to go to, called Agha Mihrab. Gladwyn Jebb, who managed all that part of the expedition with a calm and haughty efficiency, would have nothing to do with their arguments. To Murdafil we intended to go, and to Murdafil consequently we were going. We set off from Malamir on a hot morning, through rolling country where the vegetation was far richer and more interesting than it had been in the hills. Orchises, iris, anemones, borage, convolvulus, Star of Bethlehem, gladiolus, eremurus grew everywhere in great profusion; and on a slope I found to my joy the little scarlet tulip for which I had looked in vain in other parts of Persia. The white, starry tulip, and the yellow tulip had been common, but so far the scarlet one had eluded me. There it was, blood-red in the sun, and I took the bulbs, and stuck the flowers into the harness of the patient Mouse.

  As we drew near to the end of our day’s march, wondering whether we should indeed find Murdafil or whether we should be compelled to camp in some waterless place, and own ourselves defeated, we came to a sloping valley down which rushed a stream overhung by oleanders and pampas grass. The whole character of the country had altered, and by nothing was it so well indicated as by this complete change in the vegetation, so rich and green that we might almost imagine ourselves in the tropics after the severe aridity we had hitherto associated with Persia. Just above the stream we presently descried the ruins of some small building, where we decided to camp for the night; yes, said the muleteers with smug satisfaction, this was Agha Mihrab, the site they had recommended. We gave up Murdafil with as good a grace as possible, though we were sure they had deliberately and obstinately misled us. There was certainly nothing to complain of in the site: the ruins were raised up on a little natural terrace, in the midst of what had once been a garden, for some old, unpruned rose bushes grew rampant, and down in a dip grew a grove of dark myrtle. Wandering off while the monotonous process of unpacking began, we came on a waterfall that splashed down over a high wall of rock, and here we found a goatherd piping to his goats. What was the name of the ruined caravanserai we had passed some way down the road? we asked him, and received the reply, Murdafil. We were amused rather than irritated by this characteristic example of the working of the Persian mind; for the muleteers must have known perfectly well that we should find them out in their lie, and that we should establish not only the existence of a place called Murdafil, but also the fact that it lay by a stream of clear mountain water. But when we taxed them with the lie, they only put on a blank expression and shrugged their shoulders.

  It was very warm and peaceful at Agha Mihrab. I remember the place with affection and gratitude, as one of those memories which nothing can take away. The note of the goatherd’s reedy flute rose above the sound of the waterfall, and mingled with the other sounds of night: the snap of a burnt stick, the tinkle of a mule’s bell, the croaking of a thousand frogs down by the stream. We had been sitting in silence round the fire, smoking, while Venus travelled slowly across the sky and now was about to dip behind the hill. I knew that by climbing the hill opposite I could still see Venus for a little longer, in all the splendour of the clear, black night. But I was too tired. Better to let the day go out quietly, when Venus was thus silently extinguished; better to let it go out on the note of the flute, as the red fires burnt low in the valley, and the nomads wrapped themselves in their cloaks and slept.

  XXIII

  I see now that although I started this book with little hope of making it into anything more than the mere record of an expedition, it has almost of its own accord assumed a certain shape, and piled itself up into two main blocks, ordained by the force of contrast. Two different communities have crossed the stage; the one weary, ignorant, and poor; the other energetic, scientific, and prosperous; but both equally enslaved by the habit of their different modes of thought. I wish I could say that my impartiality had been such that the reader is unable to tell which way my sympathies lie. It seems fitting that it should conclude with yet a third image—the representation neither of an anachronistic existence nor of a modern civilisation. The pastoral tribes have streamed by, simple survivals from a lost world; the steam-hammers have thudded round the site of what was once the Temple of Fire; now it is time to see what becomes of empires as arrogant as the British and, on so oracular a note, to end.
/>   Persepolis is particularly suitable for such a purpose—to stand midway between the Bakhtiari country and the outposts of England as typified by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It is suitable because, although it was once the capital of the Persian Empire, its ruins now lie among surroundings as primitive as the plain of Malamir. The gaunt columns remain, thrusting up at the sky, but of the site of the city of Istakhr there is nothing but the nibbled grass. Persepolis gains in splendour from its isolation. Not another building stands anywhere near it; not a hut, not a guard-house, not a shepherd’s shelter; only the vast green plain, encircled by mountains and the open sky and the hawks that wheel and hover between the columns. As a ship launching out on an expanse of sea, the great terrace drives forward on to the plain, breasting it, the columns rising like naked spars into the clear blue of the sky. At first sight it may seem smaller than one had expected to find it, but that is due to the immensity of the plain and to the mass of the hill against which it is pushed up. The terrace, in fact, juts squarely out, backing against the hill as though for defence; but the effect is less of a seeking for defence than of an imperial launching of defiance, a looking-out across the plain, a raised domination above the level ground: the throne of kings overhanging the dwellings of the people. But the dwellings of the people which once spread over the plain have disappeared, and nothing of the royal capital remains but the ruins that were once the citadel of Xerxes and Darius; the dwellings of the people, no doubt, were made of wattle and sun-dried bricks, ephemeral material, whereas the kings glorified themselves in stone. A thousand years, I suppose, will level the disparity between them. The propylaea of Xerxes, the palace of Darius, will have enjoyed a few thousand more years of survival than sun-baked bazaars which sheltered the potter and the barber.

  So stands Persepolis, looking out over the deserted plain. The space, the sky, the hawks, the raised-up eminence of the terrace, the quality of the Persian light, all give to the great terrace a sort of springing airiness, a sort of treble, to which the massive structure of bastion and archways plays a corrective bass. It is only when you draw near that you realise how massive that structure really is. It has all the weight of the Egyptian temples; square, monolithic. The terrace itself is supported on enormous blocks, its angles casting square shadows; a double stairway climbs it, a stairway that at its landing-place is superbly dominated by huge winged bulls. Now you are in the midst of the ruins: the columns soar, supporting no roof; square doorways open, leading into no halls. (But see, within the jamb of one doorway is carved a king wrestling with a lion, and within another a king stepping forward under the shade of a parasol; these were the kings that ruled, but here, following the easy rise of steps, comes a procession of captive kings.) A little further, and you are in the Hall of the Hundred Columns, a wilderness of tumbled ruins, but ruins which in their broken detail testify to the richness of order that once was here: fallen capitals; fragments of carving small enough to go into a pocket, but whorled with the curls of an Assyrian beard; wars and dynasties roll their forgotten drums, as the fragment is balanced for a moment in the palm of the hand. Over this roofless desolation hangs the sun, cutting black square shadows, striking a carving into sharper relief; and silence reigns, but for the dry-leaf scurry of a lizard over the stones. This hall was roofed with cedar, says Quintus Curtius; and now the discovered ashes of carbonised cedar corroborate the account of the historians: this hall of Darius flamed indeed beneath the vengeance of Alexander. Little did it avail Darius that he should have caused the Avesta to be written in letters of gold and silver on twelve thousand tanned ox-hides.

  The hand of man has never desecrated these ruins, no excavator’s pick has ever rung upon these stones; tumbled and desolate they lie today, as they lay after the might of Alexander had pushed them over. The heat of the Persian summers has passed over them and bleached them; they have flushed in the light of many sunrises and bared themselves to the silver of many moons; the wild flowers have sown themselves in the crevices and the lizards scurry over the pavements; but it is a dead world, as befits the sepulchre of an imperial race.

  Ruined cities. Ranging away from Persepolis, I remember other wrecks of pride, splendour, and majesty: the ziggurat of Ur against the sunset, the undulating mounds that were Babylon, the gay broken colonnades of Palmyra. Golden, graceful, airy, debased, Palmyra rises like a flower from the desert in an oasis of palms and apricots. At the apex of a flattened and irregular triangle between Damascus and Baghdad, Palmyra lies on the old caravan route and the strings of camels still slouch beneath the triumphal arches of Zenobia and Odenathus. But the Street of the Hundred Columns is now nothing but a transparent screen of pillars, framing the desert, and in the precincts of the Temple of Baal clusters an Arab village, the squalid houses incongruously put together with the stones of the once magnificent centre of a pagan faith. What is Palmyra now? Where is the glory of Solomon who built Tadmor in the wilderness? A few tourists motor out from Beirut, and the desert traffic of camel caravans passes through on its leisurely way. The Arab children squabble in the gutters. There is a French poste de police. There is a derelict building, originally designed as an hotel. But now that even Trans-Desert Mail no longer takes Palmyra in its rush—as it did when the Druses terrorised the southern route—it seems likely that Palmyra will return to the isolation to which it is geographically destined, and that the flush of its prosperity under the Roman Empire will resemble the flush of flowers over the desert in spring—with this difference, that spring for Palmyra is not recurrent. It happened once, and will not happen again; a miracle the more exquisite for its singleness and fugacity.

  You come upon Palmyra unexpectedly, if you approach it from the Damascus side, going through a gorge crowned by Turkish forts, and coming out on to a full view of the desert with these surprising ruins standing in the white, pale sand. Lovely in colour, as golden as honey, the vistas of columns and arches give Palmyra a lacy quality: it is a series of frames, and nothing so much enhances the beauty of landscape as to be framed in a fragment of architecture. But on looking closer this architecture presents a puzzle: it is Roman, surely? but there is something not quite Roman about it; there are mistakes that the Roman builders would not have made. Indeed, the Romans did not build it, no; Arabs built it, dazzled by what they had seen or heard of the Roman models. Most people criticise Palmyra on this account. Certainly it is neither as pure nor as majestic as Baalbec. It lacks the grand solidity of Roman building, and the Roman sense of proportion is notably absent. But I like Palmyra. It is very feminine; it is gay, whimsical, and a little meretricious. It seems to have drunk the desert sun, and to have granted free passage to all the desert winds with a wanton insouciance. Palmyra is a Bedouin girl laughing because she is dressed up as a Roman lady.

  And there, lastly, under the snows of Lebanon lie the mighty ruins of Heliopolis. The Temple of Bacchus retains its shape, but of the Temple of Jupiter only six columns survive out of the original fifty-four. Baalbec had its worthy enemies: Genghiz, Timur, and Saladin; besides the earthquakes which have crashed pediment and capital to the ground. There lie the blocks of masonry, here gapes a vault; here is a column, propping itself against the wall of the Temple. It is a wilderness of masonry; havoc such as might have been wrought in a sudden onslaught by the anger of the very god to whom the greatest temple was dedicated, that Jupiter who at Baalbec was called Baal—not the hirsute Jove of the Romans, but a beardless god, covered with scales, and holding in one hand a scourge, and in the other, lightning and ears of corn. Baalbec has gone the way of those cities of antiquity on whose ruin no later city has arisen. True, a little town has grown up beside it, so that it enjoys neither the superb isolation of Persepolis nor the native sprinkling of Palmyra, but the little town is insignificant, and it is really the wreck of Heliopolis which dominates the lovely valley between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon.

  There is another difference between Baalbec and those two other cities. The plain of Persepolis is green indeed with the
short grass, and at Palmyra the fruit trees of the oasis foam with blossom in the spring, but there is no sign of cultivation anywhere. Round Baalbec the fertile land is carefully tilled; the permanence of agriculture, that detailed, laborious, and persistent craft, is nowhere more strongly emphasised than here, where it pursues its quiet way undisturbed by the presence of a crumbled civilisation. It seems not irrelevant to wonder whether in the course of centuries the Anglo-Persian oil-fields may not revert to the solitudes of the Bakhtiari hills, while London, Paris, and New York lie with the wild flowers blowing over their stones, and fields of corn bend to the breeze for the bread of the population in some distant capital whose name we do not yet know.

  JOURNAL OF TRAVEL TO FRANCE WITH VIRGINIA WOOLF (1928)

  Vita’s travels in France were many, and made quite frequently with her women lovers and companions—notably, of course, with Violet Trefusis, but also with Evelyn Irons, with Gwen St. Aubyn, and, most famously, with Virginia Woolf. On the latter trip, in September of 1928, the companions left Paris for Saulieu in Burgundy, where they visited a local fair, going the next day to Avallon and to Vézelay, where the old abbey was the drawing point. Vita’s voracious reading stood her, as usual, in good stead: she had read Walter Pater on Vézelay in his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873). She wrote Harold about traveling with Virginia: “The combination of that brilliant brain and fragile body is very loveable. She has a sweet and childlike nature, from which her intellect is completely separate. I have never known anyone who was so profoundly sensitive, and who makes less of a business of that sensitiveness.”4 Vita’s journal of that travel is quoted here in full from the Holograph, unsigned, dated Sept. 24–30, 1928, in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library.