by Jan Morris
DAY 130
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Aspects of an Addiction
The fascination of Wales is a phenomenon widely recognized but frequently baffling. Everyone knows how proud to be Welsh Welsh people can be, but even the Welshest of them can be hard put to analyse the nature of their pride. What is it about Wales, then? The landscape perhaps? The history? The language? But many of the Welsh live in ordinary or even unlovely surroundings, and most of them speak little Welsh.
So? What is the compelling nature of Welshness, in the abstract? Why is it so vivid? Why did Shakespeare, writing about his archetypal Welshman, feel the need to assure us that there was true potency behind the bluster of Fluellen? Welsh people often put it all down to the abstraction called hiraeth, which dictionaries translate simply as longing, or nostalgia. I myself think of it, though, as a sort of national addiction, more subtle, more complex, and being half Welsh, half English myself, in my hybrid way I often contemplate its jumbled fascinations …
Geography, of course, is part of it. In a way, Wales is an island, but characteristically an island that is not an island. It is bounded on only three sides by the sea, and its neo-islanders are not often insular. Welsh patriotism, though frequently ardent, is seldom racist, except for occasional simmerings of Anglophobia, often brought on by the insidious infiltration of tourism. Foreigners have generally been welcomed here, and often admired. Black Jack was the rage of the girls in eighteenth-century Cricieth, in the north; the black community of Cardiff’s Tiger Bay flourishes to this day in the south; and many enterprising Jews have succeeded in this essentially Christian society. Of course, there must be bigots here – where aren’t there? Even Tiger Bay had its race riots a hundred years ago, but bigotry is not, one may say, very Welsh!
Perhaps the truth is that Welshness is essentially an idea, or rather a confusion or concert of ideas, blended down all the generations, powerful enough to create images, influence emotions, dictate behaviours and create symbols from century to century. Welshness is the power of language and landscape, the fascination of legend, the unfailing allures of comradeship, community and possession. Welshness is Saints and Footballers, Poets and Wizards and Goats and Miners and Singers and Fairies and magical confusions – all are always with us addicts in Wales, the Land of our Fathers, and the grand old country itself is not only as tough as it is beautiful, but full of humour, too.
So, after all, who would not be hooked?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Jan Morris was born in 1926 of a Welsh father and an English mother. She lives now with her partner Elizabeth Morris in the top left-hand corner of Wales, between the mountains and the sea. Her books include Coronation Everest, Venice, the Pax Britannica trilogy and Conundrum. She is also the author of six books about cities and countries, two autobiographical books, several volumes of collected travel essays and the unclassifiable Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. In 2018 she was recognised for her outstanding contribution to travel writing by the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards, and published her most recent book, In My Mind’s Eye: A Thought Diary.
by the same author
HEAVEN’S COMMAND: AN IMPERIAL PROGRESS
PAX BRITANNICA: THE CLIMAX OF AN EMPIRE
FAREWELL THE TRUMPETS: AN IMPERIAL RETREAT
COAST TO COAST
CORONATION EVEREST
VENICE
OXFORD
CONUNDRUM
TRIESTE AND THE MEANING OF NOWHERE
A WRITER’S HOUSE IN WALES
A WRITER’S WORLD
EUROPE: AN INTIMATE JOURNEY
HAV
FISHER’S FACE
DESTINATIONS
A VENETIAN BESTIARY
SPAIN
AMONG THE CITIES
THE GREAT PORT
THE HASHEMITE KINGS
HONG KONG
LINCOLN
THE MATTER OF WALES
MANHATTAN ’45
THE MARKET OF SELEUKIA
SOUTH AFRICAN WINTER
THE SPECTACLE OF EMPIRE
CONTACT!
CIAO, CARPACCIO!
BATTLESHIP YAMATO
IN MY MIND’S EYE
Copyright © 2020 by Jan Morris
First American Edition 2021
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