Vita Sackville-West

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson , (March 9th 1892 - June 2nd 1962), more known under the name of Vita Sackville-West , was a poetess, novelist and garden English. Its long narrative poem, The Land , accepted Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She obtained it one second time, becoming the first writer in this case, in 1933 with her Collected Poems . She took part in the creation of her Jardin S in Sissinghurst, in the Kent, become Sissinghurst Castle. She is known for her exuberant aristocratic life, her solid marriage, and her stories of loves impassioned with women like the novelist Virginia Woolf.

Biography

Sackville-West was born in Knole House in the Kent. As it was a woman, it could not inherit this house, which affected the remainder of its life. It was the girl of Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville and of his wife Victoria Sackville-West, baroness of Sackville. Baptized " Victoria Mary Sackville-West" , it took in fact the first name of " Vita" all its woman.

Personal life, marriage and bisexuality

Marriage

In 1913, Sackville-West married Harold Nicolson, diplomat, then journalist, member of the Parliament, author of biographies and novels, and, in a determining way, a bisexual companion in what one would call now an open marriage. They had both of the homosexual connections, which did not prevent a close relationship between the husbands, as testifies to it to a correspondence almost day laborer (published after their death by their Nigel son), and a maintenance which they gave to the radio of the BBC after the second war.

The couple had two children, Nigel Nicolson, also politicking and writer, and Benedict Nicolson, a historian of Article In the Années 1930, the family bought the castle of Sissinghurst in the countryside of Kent, the county called also the garden of England.

Relation with Purple Trefusis

The homosexual relation which had the most outstanding effect and most durable on the personal life of Sackville-West took place with the novelist Violet Trefusis, girl of the Courtisane Alice Keppel. They met when Sackville-West had twelve years and Trefusis ten years, and attended the same school during a few years. Both married, but when the children of Sackville-West started to walk, Trefusis and it left several times on a journey, most of the time to France, where Sackville-West was disguised as an young man when they left. Their connection finished badly, Trefusis continuing Sackville-West of its assiduities until the connections of Sackville-West with other women take the continuation, but Trefusis refused the rupture.

The novel of Vita Challenge testifies to this history: Sackville-West and Trefusis started to write the book together, the male character, Julian, being the nickname of Sackville-West when it was made pass for a man. His/her mother, Sackville Lady, found the self-portrait enough obvious to ask that the novel not appear in England; his/her son Nigel (1973, p. 194), however, speaks in praise of it: " It fought for the right to like, men and women, rejecting conventions according to which the marriage requires the exclusive love, and that the women should like only the men, and men only women. For that, it was ready with all to give up… How could it consider it regrettable that this knowledge can reach the ears of a new generation, which more is infinitely more understanding than his? "

History of love with Virginia Woolf

The adventure for which one remembers the most Sackville-West was with the large novelist Virginia Woolf at the end of the Années 1920. Woolf wrote one of its most famous novels, Orlando , described by the son of Sackville-West, Nigel Nicolson, like " longest and the most charming love letter of the littérature" , under the inspiration of this connection. In an unusual way, the time of design of Orlando is well documented: Woolf acrivit in its newspaper for on October 5th, 1927: " And instantaneously the exciting means usual enter my spirit: a biography starting in 1500 and continuing, called Orlando nowadays: Vita; with for only change the passage from one sex to another " (extracted published in a posthumous way by his/her husband Leonard Woolf).

Other loves

In 1931, Sackville-West engaged in a connection with the journalist Evelyn Irons, who had required a maintenance to him after the success of The Edwardians .

It also left with Mary Garman and other women.

Literary work

The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) is undoubtedly its most known novels nowadays. In the second, Lady Slane, a ripe woman, recovers a direction of freedom and imagination driven back a long time after a life dedicated to conventions. This novel was accurately adapted by BBC in 1986 with Dame Wendy Hiller.

The scientific imagination of Sackville-West Large Canyon (1942) is an edifying tale (as it calls it) on the invasion of the United States by the Nazis. The unexpected fall makes of it more than a typical novel of invasion.

In 1946, Sackville-West was made " Companion off Honor" for its services rendered to the literature. The following year, it held a weekly column in The Observer , entitled " In your Garden". In 1948, it became a founding member of the committee of the gardens of the National Trust.

Posterity

Sissinghurst Castle is now managed by the National Trust. Its gardens are visited in England.

A plate of commemoration (" blue plaque") he pays homage like to Harold Nicolson on their house in Ebury Street in London (London SW1).

Selective bibliography

Poetry

Poems off West and East (1917)
Orchard and Vineyard (1921)
The Land (1927)
The Garden (1946)

Novels

Heritage (1919); the Heir: a history of love , Salvy, Paris, 1989.
Challenge (1923)
The Edwardians (1930); At the time of the king Edouard , B. Grasset, Paris, 1991.
All Passion Spent (1931); Any abolished passion , Salvy, Paris, 1991; Otherwise, 2005.
The Dark Island (1934); Those of the islands , Salvy, Paris, 1994.
Large Canyon (1942)

Translations

Duineser Elegien: Elegies from the Castle off Duino , by To groove Maria Rilke trns. V. Sackville-West (Hogarth Close, London, 1931)

Biographies/Others

Passenger to Teheran (Hogarth Close 1926, reprinted Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2007, ISBN 978-1-84511-343-8)
Knole and the Sackvilles (1922)
Holy Joan off Arc (Doubleday 1936, reprinted Mr. Joseph 1969)
Pepita (Doubleday, 1937, reprinted Hogarth Close 1970); Pepita, dancer gipsy or Fifty years of the life of an English big family , Paris, Editions of France, 1939.
The Eagle and The Dove (Mr. Joseph, 1943)
Daughter off France: The Life off Marie Louise of Orleans (Doubleday, 1959)
Stopovers without name , Paris, Stock, 1987.
English in the East , Anatolia, Paris, 1993; 10/18, 1995.
an aristocrat in Asia: account of a voyage in country bakhtyar in the South-west of Persia , ED. rock, Monaco, 2000; Payot and Rivages, 2006.
History of family, Salvy, Paris, 1995.
Guests of Easter , Salvy, Paris, 1990.
never of guests! , Paris, ED. Otherwise, 2007.

Studies and biographies

Victoria Glendinning: Vita: The Life off V. Sackville-West (1983)
Robert Cross-country race and Year Ravenscroft-Hulme: Vita Sackville-West: At Bibliography (Oak Knoll Near, 1999) ISBN 1-58456-004-5
David Cannadine: Portrait off More Than has Marriage: Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West Revisited. From Aspects off Aristocracy, pp.210-42. (Yale University Near, 1994) ISBN 0-300-05981-7
Nigel Nicholson, Portrait of a marriage (1973)
Peggy Wolf: Sternenlieder und Grabgesänge. Vita Sackville-West: Eine kommentierte Bibliography DER deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen von ihr und über sy 1930 - 2005. Daphne-Verlag, Göttingen, 2006. ISBN 3-89137-041-5

External bonds

Complete listing of the publications of Vita Sackville-West
Vita Sackville-West like conceptrice of photographic gardens
Portraits on npg.org .uk

References

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