Vita Sackville-West （March 9, 1892 – June 2, 1962）是一位英國籍的作家也是園藝家。
她最常被人記起的就是她對同性的偏好，以及跟 Virginia Woolf 的緋聞等。
但事實上，她蠻早（至少在死以前）就靠自己的文學作品成名了---- 1927以一首《土地》（The Land）得到Hawthornden 獎 。1933年她以《詩集》（Collected Poems）再度重獲此獎，也是唯一重覆得獎的作家。
另外她也是 Bloomsbury group 的一員，這組織原本是劍橋畢業生發起的--- 一邊喝酒一邊聊五四三的團體，後來染上濃厚的文藝氣息，成員包括：Lytton Strachey 、Virginia Woolf、 Leonard Woolf、E. M. Forster 、Vita Sackville-West 、Roger Fry 、Clive Bell、John Maynard Keynes。
但十分可惜的，她的文學作品在網路搜尋引擎上，可以說非常難尋獲！這讓我不禁聯想到Virginia Woolf 與 Sylvia Plath 同樣身為女性作家，她們最常被人拿來討論的就是其「精神狀態」與最後選擇離開世間的方式--- 自殺。對這些私生活議題的關心，遠超過她們的文學創作。
這是女性成名創作者的詛咒嗎？如果 Virginia Woolf 沒有自殺，如果 Vita Sackwille-West 不喜歡女人，她們的作品是不是更順理成章的被世人遺忘？
在網路上找到唯一的一首（免付費的）詩：
Moonlight by Vita Sackville-West
What time the meanest brick and stone
Take on a beauty not their own,
And past the flaw of builded wood
Shines the intention whole and good,
And all the little homes of man
Rise to a dimmer, nobler span;
When colour's absence gives escape
To the deeper spirit of the shape,
-- Then earth's great architecture swells
Among her mountains and her fells
Under the moon to amplitude
Massive and primitive and rude:
-- Then do the clouds like silver flags
Stream out above the tattered crags,
And black and silver all the coast
Marshalls its hunched and rocky host,
And headlands striding sombrely
Buttress the land against the sea,
-- The darkened land, the brightening wave --
And moonlight slants through Merlin's cave.
Vita說過的話：
1. "It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind."
這等於是作家的宣言吧。必須要「寫」的原因是要抓住當下，抓得住當下的人事物。或許因為比較警醒，心靈成長比一般渾渾噩噩度日的人快得多。
2. "Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong."
這段真的是太妙了！「沒有人想聽他在香港的見聞」--- 因為Vita認為旅行是很個人、私下的快感，沒必要跟大家宣告個人的旅遊所見。畢竟每個人到一個地方的感受與經驗都不同。相較於現今旅遊扎記之類的書，每年都會出版個幾十本，真是強烈的對比。或許有附彩色照片的輕鬆閱讀，在如廁時也是頂能慰藉的個人快感吧。
3. "Women, like men, ought to have their youth so glutted with freedom they hate the very idea of freedom."
這就有點女性平權的味道--- 女性不需要特別爭自由，她們甚至厭惡「自由」這字眼，畢竟在年少時候就跟男性一樣擁有太多自由了。這跟西蒙‧波娃的調調有點像（至少在我的理解），波娃厭惡女性特別爭權，或突顯跟男人不同（如男人理性，女人感性），因為對她來說，女性可以做任何男人可以做的事。就是有股傲氣吧，女性不需要 please 討好什麼，她們可以大大方方的 hate。
4."It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness."
我想這或許也顯示了她鍾情於大自然，喜歡弄花花草草的原因吧。還有什麼美的製造者比得上大自然呢？
 |
| Vita 設計的花園 |
對這位充滿個人魅力的一位作家，我只能感嘆在網路上沒能輕鬆找到她得獎的文學作品，但是可以找到Virginia Woolf在日記上紓發對Vita的觀感：
21 December 1925- A Writer's Diary
Vita for three days at Long Barn, from which Leonard and I returned yesterday. These Sapphists love women; friendship is never untinged with amorosity. In short, my fears and refrainings, my 'impertinence,' my usual self-consciousness in intercourse with people who mayn't want me and so on--- were all, as L. said, sheer fudge; and partly thanks to him (he made me write) I wound up this wounded and stricken year in great style. I like her and being with her and the splendor--- she shines in the grocer's shop in Sevenoaks with a candle lit radiance, stalking on legs like beech trees, pink glowing, grape clustered, pearl hung. That is the secret of her glamour, I suppose. Anyhow she found me incredibly dowdy. No woman cared less for personal appearance. No one put on things in the way I did. Yet so beautiful, etc. What is the effect of all this on me? Very mixed. There is her maturity and full breastedness; her being so much in full sail on the high tides, where I am coasting down backwaters; her capacity I mean to take the floor in any company, to represent her country, to visit Chatsworth to control silver, servants, chow dogs; her motherhood (but she is a little cold and off-hand with her boys); her being in short (what I have never been) a real woman. Then there is some voluptuousness about her; the grapes are ripe; and not reflective. No. In brain and insight she is not as highly organised as I am. But then she is aware of this and so lavishes on me the maternal protection which, for some reason, is what I have always most wished from everyone. What L. gives me, and Nessa gives me and Vita, in her more clumsy external way, tries to give me. For of course, mingled with all this glamour, grape clusters and pearl necklaces, there is something loose fitting. How much, for example, shall I really miss her when she is motoring across the desert?"
留言列表
三小食記 (1)
