''The Land'' is a book-length narrative poem by

Vita Sackville-West Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH (née Sackville-West; 9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer. Sackville-West was a successful novelist, poet and journalist, as wel ...

. Published in 1926 by

William Heinemann William Henry Heinemann (18 May 1863 – 5 October 1920) was an English publisher of Jewish descent and the founder of the Heinemann publishing house in London. Early life On 18 May 1863, Heinemann was born in Surbiton, Surrey, England. Heine ...

, it is a

Georgic The ''Georgics'' ( ; ) is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BCE. As the name suggests (from the Greek word , ''geōrgika'', i.e. "agricultural (things)") the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example ...

celebration of the rural landscape, traditions and history of the Kentish

Weald The Weald () is an area of South East England between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It crosses the counties of Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent. It has three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the ...

where Sackville-West lived. The poem was popular enough for there to be six print runs in the first three years of its publication aided in part by its winning the

Hawthornden Prize The Hawthornden Prize is a British literary award that was established in 1919 by Alice Warrender, who was born at Hawthornden Castle. Authors under the age of 41 are awarded on the quality of their "imaginative literature", which can be written ...

for Literature.

Background

Sackville-West began working on the poem while accompanying her husband

Harold Nicolson Sir Harold George Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was a British politician, diplomat, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist, broadcaster, and gardener. His wife was the writer Vita Sackville-West. Early lif ...

, who was an English diplomat, to the East. Nicolson records in his diary before leaving that Sackville-West had “an idea of writing a sort of English Georgics”. It has been speculated that the poem was a response to the homesickness that she felt for her home in Kent.

Form and content

The poem adopts the traditional Georgic structure of the four seasons and is divided into four parts, running from Winter to Autumn, and documenting the agricultural traditions and changing landscape through the year. The poem’s intention to capture the natural processes that exist outside of history are made clear in the opening lines: In this respect, Sackville-West’s poem can be read within a transhistorical poetic tradition that includes Virgil’s ''Georgics'' (which provides the book’s epigraph), Hesiod’s ''

Works and Days ''Works and Days'' ( grc, Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, Érga kaì Hēmérai)The ''Works and Days'' is sometimes called by the Latin translation of the title, ''Opera et Dies''. Common abbreviations are ''WD'' and ''Op''. for ''Opera''. is a ...

'', and James Thomson’s ''The Seasons''. Sackville-West, however, claimed not to have read the Georgics until more than half of the poem had been written. Some critics have read Sackville-West’s poem as a response to the bleaker outlook and modernist style of T.S. Eliot’s ''

The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the Octob ...

'', which was published four-years prior. Where Eliot’s work is famously difficult, pushing the boundaries of form, Sackville-West’s turn to tradition can be seen as an act of literary conservatism. Yet, while ''The Land'' is often read as a work steeped in tradition, critics have pointed to the way in which the poem’s seeming conservatism allowed it to smuggle expressions of lesbian desire past the censor. For instance, Suzanne Raitt reads the poem as ‘typical of the homosexual subculture of the 1920s and 1930s’ in it suggestive use of natural metaphors and rural spaces. The poem also arguably expresses Sackville-West’s frustration with being disinherited from Knole on account of her sex:

Reception and awards

The poem was awarded the

in 1927. The poem’s broader critical reception was more mixed. In her review of the poem for '' T.P.’s Weekly'', the writer

Rebecca West Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books ...

described the poem as having ‘the least chance of survival’ since, while ‘a very fine achievement’ it neither gives ‘intense pleasure’ nor ‘extend our knowledge of reality by making explicit a certain phase of our experience’.

''The Land'' in ''Orlando''

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

satirises ''The Land'' in her novel '' Orlando: A Biography'', whose central protagonist is partially based on Sackville-West, who was her lover during the 1920s. Orlando is described as working on a poem entitled ‘The Oak Tree’, which the novel presents as having ‘nothing of the modern spirit’ but nonetheless winning a popular literary award. Later, when Orlando tries to bury the poem at the base of the oak tree which inspired it, Woolf writes that it was “a return to the land of what the land has given me”. Many critics have picked up on this intertextual dimension and seen it as reflecting Woolf’s ambivalence towards Sackville-West’s literary output.Bazargan, 'The Uses of The Land, 36-37.

References

Sources

Bazargan, Susan. 'The Uses of the Land: Vita Sackville-West's Pastoral Writings and Virginia Woolf's "Orlando".' ''Woolf Studies Annual'' 5 (1999).
Blyth, Ian. 'A Sort of English Georgics: Vita Sackville-West’s ''The Land. ''Forum for Modern Language Studies'' 45.1 (2008).
Glendinning, Victorian. ''Vita: The Life of Sackville West''. 1983. London: Penguin Books
Raitt, Suzanne. ''Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville‑West and Virginia Woolf''. 1993. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
West, Rebecca. 'The Poetry of 1927'. ''T.P.'s Weekly'' (7 Jan 1928).

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Land, The 1926 poems British poems Lesbian literature LGBT poetry 1926 poetry books