Sardinia: The Unknown Island by Marie Gamél Holten 0 Commentaires

In 1913, the Danish writer Marie Gamél Holten published a book entitled “Sardinia, the Unknown Island”, which the Sardinian writer Maria Giacobbe later came across by chance in Denmark.

The book is a marvellous account of spring journeys through a wild and primitive Sardinia of the first decade of the 1900s. 

Marie Gamél Holten, with her perfect command of the Italian language, had also translated Grazia Deledda. This adventurous journey was inspired precisely by the writings of the author from Nuoro. But let us see how she described Golfo Aranci in the early twentieth century, in this special Blog edition:

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…The train once again crossed green countryside steeped in peace, and when the red, brilliant sun set behind the pale mountains veiled by the first mists, I reached the gateway to Sardinia, the charming Golfo degli Aranci.

It was so pleasant, on that serene moonlit night, to find myself on the shore of the enchanting bay, that I decided to remain for a few days in Golfo Aranci. If one is not too demanding, one can survive by taking meals at the station restaurant. Moreover, one may rent one of the neat little rooms located on the upper floor of the same building. From there, one enjoys a splendid view over the gulf, framed by low acacias in white blossom. 

The next morning, the sun rose warm and radiant, flooding land and sea with a clear light. I felt as if I had reached the Elysian Fields. Flowers seemed to sprout and open beneath my very steps; within a single mornin,g the meadow sloping down to the beach had filled with blue irises. “While you toil and struggle, here I will forget life, the world, time, and eternity.” “But what is this unusual scent? It seems to come from a grocer’s shop on a Saturday afternoon.” Ah yes—just before me were some green little plants that in both look and smell recalled the formaggini alle erbe alpine. Thus ended the illusion of being in the Elysian Fields.

I do not know whether Golfo degli Aranci can truly be called a town. It consists of two rows of low fishermen’s cottages, where every hen has its downy chicks, and all mothers have small, dirty children who do nothing but wail. What little movement exists in the town is concentrated at the end of the pier, where the steamer from the great world moors. There also stands the tiniest post office, so minute that one can scarcely find it.

What a fabulous holiday resort this place could become! The water is clear and transparent, and at the same time rich in colour.  Streaks of purple, dark blue, and greenish hues fringe and furrow the surface of the sea. The sand is white and compact, and the dainty little waves caress the pebbles of the shore. And the sharks? They will be found offshore.

On my last evening in Sardinia, I climbed to the lighthouse that stands at the summit of Capo Figari. The path wound through thickets of myrtle and flowering cistus, whose scent was so intense it seemed almost tangible. Above the scrub, at the height of a man, floated the yellow silk veil of pale grass spikes.
The lighthouse building, striped in black and white, stands in a lonely, desolate place, high upon a white-grey rock where not even the ever-living plant, which usually covers every stone and boulder, can take root.

I sat upon a stone along the path to gaze around me. To the right stretched a narrow, dark valley, wild and impenetrable, tangled with thorn-covered vegetation. To the left, the sea lay outstretched like shining satin. Its surface was scattered with islands, large and small, strewn like precious gems. Figari, dark and green like the ruins of an immense castle, with sheer cliff walls whose summit formed two terraces; the deep shadows turned the sea around the island a sombre blue. Facing me, from the calm sea, rose sheer Tavolara, like a magnificent rosy mirage, trembling.

A cloud, swollen so vast it looked like a giant balloon, dissolved into a rain of rose petals that slowly scattered across the limpid golden-red sky of evening. Sky and sea merged in a mysterious purple haze.

I sat alone, amid a pristine nature pure as on the first day of Creation. I felt the absurd desire that this land might remain forever thus: that the fair flowered countryside remain untilled and unfruitful; that the people continue to be illiterate and unrefined as now, that they love, hate, and go on killing as now—that they continue to be themselves, and happy.

Beautiful, wild island, as soon as the dairy cooperatives raise their black chimneys beside every railway station, and people kill one another only with tongue and pen, when there are sports clubs, hotels, and tourists with their Baedeker, then your beauties will be known throughout Europe, and your children will have learned to wash themselves and follow fashion. But when that moment comes, your unique, primordial poetry will already have been lost, irretrievably and forever.

Marie Gamél Holten

ph. "Golfo Aranci (1909-1912) by Thomas Ashby"