x Landscape and Character ‘Published inthe New York Times Magarine section. June 12, 1960. “You write’, saysa friendly critic in Ohio, ‘asf the landscape were more important than the characters. If not exactly true, this is near enough the mark, for I have evolved a private notion about the importance of landscape, and I willingly admit to seeing ‘characters’ almost_as functions ofa landscape. This has only come about in recent years after a good deal of travel—though here again I doubt if this is quite the word, for I am not really a ‘travel-writer’ so much as a ‘residence- ‘writer’. My books are always about living in places, not just rushing through them. But as you get to know Europe slowly, tasting the wines, cheeses and characters of the different countries you begin to realize that/the important determinant of any culture is after all—the spirit of place /Jast as one particular vineyard will always give you a special wine with discernible characteristics so a Spain, an Taaly, a Greece will always give you the same type of culture—will express Atself through the human being just as it does through its wild flowers. We tend to see ‘culture’ as a sort of historic pattern dictated by the hhuman will, buefor me this is no longer absolutely tru. I don’t believe the British character, for example, or the German has changed a jot since Tacitus first described its and so long as people keep getting born Greek or French or Italian their culture-productions will bear the unmistakable signature of the place./ "And this, of course, is the target of the travel-writers his task is to isolate the germ in the people which is expressed by their landscape. Strangely enough one does not necessarily need special knowledge for the job, though of course a knowledge of language is a help. But how few they are those writers! How many can write a Sea and Sarlinia oF a Twilight in ley to match these two gems of D. H. Lawrence? When he wrote them his Italian was rudimentary. The same applies to Nor- (156) “Almond, Languedoc, France (chareoal) UEP RE has eeeLANDSCAPE AND CHARACTER ‘man Douglas? Fowaitains in the Sand—one of the best portraits of North Aftica. We travel really to try and get to grips with this mysterious quality of ‘Greckness’ or ‘Spanishness’; and it is extraordinary how unvaryingly it remains true to the recorded picture of it in the native literature: true to the point of platitude. Greece, for example, cannot havea single real Greek left (in the racial sense) after so many hundreds of years of war and resettlement; the present racial stocks are the fruit of countless invasions. Yet if you want a bit of real live Aristophanes you only have to listen to the chaffering of the barrow-men and ped- dlers in the Athens Plaka. Ie takes less than two years for even a reserved British resident to begin using his fingers in conversation without being aware of the fact. But if there are no original Greeks left ‘what is the curious constant factor that we discern behind the word “Greckness "ft is surely the enduring faculty of self-expression inhering, in landscape. At least I would think so as I recall two books by very different writers which provide an incomparable nature-study of the place /One is Mani by Patrick Leigh Fermor, and the other Miller’s Colossus of Marousi. believe you could exterminate the French at a blow and resettle the country with Tartars, and within two generations discover, to your astonishment, that the national characteristics were back at norm—the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness for good living and the passionate individualism: even though their noses were now flat. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordi- nary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Pars bistrot. He may not be able to formulate it very clearly to himself in literary terms, but he will taste the unmistakable keen knife-edge of happiness in the air of Paris: the pristine brilliance of a national psyche which knows that artis as important as love or food. He will not be blind either to the hard metallic rational sense, the irritating coeur rairomable of the men and women. When the French want to be malin, as they call it, they can be just as we can be when we stick our toes in over some national absurdity. {Yes, human beings are expressions of their landscape, but in order to touch the secret springs ofa national essence you needa few moments of quiet with yourself: Truly the intimate knowledge of landscape, if developed scientifically, could give us a political science—for half the ts ~LANDSCAPE AND CHARACTER political decisions taken in che world are based on what we call national ‘charactes/ We unconsciously acknowledge this fact when we exclaim, “How typically Irish’ or ‘It would take a Welshman to think up some- thing like that. And indeed we al of us jealously guard the sense of minority individuality in our own nations—the family differences. The great big nations like say the Chinese or the Americans present 3 superficially homogeneous appearance; but P've noticed that while ‘we Europeans can hardly tell one American from another, my own “American friends will ease each other to death at the lunch-table about the intolerable misfortune of being born in Ohio or Tennessee—a recognition of the validity of place which we ourselves accord to the Welshman, Irishman and Scotsman at home/It i a pity indeed to travel and not get this essential sense of landscape values. You do not need a sixth sense for it. It is there if you just close your eyes and breathe softly through your nose; you will hear the whispered message, for all landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper. ‘I am watching ‘you—are you watching yourself in me® Most travellers husry too much. But try just for a moment sitting on the great stone omphalos, the navel of the ancient Greek world, at Delphi. Don’t ask mental questions, but just relax and empty your mind/Tt lies, this strange amphora-shaped object, in an overgrown field above the cemple. Everything is blue and smells of sage. The marbles dazzle down below you. There are two eagles moving softly softly on the sky, like distant ‘boats rowing across an immense violet lake. “Ten minutes of this sort of quiet inner identification will give you the notion of the Greek landscape which you could not get in twenty years of studying ancient Greek texts. But having got it, you will at ‘once get al the rest; the key is there, soto speak, for you to turn. After that you will not be able to go on a shopping expedition in Athens