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Vita Sackville-West
(This is a computer translation of the
original article in Spanish.
She should not be regarded
as
complete or accurate.)
Writer Vita Sackville-West, whose full
name was Victoria Mary Sackville-West, was born on March 9, 1892 in Kent
(England). She was the only daughter of an aristocratic family that was
possessing the famous house Knole in Kent (the biggest private house of England,
with 365 rooms, 52 stairs and 7 courtyards). Her father, Lionel Edward, was the
third baron of Sackville. Her mother, Victoria Josefa Dolores Catalina
Sackville-West, was a cousin of Lionel Edward and illegitimate daughter of the
diplomat Sir Lionel Sackville-West and of a Spanish ballerina so-called Josefa
Durán (Pepita). Vita was educated in house, since it was a custom in the epoch.
Her mother, very domineering, was saying that she was ugly. At the age of ten,
Vita met Violet Trefusis (Violet Kepple of single), who also would be a
writer later. Both girls were present at the same school for several years and
there they fell in love. At the age of eleven Vita was already composing her
first ballads. Her relation with Violet continued, in spite of which Vita
married in 1913 Sir Harold Nicolson, writer and diplomat, to avoid gossip. Her
husband, also with homosexual inclinations, was withstanding the lesbian
relation of Vita with Violet, situation known in England but silenced by the
press. Harold and Vita lived together through a long time in Persia and then
they turned Kent. Vita liked the gardening: she wrote books on the topic and
constructed the gardens of the castle of Sissinghurst, in Kent, where she lived.
Vita had two sons, Benedict and Nigel, but they stayed in charge of the
babysitters while she was taking a vacation with Violet to Cornwall. In 1918
Vita disguised herself as man and made to be called Julian in a trip realized to
Paris along with Violet. An American psychiatrist qualified the behavior of Vita
as a "feminine perversion" called travestism and included it between such
deviations as the necrophilia or the paedophilia. But if Vita was dressing
herself of man was not for looking alike to them but as claim of her lesbianism
and to be able to gain access to places where only the couples could go. In
1919, her friend and lover, Violet, married Denys Trefusis, also for expediency,
and since condition for the marriage made her promise that she would never
support sexual relations with him. Vita and Violet took a vacation again for two
months to the south of France. In 1920, the husband of Vita told her that Denys
had supported relations with Violet; Vita felt betrayed and did not see her
again any more. In 1923 the critic of art Clive Bell, member of the "Bloomsbury
group", presented her to famous writer Virginia Woolf and there made both to
themselves lovers. In 1927 Vita got the award Hawthorne for her most famous book
of poems, The country. Lionel, her father, died in 1928 and her uncle
inherited the House of Knole. Virginia Woolf, in 1929, published the novel
Orlando, based on the biography of Vita. In this novel, a clearly lesbian
story, the protagonist is a writer of upper intermediate class who sits a
special affection for the women although she ends up by marrying to be liberated
of the social pressure of the epoch. Another lover of Vita was Rosamund
Grosvenor, a girl four years major.
From 1930 Vita Sackville-West writes her two most famous works, The
Eduardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931), a portrait of the high
English class of the epoch. In 1937 she writes Pepita, a story based on
the life of her grandmother, a Spanish ballerina so-called Josefa Durán. In
addition to her books of gardening, novels and books of poems, she was writing a
column regularly in the newspaper The Observer. The Real Society of
Gardening rewarded her passion for the gardening in 1955. Vita died of cancer on
June 2, 1962 in her castle of Sissinghurst.
Appointment of Vita
Sackville-West on the lesbianism:
"I do not know any true
history of this type of relations, any who has written herself without the
intention of provoking the vicious joy of the possible readership. I have the
conviction that, as they advance the ages, and the sexes are mixed due to her
increasing resemblances, these relations will stop being considered to be merely
contrary to nature and they will be understood much better, not only in her
intellectual aspect but in the physicist. The persons' psychology will be an
interesting matter of that time, and they will have to be admitted that there
are many more people of my type than the recognized thing today in a
hypocritical system". Quoted of: Autobiography, Vita Sackville-West.
Bibliography of Vita Sackville-West
Novels
- Heritage (1919)
- The Dragon in Shallow Waters (1921)
- Challenge (1923)
- Grey Wethers: A Romantic Novel (1923)
- Seducers in Ecuador (1924)
- The Edwardians (1930)
- All Passion Spent (1932)
- Family History (1932)
- The Dark Island (1934)
- Grand Canyon: A Novel (1942)
- Devil at Westease: The Story as Related by Roger Liddiard (1947)
- The Easter Party (1953)
- No Signposts in the Sea (1961)
Short Stories
- The Heir: A Love Story (1922)
- Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour and Other Stories (1932)
- The Death of Noble Godavary and Gottfried Kuenstler (1932)
Poetry
- Chatterton (1909)
- Constantinople (1915)
- Poems of West and East (1918)
- Orchard and Vineyard (1921)
- The Land (1926)
- King's Daughter (1929)
- Invitation to Cast Out Care (1931)
- Sissinghurst (1931)
- Collected Poems: Volume I (1933)
- Solitude: A Poem (1938)
- Selected Poems (1941)
- The Garden (1946)
Biographies
- Aphra Benn: The Incomparable Astra (1927)
- Andrew Marvell (1929)
- St. Joan of Arc (1936)
- Pepita (1937)
- The Eagle and the Dove: A Study in Contrasts, St. Theresa of Avila and St.
Theresa of Lisieux (1943)
- Daughter of France: The Life of Marie Louise d'Orleans, Duchesse de
Montpensier, 1627-1693, La Grande Mademoiselle ( 1959)
Gardening Books
- Country Notes (1939)
- Country Notes in Wartime (1940)
- In Your Garden (1951)
- In Your Garden Again (1953)
- More for Your Garden (1955)
- A Joy of Gardening: A Selection for Americans (1958)
- Even More for Your Garden (1958)
- The Illustrated Garden Book: A Naew Anthology (1986)
- The Land and the Garden (1989)
- Some Flowers (1937)
Other
- Knole and the Sackvilles (1922)
- Passenger to Teheran (1926)
- Twelve Days: An Account of a Journey Across the Bakhtiari Mountains in
Southwestern Persia (1928)
- English Country Houses (1941)
- All Passion Spent (1931)
Letters
- Dearest Andrew: Letters from V. Sackville-West to Adnrew Reiber
(1951-1952)
- The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf (1984)
- Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson
(1993)
Description: biography
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