Vita Sackville-West

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Vita Sackville-West, between 1910 and 1915

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson (called Vita ; born March 9, 1892 at Knole House , Sevenoaks , Kent ; † June 2, 1962 at Sissinghurst Castle ) was an English writer and garden designer. She is also best known for her relationship with the writer Virginia Woolf , whom she served as a model for the novel Orlando . As the daughter of a baron, she carried the courtesy title The Honorable (The Hon.), Which is placed in front of her name. By marriage she later became Lady Nicolson . She received the Hawthornden Prize in 1926 and 1933 .

Life

Vita as a child in the late 1890s

Vita Sackville-West was born in 1892 as the only child of Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville, and Victoria Josepha Dolores Catalina Sackville-West at the Knole House family estate in Kent . Her mother was the illegitimate daughter of the 2nd Baron Sackville, Lionel Sackville-West. Vita's father was his wife's cousin, and the next legitimate male relative of his father-in-law inherited his father-in-law's title and property. At the age of eleven, the strikingly tall, lanky, and boyish girl wrote her first ballad . Between 1906 and 1910 alone, eight short stories and five plays followed .

Philip Alexius de László : Lady Vita Sackville-West, oil on canvas, 1910
Lady in a Red Hat - Vita Sackville-West. Painting by William Strang , 1918

In 1913 Vita married the diplomat and critic Harold Nicolson , son of Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. Hence she was given the courtesy title of Lady Nicolson . With him she had two children: Benedict and Nigel . Her father died in 1928, but she could not inherit Knole House because of male inheritance. The couple lived in Persia for a long time before returning to England to settle first at the Long Barn estate near Sevenoaks in Kent and in 1930 at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. The couple lovingly restored Sissinghurst. Vita had already discovered her talent for garden design, to which she dedicated several books and which have made the Sissinghurst garden a special attraction to this day.

Knole House in 1880

The Nicolsons' marriage was permanent and the fact that they both had several consecutive same-sex relationships and made no secret of them did not prevent Vita from being close to her husband . A relationship with deep and long-lasting effects was that with the writer Violet Trefusis . From 1918 onwards she fled with her several times - mostly to France , where she disguised herself as a man when they went out. Vita wrote an autobiographical account of this time, which was later published by her son Nigel Nicolson as a portrait of a marriage in 1973. Vitas Novelle Challenge also testifies to this affair. Vita and Violet had started writing this book as a collaborative effort.

Sissinghurst Castle
Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels in Withyham, East Sussex

Also of great significance was her deep friendship with Virginia Woolf, who was ten years her senior, which began in the mid-1920s and lasted until Virginia Woolf's suicide in 1941. The friendship was characterized by great affection and mutual admiration, and at least at times also of a sexual nature. Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando , published in 1928, is considered to be her declaration of love for Vita. For the main character Orlando , Vita was the inspiration and model.

She wrote more than 50 books in her lifetime, but best known are her novels, The Edwardians , a compassionate portrait of a society, and All Passion Spent , a description of normal marriage and aging. In her novel The Dark Island (1934; German 1998 as hot and cold flames ), which, in contrast to most of her works, was not a success with the public, Sackville-West touches on two taboo subjects with the careful thematization of lesbian love and sadism, which concerned her personally, whose names she deliberately avoided in her other works.

After suffering from cancer for a long time , Vita died on June 2, 1962 at Sissinghurst Castle. Her ashes were buried in the crypt of the Sackville family chapel of the parish church in Withyham , East Sussex .

Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust . The garden is one of the most visited gardens in England with around 160,000 visitors annually.

Works (selection)

Poems

  • Poems of West and East , 1917
  • Orchard and Vineyard , The Bodley Head, London 1921
  • The Land , William Heinemann, London 1926

Novels

  • Heritage , 1919
  • Gray Wethers , William Heinemann, London 1923
  • Challenge . Doran, New York 1923.
  • The Edwardians , The Hogarth Press, London 1930
    • German: Castle Chevron . Translated by Käthe Rosenberg and Hans B. Wagenseil, S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1931
  • All Passion Spent , The Hogarth Press, London 1931
    • German: Extinguished fire . Translated by Hans B. Wagenseil. Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg 1948; New edition under the title Unexpected Passion , Berlin 2015
  • Family History , The Hogarth Press, London 1932.
    • German: A woman of forty years . Translated by Theodor and Jutta Knust. Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg 1950
  • The Dark Island , The Hogarth Press, London 1934.
    • German: hot and cold flames . Translated by Inge Uffelmann and with e. Afterword by Ingrid von Rosenberg. Ullstein, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3-548-30424-3 .

Travel literature

  • Passenger to Tehran , The Hogarth Press, London 1926
    • German: A woman on the way to Tehran. A travel story . Translated by Irmela Erckenbrecht. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-596-11295-8

Other work

  • Knole and the Sackvilles. William Heinemann, London 1922.
  • Seducers in Ecuador. The Hogarth Press, London 1924.
    • German: Seducer in Ecuador , Limes Verlag, Wiesbaden 1946.
  • Daughter of France - The adventurous life of Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, Duchess of Montpensier. Translated by Franziska Meister, Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg 1960
  • Joan of Arc , the Maid of Orleans (1412–1431). Translated by Hans Wagenseil, Christian Wegner, Hamburg 1937.
  • Eagle and dove - a study of opposites (Saint Theresa of Avila and Saint Thérèse de Lisieux). With an afterword by Ingrid von Rosenberg, Ullstein, Berlin 1997.
  • The Easter Society. Ullstein, Berlin 1996.
  • My spring garden , Insel Verlag , Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-458-36392-7 .
  • My garden in summer , Insel Verlag , Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-458-36413-9 .
  • Mein Herbstgarten Insel Verlag , Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-458-36436-8 .
  • Mein Wintergarten Insel Verlag , Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-458-36437-5 .

See also

literature

  • Susanne Amrain : So secret and familiar. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998. ISBN 3-518-39311-1
  • David Cannadine: Portrait of More Than a Marriage: Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West ; from: Aspects of Aristocracy , pp. 210-242. Yale University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-3000-5981-7
  • Victoria Glendinning : Vita Sackville-West: a biography , Frankfurt am Main 1994, Fischer, ISBN 3-596-13552-4
  • Nigel Nicolson: Portrait of a marriage: Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West ; Unabridged edition in German translation, Ullstein 1996, ISBN 3-548-30387-0
  • Peggy Wolf : Star songs and funeral chants. Vita Sackville-West: An annotated bibliography of the German-language publications by and about her 1930-2005 . Daphne, Göttingen 2006. ISBN 3-89137-041-5
  • Loved one ... . Letters from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf. Published by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995. ISBN 3-10-011414-0
  • Hermione Lee : Virginia Woolf . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1999. As paperback 2006: ISBN 3-596-17374-4

Web links

Commons : Vita Sackville-West  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Vita Sackville-West  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nigel Nicholson: Portrait of a Marriage , ISBN 1-85799-060-9 , pp. 14 f, 19
  2. ^ Vita Sackville-West in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved September 19, 2017 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Sackville-West, Vita
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sackville-West, Vita Victoria Mary (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer and garden designer
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Knole House , Kent, England
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1962
Place of death Sissinghurst Castle , Kent, England