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    South Wind
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    South Wind
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    South Wind
    Ebook520 pages9 hours

    South Wind

    By Norman Douglas and Michael Schmidt

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The bishop was feeling rather sea-sick. Confoundedly sea-sick, in fact.

    An Anglican bishop, on recuperative leave from his African diocese, alights at the island of Nepenthe for a short stay on his passage to England. Soon he is caught up in the wild and exuberant antics of visitors and residents.

    Norman Douglas's famed, and infamous, novel of Capri is a hedonistic journey and an unforgettable classic.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHead of Zeus
    Release dateMar 9, 2017
    ISBN9781786690098
    Unavailable
    South Wind
    Author

    Norman Douglas

    Norman Douglas (Bregenz, 1868-Capri, 1952) es conocido principalmente por sus libros de viajes y por la novela Viento del sur (1917).

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    Reviews for South Wind

    3.5/5

    46 ratings4 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I have to admit that, in my ignorance, I had not heard of Mr. Douglas until someone kindly recommended his work. I genuinely appreciate anyone offering a new author and so, I feel a bit of a heel to review the work unfavourably. I draw solace from the knowledge that the book, written in 1917, has survived longer than I am likely so to do and, has more supporters. My little gripe will cause incredibly small ripples.All that said, I found this book a real trial. The book is of its age: it is a truth, unnecessary to express, that the white British male is superior to Johnny Foreigner. The humour is of the superior type which, personally, I find grates. I will admit that this is another book which I did not complete but, after 75 pages, I felt that my head would explode were another paragraph of this opus seep into my subconscious.
    • 2/5
      I read this in January 1952. I found it stupid in its "daring." It is akin to Cabell's Jurgen, and almost as dull. Heard, the bishop, after a stay on the island of Nepenthe (Capri) ends up approving murder in a particular case. The whole picture of ridicule at all sorts of things struck me as only inane.
    • 3/5
      Not sure why this work is so highly rated.
    • 4/5
      South Wind is a unique novel. Rather than presenting a traditional plot it seems like an olio or mixture of lectures and observations on various, often obscure, aspects of geology, climatology, history, morality, religion, and folklore, among other topics. The author's use of articulate characters confined to a restricted setting allows for ample airing of views and recalls the methods of English novelist Thomas Love Peacock, whose country house novels were once very popular.South Wind’s setting itself becomes a character as the island Nepenthe, which is not to be found on a map, comes alive as the narrative progresses. The literary reference is to the magical potion given to Helen by Polydamna the wife of the noble Egyptian Thon; it quells all sorrows with forgetfulness; figuratively, nepenthe means "that which chases away sorrow" (Odyssey, Book 4, v. 219–221). However, it is usually considered a fictional version of the isle of Capri, about which Douglas wrote a series of scholarly pamphlets and upon which he was living when he completed South Wind. It reminded me of Shirley Hazzard's literary meditation, Greene on Capri in which she also captured the essence of the island. She also noted the friendship between Graham Greene and Douglas in the late 1940's when Greene first began to frequent the isle, "he had the company, when he chose, of a handful of lively and literary resident compatriots . . . [and] had enjoyed the last effulgence of Norman Douglas . . ."(Greene on Capri, p 47)Douglas did not deny his novel’s debt to a real location but insisted that Ischia, Ponza, and the Lipari Islands (all lying off the southwest coast of Italy) were the actual sources for Nepenthe’s natural scenery. Douglas even incorporated a version of his observations regarding the pumice stone industry of the Lipari Islands, the subject of one of his first publications. Douglas’s creation had deep roots in his own experience—the details of which he drew upon heavily.The novel’s characters are the result of much the same observational mode which allows the reader, if he is willing, to gradually develop an acquaintance with the place through the idiosyncrasies of the characters. An example may suffice: "Mr. Keith was a perfect host. He had the right word for everybody; his infectious conviviality made them all straightaway at their ease. The overdressed native ladies, the priests and officials moving about in prim little circles, were charmed with his affable manner 'so different from most Englishmen';" (p 131)One or two characters may be based on historically obscure acquaintances of Douglas, but others are little more than personifications of facets of their author’s own personality. The voluble Mr. Keith is most likely a spokesman for Douglas’s hedonistic views, and Mr. Eames and Count Caloveglia represent Douglas’s scholarly and antiquarian interests. All are perfectly adequate mouthpieces, but none emerges as rounded or particularly memorable outside of the group.Several British writers of Greene’s generation were directly influenced by Douglas in general and by South Wind in particular. Aldous Huxley’s satirical novels Crome Yellow (1921, in which Douglas appears as the character Scrogan), Antic Hay (1923), and Point Counter Point (1928) bear its stamp. Greene himself generally wrote books of a darker character, but his lighter comic novel Travels with My Aunt (1969) bears similarities to South Wind. Douglas's erudite yet pleasant style reminds me a bit of Lawrence Durrell. Needless to say this is an engaging novel with plenty of interesting characters that more than offset the lack of a robust plot.