The English countryside
In his The Remains of the Day, Nobel Prize winning author, Kazu Ishiguro, employs a wonderful metaphor to describe the English countryside.
A connection is drawn between Stevens, the restrained butler of an Oxfordshire stately home, and the countryside that surrounds him.
Just as Stevens is dignified, so too is the land.
Unlike the spectacular Himalayas or the magnificent desert plains of Arabia, England’s countryside does not scream out for attention. It is simply there, quiet, humble and beautiful.
The English landscape at its finest – such as I saw this morning – possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess. It is, I believe, a quality that will mark out the English landscape to any objective observer as the most deeply satisfying in the world, and this quality is probably best summed up by the term 'greatness.' And yet what precisely is this greatness? I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.
Short but perfect post, always worth returning to this blog
I never quite know how to nutshell the energy of the English countryside. I like “greatness”. I also like “quiet grace”.