Sea and Sardinia

Comes over one an absolute necessity to move. And what is more, to move in someparticular direction. A double necessity then: to get on the move, and to know whither.Why can't one sit still? Here in Sicily it is so pleasant: the sunny Ionian sea, the changingjewel of Calabria, like a fire-opal moved in the light; Italy and the panorama of Christmasclouds, night with the dog-star laying a long, luminous gleam across the sea, as if baying atus, Orion marching above; how the dog-star Sirius looks at one, looks at one! he is thehound of heaven, green, glamorous and fierce!-and then oh regal evening star, hungwestward flaring over the jagged dark precipices of tall Sicily: then Etna, that wicked witch, resting her thick white snow under heaven, and slowly, slowly rolling her orange-colouredsmoke. They called her the Pillar of Heaven, the Greeks. It seems wrong at first, for shetrails up in a long, magical, flexible line from the sea's edge to her blunt cone, and does notseem tall. She seems rather low, under heaven. But as one knows her better, oh awe andwizardy! Remote under heaven, aloof, so near, yet never with us. The painters try to painther, and the photographers to photograph her, in vain. Because why? Because the nearridges, with their olives and white houses, these are with us. Because the river-bed, andNaxos under the lemon groves, Greek Naxos deep under dark-leaved, many-fruited lemongroves, Etna's skirts and skirt-bottoms, these still are our world, our own world. Even thehigh villages among the oaks, on Etna. But Etna herself, Etna of the snow and secretchanging winds, she is beyond a crystal wall. When I look at her, low, white, witch-likeunder heaven, slowly rolling her orange smoke and giving sometimes a breath of rose-redflame, then I must look away from earth, into the ether, into the low empyrean. And there, in that remote region, Etna is alone. If you would see her, you must slowly take off youreyes from the world and go a naked seer to the strange chamber of the empyrean. Pedestalof heaven! The Greeks had a sense of the magic truth of things. Thank goodness one stillknows enough about them to find one's kinship at las