THE GARDEN, 1946

The Artist
The Poem
More Information

The Artist
Vita Sackville-West was an English poet, novelist and gardener. She was famous for her exuberant aristocratic life, her strong marriage to Harold Nicolson, her passionate relationships with women and her gardens at Sissinghurst Castle, Kent. Sackville-West's long narrative poem, "The Land", won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927, and her "Collected Poems" won the prize again in 1933. Her best-known novels are "The Edwardians" (1930) and "All Passion Spent" (1931). In 1946 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. The following year she began a weekly column in the Observer called "In Your Garden". In 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust's garden committee. Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust and the garden Vita Sackville-West created there is open to the public. It is one of the most visited gardens in England.

The Work
The Garden
Small pleasures must correct great tragedies,
Therefore of gardens in the midst of war
I boldly tell. Once of the noble land
I dared to pull the organ-stops, the deep
Notes of the bass, the diapason's range
Of rich rotation, yielding crop by crop;
Of season after season as the wheel
Turned cyclic in the grooves and groves of time;
I told the classic tools, the plough, the scythe,
In husbandry's important ritual,
But now of agriculture's little brother
I touch the pretty treble, pluck the string,
Making the necklace of a gardener's year,
A gardener's job, for better or for worse
Strung all too easily in beads of verse.
No strong no ruthless plough-share cutting clods,
No harrow toothed as the saurian jaws,
Shall tear or comb my sward of garden theme,
But smaller spade and hoe and lowly trowel
And ungloved fingers with their certain touch.
(Delicate are the tools of gardener's craft,
Like a fine woman next a ploughboy set,
But none more delicate than gloveless hand,
That roaming lover of the potting-shed,
That lover soft and tentative, that lover
Desired and seldom found, green-fingered lover
Who scorned to take a woman to his bed.)
So to such small occasions am I fallen,
And in the midst of war,
(Heroic days, when all the pocket folk
Were grabbed and shaken by a larger hand
And lived as they had never lived before
Upon a plane they could not understand
And gasping breathed an atmosphere too rare,
But took it quickly as their native air,
Such big events
That from the slowly opening fount of time
Dripped from the leaky faucet of our days,)
I tried to hold the courage of my ways
In that which might endure,
Daring to find a world in a lost world,
A little world, a little perfect world,
With owlet vision in a blinding time,
And wrote and thought and spoke
These lines, these modest lines, almost demure,
What time the corn still stood in sheaves,
What time the oak
Renewed the million dapple of her leaves.
Yet shall the garden with the state of war
Aptly contrast, a miniature endeavour
To hold the graces and the courtesies
Against a horrid wilderness. The civil
Ever opposed the rude, as centuries'
Slow progress laboured forward, then the check,
Then the slow uphill climb again, the slide
Back to the pit, the climb out of the pit,
Advance, relapse, advance, relapse, advance,
Regular as the measure of a dance;
So does the gardener in little way
Maintain the bastion of his opposition
And by a symbol keep civility;
So does the brave man strive
To keep enjoyment in his breast alive
When all is dark and even in the heart
Of beauty feeds the pallid worm of death.
Much toil, much care, much love and many years
Went to the slow reward; a grudging soil
Enriched or lightened following its needs:
Potash and compost, stable-dung, blood, bones,
Spent hops in jade-green sacks, the auburn leaves
Rotted and rich, the wood-ash from the hearth
For sticky clay; all to a second use
Turned in a natural economy,
And many a robin perched on many a sod
Watched double-trenching for his benefit
Through the companionable russet days,
But only knew the digger turned the worm
For him, and had no foresight of the frost
Later to serve the digger and his clod
Through winter months, for limitations rule
Robins and men about their worms and wars,
The robin's territory; and man's God.
But the good gardener with eyes on ground
(Lifted towards the sunset as he scrapes
His tools at day's end, looks into the west,
Examining the calm or angry sky
To reckon next day's chance of fair or ill,
Of labour or of idleness enforced,)
Sees only what he sees, oh happy he!
Makes his small plot his arbiter, his bourn,
Being too lightly built to suffer pain
That's unremitting, pain of broken love,
Or pain of war that tears too red a hole.
He will endure his trials willy-nilly,
The plaguy wind, the cold, the drought, the rain,
All, to his mind, ill-timed and in excess,
But finds a sanctuary. He knows, he knows
The disappointments, the discomfitures,
The waste, the dash of hopes, the sweet surprise
Sprung in forgotten corner; knows the loss,
Attempts defeated, optimism balked;
He may not pause to lean upon his spade,
And even in the interruption brought
By friends, he will not stroll
At simple ease, but ever dart his eyes
Noticing faults, and feeling fingers twitch,
Eager to cut, to tie, correct, promote,
Sees all shortcomings with the stranger's eye,
An absent-minded host with inward fret,
The most dissatisfied of men, whose hope
Outran achievement and is leading yet.
(Still there are moments when the shadows fall
And the low sea of flowers, wave on wave,
Spreads to the pathway from the rosy wall
Saying in coloured silence, "Take our all;
You gave to us, and back to you we gave.
"You dreamed us, and we made your dream come true.
We are your vision, here made manifest.
You sowed us, and obediently we grew,
But, sowing us, you sowed more than you knew
And something not ourselves has done the rest.")
Unlike the husbandman who sets his field
And knows his reckoned crop will come to birth
Varying but a little in its yield
After the necessary months ensealed
Within the good the generative earth,
The gardener half artist must depend
On that slight chance, that touch beyond control
Which all his paper planning will transcend;
He knows his means but cannot rule his end;
He makes the body: who supplies the soul?
Sometimes, as poet feels his pencil held,
Sculptor his chisel cutting effortless,
Painter his brush behind his grasp impelled,
Unerring guidance, theory excelled,
When rare Perfection gives a rounded Yes,
So does some magic in his humbler sphere,
Some trick of Nature, slant of curious light,
Some grouped proportion, splendid or severe
In feast of Summer or the Winter sere,
Show the designer one thing wholly right.
Music from notes and poetry from verse
Grow to a consummation rare, entire,
When harmony resolves without disperse
The broken pattern of the universe
And joins the particles of our desire.
Hint of the secret synthesis that lies
So surely round some corner of our road;
That deepest canon of our faith, the prize
We look for but shall never realise;
Suspected cipher that implies a code.
Rosetta Stone of beauty come by chance
Into the testing hands of gardener's loves,
Rich hieroglyphic of significance
Only denied to our poor ignorance.
—Those orchards of Rosetta and their doves!
Should we resolve the puzzle, lose the zest,
Should we once know our last our full intent,
If all were staringly made manifest,
The mystery and the elusive quest,
Then less than ever should we be content.
The Morning Glory climbs towards the sun
As we by nature sadly born to strive
And our unending race of search to run,
Forever started, never to be won,
—And might be disappointed to arrive.

More Information
V. Sackville-West, In Your Garden. Oxenwood P., 1996
V. Sackville-West, The Garden. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014
M. Dennison, Behind the Mask: The Life of Vita Sackville-West. William Collins, 2015
V. Sackville-West, All Passion Spent. Vintage Classics, 2016

LOWLANDS, 2008

About The Work
About The Artist
Where The Work Was Exhibited
Additional Information

About The Work
Lowlands, for which Susan Philipsz became the first sound artist to win the Turner Prize in 2010, was originally created for the Glasgow International Festival and was installed on the underside of three bridges in the city. In this piece the artist sings three parts of a sixteenth century Scottish ballad called Lowlands, a song about a man drowned at sea who returns to tell his lover of his death.

About The Artist
Susan Philipsz was born in Glasgow in 1965 and studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, and University of Ulster, Belfast. In 2000, she completed a fellowship at MoMA PS1 in New York. Recipient of the 2010 Turner Prize, the artist was also shortlisted for Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award that same year.

Philipsz's work explores the psychological and sculptural potential of sound. Using recordings, predominantly of her own voice, Philipsz creates immersive environments of architecture and song that heighten the visitor's engagement with their surroundings while provoking thoughtful introspection. The music Philipsz selects, which has ranged from sixteenth century ballads and Irish folk tunes to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, responds specifically to the space in which the work is installed. While each piece is unique, the storylines and references are often recognisable; exploring familiar themes of loss, longing, hope and return. These universal narratives trigger personal reactions while also temporarily bridging the gaps between the individual and the collective, as well as interior and exterior spaces.

Since the mid-1990s, Philipsz's sound installations have been exhibited at many prestigious institutions and public venues around the world. In 2012, she debuted a major work at dOCUMENTA 13 entitled Study for Strings, which was later featured at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the group exhibition Soundings: A Contemporary Score (2013). In the spring of 2014, Philipsz opened a permanent installation on Governors Island in New York entitled Day is Done. Philipsz has also presented solo exhibitions at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin (2014); the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh (2013); K21 Standehaus Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dusseldorf, Germany (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2011); Aspen Art Museum in Colorado (2010-11); Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State in Columbus, OH (2009-10); Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany (2009); Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (2008) to name but a few. She also conceived installations for the 2007 Skulptur Projekte in Muenster, Germany, and for the Carnegie Museum of Art's 55th Carnegie International in 2008.

The artist's major commissions include Lowlands, her Turner Prize-winning work for Glasgow International in 2010; SURROUND ME: A Song Cycle for the City of London; a public project organized by Artangel in London (2010-11); Day is Done, a permanent installation organised by the Trust for Governors Island that opened on Governors Island in New York in the spring of 2014 and New Canaan, a project for the Grace Farms Foundation that opened in 2015.

Where The Work Was Exhibited
2016 Ghosts of Other Stories, The Model, Sligo, Ireland
2014 Haunted House, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, UK

Additional Information
D. Roelstraete and S. Philipsz, Susan Philipsz: I See A Darkness. Jarla Partilager, 2008
S. Arrhenius, K. Brown, C. Christov-Bakargiev, B. Franzen and J. Lingwood, Susan Philipsz: you Are Not Alone. Walther König, Köln, 2014
B. Bazalgette-Staples, Susan Philipsz: follow Me. Humboldt Books, 2015
T. Trummer, T. Ringborg and L. Schadler, Susan Philipsz: Night and Fog. Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2016

Lowlands, Turner Prize 10, 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf-_j0H3qMQ

Public Art Fund Talks at The New School, 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTSmg4wnU4g

War Damaged Musical Instruments (Pair), Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf2YzuTDVCA

Night and Fog, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4H4iXF9Ezo

Night and Fog, installation at Jewish Cemetery, Hohenems, Austria, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oWYG7fwKMk