An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Islands

 

Monte Circeo, island of Circe Photo©Nigel Summerley

I make no apology for mentioning again the wonderful book Siren Land – because among author Norman Douglas's countless pointed observations is one on the nature of islands... and the fact that they are not always necessarily islands.

His comments chime with my experience of the sublime shapeshifter Monte Circeo, today a headland in southern Italy but, in the far distant past, probably an island.

Or perhaps not. And does it matter?

Douglas says: "I cannot help thinking that commentators of the Homeric cosmography take the 'islands' too seriously, and thereby involve themselves in needless trouble. Ancient navigators were inordinately fond of islands, and slow sailing without a compass may well turn an indented coastline or promontory into a group of them. This is plain from Sindbad the Sailor...

"People living on continents are more likely to locate marvels in islands – India and America were also 'islands'; so was Paradise, according to Lambertus Floridus; to say nothing of Atlantis – and the ingenious Pelliccia has written a book to prove that the whole Sorrentine peninsula was likewise an island in olden days. 

"He argues thus: the Sirens dwelt at Capri; Circe, the enchantress, lived on another island near at hand; therefore Sorrento must have been the island of Circe – falsifying geography and geology in order to vindicate a prehistoric sailor's yarn. What strange creatures we are, placing more faith in deductions than in facts..."

My own encounter with Monte Circeo (recounted in this blog – in An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague – 11: 15-21 September 2020) pretty much convinced me that this – not the nearby island of Ponza, and certainly not the Sorrentine peninsula – was the island of Circe. Even though it is not geographically an island.

But look from a distance at the shimmering beauty of Circeo in the setting sun, or at its hazy presence beneath a stormy sky, and all you will see is an alluring island...

Monte Circeo, island of Circe                                                 Photo©Nigel Summerley