Anglophilia

Hello from England. I am in Sussex for a philosophy conference. It's so unexpectedly beautiful here! The campus is a bit of a 1965 modernist mess a la StonyBrook or SUNY Buffalo (and for the same reason --a late 60s move to create self-contained rural campuses. Interesting the same thing happened in Beligum at Leuvain also). The surrounding area, however, is just lovely. (I'll post some photos when I get back) I've realized / remembered what an Anglophile I am ... I really grew up fantasizing about this country, be it King Arthur or Wuthering Heights. (Oddly, I'm just reading Anne Carson's book where she writes about her one fascinating with the Brontes, Glass Irony and God) But mostly it was the former ... those King Arthur stories. I read literally ALL of the books in the local library when I was growing up; I was *especially* into the Lancelot/Guenevere/Arthur myth. (Rather like the Harry Potter triumvirate, I'm just realizing!) This is a bit embarrassing to reveal -- more embarrassing if you knew the content of those fantasies! -- READ MORE .. but basically from age 10 to 12 I was fairly certain in an unarticulated way (thank god it remained so) that it would ultimately be revealed that I *Was* Guenevere in some former or future life. Lord know what this has done to my psyche permanently -- my overly psychoanalytic shrink would have a field day if she knew -- but the myth really was beautiful (And complicated .. you've got the Merlin and Moran Le Fay back stories, Sir Gawain ... the list goes on. Sigh :).

God, I really wish I could live here! I don't say that about many places ... in fact, I can't really remember saying about anywhere. I mean, Tuscany is beautiful, Paris is exciting, Germany is cozy and I've contemplated spending time in all those places. But I can actually imagine moving to the UK and being an ex-pat permanently.

It's partly the language-thing (easier to imagine being an ex-pat when ordering dinner isnt' stressful), but it's really more than that.... I really have mythologized the place until it's sort of already part of my psyche, like a place you grow up in, or miss, I feel a bit of Seinsucht and all that. I've only actually been to London before and I know this is a bit precipitous -- it only being a four day stay and all! -- but I really don't think I've reacted this way to a place before. (I'm going to apply to another conference here, hoping to come back!)

It's as if the England that I imagined and researched around those stories became the setting for *all* my dream life, whether or not it related to the myth. Perhaps other people have another place that functions this way -- maybe Italy, maybe a summer holiday place, a particular garden near your house, maybe Iceland, I don't know -- and I can think of others for myself, but none as strong as England. England was my archetype of mythological space.

I'm not saying I find England to actually meet my idealized version of it -- although I did take a mostly romantically perfect walk in the countryside today! -- but rather, whether or not its current conditions meet my expectations, it already *is* my dream world. It's particularly the physical landscape itself ... the shape of the hills, the proportions and layout of the villages and countryside. They share something with the hills of Southern Ohio where I was raised, but with a bit of cultivation, compartmentalization. Certainly this has been amplified as fantasy in *every* American's imagination by Romantic reproductions, be they paintings or gardens by Fredrick Law Olmstead, but because of my particular (by no means singular) attachment to those King Arthur stories, the exponent of archetype has been raised by another power.

Well... I'm going to go back to sighing out my window to see if Lancelot is on his way while I get over my jet lag.