What do you think?
Rate this book
Pagan Light: Dreams of Freedom and Beauty in Capri
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
" Pagan Light is mesmerizing. Every detail is compelling. I felt I was reading a family history of a family far more interesting than mine." --Edmund White, author of Our Young Man
A rich, intimate embrace of Capri, which was a magnet for artistic renegades and a place of erotic refuge Isolated and arrestingly beautiful, the island of Capri has been a refuge for renegade artists and writers fleeing the strictures of conventional society from the time of Augustus, who bought the island in 29 BC after defeating Antony and Cleopatra, to the early twentieth century, when the poet and novelist Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen was in exile there after being charged with corrupting minors, to the 1960s, when Truman Capote spent time on the island. We also meet the Marquis de Sade, Goethe, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Compton Mackenzie, Rilke, Lenin, and Gorky, among other astonishingly vivid characters. Grounded in a deep intimacy with Capri and full of captivating anecdotes, Jamie James’s Pagan Light tells how a tiny island served as a wildly permissive haven for people―queer, criminal, sick, marginalized, and simply crazy―who had nowhere else to go.
" Pagan Light is mesmerizing. Every detail is compelling. I felt I was reading a family history of a family far more interesting than mine." --Edmund White, author of Our Young Man
A rich, intimate embrace of Capri, which was a magnet for artistic renegades and a place of erotic refuge Isolated and arrestingly beautiful, the island of Capri has been a refuge for renegade artists and writers fleeing the strictures of conventional society from the time of Augustus, who bought the island in 29 BC after defeating Antony and Cleopatra, to the early twentieth century, when the poet and novelist Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen was in exile there after being charged with corrupting minors, to the 1960s, when Truman Capote spent time on the island. We also meet the Marquis de Sade, Goethe, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Compton Mackenzie, Rilke, Lenin, and Gorky, among other astonishingly vivid characters. Grounded in a deep intimacy with Capri and full of captivating anecdotes, Jamie James’s Pagan Light tells how a tiny island served as a wildly permissive haven for people―queer, criminal, sick, marginalized, and simply crazy―who had nowhere else to go.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published March 19, 2019
28 people are currently reading
315 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
March 5, 2023
The big book of Capriote pederasty. Just a few notes on this paean to child molestation—or “intergenerational sex”—on Capri. Actually the book doesn’t advocate in the NAMBLA sense, but one can be forgiven at first for thinking it does. Boy love is so toxic a subject today—see priest abuse scandal, etc.—that the publisher might have included a disclaimer.
Emperor Tiberius, Norman Douglas, Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, et al. Some real Sadean horrorshows, too, mostly from the Imperial period. Suetonius, the author believes, was probably titillated more than anyone by his graphic depictions of the emperor in flagrante delicto, and he cites arguments that both Suetonius and Tacitus are untrustworthy on the subject.
Capri was a fin d’siecle magnet for boy lovers because like France, but unlike Germany and most everywhere else, it had no laws against homosexuality. To think, Norman Douglas, whose Siren Land was a roman à clef about Capri, cut a swathe through the island’s adolescent boys, but when he died the farmers who were once his lovers and their wives came to join the cortège with everyone else; the shops closed in memoriam.
It was Fersen who built his famous Villa Lysis in Capri, just down from Tiberius’s Villa Jovis. Fersen was an artist manqué. His novels, geared to the pederast demographic of his day, attracted the attention of Achille Essebac... One might argue that these were minor artists, or non-artists, so why should I care? The reason is because the author has resurrected a story from the island and brought its disparate threads to vibrant life. (I am reminded of John McPhee’s books about oranges, plate tectonics, and haute cuisine. If you can make the material sing, you can write about anything.) Despite what we today would see as his criminal behavior, Ferson was in fact a tragic opium-addled figure.
Norman Douglas’s book was in part responsible for an influx of newcomers to Capri: the novelist Compton Mackenzie, whose Vestal Fire included a “poisonous portrait” of Fersen; the Wolcott-Perries, two women, great entertainers, who took each other’s surnames; Romaine Brooks, the monochromatic portrait painter; the fascist-cum-Maoist genius novelist Curzio Malaparte, whose villa is today one of the island’s most popular sites; and novelist Graham Greene, who lived off and on the island for 30 years writing many books. See my review of Shirley Hazzard’s Greene on Capri.
And then there were the visitors: Maxim Gorki, the Stalinist enabler and island host of Vladimir Lenin; Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad who hated Capri; portraitist John Singer Sargent; Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke; and Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda. Such lives. And those mentioned in the penultimate paragraph lived a good portion of their spans on this upthrust bit of marine-fossilized limestone in the Tyrrhenian. The book is affecting (I almost said alchemical but that’s fake science). It is nevertheless gold made from dross.
Emperor Tiberius, Norman Douglas, Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, et al. Some real Sadean horrorshows, too, mostly from the Imperial period. Suetonius, the author believes, was probably titillated more than anyone by his graphic depictions of the emperor in flagrante delicto, and he cites arguments that both Suetonius and Tacitus are untrustworthy on the subject.
Capri was a fin d’siecle magnet for boy lovers because like France, but unlike Germany and most everywhere else, it had no laws against homosexuality. To think, Norman Douglas, whose Siren Land was a roman à clef about Capri, cut a swathe through the island’s adolescent boys, but when he died the farmers who were once his lovers and their wives came to join the cortège with everyone else; the shops closed in memoriam.
It was Fersen who built his famous Villa Lysis in Capri, just down from Tiberius’s Villa Jovis. Fersen was an artist manqué. His novels, geared to the pederast demographic of his day, attracted the attention of Achille Essebac... One might argue that these were minor artists, or non-artists, so why should I care? The reason is because the author has resurrected a story from the island and brought its disparate threads to vibrant life. (I am reminded of John McPhee’s books about oranges, plate tectonics, and haute cuisine. If you can make the material sing, you can write about anything.) Despite what we today would see as his criminal behavior, Ferson was in fact a tragic opium-addled figure.
Norman Douglas’s book was in part responsible for an influx of newcomers to Capri: the novelist Compton Mackenzie, whose Vestal Fire included a “poisonous portrait” of Fersen; the Wolcott-Perries, two women, great entertainers, who took each other’s surnames; Romaine Brooks, the monochromatic portrait painter; the fascist-cum-Maoist genius novelist Curzio Malaparte, whose villa is today one of the island’s most popular sites; and novelist Graham Greene, who lived off and on the island for 30 years writing many books. See my review of Shirley Hazzard’s Greene on Capri.
And then there were the visitors: Maxim Gorki, the Stalinist enabler and island host of Vladimir Lenin; Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad who hated Capri; portraitist John Singer Sargent; Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke; and Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda. Such lives. And those mentioned in the penultimate paragraph lived a good portion of their spans on this upthrust bit of marine-fossilized limestone in the Tyrrhenian. The book is affecting (I almost said alchemical but that’s fake science). It is nevertheless gold made from dross.
May 25, 2019
I had watched a travelogue on Capri and was fascinated with this island in the Gulf of Naples, which is only accessible by ferry.
"Pagan Light" as the title probably fooled a lot of people in that it seemed to refer to hedonism as a definition of pagan, as opposed to the worship of ancient gods and goddesses that most would probably associate with the book's title.
There is a focus on the worst happenings on the island from the Roman times to this century. The authors and artists featured, for the most part, are obscure, and a lot of the history presented doesn't even take place on the island. The most abnormal and atypical behavior was featured, and an almost lamentable tone was taken in speaking of the wave of movie stars and celebrities, such as Audrey Hepburn (known for her "capri" pants from here) and Jackie Onassis's arrival to the island. Subsequently this island is quite a tourist spot today, with millions visiting annually.
"Pagan Light" as the title probably fooled a lot of people in that it seemed to refer to hedonism as a definition of pagan, as opposed to the worship of ancient gods and goddesses that most would probably associate with the book's title.
There is a focus on the worst happenings on the island from the Roman times to this century. The authors and artists featured, for the most part, are obscure, and a lot of the history presented doesn't even take place on the island. The most abnormal and atypical behavior was featured, and an almost lamentable tone was taken in speaking of the wave of movie stars and celebrities, such as Audrey Hepburn (known for her "capri" pants from here) and Jackie Onassis's arrival to the island. Subsequently this island is quite a tourist spot today, with millions visiting annually.
November 21, 2023
Let's call this 3.49 stars, and let's make a couple things clear right now: do NOT choose this book because it has a pretty cover and do NOT think you're going to get a travel guide to Capri!
What you ARE going to get is a literary history of works by or about an array of libertines, perverts, weirdos, free-thinkers, and not-perverts-but-still-homosexuals who have lived, visited, and written about or written while in Capri, with a concentration on the late 19th century and early 20th century. That's back when Capri was something of a refuge for non-Italians who couldn't get along with or couldn't afford life in their native lands, especially Brits and Germans, who could be slapped in prison for dalliance with members of the same sex. Think Oscar Wilde.
And that's back before the second-half of the 20th century, when Capri became, as the author describes it, ". . . rather like a Las Vegas replica of a quaint Italian village." But he says that would be "peevish," as Capri always has been a place for visitors. Better to think of Capri, he says, as ". . . a modest provincial museum, which has let the gift shop and food-and-beverage outlets take over."
But I digress: the author spends little time talking about present-day Capri. He takes us all the way back to the Greeks and Romans before bringing us up to the 20th century: "Since antiquity, Capri has been a hedonistic dreamland, a place where the rules do not apply . . . a place where easy sex of every variety was available in abundance and not unduly fraught with consequences."
Roman emperor Tiberius ruled from Capri at the end of his time, and descriptions of his reign and life on Capri by early historians Tacitus and Suetonious ". . . paint a lurid portrait of a depraved monster governed by irrational cruelty and perverted sexual appetites." And that's where Mr. James begins his literary detective work, as he reviews and summarizes and compares the accounts of both writers and attempts to shake the facts out of the embellishments. Then he goes on to discuss other writers who either tried the same thing or tried to write their own accounts involving Tiberius. One thing leads to another, and before 10 percent of the book has gone by we're introduced to " . . . a community of effete bachelors," including painters, writers, would-be writers, and plenty of rich guys digging up Roman marbles or mosaics or chasing young boys.
And that, friends, is the bulk of the book: descriptions of the lives of these folks, summaries of the written works they left behind, summaries of writings ABOUT these people, and attempts to separate the facts from the fiction. As the author mentions on several occasions, some of the best (and perhaps only) accounts of various Capri denizens are contained in unreliable memoirs or works of fiction, and one is wise to remember that fiction IS fiction, even in a seemingly obvious "roman a clef" (sorry, no ability to create accents in Goodreads reviews).
The author's accounts of various personalities and literary works usually consume only a few pages, but he does go ON AND ON about two people: Jacques d'Adelsward-Ferson (with an umlaut over the a) and Romaine Brooks (born Beatrice Romaine Goddard). Brooks, a painter who arrived in Capri in 1899, is the book's token lesbian (apparently lesbians were not common on the island in the early days) and is quite an interesting character. Ferson (as the author normally refers to him) might also be described as interesting, but not to the extent that I care to read about him for some 80 or 90 pages in a 300-page book. A really rich French guy with a claim to Swedish nobility in his lineage, Ferson was a pederast if not a pedophile. He dabbled in writing and published a bit of fiction and poetry before being consumed by addictions to opium and cocaine. I suppose James devoted so much space to Ferson because Ferson was so outlandish and moved in important literary circles. He is mentioned in the works of Norman Douglas and Compton Mackenzie, more important writers with ties to Capri.
Other than suffering from Ferson-overload, I must confess to being disappointed that James did not give a bit more space to Axel Munthe, a contemporary of many in this book, whose memoir-of-sorts The Story of San Michele is a truly fascinating book; the current incarnation of Munthe's house in Anacapri (now a museum) also is unmentioned. James does toss in a few Munthe-related anecdotes that ring true.
In the brief section dealing with mid-20th Century figures, James gives several pages to Curzio Malaparte and the house ("Casa Malaparte") he built on an isolated promontory on the east coast of Capri. Malaparte began as a Fascist, fell out of favor enough to be exiled by Mussolini, and was back in favor in time to be a war correspondent during the invasion of the USSR in 1941. James mentions Malaparte's novelized 1940s memoirs Kaput and The Skin but does not mention The Volga Rises in Europe, Malaparte's straight war correspondence that forms the basis of Kaput. James describes Casa Malaparte but is not able to visit it . . . apparently few can. He discussed the house's role in Jean-Luc Godard's film "Contempt"; I'm not sure if James based his description of Casa Malaparte on what he saw in the movie. He does not mention the best (only?) book on the house, Malaparte: A House Like Me, by Michael Mcdonough, published in 1999.
Final words: while it is a literary history/biography that often includes lurid details, Pagan Light does include a fair amount of material that can be useful to one visiting Capri (the island), Capri (the town), and Anacapri (the other town on the island). Having spent two days there last October, I can vouch for James's contention that if one gets away from the anywhere-in-the-world shopping mall that is central Capri-town (and goes in the spring or autumn), one can discover the charm that captivated the subjects of his book in days gone by. But don't think it's a guidebook!
May 2023 addendum: I was reminded of this book when reading the wonderful Fitzroy Maclean WW II memoir Eastern Approaches, wherein he mentions taking Tito to Capri in 1944 or 1945 while trying to kill time waiting for Winston Churchill to arrive in Naples for a meeting with Tito. Somehow the tough Communist partisan doesn't seem to fit in with the characters who dominate Pagan Light!
November 2023 addendum: further reminded of this book when reading the memoirs of Simon C.J. Fraser Lovat and Veronica Maclean (wife of Fitzroy, mentioned above), as they talked about the Scottish writer Compton Mackenzie, who for a time lived on Capri and wrote about the "colorful" characters living there (including many of those mentioned in Pagan Light). So next (perhaps) I should read some of the almost 100 books Compton Mackenzie wrote -- including 10 volumes of autobiography! How to choose?
What you ARE going to get is a literary history of works by or about an array of libertines, perverts, weirdos, free-thinkers, and not-perverts-but-still-homosexuals who have lived, visited, and written about or written while in Capri, with a concentration on the late 19th century and early 20th century. That's back when Capri was something of a refuge for non-Italians who couldn't get along with or couldn't afford life in their native lands, especially Brits and Germans, who could be slapped in prison for dalliance with members of the same sex. Think Oscar Wilde.
And that's back before the second-half of the 20th century, when Capri became, as the author describes it, ". . . rather like a Las Vegas replica of a quaint Italian village." But he says that would be "peevish," as Capri always has been a place for visitors. Better to think of Capri, he says, as ". . . a modest provincial museum, which has let the gift shop and food-and-beverage outlets take over."
But I digress: the author spends little time talking about present-day Capri. He takes us all the way back to the Greeks and Romans before bringing us up to the 20th century: "Since antiquity, Capri has been a hedonistic dreamland, a place where the rules do not apply . . . a place where easy sex of every variety was available in abundance and not unduly fraught with consequences."
Roman emperor Tiberius ruled from Capri at the end of his time, and descriptions of his reign and life on Capri by early historians Tacitus and Suetonious ". . . paint a lurid portrait of a depraved monster governed by irrational cruelty and perverted sexual appetites." And that's where Mr. James begins his literary detective work, as he reviews and summarizes and compares the accounts of both writers and attempts to shake the facts out of the embellishments. Then he goes on to discuss other writers who either tried the same thing or tried to write their own accounts involving Tiberius. One thing leads to another, and before 10 percent of the book has gone by we're introduced to " . . . a community of effete bachelors," including painters, writers, would-be writers, and plenty of rich guys digging up Roman marbles or mosaics or chasing young boys.
And that, friends, is the bulk of the book: descriptions of the lives of these folks, summaries of the written works they left behind, summaries of writings ABOUT these people, and attempts to separate the facts from the fiction. As the author mentions on several occasions, some of the best (and perhaps only) accounts of various Capri denizens are contained in unreliable memoirs or works of fiction, and one is wise to remember that fiction IS fiction, even in a seemingly obvious "roman a clef" (sorry, no ability to create accents in Goodreads reviews).
The author's accounts of various personalities and literary works usually consume only a few pages, but he does go ON AND ON about two people: Jacques d'Adelsward-Ferson (with an umlaut over the a) and Romaine Brooks (born Beatrice Romaine Goddard). Brooks, a painter who arrived in Capri in 1899, is the book's token lesbian (apparently lesbians were not common on the island in the early days) and is quite an interesting character. Ferson (as the author normally refers to him) might also be described as interesting, but not to the extent that I care to read about him for some 80 or 90 pages in a 300-page book. A really rich French guy with a claim to Swedish nobility in his lineage, Ferson was a pederast if not a pedophile. He dabbled in writing and published a bit of fiction and poetry before being consumed by addictions to opium and cocaine. I suppose James devoted so much space to Ferson because Ferson was so outlandish and moved in important literary circles. He is mentioned in the works of Norman Douglas and Compton Mackenzie, more important writers with ties to Capri.
Other than suffering from Ferson-overload, I must confess to being disappointed that James did not give a bit more space to Axel Munthe, a contemporary of many in this book, whose memoir-of-sorts The Story of San Michele is a truly fascinating book; the current incarnation of Munthe's house in Anacapri (now a museum) also is unmentioned. James does toss in a few Munthe-related anecdotes that ring true.
In the brief section dealing with mid-20th Century figures, James gives several pages to Curzio Malaparte and the house ("Casa Malaparte") he built on an isolated promontory on the east coast of Capri. Malaparte began as a Fascist, fell out of favor enough to be exiled by Mussolini, and was back in favor in time to be a war correspondent during the invasion of the USSR in 1941. James mentions Malaparte's novelized 1940s memoirs Kaput and The Skin but does not mention The Volga Rises in Europe, Malaparte's straight war correspondence that forms the basis of Kaput. James describes Casa Malaparte but is not able to visit it . . . apparently few can. He discussed the house's role in Jean-Luc Godard's film "Contempt"; I'm not sure if James based his description of Casa Malaparte on what he saw in the movie. He does not mention the best (only?) book on the house, Malaparte: A House Like Me, by Michael Mcdonough, published in 1999.
Final words: while it is a literary history/biography that often includes lurid details, Pagan Light does include a fair amount of material that can be useful to one visiting Capri (the island), Capri (the town), and Anacapri (the other town on the island). Having spent two days there last October, I can vouch for James's contention that if one gets away from the anywhere-in-the-world shopping mall that is central Capri-town (and goes in the spring or autumn), one can discover the charm that captivated the subjects of his book in days gone by. But don't think it's a guidebook!
May 2023 addendum: I was reminded of this book when reading the wonderful Fitzroy Maclean WW II memoir Eastern Approaches, wherein he mentions taking Tito to Capri in 1944 or 1945 while trying to kill time waiting for Winston Churchill to arrive in Naples for a meeting with Tito. Somehow the tough Communist partisan doesn't seem to fit in with the characters who dominate Pagan Light!
November 2023 addendum: further reminded of this book when reading the memoirs of Simon C.J. Fraser Lovat and Veronica Maclean (wife of Fitzroy, mentioned above), as they talked about the Scottish writer Compton Mackenzie, who for a time lived on Capri and wrote about the "colorful" characters living there (including many of those mentioned in Pagan Light). So next (perhaps) I should read some of the almost 100 books Compton Mackenzie wrote -- including 10 volumes of autobiography! How to choose?
February 21, 2019
I requested an advanced reader copy of Jamie James' Pagan Light because I liked the cover and because the idea of a literary study about this beautiful island sounded very interesting.
I am a regular visitor of Italy and have had the pleasure of visiting Capri in the past. I guess I expected more of an interesting travelogue about Capri and it's past.
Well, this book for me proved that there is truth in the expression that you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover.
The colourful cover and the description had raised expectations which were not met while reading the book.
To start with the positive elements in the book I think that the author writes well and did an excellent job in research.
Despite this, I found almost all the story's about the people who stayed on Capri rather tedious and I think there was far to much emphasis on the homosexual visitor's of Capri. I can not believe that there haven't been heterosexual visitor's to Capri who were just as interesting.
Furthermore I found the book had no clear storyline and it just meandered from one anecdote to another.
Maybe the book is more interesting if you have a special interest in some of the people described in the book.
'
I had great difficulty finishing the book because it just didn't hold my interest.
I want to thank Netgalley for giving me a review copy of this book for an honest review
I am a regular visitor of Italy and have had the pleasure of visiting Capri in the past. I guess I expected more of an interesting travelogue about Capri and it's past.
Well, this book for me proved that there is truth in the expression that you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover.
The colourful cover and the description had raised expectations which were not met while reading the book.
To start with the positive elements in the book I think that the author writes well and did an excellent job in research.
Despite this, I found almost all the story's about the people who stayed on Capri rather tedious and I think there was far to much emphasis on the homosexual visitor's of Capri. I can not believe that there haven't been heterosexual visitor's to Capri who were just as interesting.
Furthermore I found the book had no clear storyline and it just meandered from one anecdote to another.
Maybe the book is more interesting if you have a special interest in some of the people described in the book.
'
I had great difficulty finishing the book because it just didn't hold my interest.
I want to thank Netgalley for giving me a review copy of this book for an honest review
June 3, 2019
A really interesting concept for a book: why did Capri attract a motley group of writers, painters and general eccentrics? The author introduces poets and painters I didn’t know, like painter Romaine Brooks, along with ones whose names I’ve heard but didn’t know much about, like Norman Douglas, Curzio Malaparte, Maxim Gorky. I was wary that the book would turn into a raunchy gossip session but the author avoids that. The book isn’t illustrated as fully as I would have liked but it’s well-written and well-paced. I loved it.
June 29, 2019
This is a hard book to characterize. A solid 3.5 stars rounded up for being so well-written. While it may be about Capri, it's more about the lesser-known/mostly forgotten expatriate artistic community the secluded island nurtured in the early half of the 20th century. This little gem surrounded by mostly unapproachable rocks has gifted us high water pants and pederasts with the writing focussed primarily on the latter. From Tacitus's probably fictional orgies to Fersen's Black Masses, the island was a refuge for experimentation: artistically, sexually, and romantically. A once hard-to-reach, carnal beauty quite affordable while still "undiscovered."
James follows no true chronology and the book as a whole transmits not so much any central message as it does more a feeling of lamentation, as well as recovered history. And yet it is James's pithy prose, encyclopedic research/knowledge, and his ability to weave these gossamer threads together that is the true gift. He warns us against judging artists of the past and their work using contemporary values and standards. Sometimes we forget the context within which these individuals lived where they may have been forced to choose the lesser of two evils: “In the (approximately) post-Communist era, we make an impossible demand on twentieth-century Russian writers: they cannot be tsarist, yet neither can they be Stalinists, which leaves a vaporous middle terrain that offers uncertain refuge.” For modern readers, this is probably an easier pill to swallow when it comes to politics than it is for some of the more extreme sexual deviations.
James manages to serve as historian, erudite art/book critic, and charming literary raconteur as he sprinkles almost everything with delightful anecdotes and tidbits (Norman Douglas's last words: “Get these fucking nuns away from me.”; Rilke's talent for always finding something to complain about; Gorky's sitting and smoking instead of helping save Heinrich Lieber after Lieber's failed attempt at suicide by gun).
From one of the last "laboratories of experimentation for the avant-garde," Capri begins its cultural decline somewhere around the '50s when film stars and fashion icons made it their play land. It's still well-preserved, but likened to a museum overrun by its own gift shops these days.
--------------------------------------------------
WORDS AND PHRASES THAT LEFT ME OUT TO SEA (AND A FEW I JUST REALLY LIKED)
dolce far niente | tristissimus hominum (the saddest of men) | lubricity | peripatetic | dipsomaniac | opprobrium | roman à clef | obloquy | tableaux vivants | poetaster | cynosure | faience | literateur manqué | modus vivendi | bathetic | mumismatist | mountebank | androgyne | cave hominem | plumbago | piquet | tramontane | sirocco | acidulous
James follows no true chronology and the book as a whole transmits not so much any central message as it does more a feeling of lamentation, as well as recovered history. And yet it is James's pithy prose, encyclopedic research/knowledge, and his ability to weave these gossamer threads together that is the true gift. He warns us against judging artists of the past and their work using contemporary values and standards. Sometimes we forget the context within which these individuals lived where they may have been forced to choose the lesser of two evils: “In the (approximately) post-Communist era, we make an impossible demand on twentieth-century Russian writers: they cannot be tsarist, yet neither can they be Stalinists, which leaves a vaporous middle terrain that offers uncertain refuge.” For modern readers, this is probably an easier pill to swallow when it comes to politics than it is for some of the more extreme sexual deviations.
James manages to serve as historian, erudite art/book critic, and charming literary raconteur as he sprinkles almost everything with delightful anecdotes and tidbits (Norman Douglas's last words: “Get these fucking nuns away from me.”; Rilke's talent for always finding something to complain about; Gorky's sitting and smoking instead of helping save Heinrich Lieber after Lieber's failed attempt at suicide by gun).
From one of the last "laboratories of experimentation for the avant-garde," Capri begins its cultural decline somewhere around the '50s when film stars and fashion icons made it their play land. It's still well-preserved, but likened to a museum overrun by its own gift shops these days.
--------------------------------------------------
WORDS AND PHRASES THAT LEFT ME OUT TO SEA (AND A FEW I JUST REALLY LIKED)
dolce far niente | tristissimus hominum (the saddest of men) | lubricity | peripatetic | dipsomaniac | opprobrium | roman à clef | obloquy | tableaux vivants | poetaster | cynosure | faience | literateur manqué | modus vivendi | bathetic | mumismatist | mountebank | androgyne | cave hominem | plumbago | piquet | tramontane | sirocco | acidulous
February 21, 2020
I had a mixed reaction to this book. I knew very little about Capri – mainly the song, “Isle of Capri” and the fact that it became a sort of interwar gay haven. The author’s journey through the history of the island has a lot of fascinating detail – a testament to his erudition – but manages to bog down when he focusses on some of the people living there. He wastes a lot of space, for example, on one Thomas Spencer Jerome, an obscure Detroit lawyer, who wanted to write a history of Rome and rehabilitate the Roman emperor Tiberius, whose reputation had been besmirched by the historians Tacitus and Suetonius. Jerome lived with his partner, Charles Lang Freer, in the Villa Castello, which he’d bought from its previous owner. The only really interesting thing here is that Jerome became a fictional character in works by Somerset Maugham and Compton Mackenzie.
Capri had none of the advantages of Tangier, or of other islands like Tahiti or Bali to which artists and writers have long been attracted. Situated too close to Naples and with too small a population to have developed a unique, indigenous culture, Capri instead morphed into a dream place, its myth starting with Odysseus' encounter with the Sirens, "horrid bird-women whose surpassingly beautiful song lures mariners to ruin on the dangerous shores of their frightful lair." The mythic power of Capri was the subject of a bestselling book by Norman Douglas, called "South Wind", which described the decline into lazy hedonism of a morally upright bishop under the general influence of the island and its "south wind" (the Sirocco); this theme echoing Thomas Mann's “Death in Venice”, published only five years earlier, in 1912.
The author rightly gives space to the overlooked and often forgotten artist Romaine Brooks and her (romantic) associations with the controversial dramatist Gabriele D’Annunzio and the flamboyant lesbian hostess Natalie Clifford Barney. Brooks’ work was heavily influenced by James McNeil Whistler, whose famous painting of his mother, titled “Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1”, set the tone for her own monochromatic works. But, laudable as this effort is, James also gives space to a deservedly forgotten reprobate called Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, of whose literary works James himself wrote, “Some of them are charmingly written and offer points of interest, but none of them is fully satisfying as literature.” He then mentions d’Adelswärd-Fersen’s creation of the Villa Lysis, which is still a tourist attraction on Capri today – a legacy, at least. D’Adelswärd-Fersen was the subject of Roger Peyrefitte's fictionalised biography, L'Exilé de Capri (The Exile of Capri). He may have led a sensational life, complete with a trial, in France, for inciting young boys to “commit acts of debauchery”, but does he really deserve the extensive treatment he receives in this book? He was simply a wealthy man with a penchant for boys who wrote easily forgotten works.
Unhappily, James writes a lot less about the more important writers who visited or lived on Capri: Somerset Maugham, Rainer Maria Rilke, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Grahame Greene, Pablo Neruda and Marguerite Yourcenar – the first woman elected to the Académie Française. He does, however, include a vignette about Oscar Wilde, from The Exile of Capri by Roger Peyrefitte. Wilde supposedly visited the island, with Lord Alfred Douglas, shortly after his release from prison. Wilde and Douglas were refused service in the dining room of the Quisisana Hotel, where they were staying. Peyrefitte has his protagonist, then a young, naïve boy, wax furious and sorrowful at their humiliation. This may have been an invention by Peyrefitte, as Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde mentions only that Douglas visited Capri, not Wilde.
There is quite a lot of other stuff included in this somewhat rambling account of life on Capri. To aid the reader, there is a map of the island, some interesting black and white photographs and a good index. No separate bibliogaphy: you have to look at the notes for the titles. All in all, worthwhile, though be prepared for patches of boredom.
Capri had none of the advantages of Tangier, or of other islands like Tahiti or Bali to which artists and writers have long been attracted. Situated too close to Naples and with too small a population to have developed a unique, indigenous culture, Capri instead morphed into a dream place, its myth starting with Odysseus' encounter with the Sirens, "horrid bird-women whose surpassingly beautiful song lures mariners to ruin on the dangerous shores of their frightful lair." The mythic power of Capri was the subject of a bestselling book by Norman Douglas, called "South Wind", which described the decline into lazy hedonism of a morally upright bishop under the general influence of the island and its "south wind" (the Sirocco); this theme echoing Thomas Mann's “Death in Venice”, published only five years earlier, in 1912.
The author rightly gives space to the overlooked and often forgotten artist Romaine Brooks and her (romantic) associations with the controversial dramatist Gabriele D’Annunzio and the flamboyant lesbian hostess Natalie Clifford Barney. Brooks’ work was heavily influenced by James McNeil Whistler, whose famous painting of his mother, titled “Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1”, set the tone for her own monochromatic works. But, laudable as this effort is, James also gives space to a deservedly forgotten reprobate called Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, of whose literary works James himself wrote, “Some of them are charmingly written and offer points of interest, but none of them is fully satisfying as literature.” He then mentions d’Adelswärd-Fersen’s creation of the Villa Lysis, which is still a tourist attraction on Capri today – a legacy, at least. D’Adelswärd-Fersen was the subject of Roger Peyrefitte's fictionalised biography, L'Exilé de Capri (The Exile of Capri). He may have led a sensational life, complete with a trial, in France, for inciting young boys to “commit acts of debauchery”, but does he really deserve the extensive treatment he receives in this book? He was simply a wealthy man with a penchant for boys who wrote easily forgotten works.
Unhappily, James writes a lot less about the more important writers who visited or lived on Capri: Somerset Maugham, Rainer Maria Rilke, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Grahame Greene, Pablo Neruda and Marguerite Yourcenar – the first woman elected to the Académie Française. He does, however, include a vignette about Oscar Wilde, from The Exile of Capri by Roger Peyrefitte. Wilde supposedly visited the island, with Lord Alfred Douglas, shortly after his release from prison. Wilde and Douglas were refused service in the dining room of the Quisisana Hotel, where they were staying. Peyrefitte has his protagonist, then a young, naïve boy, wax furious and sorrowful at their humiliation. This may have been an invention by Peyrefitte, as Ellmann’s biography of Oscar Wilde mentions only that Douglas visited Capri, not Wilde.
There is quite a lot of other stuff included in this somewhat rambling account of life on Capri. To aid the reader, there is a map of the island, some interesting black and white photographs and a good index. No separate bibliogaphy: you have to look at the notes for the titles. All in all, worthwhile, though be prepared for patches of boredom.
June 23, 2019
A gorgeous and evocative piece of scholarship on the history of Capri and its most eccentric and infamous residents.
Part erudite travelogue, part cultural scholarship, Pagan Light is a history both human and geographic, oft highlighting how each influenced the other.
James writes beautifully and thoroughly, with the poignant socio-contextual eye of Simon Schama and the wry, subtle tone of Stacy Schiff.
Historical figures both familiar and esoteric come to life under James’ exacting lens. Though it requires some scholarly interest in both Italy and the poets, writers, artists, and other personages who populate the book, it still reads accessibly.
One final note: I was deeply disappointed to see so many fellow reviewers disparaging this book in a way that radiates bigotry and intolerance. The homophobia expressed in far too many reviews would be hilarious if it wasn’t so very sad.
If you simply do not care for a book or its subject matter, that is fine. But to criticize an author for reporting facts simply because those facts make you uncomfortable makes you an irresponsible and untrustworthy reviewer.
Most of the reviews that skewed this way mentioned that the reviewer chose the book “because of the pretty cover.” I hope that this sort of foolishness does not affect the book’s rating too much, because it is an absolute gem.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
Part erudite travelogue, part cultural scholarship, Pagan Light is a history both human and geographic, oft highlighting how each influenced the other.
James writes beautifully and thoroughly, with the poignant socio-contextual eye of Simon Schama and the wry, subtle tone of Stacy Schiff.
Historical figures both familiar and esoteric come to life under James’ exacting lens. Though it requires some scholarly interest in both Italy and the poets, writers, artists, and other personages who populate the book, it still reads accessibly.
One final note: I was deeply disappointed to see so many fellow reviewers disparaging this book in a way that radiates bigotry and intolerance. The homophobia expressed in far too many reviews would be hilarious if it wasn’t so very sad.
If you simply do not care for a book or its subject matter, that is fine. But to criticize an author for reporting facts simply because those facts make you uncomfortable makes you an irresponsible and untrustworthy reviewer.
Most of the reviews that skewed this way mentioned that the reviewer chose the book “because of the pretty cover.” I hope that this sort of foolishness does not affect the book’s rating too much, because it is an absolute gem.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
February 10, 2019
I requested this book because I fell in love with Capri and was happy to see a book about this wonderful place.
The book is amazing, well written and engaging.
You meet a lot of the historical characters who lived there when it was a paradise for people who were outcasted for political or sexual reasons.
The pagan word in the title refers to the atmosphere that is on the island has no religious meaning.
It's an amazing well researched trip that makes you crave for going there.
I look forward to reading other books by this writer.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for this ARC
The book is amazing, well written and engaging.
You meet a lot of the historical characters who lived there when it was a paradise for people who were outcasted for political or sexual reasons.
The pagan word in the title refers to the atmosphere that is on the island has no religious meaning.
It's an amazing well researched trip that makes you crave for going there.
I look forward to reading other books by this writer.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for this ARC
February 5, 2019
This sounded really interesting but I just couldn't get in to it. It was a long, hard slog. It is a history book but it just didn't grab me.
I also thought there would be mentions of witches because of the title. I like the cover but that is all.
If I hadn't received a review copy then I wouldn't have finished it.
I'm sure that if you have a stronger interest in the history of homosexuality with young boys or the quirky patrons of Capri through time then you would rate it more highly.
I also thought there would be mentions of witches because of the title. I like the cover but that is all.
If I hadn't received a review copy then I wouldn't have finished it.
I'm sure that if you have a stronger interest in the history of homosexuality with young boys or the quirky patrons of Capri through time then you would rate it more highly.
March 6, 2021
Hedonists, renegades, misfits, gold-diggers and those with really unsavory behaviors are featured in this well-written book about the social history of foreign visitors to Capri. It was a remote refuge until the mid-twentieth century, when it was transformed into a day-trip tourist destination and elite shopping mecca. I found it interesting and literate, but certainly not for all readers.
June 6, 2021
Another volume related to my ongoing interest in Capri and its literary/artistic inhabitants.
When I say ‘inhabitants’ I do not mean the native Italians (who largely appear in supporting or sexually subservient roles), but all those figures who choose to use as a haven. Many of the characters James cites were gay as Italy had no laws regarding homosexuality and Capri was distant enough from the mainland to avoid nasty domestic ruptions, he devotes many pages to Jacques d’Adelsward-Ferson who exiled himself from France in 1903 after a scandal involving adolescent boys, German industrialist Friedrich Krupp, the American painter Romaine Brooks and English author Norman Douglas, who did much to popularize Capri via his best-selling novel ‘The South Wind’.
There is a strong supporting cast of characters, the Mackenzies Compton and faith (some of the formers works satirize the island's characters), E.F. Benson, Maxim Gorky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marchesa Luisa Casati, Axel Munthe and a host of other relatively unknown eccentrics and oddballs which James weaves together with dexterity and obvious love for the subjects. He has an eye for the odd (not that he needed to look far) but also attempts to position his characters in relation to the islands history and greater world events which he succeeds in doing very well.
I would have liked a little more observation of how the locals reacted to all these shenanigans. From today's perspective, there is a strong scent of sexual tourism/ exploitation (hetero as well as homo) although the age of consent in Italy is 14. It would have been nice/useful if James had tacked this issue. Were Capri-ites as easygoing as the book implies? Was it really a rural idyll of free love or did the locals regard these incomers as money-pots ready to be exploited and that was part of the price?
The book also tails off a little post-1970, many of the above named were dead and Capri was becoming far more touristy. One suspects, though again it is not said, that the arrival of ‘the masses’ rather dampened the party down.
But this is still an entertaining read and an excellent introduction to the milieu of the period that is not too bogged down in dates and long-winded biographies. Reading this book will set you up nicely for Compton MacKenzie’s 1927 novel ‘Vestal Fire’.
When I say ‘inhabitants’ I do not mean the native Italians (who largely appear in supporting or sexually subservient roles), but all those figures who choose to use as a haven. Many of the characters James cites were gay as Italy had no laws regarding homosexuality and Capri was distant enough from the mainland to avoid nasty domestic ruptions, he devotes many pages to Jacques d’Adelsward-Ferson who exiled himself from France in 1903 after a scandal involving adolescent boys, German industrialist Friedrich Krupp, the American painter Romaine Brooks and English author Norman Douglas, who did much to popularize Capri via his best-selling novel ‘The South Wind’.
There is a strong supporting cast of characters, the Mackenzies Compton and faith (some of the formers works satirize the island's characters), E.F. Benson, Maxim Gorky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marchesa Luisa Casati, Axel Munthe and a host of other relatively unknown eccentrics and oddballs which James weaves together with dexterity and obvious love for the subjects. He has an eye for the odd (not that he needed to look far) but also attempts to position his characters in relation to the islands history and greater world events which he succeeds in doing very well.
I would have liked a little more observation of how the locals reacted to all these shenanigans. From today's perspective, there is a strong scent of sexual tourism/ exploitation (hetero as well as homo) although the age of consent in Italy is 14. It would have been nice/useful if James had tacked this issue. Were Capri-ites as easygoing as the book implies? Was it really a rural idyll of free love or did the locals regard these incomers as money-pots ready to be exploited and that was part of the price?
The book also tails off a little post-1970, many of the above named were dead and Capri was becoming far more touristy. One suspects, though again it is not said, that the arrival of ‘the masses’ rather dampened the party down.
But this is still an entertaining read and an excellent introduction to the milieu of the period that is not too bogged down in dates and long-winded biographies. Reading this book will set you up nicely for Compton MacKenzie’s 1927 novel ‘Vestal Fire’.
March 9, 2020
Playing out more as an encyclopedia of the lives of rich people who are all linked through some vague connection with Capri, Jamie James "Pagan Light" is less a story about Capri and more a telling of stories that spring from Capri.
Though James is certain to start each of his frustratingly meandering chapters in Capri they inevitably lead away from the small island off the coast and end up telling the stories of Romaine Brooks and Joseph Conrad as they spend years of their lives in Paris, Rome, and Venice. Interspersing snippets of tales from books written by some writers who lived on Capri, even these snippets failed to talk about Capri. Citing Maxim Gorsky, James himself points out that Gorsky only ever wrote about Russia during his time living in Capri, but nonetheles proceeds to do literary analysis of these Russia-based texts.
The lack of Capriotes in a book about Capri is the unwelcomed present, but wrapped around this gift is a bow that acts as an uncritical apologist both of wealth and borderline pedophilia. From a line in which James outright claims that rich people struggle just as much as poor people, James supports this claim by pointing to Jacques D'Adelsward-Fersen, the wealthiest man in Europe who was also outcast for his continuous courting of obscenely young boys. While James does not go so far as to support these mores, he does seem to position actors like Fersen as existing in a world that had "more sexual freedom" than we do now because our contemporary culture pooh-poohs "intergenerational relationships." Certainly when reporting on the culture of the past we should do so without judgment, but that also doesn't mean we should do so uncritically.
Though James is certain to start each of his frustratingly meandering chapters in Capri they inevitably lead away from the small island off the coast and end up telling the stories of Romaine Brooks and Joseph Conrad as they spend years of their lives in Paris, Rome, and Venice. Interspersing snippets of tales from books written by some writers who lived on Capri, even these snippets failed to talk about Capri. Citing Maxim Gorsky, James himself points out that Gorsky only ever wrote about Russia during his time living in Capri, but nonetheles proceeds to do literary analysis of these Russia-based texts.
The lack of Capriotes in a book about Capri is the unwelcomed present, but wrapped around this gift is a bow that acts as an uncritical apologist both of wealth and borderline pedophilia. From a line in which James outright claims that rich people struggle just as much as poor people, James supports this claim by pointing to Jacques D'Adelsward-Fersen, the wealthiest man in Europe who was also outcast for his continuous courting of obscenely young boys. While James does not go so far as to support these mores, he does seem to position actors like Fersen as existing in a world that had "more sexual freedom" than we do now because our contemporary culture pooh-poohs "intergenerational relationships." Certainly when reporting on the culture of the past we should do so without judgment, but that also doesn't mean we should do so uncritically.
January 27, 2020
Pagan Light provides a brief impressionistic history and literary tour of the island of Capri off the coast of Naples. The author begins with when the Roman Emperor Tiberius situated himself on Capri to rule Rome, setting the example for libertinism to followed centuries later by expatriate artists, writers and poets in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. He spends a good deal of the book focusing on two residents in particular, the writer Jacques Fersen and painter Romaine Brooks, as well as the circle of those around them. Their stories carry them well beyond the island itself to many other places in Europe and beyond. Many of the places mentioned in the book still exist in the present day and many may be visited. If this all sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend the book. But if you are looking for something more along the lines of a guidebook, you should go elsewhere.
July 22, 2022
This book does a beautiful job of transporting readers to this gorgeous locale. But that’s not really it’s focus. And I’m glad! The focus is much more interesting! It looks at the art made there (and about Capri). And it looks at the expatriots who lived in times that misunderstood them. Certainly, the book does not excuse any of these artists for any injustice they caused others, but it does help us to understand the repressions (and condemnation) they faced in a pre-21 century world that doggedly defended heteronormative, binary expressions of self. The book asks us to reconsider the people who were faced with making authentic artistic choices in that landscape, and it encourages us to continue searching for the truth in their stories while we parse the rumor and sensationalism from the facts as they were known.
October 2, 2023
This provides a scholarly look at writers and artists who were attracted to Capri, or self-exiled there, because of its leniency toward moral behaviors outlawed in other parts of the world (such as homosexuality), or because they were politically at odds with their home government. There is much description of the works they created on or about Capri, many of which are obscure.
March 28, 2022
Was expecting a travelogue of Capri (it's not), but still very interesting. It gives a rich history of the avant-garde outcasts who have given life to the island and thus used it to enrich their own lives. Though at times it reads like part encyclopedia, part literary and film criticism, it is chock full of references to other works both classical and modern, and I have expanded my read and watch list tenfold. It is easily one of the best-researched books I have ever read. The last 50 or so pages I couldn’t put down. Overall though the subject matter wouldn’t normally have been something I picked up, which is a random smattering of biographies all tenuously linked to Capri in some fashion, it does enrich any traveler’s understanding and appreciation of the history there.
August 2, 2019
Capri draws artists. It is a beautiful island and appeals to those wanting to live on the edge of morality.
Well written and filled with anecdotes...
Well written and filled with anecdotes...
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews