Siren Land: A Celebration of Life in Southern Italy

by Norman Douglas

Norman Douglas’s first travel book, Siren Land is an homage to a part of the world that captivated the author more than any other. Weaving the myths of the Sirens into the landscape and history of the region, Douglas writes with knowledge and an irrepressible exuberance of the past and the present, of legends and archaeology, folklore and daily life, patron saints, local ghosts, wine, and the wind.

Genres: Travel, Italy, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, History

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1911

About the author

George Norman Douglas was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind. His travel books, such as Old Calabria (1915), were also appreciated for the quality of their writing.

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douglas is considered by some as the father of modern travel writing. This book ranges over such a wide variety of topics as the mythical sirens, the Emperor Tiberius, local food and wines, the Blue Grotto, ruins and archaeology, religions and superstitions, the Capriot mystic Sister Serafina, the landscape, legends, the weather and climate, and the general stupidity, sordidness, and dishonesty of the locals. His tone is often condescending and contemptuous, so I enjoyed it a great deal.

The sort of travel Douglas discusses requires wealth, leisure time, intelligence, culture, taste, and education--all in large and equal quantities. I'm not sure that sort of person exists anymore. A traveler may have a lot of money, but lack cultural depth, or he may possess taste and intelligence, but not have more than a few days or weeks at most to visit a destination.

I also cannot imagine there are many people nowadays who would enjoy Douglas's writing style. He was clearly a well-read and highly-educated man, with quite the faculty for languages. The text is full of scholarly references, and the quotations in foreign languages are left untranslated. He does not not talk down to his readers--he assumes they are as intelligent as he is. And I must admit that I preferred being treated as an intellectual equal, even if I didn't understand everything Douglas was talking about some of the time.

(I must also confess that I've been guilty of the same sort of pedantic obscurity in my own writing, and people have criticized me about it.)

Before I read the book I read up on Douglas himself, and learned that, unfortunately, he was a pedophile. He went to Capri not only for the scenery and the history but also because it was in his time what Thailand is in ours--a hotbed for kinky sex tourism.

Often our society is presented with this dilemma--can we enjoy and appreciate a work of art if we know that the creator, be he a painter, a writer, a composer, or a director--a Picasso, Celine, Wagner, or Polanski, say--is a truly despicable person? I certainly can't answer that. But I will say that my background knowledge of Douglas caused me to try to read closely between the lines.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douglas is eloquent, indeed beautiful in his evocation of the regions around Capri. He meanders through history by means of a stream of consciousness, with seemingly random (but surely crafted) associations, in a manner reminiscent of W.G. Sebald's "The Rings of Saturn". By this means he burrows into the psyche of the people and the region, borne of centuries of ebb and flow of people, empires and their mythological, as well as economic cargo. Douglas brings a gentle, outsider's lens and sarcasm to his discussion of the ad hoc hybrid mythologies of the locals (these designed to cater to the naive expectations of the tourist), but exudes asperity in his critique of the clergy, especially towards the vindictive and twisted Spanish variety. His peregrinations through history are peppered with gems like this: “Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes.”; perhaps to be taken with a grain of salt, but perhaps not. His knowledge of Mediterranean history is profound (exemplified best by his criticisms of Tacitus), but the corollary of this is that, occasionally, he is challenging to read (in an age when most of us (Plebians) are not well educated in Greek and Latin). I am sure that I would never have encountered the off-hand use of the word "hyperborean" unless I had read this book. I will now use the word at every opportunity. However, although the book is likely to be challenging to the modern reader, it is worth the effort, especially for those who love southern Italy.

[Sue Pit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1911, Norman Douglas writes as if chatting with you one on one in a relaxed but erudite manner , tossing in side tidbits including facts, tales of lore as well as first hand experiences. The writing in general regards the Sorrento Pennisula of Italy as well as Capri Island and some other proximal islands. Discussions of the Sirens (from whence Sorrento takes it name) , including their origin are told as well as Fauns and Man-Wolves …a lot of legend and superstition seems to abound in the earlier fabric of this area. His take on religion includes discussing a very zealous nun by the name of Sister Serafina who founded a convent on Capri. Also notably, Tiberius is discussed and defended. The Blue Grotto and a variety of other subject matters are detailed, plentifully dotted with tangential orts. At times the reading gets dense especially if unfamiliar with his references (of which he assumes you are already quite aware) but then there are golden nuggets of information interspersed and he can tell a tale quite well too (my favorites being one regarding a dolphin and another regarding the "evil eye". I also loved the story about the medical competition between certain doctors of Salerno and certain healing waters on Siren Land). A bit of a challenge to read but interesting over all if one is interested in the area.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This leisurely meditation on the south of Italy around Capri and Naples is full of classical allusions dear to the educated of a century ago. Norman Douglas, author of Siren Land: A Celebration of Life in Southern Italy, is a disreputable character because of his predilection for pederasty, which led him to be thrown out of a couple of Mediterranean countries.

His book has value as it is an intensive meditation on the history of the Campanian coast, beginning with ancient Greece and going through the Medieval period and the rule of the Bourbons. What surprised me the most is that Douglas attempts to sanitize the Emperor Tiberius who, during his 10-year-residence in Capri was accused by Suetonius and Tacitus of carnally consorting with his "spintrians," local minors brought to his palace to sate his appetites.

[bookinglibrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written and accurately evocative depiction of Campania, especially the life and land of the Sorrentine peninsula and Capri. While there have been major changes since the time this was written (the early 20th century--no doubt Douglas would be appalled by the massive hordes of 21st century tourists); the rocks, the sea, the weather and hopefully even the stories, remain largely unaltered.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life in Italy. Good idea, good book.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting account of life in Southern Italy. The blue grotto incident was referred in a Food-Travel book I read recently.

[JanJan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes me want to read the source of every reference this erudite old hedonist pulls out his sleeve. Brilliant, literally.

[Alex Sarll]

An idiosyncratic love letter to southern Italy, though at times you struggle to work out why it's not a hatchet job instead: Douglas frequently finds the people frustrating, the environmental stewardship appalling, the food unspeakable and the wine worse. Hell, even when it comes to Capri's association with Tiberius, whose proclivities you'd have thought might make him a draw for someone of Douglas' own terrible reputation, he instead performs that odd ideological jujitsu whereby someone who covertly approves of the accused's actions also insists they didn't do it anyway – and I wonder how much this portrait of a sober Emperor who offended Rome by being simply too restrained and sensible has informed subsequent revisionist takes? Always running through it, though, is a love of the region's barely buried closeness to pagan antiquity, and a sense of it as a place where one can rewardingly be at leisure – which, whatever his other faults, Douglas quite correctly recognises as the noblest of human ambitions.