My abiding affection for small islands explored by Roger Knight
Every island to a child is a treasure island. P. D. James
Oh, island in the sun
Willed to me by my father’s hand
All my days I will sing in praise
Of your forest waters
Your shining sand.
Harry Belafonte song released in 1957
‘Oh, my beloved island, I wish I had never left,’ are the words attributed to Robinson Crusoe, reflecting on his deep emotional attachment to the island where he was shipwrecked. Thought to be the largest of the Juan Fernandez Islands situated in the South Pacific Ocean.
Having been born and raised on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and subsequently lived on at least four others, I can relate to Crusoe’s sentiment.
I think it has something to do with being surrounded by the sea, because when living on a continent, it always concerned me as to how far away the nearest beach was. It may also be about the need for visible boundaries, that separation of land and sea. The famous Byron quote comes to mind, that ‘man marks the earth with ruin - his control stops with the shore.’
The vast ocean remains beyond human dominion. Living on an island reminds you of that.
During the hurricane season in Bermuda, I would watch the waves crash and pound many a South Shore beach. It was as though the sea was fighting back and asserting itself over the land.
Is it, I wonder, because of this maritime threat that island communities seem closer, more cohesive, and more congenial? Perhaps there is a lifeboat mentality of looking out for each other, rather than the FUJIA attitude that prevails elsewhere? [F—-You Jack, I’m all right.]
My choice of holiday destination still tends to be small islands, too. The more remote, pristine, and exotic, the better.
The American poet Hart Crane wrote about ‘the seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise’ that might to some extent account for my island affection.
As the Austrian poet Rilke once wrote, ‘ We are grasped by what we cannot grasp.’
Perhaps one of the deepest causes of our discontent and of our confused / conflicted yearnings is our absence of paradise discovered? The human soul needs anchoring in something beyond itself, in that vision which is the basis of all initiations, a vision which hints that life on earth can reflect ideals of perfection personified as paradise.
Some islands still epitomise and project perfection, enticing us with their promise of paradise that may result in a state of enchantment where we might come to truly know ourselves.
In Hart Crane’s Voyages 2, he asks that we not die, until we have experienced the intensity of that gaze toward paradise that I am sure still exists on some far-flung islands around the world.
For some wealthy French retirees, the island of La Reunion has become a favoured bucket-list destination that personifies paradise, due to its unique, unspoilt and breathtaking scenery.
Was this a fulfilled ambition that Paul Gaugin in Tahiti might have had before? His paintings, such as Nevermore and Tahitian pastoral are frequently cited as significant works that evoke a sense of paradise.
Hart Crane's own interpretation of the paradise he wrote about has been made more poignant by him stepping off the stern of a ship in the Gulf of Mexico to join those sea creatures he so revered.
For me, though, small islands, wherever in the world they are, will always conjure up the notion of a more easeful, relaxed life, whose setting and scenery immediately uplifts me. Such was the case at Grape Bay in Bermuda, where the cedar and casuarina trees and Bay grape bushes grow close to the shore and where a turquoise-coloured sea gently laps a glistening pink sand beach, and with no one in sight.
I therefore consider myself truly blessed to have enjoyed such a scene throughout much of my childhood and beyond.
To have been afforded an island life that, in retrospect, seems to have been paradise realised and which is less likely to be rediscovered in a more crowded, developed and degraded world.
Our quest for paradise, which can take us to many islands around the world, remains, for many of us I'm sure, elusive, quixotic and undeniably a covert, compelling force that we have to frequently consign to the deeper recesses of our mind.
Bind us in time, O seasons clear and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.
Hart Crane [1899-1932]
RAK 7/25
