Split – Arthur Hofn

That Feeling When You Realise You Might Well Be A Character In A Novel

And suddenly we’re in November and 2023 has, for the most part, passed by. It’s true I’ve written fewer blogs this year. In fact after a several solid years of writing, (2018 Framed of Rathgar, 2019 Indoldrum, 2020 – 2022 all three Series of Beck’s Game,) 2023 was a year where I’ve slowed down a bit. Nothing wrong with this, I believe writing shouldn’t be forced if it doesn’t have to be. Having said that I have written a few short plays and I’m working out what to do with a new full length script. I’m also in the very early days of a new project. As such blogging is a bit lower on my list of things to do.

Regardless as I come to the last few weeks of 2023, in the dark and the cold, I find myself wishing I was still back in the summer. This year I spent some time swanning around Europe and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Part of this was spent on the Dalmatian coast in Croatia, Split in specific. I’ve been here before, but I still love this place, as a city it’s built around Diocletian’s palace, but as he’s not using it so much at the moment it’s become the heart of this Balkan city.

Summer is a funny thing, the ideals we have of what a summer should be invariably won’t turn out to be the reality of the season. Life still needs to be lived, work still needs to be attended and the great loitering and we envisioned ends up being a week, or if we are lucky two, somewhere where we’re spending our time worrying if we’ve brought too much luggage and so incur a large fine trying to get it on the plane home; or is that just me?

As mentioned I was a little bit fortunate as I fitted in a great trip exploring the Netherlands and Milan as well as some of Croatia, so I guess I have nothing to complain about.

The whole point of my above boasting about, and pinning for, the hotter days of 2023 is because I had a literary epiphany one morning whilst I was away. It’s hard to get a cup of tea in Split, trust me I’ve tried. As an Englishman this is an essential part of waking up and in my search for anywhere I could purchase a proper black tea, not some fruit infusion nonsense (which is NOT tea), I ended up on the Riva, the paved waterfront. Having eventually got my drink from a cafe by the harbour, I found a seat looking out to sea and paused for a moment to take in not only the hot morning sunshine but also the whole scene. In front of me yachts and tourist boats slowly came and went, whilst locals and holiday makers from all over the globe made there way in either direction along the Riva. It was very civilised. I’d been over specifically for a wedding a few days previous in another part of the Balkans, yet whilst I sat watching life go by some parties of the other guests strolled passed. They stopped and we chatted for a while, what were our plans for the day? Where had we eaten? We suggested meeting up again if we were able and with that they continued.

It was sat there on the bright sunny morning that I suddenly remembered a trope for early 20^th Century literature, one which always appealed to me, and now I felt I was actually part of.

Mainly in American novels from the late 19^th or early 20^th Century it’s common for the action to take an interlude while the characters go to Europe for a summer season. Examples are The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920) where a couple go on honeymoon to the fashionable parts of Europe, and in Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott (1869 – a sequel to Little Women), one of the daughters is taken with an Aunt on her European tour and writes home about it.

HEIDELBERG
My dear Mamma,
Having a quiet hour before we leave for Berne, I’ll try to tell you what has happened, for some of it is very important, as you will see.
The sail up the Rhine was perfect, and I just sat and enjoyed it with all my might. Get Father’s old guidebooks and read about it. I haven’t words beautiful enough to describe it. At Coblentz we had a lovely time, for some students from Bonn, with whom Fred got acquainted on the boat, gave us a serenade. It was a moonlight night, and about one o’clock Flo and I were waked by the most delicious music under our windows. We flew up, and hid behind the curtains, but sly peeps showed us Fred and the students singing away down below. It was the most romantic thing I ever saw—the river, the bridge of boats, the great fortress opposite, moonlight everywhere, and music fit to melt a heart of stone.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Good Wives

This idea of the socialites from the higher classes spending the season in the Mediterranean, meeting with old friends or acquaintances from previous events and just generally taking it easy in gentrified society has always appealed to me (ok, judge me). I mean I would always take on the role of the eccentric loner on the margins of the plot as it’s more the idea of the atmosphere that attracts me rather than any desire for etiquette bound interaction with my fellows, however there is something very intriguing about this concept.

The reality is, way back when, this did happen each year. The apparent great and the good made their way to the coasts of Europe to be seen and form important connections for their lives back home in not quite the same way we do today. Whilst these were not my motives, as I sat on that bench watching the boats, the city centre and the people going about their business, and chatting to friends or acquaintances I knew from other places, or had just met, I really felt like I was experiencing this literary genre come to life.

Although not set in Croatia, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night (1934) deals more specifically with a couple who at the the start of the book are in the French Riviera. There then follows events which strain their relationship. This is a novel that takes the veneer of a culture and explores just exactly what it’s covering up and how easily it is for us to fall apart. I’m not going to give anything more away than just say that as it’s worth reading and add that the tragedy here is not what I had in mind when I decided at that moment I knew what it was like to be one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s characters. When I say I’d be on the margins of this type of story, it’s often this is the safest place to be.

“Noon dominated sea and sky—even the white line of Cannes, five miles off, had faded to a mirage of what was fresh and cool; a robin-breasted sailing boat pulled in behind it a strand from the outer, darker sea. It seemed that there was no life anywhere in all this expanse of coast except under the filtered sunlight of those umbrellas, where something went on amid the color and the murmur.}
Campion walked near her, stood a few feet away and Rosemary closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep; then she half-opened them and watched two dim, blurred pillars that were legs. The man tried to edge his way into a sand-colored cloud, but the cloud floated off into the vast hot sky. Rosemary fell really asleep.
She awoke drenched with sweat to find the beach deserted save for the man in the jockey cap, who was folding a last umbrella.”

“Her love had reached a point where now at last she was beginning to be unhappy, to be desperate.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night

For the rest of the trip I felt I had a new spring in my step and maybe, for just a short time, I’d travelled not just through Europe to the Adriatic, but also a little bit into the past.

Buy Good Wives – by Louisa May Alcott
Buy Tender Is The Night – by F. Scott Fitzgerald