Quite by chance I came across a few words by Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy had come up in discussion at a most convivial (and musical) party last night.
... You shall leave everything you love most: this is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste of others' bread, how salty it is, and know how hard a path it is for one who goes ascending and descending others' stairs ...
How nicely Dante, exiled from Florence with threats to his life, expressed those feelings seven hundred years ago.
That's me in the photo, passing my neighbours the shepherds.
Being in exile back in the land of one's birth presents an interesting concept. Of course, as my friend K says, my real origin probably was elsewhere. A mix, she supposes, of Welsh (based upon my biological origin before adoption) and - based upon her intuition - Jewish. I am not sure how she figured out the latter.
Ascending and descending others' stairs describes a feeling of living a life and pursuing a career that are, in normal terms, perfectly reasonable and decent. However, in some indeterminate way, they don't fit with ones essence.
As for bitter and salty bread, I've found Britain for the most part bland, without the rich tastes of more exotic places. At least there is bread. I left a place where there wasn't enough for me, who had not the roots of a family there.
Thirty years ago I worked with a Hungarian man exiled in 1956. He'd bought a weekend cottage in the flattest, remotest part of England within easy reach, and set out to build a facsimile of a cottage on the Great Plain of his erstwhile homeland.
I suppose that I shall need to build some kind of facsimile until the lease of a salary weakens and I can move somewhere more akin to my nature. However, what is that nature? And what will be the prototype of my facsimile?
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