In the Mountains
1920
In the Mountains, published in 1920 by Elizabeth Von Arnim, is a novel that follows an unnamed English woman who retreats to her mountain chalet in Switzerland after the traumas of World War I. Seeking solitude and healing, she reflects on her past losses while surrounded by the beauty of nature. The narrative unfolds as she encounters two other English women, leading to a unique bond as they support one another through their personal struggles. The book explores themes of loneliness, recovery, and the restorative power of the natural world.
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“But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“For I'm afraid of loneliness; shiveringly, terribly afraid. I don't mean the ordinary physical loneliness, for here I am, deliberately travelled away from London to get to it, to its spaciousness and healing. I mean that awful loneliness of spirit that is the ultimate tragedy of life. When you've got to that, really reached it, without hope, without escape, you die. You just can't bear it, and you die.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“There's no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk -to believe, and to risk everything for your belief.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“I don't believe there was ever anybody who loved being happy as much as I did. What I mean is that I was so acutely conscious of being happy, so appreciative of it; that I wasn't ever bored, and was always and continuously grateful for the whole delicious loveliness of the world.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“I's lonely to stay inside oneself.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“And then when I got home I burrowed about among my books, arranging their volumes and loving the feel of them.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“At night the bottom of the valley looks like water, and the lamps in the little town lying along it like quivering reflections of the stars.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“I wonder why I write about these things. As if I didn't know them! Why do I tell myself in writing what I already so well know? Don't I know about the mountain, and the brimming cup of blue light? It is because, I suppose, it's lonely to stay inside oneself. One has to come out and talk. And if there is no one to talk to one imagines someone, as though one were writing a letter to somebody who loves one, and who will want to know, with the sweet eagerness and solicitude of love, what one does and what the place one is in looks like. It makes one feel less lonely to think like this,”
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
“The only thing to do with one's old sorrows is to tuck them up neatly in their shroud and turn one's face away from their grave towards what is coming next.””
— Elizabeth Von Arnim
