The Last Rose of Summer

Italian Poppy Field

The natural landscape of a place plays not only an essential functional role – survival – but also the more emotional role of providing ambience. Humans have been cultivating land and growing crops since they made the transition from a hunting and gathering society to an Agrarian one 10,000 years ago. In Evening of the Holiday, Hazzard repeatedly details the Italian landscape, vegetation, and farms. She paints pictures of “endless golden hills” and evokes mood by calling to the reader’s mind the “scents…of the dry red earth and the cut grain and of rosemary” (42). Tancredi takes Sophie to the countryside outside of town, “bare…[with] multitudes of small hills, more shapely than ever in their exposure, [that had] turned to dry gold” (40). Here, Hazzard refers to the midsummer harvests of corn and wheat, the most prominent Italian crops. Also widely grown in Italy are olive and citrus trees, not to mention the vast vineyards, Italy being famous for its olive oil and wine.

Hazzard also depicts Italian flowers and trees native to Tancredi’s town: lemons, figs, oranges, roses, dahlias, marigolds, almonds, poplars, olives, red poppies, cypresses, and crocuses dot the landscape and liven up the villa gardens. The image of the poppy fields was my personal favorite: “The field, which for some time had not been ploughed or planted, was full of coarse grass and tough little shrubs that caught on Sophie’s dress and scratched her bare legs. Tangled everywhere through this dry summer slope were thousands of red poppies” (84).

Hazzard’s descriptions of the Italian landscape invite the reader to step into the setting. In detailing the specificities of the couple’s surroundings, Hazzard symbolizes their heightened senses and feelings. Moreover, the picture Hazzard paints of Italy makes Tancredi and Sophie’s affair feel all the more romantic, dreamlike, and, just like the summer flowers and crops, short-lived.