The Mystery in "Evening of the Holiday"

In an interview Shirley Hazzard says in regards to criticism: ““Max Beerbohm said, when a very old man, "They explain because they can't understand." We're getting shorter and shorter on understanding. Not to generalize too much, but one still goes to Europe for that, for ready understanding, not having to explain. A relief, don't you think? You meet a person, you don't have to explain everything. And they don't look at you with that sort of assiduity, that concentration, as if to say "Well, what on earth does this mean?" Too much explication deadens the intuitions, deadens some shade of irony, perhaps; some sense of the absurdity of life.” (A Conversation with Shirley Hazzard)

Perhaps, this is what Evening of the Holiday is all about – and I’ll try not to explain this to the point of deadening the intuitions – but it seems as if Sophie’s love affair with Trancredi is so meaningful because it’s never fully realized. In their relationship, there was never a need to explain and even in the end, Hazzard leaves one with unanswered questions about Sophie and Tandredi – their intentions, the way the relationship ended, the authenticity of their feelings toward each other, its importance to both characters.

Even from the beginning, Tandcredi and Sophie are mysterious and unexplained to each other. When they meet for coffee it is said that “it was the most natural thing in the world that they should sit there without speaking, making no attempt to discover one another,” (33), suggesting that they want to remain mysterious to each other. Hazzard also continually gives us both Tancredi and Sophie’s points of view, displaying to the reader the misunderstandings between the two. On their first drive to the country, Tancredi finds Sophie “cold and unaccountable,” (44) while Sophie is thinking “It isn’t that I am unapproachable; it is the circumstances,” (44).

Throughout the relationship there is always an air of mystery and confusion. And at the end of the relationship, Tancredi and Sophie seem to be left without closure and explanation. Soiphie proclaims out of the blue to Tancredi that she’s leaving soon. Then when she comes back for Luisa’s funeral and stands by Tancredi’s car without encountering him. Luisa talks about how we all long that kind of mystery without explanation: “’...sometimes experience is like that, and that it matters to have committed to yourself at one moment, even at great cost and disorder, and to now that you have that capacity. We can’t be orderly all the time without becoming bores,’” (114). This suggests that experiences that cannot be completely explained in an orderly way are in a way more significant; or at the very least necessary in order not to become “bores.” It almost makes Tancredi and Sophie’s affair inevitable – adding to the kind of mystical mood.

This idea of the unexplained in Sophie and Tancredi’s relationship is further shown by their misunderstandings Sophie “always wanting to go home,” (43) and has “the solitary pang of the expatriate,” (42). Tancredi never feels as if Sophie is ever fully experiencing the situation. Tancredi says she is “following the score instead of listening to the music..” (53). Tancredi likewise can’t understand Sophie or her culture. “His forthright Italian sensuality found her behavior neurotic an absurd,” (59).

Hazzard says that one goes to Europe so one does not have to explain everything. This seems to be why Sophie retreats to Italy – for a break, a “holiday.” Because there’s a certain mystery about being in a new place, like “a traveller who stands one morning on the deck of a ship in a strange harbor, stuyding the country where she is to live; who wonders which of these grouped houses is to grow familiar, which of these streets most travelled, whether those parks, so attractive in the early sunshine, will become perhaps sinister by night,” (59).

None of the natives do ask Sophie to explain. This can be seen in the way she interacts with the natives. During the festival she observes them from afar and “from time to time someone, glancing upward, stared curiously at an unexpected detail – the foreign-looking woman in print dress, sunglasses, and sandals, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands – on the otherwise deserted steps of the baptistery. The curiosity, however was brief; the crowd, engrossed, had no real interest in her judgment,” (60). Also, the family on the farmland that Tancredi owns also does not ask the two of them to explain their relationship.

In the same way one can never fully grasp a place one travels to, one can also never fully understand any love affair. One can ponder it forever and never really be able to explain it completely. Perhaps, that’s the point.