Always summer...

If it could only be like this always – 

always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe 

and Aloysius in a good temper... 

—from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
(spoken by Sebastian Flyte)

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As I watched the 2008 version of Brideshead Revisited (again, for the millionth time) I realized that I get an ache of melancholy during this "always summer" segment. The entire film is heavyhearted of course, and makes me pensive and woeful, but this bit, in particular, does. It's a gorgeous film, with sentimental vignettes that tug at your heart, and amazing cinematography; the kind that moves and wraps around the characters in each scene. It's quite beautiful. And so is the music, composed by Adrian Johnston. I am convinced that Waugh can't write a bad sentence, and the quote above from the book is such a lovely  example... A metaphor—a longing for simpler times and endless, languid summer days.

Please click here to watch and listen to these amazing scenes 

from the 2008 film version.

Now have a watch of the older 1981 film version, 

with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.

...at any rate, believed myself very near heaven, 
during thoselanguid days at Brideshead.

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It is thus I like to remember Sebastian, 
as he was that summer, when we wandered 
alone together through that enchanted palace; 
Sebastian in his wheel-chair spinning down 
the box-edged walks of the kitchen gardens 
in search of alpine strawberries and warm figs, 
propelling himself through the succession of hothouses,
from scent to scent and climate to climate, 
to cut the muscat grapes and 
choose orchids for our buttonholes...

—from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited

(spoken by Charles Ryder)