Diversions in Sicily — Key Ideas to Explore

A Festa on Mount Eryx: Structure and Spectacle

The longest excerpt describes a religious festa, likely on Mount Eryx, with a level of detail that transforms the event into a set piece. Jones catalogs the sensory overload: men selling water and syrups, buttonholes of gelsomina folded in vine leaves, three piano-organs and a brass band, and a blind singer with "no bridge to his nose" performing a ballad about murder. The description is precise—"fifty-five grapes" of diamond rings on a costume—but also self-consciously literary, comparing the singer to Demodocus from the Odyssey. The procession itself, with cars representing "The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men" and "Sin" as a bearded man with a golden sceptre, is rendered as a baroque, almost surreal spectacle. Jones's voice here is that of a detached observer who nonetheless relishes the chaos, noting the contrast between the riotous bells and the peaceful nuns who ring them.

Marionettes and Metaphysics: The Dedication's Clues

The dedication to Enrico Pampalone is more than a personal note; it is a miniature essay on the persistence of chivalric romance in Sicilian life. Jones invokes Orlando and the Paladins, Angelica's ring, and Astolfo's myrtle prison, arguing that these stories still colour the thoughts and actions of the island's young men. He ties this to a specific economic reality: an "imaginative shoeblack in the Quattro Canti" works for pennies by day to pay for the story told by night in the marionette theatre. This observation grounds the literary in the everyday. The dedication also introduces a cast of "less heroic figures"—the brigadier gambling at Selinunte, the French gentleman classifying a procession, Micio buying story-books—whom Jones promises the reader will meet. These hints suggest that the book's diversions are not only scenic but also anecdotal, populated by eccentrics encountered along the way.

The Authorial Voice: Between Observation and Irony

Jones's prose is marked by a wry, self-aware tone that undercuts any pretension to exhaustive knowledge. In the festa scene, he notes that "while you are thinking that the tumult must be at its height, peaceful nuns are creeping up the convent stair," a juxtaposition that reveals his fondness for anticlimax and hidden order. He also includes a meta-commentary on the blind singer's humor: when the singer fibs, he calls on heaven to "strike him blind and smash his nose if he was not speaking the truth." Jones does not explain the joke; he lets it stand as a characteristic piece of local wit. This restraint is typical of the excerpts, which avoid sweeping generalizations about Sicily in favor of specific, often ironic vignettes. The result is a travel narrative that feels personal and provisional, as if the author is sharing impressions rather than delivering a definitive account.

The Catalog Subject vs. The Text's Reality

The catalog lists Diversions in Sicily under "Sicily (Italy) — Description and travel," a classification that implies a comprehensive geographic survey. Yet the excerpts focus almost entirely on a single festa and the dedication's philosophical musings. There is no mention of major landmarks like Mount Etna or the Valley of the Temples; instead, the text dwells on a blind singer's nose, a shoeblack's wages, and the logistics of dressing participants for a procession. This mismatch suggests that Jones's "diversions" are deliberately selective—he is more interested in the human theater of Sicilian life than in its physical geography. Readers expecting a systematic tour may be surprised, but those open to a meandering, anecdotal approach will find a richly textured portrait of a place as experienced through one man's idiosyncratic lens.

Diversions in Sicily rewards readers who accept its digressive structure. Jones's eye for the peculiar detail—the diamond grapes, the nun's bell-ropes, the shoeblack's marionette habit—turns what could be a routine travelogue into a series of vivid, self-contained sketches. The book does not pretend to cover the island; it offers a personal selection of moments, filtered through a literary sensibility that is both amused and affectionate. Approach it as a collection of essays rather than a guide, and you will find its diversions genuinely diverting.

There’s something about old travel writing that lingers—Jones’s Sicily feels less like a guidebook and more like a room you’ve wandered into, sun-warmed and unhurried. That same quiet intimacy keeps surfacing in A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 — Themes and Context, where lived detail outlasts any itinerary. I keep thinking how both capture places mid-breath, before they were fully labeled.