Florence 3

May 19, 2011

Morning saw us at the Bargello, upon which we can spit from the roof of the hotel. The light-filled central court was thronged with wheeling, musical swallows, and I thought that if any residence in the world could be delivered to me for my home, it might be the Bargello. It was full of beautiful things by artists such as Giambologna and Ammannati, whose work I had seen but whose names I had never heard. The Renaissance was a threat to Christian civilization because for a moment meekness and subjugation ceased to be the cardinal virtues. Except for a few individual– and most of those adapted pagans– Christian heroes did not do, but were done to, They suffered the energies of others but did not have particular energies of their own. They said “Thy will be done,” and they thought they were talking to God, but it was the Church which heard them. The golden halos and lapis robes were rewards for allowing themselves to be run down by the juggernaut of their own faith. What did people think when Bacchus and Herakles and Oceanus and seductive sensuous David began creeping back onto the pedestals? Nothing has made “Christendom” more disgusting to me than to wander in its capitols. It was a gilded rot, a conspiracy against the heroic energies of man, almost forgivable because of the glory of art heaped upon it, as jewels across the swollen bodice of some insatiable hag.

Leland and Jack went on to Venice, and DJ and I went to the Orsanmichele, a square church that had, evidently, been a granary and a church in alternation, and which was very beautiful and holy to me, It was like being inside a jewel box. Off to Saint Lawrence, the Medici Church, where I sat and wrote under a Fillipo Lippi Annunciation. Much gold, much gleam of metal and crystal in the dimness. In the gloom the gold gathers the gleam against it. The Chapel of the Princes, the Michelangelo tomb sculptures, a glut of riches. We ate at the Hedgehog outside St. Lawrence, and that was the first time we had a sighting of the stars of the TV show Jersey Shore, which, interestingly enough, we had seen for the first time on the TV in this very room, though the images are inescapable in the contemporary media. We saw them again in the Piazza del Duomo, where a man whispered to me from his shop, “Jersey Shore,” in what was clearly meant to me an American accent. The boys are smaller than you expect, and really quite unexpectedly beautiful. The girls are bigger than you expect and, though beautiful in a way, hard and cruel, like queens in fairy tales.

Finally–in what was for me a haze of sweat and exhaustion–the beautiful, cool church SS Annunziata at the Ospital degli Innocenti. A priest rattled a collection basket and sang at the door. In two places, Annunziata and St Lawrence, I put my coin in the slot and lit candles, praying for what I will not reveal.

We went to a concert at the Teatro Verdi, La Orchestra della Toscana in works of Bruno Maderna, Manuel De Fall, Mahler, Schubert. Stopped at a bar on the way where we met Mario and. . . well, I forget her name, , , from Edmonton. Alberta. Despite his name, he was a Canadian such as they used to make fun of on the TV. We loved them instantly.