March 9, 2011
Walked longer today than yesterday, though perhaps not quite so far. When I start out I’m running in front of traffic like un cerva; by the end I’m shuffling like una taratuga. I’m full of animal names because I went to the sad little Roman zoo. Climbed from the Piazza di Popolo up into the Borghese Gardens, which are vast, Central Park vast. Cherries are in bloom there. I would have lingered and tasted more, but I was anxious to find my way around. Stopped at the Museo Pietro Canonica, in a house the Commune gave Canonica because of his fame and excellence as a sculptor. I’d never heard of him, but his execution was quite good, quite individual. His subject matter was historical, heroic, as dramatic as one can get without crossing into the histrionic. The pieces which were not historical seemed to have been portraits of aristocrats, czars and grand dukes and popes and infant barone. It made him look like an artistic social climber, but he might have been hugely popular, and all that commissioned. His garden gleamed with orange trees, with a well brimming clear water. I’d been aiming all the while for the Borghese Gallerie, but when I arrived, though it was barely noon, it was “sold out.” How does a museum get to be “sold out”? So I bought a ticket for domani il nonno, an absurd time to be looking at art. Thwarted by culture, I hiked on to the zoo. While the Gallery was full to overflowing, the zoo was almost mine alone, an interesting state of affairs. The names of animals are easy to remember, so I hope to encounter more discussions of zoology. Three or four of us were treated to a domestic moment when the lioness nuzzled the lion, and he groomed her for a while, and they snuggled, and then he walked away, finished with that long before she was. The tiger, in plain sight, did not deign to move. The oranutans were holding hands. There in an aquarium coiled the adder which bit Eurydice. Dragged my exhausted carcass past the Belvedere to the Piazza di Spana and the Spanish Steps. I had some refreshments– an elegant, pricey daiquiri–at the top, and then plunged down among the thousand or so kids who played on all the steps. It was quite lovely, and made me wish I’d found the spot forty years before. I was looking for the Keats house, and found it. The girl who sells the tickets is from New York, and told me she had studied Italian for four years before she came here, and still couldn’t understand a thing when they began to talk. I felt better. Her boyfriend is from Limerick, and we shared our affection for the rough, very-unlike-Rome little town. Keats’ last home is a little pale blue room, long and narrow, with a very high ceiling. It has a window open directly onto the steps, and I know the sounds of the piazza delighted Keats as long as he could be delighted by anything. Looking at the tiny bed in the tiny corner– I wept. I wept still in the street making for my hotel. I thought all the ridiculous things you think– maybe I could have comforted him, brought him a whole chicken, smuggled tetramiacin in from the XXth century, held him when Severn was weary. Anything. The other literary place which moved me like that is Yeats’ tomb in Drumcliff.
The trees I misindentified as date palms are Canary palms. There are wild parakeets in the Borghese, zipping by in a flash of emerald.
But, where do the Romans buy groceries?
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
ROME III
March 8, 2011
Twelve hours ago I began tramping around Rome. I come to rest now with boards for legs and stone for a back.
Found a bar last night only one door down. Who should be in it but an elderly couple from Fermanagh, who said they were not enjoying Rome very much, as there is nothing to do. I do understand what they mean. If you’re used to a bar as a center of social life, you’re thrown, for there aren’t that many. Today I found two more, which I may get to yet tonight. They’re both Irish. One is called The Abbey Theater. There are, however, plenty of restaurants; the Irish (or American) idea of drinking without eating is just plain odd to the Romans. As this is Shrove Tuesday, I sat me down to a regular Italian lunch at Re Papa’s in Trastevere. It nearly killed me. It’s as mortal as an Irish breakfast. Still rifting up the remnants. Delicious as sin, though
Set out in the morning light across the Castle footbridge, following a path Simon had laid out for me the day before. The sun was so brilliant and low I could see nothing so long as I was headed east or south–which was most of the time–but a white glare as comforting to the touch as it was blinding to the eye. The Piazza Novollo lay white and sunstruck between its glowing buildings. In the center a Ramesean obelisk floats on a cloud of Baroque river gods. On the south end was a little square stage and a punch-and-judy cart, probably waiting for tonight. On the north end, a fountain where a studly bearded dude is locked in mortal combat with an octopus. I wanted to sit and write there– I did a little–but the Pantheon lay nearby, and it was calling my name.
The Pantheon, now called St. Mary and the Martyrs, springs up out of an ordinary piazza with no fanfare whatever. One might miss it if one didn’t look in the right direction at the right moment. Is it the most famous building in the world? The Parthenon and the Taj Mahal might ace it, but not that many more. It deserves whatever praise, for it is suave and essential, and only a precise combination of efficiency and vision–the kind that, in a different mood, builds durable empires–could conceive it. On the inside it looks like it was finished yesterday. Flashbulbs flashed beside the signs that said, “No photography.” A bunch of Japanese kids set a camera on the drain and then circled around, so the camera would snap them in the dead center of the structure, heads framed by the sky blue oculus. The oculus threw a blinding oval on the north wall. I must say that the imposed Christian iconography is alone loathsome, presumptuous, infantile. It’s like a dog pissing on a statue and thinking it owns it. I suppose if that was what was necessary to preserve the masterwork through troubled times, then so be it. I remember in the Sistine Chapel an attendant rushing in and shushing everybody, trying to restore the illusion that it is still a place of worship. The Catholic Church has always tried to have it both ways, to be removed and holy and at the same time a profit-taking power of the world. That might be the center of its absurdity. I have never hated the Church Political more than now I’m in the capital of it.
The Trevi Fountain was my next stop. The playfulness which I find throughout the monuments of Rome is nowhere plainer than here. It was surrounded by laughing children and–for some reason–soldiers. Two gulls perched on the fountain, looking at us as we at them, every now and then squawking something to one another which must surely have been a comment on somebody in the Fellini-esque crowd.
Walked to the Colosseum through the ruins of the Forum. It must have been beautiful then, for it’s beautiful now as a few columns and tortured brick walls softened by pines. Roman building practices are so like ours that the ruins do not give off an air of antiquity, but rather of a bombed city just now being restored. All the African boys were selling tiny model tripods. I have no idea what that was about. They must have been illegal, for they all swept up their goods and pretended to be walking idly along when the polizia drove by. Simon warned me don’t bother to go into the Colosseum, so I didn’t–however doggedly I was harassed by the tour salesmen–but I could see enough inside to appreciate how gigantic it was. Still, however, without feeling oversized or looming. The only building in Rome which looms inhumanly is the nearby, snow-blind white Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the gawky giant-child of the whole city. Did the fascists build it? I think they must.
Beautiful shade and suave ruins of the Palatine Hill, the source of the word “palace,” so the tour guide said.
Spring flowers in the grass of the Circus Maximus.
Temple of the Vestal Virgins, the oldest building in Rome, looking very Greek. A man was peeing on it.
I did–again–as Simon suggested, and crossed the Tiber into Trastevere. In some ways, though lacking famous monuments, this quarter is the best yet. It is a keenly liveable and heavily lived-in place, with chaotic brick streets and the most elegant vernacular architecture in the world. Everywhere you looked was something– I hate to use the word–picturesque, a crooked street with laundry flapping from the windows, an angle of walls, a flower pot sitting just so in a patch of Roman dirt. I longed for my paint and bushes. It was the end of the day and I was shivering with exhaustion, but I lingered and lingered. Found what is to this point my favorite church in Rome: Basilica de Santa Maria in Trastevere, a Romanesque jewel-box, creepy and holy and dark, the way an ancient church should be. The faux beggar at the door said, “The Virgin Mary watches you.” My Italian isn’t quick enough to reply, “And you too.” Roman beggars– most of whom are pros and therefore frauds-- genuflect in the street, face down, like slaves before pharaoh on the old movies.
Took advantage of information on a poster and went, finally, to a concert at the Chiesa Valdese, not far from my hotel. The title was: Festino nella sera del giovedi grasso avanti cena di Adriano Banchieri (1567-1634). I didn’t know Banchieri, but some of the music was familiar. Maybe Praetorius used it. It was less a concert than a masque in honor of Carnevale, and very charming. The homey chaos in the church before it started– performers and audience chatting, costumes being donned, all sorts of “unprofessional” behavior– led to me to expect less than I got. It was rambunctious and playful and yet musically tight. The performers were people to whom music came easily, so they could afford not to be so serious about it. The main tenor was crystalline and perfect. A good actor, too. It was quite wonderful, a Renaissance romp in the place which, after Florence, invented it all. The old woman who sat next to me spent the half hour before the concert throwing her coat up against me, saving the row for her family, incidentally expressing her vexation that I had been there before she could claim it all. Her daughter would move the coat, asking her mother what if I had a friend coming, but when her back was turned, nona threw the coat against me again. Naturally she chattered through the performance, twisting around in her seat, fixated on her granddaughter, patting everyone on the shoulder so they could see what cute thing the granddaughter was doing at the moment. My Italian was not up to either “stop being a schoolgirl and pay attention to the concert” or “if you want to watch your granddaughter, why don’t you stay home and do it?” I did have the revenge of making her chatter to me a long time before saying, “No parlo Italiano.”
Which, at this time, is only 99.5% true.
Twelve hours ago I began tramping around Rome. I come to rest now with boards for legs and stone for a back.
Found a bar last night only one door down. Who should be in it but an elderly couple from Fermanagh, who said they were not enjoying Rome very much, as there is nothing to do. I do understand what they mean. If you’re used to a bar as a center of social life, you’re thrown, for there aren’t that many. Today I found two more, which I may get to yet tonight. They’re both Irish. One is called The Abbey Theater. There are, however, plenty of restaurants; the Irish (or American) idea of drinking without eating is just plain odd to the Romans. As this is Shrove Tuesday, I sat me down to a regular Italian lunch at Re Papa’s in Trastevere. It nearly killed me. It’s as mortal as an Irish breakfast. Still rifting up the remnants. Delicious as sin, though
Set out in the morning light across the Castle footbridge, following a path Simon had laid out for me the day before. The sun was so brilliant and low I could see nothing so long as I was headed east or south–which was most of the time–but a white glare as comforting to the touch as it was blinding to the eye. The Piazza Novollo lay white and sunstruck between its glowing buildings. In the center a Ramesean obelisk floats on a cloud of Baroque river gods. On the south end was a little square stage and a punch-and-judy cart, probably waiting for tonight. On the north end, a fountain where a studly bearded dude is locked in mortal combat with an octopus. I wanted to sit and write there– I did a little–but the Pantheon lay nearby, and it was calling my name.
The Pantheon, now called St. Mary and the Martyrs, springs up out of an ordinary piazza with no fanfare whatever. One might miss it if one didn’t look in the right direction at the right moment. Is it the most famous building in the world? The Parthenon and the Taj Mahal might ace it, but not that many more. It deserves whatever praise, for it is suave and essential, and only a precise combination of efficiency and vision–the kind that, in a different mood, builds durable empires–could conceive it. On the inside it looks like it was finished yesterday. Flashbulbs flashed beside the signs that said, “No photography.” A bunch of Japanese kids set a camera on the drain and then circled around, so the camera would snap them in the dead center of the structure, heads framed by the sky blue oculus. The oculus threw a blinding oval on the north wall. I must say that the imposed Christian iconography is alone loathsome, presumptuous, infantile. It’s like a dog pissing on a statue and thinking it owns it. I suppose if that was what was necessary to preserve the masterwork through troubled times, then so be it. I remember in the Sistine Chapel an attendant rushing in and shushing everybody, trying to restore the illusion that it is still a place of worship. The Catholic Church has always tried to have it both ways, to be removed and holy and at the same time a profit-taking power of the world. That might be the center of its absurdity. I have never hated the Church Political more than now I’m in the capital of it.
The Trevi Fountain was my next stop. The playfulness which I find throughout the monuments of Rome is nowhere plainer than here. It was surrounded by laughing children and–for some reason–soldiers. Two gulls perched on the fountain, looking at us as we at them, every now and then squawking something to one another which must surely have been a comment on somebody in the Fellini-esque crowd.
Walked to the Colosseum through the ruins of the Forum. It must have been beautiful then, for it’s beautiful now as a few columns and tortured brick walls softened by pines. Roman building practices are so like ours that the ruins do not give off an air of antiquity, but rather of a bombed city just now being restored. All the African boys were selling tiny model tripods. I have no idea what that was about. They must have been illegal, for they all swept up their goods and pretended to be walking idly along when the polizia drove by. Simon warned me don’t bother to go into the Colosseum, so I didn’t–however doggedly I was harassed by the tour salesmen–but I could see enough inside to appreciate how gigantic it was. Still, however, without feeling oversized or looming. The only building in Rome which looms inhumanly is the nearby, snow-blind white Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the gawky giant-child of the whole city. Did the fascists build it? I think they must.
Beautiful shade and suave ruins of the Palatine Hill, the source of the word “palace,” so the tour guide said.
Spring flowers in the grass of the Circus Maximus.
Temple of the Vestal Virgins, the oldest building in Rome, looking very Greek. A man was peeing on it.
I did–again–as Simon suggested, and crossed the Tiber into Trastevere. In some ways, though lacking famous monuments, this quarter is the best yet. It is a keenly liveable and heavily lived-in place, with chaotic brick streets and the most elegant vernacular architecture in the world. Everywhere you looked was something– I hate to use the word–picturesque, a crooked street with laundry flapping from the windows, an angle of walls, a flower pot sitting just so in a patch of Roman dirt. I longed for my paint and bushes. It was the end of the day and I was shivering with exhaustion, but I lingered and lingered. Found what is to this point my favorite church in Rome: Basilica de Santa Maria in Trastevere, a Romanesque jewel-box, creepy and holy and dark, the way an ancient church should be. The faux beggar at the door said, “The Virgin Mary watches you.” My Italian isn’t quick enough to reply, “And you too.” Roman beggars– most of whom are pros and therefore frauds-- genuflect in the street, face down, like slaves before pharaoh on the old movies.
Took advantage of information on a poster and went, finally, to a concert at the Chiesa Valdese, not far from my hotel. The title was: Festino nella sera del giovedi grasso avanti cena di Adriano Banchieri (1567-1634). I didn’t know Banchieri, but some of the music was familiar. Maybe Praetorius used it. It was less a concert than a masque in honor of Carnevale, and very charming. The homey chaos in the church before it started– performers and audience chatting, costumes being donned, all sorts of “unprofessional” behavior– led to me to expect less than I got. It was rambunctious and playful and yet musically tight. The performers were people to whom music came easily, so they could afford not to be so serious about it. The main tenor was crystalline and perfect. A good actor, too. It was quite wonderful, a Renaissance romp in the place which, after Florence, invented it all. The old woman who sat next to me spent the half hour before the concert throwing her coat up against me, saving the row for her family, incidentally expressing her vexation that I had been there before she could claim it all. Her daughter would move the coat, asking her mother what if I had a friend coming, but when her back was turned, nona threw the coat against me again. Naturally she chattered through the performance, twisting around in her seat, fixated on her granddaughter, patting everyone on the shoulder so they could see what cute thing the granddaughter was doing at the moment. My Italian was not up to either “stop being a schoolgirl and pay attention to the concert” or “if you want to watch your granddaughter, why don’t you stay home and do it?” I did have the revenge of making her chatter to me a long time before saying, “No parlo Italiano.”
Which, at this time, is only 99.5% true.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Rome II
March 7, 2011
Couldn’t figure out why there was confetti on the ground everywhere, and why little girls–le bambine-- were everywhere dressed like princesses, and little boys– i bambini-- like animals. Then I realized I’d come to Rome during Carnevale, and that tomorrow is in fact Shrove Tuesday. By some good fortune I walked last night past the ara pacis–looking like it had been carved yesterday– and Augustus’ mausoleum to the Piazza del Popolo, where a great festivity was going on. Hundreds of people were watching light shows on the facades of the buildings, milling about, shooting glowing toys into the air. Horses were running around and around in a little arena. I couldn’t figure out what that was–a race without riders?– but it was grand. A baby less than a year old was in papa’s arms, pointing at everything with a look of transported wonder on his face. I prayed that emotion might remain with him through his life, even if he didn’t remember why. The jewel-box Baroque churches on the Piazza and along the Via Corso were all open, each gaudier than the next. I went in to each. In some there were worshipers, singing and praying aloud, either ignoring the tourists or courting us. Some of the art was exquisite, some of it was overrun by its own emotion. One woman had a show of her own paintings in a side chapel. Unfortunately the art was crap, so I didn’t try to talk with her about it. A South African couple had left a bitter comment in the comment book about how rude all the Romans are, and how back in civilized places you retreated into churches for comfort, whereas they had found more rudeness inside. One could just imagine those two. I wrote underneath my testimony, which was that the Romans had been endlessly patient with and kind to me, and that civility is as deep here as I’ve ever seen it in the world.
Bought a copy of Walt Whitman in Italian, Folglie D’Erba:.
Demonio o ucello! (esclamo l’anima fanciulla)
Evening: Attempt at writing this interrupted while I get up and stamp around the room, trying to get rid of gigantic leg cramps.
Last night when I arrived at the Piazza del Populo, the thinnest curve of moon shone above Rome, like a goblet so fine it was transparent except for a few drops of liquid at the base, the color of pearl. I’m wondering where I will see it tonight. I know I shall, for the sky all day was blue, clear, absolutely cloudless.
I was making for the Pantheon early in the morning when I was stopped by an Indian girl who wanted to know if I wanted to see the Vatican. I assumed her salutation was portentous, so I said Yes. Our guide was piu bellisimo Simon, every drop of whose considerable charisma was necessary to get us through the ordeal without somebody’s losing his temper. Simon was eloquent, funny (I’ve already mentioned handsome) informative, and wrong only every so often. His mild homophobia (he assured us that all the handsome employees of the Vatican were boyfriends of one cardinal or another) was made funnier because he was practically designed to attract the gay man’s eye. He was so Catholic as to believe the Donation of Constantine was not a forgery. I was the first in the group of what would eventually be 40 or so, and so had a portion of his time that I found at once pleasant and exhausting. A tall blond flame he was, burning us through the crowds and with some dispatch from sight to sight. We paid 45 euros in order to avoid the lines. What is the first thing we did? Got into line, in the cold shadow of the Vatican walls on a cold if sparkling morning. He almost lost us then. There was an explanation, some snafu within, but it doesn’t matter that much when one has paid to avoid the precise thing with which one is subsequently confronted. Anyway, inside we got. I had such a crush I was determined to give Simon the benefit of the doubt, but even I kept muttering within , “It’s been an hour. . . it’s been an hour and a half and I haven’t seen a single work of art.”
Simon hates Dan Brown as much as I do.
Well, we did see the art at last. It was astonishing, overwhelming, a glut, a hecatomb, a tsunami. Hardly a square inch lacked something famous, and there were acres of beautiful things I had never heard of. Does the Pope walk through those galleries, rubbing his hands, glorying that, in terms of the value of masterpieces, he is the richest man that ever was? In one round courtyard the Apollo Belvedere and the Laacoon stare whitely at one another from a crowd of statues as beautiful as themselves. The Sistine Chapel was the last thing we saw as a group. The build-up may have slanted my perceptions a little. The effect was not what I expected, not better or worse, but far more available to the emotions. I expected to be dumbstruck, but it was like seeing an old friend and being relieved that he was everything one expected, all the power and excellence and additionally–it’s hard to explain this– good humor thrown in as well. Not exactly funny, of course, but smiling, God’s bare butt mooning the kneeling Pope being just the sharp end of it. What I noticed about the whole Vatican is its emotional availability. It is not profound, exactly. It is far too busy, far too Italian for profundity. It is immensely beautiful, but manifesting more a superstitious and very rich nona’s imagination than a saint’s.
Now the Basilica itself. One familiar with St. Paul’s can’t be too astounded by St, Peter’s, though the vastness of the latter exceeds any comparison my experienced can make. London and Rome are constantly comparing themselves in my mind, their public buildings, their central churches. It is as if London took its title of world capital from Rome fully conscious of what it was doing, but with less of the Roman verve and humanity. The big British Imperial buildings are arrogant and horrifying, blocky, sometimes defiantly ugly, the way a rich man will do nothing to hide his paunch. The Basilica, however big, is not too big. It redifines enormousness, perhaps, but still allows proportion and availability to have the upper hand. It also does without those grotesque statues of generals and dukes now lost to history which clutter St. Paul’s glittering space. Popes and saints seem somehow more fitted to the occasion, and the sculpture is better anyway. I expected my spirit to be flattened by the Basilica. Instead, my senses were piqued to look at everything, as a man looking at the works of man, delighted.
Gothic is Christianity’s architecture. Baroque is essentially a secular style, fitted for rich burghers and self-satisfied kings, and when Christian spirit is poured into a Baroque shape, created is a hybrid that no one has explained satisfactorily. The Basilica is a holy place of civilization, but not of God. In some ways it is too perfect. A place of the spirit would honor the Creator by being, here and there, a little rough, a little incomplete. Nevertheless, in the light of the descending dove, I prayed until tears stood in my eyes. I will never say what I prayed for.
Where I felt holiness was in the crypt. There lie dozens of dead popes. Paul VI and John Paul I have flowers on their stones. The tomb of that absurd saint-to-be, John Paul II, was surrounded by rosary-tellers, so that one had to edge gingerly by not to disturb their worship. But the tomb of Peter the Apostle exuded sanctity and beauty at once. There I was awed. There my spirit caught up with my eyes at the banquet.
A couple from Arden were in Simon’s group with me. Mondo piccollo.
Couldn’t figure out why there was confetti on the ground everywhere, and why little girls–le bambine-- were everywhere dressed like princesses, and little boys– i bambini-- like animals. Then I realized I’d come to Rome during Carnevale, and that tomorrow is in fact Shrove Tuesday. By some good fortune I walked last night past the ara pacis–looking like it had been carved yesterday– and Augustus’ mausoleum to the Piazza del Popolo, where a great festivity was going on. Hundreds of people were watching light shows on the facades of the buildings, milling about, shooting glowing toys into the air. Horses were running around and around in a little arena. I couldn’t figure out what that was–a race without riders?– but it was grand. A baby less than a year old was in papa’s arms, pointing at everything with a look of transported wonder on his face. I prayed that emotion might remain with him through his life, even if he didn’t remember why. The jewel-box Baroque churches on the Piazza and along the Via Corso were all open, each gaudier than the next. I went in to each. In some there were worshipers, singing and praying aloud, either ignoring the tourists or courting us. Some of the art was exquisite, some of it was overrun by its own emotion. One woman had a show of her own paintings in a side chapel. Unfortunately the art was crap, so I didn’t try to talk with her about it. A South African couple had left a bitter comment in the comment book about how rude all the Romans are, and how back in civilized places you retreated into churches for comfort, whereas they had found more rudeness inside. One could just imagine those two. I wrote underneath my testimony, which was that the Romans had been endlessly patient with and kind to me, and that civility is as deep here as I’ve ever seen it in the world.
Bought a copy of Walt Whitman in Italian, Folglie D’Erba:.
Demonio o ucello! (esclamo l’anima fanciulla)
Evening: Attempt at writing this interrupted while I get up and stamp around the room, trying to get rid of gigantic leg cramps.
Last night when I arrived at the Piazza del Populo, the thinnest curve of moon shone above Rome, like a goblet so fine it was transparent except for a few drops of liquid at the base, the color of pearl. I’m wondering where I will see it tonight. I know I shall, for the sky all day was blue, clear, absolutely cloudless.
I was making for the Pantheon early in the morning when I was stopped by an Indian girl who wanted to know if I wanted to see the Vatican. I assumed her salutation was portentous, so I said Yes. Our guide was piu bellisimo Simon, every drop of whose considerable charisma was necessary to get us through the ordeal without somebody’s losing his temper. Simon was eloquent, funny (I’ve already mentioned handsome) informative, and wrong only every so often. His mild homophobia (he assured us that all the handsome employees of the Vatican were boyfriends of one cardinal or another) was made funnier because he was practically designed to attract the gay man’s eye. He was so Catholic as to believe the Donation of Constantine was not a forgery. I was the first in the group of what would eventually be 40 or so, and so had a portion of his time that I found at once pleasant and exhausting. A tall blond flame he was, burning us through the crowds and with some dispatch from sight to sight. We paid 45 euros in order to avoid the lines. What is the first thing we did? Got into line, in the cold shadow of the Vatican walls on a cold if sparkling morning. He almost lost us then. There was an explanation, some snafu within, but it doesn’t matter that much when one has paid to avoid the precise thing with which one is subsequently confronted. Anyway, inside we got. I had such a crush I was determined to give Simon the benefit of the doubt, but even I kept muttering within , “It’s been an hour. . . it’s been an hour and a half and I haven’t seen a single work of art.”
Simon hates Dan Brown as much as I do.
Well, we did see the art at last. It was astonishing, overwhelming, a glut, a hecatomb, a tsunami. Hardly a square inch lacked something famous, and there were acres of beautiful things I had never heard of. Does the Pope walk through those galleries, rubbing his hands, glorying that, in terms of the value of masterpieces, he is the richest man that ever was? In one round courtyard the Apollo Belvedere and the Laacoon stare whitely at one another from a crowd of statues as beautiful as themselves. The Sistine Chapel was the last thing we saw as a group. The build-up may have slanted my perceptions a little. The effect was not what I expected, not better or worse, but far more available to the emotions. I expected to be dumbstruck, but it was like seeing an old friend and being relieved that he was everything one expected, all the power and excellence and additionally–it’s hard to explain this– good humor thrown in as well. Not exactly funny, of course, but smiling, God’s bare butt mooning the kneeling Pope being just the sharp end of it. What I noticed about the whole Vatican is its emotional availability. It is not profound, exactly. It is far too busy, far too Italian for profundity. It is immensely beautiful, but manifesting more a superstitious and very rich nona’s imagination than a saint’s.
Now the Basilica itself. One familiar with St. Paul’s can’t be too astounded by St, Peter’s, though the vastness of the latter exceeds any comparison my experienced can make. London and Rome are constantly comparing themselves in my mind, their public buildings, their central churches. It is as if London took its title of world capital from Rome fully conscious of what it was doing, but with less of the Roman verve and humanity. The big British Imperial buildings are arrogant and horrifying, blocky, sometimes defiantly ugly, the way a rich man will do nothing to hide his paunch. The Basilica, however big, is not too big. It redifines enormousness, perhaps, but still allows proportion and availability to have the upper hand. It also does without those grotesque statues of generals and dukes now lost to history which clutter St. Paul’s glittering space. Popes and saints seem somehow more fitted to the occasion, and the sculpture is better anyway. I expected my spirit to be flattened by the Basilica. Instead, my senses were piqued to look at everything, as a man looking at the works of man, delighted.
Gothic is Christianity’s architecture. Baroque is essentially a secular style, fitted for rich burghers and self-satisfied kings, and when Christian spirit is poured into a Baroque shape, created is a hybrid that no one has explained satisfactorily. The Basilica is a holy place of civilization, but not of God. In some ways it is too perfect. A place of the spirit would honor the Creator by being, here and there, a little rough, a little incomplete. Nevertheless, in the light of the descending dove, I prayed until tears stood in my eyes. I will never say what I prayed for.
Where I felt holiness was in the crypt. There lie dozens of dead popes. Paul VI and John Paul I have flowers on their stones. The tomb of that absurd saint-to-be, John Paul II, was surrounded by rosary-tellers, so that one had to edge gingerly by not to disturb their worship. But the tomb of Peter the Apostle exuded sanctity and beauty at once. There I was awed. There my spirit caught up with my eyes at the banquet.
A couple from Arden were in Simon’s group with me. Mondo piccollo.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Rome I
March 6, 2011
Every single leg of the flight from Asheville was delayed or weirded in some way. The plane that took us from Chicago to Munich had been struck by lightning, and had to be checked out. I slept heroically across the Atlantic, and so have very little jet-lag. I almost never do on this side. Munich might have been Cincinnati for all I saw of it. What struck was that German men are tall and masterful looking, an observation rather disturbing now that I consider it.
Rome
Atlante Garden, Via Crescenzio, just off the Piazza Risorgimento. I’ve been in Rome for 22 hours. The pines are the first thing exotic you notice while being whisked from the airport, the bare tall trunks with viridian bowls set on their heads. They are very beautiful, and strange, like looking at a painting. You think the old painters made them up, but they didn’t. The streets are lined with orange trees, heavy now with oranges. In the courtyards are lemons, also heavy laden. I walked in the evening and into the night, after I was settled in this heavily-curtained, dark green room. I ate at a ristorante near the Piazza di Cavour, ordering in utter ignorance of what I was going to get, which turned out to be pasta with prawns in it, and a fried ball of. . . something. . . with a mixture inside which included peas. All was, nevertheless, excellent. Their house wine was a sparkling red, sweet and bubbly, exactly the sort of thing I could drink forever. Three young men sat down beside me. For a while I despaired of what Italian I had learned, until I realized they were speaking Spanish. They were handsome and each subtly perfumed, a feast for all the senses except–alas–touch. I wandered about until I came to the Tiber and the Castle Saint Angelo. There I burst into tears, for I was standing in Rome, at a FAMOUS PLACE, and everything was lit with the soft gold glow of European streetlights. An old man was playing Bach on a guitar. As a river the Tiber is hardly more impressive than Liffey, much less so than Thames, but so full of history its waters might as well have been running gold. Despite the actual age of everything, Rome does not give the impression of antiquity. All seems alive in the present, vital, and unexpectedly colored in the shades of healthy human bodies–from pale ivory to pinkish to sand to café au lait to sunny golden-brown. The buildings are never African black, but the vendors in the street are, and so the spectrum of flesh tones is complete. This morning a billion people were lined up in the Square waiting to get into St. Peter’s, so I passed that by and got on one of those tour busses where you sit on the roof and listen to history, and Mozart, and, on a day like this, freeze nearly to death. Ho freddo. I’ll need to trace the route on foot to have full benefit, but the tour rang with names one has heard forever– St. John Lateran, Borghese, Circus Maximus. Again, nothing looked “preserved” or sacred, but all part of a living city. It’s hard to dodge the impression that the history of the papacy has been far more political than spiritual. If the popes had not sponsored great art and architecture, they would have been no use at all. I loved the wall that allowed the pope to flee in times of siege from the Vatican palaces to the safety of Castle St. Angelo. The seven hills of Rome are scarcely what we would call hills at all, but I suppose they stood out where everything else was marsh.
Something in my walk must say “American,” for people start speaking to me in English before I open my mouth. Those times when I’ve tried my Italian, they have been kind, repeating what I just said as though making sure they understood, while gently correcting pronunciation and ending. The hotel staff has no English (except for the bartender) so I’ve practiced on them a little. I was chatting with the desk clerk in what approached fluency, and then I had to ask about WiFi, where my Italian promptly collapsed. It is exhausting to be constantly groping for comprehension. I went over Italian idioms and grammar before sleep, trying in those last seconds to figure it out. I bet babies do the same when they’re learning the first time around. The cheerful waiter at the café in the park–which served me a nasty salad, but no matter–corrected a number of idioms for me. People are all the time saying “prego,” which must mean everything from “welcome” to “OK” to “don’t worry about it.”
The best thing I’ve seen yet: small, old-fashioned wind-up toys running by a vendor’s stand near the Castle. The sunlight blazed on them. They seemed so distant, so precious--
Every single leg of the flight from Asheville was delayed or weirded in some way. The plane that took us from Chicago to Munich had been struck by lightning, and had to be checked out. I slept heroically across the Atlantic, and so have very little jet-lag. I almost never do on this side. Munich might have been Cincinnati for all I saw of it. What struck was that German men are tall and masterful looking, an observation rather disturbing now that I consider it.
Rome
Atlante Garden, Via Crescenzio, just off the Piazza Risorgimento. I’ve been in Rome for 22 hours. The pines are the first thing exotic you notice while being whisked from the airport, the bare tall trunks with viridian bowls set on their heads. They are very beautiful, and strange, like looking at a painting. You think the old painters made them up, but they didn’t. The streets are lined with orange trees, heavy now with oranges. In the courtyards are lemons, also heavy laden. I walked in the evening and into the night, after I was settled in this heavily-curtained, dark green room. I ate at a ristorante near the Piazza di Cavour, ordering in utter ignorance of what I was going to get, which turned out to be pasta with prawns in it, and a fried ball of. . . something. . . with a mixture inside which included peas. All was, nevertheless, excellent. Their house wine was a sparkling red, sweet and bubbly, exactly the sort of thing I could drink forever. Three young men sat down beside me. For a while I despaired of what Italian I had learned, until I realized they were speaking Spanish. They were handsome and each subtly perfumed, a feast for all the senses except–alas–touch. I wandered about until I came to the Tiber and the Castle Saint Angelo. There I burst into tears, for I was standing in Rome, at a FAMOUS PLACE, and everything was lit with the soft gold glow of European streetlights. An old man was playing Bach on a guitar. As a river the Tiber is hardly more impressive than Liffey, much less so than Thames, but so full of history its waters might as well have been running gold. Despite the actual age of everything, Rome does not give the impression of antiquity. All seems alive in the present, vital, and unexpectedly colored in the shades of healthy human bodies–from pale ivory to pinkish to sand to café au lait to sunny golden-brown. The buildings are never African black, but the vendors in the street are, and so the spectrum of flesh tones is complete. This morning a billion people were lined up in the Square waiting to get into St. Peter’s, so I passed that by and got on one of those tour busses where you sit on the roof and listen to history, and Mozart, and, on a day like this, freeze nearly to death. Ho freddo. I’ll need to trace the route on foot to have full benefit, but the tour rang with names one has heard forever– St. John Lateran, Borghese, Circus Maximus. Again, nothing looked “preserved” or sacred, but all part of a living city. It’s hard to dodge the impression that the history of the papacy has been far more political than spiritual. If the popes had not sponsored great art and architecture, they would have been no use at all. I loved the wall that allowed the pope to flee in times of siege from the Vatican palaces to the safety of Castle St. Angelo. The seven hills of Rome are scarcely what we would call hills at all, but I suppose they stood out where everything else was marsh.
Something in my walk must say “American,” for people start speaking to me in English before I open my mouth. Those times when I’ve tried my Italian, they have been kind, repeating what I just said as though making sure they understood, while gently correcting pronunciation and ending. The hotel staff has no English (except for the bartender) so I’ve practiced on them a little. I was chatting with the desk clerk in what approached fluency, and then I had to ask about WiFi, where my Italian promptly collapsed. It is exhausting to be constantly groping for comprehension. I went over Italian idioms and grammar before sleep, trying in those last seconds to figure it out. I bet babies do the same when they’re learning the first time around. The cheerful waiter at the café in the park–which served me a nasty salad, but no matter–corrected a number of idioms for me. People are all the time saying “prego,” which must mean everything from “welcome” to “OK” to “don’t worry about it.”
The best thing I’ve seen yet: small, old-fashioned wind-up toys running by a vendor’s stand near the Castle. The sunlight blazed on them. They seemed so distant, so precious--
Friday, March 4, 2011
March 4, 2011
Cool winter-spring. I threw ageing sesame crackers out onto the lawn for the crows, who dip them in the birdbath to soften them before they eat.
Budget debates in the States and in the Federal Government have reached a pitch that amounts to idiocy. Everyone is striking poses; no one embraces the two words that would solve the problem with the least and the most evenly distributed misfortune: raise taxes. Or, if we want to stretch to five words: raise taxes on the rich. Legislative jackals grin their jackal grins and vow to axe the NEA, with its thousandth part of a percent, to whittle away Unemployment and Headstart while with the other hand hoarding their own selfish riches for that second beach house, for that roomier corporate jet. Recognize those services which should be offered, and then figure out how to pay for them. There must be something desperately wrong with this line of reasoning; it seems so clear, and yet nobody mentions it.
Off to the airport in–what?– twenty minutes. One is never ready.
Cool winter-spring. I threw ageing sesame crackers out onto the lawn for the crows, who dip them in the birdbath to soften them before they eat.
Budget debates in the States and in the Federal Government have reached a pitch that amounts to idiocy. Everyone is striking poses; no one embraces the two words that would solve the problem with the least and the most evenly distributed misfortune: raise taxes. Or, if we want to stretch to five words: raise taxes on the rich. Legislative jackals grin their jackal grins and vow to axe the NEA, with its thousandth part of a percent, to whittle away Unemployment and Headstart while with the other hand hoarding their own selfish riches for that second beach house, for that roomier corporate jet. Recognize those services which should be offered, and then figure out how to pay for them. There must be something desperately wrong with this line of reasoning; it seems so clear, and yet nobody mentions it.
Off to the airport in–what?– twenty minutes. One is never ready.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
March 2, 2011
Acting class last night. G, a high school kid, was doing an exercise, breathing on every phrase of his speech (Oberon), and the effect was striking, overwhelming. It revealed a life the words owned beneath the life of the phrase and sentence, as if the words were stone and each syllable had to be carved by labor and concentration. As an actor I have typically worked on a level above that, concentrating on the meaning of the whole, trying to deliver a speech to the comprehension of the audience. Delivering the inner life of each word is a different process, and one so applicable to all poetry that my head spun with revelation. As a playwright I have felt that most “methods” were superfluous, a sort of self-indulgence on the part of those who taught them. Maybe not. Maybe I thought that because I resisted doing any of them. Day by day am more honored by the labor that an actor puts into the words he says, which are sometimes my words. It humbles me into trying harder to make those words worth the effort. Even if I don’t hear it in the finished speech, G has an understanding of those lines which must communicate, must make a difference on some level. My understanding of them was altered. Errors in fact are made, and I’m the sort of person in whom that instills mistrust, but all those are borne away by the laborious, awkward revelation of a boy on a stool, speaking words as though they were the first words spoken by anybody, ever.
Acting class last night. G, a high school kid, was doing an exercise, breathing on every phrase of his speech (Oberon), and the effect was striking, overwhelming. It revealed a life the words owned beneath the life of the phrase and sentence, as if the words were stone and each syllable had to be carved by labor and concentration. As an actor I have typically worked on a level above that, concentrating on the meaning of the whole, trying to deliver a speech to the comprehension of the audience. Delivering the inner life of each word is a different process, and one so applicable to all poetry that my head spun with revelation. As a playwright I have felt that most “methods” were superfluous, a sort of self-indulgence on the part of those who taught them. Maybe not. Maybe I thought that because I resisted doing any of them. Day by day am more honored by the labor that an actor puts into the words he says, which are sometimes my words. It humbles me into trying harder to make those words worth the effort. Even if I don’t hear it in the finished speech, G has an understanding of those lines which must communicate, must make a difference on some level. My understanding of them was altered. Errors in fact are made, and I’m the sort of person in whom that instills mistrust, but all those are borne away by the laborious, awkward revelation of a boy on a stool, speaking words as though they were the first words spoken by anybody, ever.
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