Last Day in Italy (Part 2)

We are in Rome's "metropolitana" which unlike many other European metro systems, is dirty, rundown, absolutely packed, and worst of all, full of thieves.

You feel nervous down here, the way you might feel in Mexico City's subway. You hold on tight to your bag and remain vigilant.

You travel the few stops packed like sardines.

There's an air of extreme paranoia and the slightest accidental brush of an arm or any physical contact results in a dirty stare, flinching retreat or even a curse.


We are somewhere inside the rabbit warren of connecting tunnels between platforms and as if on cue, there's a sudden shriek. A crowd collects, commuters gasp in horror, an army of security guards come rushing out of nowhere. A woman is lying face down on the escalators. She has been knocked down by a purse snatcher who is gone in a flash.

You thank God it wasn't you. You know everyone else is thinking the same thing.
We emerge into the light of day: Piazza Spagna, the "Spanish Steps".

Ugg! You catch sight of literally hundreds of people lounging all over the elegant scalinata which climbs toward Piazza Trinità dei Mont. There are lots of kids fooling around and people taking stupid photos of themselves. The scene resembles one of those overcrowded penguin colonies you see in documentaries about Antarctica. There is barely any room to make the ascent - so we give up on doing that too!

We've come to see the Keats-Shelley House, which luckily is at the foot of the Spanish Steps. I have a brief moment of dread. If there are this many people here in the piazza will it also be packed in the house?

But it's like stepping into another world...

The crowds are obviously not into the Romantics in the numbers I had imagined!

The house is almost empty. You make your way up a narrow staircase lined with portraits of Keats, Shelley, Byron and their contemporaries. You are welcomed at the reception desk and pay a small fee to enter this historical bubble. It's all polished wood, parquet floors, book-lined walls, sparkling vitrines which contain letters, drafts of poems, miniatures and personal keepsakes.

There are three rooms, each dedicated to the three poets. Why it is not called the Keats, Shelley and Byron House, I am not quite sure.

The commentaries in English (no Italian, which is a bit of a pity) provide some fascinating, and unexpectedly moving detail.

I was touched by the story of Keats' sister, Fanny, pictured here in old age. She saw little of her brother when she was younger but corresponded closely with him all of her life. Fanny treasured the letters throughout her life, while Keats asked her letters be buried with him in Rome.

In 1823 Fanny married a Spaniard, Valentin IIanos, who had seen her brother in Rome three days before he died. Not until 1861 did Fanny feel she could finally go to Rome herself to visit the grave of her brother.
At the house on Piazza Spagna she by chance met Keats' dearest friend, Joseph Severn, who was at the poet's bedside when he died.

He wrote:

For a long time we remained as if unable to speak ...'twas like a brother and sister who had parted in early life meeting after forty years. How singular that we should meet in the very place where Keats died.

Severn accompanied Fanny (who had travelled alone from Spain) to the cemetery where her brother was buried.

They planted two bay trees there.

The drowning of Shelley and his highly romanticised cremation on the beach by Byron and Co. (idealistically painted by Fournier in 1889) was apparently sheer fiction.

In pre-Victorian times it was English custom that women would not attend funerals for health reasons. Mary Shelley did not attend, but was featured in the painting, kneeling at the left-hand side. Leigh Hunt stayed in the carriage during the ceremony but is also pictured. Also, Trelawney, in his account of the recovery of Shelley's body, records that "the face and hands, and parts of the body not protected by the dress, were fleshless," and by the time that the party returned to the beach for the cremation, the body was even further decomposed. In his graphic account of the cremation, he writes of Byron being unable to face the scene, and withdrawing to the beach.

But one piece of "mythology" which may in fact be true relates to Byron whose good looks were said to be gob-smacking. There are several drawings and paintings of the great man on display.

I will leave it to you girls (and boys) to decide for yourselves.

Posted with Blogsy

Last Day in Italy (Part 1)

"The charm, as always in Italy, is in the tone and the air and the happy hazard of things"

- Henry James, Italian Hours (1900)

We didn't bother getting off the #64 bus this morning. It was raining and we had good seats. We sailed right past our intended destination and got off at the Vatican instead.

It must be the "pagan" in both us. We looked at one another, barely exchanged a word and made a quick retreat out of that square. I'm not convinced there is anything very spiritual going on in the Vatican at all!

We then walked towards the Tiber with St. Peter's behind us turning every so often to get a glimpse. Our original destination, the Castel Sant' Angelo, looms up before us. It sits majestically on the banks of the Tiber and is in fact not a palace but Diocletian's Mausoleum. The huge, rotund edifice was given a Catholic, rococo make over and become a Papal possession several hundred years ago.

I always recall it from the long, silent, closing scene of Fellini's "Roma" in which the motorcyclists roar around Rome by night passing the city's key buildings and monuments.

We cross the Ponte Sant Angelo straddling the Tiber. we are now officially back in Rome. It's beginning to rain. We take shelter in a tiny cafe with a group of traffic cops - the most hated species of worker in Italy. The waiter takes pity on us and lets us drink our cuppucino seated for the same price as standing up at the bar.

Before long we are in Piazza Novona admiring the Fontana dei Fiume. Now we are searching for the real spiritual heart of the city (if it has one?) and take a few wrong turns.

"Signora, una indicazzione, per favore?" My mantra!

We are quickly steered back on the right track.

We turn out of a grimy, cobble stoned lane and then there it is in front of us in its ancient glory:

M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIUM·FECIT

"Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made this building when consul for the third time"

We enter the building.

Again, like Diocletian's mausoleum, the Christian overlay grates. The building even has a ludicrous other name, "the Church of St. Mary and the Martyrs". The tacky ecclesiastical trimmings seem ridiculous and totally out of place.

Look up at the vaulted dome and you immediately know this is a "Pantheon" - a place of "All Gods".

The oculus opens to the sky at the centre of the dome and is as perfect a symbol of Other-worldliness as anyone ever imagined. The sight of it really does inspire awe. The rain is streaking down and hitting the marble floor. It drains away through barely visible cracks installed most likely by Emperor Hadrian in the first century AD.

Our little journey continues along Via Largo de Argentina to the ruins of the Theatre of Pompii where Julius Cesar was knifed in the back. For us it is more affectionately associated with its present day occupants - hundreds of stray and abandonned cats. There is a cat shelter here run by volunteers. The shelter desexes and immunises the felines though the volunteers are hard pressed to keep up with demand - Romans keep dumping yesterday's kittens on them.

Whether it is because the pussies are no longer as cute as they once were, spray or make a mess in the city's shoebox sized apartments or just don't go with this year's Prada handbag is anyone's guess.

 

...to be continued

 

Posted with Blogsy

Let's do the Machine! / Facciamo la Macchina!

The latest dance craze to hit Russia ...the DANCE OF THE MACHINE which officially replaced the Charleston in 1927!

I suspect like most other things Soviet the dance craze was hardly a great success.

Experimentation and extreme tendencies in art, literature, dance, cinema, architecture, fashion and design, were in full swing at the time.
Industrial development was perceived as the means through which the working class could realise its full potential.


It was thought the past - with its elitism and exploitation of simple working people - could be buried and a new, democratic world in which full participation in cultural production and distribution of wealth could be facilitated. How odd these ideas seem now!

I found these snippets in the Museum of Modern Art at Rovereto in Northern Italy. Italian artists and writers through the "futurist" ideas of Fillipo Marinetti were calling for similar new beginnings.

It's fascinating that this type of experimentation was crushed in the Soviet Union - a leftist dictatorship. - and embraced in Italy but quickly snuffed out by the fascist regime in the 1930s.

Does his suggest extremism at both ends of the political scale eventually meet at a similar reactionary point? Or at least, dictatorships depend on control so anarchic tendencies always need to to be reigned in?

Posted with Blogsy

Art

It's a widely held belief that if you want to see great art in Italy you should be prepared to elbow your way through throngs of other tourists to get a glimpse of "great works" - and pay a hefty entrance fee to do so.

I almost feel ashamed admitting that we mainly avoid big name galleries in most of the European cities we visit. At first you may grit your teeth and follow the crowd, but you quickly give up on the exercise as being fairly unpleasant and pointless. At least that is how I felt.

Who wants to spend half a day waiting in a queue? And when you do get to see the works on display there is little possibility of having a quiet, personal experience or engagement.

Neither of us could be bothered with the main attractions in Venice and Urbino. We did manage the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Hermitage in St.Petersburg, but honestly, I would have to say smaller, less frequented galleries, were much more rewarding.

We have probably missed out on lot and I can hear the clicking of tongues. But as I mentioned in former posts, midnight strolls and long afternoon explorations on less trodden tracks brought us face to face with some great works of art in Venice, and elsewhere.

While in Le Marche, our drives into the countryside had us stopping at churches dating back to the 9th and 10th centuries, provided many artistic rewards.

I'd suggest it is nearly always by chance that you come across art that really captures your imagination, whether it be in some tiny, crumbling roadside chapel or an obscure municipal museum.
At Macerata, a small Italian city in Le Marche few people seem to visit, I discovered one of the best collections of twentieth century art in the country - greater by far than the Italian works held at the Guggenheim in Venice.

We paid nothing for the privilege of viewing these works and funnily enough were able to enter the Palazzo Ricci on a day when the museum was not meant to be open.

We were on our way back from a stint of supermarket shopping when we saw the door open, made an enquiry and were very politely invited to view the collection ...with no one else present! They even took care of our shopping bags.

On the suggestion of our Italian host, we visited the gallery at Rovereto tucked away in the old town one rainy afternoon. Rovereto was the home of Fortunato Depero, of whom I knew nothing. Like other members of the Italian Futurist school, Depero sought to capture the idea of modernity, the sensations and aesthetics of speed, movement, and industrial development. 

He was employed by Campari in the 20s to create posters and during the war left for America where he worked on covers for Vogue, Vanity Fair and other magazines.

It's interesting to consider the direction Italian futurism took politically, embraced as it was in the 1930s by the Fascists who were similarly enamored with the idea of doing away with old forms, worshipping strength, grandeur, speed and combat.

The slide show I put together (above) shows examples of this.

Renato Di Bosso's, Pattuglia (1939) painted on an irregularly cut canvas is brilliant. It shows four fighter planes being shot down over the Italian landscape - presumably by the "superior" forces of Il Duce out of the frame. It is fabulously conceived and has a very dramatic sense of movement. It is perhaps the best work in the futurist collection at Macerata.

Fascist period architecture is everywhere in Italy, especially Rome, where a whole quarter of the city - the EUR - was designed and built.

It is not just Rome, however, where you will find examples of this aesthetic reflected in its buildings, but even a small lakeside town like Riva del Garda.

The town's most arresting building is not its 16th century church but its 1930s hydro electric station - huge, monumental and sporting a very camp sculptural depiction of electricity!

Posted with Blogsy

Lions

Leone Urlante or Roaring Lion by Mirko (1956), can be found in the gardens of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. It's an appropriate location for the work, this being the city of St.Mark whose symbol is the lion.

Mirko's piece is one of many beautiful sculptures placed around the garden - Moore, Brancusi, Giacometti, to name just a few - are on display in the pleasant courtyards where you can sit and admire them.

There are brilliant works by the Italian Futurists and after having seen their Russian avante-garde counterparts in St.Petersburg, this was the main attraction for me.

Led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the ringleader of the group, its members sought to capture the idea of modernity, the sensations and aesthetics of speed, movement, and industrial development.

What I wasn't expecting was an array of other spectacular works by the likes of Picasso, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Leger, Ernst and my favourite, Giorgio di Chirico.

Guggenheim herself came to live in the palace along the Grand Canal whose proper name is Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.

Legend has it that the palazzo came to be called this because the Venier family kept a lion in the garden! Highly unlikely.

Directly across the water is the small but elegant Palazzo Barbarigo Minotto.

We had booked to see a condensed version of La Traviata on our last night in the city and when I discovered it would be performed in the very same palace I was delighted.

I immediately did some research online about the illustrious history of the place which in the 16th century had a total "make over" - gorgeous cornices, elaborate stucco, gilded picture rails, doors and the like. There are beautiful paintings on display, most notably by Tiepolo whose painted ceilings are amongst the most striking in Venice. The only way to see part of the palace is by attending the initiate soirées of opera which are performed to a small audience for most of the year.

The Barbarigo family had been around since the Middle Ages.

There had been two Doges in this family. The first, Marco, ruled the Republic in 1485-86 and was the first Doge to be crowned on the Giants Staircase of Palazzo Ducale. His reign was so short due to a fatal wrangle he had during a senate meeting with his brother and successor, Agostino.

Agostino Barbarigo reigned from 1486 till 1501, the period in which Caterina Corner, queen of Cyprus, donated her kingdom to Venice.

The palace fell into shocking disrepair until the late 19th century when it took a wrangle of another kind - on a different continent - to save it.

I didn't know at the time but subsequently read that the palace was owned by a famous American who came to Venice well before Peggy but whose descendants were good friends and neighbours.

How the Curtises came to Venice is an extraordinary story worth telling.

I came across it in John Berendts, The City of Fallen Angels:

The Curtises,” said Peter, “were rich, old-line Bostonians, whose ancestry went back to the Mayflower. They bought Palazzo Barbaro, and their descendants have lived there ever since

...Peter went on to explain that Daniel Curtis was riding in a commuter train from Boston to the suburbs when he got into an altercation with another man over a seat that had been saved for a third party. Words were exchanged. The other man declared that Daniel Curtis was “no gentleman,” and in reply Mr. Curtis twisted the man’s nose. The injured party turned out to be a judge, who thereupon brought suit against Daniel Curtis for assault. A trial followed, and Daniel Curtis was convicted and sentenced to two months in jail. Upon his release, according to the story, he indignantly gathered up his family, moved to Europe, and never came back. “It is only fair to point out,” said Peter, “that in all the years he lived in Venice, Daniel Curtis behaved like a consummate gentleman. From the moment he and Ariana set foot in Palazzo Barbaro, they made it a gathering place for the best-known, most-admired artists, writers, and musicians of their day. Robert Browning read his poetry aloud to the Curtises and their guests. Henry James, a frequent houseguest, used the Barbaro as the model for the fictional Palazzo Leporelli in his masterpiece The Wings of the Dove. John Singer Sargent was a distant cousin, and when he was visiting the Barbaro, he painted in the top-floor studio of his cousin, Ralph Curtis, who was also an accomplished painter. Monet painted views of Santa Maria della Salute from the Barbaro’s water gate. Are you getting the picture?

Venice evokes a range of emotions - from bemusement or disgust with the swarming tourism it attracts, to sheer awe at being immersed in undeniable beauty and uniqueness. Henry James wrote in Italian Hours (by far the best book on travelling in Italy I have read despite its age):

There are travellers who think the place odious, and those who are not of this opinion often find themselves wishing that the others were only more numerous. The sentimental tourist's sole quarrel with his Venice is that he has too many competitors there. He likes to be alone; to be original; to have (to himself, at least) the air of making discoveries. The Venice of to-day is a vast museum where the little wicket that admits you is perpetually turning and creaking, and you march through the institution with a herd of fellow-gazers. There is nothing left to discover or describe, and originality of attitude is completely impossible.

 

What James says is as true today as it was in the late 19th century. There is no way of escaping the touristic dimensions of a stay in the city, of getting frustrated by some of its crass commercialism.

There are really no new experiences to be had ...but that's part of what being in this maze of incredible beauty is all about. What you need to do is let go of your preconceptions and preciousness, get away from the crowds if you can and just wander ...the enchantment inevitably catches up with and washes over you.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Midnight in Venice

I was determined that my first glimpse of Piazza S.Marco in almost thirty years should be a special one so I decided to visit at midnight - and I was not disappointed. The day trippers had mostly all gone home, other tourists were getting drunk in one of the city's many bars or were tucked up in bed ...one hopes, immersed in Jan Morris or Henry James (as I would have been).

It had been a long day. We flew from Vienna and on the way passed over Trieste where my Dad is buried.

The pilot announced the fly over in a matter-of-fact fashion and as if on cue, the clouds parted, the sun shone and from my window seat I could clearly see the city and its landmarks - Castello di Miramar, the ship yards, the huge petro chemical tanks at Aquilinia, the little, Venetian harbour at Muggia.

I was emotionally exhausted before we even landed.

Then suddenly we were there speaking another language.

The Campanile bell tower - the "Marangona" in dialect - rings out marking midnight as it has for hundreds of years. You are not the only one to hear - or have heard it. The city has made the hearts of many others leap, just it has yours.

But there I am on my own in the middle of Piazza S. Marco. I had the time to contemplate the Basilica, the Doges Palace, the old porticos that hug the square with their beautiful tableaux, the gondola lined water front.

Italy welcomed me back.

Posted with Blogsy

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

 

 

 

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili also known as "Stalin" - the "man of steel" - is reduced to cellophane and sold for quick sale to tourists along the Nevsky Prospekt.

How times have changed!

Even in the twilight years of the Soviet Union I doubt anyone would have dared package the dictator in such a manner. Without question, this would earn you a one way ticket to Siberia in Stalin's heyday.

The top selling tourist kitsch along the city's main boulevard are doe-eyed postcards of Tsar Nicholas and his martyred family dressed in pristine white.

There are wooden matryoshka versions of all past Soviet leaders though I noticed Vladimir Putin, Russia's current leader, seems to have been spared the ridicule.

Times may not have not changed as much as people might think?

 

Posted with Blogsy

Akhmatova

The night before our visit to Anna Akhmatova's third storey flat at the Sheremetev Palace situated on the Fontanka Canal, I re-read some of her poetry.

There are the two opus works - "Requiem" and "Poem Without a Hero" - but also a number of shorter verses which I've always loved.

For instance ...

It was a strange coincidence being met at the door by a big, red Russian cat. Once we were welcomed in, the kotchka rushed to the fireplace where it curled up after a long night of (I suspect) rat catching.

The rooms you move through represent different stages of the poet's life. There is a room dedicated to the wild, avante-garde days in the 1910s in which Akmatova spearhead the Acmeist School which included other celebrated poets such as Osip Mandelshtam and Alexander Blok.

There are posters of poetry readings by her contemporary, Natalia Goncharova, as well as photos of other artists and writers of the day at the "Stray Dog" night club.

There is a particularly beautiful fly cover on display of Akmatova's collection, "Evening" designed by Modigliani as well as many hand-written drafts of her early poems to see.






As you progress deeper into the apartment you witness Akhmatova's fortunes change ... mainly for the worse. Other residents are moved into the house. She and her family are bullied, threatened and informed upon to the authorities. But as personal hardship increases within the walls of her home, so does the complexity and range of her poetry.


There are articles from the newspapers condemning her poetry - and a particularly nasty attack on her by Leon Trotsky. On display are her original letters to Stalin unsuccessfully begging for the release of her ex-husband, Gumilev, who was executed for treason.

The imprisonment of her son brought with it a huge change in the character of her poetry, away from highly polished lyricism and personal themes of the early period to robust, agonizing verse dealing with the suffering of a whole nation under Stalin.

The draft of "Requiem" can be found in the room just before you leave the Akhmatova house ...

I. INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad.

Once, someone “recognized” me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who l of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):

“Can you describe this?” And I answered, “Yes, I can.”
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.


For me what a poem like "I Taught Myself to Live Simply" teaches us is something akin to what is ultimately contained in "Requiem" : the need to develop resilience.

Walk to tire worries, celebrate nature and the changing of the seasons, stroke a cat, meditate on nature and the changing seasons as a necessary distraction to the troubles - and horrors - life can present.

On my last day in St.Petersburg I walked the whole afternoon along the Fontanka, sad for having to leave the city, thankful for what Akhmatova - and St. Petersburg - had gifted me.

Posted with Blogsy

Tsarskoye Selo

A visit to the Catherine Palace outside St.Petersburg. The palace was sacked and totally destroyed by the Nazis during WW2 ...they got this close to the city during the siege (less than 1/2 an hour by local train)! The years of painstaking work involved in the reconstruction of the palace - and every detail of its interior - is an amazing and touching achievement.

Tsarskoye Selo

 

Posted with Blogsy

St. Petersburg Metro

They say it is not as majestic as the Moscow metro but I'd live down here if I had the chance ..."palatial" is the word I'd use to describe the network. In that respect the metro is in keeping with the rest of the city. It is the deepest subway in the world so truly vertiginous on the way down in the escalator. The trains run every 2-3 minutes so getting around St.Petersburg is easy and cheap (less than a dollar a ride). I'm crazy about metros so it has been a fun week getting around these stations which are decked out in marble, full of chandeliers, beautiful murals, artwork, with labyrinthine passage ways and surprises around every corner.

St. Petersburg Metro

 

Posted with Blogsy

Nevsky Prospekt

St. Petersburg

The sun illuminates the pastel coloured palaces along Nevsky Prospekt.
The onion domes of the city's Church of Spilled Blood flash.

A day ago it was snowing and there are plenty of reminders - hazardous, icy footpaths, parks piled knee deep in snow as well as frozen over canals.

This sunny day, however, stretches well into the night. It is 9pm and only now the evening draws in and the temperature drops.

The day started with Russian champagne served at breakfast followed by a much anticipated audience with Malevich & Co. at the Mikhalovsky Palace.

Room after room of brilliant art and you abruptly come face to face with a portrait of Ahkmatova, elongated, angular and regal.

We loop back via the banks of the Neva so we can catch a glimpse of the Peter and Paul Fortress across the ice.

Now almost delirious with fatigue we suddenly find ourselves alone in the vast expanse of Winter Palace Square.

You expect a crowd demanding Land, Bread and Liberty to come out of nowhere or else witness the storming of the place. No chance...the Russians are too busy shopping along the Nevsky Prospekt.

Mayakovsky in the metro as we move with the masses up the escalator and back towards our hotel.

Posted with Blogsy