Letters from Italy

Front matter

LETTERS FROM ITALY

By the same Author

LETTERS FROM ENGLAND KRAKATIT R.U.R. THE INSECT PLAY, ETC. , ETC.

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Before I started, kind friends sent me thick volumes on Italian history, ancient Rome, art in general and other subjects, with emphatic advice that I should read them all through. Unhappily I did not comply; the result of this remissness is this opusculum.

Man usually performs something other than he desires. I had no desire to travel at all, nevertheless I have journeyed as though crazy, by every conceivable vehicle and mostly on foot, and when at sea off Africa I wanted to go on to Africa itself; I had no mind to write, but yet I have written the whole of this small book to which I contribute this preface—in which I should have liked to note down hastily all that, alas, I had forgotten to record in succeeding pages, e.g., Florentine architecture; various kinds of wine; different ways of tying up vines; especially the wine of Orvieto; Tintoretto; suburbs which I have traversed with particular interest wherever I happened to be; temples at Paestum which from a distance resemble drying kilns but are Doric when near at hand; pretty Roman women who have very strong and powerful frames; the nightingales at Fara Sabina; the singularity of an asinine bray; the Bonano and Barisano doors at Monreale; and a great many other things and phenomena; however it is too late now to recall them all.

And thus I made my way not only without any useful information but without a definite plan; I traced the journey with my finger on a map, often attracted by a pretty name, or by the fact that the first train went in that direction at 10 a.m., so that I did not need to rise early. However, since according to Hegel Absolute Reason realises itself in the course of this world, these chances and humours conducted me by wondrous guidance to nearly all the places “one must see” in blessed Italy.

In this world, however, one ought to see everything: everything stands for show, every street and every man, every object wretched or glorious. There is nothing whatever undeserving of interest and inspection. I have wandered with pleasure through areas upon which Baedeker does not mark a single “*” as being worthy of attention, and I have not regretted a single step but went wherever chance led me, even following honest folks down their passages; sometimes I gazed at very celebrated monuments and sometimes only on children, aged grandmothers, human misery and joy, on animals and people at windows. But when I wanted to describe what I had seen I somehow hesitated to relate things so insignificant, or else did it out of vanity or personal whim. Briefly, after all I have written straightforwardly and for the most part about different famous memorials. For this reason I now set down by way of introduction a to all readers of this book not to regard it as a guide-book, a travel description, or a cicerone, but as whatever they feel inclined; so that when they take a journey they may rely—without the road-map—entirely on the peculiar grace which accompanies a traveller and indicates more to him than it is at all possible to describe or narrate.

Chapter 1

LETTERS FROM ITALY

Chapter I

VENICE

If what follows is a trifle confused and lacks conciseness I cannot help it, since I have in no way set down what I saw in regular order. There is a little of a great deal: I shall arrange it in order subsequently, but in such a way that I shall forget it all again, but at present I can merely set it out after a fashion in two divisions under two summary headings: what pleased me and what displeased me.

(A) What displeased me.—(1) First and foremost Czechoslovakia, because her frontier officials took away my credit note on an Italian bank, and benevolently gave me the choice of returning home or proceeding to Italy penniless. I am a stubborn personage, and continued my journey, taking chances without the credit note, bestowing maledictions on the Republic, old Austria, and that clean-shaven gentleman on the frontier. (2) Next Vienna displeased me, since it gives one a mathematically stupid sensation to have to pay something like thirty thousand in some monetary denomination for a supper; besides, it is a dead city and the people are, so to speak, straitened. (3) The terrific mass of tourists here in Venice. Germans mostly carry rucksacks or wear coarse woollen clothes; the English sport photographic apparatus; Americans are recognised by their shoulders; and Czechs because they almost resemble Germans and speak in remarkably loud tones, perhaps because the air is rarer with us. (4) St. Mark’s. This is not architecture but an orchestrion: one looks for a chink to throw in a sixpence so that the whole machine may give out O Venezia. I did not find the chink, so the orchestrion did not function. (5) Newly-married couples, without stating any reasons. (6) Venetian women, because they are Russians. One, swarthy as the deuce, with eyes of an eel, in the traditional costume with a fringe an ell in length and a comb in her rolled-up hair, of the purest Venetian type, who fascinated me directly, said to her cavalier, Da, da, jasny moj; so I was poorer by an illusion. I might record at least a dozen things that displeased me, but I hasten on joyful wing to—

(B) What pleased me.—(1) First and perhaps foremost the sleeping-car, a handsome carriage for slumber, complete with fine brass levers, buttons, knobs, latches, handles, and all kinds of apparatus. If you press or pull one, immediately there appears some convenience for slumber, an invention or an acquisition. I amused myself in this way the whole night, pushing or pulling everything around in turn: sometimes, for example, at some odd-looking rack without any result, clearly in consequence of my clumsiness. Perhaps in this way they can produce dreams of paradise or something similar. (2) Italian gendarmes from the frontier onwards. They patrol everywhere in couples, in skirts embroidered with a flaming bomb and on their heads a kind of boat, like those formerly worn by grammar-school professors, but set crossways. They are immeasurably sympathetic and comical, and remind me—I know not why—of the Brothers Čapek. (3) The alleys of Venice, in which one does not exactly find canals or palaces. So tortuous are they, that so far they have not all been thoroughly investigated; perhaps some have never been trodden by foot of man. The best are a whole metre broad, and so long that a cat can find room even with his tail. There is a labyrinth in which the past roams about and can in no wise issue forth. I, who flatter myself that I have the sense of direction, strolled round a circle for two hours yesterday. I left St. Mark’s Square for the Rialto, a good ten minutes’ walk after two hours I finally reached St. Mark’s Square. These Venetian streets decidedly remind me of the East, clearly because I have never been in the East, or of the Middle Ages for perhaps the same reason. But on pictures by Carpaccio, Venice appears to a hair precisely as to-day, except for the absence of tourists. (4) It is uncommonly agreeable that one cannot see a single motor-car, bicycle, cab, wagon, or excursion car; but for this reason there is (5) a very large number of cats, more than the pigeons of St. Mark’s, gigantic cats, mysterious and bright-eyed, which gaze ironically from the footpaths on the tourists and at night mew on surprisingly high notes. (6) Very fine are the royal Italian sailors, also the little boys in blue, and fine also are the war vessels and the shipping generally sailing vessels, steamboats, barks with saffron-coloured sails, grey torpedo-boats with handsome guns, laden transport vessels; every vessel is fine and deserves a feminine name. Perhaps this accounted for my wish as a youngster to be a sailor, and only to-day on the Lido I followed a disappearing white sail floating somewhere eastwards, and those white sails allured me far, endlessly farther than this white paper, upon which moreover I shall not discover a new country.

I had no desire to write much about Venice, and think it is familiar to everyone. It is actually as unsettling as the different souvenirs de Venise; when I stood for the first time on St. Mark’s Square I was utterly bewildered, and for a long time could not get rid of the oppressive feeling that this was not real, but a kind of Luna park where a Venetian night might be represented. I only waited for guitars to begin to coo and a gondolier to sing at least like our opera tenor Mr. Schütz. Fortunately the gondolier was mysteriously silent and at last turned to me in an unchristian manner, waving a tariff before my eyes. Well then, this man was certainly straight and unvarnished.

On the other hand the Grand Canal will certainly take you in. Some are in raptures over the splendour of its palaces and others over its dying melancholy; I found there, for the most part, bad enough Gothic which only brought to the Venetian nobility the renowned “stone lacework,” with which they hung their façades as with a breast ornament. Unhappily I am lacking in appreciation of this architectonic gold lacework and all this mercantile frippery of old Venice. Certain wares have been imported: Greek columns, oriental cinnamon, Persian carpets, Byzantine influences, brocade, Gothic, Renaissance; all was correct for these merchants, provided it was sufficiently ostentatious. And then, just look at Venetian Renaissance, which begins directly from the Corinthian order, with balustrades, balconies, marble and all this pompous stucco-work! Nothing has been thought out here: let us take for example that open loggia in the middle of the façade, which is certainly pretty but a little too small for good architecture. Venice has one single talent of its own, and that is to become Baroque. Its Orientalism, its decorative Gothic, its heavy Renaissance—all these have predestined it to be the most Baroque city of our planet; but when real Baroque arrived Venice was already overcome, if my history is not at fault.

And now I know why I am so inept to discuss the beauty of Venice. Venice has only palaces and churches, the house of a plain man is simply nothing at all. Bare, narrow, and dark, unprovided with a cornice, or a little portal, or a little column, having the odour of a decayed tooth, artistic only through its rabbit-hutch straitness, it does not display the least necessary quality of beauty; you will not, in your rambles, be cheered by the pretty little profile of a cornice or a frame-work entry to greet you with a welcome; poverty, with no trace of virtue. Now then, these one or two hundred palaces do not represent culture but only wealth; no life in beauty but ostentation. And do not tell me that this is due to exceptional lack of space it is due to excessive indifference. The atmosphere of Venice to-day is lazy and, so to say, demoralising, since it incites to reverie and dalliance.

But for all that it has its charm: you saunter through the streets as in a dream; the canals purl along, the band plays at St. Mark’s, twenty languages blend in ceaseless hum; and you feel as though you had wadding in the ears or were surrounded by stupefying unreality. Then all at once you come upon the Lido; suddenly a little tramway bell tinkles in your ear, wheels rattle, there is a clatter of hoofs, and the spell is broken. O goodness, in all Venice there is not a single live horse. The principal charm of Venice is olfactory and acoustic: the heavy odour of the lagoons and the unique hum of human voices.

Chapter 2

Chapter II

PADUA AND FERRARA

While Venice is distinguished by its abundant canals, gondolas, and tourists, Padua is characterised by arcades and bicycles; Ferrara again by bicycles, brick-built palaces and Romanesque style. I leave the bicycles alone, and hope they will also do the same to me. As regards Padua, learn this, that to see in one morning the most beautiful work of Giotto, Mantegna, and Donatello is a special favour, a gift of God, and a joy resembling a dream. It is only a tiny, bare church, this S. Maria dell’ Arena, but Giotto has adorned the interior from crown to base, not omitting the smallest space, and replenished it with his stately, simple logic of painter and Christian, for Giotto was a genius thoroughly sensible, devout, and brilliant. But Mantegna, a steel designer, hard, keen—I do not know what to say: a terrible formalist—but concealed behind a veil of heaven knows what, astonishing, graceful, and severe melancholy. And Donatello, passionate grief incarnate, silent, gnawed by the bitterness of a too perfect spirit. All three are the most masculine of artists. It is a holy day, when one has made the acquaintance of these three.

Having ended this holy day at a point and then had supper (not at Padua, however, but at Ferrara), I had, after writing the above, an experience which I want to relate at once: beware on your travels through Italy of the so-called vino di paese (wine of the country). It is cheap enough, looks innocent, and is served in bottles the cubic capacity of which you will certainly underestimate at first sight. When you have finally disposed of it—it is, of course, surprisingly good—you are seized with a kind of exaltation, pugnacity, lust for song, elevation, and similar feelings. If at that moment I had before me a certain … who among you, in Bohemia, writes such frightful nonsense about the theatre, I should fell him to the ground: such was my frame of mind. I should also fell many others who write on art, for instance … and other esteemed personages, and then, sprinkled with their blood, singing lustily, magnifying Giotto, Mantegna, and Donatello, I should have retired to rest and in dreams have gazed on the little church dell’ Arena, the altar at Santo, and the Eremitani chapel, reproached myself, bowed before the endless magnificence of art, and then slumbered with a grateful memory of the vino di paese.

However, the blood of those remote is out of reach, I cannot continue my holy fervour, I shall never succeed in sketching for you the frescoes which I have to-day adopted for myself. To-day I went through all the churches of Padua and Ferrara do not ask me how many there were. And now I maintain that Christianity perished in the south with the Romanesque style, and in the north with the Gothic; and that with High Renaissance, and especially Baroque, begins something new and entirely unsympathetic, viz., Catholicism. Christianity can only speak to us in the primitive, severe, holy language of the early styles: it is earnest, pure, and in some degree simple. Beside it, the Renaissance is heathen, and Baroque idolatrous, fetishistic, Catholic in short; there is something culturally, amazingly mean in contrast with early, pious purity. All this maniacal pomp, marble ornamentation, brocade, stucco-work, gold, altars with little towers, all this chilly splendour conveys to you nothing of piety or the least fragment of what is uttered in unbounded solemnity and purity from the Giotto chapel.

If this morning it was a dream to be in the Eremitani or the Giotto chapel, in the afternoon it was another dream to walk Ferrara streets. They say—see Naples and then die. I should not care to die at Ferrara but to live there for some weeks; to live in a certain brick-built palace, which externally resembles an unscoured barn, but through the courtyard of which you pass into a splendid, tranquil loggia looking on the magnificent Ferrara gardens. In a delicious spring shower, trees of violet and yellow hues, unknown to me by name, droop over the brick walls. Level streets with coloured window-shutters—red, yellow, green; little Romanesque columns; red palaces; red churches; and through it all surges, forces itself, and blooms vigorously, the fresh green of moist spring. One strolls aimlessly, since he lives in a dream. In a dream one desires nothing: but when he beholds a magnificent garden beyond the marble loggia, which I have seen and shall see again, there is a longing to be able to remain there, to cease flight through space and time, and to abide in the midst of this dream.

Chapter 3

Chapter III

RAVENNA AND SAN MARINO

Ravenna itself is a half-dead city without individual character: beyond that it is a sort of holiday resort for Fascisti, and these “black shirts” parade the town with guns and bands, the real fascio, Garibaldian grandfathers, musicians, processions and delays. In passing, Fascisti in uniform closely resemble our chimney-sweeps; they even wear the same kind of black cap with a tail and their teeth gleam: a curious impression.

This Ravenna has of course nothing to do with dead Ravenna, the Ravenna of the oldest Christian architecture and the finest mosaics in the world. Were I to write exhaustively on what I saw—which I certainly shall not—Ravenna mosaics would form the most impressive discourse. I confess that even at the tomb of Dante I was not overcome by actual religious emotion, but at San Celso e Nazario I longed to kneel. San Vitale is the finest architectonic area that I know, San Apollinare in Classe is sublimity itself, but the rotunda of Galla Placidia, where from gloomy little arches gleam sacred mosaics of a grace really heavenly, that is one of the artistic summits of Christianity. But I dare not forget you, holy virgins of San Apollinare Nuovo, nor you, heavenly lambs in San Apollinare in Classe fuori. I shall never forget you, unutterably Christian grace, which cheered me so at Ravenna.

But thou, Rimini, art in no wise least among the cities of Italy. And even if all besides were of little value thou hast the Malatesta temple of Leone Battista Alberti; an unfinished façade and the interior half decorated in Baroque, but what remains over by Alberti makes up for this: it reconciles me with the Renaissance which left me so cold at Venice. History styles Alberti “the theoretician of early Renaissance”; but if you understand how to read traces and memorials of human hands, then you will read in the Malatesta temple such a tremendous exertion of will, such perfect and graceful strength and purity of style in every plastic detail, that you will be miserable sceptics in art if you do not give the pre-eminence to this magnificent wreck before the best by Sansovino and the other masters of the splendid Renaissance.

Style, above all purity of style! And take care to get clear of what is merely pretty and lax, if you would make architecture. Style, that is everything, that is more than man, for with style man aims directly at the Absolute.

And lo, while I have been meditating on style and prettiness, fate punished me for prettiness. A spacious motor-car with the inscription “Rimini–San Marino” bore me off to what is said to be the smallest Republic in the world. These lines are written in the very centre of the Republic. Many of the beauties of this honourable state escaped me, for on the journey we were surprised by heavy rain, fog, and clouds; I only know that we proceeded in an alarming way uphill, straight up among the clouds, and now I am sitting simply amidst clouds, in a wonderful rocky nest surrounded on every side by clouds and vaporous precipices. Instead of streets there are merely steps, a rocky castle set on a vertical peak, every house like a bastion on a rocky terrace, vertical bluffs above unknown depths whence rolls up mist—in short, the wildest eagle-like picturesqueness that you can possibly imagine.

While in the representative hotel of the Republic I feasted on a beefsteak in oil and goats-milk cheese, all San Marino assembled hurriedly and gazed at me. A native, engineer by profession, entered into conversation with me: in a frightful verbal duel (he struggled with French and I with Italian, in the course of which both languages landed us in maddening contradictions) he explained to me that San Marino is actually an independent Republic, which during the war only raised volunteers; that it has altogether five thousand inhabitants over which Signore Gozzi holds sway in a blessed and comfortable manner, though I noticed on corner-stones inscriptions proclaiming evviva for some other grandeur, evidently an opponent. This accessible native tried to give me a sketch of the history of San Marino, but that did not go well by employing manual gestures. He supposed the Czechs were some Greek tribe. I could not establish closer inter-state contact for the difficulty already mentioned, but if anyone else would follow in my track, let him choose a day when it does not rain incessantly and mists do not cover this wonderful rocky summit, this steep islet, this best preserved European Republic.

Chapter 4

Chapter IV

FLORENCE

On the last occasion I wrote to you amid rain and fog from the only and therefore the best hotel in San Marino. And lo, the sky was more favourable in the morning, the mists ascended a storey higher, and one could see the country round to a great extent: the sea about thirty kilometers away, mountains, rocks, a measureless mass of mountain and rock, and beyond it the whole of Emilia, and on each mountain some castle or watch-tower or human nest set as on the palm of a hand, and at one’s feet a precipice whence rises the vertical rock of San Marino. From below it is a wonderful dentated crest, and I gazed back upon it from beyond Faenza, and after that I arrived at Bologna.

If Padua is a town of arcades and arboured walks I do not know how to designate Bologna. Here each arcade is as high as a two-storey house; in the midst a portal leads to a hall of columns which can accommodate a good-sized railway station, and from the hall through another portico you reach the courtyard. It is a regular frenzy of columns and arches; house after house is a palace of columns; the whole street, practically the whole town, consists simply of palaces, and even in the poorest quarters there are still arcades leading to streets and courtyards, arboured walks, porticos, all in heavy Renaissance. It is a pompous city, a trifle cold; its glory is not in art but in erudition and wealth. Every city in Italy has a kind of Romanesque church and Gothic castellated palace of the podestà (mayor); Bologna has in addition two oblique towers which resemble two misshapen square factory chimneys.

I shall not talk with you of art at Florence. There is far too much, so that the head spins round; finally one stares in stupefaction at a corner-stone in the belief that it is a fresco. After this tremendous flood of immortal beauty one clings firmly again to Giotto and Donatello, Masaccio and the blessed little Brother Angelicus di San Marco. Giotto, Master Jottus, has here in the cathedral a memorial tablet of the year 1490 on which is written: Hoc nomen longi carminis instar erat (this name has the value of a long poem). That is true, indeed: I have written down this name as though it were a poem, and am delighted that I shall meet with it again at Assisi.

For the rest, Florence is frightfully overflooded with foreigners. The native inhabitants for the most part ride bicycles, and here less than elsewhere is viva il fascio scrawled on the walls. As regards the Fascisti their yell is ejaejaeja, and their salute is such a violent sweep of the arm through the air that one is scared. But thank goodness I am no politician, and can now return to the foreigners. I am most sorry for those whom a hired guide urges along through churches and museums. If the guide declaims his explanation in Italian then the foreigners cannot understand him, and then if he yells in their ears something which he considers is French or English then they simply do not understand him at all. Besides, he is in the most unaccountable hurry, as though an addition to his family had just arrived; he runs along with his hat at the back of his neck, skips three-fourths of the objects, and has a special predilection for Canova. A second group of foreigners grip Baedeker as a drowning man clutches a straw, or a treasure-seeker grasps a divining-rod. They carry it unweariedly in front; and when they approach a masterpiece Baedeker visibly trembles in their hands, as they cast a rapid glance upwards, hastily contemplate the masterpiece, and then in half-tones read what Baedeker quotes about it from Crowe and Cavalcaselle. A third group are newly-married folks, whom at Venice I determined to ignore. A fourth group are “highlife,” who incessantly tear round in motor-cars, in which direction I know not since in ten minutes you can rush through Florence in different directions. A fifth group are copyists. They sit in the Pitti or Uffizi galleries and copy the most showy pieces; in their sense of private ownership they are unpleasantly affected if anyone begins to gaze immodestly at “their” master. They make miniatures after Fra Bartolommeo and picture-postcards after Botticelli; they have a marvellous ability for never matching a single colour, and make the picture so greasy that it gleams like an Easter-cake. They are mostly old gentlemen and ugly girls. Not a single copy, heaven knows, nor a single lady copyist is the least pretty. To-day at Fiesole three of them painted the promenade round the monastery and the cypresses; a few steps away was a child rolling on the grass with a dog, and that was so charming that I forgot to glance at these fanciful promenades and the “magnificent view of Florence and the valley of the Arno” (thus Baedeker describes it): but the three lady copyists continued solemnly to smear their fanciful promenades and cypresses, and not one removed her spectacles to regard the child with the dog or averted her eyes.

Chapter 5

Chapter V

SIENA AND ORVIETO

Siena is an uncommonly nice little town, planted on three hills and smiling, whether warm rain pours across its back or the sun shines; it has a few fragments of famous memorials, but is in itself an entirely dear little old memorial. It is of good, rightly constructed tiled Gothic set with a few raisins of early Renaissance; but not defiant, belligerent Gothic nor the fortress-like, firm, unattainable Renaissance of some Strozzi palace; all is more intimate, joyous, and graceful than elsewhere. I went specially to Siena to see the Duccio di Buoninsegna, the Giotto of Siena; but for a wonder the sober and pleasantly monumental Giotto would be more appropriate to Siena than the more naturalistic and temperate Duccio. It is most charming to roam about the streets, which run hither and thither like some exuberant slide, and look on that streak of blue sky amid the red pinnacles of old houses and the green waves of Tuscan hills all around. The Tuscan landscape there is especially like a pretty landscape in Bohemia; but here vines grow instead of potatoes, and every hillock is most attractively crowned with some towered hamlet or old fortified castle. Here, at Siena, was the place of origin of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who in his day had business with George of Poděbrad and afterwards became Pope. In the cathedral is a library where Pinturicchio painted his achievements; the extolled Siena has preserved these frescoes in such freshness, as though old Pinturicchio had only yesterday cast the last variegated arabesque round the window. And there is the Gothic town hall, of which the interior is embroidered with frescoes from crown to base, and the cathedral, within and without, laid out with marble of various colours, an over-decorated façade and a floor all sgraffito, fine gigantic squares, the Fonte Gaja, the “Peace” by Lorenzetti, and a whole mass of agreeable, cheerful things: all these are there and more besides.

But all this is nothing in comparison with Orvieto. Orvieto is a still smaller town, and is entirely situated on the area of a rocky table-land, which is as though it had crept vertically up from the ground to a huge height. One must ascend either by a serpentine path, which must be taken into consideration by the most pugnacious enemy of this inaccessible townlet, or by a wirerope railway on which one’s head will spin. At length we are at the summit, at a height of about fifteen hundred years, not meters: for all Orvieto is

terribly old, all of unworked square stones, all of bare stone cubes. The Orvietans have only permitted themselves a single jewel, and that is the cathedral. I have never indeed been captivated by the decorative lacework and embroidery in which the old Italians set their Gothic, but Luca Signorelli, a wonderful and established great painter, has adorned the interior of an entire chapel with ideal representations of the human frame. He is not satisfied with the Last Judgment, with a whole flood of gloriously modelled muscular activity; he has framed the entire chapel with medallions, each of which is like an illustration to Dante’s Inferno, and surrounded them with arabesques which again are garlands of human bodies in the most wonderful positions and attitudes. It seems as though he could not be satiated with the human body in motion inebriated and at the same time remarkably clear, passionately excited and powerfully correct. He is a painter for whom it is worth abandoning the regular Italian tracks and climbing the rock of Orvieto. Over and above, you can reach two large chapels literally strewn about with frescoes of the good Quattrocento.