Via Appia Antica

Roman moonrise # 156

As my time is quickly coming to an end here in Rome, it's the little things that matter, like this, what is I think my hundred and fifty third Italian moonrise.

The Baths of Caracalla

(The Baths of Caracalla)

Talk about scale: judging by the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, you'd swear giants used to live in Rome. Or Titans. The baths are about the size of a modern waterpark (think 'Wet 'n Wild' on the Gold Coast). It's no coincidence that Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound here - and it proved an enjoyable imaginative exercise to try to guess which block of marble the Romantic poet sat on to do so.

The Roman Forum is impressive, but I realise now it was but one of many major centers of public life in Ancient Rome. The ruins of Ostia Antica, the sea-port town are much larger (and you're free to run around through the ancient city, playing ancient traders); the Palatine hill is easily as conducive to the imagination; what's left of the Villa Adriana (Hadrian's Villa) in Tivoli suggests that the emperor's abode was the size of maybe four Westfield shopping centres; and from our recent visit to the Baths of Caracalla, one thing's for certain: they don't make baths like they used to.

(An artist's impression of the baths... see those specks in the water?)

Why so large? Well, of course you need your cold baths, your hot baths, and your luke warm baths; and what bathing complex would be complete without a gymnasium to practise wrestling and boxing, a public library and a place for gigolos and prosititutes to ply their trade? There are a few small areas where the mosaic floors and walls have been renovated (one imagines), though the bronze mirrors that aided in the heating process, and the colossal statue of Hercules are no longer about (the latter, I believe, is in the museum at Napoli). The whole thing - along with the rest of the city - went belly up when the Goths invaded and cut the aquaducts.

With summer in full swing - though it's yet to pack a serious punch - it would be calming to know that there was a public bath (or water park) this central. In Australia, the public swimming pool - like the public BBQ - is comparatively ubiquitous. Here in Rome, for all its stupendously beautiful fountains, and its countless drinking fountains (fontanelle), there's noe one public swimming pool to speak of - which is arguably why the locals head to the hills in July and August.

Circo Massimo

To get to the Baths of Caracalla (see above) we caught the bus to Circo Massimo, once a grand stadium famous for its chariot races, now better known as the place where the whole of Rome came to watch Italy win the football World Cup last year. It is, of course, no longer a stadium, but an oval-shaped park between the Palatine hill and (my favourite) the Aventine hill. Em and I have walked past here a number of times, but this was the first time we actually walked through the park.

There is to this day a dusty track around the inner perimeter that schools use for athletics, but the rest is grass and, the remnants of spring flowers.

UPDATE (July 11): My kiwi friend James has recently informed me that Genesis , who recently reformed for a one off tour band, are playing their final show of their first world tour in 25 years, here in Circo Massimo this Saturday night, in front of up to 400,000 people (Yikes) - minus Peter Gabriel, but with Phil Collins. What's more, its free - the real challenge will be getting a seat. Stay tuned for a review (that is, when I finish my other reviews). She seems to have, an in-vis-i-ble touch-ah...

Via Serpenti

One of my favourite streets in Rome, for some reason (perhaps that big stadium in the distance): Via Serpenti in Monti, joining Via Nazionale and Via Cavour. This is where I've been meeting up with my poet friend Aidan to talk shop over a cafe freddo and a nastro azzuro... or three. He's introduced me to Muldoon, I've introduced him to John Forbes, etc.

Moonrise in Trastevere

Trinity College

DUBLIN: On Bloomsday afternoon we met up with Liam’s mate Simon for a tour of Trinity College. As the privilege of viewing the college’s main attraction, the Book of Kells, costs 8 euros, and the guided tour including said attraction costs 10, we decided to take the former – two euros for a guided tour seemed more than fair.

Our tour guide was memorable, to say the least: a dashing gentleman and graduate in his early twenties, he was nothing if not a top-shelf toff, complete with cravat (class-conscious Aussie? No such thing!... ‘You can take the boy out of Queensland….etc.’) – and by that I mean, ‘young man brought up knowing he was going to become an MP because his parents always said so'– with an intimidating, towering intellect and the perfect annunciation of a QC from the days of olde.

(Our tour guide, the future Irish PM)

Our young would-be MP or PM did, however, have a charmingly dry sense of humour, which eventually disarmed us all – e.g. “To the left you can see the former residence of one Samuel Beckett, who after emigrating to Paris famously declared that Trinity College attracts the cream of Irish society – the thick and the rich… The only difference now, of course, is that we are no longer rich…” (delivered in deep, drawn-out and deadpan tones) – and though he was aware of his charm, we didn’t hold that against him. I later learnt from Simon I wasn’t the only one suffering an inferiority complex.

However, given both the beauty of the architecture, and the undeniable rigour of its intellectual culture, I was overcome by a strange desire to attend such a college (which I realized with a pang was about as likely as me playing cricket for Australia… Incidentally, Liam spied the cricket pitch that Beckett, whom we both knew played for the college as a fast bowler, probably graced).

We were reminded by our guide along the way that the empirical philosopher Berkeley (from whom the Californian college gets its name), the revolutionary conservative politician Edmund Burke, and one of the two men to split the atom were among Trinity’s numerous illustrious alumni.

The Book of Kells – an illuminated manuscript of the gospels about fifteen hundred years old – was, while impressive, not the knockout one is led to expect. At least, I didn’t think so; I suppose it’s difficult to be impressed by ‘old’ stuff when arriving from Rome. I enjoyed the ‘Long Room’ of the library, which contained over 200,000 rare books, just as much. (Another excerpt from our dashing guide: “The Long Room is the longest college library in the world, approximately five meters longer than that at Trinity College, Cambridge – and we relish… every… centimeter”.)

By this time we all agreed it was Guinness o’clock, and embarked on a Saturday night pub crawl that would end sometime Sunday. One of our detours fortuitously lead us past Christ Church, and, eventually, the church of St. Patrick.

(Christ Church, Dublin)

(St. Patrick's)

Dusk was late, but when it finally hit the overcast sky gave way to vibrant blue, which lent the churches a more upbeat mood than that afforded by the perennial grey. Needless to say we spent the rest of the night swimming in stout and Irish whiskey, debating contemporary politics, the civil war in Palestine, London’s bonus boys and the bombing of Dresden.

Oscar

DUBLIN: As Liam and I found ourselves near Merrion Square (in search for the chemist in Ulysses that sold Bloom the lemon-scented soap, which we couldn’t find), I made a request to visit the Oscar Wilde statue, and the house where he once lived (now the American Academy), which we almost couldn’t avoid anyway.

(Myself and Oscar)

Such a pilgrimage to Oscar would normally in no way be an aside – and even now, I find it difficult to justify describing it thus, The Picture of Dorian Gray being one of the very first ‘literary’ books I read, at seventeen, which was a personal discovery… Ah those were the days, when literature was fresh and new. O god, am I beginning to sound jaded? (Or just more like a jobbing writer? I hope the latter.)

Hold on… Joycean moment coming on: as I write this, I remember hearing, blaring from a loud speaker on a tourist bus (!) as I stood on the corner across the road from the statue, that the jacket worn by Oscar-the-statue (see photo) is carved out of... jade.

(Wilde's former house)

After visiting the jade-coated but in no way jaded Oscar, we popped in to the National Gallery across the road. For some reason I was skeptical, but Liam showed me a guidebook that stressed the gallery was worth it. In hindsight, I’d agree. We whipped around in about forty minutes, and managed to see a handful of Goyas (the fantastic portrait of actress Dona Antonia Zarate c.1805), a Vermeer, a Rembrandt, and a Caravaggio (the latter two particularly gripping – it’s not appropriate I don’t think to use the word ‘gripping’ to describe Vermeer). What’s more, it was free. Forty minutes well spent digesting our lunch and looking at pictures.

Bloomsday 2007

(Bloomsday crowd at the James Joyce Centre)

DUBLIN: It’s not every day, nor is it for every book that one flies halfway across Europe to walk in the footsteps of a certain literary character – and no, I’m not referring in any way to Dan ‘didn’t-visit-The-Vatican-before-setting-my-novel-there-so-made-numerous-howlers-oops’ Brown.

So I’ve made it. Dublin on Bloomsday – June 16 – when literary types come from all over the world to experience the city through the words of one of its greatest writers, James Joyce. (For the uninitiated, the door-stopper work of fiction that is Ulysses (1922) is set entirely on a single day, June 16; Leopold Bloom being the main character, the date is celebrated in Dublin as ‘Bloomsday’.)

The whole shebang was Liam’s suggestion many months ago (i.e. I deny all responsibility), and though I initially balked at the expense, I eventually managed to find some cheap flights in light of it being, more than likely, a once in a lifetime sort of thing. (For ‘thing’, read ‘chance to get drunk on Guinness that hasn’t traveled while using the phrase ‘literary pilgrimage’ to justify the expense.’ Well, not quite, but there’s some truth there.).

After an Irish breakfast to sop up the sea of stout we consumed in Temple Bar, Liam and I made for the Joyce Centre, where we found a healthy crowd listening to a series of brief readings. Unfortunately, most of the readers were ambassadors, for whom reading publicly from Ulysses was clearly not a forte. Visiting the bathroom in the centre, we overhead snippets from the events that actually cost money, and could tell from the truly animated voices in those rooms that we’d missed a trick by not paying up. Still, we had our walking tour to look forward to.

(In the footsteps of Leopold Bloom... ps. a leprechaun made me buy the hat... but i dig it)

The tour itself – which followed the footsteps of Leopold Bloom in the ‘Lestrygonians’ chapter of Ulysses – was, along with our Trinity College jaunt (to follow), one of the two highlights of my Dublin experience (okay, three highlights if I include the Guinness). Our guide was extremely knowledgeable, but didn’t lord it over us, ie. he was in no way pretentious. He illuminated the text by reading sections of it at each stop along the way, and suggesting ways of understanding its countless resonances. I won’t go into detail here, frankly because it would be too difficult, and too lengthy – and I don’t have enough superlatives. Suffice to say that the one and a half hours of the tour were alone worth the trip to Dublin, that being there in the flesh was worth twenty lectures on the text, that the whole thing was unforgettable, and that in light of this, my appreciation for the scope of Joyce’s genius will never, ever flag.

(Yeatsbus)

Temple Bar

DUBLIN: Liam arrived a day after me, and as soon as he did we set out in search of Temple Bar, for, yes, a nice pint of Guinness. As you can probably see in the photos, I’d bought myself an Irish hat – Liam already owned one. While wearing it, I suddenly thought of all those tourists in Australia who wear Aussie hats – thus it was in Dublin; no Dubliner under sixty actually wears these hats any more.

Funnily enough, when crossing the Liffey, a well-lubricated Irishman remarked as he passed, ‘Like your hats boys’. Of course, knowing from our own culture that he was more than likely taking the piss, we were quite surprised when, a few stumbles later, he wheeled around, as we did, and repeated as sincerely he could manage, ‘No, I really do like your hats. We used to wear those y’know! We used to wear those!’

Though this guy was harmless, I must say, I found the rowdiness of some of the revelers, not so much in Temple Bar but in the pubs around the train station where I spent my first night, on my own, a bit much on occasions. From the doors of almost every pub I visited there spewed forth at least one, if not five burly red faced men, sweating Guinness, intent on picking a fight with a lamppost. After forty eight hours, I realized that this probably goes a long way to explaining where the ‘Aussie bloke’ gets his, um, style (and I’ve been known to be included in this category at times).

Temple Bar itself (well, not the bar, but the pub and club district) is, it must be said, more like a theme park than a clutch of authentic Irish bars. Oh, and teeming with tourists, such as ourselves. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any traditional music, which Liam was searching for, and which I couldn’t seem to avoid the night before – unless by traditional music you mean the Counting Crows and The Proclaimers.

Stately plump Buck Mulligan

SANDYCOVE: Ulysses famously begins in the Martello Tower on the east coast of Ireland, about half an hour by train from Dublin, and it was here that I headed the morning after my arrival. I found my way to the small town easily enough, and once off the train soon discovered the strand that led to the tower. I find these solitary journeys quite rewarding; they make me feel vaguely competent as a traveler.

The bay was a blustery affair, the sea a thick spumey mess, and yes, ‘snotgreen, scrotumtightening’ to boot. For some strange reason I was surprised to find that the Forty Foot Pool (in which Buck Mulligan swims) was indeed about forty feet across – and given the temperature of the water, it would’ve taken quite a few shots of Jamesons (the 12 year old, if you don’t mind) to get me in there.

So I found myself standing on the rocks where the sea buffets Ireland more violently than I expected, thinking of shipwrecked sailors in days gone by, and also, for some strange reason, of South Head, Sydney. The tower was somewhat smaller than I expected, and the entrance fee, at seven euros, somewhat steeper.

Among the many items on display was a letter from Joyce written to his sweetheart, Nora – in which he apologized for his ‘cruelty’ toward her while indignantly professing his undying love. This, together with his scratchy handwriting, made the literary colossus seem painfully human to me.

It was easy to imagine Joyce and Gogarty (Buck Mulligan) in the Oval Room, the sleeping and living room of the Tower. The highlight, however, was the parapet, which affords a good view over the bay. It is here that Buck Mulligan shaves, at the opening of the novel, and since there was no-one else there at the time, I felt a bit like Buck himself...

('Is that, no, it couldn't be... is that sky...blue?')

Beginning with Guinness

DUBLIN: My Ryan Air flight touched down an hour late (gasp) in Ireland just after lunch on the 14th; I’d not managed a wink of sleep the night before (my flight was early, and I’d been up late writing and packing, so decided to pull an all-nighter lest I slept through my alarm and missed the plane), so my first impressions of the city were rather surreal.

It was raining, and continued to rain – or drizzle, or at the very least was cold and overcast with the odd droplet condensing on my face – for the three days of my stay. Still, the brooding grey shawl seemed suit the city, the architecture seemed to revel in the drizzle, and the cold was a nice change from the stifling Roman heat (though if I was in the countryside, I would’ve wanted at least a wink of sun). As the temperature was in the high twenties in Italy, however, I didn’t think to pack my thermals, which at times I could’ve done with.

My first day was not terribly exciting, not counting the excitement of being in Dublin for the first time! It might sound like a minor thing, but I can’t overstress how pleased I was to get stuck into some Irish tucker – bangers and mash, cabbage, gravy etc, though I could only nibble at the black pudding – after four months on a strict diet of pasta and pizza.

On the other hand, I did miss the Roman lifestyle just a tad – drinking fantastic coffee at a bar (more like a fuel stop in Rome) and having an apperitivo at dusk. (The few cups of coffee I did have in Dublin were woeful – and Liam’s mate Simon, who we met up with on Bloomsday afternoon, predicted I would become a coffee snob after living in Rome, which I fear is inevitable.)

I made up for this, of course, with many ‘nice pints’ of Guinness. By many, I mean many. I’ve never been a huge fan of the stout, but I drank it like water in Dublin. It’s often said Guinness doesn’t travel well, and this is probably true. Guinness in Dublin, however, is superb. The soft inch or so of froth is a sensuous, suggestive veil one removes ever so slowly from the dark, mysterious goddess beneath. I repeat, drinking Guinness in Dublin is one of the joys of life. As I write this, however, my kidneys are suing me for negligence.

I must admit I was a little surprised to find that not every Dubliner was as excited about Bloomsday as I was – the odd punter at the bar, when inquiring as to my reasons for being here, barely registered a shrug. This was a shame, I felt, considering that Ulysses, while certainly a confounding modernist text, breathes life into and sympathises with the plight of the average Dubliner in a way no work of fiction has, nor perhaps will again. Perhaps this says something too about the bars I found myself in on the first night. But I guess I just had a silly, romantic idea that every Dubliner propped up by a Guinness could probably recite Yeats.


Two things of note happened on my first night in the Dublin. First, a remarkable “it’s a small world” moment. Corralled into idle chat with a group of people in a bar called Leary’s, near O’Connell street, I found that one of the women, a fifty year old from Leicester here for her girlfriend’s birthday, had just been in Australia for her niece’s wedding. When I said I was from Queensland, you can imagine my shock when she replied, ‘Oh really? You know, the wedding was in Queensland, a place called Bribie Island. A little suburb called something like Woorim.’!

Yes, not just Bribie Island, but Woorim, the suburb I first lived in at the age of seven when I moved with mum and Abe to the island, the suburb I moved back to for three years to complete my Masters, the suburb my family lives in now… the smallest suburb on the island etc, etc. To recap: on my first night in Dublin I met a woman from Leicester who had just come back from her niece’s wedding at Woorim, Bribie Island, Queensland, Australia.

Secondly, stumbling past a hotel, I asked the porter where I might get some late night bread to sop up the many pints threatening to make me unseaworthy. To my surprise, the porter, who may have found me humourous (or laughable), invited me into the lobby for a pizza that he and his mate had just ordered, at about 2 am. He was from Lithuania – being barely able to pronounce his name, I certainly couldn’t recall it here. Now most of the immigrants in Dublin seemed to be from Eastern Europe. There are many Poles, for instance, and barely any dark-skinned people to speak of, hardly the swathes of Africans, Asians and Caribbeans found in Rome and London. Anyway, my Lithuanian-Dubliner friend said something very interesting. He felt quite at home in Dublin, he said, because Lithuania was to Russia, in many ways, as Ireland was to England (he went on to explain, though I won’t here.) I wonder what Joyce would’ve made of the analogy.

Riccardo and 'Ray'

Last Tuesday I had Riccardo Duranti over to the studio for an afternoon glass of vino. A friend of Franca Cavagnoli’s, Riccardo is, like Franca, a major Italian translator. He is the Italian translator of Raymond Carver, and has also translated Richard Ford.

We spent most of the time talking shop over a couple of glasses of white wine. I was thrilled when he admitted that a book by George Steiner that I’m particularly relishing at the moment, After Babel, was required reading for all and sundry in the translation trade.

He also told me a wonderful story about the first time he met ‘Ray’, when in upstate New York and visiting the great writer’s partner, Tess Gallagher, with whom he had been in lengthy correspondence. It wasn’t until later in the evening that he realized who he was talking with, and he lamented the fact that he hadn’t really read a word of Carver’s work (this was in the early 80s). That night, he happened to be lodged in Carver’s library. Riccardo chuckled with glee as he told me he didn’t get a wink of sleep, but instead spent the entire night reading every short story Carver had written! The rest, I suppose, is history.

Shantaram

On Thursday evening after our day trip to Tivoli I attended a session at the Rome Literature Festival, to which I’d been invited by the embassy. The session featured one Gregory David Roberts, former prison escapee, Hollywood screenwriter, and Australian author of the best-selling Shantaram, a door-stopper at over 900 pages (which I haven’t read) – and there was to be a dinner afterwards. There was quite a buzz about the whole thing, particularly given the recent news that the book is being made into a film (starring Johnny Depp).

But this wasn’t just any writers’ festival. For starters, the location was simply stupendous – the festival was being held actually in the open air ruins of the Basilica di Massentio in the heart of the Roman Forum, whose majesty under a clear night sky can not be overstated.

Secondly, the audience numbers, which went into the thousands; the place was packed.

And thirdly, the technology, which miraculously aided in making the evening run smoothly. There was no MC; rather, the names of the authors faded in on a huge screen as they approached the lectern. Their microphones were the type that is poised along the cheek, as worn by contemporary pop-stars of the singing and dancing variety. And finally: as the authors read from their work, one of two camera shots (profile, front-on) of the author would appear on the right half of the screen, while on the left appeared the Italian translation of the author’s work, as they were reading. I’d never seen anything like it.

I’d not heard much about Gregory before this, but I can declare now that he is one of the very best readers I’ve encountered. He looked every bit the prison-escapee-come-good (and-very-wealthy), with a sparkling black Indian coat down to his feet, and blond hair down tied in a tight, warrior-style pony tail that reached his arse.

He read a short story about some emerald smugglers outbound from Iran; the story itself is a cracking yarn with fully-drawn, convincing characters, sprinkled with gorgeous poetic flourishes that are devoid of all self-consciousness. A rare combination.

But more than this was his actual reading. Really, many authors (including myself) would do well to take a leaf out his book, though I suspect that one is born with the je ne sai qua of his performance: it was perfectly modulated in pace and volume, as the subject matter required, the intensity was sustained when it needed to be, as was his concentration. He actually did the crazy voices for his three characters (an Italian, an Algerian and an Aussie) and nailed them; he seemed to be a good mimic. Sometimes authors zone out a little when reading their own work, particularly if they’ve read it countless times before. But this wasn’t the case, and he didn’t make one slip of the tongue, not even a minor one. In short, it was a consummate reading.

*

Given that there were several thousand people at the reading in the forum (the guy who sat down next to me had brought his own, very tattered copy of Shantaram), I felt extremely privileged when a couple of hours later, in a restaurant with fifty or so other punters, I found myself sitting at a table of about eight, between Gregory himself and the Aussie ambassador Peter (Walcott).

For the rest of the night we heard a few of Gregory’s larger-than-life personal stories; how he taught himself German when in a German prison so as to represent himself in court; how two girls once flashed the security check at an airport so that he could get through on fake passport; and, of course, the details of the upcoming film of Shantaram.

The latter go something like this. Apparently all the major studios made a bid for the option for the film. At the end of the day, Johnny Depp (& studio) beat Brad Pitt, Ed Norton and Russell Crowe (and their respective studios) to the prize, because “Johnny” put up a six figure sum of his own money to secure the role, whereas the others only offered five figures. On the day Gregory received the cheque, he called his stepfather (who raised him) and told him to retire. If I recall correctly, the film begins shooting later this year. At the helm will be the great Indian director Mira Nair (much of the film is set in India).

George Bush in Trastevere

Dear Readers,

You may or may not have heard that the 43rd US president will, this Saturday, be descending on Trastevere for some gelati, together with his hundreds of personal bodyguards. Apparently he is making a bee-line for the Chiesa di Santa Maria - arguably the oldest Christian church in Rome, perched on a piazza in which I find myself many times a week, a piazza in which I've done everything from dance to a didgeridoo to crawl intoxicated across the cobblestones. Stay tuned...

Tivoli: Villa Adriana

Picnic at the Villa Borghese

(Words to follow...)

Vatican Museums

Pickpocket

Those of you who know Em would know she is something of a quiet lass. But this evening, thankfully for the both of us, she was compelled to unleash another side to her usually tranquil mien.

After a very long day, during which we’d walked miles and visited four of Rome’s best churches, we found ourselves at the mercy of the city’s whimsical public transport system. Of late, the trams to Trastevere have been undergoing maintenance; this means that the eighty or more commuters for each service are jammed into infrequent, supplementary buses.

Exhausted to the point of barely being able to stand, we found ourselves packed in the sardine tin of a bus with numerous other tired and sweaty passengers, in peak hour traffic on one of the hottest spring afternoons. Amid dubious odours, we found our tiredness giving way to delirium, as it often does, and were reduced to making sarcastic remarks (eg. ‘Thank god it’s peak hour’; ‘Can someone turn on the heater?’) and bouts of sporadic laughter.

This was all well and good until we finally crossed the Tiber and came to the next fermata. Now, the bus was already so full that we were severely pressed on all sides – I kept wondering what India must be like, imagining people clambering on the roof.

We were standing smack bang in the middle of the bus. Unlike back home, one can board the buses here through any of the doors, front, middle or back; so, as the middle doors opened, about ten more people tried to get on. It was sheer madness. Again we laughed, making jokes about the lack of personal space etc.

It struck me that one particular woman who had just hopped on had her right elbow raised, and seemed to be pushing Emma in the chest, quite forcefully, as she boarded; I caught her eye, and could tell that her expression was strangely intense – but I was so exasperated at her rudeness that I didn’t even think there might be another reason for her excessive pushiness. Only later did Em and I realize that the elbow to Em’s chest was a type of ‘marking’ device for her accomplice, a smaller woman who’d managed to squash up against Em.

Em was wearing a money belt, rather conspicuously, over her shoulder. As mentioned, we were quite delirious, and had no choice really but to recommence our sarcasm, if only to make light of the truly unbelievable situation.

Barely a minute after the doors closed, I suddenly heard the usually placid Em shout with uncharacteristic aggression, and much determination. ‘Give that back!’ Silence. Em repeated herself. ‘NO, give that back’. Suddenly, Em’s purse fell to the floor of the crowded bus, and some of the contents spilled out. ‘Not me miss!’ came the reply, and a general scuffle ensued, whereupon Em somehow managed to retrieve her purse from the floor.

At the time, the feigned innocence of the thief caught Emma off guard. She genuinely thought she may have mistakenly accused the woman of pickpocketing her. Em looked at me. I was bewildered, but was ready to grab the thief by the hair if she didn’t return the purse. Suddenly, the first woman – whom we later realized, with hindsight, to be her accomplice – picked up the receipts that had fallen from the purse, and ever so sweetly returned them to Em.

An awkward silence. For the next minute – which was quite surreal, really, given the four of us were squeezed into about one square meter – I studied the older woman who had originally elbowed Em in the chest, through my sunglasses, and caught her on more than one occasion scowling at the other, rolling her eyes. I knew at once what she was saying: ‘You fool, how could you have possibly screwed that up?’ I also caught the eye a nearby passenger, and knew too what he was telling me: ‘Do you realize how lucky you are?’

The pair of women disembarked at the very next stop. When they were clear, we decided to push past the new passengers and get off the bus; we’d had enough.

Free from the crush, and still not entirely certain as to what had actually occurred, it struck me quite forcefully that the fact that the two women disembarked where they did was an important clue as to their caper: the stop was barely eighty meters from where they had hopped on, on the same street – I know from experience that it is in fact the shortest distance between any two stops on the entire route. Given the peak hour traffic, they could’ve easily walked the distance in less time than in took the bus to travel the distance. What’s more, they began walking back the way they came.

As we went over the events, our hearts racing with adrenaline, we began to piece the puzzle together, what was left of our naïveity being swept aside in the process. The two accomplices were clearly aware of the public transport situation – and were probably spending the best part of the day making a mint, getting on at one stop, pinching a purse or two, then hopping off at the next. When they saw Em standing directly in front of the door with her moneybelt, they must’ve thought they had easy pickings. It was highly probable that the purse only fell to the floor when the thief made to pass it hurriedly to her accomplice, and, thankfully, failed.

They were quick – lightning quick – but they met their match in Em. It was, she said, the sudden lack of weight in the money belt that made her realize it was gone. If it had taken her thirty more seconds to do so, the pair would’ve been off the bus with a hundred euros of Em’s, and all of her cards.

My kiwi friend James says he has seen four successful pickpocketings in Rome (and each time he has intervened). This was our first experience, and, with our new and increased awareness, hopefully our last.

The Arrival!

Finally, Emma has arrived! And wouldn't you know, we unintentionally found ourselves at the very table I'd jokingly reserved for her, when I first arrived in Rome. Well, I hope this update also goes a long way to explaining the increasingly sporadic nature of this blog...

Just Another Aussie Bogan

The day I got back from Milan, Liam arrived in Rome from London. While we didn’t swim the Tiber, as I’d hoped, we did manage to pack a shedload into the week that he was here. Here’s a sample.

1. Drinking Danish beer (Tuborg) in possibly the oldest bar in the world. That is, the remarkably preserved ruins of a bar at Ostia Antica, dating from the first century AD ( called the Thermopyleum)! Liam had heard that Ostia Antica was a good place to visit, much like Pompeii. It surpassed both our expectations. I was thinking maybe a block or two of ruins. Try an entire town with a two kilometer main road, amphiteatre, forum, you name it. This was the commercial hub, the sea-port at the time of the republic. We strolled around the ruins for most of the day – and when we found the bar, complete with feint frescos, earthenware jars, and most imporatantly, beer-garden / courtyard, we went to the merchandise-café area a few blocks away and bought ourselves a couple of ambers to drink with the ghosts of ancient Roman merchants.

2. Bernini in 30 seconds. Well, in truth, we saw a fair bit of Bernini, and there are no better sculptures than Apollo and Daphne and The Rape of Proserpine in the Museo Borghese. Hmmm. How to describe these? Both are remarkable in that they capture sheer movement in stasis, climactic episodes from Ovid’s metamorphosis. The former – marble representing flesh becoming wood – depicts the precise moment Daphne transforms into a tree. Her hips are wrapped in bark, her fingers metamorphose into the most delicate leaves. The latter shows Proserpine trying to flee the amorous advances of Pluto; his hardness is contrasted with her suppleness where his hand presses into her thigh. The indentation his hand makes on her thigh makes the marble look like flesh, and draws all manner of gasps. After this, we bolted to the church down the road to see Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa – a controversial piece that makes the saint look more like a lover in the throws of sexual passion than anything pious. The problem was, we arrived half a minute before mass started, and so only got the most cursory of glimpses of the work – though it was impressive enough to burn itself into my memory as though I’d stared at it for an hour or more.

3. Aperitivi in the Café Greco.

I used to hang out here a bit in the first couple of months after my arrival, a café brimming with literary cache, where everyone from Mark Twain to Arthur Schopenhauer, Goethe to Shelley used to drink. These days it’s more of an upmarket-looking tea-house, but they do serve fantastic aperitivi at the bar. So it was aperol and free salmon sandwhiches in the early evening, just a few doors down the Via Condoti from the Spanish Steps. Gold.

4. Beer at the Trevi. You might be getting the impression that there is a constant in these highlights, that being: beer. And if so, you’d be right. But this was certainly one of the best beers I’ve had in Rome. We hit the Trevi in the evening, the best time to view the fountain, and sat in the middle of the steps facing it. Liam disappeared and returned with two brews. The tide of people ebbed and flowed around us as night descended. For some reason, it was just one of those perfect beers.

5. Reading John Forbes poems in full, drunken voice, and engaging in heated debate about the world’s problems – from Sarkozy to Mugabe, Mussolini to Vanstone – on the terrace of the studio, until dawn. Alcohol involved. Complaints from neighbours the next day (but hey, the first and only complaints since I arrived, and apparently they were much more frequent with former residents).

Milan

At the conference in Udine I audited a paper by Franca Cavagnoli, David Malouf’s Italian translator, on the challenges of translation presented by the ‘poetic’ nature of Malouf’s prose. The paper was marvellously incisive, eagle-eyed, sensitive to the most nuanced aspects of Malouf's prose, the music, the pacing etc etc. Naturally, I found myself hanging on every word. After a discussion with her at lunch we struck up a friendship; at the end of the conference, she invited me to stay with her for a weekend in Milan.

I gladly accepted. A fortnight after the conference, I hopped on the train and headed north. I was greeted by Franca and rain at the station; the rain would soon pass, and Franca - Italian translator of no fewer than four nobel laureates (Coetzee, Gordimer, Morrison, Naipal), novellist in her own right and dyed-in-the-wool Inter Milan fan - would take me on the most comprehensive 72 hour tour of Milan imaginable. I will include posts below as time permits.

La Scala

(Teatro della Scala)

MILAN: By some stroke of fortune my host in Milan, Franca Cavagnoli scored two tickets to La Scala – Milan’s legendary opera house – for the Saturday night I was in town. I was thrilled, and did my best to dress up for the occasion, though my efforts seemed hopeless given where I was (!).

When the orchestra (the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundunks conducted by Mariss Jansons) started up, the room was positively drenched in frisson – the opening piece was Also Sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss, familiar to late twentieth century listeners as the opening theme from Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The crescendo of the timpanies at the outset brought tears to my eyes, before the exaltant, if ominous horn section soared through the roof. The piece was played in a quicker tempo to the version in the Kubrik film.

The second piece was a slow movement (Vorspiel und Liebestod) from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde – which was certainly beautiful (usually my type of music) but which for some reason seemed the least invigorating piece on the night.

Finally, a crazy piece by Bartok (Der Wunderbare Manderin), which involved much mad percussion from the string section striking the backs of their bows on their instruments with gusto.

The evening was one of those occasions on which I wished I had a million dollars so I could share it with all my friends and family. In light of this, I’m going to try my damndest to pick up some cheap tickets to the opera when Em and I are in Vienna.

The Last Supper

MILAN. In an age of over-zealous MTV-style producers, cutting between camera shots at a nauseating pace; an age of carpet-bombing marketing campaigns; an age, in short, of the fetishisation of the image, arguably the greatest challenge for the observer of the work of art (and of historical artifacts) is to be able to still the mind for long enough to actually see the damn thing.

See, that is. Not merely look (at). And in this I’m making a similar distinction to that made in the film White Men Can’t Jump, when Wesley Snipes’ character chides Woody Harrelson’s character for being able only to listen to Jimi Hendrix, but unable to hear him. (I'm aware there is a certain irony here in my reference to a film in this context.)

I tried over the phone to book tickets to see Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper while still in Rome, and was informed that there were no availabilities for at least a week. But by a combination of good fortune and Franca sweet-talking the ticket vendor, we managed to fluke a single ticket not long before closing time on the day I arrived in Milan.

During my time in Italy, a mere four months so far, my understanding of what the German philosopher Walter Benjamin means when he talks about the ‘aura’ of the work of art – that strange cultural membrane through which the viewer must penetrate, as it were, in order to be able to see the painting (or sculpture) – has improved dramatically. (And this in a fraction of the time I spent studying Benjamin at uni.)

So to Leonardo, the blue ninja turtle with the kitana blade, and probably the most famous of all Renaissance men. It could be said that of his peers, he had the most ‘genius’ (if it weren’t anachronistic to apply the Romantic notion of ‘genius’ to an earlier historical period). But the fact is, while Michelangelo, who is lauded as the most sublimely talented sculptor to have ever lived, was also a gun painter and architect, and Raphael no less so on the score of each of the latter, it seems that Leonardo changed the way we understand ourselves and the world in a somewhat more substantial way.

Leo’s mastery of what are now considered distinct disciplines, ranging from anatomy and biomechanics to mechanical engineering, is perhaps his primary achievement. Oh, and the bloke wasn’t too bad with a paintbrush.

But after the prison-like preliminaries involved in entering the church in which The Last Supper is displayed, I imagine that many punters could feel a twinge of disappointment.

The fresco has, famously, gone to the dogs, despite numerous restorations (some of which have actually done more damage than rejuvenation). The giant room is other wise bare, apart from another fresco on the wall at the far end. It is also difficult to find the best vantage point from which to view the work – up close, in the middle of the hall, or from the back.

But the greatest difficulty in appreciating the work is surely the one that involves breaking through the 'aura' of the work, again, that cultural membrane through which one must penetrate just to be able to see the work. Taking the opportunity to briefly observe my fellow observers, I noticed that the vast majority seemed distracted, unable to stay still before the work, glancing for some reason at the blank walls, shrugging their shoulders - I guess I was one of them, distracted enough to look around. Without trying to sound like a snob, I imagine that many of them were the type of travelers who would leave with one thought: ‘Now I’ve done The Last Supper.”

As Benjamin explained, the difficulty of seeing is partly due to our age of mechanical reproduction. What is (ontologically speaking) the difference between the ‘copy’ of the image - on the teatowel, in the postcard or on the television - and the ‘original’? They look the same don’t they? Sure, one guy painted this version and someone else made the copies; but then the copies are the same ‘image’ aren't they. We’ve looked at this image a thousand times… so how can the original live up to the idea that it is something profoundly different?

The way I see it, ‘seeing’ a work like this requires a type of radical ‘forgetting’. Forgetting the aura, forgetting the world outside, forgetting the time that has elapsed into history, the innumerable artistic and cultural developments that have occurred since.

One is only allowed half an hour to view the work – which I found was only just long enough to approach this necessary ‘forgetting.’ It was only in the five or so minutes before I had to leave that I'd finally forgotten enough to remember how to appreciate the work - its narrative, the investment of each participant in the scene, their gestures, expressions and gaze - which are so perfectly rendered that, if we’re lucky, we can recognize in them something intrinsic in ourselves.

Villa Reale

MILAN: Franca tells me that this wonderful villa was waiting for Napolean upon his arrival in the city, on account of him declaring himself ‘Duke of Milan’. The building is now an art gallery and a scenic backdrop for wedding photos, and the gardens are a lovely place to get away from the traffic and the fashionistas.

When she was studying, Franca would come to the gardens here to read. It is perhaps the most peaceful place in central Milan, a secret really. Turtles and ducklings shared the banks of the creek that leads to a small waterfall. Wild strawberries declared that it was the beginning of spring.

5 conversations with a translator

During my whirlwind tour of Milan, Franca and I had much to talk about; below is a random selection of five topics covered in our conversation.

1. On the phonetic differences between the German and Austrian languages. This was not really a conversation, but a case of me listening to a master of European languages. I asked the question, she explained the difference with examples. I have neither the skill nor the memory to repeat the details of the lesson; suffice to say that I completely understood the essential phonetic differences between the two languages – if only for two minutes.

2. On the strange similarity between the remains of San Carlo Borromeo in the crypt of the paleo-Christian Battistero di San Giovanni, and the undead pirates in Pirates of the Carribean. Our tittering was shushed by a pious devotee who was sitting behind us.

3. On the relationship between ‘terrorism’ and ‘fascism’. Franca has distinct memories of Italy’s more recent, violent past, such events as the fatal bombings in Bologna in the 80s, when scores of people were murdered. The Mafioso is still a strong presence in Italy and Italian politics, and has strong links to residual fascism (if I can call it that). I wondered whether the Mafioso would find it more difficult to use force and physical violence, given that they may now risk being branded ‘terrorists’.

4. On the difficulty of forgiving oneself for wrongs done to a recently deceased loved one.

5. On the most likely candidate for Australia’s second Nobel prize for literature. As the Italian translator of no fewer than four Nobel laureates (Toni Morrison, J.M. Coetzee, V.S. Naipal, Nadine Gordimer – incidentally, all four received the prize within two years of her translations) Franca is infinitely more qualified than myself for serious discussion on this matter. This didn’t, however, prevent me from having input in the discussion.

We both agreed that David Malouf and Les Murray were Australia’s best hopes. I declared my position in the former camp immediately. At the time, this was partly because I had recently received my advance review copy of Malouf’s latest collection of poems Typewriter Music (UQP 2007) (keep an eye out for my review in the June issue of the ALR, in The Australian on the 1st Wednesday of the month – at 3500 wds, the lengthiest review I’ve published.)

My argument is as follows: the main criterion for the award, as I understand it, is the author’s contribution to their national literature. My first argument concerns the breadth of the contribution – a type of quantitative argument. Whereas Murray has published many volumes of poetry and criticism, Malouf has made substantial contributions not only to the nation’s poetry and criticism, but also its prose fiction, both novels and short fiction, as well as opera libretti. The depth of the contribution – which would perhaps be a qualitative argument – requires more time than I have here, and is perhaps ultimately a matter of ‘taste’. I won’t go further into the matter here – suffice to say it’s my opinion that, in these discussions, it is often forgotten that Malouf is a poet, as well as a novelist.