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.

Ulysses

TRIESTE. After my adventure in and around Miramare Castle I had a few hours left in Trieste before my train left for Rome, and so decided to set out in search of the houses and apartments that James Joyce lived in when he based himself in the city.

Thankfully, each of these places is marked with a plaque. With the help of a brochure, I managed to locate five of the fifteen or so buildings where Joyce once resided.

On my way back to the hostel, I came across a bronze statue of the Dubliner. The remarkable thing about this statue was that it was not set above the street, towering high on a plinth above the pedestrians, but was set at street level, on the pavement, among the people (see photos above), in the humble pose of a man merely going about his daily business.

Naturally, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of accosting him for a chat. (For the curious, the subjects of our conversation included the influence of Islamic poetry on eighth century Christendom, Oscar Wilde’s deathbed conversion and Amanda Vanstone’s recent appointment as Australian ambassador to Rome.)

Miramare Castle

TRIESTE. In light of the thorns, spiders, wolf traps and ankle-breaking descents of the ancient path to the Miramare Castle, it was something of a relief to finally sit by the fountain in the forecourt before the ostentatious, neo-gothic façade of the castle itself. And this despite the hundreds of children on school excursions, running through the gardens.

The castle is certainly more impressive architecturally than the one at Duino (though I preferred the latter, on account of the Rilke factor). Like many, it is supposedly haunted; it is said that some mischief will befall anyone who spends the night inside. The reason for this haunting has particular historical resonance; it is due in some part to the fate of the founder of the castle, and also that of his successor, who both died in unfortunate circumstances; but more famously, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand spent the night here on his way to Sarajevo, where he was assassinated (the catalyst for WWI).

The library, though, was to die for, and had my train not been leaving that night, I might’ve contrived to get locked in after closing time, as I did accidentally in the gardens at Duino. Dark wooden bookshelves with priceless editions stacked high to the ceiling, an old-school giant globe, marble busts of Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare and Goethe, a sculpture of Dedalus attaching wings to Icarus, a sumptuous desk, and all overlooking the silk blue sheet of the Adriatic sea.

Looking for Miramare

TRIESTE. Although one rationally hopes for everything to go according to plan when traveling, it is often the case that the best experiences occur when those plans go pear shaped. So it was on my second and final day in Trieste.

I was quite convinced that nothing could match the serenity of the Rilke Walk along the cliffs of the Adriatic, in Duino, which I’d discovered the night before. But this didn't prevent me from visiting Miramare, a seaside town famous for its opulent 19th century castle.

It was a perfect spring day, and from the train the view over the Adriatic was postcard stuff, a cobalt slab all the way to the horizon. The problem occurred when, at Miramare station, the doors wouldn’t open. I raced through the carriage to the next door, only to find another guy standing helplessly before his doors, which also weren’t opening. A nearby conductor merely shrugged his shoulders at the both of us, and said something about getting off at Monfalcone, another twenty minutes away.

There were in fact two other guys in standing before the door. The one who had also tried to disembark was, judging by his accent, clearly an Englishman. We both agreed to hop off at the next stop, and try to make our way back to Miramare.

In this way, I came to be stranded in Auriviso - basically the middle of nowhere, a type of tumble-weed, one bar town - with absolutely no sense of how to get to Miramare... the next train was four hours away, at 3 in the afternoon.

After much difficulty, we found the town’s one bus stop, and also the strange ticket vending machine. During this time, a found out that my new friend, James (to be distinguished from by Kiwi friend James from Rome) had recently received his doctorate in physics from Cambridge, and was employed at the world famous International Institute for Theoretical Physics immediately beside the Miramare Castle. He specialized in models of heat transference, but felt under the pump to produce more results than he had managed in the year he’d been working.

James had heard of a mythical, ancient path, that apparently stretched from the next small town on the bus route, down to the ocean. Our search for the path was shambolic; we asked every single person we saw (about five) for directions, and each one of them mumbled words such as ‘lontano’ and ‘brutto’ – long and harsh / ugly / crap.

When we finally came across the long, harsh, ugly and crap path, we knew we were in the right place. For the first half, ‘path’ was too generous a word to describe the barest of impressions in chest-high grass and thorny briars. We came to a few divergences, clambered through barb-wire fences, across private property, olive groves and orchards. At one stage we narrowly averted what looked like some sort of large, rusty animal trap, clearly forgotten about in the long grass.

The whole affair turned into a matter of survival. We talked about the challengers faced by explorers; the possibility of a venture capital start-up that acted as an ‘angel’ for lost travelers; the ancient uses of the path. Eventually we spied the stone foundations of the path proper, in the distance, and upon reaching this, we saw the welcome sight of the sea.

(The 'real' path. I think I was too preoccupied to take photos when on the 'cattivo' path.)

Eventually we made it to the Institute. James pointed me in the direction of the vast gardens belonging to the castle, shook my hand, and went to work – two and a half hours late. As I turned and made my way, I felt strange about parting with this guy (we didn’t exchange emails), an absolute stranger a few hours before – for those hours were spent on a truly memorable adventure.

*

I mentioned that there were in fact two men in the train carriage at Miramare (where the doors failed to open). James was one. The other was a dark man dressed in a pair of blue mechanic’s overalls. His skin seemed olive or tanned, and dirty, as though he’d been hard at work for months. His closely cropped black her poked out from underneath an old blue cap.

The reason the image of this man has burnt itself into my memory is this: when James and I met in the carriage, we turned to him and asked if he too had been prevented from getting off the train. He didn’t reply, and obviously didn’t know English, but after further prompting, he simply shrugged his shoulders and showed us a piece of paper. On it was written two words, with an arrow from the first to the second. These words were, respectively: Trieste… Romania.

On seeing these two words, and the slightly baffled look on the man’s face, I realized in that instant that my own troubles (not being able to disembark at the station I intended to) were of absolutely no significance whatsoever.

Cafe San Marco

TRIESTE. Tuesday morning. Wander the streets in search of coffee. Find myself at Cafe San Marco, which I'd tried to visit at around midnight last night; once a bohemian cafe, one of James Joyce's faves. This morning it is empty, though I find a sign on the noticeboard spruiking a poetry reading tonight. I hope to check it out, but probably wont, given my train leaves for Rome at 9pm, and the gig starts at eight.



Coffee rating: excellent (9/10). Now back to the backpackers to check out, deposit bags at the station, and set out for Miramare...

Duino Castle

On arriving in Trieste, I checked into my hostel – a place that was good for a bed though not much more – dumped my bags, and set out at once in search of the bus to Duino. After some confusion, I managed to fluke the last service that would get me there before the castle closed.

The castle’s façade isn’t as grand as others, but the view! Perched high on a cliff peering out over the vast Adriatic, with the gorgeous castle gardens spread out below. As usual, I was particularly mesmerized by the literary cache of the place. I could see Rilke arriving, thinking of Lou Salome, whom he’d stolen from Nietszche; Marie Bonaparte writing letters to Freud (some of which were on display).

I spent an hour in the castle, during which time I discovered a gorgeous balcony off one of the main rooms. After the initial shock of the view, I thought it would be appropriate to recite the opening lines of Rilke’s first Duino Elegy while videoing the surrounds (see below).

from the first of Rilke's Duino Elegies (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
And even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,
which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing...

___

I also like John Tranter’s version, which opens:

I hate this place. If I were to throw a fit, who
among the seven thousand starlets of Hollywood
would give a flying fuck….

___

By this time the castle was closing – and here began one of the strangest experiences on my trip so far.

Rather than leaving, I thought I’d go for a stroll through the gardens, along the cliffs. The flora was luscious, but to my surprise I saw some of the fauna also: about thirty meters away, I caught sight of a young deer as it bounded away, no doubt spooked by my presence.

Suddenly I was startled by a man’s voice behind me. It was the gardener, and though he was yelling at me in Italian, I was certainly aware what the problem was: I wasn’t supposed to be here. When he realized I spoke English, he spoke to me in quite an aristocratic English accent, though gruffly. ‘How did you get in? Did you jump the fence?’

I replied that I’d merely walked in, through the open gate after visiting the castle. He didn’t believe me, insisting instead that I must’ve jumped the fence as the gate was locked. Thankfully, I’d taken a photo of the open gate, so I showed him on my camera. It seemed I had somehow gotten myself locked in the gardens for about an hour.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said. ‘They let the dogs out after they lock up!’

The dogs??? I suppose I should count myself lucky, really.

The gardener started to relax when he realized I was harmless, and showed me the way out through his own adjoining garden. In hindisight, I wouldn’t have swapped getting locked in the gardens of the Duino castle for anything.

Every Angel is Terrifying - The Rilke Walk

Trieste by Night

April 23, Monday. I decided to make the most of being in the Fruili region, the north-easternmost in Italy, by spending a night at a cheap backpacker’s in Trieste, a once great sea-port city overlooking the vast Adriatic Sea.

My reasons for going to Trieste were three-fold:

1. It is a fairly out-of-the way place, usually overlooked on the tourist trail – the approach from Venice, by rail or road, skirts the highest cliffs in Italy, overlooking the Adriatic. If the breathtaking beauty of the winding roads in and around Queenstown in NZ where anything to go by, I trusted the guidebooks when they said that the trip was severely underrated. Add to this Trieste’s location in the furthest reaches of north-eastern Italy, and I figured that, since I wasn’t coming this way again any time soon, then why the hell not.

2. In truth, it was Trieste’s literary cache, just as much as its location, that drew me there – particularly, the fact that it was Irish literary great James Joyce’s place of self-imposed ‘exile’. It was here that Joyce worked on Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, while tutoring students from noble families.

3. After doing my research, I also discovered that within striking distance of Trieste, barely half an hour by bus, stands the Duino Castle – that inspired the German poet Rainer Mariner Rilke to write the Duino Elegies, one of the great poem-series of the last century. This sealed it for me, and I decided I’d spend the night in Trieste, and make a day trip to the Duino Castle – a literary pilgrimage, you might say. The thirty-six hours I subsequently spent in and around Trieste turned out to be some of the most exhilarating of my life.

Trieste was not part of Italy until last century (when Italy looked at the great western powers, saw that they had colonized much of Africa, and indeed many other parts of the world, and felt that she should also get in on the action – though my somewhat flippant interpretation of the rise of expansionist fascism is of course debatable). It is probably worth contextualizing this by stressing that Italy didn’t officially exist as a unified nation until 1870.

Judging by its architecture, Trieste clearly cashed in as a major port. The major piazza overlooking the sea seems to rival the Piazza San Marco in Venice, for size, and nearly for grandeur.