Road Trip 3 - Va Pensiero

Va Pensiero


Random thoughts from Abroad

On our way back to England, we pay our respects to three great Italians. First we stop at the house where Michelangelo Buonarroti was born.  

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This is a robust building within the walls of a small castle atop the village of Caprese Michelangelo, pretty much in the middle of Tuscan nowhere.  Michelangelo’s father had recently been appointed the Podestà, or Magistrate, of Caprese when his son was born on March 6^th 1475.  It is a quiet place, and visitors are few and far between, but at the least it gives a sense of the natural and remote world where the infant artist may have first been inspired.

St Francis's cloak - preserved at La Verna

Not far away, and almost as remote, though in this case with bus parks and places to stay, is La Verna, where St Francis of Assisi received the stigmata (on September 14^th 1224) while enduring a forty day fast.  

The mountain, which is in the Tuscan Apennines, was gifted to St Francis by a local landowner and became a place of sanctuary for him and his followers.  It is a much visited, and very beautiful, place, surrounded by mature forests of beech and spruce, and with spectacular views to the west and south.

At the end of the first day of our travel north, we rest in Anghiari, a well-preserved walled town, whose great claim to fame is that it gives its name to a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci, which is said to hide behind other frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence (at the same time that Michelangelo was working there on the opposite wall).  The subject, of course, is the battle, at Anghiari, which took place between the Florentines (who were victorious) and the Milanese on 29^th June 1440.  It was a crucial event in the development of the Renaissance, though despite the fact that thousands of men confronted each other for more than four hours, only one soldier died, by falling off his horse.

Exhausted by so much culture in one day, we have supper at the Ristorante Nena.  Their website claims that We are fans and holders of the taste, we like genuinity of typical tuscany foods, strong taste, but delicate. We put all our experience and care in every single dish, accompanied with a good wine chosen among our wide choice, and they are spot on.  Their ragù is wonderful, and the bistecca di razza chianina superb…. I somehow doubt whether San Francesco would have approved of our indulgence, but have a sneaking suspicion that Michelangelo and Leonardo might have happily joined our table, possibly even forgetting their differences…..

Day two sees us in the Valley of the Po, where, on October 9^th 1813, Giuseppe Verdi first saw the light of day.  His father was an innkeeper, and the simple building they lived in is now a monument to the composer.

Many years ago we stayed in a lofty hotel in nearby Busseto, where a great statue sits in the arcaded piazza Verdi. The fine old-fashioned Caffé Centrale is still there, not much changed, though as a sign of the times the name on the receipts in Zheng Liangdi….

In the nearby sixteenth century Villa Pallavicino the Giuseppe Verdi National Museum was opened in 2009, purporting to be a celebration of Verdi’s genius. 

Extracts from the operas waft around the costumed dummies in theatrically decorated rooms, but somehow the Maestro is missing….

He’s not at his home, either, at his villa at Sant’Agata.  

He lived here for fifty years, and instructed in his will that it should remain in the family and be kept unchanged after his death on January 27^th 1901.  So, though the cracks are appearing, it is an atmospheric memorial to his private life….

Back in Roncole Verdi, you can see the church where he learned to be a musician from his upstairs window.  

And next door, at the Vecchio Mulino, an old mill also once belonging to the Pallavicini, the Dallatana family now produce Culatello di Zibello D.O.P. one of the delights of Italy yet to be popularised by the mass markets, and they will serve it with delicious local wines….

 

Paul Halsall, of Fordham University, states that The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, (Va Pensiero), from Verdi's opera Nabucco (1842) attained great political significance. Va Pensiero became the Italians' song of liberation, for, in the oppressed Hebrews, they found a symbol of their own longing for reunification with Lombardy, which was occupied by Austria. The unison chorus (one of the few da capo choruses in all opera) became the underground national hymn. And the composer's name became V.E.R.D.I, a slogan meaning Vittorio Emmanuele Rei d'Italia (Victor Emanuel, King of Italy) - a reference to the sole native dynasty in Italy and the focus of nationalist hopes for unity.

In 1981 the chorus was proposed as a replacement for the Italian National Anthem, though this never came about.  Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord/Padania, a predecessor of our very own UKIP, however did adopt it in 2009.

In the context of Brexit, the question of sovereignty and the desire for unification in Italy in 1842 would have been a very different issue from that of Europe in 2016.  Verdi was actually born within the borders of the First French Empire.  In 1814 his mother, Luigia, narrowly escaped, according to a plaque on the church wall, with her son, Beppino, from the invading bloody hordes of Russians and Austrians.  The political map of Europe has been a shifting jigsaw for centuries.  The cry, O, mia patria, sì bella e perduta! (Oh, my country, so beautiful and so lost!) is entirely understandable, both in the historical context, and today, but it does not now dictate dissociation from your neighbours…..  Va, Pensiero....

The next day, with mixed feelings, we queue for an hour to drive through the St Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland, emerging into the fantasy world of William Tell and the canton of Uri.  Legend has it that William Tell confronted the Habsburg tyrant Albrecht Gessler in the square of the town of Altdorf.  The lime tree under which Walter Tell stood in 1307 with an apple on his head (split by his father’s masterful shot) was felled in 1567.  In 1582 a chapel in Bürglen was dedicated to William Tell.  In 1780 a monument to Tell was erected in Zurich.  Following the establishment of the nation state of Switzerland in 1848 every town wanted a monument to the founding fathers, and in 1860 Altdorf was presented with its first Tell monument, though the massive statue now in front of the Türmli, created by Richard Kissling at a cost of 142,000 Swiss francs, was not inaugurated until 1895.

What none of this admits is that William Tell didn’t exist, and that despite Schiller’s 1804 play, and even John Wilkes Booth’s citing of Tell as an inspiration for his assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the probability is that the legend goes back to Norse mythology….  This doesn’t mean it’s not a great story; but it is a bit like believing that because the New York born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson says Brexit will give £350 million a week to the NHS, the UK should unilaterally and without further debate invoke Article 50.

Anyway, after a brief SatNav breakdown, which meant that we drove through a nine kilometre tunnel out of Altdorf twice, we found the tiny, windy and precipitous road up to the village of Isenthal, where we are warmly greeted by Lisbeth, our host, and where we eat deer and drink good wine….. The valley is steep, and green, with the dingling of cow bells in the pastures and children chasing goats down the street. 

We walk to look down on Lake Lucerne and Altdorf, and relax as the sun declines behind the mountains.

The Urnersee, as Lake Lucerne is known here

The rest of our journey back to Brexitland is fundamentally anticlimactic.  We stop the next night in Landgasthaus Wintringer Hof in Kleinblittersdorf, Germany, where we are treated very well by Vito, who is from Calabria….

We visit Trier, which Diocletian made the capital of the West-Roman Empire.  The impressive Porta Nigra 

is awash with grey tourists, but the 4^th century Aula Palatina, once the Basilica of Constantine, and now the protestant Church of the Redeemer, is virtually empty, its brick walls towering 33 metres high and 67 metres long…..

Trier was also the birthplace of Karl Marx, and that house is a museum. By the front door the opening times are inscribed on a brass plate in German, English... and Chinese.

We sleep in a grand house by the Meuse, near Namur, in Belgium, but the air is damp and local roadworks impossible.  

The city of Namur suffered badly in both World Wars.  I regret to say that it doesn’t seem to have recovered…..

And so, the spring having gone out of our step somewhat, we approach Calais, where there are still thousands of migrants desperate to reach the UK, and we steam, guiltily, across the channel to that symbol of Brexitness, the White Cliffs of Dover, which gleam at us like some thin-lipped snarl. 

I’ve driven three thousand miles through seven countries, feeling the exchange rate slipping away from us, but encountering generous, welcoming people everywhere, though these are people who simply cannot understand this Brexit business.  An element of distrust hangs in the air, perhaps, like the whiff of an illicit cigarette some hours after it has been consumed.  I feel ashamed and slink home, retiring to bed to nurse my still damaged arm (after the fall as described in Part 1), skulking on my selfish island…..

Ah well....

Va, Pensiero!

As St Francis wrote in his Letter to all the Faithful:

And let us love our neighbours as ourselves, and, if any one does not wish to love them as himself or cannot, let him at least do them not harm, but let him do good to them…..

Or, as Giuseppe Verdi put it, in his vigorous chorus:

o t'ispiri il Signore un concento

che ne infonda al patire virtù.

[though this is much better without translation*.... simply because it sounds so good....]

It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.

Bashō Matsuo

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches

* though a rough translation is:

or permit the Lord to inspire us

to endure our suffering.

Roman walks 4

The Appian Way

When we looked at Monti Celio and Esquilino, we started from the obelisk (or stele) of Axum, in the Piazza di Porta Capena. If we return there for a moment we'll find, on the northern side of the Via delle Terme di Caracalla, opposite FAO, a time-worn lump of brick and stone. Set on the side of this is a simple inscription that says, Here begins the Via Appia. Once this was the limit of Rome: outside the Porta Capena you were on your own, on your way south without the city to protect you. Since then the Aurelian walls were constructed, and now, in name anyway, the Via Appia, or Queen of the roads as she was known, begins at the Porta San Sebastiano, or the Porta Appia as it once was.

The road was opened in 312BC, by the Censor Appio Claudio, and then it went to the Colli Albani and on to Capua. Later developments took it as far as Bari, in the far south-east of Italy. It has suffered a bit in its long life, and traffic and the Raccordo Anulare have definitely lessened its charm for one can no longer do what Charles Dickens and his family did some one-and-a-half centuries ago, which was to walk out to the Colli Albani along the road for a day out, returning by coach in the moonlight. We can see a bit of it, though, and recapture something of its glory.

Not far from the beginning or the Via, set back on the right, you'll soon see the massive walls of the Baths of Caracalla (Thermae Antoninianae). These walls and gardens provide one of the most pleasing spectacles of ancient Rome: it's not as romantic now as it was when Joseph Severn painted Shelley here, creepers and grasses trailing from the masonry, but it's probably a lot safer than it was then and much more is known about the building. Measuring 330 metres by 330 metres on the outside, the main edifice is 220 by 114. There were cold rooms, warm rooms, hot rooms, gyms, libraries and even a stadium, and it functioned from about 217AD until the Goths smashed the water supply complex in the sixth century. About one thousand six hundred people at a time could use these baths, whether they were being massaged with oils or just relaxing amidst the sculptures and mosaics.

Nowadays it is used in the summer for open-air productions of opera and ballets, and what is sometimes lost in the technical quality of the performance is more than compensated for by the magic of sitting among these huge shadows while the moon rises over the graceful Roman pines.

Enough of this! We need to get on, and crossing the Piazzale Numa Pompilio may take a while, since the traffic lights here seldom seem to favour pedestrians. However, once across, and into the Via di Porta San Sebastiano you are in a relatively quiet road that becomes one way and which functions a bit like the sewers of Vienna (in The Third Man): every so often you hear a rushing behind you and a flush of miscellaneous vehicles races past, almost tearing you from your handhold; then there is calm again.

Shortly, on the right, you will find the Casina di Cardinal Bessarione, which is a delightful fifteenth century house set in a happy garden.  At present the house is closed (having been restored it is now only rarely open to the public) but it is a lovely example of its kind even from outside, with frescoed walls and mullioned windows and it presents a picture of Renaissance Rome that is different, and refreshing.

Further up the road, on the left, at number nine, there is another peaceful oddity: the tombs of the Scipio family (Sepolcro degli Scipioni) which reopened to the public in 2011 after being closed for twenty years of restoration. These lie under a Roman house in the gardens of which is also the Columbario di Pomponio Hylas, which is a private, decorated tomb in the form of a dove-cote, from the first century, in perfect condition.  Unfortunately, while this used to be included in the entrance to the Scipio tombs, it is now separate and only available to pre-booked parties.

A little further on and you will pass under the Arch of Drusus (Arco di Druso), which is a third century adornment for the Appian Way and which helped to support the Antonine Aqueduct which supplied water to the Baths of Caracalla. After this you are inside the Porta San Sebastiano.  On the right is the entrance to an interesting museum (http://en.museodellemuraroma.it/)  and also to a tract of the Aurelian walls that takes you towards the Porta Ardeatina.  If you have the time, and access is permitted, a walk along the defences is worth it, with a remarkable amount of greenery behind, you, and occasional glimpses of the country outside the city through the slits.

Once outside the walls you are faced with a choice. Here begins the Appia Antica proper (see http://www.parcoappiaantica.it/en/) and you can get a bus down it if you want or you can risk the traffic as far as Domine quo Vadis (a small church that is on the spot where Christ met Peter on his way out of Rome). This is just less than a kilometre from the gate and from there you can take the coach entrance to the Catacombs of San Callisto (http://www.catacombe.roma.it/en/index.php), and then to the church and catacombs of San Sebastiano (http://www.catacombe.org/uk_info.html), from where you can catch the bus back. It really is not worth trying to walk up the Appia Antica past Domine Quo Vadis, as the traffic is horrendous and the road is narrow and. walled. There is an alternative, however, and that is to take the bus away from Rome to its terminus and then to explore the road beyond by foot, stepping from block to block under the pines, between glamorous villas and the rubble of ancient monuments.

Whatever you decide, however, you have to come back the same way and you'll quite likely be on the bus, so go a couple of stops around the walls and get off near the Porta Latina. Inside the walls again, and just near the entrance to the Columbario, if you didn't see it before, is a curious little octagonal Tempietto di San Giovanni in Oleo, to which great artists such as Bramante, Sangallo and Borromini have contributed. This marks the place where, according to legend, St John the Evangelist emerged, unharmed, from a pot of boiling oil into which he had been forced by the Emperor Domitian.  John's survival persuaded his tormentor to exile him to the island of Patmos instead, where he then wrote his Revelation.

Where would we be without stories?

A few steps from here, going down the hill first then right up the Via di San Giovanni a Porta Latina, you find a courtyard with a hundred-year-old cedar tree and an eighth-century well. Here is the simple church of San Giovanni a Porta Latina. It was first built in the fifth century, though it has been restructured and restored several times; the campanile is tenth or eleventh century. Inside it is light and plain with the lovely luminosity that comes from using onyx (according to the Rosminian Fathers who live there, though for some reason I thought it might be selenite as in Santa Sabina) instead of glass in the windows. There are various ancient columns of marble and granite, and some twelfth century frescoes depicting scenes from the old, and the new testaments. This church really looks and feels like it could have done eight hundred years ago or more, and, being in a cul-de-sac, in a quiet part of Rome, it is an ideal place to reflect on time and its vagaries.

I would leave you here, steeped in philosophy and early medieval Rome, but perhaps that's not fair. Life isn't like that, and there's just one more church, also dedicated to St John, that you ought to see. In fact you may have noticed it earlier if you walked along the tops of the walls, for you can see the backs of fifteen giant statues from almost everywhere in Rome that has a view roughly eastwards. San Giovanni in Laterano (The Papal Arch basilica of St John Lateran http://www.rome.info/basilicas/st-john-lateran/) and all its trappings - the park in front of it, the gates in the walls, the baptistery, the Scala Santa, the modern monument to St Francis of Assisi, the trams, the metro, the Coin supermarket and all - it's very much the heart, or perhaps the liver(?) of Rome, and that's where you should end your walks. So from the Rosminian haven slip back out the Porta Latina and follow the walls to the Porta Metronia, the next gate to your left. Then go inside and up the Via dell'Amba Aradam, and you are in Piazza Giovanni Paolo II, and next to Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano). The facade and main doors are round the other side, but here is the baptistery, and there's a palace, there's an obelisk, and all around is teeming Roman life. It may be tiring, but it is alive.

I will leave you here, amidst the confusion: you're not lost; no where's very far from anywhere else in Rome and you will have seen a lot of the city now. You may be overwhelmed, but you are meant to be.  They didn't build this city to have it ignored!

We will return

Umbria I - Assisi

The Heart of Italy - Part I



La Basilica di San Francesco, Assisi

On September 26^th, 1997, starting at 2.30am, Italy suffered a series of heart attacks.  The furred up arteries of her heartland were racked with shocks which caused devastation in and around Assisi, the home town of St Francis, patron saint of Italy.  The great basilica, with Giotto’s 13^th century frescos of the life of the saint, was seriously damaged and much of the vaulted ceilings fell in ruins.  In the neighbouring hills, monasteries and villages were ravaged and, as with a serious cardiac arrest, there was fear, pain, and death.

The Cloister of the Basilica of St Francis

Fortunately the paramedics, doctors and nurses worked tirelessly and brilliantly and the green heart of Italy is still beating.  Some might even say its health has been improved, and like a reformed smoker, Assisi is pink and shiny, clean and bright, getting up early to greet the day and still having the energy to stay up late at night.  The basilica is in top condition, and the miraculous cycle of frescos has been restored for all to admire, so we can still see young Frank handing his father his fine clothes in the presence of the Bishop, and the remarkable proportions and movements of the doves, quails and sparrows coming to feed from his careworn hands.



Reflections on St Francis

Some say, however, there has been an element of Disneyfication, so that Assisi, with its crowds, is more a medieval theme park than a living museum.  It’s too smart and shiny, and, again like some reformed smokers, there’s a zealous cleanness about it that doesn’t quite convince.  In fact, the town is craving for a puff of smoke, a taint of tawdriness in the darker corners, and that touch of danger that comes from risky practice.



Tempting goodies to catch the eye

You can sense the tensions in the shop windows – a material world of glittering creations is on sale here, from plaster Saints to enticing cakes; figurines for cribs to hand-painted pottery.  On the steps of the great church of Santa Chiara a group of brothers wait for opening time, their watches and mobile phones not quite in keeping with their simple habits and sandals.



On the steps of Santa Chiara

For me there’s interest in these contradictions, but I tend to prefer the other places, not quite so pretty, not quite so frequented.  However, I am not complaining – Assisi is a wonder; a treasure trove of medieval art and architecture, from the imposing Rocca Maggiore that dominates the hill to the cloisters of San Damiano below.  And you do not have to wander far up the stony veins that lead into the piazza to get away from the swirling, chattering masses, and to find symbolic peace within the walls and gardens.



A Peace Niche within the walls of Assisi

And one special place, not far from Assisi, that also suffered in the landquake, is the Abbey of Sassovivo (living rock – because of the clearwater spring there).  This monastery, which tops a spur on the wooded slopes of 1100m Monte Aguzzo, commands a view across the city of Foligno and up towards Monte Subasio and Assisi. 



The Abbey of Sassovivo, 520 metres above sea level

It was founded by Benedictines around the year 1,000, and was an important centre of scholarship in the fourteenth century, although it went into decline in the fifteenth.  Today it is the home of a small group of The Little Brothers of Jesus, followers of Charles de Foucauld.  It is being lovingly restored, but work is slow.  Central to the complex is a beautiful Romanesque cloister, the work of Pietro De Maria in 1229, who constructed it in Rome to be brought here and assembled. 



Part of the Cloister at Sassovivo

I marvel at the idea of an upmarket medieval Ikea, with the monks choosing the design from a vellum catalogue and a team of donkeys employed to deliver the goods.  It consists of 128 double columns, with 58 arches, around an ornate well (dating from 1340, although redesigned in 1623).  Today the silent shade is skewed, as though the hand of God has lifted and twisted it slightly but left it whole, respecting its integrity and value as a place of contemplation.  A solitary brother studies in the cool.  The coloured marbles, pink limestone and threads of mosaic catch the sunlight and reflect it back to the blue sky.  Nothing stirs, except for a tiny tremor in my heart. 

Il Chiostro - Sassovivo