III.xviii. Sciopero

"Italy is a poor country full of rich people."
- Richard Gardner, former U.S. ambassador to Rome

In spending an extended amount of time in Italy, one begins to have respect for stereotypes. One such stereotype is that of the sciopero, the famed civil strike. Of course, in two short months I have already witnessed a student strike, a lecturer strike, even a museum personnel strike, but today was a nation-wide general strike. The idea of a total shutdown prompted visions of mass chaos, rioting, looting, garbage piling up on the streets, but in fact today was nothing like what I had imagined. True, most stores and services were unavailable for certain periods of time, but for most of the day the work stoppage was imperceptible. There were certainly more people out on the streets, but it was a festive atmosphere.
    Alex and I decided to take advantage and go for a walk, though the purported mass demonstrations that were supposed to be underway failed to materialize. Instead, we decided to visit some quarters of Bologna somewhat off the beaten track. We strayed into a Baroque church (such places are unaffected by the temporal disturbances of the outside world) dedicated to Saint Anne of Bologna, though I spent more time there as I would have wished as I ended up being locked into a tiny chapel, full of about five or six others quietly praying and most unaware of our predicament. I had to wait for the nun to return, I was told. It was only going to take a minute. Instead, I had to wait more than ten, to the alarm of Alex who had sat down on a pew, wondering to where I had vanished. Finally, we left that place and moved on to the park surrounding San Michele in Bosco, high up in the southern wooded hills of the city. This was one of the few places where greenery encroaches on city space, and the effects of the recent cold weather were plainly visible. The giant yew, elm, and ginko trees that grow high from the good soil were bright yellow, shedding leaves like rain. We looked out from an overgrown terrace over the towers, domes, and rooftops of a city besieged by clouds. Winter was coming.

III.xvii. Two Cities

"Today the two cities seem to stand in contrast to each another. Florence has become a bustling and vital modern city. Whilst it may no longer nurture Michelangelos and Botticellis, there are native Florentine painters of international renown. Its ancient craft of leatherwork plays a distinctive role in contemporary fashion, and Florentines have effectively revived the old skills with stuffs and dyes and organized their distribution on a scale which dwarfs the network of the once ubiquitous Medici banks. Venice instead is apparently a city belonging only to her past, an empty shell of former glories. Its native population diminishes constantly, deserting the island for the industrial wasteland that threatens to destroy what is left of millennial grandeur. Its last remaining industry makes baubles for the tourists who come in droves to stay on a statistical average of eighteen hours, to mill about and to gawk at the remaining relics of the Seremissima’s magnificence."
- Peter Lauritzen

In a two day bout of cheap, extremely artistically obsessed travel, Alex and I toured both Venice and Florence. As a brother, Alex is enormously generous to me and is one of the very few people who will put up with my insistence on visiting obscure masterpieces of every sort. He is as indefatigable as I am, really, and our two day extravaganza, to be followed shortly by a four day visit to Rome, was as unforgettable as it was packed.

III.xvi. Broken Social Scene

"And they all want to love the cause
'Cause they all need to be the cause."
- Broken Social Scene, Cause=Time

Late Thursday night, in a dimly lit suburban park in Bologna, an unshaven man wearing a t-shirt with "Leaside Girls Hockey" written on it greeted his five-hundred strong audience: "I just wanted to say, the food here is awful. I've tried Bogolnese sauce three times, and it sucked. You all should try my Bogolnese sauce. If ever you come to Toronto, I'll invite you over and you can taste it. I'll make it special for you, with my own intestines... and ketchup."
    For the lead singer of a group that has composed songs with such erudite titles as "I slept with Bonhomme at the CBC" he seemed quite inarticulate. Perhaps the jetlag, or the beer he was drinking on stage, was beginning to get to him. Nevertheless, he and his twelve or so bandmates performed well that night, despite the occasional insults they hurled at the mostly oblivious Italian audience. The opener, Apostle of Hustle, was composed mainly of members of the headliner, and probably relished in the fact that the Italian sense of humour wasn't cynically evolved enough to find such a collection of band names amusing. It was all a pretty free-flow sort of experience, but the crowd loved it. "Half of you don't even know what I'm saying," he yelled, before dedicating a song to Prime Minister Rigatoni, to the displeasure of most of the audience.
    Such was my experience of Broken Social Scene at the Covo Club in Bologna, a rabbit warren of dark, smoky rooms located in a rather seedy quarter of the city, above a Communist bar for old timers, and next to a popular dance hall. It had a community centre type of feel, with the community consisting of the local quasi politically active punk students that are in on the worldwide independent rock scene.
    Nevertheless, it was comforting in an odd sort of way to hear the familiar Toronto accent spoken so far away from home, and also to indulge in some of the absurd cultural variety our modern world affords. Furthermore, while I distain on the whole the incursion of English music into Europe, it was a welcome break from the almost endless classical music concerts I have been keeping myself busy with in the evenings. I suppose the Southern Ontario drawl of Broken Social Scene is a tad less harsh than the High German of Leonore, Beethoven's Opera which I had seen two nights before, though in terms of musical quality and tuning the latter was far superior.
    All this serves to demonstrate that the nightlife in Bologna is as varied as the architecture, sculpture, or painting, and open much later. The club scene isn't exactly what it is in Toronto, especially since the principal venue in town is outside the city centre, but we've all spent entertaining nights at the Downsview Krispy Kreme in Toronto, so I suppose that can be forgiven. Overall, whether dealing with punk-rock or opera, it seems as though Italy would do better sticking with its home grown talent. If this approach were to be taken, less Phil Collins would be heard droning on in the local Plenty Market, while the 8 Euro rush "seats" in the Teatro Communale's rafters would resonate more agreeably with the heavenly vowels of Italian, as opposed to the German barking orders that, all things said, belong well north of the alps. No imports should be needed here; life itself is an Opera, a full-scale Broken Social Scene with a cast well over twelve, and an audience even larger.

III.xv. At the Balmoral, without Erasmus and All That

"Twenty years a child; twenty years running wild; twenty years a mature man—and after that, praying."
- Irish Proverb

As wonderful as it was to spend my birthday with Alex, my brother, it wouldn't have been right, indeed it would have been downright incorrect, to not hold a celebration for a wider crowd. At first I was hesitant towards this idea because it entailed a new social situation, something with which I am not generally comfortable.
    I decided on the Balmoral for a venue, not because I particularly enjoyed spending time at that bar, but because I was familiar with it from Erasmus nights, and it was a known quantity. What was unexpected, however, was the change the place undergoes when it is not hosting hundreds of foreign students. Gone were the leopard skin clad rock groups and in their place were tablecloths, silverware, and higher prices. The place had assumed the class of a high-end urban pub while retaining the best elements of Italian hospitality- namely a wide assortment of aperitivi that were available free of charge. In Bologna, where things rarely come for free, these delicious samplings of local delicacies- fried dough, olives, pork head sausage- are often welcomed with great enthusiasm. The Balmoral, owing to its apparently elevated status on non-Erasmus nights, didn't attract the rag tag groups that other bars normally do during the aperitivi hour. Places such as the Scuderia, the hip but still proletarian student union located right on piazza Verdi, are packed in the early evening hours with students and others piling small plates sky high with the free culinary offerings. Certain pubs are renown for their spreads, from which an entire meal can be taken, as long as one doesn't take the Italian sense of bella figura too seriously and thus loose face in front of frowning barmen.
    Nevertheless, eight of us sat at a long table in the wood-paneled parlor of the Balmoral for several hours to celebrate, at least nominally, the passing of my twentieth year. Present that night were, in addition to myself, my brother Alex, my friend from high school years Matt, his roommate Michele, Michele's girlfriend Sara, Marlene from Niemeghen, Elizabeth from Barnard College, and her friend Clara. Switching between Italian and English, the group of disparate people quickly melded together into a closely-knit gathering of friendly, talkative people. Most were drinking white wine but I had reverted to pints of dark Irish ale, a standby that in the late evening I will usually prefer to any Mediterranean offering.
    Eventually, once we had all gotten tired of sitting down, we decided to shift locations. The kasa][attam (read Casa Matta) was hosting, as it does every Wednesday, an Erasmus party. Having had enough of our exclusive get together in overly Anglo surroundings, we crossed Piazza Maggiore and headed towards that labyrinth of underground cellars. Inside, the kind of brassage was occurring that would have eliminated any need for nation states in Europe, had it only occurred a few centuries prior. In this rare instance, Italian was the lingua franca and students from all corners of the continent crowded into the tiny space, without any of the worries that burdened most of the previous generations of Old World youth. We stayed as long as we could.

III.xiv. Turning Twenty on a Busy Day

"Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story—
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;"
- Lord Byron (Stanzas Written on the Road Between Pisa and Florence)

My twentieth birthday was something I had wished to ponder at much greater length than was ever actually possible. I suppose I take time to reflect upon things more than many people do, and since as far back as I can remember I have daydreamed constantly, perhaps at the expense of my slumbering dreams, which at best are fleeting and at worst non-existent. I daydream about ridiculous things; about building cathedrals, being the king of France, finding lost masterpieces. These intimations sometimes seem so vivid that they are scarcely less believable than my waking life. I don't really suppose that this habit is a manifestation of delusions of grandeur, but rather a tenacious imaginative inheritance from my youth, and a certain constant feeling that the present century is not quite the one I was intended for. "I must have been a painter in another life," I once told my brother while we were examining a frescoed room. Sometimes I feel as though if this world were to end I would wake up on the heights of an enormous scaffolding, with some beautiful familiar figure calling up to me that it was time for me to take my lunch.
    But will all these pillars of my imagined world somehow vanish in my twenty-first year? Do they belong to an earlier version of myself? These days I am preoccupied with the kind of self-examining questions one is always at pains to answer. The root of the problem is that I couldn't really have asked for more in my life thus far, especially of late, and I mean that in all seriousness. Fortune, in my youth, has been as good to me as I could ask. It has constructed a world for me that is happy beyond belief. My parents raised me in a way that, I am only realizing now, I could never enough thank them for. My friends are beyond any sort of reproach. I have never really lacked anything I needed. Growing up was a blessing; this year was to be my apotheosis. Yet Martin Amis wrote that turning twenty was "in all consciousness, the end of youth." I'm not sure if I'm prepared to accept that simple an explanation, either simply through denial or because to me age is something infinitely more complicated. I never really felt like a teenager, though I experienced my adolescence in a uniquely Petrarchian sort of way, with its share of happy longing and hilarious self-inflicted tragedy. I became what I am now at about fifteen or sixteen, not overnight but not all that gradually either, and since then I have felt like a fixed entity. I've had the benefit of knowing myself from an early age, knowing what I wanted to study, roughly where I wanted to go in life. Those close to me know that I am quite certain in my aspirations and beliefs, without the overbearing need to pronounce their validity.
    I don't quite know what lessons I should draw from all this. Sometimes I feel a Christian sort of guilt for not doing more to spread my fortune to others. Equally, I think all too often about those fascinating medieval depictions of fortune's wheel, turning unpredictably to unseat those who climb it. Yet to think about this wheel too much is fall victim of it. To not live for today is to put stock in the future, and putting stock in the future is nothing more than gambling. To me, the outside world, the one on television, in science, in politics, has long ceased making any sense. My world, that which I treasure, is my rock, and it keeps me steady.
    And so, in what is without a doubt my most extraordinary year to date (no more of this feeling of déja vu every New Year's), I turned twenty on a rainy day in Bologna. I didn't see anyone that day, save my brother, who is all the good companion a brother should be, and none of the bad. We ate lunch at the Al-Salaam cafeteria just down the street, with its windows decked with posters mourning the death of Arafat. The Middle Eastern food we ate reminded me of Toronto and all its requisite multicultural variety. I had class for the rest of the day, though in the evening Alex and I had a quick dinner at a nearby Pizzeria before seeing Beethoven's Leonore performed at the Teatro Communale. The girl selling the tickets had warned us that they were "really more like listening seats," and she wasn't joking. Partial view would have been front row centre to the nosebleed section that was the second balconetta; not that the stage antics, generously called acting, were very important to this opera. Nonetheless, the music was beautiful, and it rounded off the busy day, and the preceding two decades, rather nicely.
    I entered the third happier than I had ever been.

III.xiii. Cecily

"But bright Cecilia rais'd the wonder high'r:
When to her organ vocal breath was giv'n,
An angel heard, and straight appear'd,
Mistaking earth for heaven."
- John Dryden

The feast day of Saint Cecilia, her onomastico, passed almost unnoticed, until, at five minutes to midnight, I realized and celebrated with a crêpe from a popular late-night hole in the wall not five minutes away from my apartment. My brother Alex and my friend Matt were present, and the three of us had just seen a pianist, Mitsuko Uchida, perform at the Teatro Manzoni. The culinary celebration had a dual meaning, as my birthday began at the stroke of midnight. Shamefully though, I wasn't even aware when showing my brother the frescoes of the saint's life some hours earlier that a celebration was in order, though in Italy such things are important, and a feast day is tantamount to nightlong parties and heartfelt gifts. I promised myself that the next day, being my birthday in fact, I would steal into the chapel on Via Zamboni when I had a spare moment and converse with the saint a little. I could read her a letter, or something of the like. Cecilia and I, despite our arguments, have an inexplicable understanding. Finally remembering to wish her well on her day, I could not help feeling guilty for tending to her so little. I had to admit to myself, at this point, that I was hopelessly in love with her.

---

    Transfixed in front of her like Pygamalion, awaiting Galatea's transformation, I would read from her history:
    "Cecilia, a virgin of a senatorial family and a Christian from her infancy, was given in marriage by her parents to a noble pagan youth Valerianus. When, after the celebration of the marriage, the couple had retired to the wedding-chamber, Cecilia told Valerianus that she was betrothed to an angel who jealously guarded her body; therefore Valerianus must take care not to violate her virginity. Valerianus wished to see the angel, whereupon Cecilia sent him to the third milestone on the Via Appia where he should meet Bishop (Pope) Urbanus. Valerianus obeyed, was baptized by the pope, and returned a Christian to Cecilia. An angel then appeared to the two and crowned them with roses and lilies."
    Poor Valerianus. He got a raw deal; because of his conversion he was beheaded, and all he got were some roses and lilies.

---

    Still, even though I had gone through the whole day, oblivious until the very end that Cecilia was being honoured by Catholics and classical music radio hosts everywhere, I did not fail to think of her. Passing a local shop that repairs string instruments, I was briefly transfixed by what I saw through the window. Inside was a still life of half-finished instruments, one of which was freshly lacquered, surrounded by brushes, stains, and woodworking tools. Here was a chaos of material so primordial it could not even make sound. It reminded me of the bas-de-page of Raphael's painting, the medley of broken instruments which Cecilia steps over confidently as she looks heavenward. Goethe was in ecstasy before that image when he visited Bologna. My brother, who had seen it earlier in the day as I left him off at the gallery in order to go to class, was less impressed. He preferred the gentler works of Francesco Francia, the underrated regional master who exceeded himself in the frescoes of that same saint, the ones I later swore to visit the following day.


Raphael's ecstasy of Saint Cecilia

III.xii. Stepping off a bus

"Man himself is a visitor who does not remain."
- Unknown

My brother Alex, fresh off the plane from Dublin, stepped out of the BLQ Aerobus at about 7:45 on Saturday night, and I was there to meet him at the station. "Let's just move here," was the first thing he said to me. I was surprised that a nighttime journey from the airport could be so inspiring, but I do concede that first impressions of Bologna tend to be quite striking.

---

    My first visit to Bologna, back on an exploratory journey in May of this year, started with a stroll, somewhat inadvertently, through Via Zamboni through to the centre of the city. I was staying at the youth hostel located in the agrarian suburb of San Donato, and the bus into the city left me just outside the great gate that announces the entrance to the university district, as well as the city centre itself. It was a glorious spring day and the university's high street was in full form: crowded, grimy, and chaotic as ever. I had really wondered what I was getting myself into, that day. As I have explained earlier, though, my fears were somewhat assuaged when I happened to stroll into Saint Cecilia's chapel and see frescoes that calm the nerves like a visual balm. If such incredible beauty could coexist literally on the opposite side of a wall from the grunge, noise, and debauchery of modern university life, I couldn’t do anything but play my part in the dichotomy.

---

    So, after Alex unpacked, we went for a quick walk through the city centre. Piazza Maggiore, in the floodlit November mist, was impressive as always, thoughy I was a little disappointed because Via Zamboni was not entirely as lively as it can be on a Saturday night, but its physical presence remained striking. The crumbling arcades, overflowing garbage bins, badly named pubs, pizzerias, and encrustations of student flyers added atmosphere and an organic quality to the architecture of the part of the city that, though never planned for the purpose, now accommodates one of the largest body of students in the world.

III.xi. Death and Glory

"Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;
And was the safeguard of the west: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reached its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great is passed away."
- William Wordsworth

The only thing more daunting about Venice than the city itself is its legion of famous visitors that has already written about it in an eloquent eternity's worth of reading. Everything that can be said about the city has been surmised a thousand times before in infinitely more elegant ways. A visitor, then, as familiar as he can be with Venice by the book, will always feel a certain inadequacy as he walks down the steps from Santa Lucia station onto the banks of the Grand Canal. It is an inadequacy due not just to the material fact that Venice is too glorious to ever begin to encompass or understand, but also to the knowledge that any attempt at this will already have been superceded by countless long dead heroes; Byron, Wordsworth, Proust, Goethe, Ruskin, Wagner. Dead, like the city itself.
    Inadequacy and Lament, Wordsworth's sonnet, are hard to overcome then in this place. It's the same all over Italy, except that the shards of the past in Venice are hardly shards at all, and the city's stones, its marble brick and mortar, are the same as those of the Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic, the Queen of the Adriatic, dead some two hundred years ago at Bonaparte's behest. A completely preserved body, with no soul, and the lagoon waters are a cruel formaldehyde that doesn't let die what should die.
    Venice is on life support. In Saint Marc's square work crews are rebuilding the canal bank. A few hundred million Euros later and the whole square will be resting on a plastic membrane, totally impermeable to the acque alte that have plagued it for the past century. The engineers go about their business under the watchful eyes of Saint Marc's lion, symbol of Venice, perched atop an ancient column, and the four golden horses that were stolen from the stadium at Constantinople, brought back as trophy from an eastern raid. But the lion looks a little too fierce- he was removed in 1993 for restoration at the British Museum, then dutifully shipped back. And the bronze horses, the real ones, are preserved in the basilica's museum for safekeeping; their sixteen hooves have traveled more than their fair share; stolen, they were stolen again by Napoleon, brought to Paris and then restituted to their less than rightful place some years later. Thievery is not the open, symbolic thing that it once was.
    But, somewhere between Santa Lucia station and Saint Marc's square, I realized that I would never be sad for Venice again. Venice is not dead, it is as real as anything that has ever been; it is as vivid and as valid as the present. For such is history, a collection of everything that has ever occurred, and the Doges that looked out to crowds from balconies, all the painters, the fishermen, the prostitutes, the moors, they are all as real as you or I, and in the eternal scale of things they are just the same.
    So I won't be sad for Venice, nor anything else that we today foolishly consign to the Past that we will all soon be part of. Today I visited the Academia and spoke with Titian about his brushwork. I bought silk scarves from a Levantine merchant in the Rialto. I even listened to the strum of a classical guitar in the loft of a waterborne palace. I will be returning, soon and often, to the Queen of the Adriatic, the bride of a sea that still, after Napoleon, Garibaldi, Floods, Tourists, Trains, Buses, and even the British Museum, still laps at the shores of its eternal mate.



No one ever forgets the light of Venice…


… nor the River of clichés that is the Grand Canal…


… the Lions that rear their heads throughout…


… or the pinnacles and pigeons of Saint Marc's

III.x. Modes of Transportation

"Stealing things is a glorious occupation, particularily in the art world."
- Malcolm McLaren

This evening, on the way to a wine bar known as the Corte di Bacco, I stumbled upon a punk not thirty metres from my apartment door. He was standing outside "Yogurtlandia", one of the many purveyors of fast food for the mendicant populations of Bologna. The bohemian entrepreneur was displaying a bright red, single speed bicycle with a lock still attached to the spar. I was with Matt, a friend from high school in Toronto, who is studying in Bologna this year. Matt had already purchased a bicycle for himself, strangely for sale in a gun and ammunition store. It was a doozy, but had been stolen in broad daylight from Piazza Verdi, in plain view of the municipal police station and the crowds of officers that supposedly keep watch over the square. For insurance purposes, Matt did go to the Quaestura to make a denuncia, though there they told him that there was very little to be done. Of course, they knew of the seven or eight individuals who were responsible for the illegal bicycle trade in the city, but they couldn't be stopped; apparently, stealing a bicycle is not an arrestable offence. Not an argument in favour of civil code based justice systems. The police kindly suggested that Matt scour the area in an attempt to find the delinquents selling his bike. Once he had found it, he was to feign an interest in purchasing it, saying he had to go to a bank machine to procure the requisite cash. Instead, he could call the police, and they could help him intervene. "Make sure you don't get beaten up," they told him before he left the station. Despairingly, almost, Matt had made a new purchase, one that was less likely to be fleeced from him. He urged me to do the same.
    "Ten euros." I held out the bill to the dreadlocked man.
    "Fifteen," he insisted.
    "No, ten. Final offer." Actually, Matt, who's Italian is infinitely better than mine, did most of the negotiation, which was limited to a few words; it was getting late and if Yogurtlandia was to close, the man would have to seek out the distant Bombocrêpe or Donermania for nourishment.
    "Alright," he agreed. I took the bike, but an overwhelming feeling of guilt immediately consumed me. Who had previously owned this gem of greased steel, so lovingly covered in thick layers of repainted colours? What if that person were to see me riding this? Matt, ever the rationalizer, attempted to convince me of my innocence in the matter. It was all a little bit over my head.
    "Look, if you were to buy a new bike, or even a legitimate used one, it would be stolen as fast as my old one was. You would be feeding the circuit. So, by buying something for ten euros, you're minimizing the chance of you becoming the victim, while at the same time doing your part to eliminate the vicious circle of bicycle theft. It's a given that a bike will be stolen in Bologna. You're just cutting your losses."
    Where my friend Matt rationalizes, I abstract, and so I applied my situation to that which I know best- the Art World. I likened buying a stolen bike (or at least one of dubious origin) to purchasing a painting, though this comparison did nothing to alleviate my guilt. Art galleries that buy stolen art, even without the knowledge that it had once been stolen, are obliged to return it, or are they? What about the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, or Napoleon's loot in the Louvre? No, those were examples from the distant past. But the Met in New York? Their galleries are full of pirated art, most of which was purchased this century. Anyhow, is it not preferable to have art on display to the public than in the hands of greedy private owners? I concurred, but I was distancing myself from the little red bicycle, perhaps intentionally. In the end, I decided I ought to rebalance my Karma with some good work instead of performing exercises in apologetics. I would give I discussed these ideas with Matt over a glass of Chianti and some potato chips at the Corte di Bacco. The glass of wine cost forty percent of what I paid for my new bike, but I suppose the wine was of a deeper, more costly shade of red.
    Is there a patron Saint of thieves?

III.ix. More on Dublin

Coming soon.

III.viii. Dublinees

"Och, Dublin City, there is no doubtin’,
Bates every city upon the say;
‘Tis there you’ll see O’Connell spoutin’,
An’ Lady Morgan makin’ tay;
For ‘tis the capital of the finest nation,
Wid charmin’ pisintry on a fruitful sod,
Fightin’ like divils for conciliation
An’ hatin’ each other for the love of God."
- Charles James Lever

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, coupled with Guy Fawkes day, a dead Scotsman's wake, were erupting together fortuitously all over southern England as I looked out the window of the Aer Lingus jet. East Anglia was spread out before me like a sparkling jewel, with fireworks erupting in every town along the coast from Eastbourne to Dover, and in the Thames estuary from Canterbury to Colchester. The Indian families that add variety to a stodgy nation and give some hope for the future of English cuisine were celebrating their Victoria Day, while the Scots who weren't quite prepared to jump the Island but moved south all the same were enjoying theirs. London itself was a giant, glowing mass, with spectacular carnation shaped eruptions all along The Mall, clearly visible against the patchwork of parks scattered throughout the city. These lights, which to me were nothing more than distractions on a short haul flight, represent the pyre of the tartan poet on the one hand and the god Ram's return from on the other. Despite this grand significance, these exotic implantations onto Britton soil, from thirty thousand feet at ten thirty Greenwich Mean Time, it all looked so small. The whole south of England stood out like the shimmering gold brocade of a sitter in one of Titian's black-backgrounded portraits. There was so little pure darkness, except of course for the channel in the distance. There was so little dark nature or wilderness, only a surfeit of lights and erupting fireworks. This was the surface of England, looking as though it were painted onto the very curvature of the earth. It wasn't so much an island as a phosphorous flare drowning in the night sky.
    But I was heading towards another Island altogether that dark November night. I was going to Ireland, to Dublin, to wish my brother Alex well on his graduation from Trinity College. There I was to rendezvous with Alex and my mother, both of whom I hadn't seen in two months. Unfortunately, my father wasn't able to make it to Ireland this time, being caught up with work in Toronto.
    Less than an hour after getting off the plane I was in the warm, welcoming family home of one of my brother's closest Irish friends, enjoying a variety of home made puddings, cakes, and crumbles. I had never felt such an immediate embrace so soon after arriving in a country. The chaos of Bologna and the quiet of Pistoia from yesterday's excursion seemed a world away. I was on the other side of Europe now.
    The short three days I spent in Dublin were a wonderful escape, though they passed quickly. I had been to the city twice before, and knew it quite well, so I didn't feel the inadequacy and apprehensiveness that goes with setting foot in a large, bustling city for the first time. Alex's graduation was a monumental affair, conducted entirely in Latin in the heart of one of the English-speaking world's most storied universities. He had finished his first degree here June past, and was returning, cloaked in a black gown that reminded me of the rituals at my own Trinity College, to be awarded his degree.
    And so, as quickly as it had arrived, my last incursion into Ireland for the foreseeable future came to an end. Before I knew it, I was back in Bologna. I was alone again, but my brother would be coming to visit in just a few short days, and the whole family would be together for Christmas, barely one month away. With Dublin come and gone, the beginning of my year abroad was on the wane.


A nighttime view of London from the plane, illuminated by the lights of Diwali and Guy Fawkes day


Alex and I in Front Square of Trinity College, Dublin


Alex with his well-earned diploma


Alex and his friends Rossa, Trish, and Anthony along with me and mom, at Wagamama, a communist chic culinary hot spot in Dublin (one of many)

III.vii. Brother Nicholas

"The Pistoiese are enemies of heaven."
- Michelangelo Buonarotti

    "Are you a priest?" the old woman asked me. She was standing by the door of the church along with a younger woman that must have been her daughter.
    "Excuse me?" I replied, not sure if I had heard her right. This wasn't the sort of situation I had anticipated in learning Italian.
    "So young and clean shaven. Aren't you a priest? I am sure I have seen you here before." Several people nearby were becoming onlookers in the situation.
    "No, madam, I'm sorry, I'm not a priest." I said to her finally, genuinely freaked out. I moved on, but solicited stares from strangers for the next few minutes.
    This is my chief memory of Pistoia, another city of art near Florence, not fifteen minutes from Prato on a midday train crowded with chatty high school students. Like most cities here, it is home to its own unique monuments of art, in this case being a supreme series of carved pulpits from the thirteenth century, as well as its glimmering green and white marble buildings. Fortunately, perhaps, the city's legacy of being militant and pigheaded has faded.
    But still, I was accosted and accused of being a priest. How erroneous of that matron; I was in town to look at pulpits, and not to preach from them. I spent a good hour alone in the out of the way church of Sant' Andrea communing with Giovanni Pisano's masterpiece, a carved pulpit about twelve feet high that took him six years to carve. Unlike the other Pisano pulpits in Pisa and Siena, this one is hardly ever visited nor is it cordoned off from the viewer. All it takes is a fifty-cent Euro piece for the lighting machine. This is quite reasonable, really, even though it only lasts for five minutes. Having only one coin of the right denomination I had to appreciate the sculpture in the dark for most of my time. It was a good deal though, because in Florence, the going rate for church interior illumination is between one and two Euros. Even after my lit time had run out, I stood up on one of the pew chairs and ran my palms along Giovanni's incredible carvings.
    For all the vehement objections of the art conservator, I am all for touching art, especially sculpture. Doing so exalts the work but also brings it down from an iconic level to a more personal one. Too many students go through their academic careers learning through slides, and many more are content simply to look. One of the benefits of exploring places somewhat off the beaten track, even more so in the winter months, is that it affords the chance to be alone with art, the chance to use all the senses. I'm not spending a year in Italy only to see; I'm here to use all my senses.



Some of the striped marble buildings for which Pistoia is famous


A lion trouncing a gazelle, part of Giovanni Pisano's masterful Pistoia pulpit


The striped façade of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, literally Saint John Outside the City

III.vi. A Field and a Brother Painter

"It is said that Fra Filippo was much addicted to the pleasures of sense, insomuch that he would give all he possessed to secure the gratification of whatever inclination might at the moment be predominant .... It was known that, while occupied in the pursuit of his pleasures, the works undertaken by him received little or none of his attention; for which reason Cosimo de' Medici, wishing him to execute a work in his own palace, shut him up, that he might not waste his time in running about; but having endured this confinement for two days, he then made ropes with sheets of his bed, which he cut to pieces for that purpose, and so having let himself down from a window, escaped, and for several days gave himself up to his amusements."
- Giorgio Vasari

I don't know what Prato, the first major city south of Bologna and across the Apennines, did to kindle such passion in its greatest of sons, brother Filippo Lippi. Today it is a rather quiet, pleasant place, without much nightlife or intrigue at all. The city is most famous for harboring the Holy Girdle, a belt that the Virgin Mary supposedly dropped to a still incredulous Apostle Thomas as she ascended into heaven. It is still here, encased in crystal and gold, jealously guarded by a wrought iron fence in the Cathedral. Other than this, guidebooks don't recommend much to Prato; it is said to make a nice day trip from Florence, should the visitor grow tired of the crowds. This must have been a different place when Filippo lived there, especially if we are to believe Robert Browning's great poem about his daring escapades:
       I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
       You need not clap your torches to my face.
       Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!
       What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
       And here you catch me at an alley's end
       Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?
    The long lines of verse begin by describing an encounter between Filippo, out past curfew, and the Night Watch. The young monk has again snuck out of his convent to visit the nun he is in love with, a nun who would later bear him a painter child named Filippino, much to the delight and dismay of later art lovers who would struggle to differentiate father from son.
    I was in Prato on a crisp sunny morning, with no night watch nor lascivious painters in sight. I came principally to see Filippo's works but, as has become the norm here in Italy, I was astonished by the depth and quality of the art that is everywhere. I have also grown accustomed to being the solitary visitor to most museums for days on end. Often, those working at many of the smaller museums I go to seem genuinely surprised to see a visitor, especially since tourist season is long over. Such was the case at the Cathedral Museum in Prato, where upon walking into a room I surprised two curators who were admiring a tondo by none other than Botticelli. They had it propped up on the floor amidst the sea of bubble rap and canvas it had been packaged in. Presumably, it had just come back from an exhibition held in Florence, and they seemed to be inspecting its condition, though in a terribly ad hoc manner.
    Given the informal way in which the two jovial curators were handling it, I shuddered at the though of how much the waist-high painting might be worth, especially since only a few days earlier the Met in New York had acquired an eight by ten inch Madonna by Duccio- an artists of comparable stature- for a cool forty five million dollars. I found myself assigning value to paintings, something I all too often do. It is useless to give value to paintings in Italian museums; most are unique masterpieces with nothing similar in existence. They become an interesting if irrational sort of economic good, one that has no theoretical limit to its value. The sale of a masterpiece of Italian art has become such an extraordinary event that it causes rationality to evaporate faster than paint thinner. This is why a wealthy California museum can offer thirty five million for a tiny Raphael and why a rich Canadian Magnate's son can bid one hundred million dollars for a hideous Massacre of the Innocents by Rubens.
    But the museum men in Prato quickly wrapped the painting back up and learned it against a wall in the gallery before vacating the room. The package, about the shape of a wagon wheel, was simply marked "Madonna and Child- Botticelli". I could have grabbed it and rolled it out the door, but it would have been cumbersome on the train, so I left it be. I toured the rest of the museum, briefly setting off an alarm when I stepped too close to a little Bellini, seeing Donatello's work that had been moved indoors for safekeeping, and finally being disappointed by the famous frescoes by Filippo that were out of view. As is so often the case in Italy, these were being restored, though I noticed that it was possible to book an appointment to climb up on the scaffolding and watch the restorers at work. I decided this would make a good opportunity to return to Prato at some point in the future.


A view of the Duomo in Prato


A view of the main square and fountain in Prato

III.v. Protest, Part II

"Protest, evasion, merry distrust, and a delight in mockery are symptoms of health."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I left Siena Sunday night because I assumed, quite rightly I think, that I was to have class Monday morning. This turned out to be a false assumption, as it was now the professors' turn to protest by not attending classes. More accurately, it was the ricercatore, a type of senior lecturer, that was protesting the Moretti reforms this week. It was unclear as to whether my other classes (as only one, the Semiotics of Art, was taught by a ricercatore), would be held. I arrived at my nine o'clock class to find it was empty. It looked like professor Lenzi, with all her decades of seniority, understood the cause of the researchers. Our class, already diminished after the American students, deciding they had better things to do three days a week, decided to lodge a protest of their own by no longer attending the class. At this point, there were only about twelve of us hangers on, and none of us minded excessively that the class was cancelled.
    My afternoon class did indeed go ahead, though with a hugely diminished cohort. My evening class, with the glamorous professor Corrain (actually a ricercatore, I assumed would be cancelled, but I went to it all the same. Most of the class was there, but Lucia Corrain never showed up, and we all eventually dispersed back into the sheets of cascading rain that have lately been falling on this city.

III.iv. A Dragon Preserved

"There’s nothing in the world quite like Siena, it is a medieval city that might be likened to a rare beast, with heart, arteries, tail, paws and teeth. Only the skeleton is left intact, and it is enough to astound us."
- Bernard Berenson

Six and a half years ago I was in Siena for one day and ever since then I have had an ever growing, ever aching desire to return. This past weekend, I did. I returned to a city no bigger today than it was seven hundred years ago, still alive, still slightly melancholic, still beautiful as ever.
    There is something about the Sienese aesthetic, the hopeless addiction to beauty, to ritual, to symbolism, that appeals to me in my deepest nerve. It is the same sway I feel towards the earliest French art, and, to a lesser extent, the Venetian art of Mantegna and Bellini. The Sienese were concerned with beauty in all aspects of life; in a beautifully desperate act they vowed their entire city, its hopes and desperations, triumphs and failures, to the Virgin Mary in the same way that Louis XIV dedicated his kingdom to her also and the Venetians wedded their republic to the sea. But in Siena they went further; they had their greatest painters decorate the covers of municipal ledger books, they frescoed the walls of their city hall with the truth and fiction of their own history, and they even embarked on an outrageous plan, defying at once physics and logic, to expand their Cathedral in a time of economic decline and catastrophe.
    But in its confidence and exuberance, Siena suffered and made enemies. Two thirds of its people died in the plague of 1348, and the Florentines, the perpetually irked rivals, eventually took it over. Now it is quiet, a backwater of steep streets, old palaces, and beauty standing still. As a city it had no reason to prosper much beyond the middle ages, and the pilgrims coming to Rome along the Via Francigena, the artery that was the lifeblood of the place, eventually slowed to a trickle, then stopped. A city like Pisa, near the sea, has its river silt up. Siena just dies because people stop coming.
    But today all these things coalesce into unimaginable beauty, newly thronged with tourists during the summer months though quite quiet upon my visit. I decided to come here for several days, my first overnight trip since my arrival in Italy. It is in fact a point of contention amongst European travelers as to what distance is too far for a day drip. There seem to be several schools of thought on the subject, ranging from ratio of hours of travel over hours of visiting time to the hour when the last train leaves for home. My reasoning was simply an economic one, a night in the youth hostel costing less than a round trip train fare to the place, never mind that this hostel was far outside the centre and nearly unreachable by bus in the after dinner hours.
    On my third and final day in Siena, strolling through one of the pleasant, narrow streets lined with shops, a display of silk ties caught my eye and I peered into one of the display windows. Having decided after a minute or so that a nice tie was not worth a monograph on Duccio or Simone Martini, I moved on. A few seconds later, a girl came running out of that very shop yelling "Nick!"
    I looked at her, astonished.
    "Nick! Don't you remember me, from SPECQUE?" The Simulation du Parlement Européen Canada Québec Europe was an international conference I had attended in Toronto before I left, the same conference where I had met my friend Marko who had visited me in Bologna several weeks prior.
    Of course I remembered, this was Ditmira, from the Sienese delegation. I was embarrassed as I recalled that, barely two moths ago, she had been at my house in Toronto for an end of conference party, and has given me her number in case I were ever to visit Siena. Here we were now, conversing in French once again on a shopping street in Siena in November. It turned out that she worked at the tie store, and unfortunately wasn't able to leave her post. When I told her I was staying at the youth hostel she seemed genuinely horrified.
    Next time you're here, Nick, there is a room in the University residence you can rent for only eleven Euros," she said. Eleven Euros! This made the youth hostel seem an unaffordable luxury. If only I had known.


A view of the famous Campo of Siena and the tower of the Palazzo Pubblico


The Duomo of Siena, clad in brilliant white and verdigris marble


The façade of the Duomo


Me in front of the Duomo


The unfinished expansion project, now a parking lot…


… that is used for things such as Fiat conventions…


…while Giovanni Pisano's timeless gargoyles look on


Inside the baptistry


The man and his frescoes


Me and my Duomo


Culinary delights are not lacking in the city, which has a shop selling only gourmet coffee beans

III.iii. In the Library

"In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Recently, I have begun to explore the library system at the university of Bologna. It consists of a fragmented collection of some ninety-three small libraries, each of which specializes in a certain subject matter. Unlike a North American university library system, it has no central location per se, owing really to the physical nature of the university facilities here; there is simply insufficient space for one large central library. Even though it only has about three million books, compared to twelve million at the University of Toronto, it is still an excellent resource.
    For my sake, the most useful library is that of the Visual Arts Department, tucked away in an inner chamber of Palazzo Poggi, a great Renaissance palace that was never meant to be part of a university, but now shelters a myriad of faculties and departments, even serving as a makeshift university centre. The Visual Arts library, difficult to find and unassuming until you enter it, consists of several long connected rooms lined with bookshelves, with an additional mezzanine level squeezed in below the vaults holding even more books. It is somewhat claustrophobic, but maintains a cozy academic air.
    I have been spending a great deal of time in this space, as it is not a lending library and nothing can be borrowed. Most of my course texts are relatively obscure, and since the concept of bookstores coordinating and pre-ordering course materials has not quite arrived here, reading library copies remains one of my only options. Sitting down here in one of the many molded plastic chairs on one of Bologna's many rainy fall days has become quite a pleasure, really. None of the sofa chairs and genteel fireplaces of the Anglo Saxon bibliophilic world. The place is usually crowded with other students, and it can be difficult to find enough space to settle down and spread out, but the mornings start out rather quietly and I find that being in such close quarters with others enhances study rather than detracting from it.
    I must admit, however, that the most astonishing aspect of this library is its users, for they are so numerous. In Toronto, even at the Fine Art library, there are rarely more than half a dozen solitary students, while here there are many more packed into a much smaller space. Astonishingly, very few study modern art. A quick glance over shoulders reveals droves poring over Giotto, Cimabue, Bellini, and I no longer feel as alone as I do in the concrete bunkers of my native institution. Here, despite all external appearance, young people care about their art
    The familiarity of this place comforts me and surrounds me with things I am familiar with in a city and country that are still new to me. The books that line the walls are not only Italian, but French, English, and German as well. I have recourse to books written by my professors from Toronto, to ideas I am familiar with, and to new horizons as well. The collections are a bit of a shambles, and locating a specific book can be quite a challenge. Library users tend to leave books unsorted on the reading tables, with notes asking others not to disturb their piles of books, which they will return to consult later. Consequently, it is difficult to find specific items on the shelves.
    Furthermore, the librarians insist on keeping dust covers on books, instead of rebinding them in institutional navy gold covers as is done in North America. This excess of torn, dog-eared paper gives an added semblance of disorganization, as do the books laid flat on their sides due to shelves neither deep nor tall enough. There is no extra shelf space to be found anywhere here, which adds to the happy disorder and confusion. It is a crowded, learned environment; an apt metaphor for the city that extends beyond the walls of this place.



The interior of the Visual Arts Library

III.ii. Room Service and an Eager Slide Projector

"There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers."
- Henry David Thoreau

Returning to class today after the lengthy break that the recent combination of student protest and holiday had made for, I was surprised to see the director of the Department of Visual Arts visiting our modern architecture class. He was, in fact, making his rounds, visiting the various undergraduate classes and seeing how things were progressing. Perhaps his interest was peaked by our class in particular since it was now about only a quarter full, with fewer students being present each successive day of lecture. Most notably, the Americans seemed to be coming less frequently. This was their loss, I thought, as I was rather enjoying the class, complete with walking tours of key Bolognese monuments once a week. Nevertheless, there was something about the class- perhaps professor Lenzi's persistent uncontrollable coughing, or the brand new, sun-drenched classroom that made the slides virtually impossible to see properly- that was making other students think twice about attending her class.
    The latter problem seemed to be disturbing the professor as well, and she made no secret of her desire to have the class assigned to a new room. Our present location, at the converted monastery of Santa Caterina, was intended for political science classes that had no need for slides- the rooms were airy and bright, rather unlike the dark, lugubrious locales needed for proper art history. We needed to change rooms. The best way to get this done, in the professor's opinion, was to happen to switch to a particularly faded slide when the director was present. As he approached, plainly visible due to the glass wall that encloses the room, professor Lenzi frantically tried to switch slides. Unfortunately, most of these seemed to be appearing quite well. She of course did not notice that the director, still outside, was watching her do this with a strange look on his face. He poked his head in the door and insisted on having the slide projector replaced as soon as possible, since it seemed to be working so erratically. Other than that, he commented on how nicely these rooms seemed to be working out, and then left without any further comment.

III.i. Ognissanti

"I've got a waiting list of fifty people at that cemetery just dying to get in."
- Groucho Marx

Today, once again, there were no classes. I discovered this the hard way, waking up for my nine o'clock appointment with Modern Architecture. I walked half way to Santa Caterina, the former monastery that has been converted into lecture halls, before I became truly convinced by the deserted streets. True, daylight savings time had just come into effect, but I had taken that into account. Besides, it ought to be an hour later, not earlier. No, it was All Saints' Day, Bologna was empty, and the crowds were at the cemeteries.
    I know the main monumental cemetery of Bologna quite well, not because I have any relatives buried there, but because its parking lot is open to anyone free of charge, rather unlike the cemetery, I suppose. While my friend Marko was visiting last week, we decided to park his car there for a few days, since we didn't need it and wanted to avoid the relatively high costs associated with leaving it at a more central lot. Out we drove to the Parcheggio Mahatma Gandhi, situated next to the rows of flower stores that are so cynically situated across from the cemetery's main entrance. Peaceful resistance comes at a price, though, because as Marko and I left the parking lot on foot that day, I noticed a sign; parking was free every day of the year, except on Ognissanti.