IV.xiv. La Garance

"What astonishes me here, and what makes painting here so attractive to me, is the clearness of the air; you can't even know what it is, because we don't have it where we're from. From an hour away one can distinguish the colour of things: the grey-green of the olive trees, the green grass of the fields, for example, and the lilac pink of a worked field. Where we're from, we can only see a vague grey horizon line; here, the line is clear for a great distance, and the outline recognizable. This gives an idea of space and of sky."
- Vincent Van Gogh

My grandmother, Nadine De Montmollin, named her house after the plant she found growing on her property when she first purchased it. Garance, coveted by drapiers for its crimson ink bearing seeds, was used for centuries to dye the berets of French Marines. It was growing here long before the waves of ex-pats invaded the Luberon valley, long before Peter Mayle wrote A Year in Provence, long before the hordes.
    Grandmaman built this house for her retirement, and she lived well in it. She became a matron of sorts, a centre of the artistic expatriate community that had its glory days when I was just a small child. Still, I remember those days, because I spent my childhood summers here. La Garance is the place of my youth.
    I owe perhaps more than I can imagine to my grandmother. In 1995 she took my brother and I to Paris. Together our eyes were opened to the glittering world that was Europe. We saw all the sights, but none left more of an impression on me than the Cluny Museum, where I remember turning the pages of a book of illuminated manuscripts, each precious, gilded page encased in glass. That was a formative moment, with Grandmaman watching over, and with her a few days later we saw the glass at Chartres and I knew for me there was to be no turning back.
    Ten years after I am sitting here at the round wooden table where, for as long as I can remember, I have been sitting down each year to draw, read, and write. My family is here with me, but the house will forever have a tinge of loneliness to it without Grandmaman. The last time I saw my grandmother, in August 1997 barely a month before she died, she gave Alex and I keys to the house. With them was a note saying that one day, we too would be masters of this place. I didn't realize what that meant at the time, but I still keep the key, and the memory of her, close with me.

---

These days we don't get to La Garance as much as we would like. We rent it out during the summer to cover costs, and my mother shares it with her sister. Still, like a continuing gift from my grandmother, it has become a place of happy acquaintance, to which the family can steal away the odd December holiday, and meet up to be tranquil for once. In the years to come I am sure we'll all appreciate this even more, as our paths begin to grow evermore apart.
    Today I am here with my parents, my brother, and our friends Alan and Denise, who after picking me up at the train station near Nice drove me here. They will stay just a few days, my family a little longer. It is time to savour.

IV.xiii. Public Drunkenness Punishable by Fingerprinting

"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself."
- Albert Camus

Today was the end the first act; my first three months had gone by. The ending was a gradual one, since I left Italy via a night train (or rather four) that took eleven hours to travel three hundred and fifty kilometers. Before I could leave I had some loose ends to tie up. I bought a huge amount of Italian sweets that are on sale all over Bologna at this time of year, and some silk shawls that make useful gifts. Alaric helped me clean up my apartment, which had become somewhat of a mess. Upon my return to Bologna I would be accompanied by some important guests, so the place needed to be left in the best of shape. Finally, I dropped by on a dinner that my American friends were having, as they were leaving soon as well, and unfortunately those I knew best were not returning for a second term. We said our goodbyes and traded addresses. It was a pity, because I felt as though I would have to start over again come January, but in the end that might be for the best. I left Monday night after seeing Alaric off at the station few hours prior, and headed across the Apennines to the coast, to France.
    On the overnight train I met a friendly Arab who was retuning home after having visited his brother, a doctor, in Forlì. He was clearly an intellectual. "You're from Paris?" the man asked me, after we had bonded through both being forced to stand for the first two hours of the train ride. His French was heavily Mediterranean.
    "Me? Oh no, I'm not French, I'm Canadian. My mother is Swiss."
    "But you speak French like a Parisian," he said.
    "Oh, really I don't. You're kind."
    "It wasn't meant as a compliment."
    "Oh." Despite our initial misunderstanding, we got along well. The man's name was Samrah, or Samnah, or something to that effect. It turned out that he was an officer in the forensic police squad in Algiers, charged with fingerprinting suspects, dead and alive.
    "Sometimes I even have to collect fingerprints from murderers, rapists, IPIs,"
    "IPIs?"
    "'Incident Public d'Ivresse,' public drunkenness. It's a crime where I come from, you know."
    "Of course. Uh, as it should be."
    "Once in a while I even have to fingerprint headless cadavers, you know. Those terrorists do awful things. Have you ever been to Algeria, then?"
    "No, never. If I were to go, I could get around speaking French?"
    "Certainly. Everyone speaks French there. Just make sure to wear a Canadian flag."
    "Right." We continued to talk for a while. Eventually a few seats freed up in one of the cabins, and at dawn, in Genoa, we were informed that the train was going out of service. We transferred to a much slower Regionale and eventually we ended up in Ventimilia, the Riviera border town. He switched to yet another train and we parted ways. He told me to look him up when I get to Algeria.
    When I finally got off the train in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, a beautiful French Riviera town, I was dead tired. Alain and Denise, old family friends (far removed cousins, in fact) were there to pick me up. The three of us would drive over, that afternoon, to La Garance, the house where I was to meet up with my family for Christmas.

IV.xii. Terra Firma

"The traveler who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it."
- E.M. Forster

Four hours after getting home from the previous night's adventures Alaric and I were on a train northward to Padua, Italy's second university town. We had arrived at this point not without difficulty, though surprisingly this was not due to our lack of sleep, but rather the workings of Italian public transport.
    Trains in Italy run under the brilliant guidance of Trenitalia, a massive state-owned entity that employs twice as many personnel per mile of track than its French equivalent. Trenitalia, it is true, allows for very cheap travel throughout the country, but beyond that the corporation is plagued with problems. As should be expected, the trains in Italy are organized into overly complex categories. The cheapest trains are of the Regionale and Interegionale classes (interestingly, these trains are similar, in name only, to the Swiss Interegio, an attempt at a name which makes sense in all four Helvetian official languages, but ends up meaning nothing in any of them). These sorts of trains stop at all stations, and more often than not seem to be waiting on some obscure siding for a faster, more expensive train to pass. Not wanting to upset the passengers, in such cases the conductors also take care not to go underway immediately after the faster train has passed, thereby disguising their scheduled inferiority by waiting even longer than necessary. People would rather be late than play second fiddle to some speeding bullet for businessman.
    Then there are the Intercity trains, named in English perhaps to give a greater impression of speed, which are quite expensive but sometimes the only option. They are usually divided into cabins. Sometimes black and white photographs of Italy's monuments hang in old frames that rattle constantly over the nation's decrepit tracks.
    The Eurostar, Italy's ponderous, unreliable answer to the TGV, makes for a somewhat better choice, provided that one has the money to ride it. The Eurostar is approximately three times as expensive per kilometer as the bottom of the line Regionale and Interegionale trains. Annoyingly, it and the Intercity require reservations most of the time, which causes additional complications when working with the bright yellow automatic ticket machines that form the most dependable link in the chain. With the advent of these machines, of course, no ticket agents were laid off, so buying tickets manually or electronically has never been easier. The machines usually function quite well, but just the other day as Alaric and I were purchasing our tickets to go to Padua one of the machines swallowed a twenty Euro bill and then promptly displayed a bright red "out of order" screen. As our train was leaving in four minutes, I despaired over both reaching Padua that morning and retrieving my French friend's twenty. "You, stay here," I commanded Alaric, taking charge of the situation in a way I could never have done three months ago. I marched over to a manned ticket booth, waited in line for a moment, then demanded that the Trenitalia employee I was dealing with refund my friend's money. I pointed angrily at the machine. She was about to refuse, but at that very moment a technician pushed Alaric away from the thieving machine he was guarding and began to repair it. Three minutes to train time. With uncharacteristic speed the machine was fixed, and the gruffly expeditious technician proceeded to confirm that yes, indeed, we were owed twenty Euros minus the cost of a ticket to Padua. Two minutes. I cringed at the thought of the forms I would have to fill out, then and there, in order to get the refund. I slid my hand through opening in the window to retrieve the forms, but I was overjoyed to find a ticket to Padua and change instead. We rushed to the train and, on time for once, we were off. In Italy, there's always a way.

---

    We didn't have any particular business in Padua, except that we had arranged to meet friends of ours from Slovenia in front of the Scrovegni Chapel that morning. Naturally, we had to do our best to keep up with our exotic troop of European friends, lest we loose contact with them and thus appear even less continental. I suppose this is less of a problem for Alaric, with his slight French accent, than it is for me. Nevertheless, we met up with Marko and Jernej as we were looking at a bust of Perlasca, an Italian war hero who, in the closing days of World War Two, faked being the Spanish Ambassador to Budapest in order to safeguard Jews from the Nazi occupiers. A film was made about this saga a few years ago, but Italians seemed to prefer romantic comedies and dramas to stories of Garibaldian heroes.
    We walked into town with the Slovenians (I refer to them jokingly as Yugoslavs). In all seriousness, the friends I meet abroad are very important to me. I usually don't even bother making friends with uninteresting or ordinary people, so that those I am attached to are all the more valuable. I also hold a theory in the back of my mind that, along with most of my ideas, I have probably abstracted in order to make sense of a chaotic world. Still, I believe that despite the millions of disparate people throughout the world one can never hope to meet, it is always possible to come across the right ones. It is only a matter of placing yourself right, and recognizing genuine connections when they come your way. Life is a Ven diagram of acquaintances; one's experiences are always coloured by other circles.
    Having rendez-vous'd in Padua, the four of us found that we didn't actually have that much to do with ourselves. My three companions, like most of the world, can't take as much art as I can in a day, so we contented ourselves to wandering the streets and making the occasional stop in a café. Marko Jokingly said that he'd let me know if he felt any art cravings. Regardless, we still made sure to visit Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni chapel, which I repeatedly stressed as being at least equal in importance to the Sistine Chapel, if not far greater. I was disappointed, however, when after fifteen minutes a guardian ushered us out; time restraints have become the norm in such glorious yet cramped places.
    Far more unexpected than the dazzling blue skies and monumental humanity of the chapel was another altogether different display of spirituality in Padua. In the centre of town, not far from the famed café Pedrocchi, a live action nativity scene was being presented.
    We convinced the Slovenians to drive us to Venice before returning home. Marko had a car, a two-door Renault Clio, and we intended to take full advantage of it. We were deposited in Piazzale Roma, the hideous automotive incursion into Venice, at about eight thirty, and we left on the midnight train back to Bologna. Our few hours in the city were serene and magical, the season and time of day lending the place an even more theatrical backdrop than normal. We waxed eloquent, two failed orators, about the tides of Venetian fortune. I reminded Alaric that four hundred years ago, at the height of the Republic's naval supremacy, the Arsenal was able to construct an entire war galley in the time it took Henri IV of France, visiting as a dignitary, to attend a state dinner.
    Saint Mark's square was empty, populated only by the stacks of platforms kept handy for the acque alte that are prone to happen this time of year. Even the famous pigeons that delinquent Italian school kids use to their advantage by throwing seeds at a chosen victim, thus swarming him or her with birds, were absent. The chords of Don't Look Back in Anger were floating over the square from the piano bar at the Hotel Gritti Palace as we left to catch our train. A last droning ballad for a dead city.

IV.xi. The English Empire

"All this time you were pretending, so much for my happy ending."
- Avril Lavigne

I can't escape the blaring, forceful ballads of that young songstress from Napanee, Ontario, no matter where I go. It doesn't surprise me much anymore. From the time I first heard her voice echoing down the Quai du Mont Blanc during my summer in Geneva I have had to get used to it.
    In Italy, she is everywhere. She echoes through the fifteenth century porticoes on Via Zamboni, and even seeps past the padded doors of old San Giaccomo Maggiore, like a dissonant incense from the crappy, modern world. I suppose that if she weren't so Canadian and Attractive she would annoy me even more, but she is the least of it. Her, and her innumerable English speaking colleagues, are trouncing their foreign opponents.
    What is this language? Why do radios, televisions, cinemas, broadcast these guttural, inelegant sounds? No one understands it. It is like church mass in Latin before the uncomprehending medieval populace. Why do they even bother? We are in Italy, the birthplace of arguably the most beautiful language in the world, but Italian falls by the wayside and someone insists on Avril, dollars, and Big Macs.
    No one can go a single day without being exposed to this, the footsoldiers of the English Empire. It is, after all, right there on Via Zamboni. It spills out onto the grimy arcade. Most people need to pass it to go to class. The English Empire is a pub. Its name is uncanny, not only because it demonstrates a lack of understanding of Anglo-Saxon historical concepts, but because, beyond that, the name is all too apt. Inside, in big letters above the bar, is written: "A day of pleasure is worth two of sorrow." Likely some ill-appropriated proverb, a typically Mediterranean misuse of English akin to other signs saying "Welcome in the bar" and "We speak in English as wells." The whole place reeks of unconscious irony and unobserved allegory.

---

    English is everywhere here. Like a cancer, it spreads and infects indiscriminately. Italian, of all the Romance languages, is probably worst hit, because any word including the letters y, j, k, or w (not present in the Italian alphabet, as one quickly notices when searching through rows of seats at a theatre) becomes suspect and immediately identifiable. In French, for example, it is much easier to transform foreign words in neologisms (email becomes mél, short for message éléctronique). Italian, with its beautiful insistence on terminal vowels, clashes with the cisalpine, or cisatlantic, invaders.
    Less severe but still a problem, Anglicization has infected the whole continent. Most of my European friends don't really regard this as a problem, indeed for the most part they aren't even aware of it. A few outspoken nationalists or newspaper editorials might cite it as another curious example of globalization. Denglish or Franglais has made inroads. Linguists, removed from judgment in a typically academic way, remind us that languages have borrowed from each other for centuries. Nothing to worry about, they assure.
    But no one seems to ask what it is that elevates one culture above another? What gives English culture, my culture, the right to eclipse and obscure yours? In nightclubs, advertisements, record stores, and on television, from Toledo to Tokyo, English dominates. Why? Why aren't American youth made to listen to music in languages they don't understand? It will be a glorious day for world culture when the American (or Australian, or British) teenager has to struggle to understand the lyrics of a song in Arabic, Spanish, or French that, for reasons totally beyond his control, is both popular and necessary to memorize. In China a civilization that has lasted millennia is disintegrating in the face of imported cultural values; in Italy, the land of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio, prime time television shows dubbed over reruns of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Full House. These incongruities are amusing, of course, but their humour obscures their gravity. Entertainment, as an economic good, is superceding culture. Never has the variety and beauty of the world been under such threat.
    We should resist this assault, or they should, at any rate. Their existence is challenged, and they welcome it with open arms. Freedom is a concept with a much wider definition than many today would admit. There is, of course, political, economic, religious freedom, but there is, or ought to be, cultural freedom as well. Rather than being bombarded from a young age by images and sounds of a single other culture, shouldn't young people be exposed to representative samplings from all over the world? Culture, as the last bastion of unassailed freedom, is under attack.
    After a drink at the "English", which I had sworn never to enter but found myself in Saturday evening, Alaric, myself, and our female posse of American students, headed out to dance. In a discotheque in Bologna, the mostly Italian audience puts up with the English music. It doesn't bother them, and occasionally they can mouth the words, without grasping their meaning. When, at a decimate interval, an Italian song is played, the masses erupt in a fit of energetic dancing, singing, and all-round good vibe. Why then is this so rare? People adore their own music but, through cultural impositions, slavishly buy into a cynical commercial model. They have been granted citizenship in the Empire.

---

    My friend Alaric reminded me of an interesting fact the other day. The number of people speaking and learning English is naturally at an all time high, achieving a hegemony and universality hitherto unknown in human history. However, the number of people who speak and use English properly is steadily declining. What was once one of the richest languages in the world is rapidly being reduces to a few thousand buzz words. "Speed English" and "Business English" attempt to put a sixteen-month cap on language acquisition. Striving for enviable accents outstrips emphasis on proper usage. English is in decay. Latin underwent the same metamorphosis in the dying days of the Roman world. The Empire will fall.


Our English Empire

IV.x. Without House

"From the keep of the well-closed doors, Let me be wafted."
- Walt Whitman

"Uh, Doctor Caramori?"
    "Yes, hello Nicholas, how are you?" We were speaking in Italian. It was early Saturday morning.
    "Fine, uh, I guess. Listen, I have a small problem here… the door to the apartment won't open."
    "What do you mean?"
    "Well, it's struck. The key won't open it. It must be jammed."
    "Oh my god (o mio dio), that is quite a problem. You are absolutely sure about this? Nicholas, I don't know what to tell you." Doctor Caramori was quite frantic for an Italian, and this was especially evident in his mother tongue.
    "Well, I guess it is rather serious. It began last night. I had to sleep at a friend's place. Listen, I'll just wait at a café until you arrive, alright?" I was worried because, owing to last night's festivities, the whole apartment was uncharacteristically filthy, and I certainly didn't want poor Doctor Caramori to see the place in such a state. I had even left cheese out on the table.
    "Nicholas, I am not in Bologna. I am in Treviso." Treviso is north of Venice.
    "Oh." I also used an expletive, the severity of which I had underestimated because it was in a foreign language.
    "Sorry? Nicholas, you must call a Fabbro."
    "Who?"
    "Fabbro."
    "Fabbro? How do I call him?" I feigned knowing who Fabbro was.
    "I don't know… you must look him up. It may be difficult. These things seem to happen only on Saturdays and Sundays! I am so terribly sorry, but I can't help you. I can't be back in Bologna until Monday. "
    "I see…"

---

    After the phone call it took me a significant amount of time to find out that Fabbro was actually a fabbro, a locksmith. Never had my four year secondary school Latin substrate paid off so. In my tired state, having slept on a mattress at the rather distant apartment of a friend, I stumbled towards the university area, spurred on only by a coffee and a brioche filled with Nutella.
    It was just my luck that the phone books in the city of Bologna were being updated for the new year this week. I grabbed an old one from a pile in the street, and with cold fingers found the pages where the local fabbri were listed. I walked to the nearest phone booth and began to call.
    Most people I spoke to seemed incredulous, some downright indignant, that someone could be locked out of an apartment on a Saturday morning. Never mind that these were all professional locksmiths who purported in their adds to have twenty four hour service. A few said they could possibly stop by late in the afternoon. It was nine AM.
    Finally, I found a fabbro who arrived within an hour. Even his van, custom decorated to resemble a giant key, looked expensive. I shuddered and made a mental count of the euros I had on me. By means of a hammer and a great deal of force, the locksmith was able to unjam and open my door in a minute flat. He charged me eighty euros, which I voluntarily paid. The price was so high, so outrageous, that I was stunned out of protesting. Before leaving he commented on the state of my apartment, obviously wondering about the five empty bottles of wine on the table and the wafting smell of Asiago cheese that had been left in the open far too long.

IV.ix. Trials

"Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end."
- Oscar Wilde

After Alaric left for Siena, my friend Elizabeth called. She was in a flustered state, as her exam for our semiotics of art class was to be held later that day. She asked if I could help her study. I consented, knowing that in the distant future I too would have to take the exam. I arrived to find Elizabeth almost in tears. A friend of hers had already taken the exam and apparently the examiners had been very severe, not at all lenient towards foreign students as had been so widely reported.
    Having had a certain amount of experience in helping people study art history, I first told Elizabeth to relax. I couldn't see her doing badly on the exam, for she was an Ivy League girl, after all, marked by the diligence I have always lacked but somehow made up for all my life. Secretly though, I was afraid as well, as I couldn't put off the exam indefinitely, and my Italian was far less evolved than hers. Together we summarized much of the course material. We reviewed the differences between the Enunciated and the Ennunciator, the different types of passions, the varying approaches to visualizing a text. We must have presented ourselves as a model of struggling foreign students. The material itself wasn't what worried us, but rather the difficulty of presenting it all in Italian.
    Eventually, we walked over to Palazzo Poggi, where the exam was to take place. In a cramped hallway we found twenty or so other students cramming at the last minute. Intermittently, students would leave the door marked with our Professor's name. None of them lingered to tell us how it went. Eventually, it was Elizabeth's turn. A white haired teaching assistant arrived, smoking a cigarette, and ushered her in through the office door. Others peered in to try to get a glimpse of what lay beyond the mysterious threshold. I told her I would wait for her outside, though after half an hour, much longer than normal, I assumed she had left through some other door and so I left as well. Only later did I find out that she did extremely well, scoring a twenty eight out of thirty on the convoluted Italian scoring system, after being kept inside for over an hour. Our professor told her that she had done very well. "Sei stata brava." It gave me encouragement.

---

    That evening, I invited the greater extent of my social circle over to my apartment for drinks. We had to wish Alex off, as he was leaving tonight, while at the same time premiering our latest collaborative project, a short film about our respective experiences in Bologna.
    As brothers, Alex and I have been creating short films of varying quality for a few years now. Never too serious, these projects appeal to his penchant for literature and my love of the visual. They nearly always solicit laughs. Our latest effort, more serious than in the past, rehashed a sustained conversation we had on the day of his arrival in Bologna. It was well received.
    From my apartment we transferred ourselves to the Scuderia, the student hangout I had been frequenting of late, and said a last goodbye to Alex. He caught his train, though my evening was just beginning…

IV.viii. A Second Wave of Gothic Invasions

"The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices."
- William Hazlitt

Wednesday night, or more precisely early Thursday morning, a good friend of mine arrived in Bologna. For the next few days I was double booked with visitors, as Alex was leaving only on Friday. This didn't matter, however, as we all get along extremely well. Alaric, studying in Toronto, was home in Paris for the holidays. I suggested he take the train south for a few days, and he put up little resistance.
    Alaric is a European searching for a Canadian identity and I am a Canadian searching for a European one. Perhaps surprisingly, we get along well. He is one of the best friends I have made during my Trinity College years, more exotic than my crop of irreplaceable Toronto stand-bys but able to match them in intellect and whit any day. I took him on my tour of Bologna, stopping to admire the requisite sites; the Saint Cecilia Chapel, the fresco of Mohammed burning in hell at San Petronio, the food markets in the Quadrilatero district, the Christmas fairs. Alaric seemed impressed. He too doubted why he had spent so much of his life in Toronto.
    At the crack of dawn the next morning Alaric was off to Siena. He too went to see Ditmira, our mutual friend to whom I had sent Alex not two weeks prior. Unbeknownst to me until I bumped into her at a tie shop in that city, Ditmira lives in a university residence and can book an extremely cheap room for visitors. This is where Alaric was to stay, though he underwent trials similar to those Alex had experienced, namely difficulty in finding Ditmira and close encounters with the local youth hostel staff. In both cases, however, all was well in the end.


Traditional Italian nativity scene figures for sale at a Bolognese marlket

IV.vii. The Spires of Modena

"It was most delicious weather, when we came into Modena, where the darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways skirting the main street on either side, was made refreshing and agreeable by the bright sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed from all the glory of the day, into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was performing, feeble tapers were burning, people were kneeling in all directions before all manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning the usual chant, in the usual, low, dull, drawling, melancholy tone."
- Charles Dickens

One of the greatest advantages of Bologna, if I have not already expounded on it, is how easy it is to get out of it. Day to day, this idea obviously doesn't preoccupy me a great deal, but every week or so a quick getaway does no harm. Location-wise, Bologna is arguably the most strategically placed hub in all of Italy. No northern Italian destination of note is more than two and a half hours away. I must admit that in planning my year abroad, these considerations far outstripped my concerns about academics. Now, I find myself not only within an easy day's visit from Florence, Venice, Padua, and Parma, but living in the heart of a city that never sleeps.
    The bustle and hubbub of Bologna, best described by the varied and hectic days of the previous week, were quickly forgotten in Modena. Only twenty minutes and a couple of euros away by train, it is the closest neighbouring city. Even Goethe, when he climbed the Asinelli tower in Bologna, expounded on the fact that the Western horizon he saw was punctuated only by the pinnacles of Modena. Today the city is best known for its balsamic vinegar, its Ferrari factory, and its glorious cathedral.
    Smaller, cleaner, quieter than Bologna, Modena grew in importance when the d'Este family moved its court there from Ferrara, taking the extraordinary collection of paintings they had amassed with them. Long before that, Willigelmus, the sculptor famous principally for being known by name, was at work on the cathedral here. Now his work is the pride of this town, and along with the main square, they were recently classed as a UNESCO world heritage site. These are a dime a dozen in Italy however; this country has more of these sites than does any other. According to the United Nations, fifty percent of the world's art originated in Italy.
    Under the shadow of the Romanesque cathedral, a precariously leaning marble affair best known to me through the heavily accented lectures of a severe Germanic professor of mine, an antique market was occurring. A few dozen dealers had their wares spread out on tables. A few old paintings and some Roman fibulae caught my eye, but most notable of all was a drawing, a sketch of a Madonna and Child. I held it up to the light and noticed a curious watermark, a lamb bearing a staff with the initials "AB" below. The price put me off, and I vacillated. Finally, I decided that a bit of research was in order before such a purchase could be made. Most of the best pieces I own were bought through careful consideration; most, but not all, since there was that little "Parmigianino" sketch my father and I came upon last year…
    I have promised myself that I will make some definite finds this year, but my year has just begun, and these things take time. To be honest, I was more interested in investigating the incredible cathedral, which includes depictions of the great Arthurian legends of the middle ages. Odd as it seems, Modena was once a major stopover point en route to the Crusades, and many an Englishman passed through its walls, thereby influencing the decorative programme of the unfinished cathedral. Some never left, and their red haired descendents still stroll through the streets here, oblivious of their millennial heritage. I went on to visit the civic museums, and finally I stumbled upon a Christmas concert in a local church. It was packed with locals, especially the elderly, who in Italy have a habit of speaking loudly during such events. Despite this, the orchestra played on, excerpting Handel's Messiah at one point, causing my thoughts to drift longingly off to winters past.
    The choir sung, struggling with the English words but still able to enunciate them; "and we like sheep, have gone astray."


A general view of Modena Cathedral


The famous Crusader reliefs on the North Door


A red marble lion

IV.vi. Delicacies

"They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach."
- Luigi Barzini

Today was a busy Saturday in Bologna. Christmas was approaching, and the streets were unusually lively. Of course, I am quite seldom in Bologna on the weekend, as I usually take the opportunity to travel, but the city did seem extraordinarily awake. In addition to the usual market that crowds the immense Piazza VIII Agosto every Friday and Saturday, Bologna was littered with seasonal markets selling everything from homemade woolen hats to nougat. The city's inhabitants were out in droves, and a bright Emilian sun warmed an otherwise crisp morning.
    We wanted to tie up some loose ends. The first project for the day was the visiting of a rather unique museum, one about which I had told Alex soon after he had arrived here. As we were both interested, we braved a rather restrictive opening schedule and visited early early in the day. The Museum of Modern and Ancient Tactile Painting, located on the top floor of an institute for the blind in the southern district of Bologna, was our first stop this Saturday morning. The museum consisted of one room filled with three-dimensional reproductions of the most famous paintings; Boticelli's Birth of Venus, Caravaggio's Burial of Saint Peter, David's Death of Marat. In front of these colourless, cast-like renderings were contorted clay models made by the blind in imitation of the things they were led to feel with their fingers. The museum's purpose was to let the blind see, or rather, to give them a fuller understanding of the world of painting, and the ideas of perspective as applied to art. An enthusiastic young woman greeted us and began to give us lengthy explanations. She offered to blindfold us and have us try our hand at identifying some of the works. We kindly refused and undertook to do this ourselves.

---

    It gives a strange insight to feel and not to see, especially for an art historian. I have always held touch to be especially important, overlooked by bookish scholars who are content only to study from afar through a lifetime of faded slides. I remember the incredulous looks of a beautiful colleague as I showed her the Group of Seven paintings that hung at Saint Hilda's College in Toronto. Alone together in that room, always unlocked but never visited, I pawed at them as though they were cheap reproductions. "Nicholas, you really mustn't do that," she said. An admonishing Saint Cecilia, more interested with sound or sight than touch.
    "Of course you shouldn't from a conservator's point of view," I replied, "but for passion's sake… feel this!" I guided her hand across the mottled brushstrokes of an A.Y. Jackson.
    "But if everyone were to do that…"
    "We're not everyone," I said.

---

    Then, from a deprivation of the senses to an overwhelming of them, Alex and I ventured into the main clothing market in Bologna. I had been here before many a time, but still remained stunned by the immensity and chaos of it all. Hundreds of stalls set out in front of vans form six orderly alleyways which are subsequently thronged by the thriftier Bolognese. We were among them that day, as we dove in with the purpose of buying cheap gloves, scarves, and perhaps even the odd pair of leather shoes being sold for fifteen euros. At length we found what we needed, though it took some time; the market is eighty percent women's clothing. The items for sale are nearly all imitations of the most sought-after styles, and negotiation is welcomed. This is one of the rare places in Italy where the market economy is allowed to blossom in its healthiest form.
    From here a quick tramezzino and a coffee at a bar on Via dell'Independenza, the main arcaded artery that leads from the railway station to Piazza Maggiore. The quick jolt of caffeine and the more enduring satisfaction of a sandwich stuffed with prociutto is becoming nearly a daily fixture in my life here. Even during the day, most bars and cafés in Bologna offer an assortment of local snack foods to supplement the thickly brewed elixir. Artichoke spread, pork sausage, and pistachios were today's offering.
    Hungry again, in mid-afternoon we reached a destination I had been meaning to arrive at for quite some time: the Nutelleria. Bologna, the birthplace of the thick, rich spread that is the staple of childhood breakfasts from Ibiza to Stockholm, is also home to a restaurant that exclusively serves dishes heightened with the magical ingredient. We ordered a Focaccia Invernale (warmed bread filled with ice cream and a generous dollop of the stuff), and, in a nod to Germanic culture, a stuffed Krapffen. We ate them under the heated canopy of a seating area that overlooks a triumphant Garibaldi, the sculptural fixture of every village, town, and city in Italy. It was delicious. Admittedly, the taste was better than that of Spamella, the cheap substitute I buy at the Plenty Market, despite the scoffing remarks it solicits from visitors to my apartment. "Just buy Nutella Nick, it really isn't that expensive."
    Finally, we rounded out the day with a visit to the University Museums, housed in the upper floor of Palazzo Poggi, directly above the art history library I so love to frequent. These museums, recently renovated in the latest Italian style, highlight the scientific discoveries of a nation and university that for hundreds of years were at the forefront of discovery. In addition to the usual permanent displays, the museums were hosting an exhibit on anatomy from Da Vinci to the Enlightenment. We entered, dazzled by the array of artifacts relating to this gory field. In one room, hundreds of true to life ceramic fetuses were displayed, all the work of an eighteenth century physician who devoted his life to educating midwives, until then very much steeped in folkloric tradition, far from the scientific advances of the age. In another small, mysteriously lit room were ten pages of sketches by Leonardo on loan from Windsor Castle. This was the real treasure of the day, the tiny pages displaying a variety of extraordinary observations on the human body glossed with the trademark mirrored writing of the ultimate Renaissance man.

IV.v. Tosca

“Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is
manifested in all high artistic achievements.”
- Giacomo Puccini

South of the Apennines, it suddenly gets much warmer. We traveled there today, not because it was particularly cold in Bologna, but because I had made plans with Alex and two American friends of ours to visit Lucca. Supposedly one of the most beautiful, immaculately preserved walled towns in Tuscany, it was like most of its cousins a powerful city-state at one time. Lucca is close enough for a day trip, though the incredible wealth of sights nearer still hadn't yet given me a chance to explore it; nestled amongst a ring of hills in the lower Arno valley, it is about three hours away by train.
    My principal reason for visiting was that Lucca is home to twelve Romanesque churches, though my travel companions were perhaps interested in less arcane things. We spent a wonderful day there, eating lunch in a sunny square overlooked by the wedding-cake like white marble façade of the church of San Michele. The Christmas markets that abound in every Italian town at this time of year were in full presence here, and throughout the day the narrow streets became increasingly lively, culminating in a packed late afternoon passegiato. The temperature hit a high of twenty-two degrees Celsius, which in most climes I would find too hot. Here, in mid-December, with palm trees swaying and a clear blue sky, I took what I could get.
    In the evening, after feasting on some aperitivi and downing some local wine, we attended a vocal concert in a beautifully restored, converted church. Highlights from Tosca were being performed, overlooked by a large photo of its cigarette-sporting composer, towering over the scene in place of an altar. The commentator, clad in a dressing gown and slippers, switched between English and Italian for his audience of no more than twenty, and claimed that, in addition to being the venue for "the world's only all-year festival", Lucca had the honour of being the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini, "the greatest Italian ever".
    Italy, in the end, is nothing without exaggeration.

IV.iv. Immaculate Conception

"For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness."
- D.H. Lawrence

It surprises me to no end that Italy is one of the most productive economies in the world. The Northern Italian, on average, is significantly wealthier than the German or the Brit, yet partakes in an inordinate number of religious holidays, coffee breaks, and strikes, all of which, in this country at least, further enhance quality of life.
    So, in terms of a purely economic analysis, Italy ranks among the richest nations in the world, even though in most places it lacks a usable banking system, free public washrooms, timely train service, and so on. Astonishingly though, these things can be coupled with a more qualitative view of development that also places Italy at the top. Despite the petty criticisms that are easily leveled, the Italians have constructed a society for themselves that is eminently, and fascinatingly, beautiful.
    This is no weekend revelry; the local drogherie, a type of old fashioned wine bar, are packed every evening with professionals and students alike who share bottles of Lambrusco or Chianti with friends while snacking on aperitivi provided free of cost. These bite-sized portions of prociutto, Asiago cheese, focaccia, grilled vegetables, and sausage, are the only exception to the Italian aversion to eating between meals. In recent years however, probably through the dreaded though inevitable influence of American culture, snacking has become more common, and the primacy of the pranzio, the lunchtime meal, has eroded in favour of a familial cena, the main evening meal. Still, the Italians enjoy themselves in droves. Only the French and the Spanish have worldviews of a comparable aesthetic. In Italy it would be hedonism if only there were not so many businessmen, inventors, and scientists among them.
    Today, December eighth, is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Classes are cancelled and shops are closed. The streets are mostly empty and people remain at home; some even go to church. Despite the erosion of such things, the family unit is still of extraordinary importance here. Families are enormous, longevous things. Often three generations will live under one roof for decades; Italian students live at home longer than any others. Many of those studying in Bologna do the settimana corta, returning home every weekend to families who send them back on Sunday loaded down with home-cooked dishes in Tupperware containers, a relatively recent arrival in Italy. I have even heard stories of more attached Italian mothers leaving parcels of food on trains and having them retrieved by their children at the appropriate station, thus avoiding the need to visit or the cost of shipping.
    My brother Alex is in Tuscany. He traveled to Siena for a few days while I stayed behind, ostensibly to study. Later tonight, I will go out to the Scuderia with the Americans, the other family-less residents of Bologna, to hear some jazz and possibly drink some beer. I can take holidays too.

IV.iii. Evenings

"The trouble with eating Italian food is that 5 or 6 days later you're hungry again."
- George Miller

My evenings are getting busier. Though the year is only a quarter over, it feels at though it is already halfway done, perhaps because the winter holidays are looming and in psychological terms this seems like a logical halfway point. The group of American girls that has befriended me has begun to invite me to dinners, which gives me a keen insight into the world of all-girl, program-sponsored living arrangements.
    The principle division among foreign students in Bologna is between those here on programs organized by specific universities and those here on independent studies abroad. My situation puts me squarely in the latter category, which has both its advantages and drawbacks. I had to deal with the bureaucracy of the Italian university system first hand, deal with convoluted residency requirements, find my own accommodation, get to know the city, and stand on my own two feet with literally no help from my home school. Most North Americans, however, are here through programs directed by Brown University, Indiana University, and a variety of other coddling institutions; Most Europeans are not. I am therefore in a strange category, non-European and non-program, and understanding is not always forthcoming when the inevitable question, "Erasmus?" comes up. Still, I would rather have gone through all the effort to register here myself than have these things handed to me on a silver plate. If one had asked me my opinion a few months ago, however, I would likely have answered otherwise. Still, the expense of my entire year here is comparable to a year in Toronto, while most other North American students end up spending far more.
    "Basically, we pay to have friends," one of the American girls tells me at dinner. The apartment to which I was invited, one of seven owned by Brown, is adequate but somewhat dingy, beyond the coveted cento storico, and definitely short on privacy. I heard complaints all evening about meddling program directors who intervened to impose order and discipline on the colony of girls. To them, these sorts of infringements seemed normal; their place wasn't as much a private apartment as a residence hall. I have never been used to this sort of oversight, since my high school was essentially student-run and my residence years in Toronto were anarchical and don-free. At this point I wouldn't trade my two room, private, whitewashed, stuccoed, Ikea-furnished paradise for anything else.

IV.ii. Earthquakes in Assisi

"He who works with his hands is a labourer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist."
- Francis of Assisi

Two short hours from Rome on a regionale is the station of Assisi-Santa Maria Degli Angeli. A small municipal bus then ferries tourists, the modern day pilgrims, to the place where Francis' bones rest. Of course, the irony of having a Saint who threw away the clothes and wealth of his family to live in the wilderness and preach to the birds sepulchered in one of the most magnificent structures the Middle Ages ever built is overlooked by most of these visitors. Christianity constantly inters the humblest of people in the most lavish of shrines, whether they like it or not. Francis was a simple man who had an uncanny spiritual connection, who wrote achingly beautiful verses about the wonders of nature, who loved poverty but hated nothing. A second Christ, they called him. Now he lies below two superimposed churches entirely covered in frescoes, with skies painted in lapis lazuli, a pigment more expensive than gold.
    The city of Francis, hung atop a long rocky crag like a huge marble ship, was mostly invisible to us in the rain and fog that afternoon. In clearer times a giant castle, the Rocca Maggiore, commands the scene like a crow's nest, while the steeples of the dozen or so churches form the bristling masts. The figurehead, the prow, is Saint Francis' Basilica, probably one of the greatest treasure houses in Italy. Inside are frescoes four times larger in surface area than those of the Sistine Chapel, and a great deal more beautiful. Yet, somewhat emblematic of Francis himself, the brilliant soul of this place is belied by a gruff, unpolished exterior. Despite its outward appearance of fortitude, it is quite a fragile thing. In 1997 an earthquake shook the region and brought down two of the upper church's vaults. Incredible scenes by Cimabue, the father of Italian art, crumbled into dust. A poor friar was crushed to death. A tourist caught it all from the inside on video camera. Half crumbled, the place was a reminder of Francis' famous vision of a crucifix that spoke to him; "repair my house", it commanded. He obeyed, at first in the literal sense, and rebuilt a small chapel with his own hands. After the earthquake, scholars were called to do the same. Last time I was here, on that formative trip in 1998, the upper basilica was still closed, and a team of patient art historians were piecing together thousands of fragments of plaster like a giant puzzle. Now the shattered scenes have been reconstructed. They are not their former selves, but at least they still exist. We spent a good few hours admiring these and the other incredible frescoes, all by the greatest painters of the age; Giotto, Cimabue, Martini, Lorenzetti. By the time we left the basilica the Umbrian mist had surrounded the place and, in all senses, given it an atmospheric air. We strolled through the city, which was not altogether empty but neither bustling as well. The many empty tourist shops seemed to be intended for the summer.
    Back at the station we had a thirty minute wait for our train. The cabin fever I anticipated having on the four hour journey back prompted me to explore the lower town of Assisi, one that lacks the history and beauty of the upper town, but is all the more bustling for it. I headed towards a huge, incongruous looking basilica that loomed over the railroad sidings of the station. I entered and found it full of people, warm, and well lit. In the crossing of this huge baroque church there was a tiny stone chapel. It looked ridiculous, but then I remembered a lecture by a Franciscan scholar I had attended years ago on the very topic; this was the porziuncola, the church Francis had repaired with his own hands. It survived the earthquake unscathed.

IV.i. Flowers at the Forgotten

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
- Epitaph of John Keats

"Well, this is thoroughly depressing," I repeated to my brother as we looked at the little tombstone and the pathetic collection of withered flowers in front of it. I ritually added a daisy I had picked by the road, since the flower shop that could have sold me violets wasn't open yet. A lonely speckled white cat wove through our ankles. The place is a haven for strays. It was a rainy Saturday morning in the Protestant, or more correctly the acatholic, cemetery of Rome, a place that somehow still manages to fall within the universality of the city's walls, though just barely. A symapthetic Pope was gracious enough to let these dead heathens stay, albeit out by the Porta Ostiense, the ages old road entrance to the eternal city from its port on the sea. The cemetery is encircled on one side by Aurelian's massive ramparts and on the other by a rustic and rather English looking brick wall that looks as paltry and out of place in this grand city as does the stodgy All Saints' chapel near the Spanish Steps, that might as well be in Rosedale or Warwickshire. Cauis Cestius' huge travertine marble pyramid, an equally incongruous monument, rubs shoulders with the cemetery walls here. Such a collection of funerary follies should come as no surprise; Rome is a city the buried and a city of the unearthed.
    But why am I preoccupied with these things? I wouldn't consider myself particularly morbid. In fact, I tend to believe in the life of things that most others believe dead. Still, there were things that needed to be done on this trip, important things. I set out to do them on a pilgrimage of sorts.
    There are still a lot of true pilgrims who come to Rome. In terms of sheer numbers, probably more than have ever come in any other century, but they are far outnumbered by the hoards, the bus tours and the backpackers who want to glimpse at the grandeur of what to them is nothing but a fictive dream. We mingled with them as we checked in at our eccentric youth hostel. A Californian named Joseph was working at the desk. He explained to me, after recommending the Borghese (he pronounced it bor-geez) Museum and the Da-lee exhibit in Venice, that he had run out of money while traveling and so had been working here at the Alessandro Palace Hostel for twelve days. We also met Pete, heading towards the Amalfi coast while his ex-girlfriend struggled with their three year old child in Vancouver, and an Argentinian who only spoke Spanish, and who said long prayers before going to bed.
    In Saint Peter's a Japanese tourist laughed while pretending to cross himself at a holy water stoop, only so that the moment could be recorded on film. This wasn't as bad as the Frenchman I once saw piss against the façade of Reims cathedral, the place where his kings were crowned for a thousand years, or the matrons who bring their poodles into Marseille churches to keep themselves company. The Vatican is important enough to warrant ushers who attempt to prevent the altogether untoward from occurring, but they are no real deterrent. Lhasa is unreachable, Jerusalem unsafe, and Mecca unwelcoming, so the masses come here to mock, or at least gawk at, the strangeness of things they don't understand. Despite them, Catholicism, that dominant world religion, is still a sacred thing, and Rome, for all its decay and crumbling layers of history, is still the nominative centre of the world, simply by default of being the only city to actually declare itself so.

---

    Cecilia, certainly out of Carrara (for she was whiter than Travertine), had her face wrapped with a shroud and a gory incision in her neck. Other than that, she was as beautiful as ever. This is how she looked when they exhumed her body in 1599. Her miraculously preserved remains were immortalized by Stefano Maderno, an otherwise unknown sculptor, and it rests here in the altar, under the gaze of glowing golden mosaics, in her church in Trastevere. In 230, after unsuccessfully trying to scald her, they reverted to beheading her. Her body, long believed lost, was found by Pope Paschal in the ninth century, and it has rested here ever since. I don't doubt that this is true, but only chuckle at the though of many an ancient Pope searching the catacombs outside Rome for the precious relics of a saint. I can't imagine such things being on the current Pontiff's daily schedule.

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    We stopped, on the quiet pilgrimage, at the Keats-Shelley house. Just outside, the hubbub of the Spanish Steps contrasts with the smoking room atmosphere of the small museum. Set up and frequented only by aficionados, it is as strange and decontextualized a place as Babington's English teahouse across the way. Inside, its oak bookcases are lined with leather-bound books and memorabilia. Other than a few letters, nothing is original. After Keats died from consumption the papacy ordered everything in the place to be burned in an attempt to prevent contagion. It was purely a medical decision. They had nothing against the late poet personally; how could anyone holy disagree with the man who wrote Saint Agnes' Eve?
    Earlier in the day a few people stared, though not too many, when I put the rose on Raphael's tomb in the Pantheon. The majority is here to admire the great coffered dome, a feat of Roman architecture, or the monuments to several feckless Italian kings, not this quiet tomb (though altogether not as quiet that of a certain Young English Poet). The greatest painter who ever lived, dead at thirty-seven. He beat out Keats, his lyrical equivalent, by twelve years, and Cecilia, his hagiographical one, by a good twenty.
    Around the corner, another tomb in another church; this time Fra Angelico, the Dominican turned painter, happy in the village of Fiesole but summoned to Rome to paint for the Pope, only to die a few years later. When he was invited to dine with Nicholas V, he politely refused to eat the meat offered to him because he lacked permission from his prior. Worse, he declined the position of archbishop because he deemed himself unworthy. I can only thank him; if he had accepted the job he would undoubtedly have painted less, and there would have been tears of omission. His tomb was the least sorrowful of all those I had visited, for some fascist-era renovation had given him a bronze wreath and some sacristan had lit a few candles. Artists always get the best graves, I realized. From me he got a white lily.

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    Back at the cemetery, a quick visit to Shelley's grave. About it he wrote that "it might make one in love with death, to be buried in so sweet a place". No one second-guessed him when his drowned body washed up on the shore at La Spezia, though he was cremated on the beach and only his ashes lie here. Another cat, this time charcoal black, observed us. Alex and I pondered the possibility of reincarnation, then left.


Keats' grave


A Plaque in the Keats-Shelley House


The Rose on Raphael's tomb


The sempiternal Swiss Guards


The brothers in Saint Peter's square…


… and on the Capitoline Hill