MY ITALY
I will not conceal that this article’s headline is patterned after My Japan, the title of a book by the well-known Russian writer, poet, and artist (his facets are innumerable) Dmitry Prigov. Prigov is, of course, a talent, a true storehouse of arts. Yet, his Japan is really a preserve of his own and it reveals the nature of himself, “Dmitry the Ubiquitous,” rather than of Japan as such. A good thing, of course, but still one would like to know something about Japan, too.
By no means striving to match Prigov, the author of these notes just wants to tell about “his” Italy or, to be more exact, about what he saw in this Italy. Please do not roll eyes if what I describe sometimes sounds like an extract from a tourist guidebook or a school reader. It is no crime to see a picturesque place once again. So...
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All roads lead to Rome. In Venice, however, all tiny streets, bridges and canals lead to the majestic St. Mark’s Cathedral built in the fourteenth century when the Venetian Republic was thriving.
Incidentally, that state was not very virtuous. It is pirates and merchants, not bishops and cardinals, who ruled there. Trading or stealing, they would bring riches from all over the Mediterranean coast. When a still inimitable city began to emerge on the marshy and nasty shores, these villains decided to build a church. A church that houses the relics of none other than St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice, and whose mosaics strikingly resemble the frescoes of Orthodox churches. A church that stands out so beautifully against the backdrop of the surrounding square inundated with a regular flood.
Water is just the thing that helps one see what is otherwise hidden by the tourist vortex. Here I mean the snow-white and green St. Mark’s (San Marco) Cathedral whose spires, steep towers, expressive sculptures, and fretwork make it look like a real mosque — only without crescents on the spires, a wonderful Muslim mirage in the very heart of Catholic Europe. This is how the Arab Orient struck the Venetian buccaneers...
A joke of history indeed.
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Milan’s Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, shaped like a huge gingerbread, is by and large like any other Northern Italian house of worship. The only exception is that you will find Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper inside.
An enormous empty hall with just one fresco. The once royal blue, saffron, and red paints of the pictured clothes have almost peeled off, leaving intact only the palms and heads. You walk left and right along the barrier and read this picture as if it were a constantly renewable text. And the more you do so, the more you understand that the picture’s puzzle has endless solutions. All Leonardo did was depict just one of the most dramatic episodes of the Gospel, “one of you shall betray Me.” But there are too many Bible-related frescoes, so why does precisely this one keep you glued to it, mesmerized?
Then an echo-like revelation dawns upon you: these thirteen men are talking about the most important of all things, and you hear them talking when you look at them. They have been speaking for 500 or 2000 years. And as long as they argue, our world still has a chance.
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Verona is perhaps the only place where Romeo and Juliet could be set. It is a very theatrical city, with sky-high walls, narrow cobblestone streets, and coquettish balconies. The central square is just a ready-made stage surrounded with strictly rectangular palaces: one gets the feeling that the bullying Tibalt is about to crop up from around the corner to haggle with the restless Mercutio.
All crossroads are studded with “To Juliet’s house” signs — you can’t miss it. Everything has been reproduced right to the letter. The same little courtyard with a typical high fence, the same bushes and second-story balcony, and a bronze Juliet (a bit too plump, in my view) for tourists to gaze at.
But what presents interest is not the courtyard itself but the gateway. Everything, from the cobblestone to the vault, is strewn with the autographs of lovers from all over the world. All these “John + Mary” and “Arsene + Francoise” overlap one another in several layers. A loner who comes in here becomes lost in a haze of melancholy.
There is no Romeo’s house in Verona, only a lackluster brown wall with a plaque saying that such and such youth could have lived here.
Incidentally, the play’s original text ends as follows,
“For never was a story of more woe,
Then this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
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There is eternal pandemonium in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel. Guards keep swooping on those who flash their cameras, “Stop photographing!” They are right, in a way: what can a tourist’s camera see at the dizzy height, where Michelangelo once executed the order of the Holy See?
The order was to paint over the chapel for the then Pope. Something from the Bible. What came out was a far cry from a simple illustration to the Holy Writ. Yes, the picture shows real-life characters, but these overstepped the boundaries of their names and came to symbolize Old Age, Youth, Femininity, and Inspiration. The famous central scene of the making of man is more than a parable about God and Adam. The main thing is the empty space between the hands of the Creator and the Created who reach out for each other. This pause is the greatest symbol. Michelangelo thus managed to express the eternal emptiness that pushes man forward, forcing him to paint pictures, compose poems, build churches, and head for unknown shores again and again... And to love.
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Padua is perhaps the only city in Europe, where one can walk out in a torrential rain without an umbrella, for all the downtown sidewalks are reliably covered with galleries. Yet, you will have to get soaked on the way to the Capella degli Scrovegni church: painted over by Giotto himself, it stands exposed to the elements in the Arena Park. The medieval genius was ill-treated by the barbarous twentieth century. One of the temples with his frescoes was ruined during World War II (there were especially bitter battles near Padua). Scrovegni was also bombed, but the frescoes survived. This outwardly modest church is the main proof of Giotto’s artistic talent.
Scenes from Christ’s life inspire tense and expressive awe. The presentation in the Temple, entrance into Jerusalem, the kiss of Judas... Giotto’s frescoes are short of the famous Renaissance perspective, for it was still unknown in his time. But this is not required in fact. Landscapes are just scenery for the greatest drama, in which every gesture, pose, and even fold of clothing are full of incredible expression. This is a theater of sublime passions purified of all mundane things and stunning to the bottom of one’s heart. This is also a true mystery of color. Giotto must have been flying to see angels in a sky as blue as the color of the whole vault and many figures on the walls.
Maybe, this saved his last work.
