Roman recollections
In putting together my PowerPoint lecture for tonight, I decided I'd use some of my own photographs of mythological subjects in ancient art which I took at the Capitoline and Vatican Museums last summer. What a flood of memories hit me when I went through them. I had meant, reader--as you may remember--to write up a detailed description of every day of the trip here in this journal. I made it as far as the first day.
Fortunately, the trip in the spring refreshed my memory considerably. I have, at least, today, gone through those three hundred or so pictures labeling a good many. The photos of me are a little frightening. I am bent over (even more so than usual) and my face is flushed with heat, my eyes distracted from looking dead on at anything by the intense Italian sun and the force of fatigue. Add to that my dyed red hair and eyebrows bleached pale for accuracy; the result is, strangely, that I look older in those pictures than I do now.
All the same, the sweat and grime notwithstanding, that trip ranks as one of the my favorite memories ever; it is certainly the best I have with my father. He was a wonderful traveling companion. He and I share that same anxiety over time and money: we always fear that we are wasting it. Hence we marched at every available moment hither and thither making pilgrimages Christian and pagan over that most glorious of cities. We were more like soldiers on a campaign rather than those on holiday. Our sustenance throughout the day was little more than protein-bars and water gathered from the countless fountains.
As hot and unforgivably sunny as July is, I'd freely go back--I'd go even in August. Rome fascinates me endlessly. Every inch of that place has witnessed some of history's greatest stories and spectacles. These memories seems to rise up from the pavement and infuse the visitor with a clear sense that he is in the capital of the world. Mind you, the easily obtained gelato, espresso, and fresh, free, cold, clean water flowing readily from the drinking fountains appeal to my more kinetic pleasures.
Of course, it is also a paradise for a Catholic: every city block holds gorgeous little chapels, passed over in guidebooks but far grander in their tiny space than a good many American cathedral. Every street corner has its own Madonna, enclosed right into the wall of a building. Every Catholic needs to stand in St. Peter's Square and to see the great monuments within that Basilica--kings, queens, saints, and, of course, popes. One can't really visit the church as a whole: it's too large. One visits its various parts. The catacombs, St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, Il Gesu--the universality, the triumph of the Church overcomes the pilgrim; he loses himself gladly in that communion of the saints, that "great cloud of witnesses" which seems to stretch infinitely backward and forward.
The plan is now, at my school, to return to Rome the year after next. Paris is the trip approaching in the spring. No doubt I will enjoy Paris, but I doubt it will penetrate me as Rome did.
Fortunately, the trip in the spring refreshed my memory considerably. I have, at least, today, gone through those three hundred or so pictures labeling a good many. The photos of me are a little frightening. I am bent over (even more so than usual) and my face is flushed with heat, my eyes distracted from looking dead on at anything by the intense Italian sun and the force of fatigue. Add to that my dyed red hair and eyebrows bleached pale for accuracy; the result is, strangely, that I look older in those pictures than I do now.
All the same, the sweat and grime notwithstanding, that trip ranks as one of the my favorite memories ever; it is certainly the best I have with my father. He was a wonderful traveling companion. He and I share that same anxiety over time and money: we always fear that we are wasting it. Hence we marched at every available moment hither and thither making pilgrimages Christian and pagan over that most glorious of cities. We were more like soldiers on a campaign rather than those on holiday. Our sustenance throughout the day was little more than protein-bars and water gathered from the countless fountains.
As hot and unforgivably sunny as July is, I'd freely go back--I'd go even in August. Rome fascinates me endlessly. Every inch of that place has witnessed some of history's greatest stories and spectacles. These memories seems to rise up from the pavement and infuse the visitor with a clear sense that he is in the capital of the world. Mind you, the easily obtained gelato, espresso, and fresh, free, cold, clean water flowing readily from the drinking fountains appeal to my more kinetic pleasures.
Of course, it is also a paradise for a Catholic: every city block holds gorgeous little chapels, passed over in guidebooks but far grander in their tiny space than a good many American cathedral. Every street corner has its own Madonna, enclosed right into the wall of a building. Every Catholic needs to stand in St. Peter's Square and to see the great monuments within that Basilica--kings, queens, saints, and, of course, popes. One can't really visit the church as a whole: it's too large. One visits its various parts. The catacombs, St. John Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, Il Gesu--the universality, the triumph of the Church overcomes the pilgrim; he loses himself gladly in that communion of the saints, that "great cloud of witnesses" which seems to stretch infinitely backward and forward.
The plan is now, at my school, to return to Rome the year after next. Paris is the trip approaching in the spring. No doubt I will enjoy Paris, but I doubt it will penetrate me as Rome did.