(no subject)
I think I have got straight, to my satisfaction at least, what makes Italy, and especially Rome, so special. It is not even beauty; it is what beauty points to. Think of Samuel Johnson's famous meditation on the isle of Iona:
We were now treading that illustrious Island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!
True, noble, and beautiful. But if a man can get so much out of a small, tempest-tossed monastic island in the north seas, what can one get out of Rome? Piety would feed not only on the memory of St.Peter and St.Paul, not even on the succession of Popes and great ecclesiastics, but also on wholly local saints such as St.Frances of Rome or St. Philip Neri. Patriotism? I still remember my grandfather taking me to see the French cannonballs embedded in the walls in the Gianicolo Park, where in 1848 Garibaldi and his volunteers held back an overwhelming French enemy for a month, and Goffredo Mameli, the writer of our national anthem, died of gangrene from a wound at twenty. Art? No city in the world compares. Science? Enrico Fermi, one of the greatest scientists in history, established his group of brilliant researchers in the 1920s in Via Panisperna, and the group was ever since known by the name. Rome has the most ancient Jewish community in the world - and one of the few which is neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardi - the memory of great musicians from Palestrina to Liszt and Respighi, the grief and horror of the Second World War, great parks, buildings from every style and age from pre-classical to twentieth century modern (Palazzo Civilta' del Lavoro, in the EUR quarter, has often been used as the background or inspiration for science fictional or supernatural settings) - everything loaded with grandeur, emotion and significance. And then there is the rest of the country. A person who travels through Italy travels through his or her own life, in every way that is significant.
We were now treading that illustrious Island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!
True, noble, and beautiful. But if a man can get so much out of a small, tempest-tossed monastic island in the north seas, what can one get out of Rome? Piety would feed not only on the memory of St.Peter and St.Paul, not even on the succession of Popes and great ecclesiastics, but also on wholly local saints such as St.Frances of Rome or St. Philip Neri. Patriotism? I still remember my grandfather taking me to see the French cannonballs embedded in the walls in the Gianicolo Park, where in 1848 Garibaldi and his volunteers held back an overwhelming French enemy for a month, and Goffredo Mameli, the writer of our national anthem, died of gangrene from a wound at twenty. Art? No city in the world compares. Science? Enrico Fermi, one of the greatest scientists in history, established his group of brilliant researchers in the 1920s in Via Panisperna, and the group was ever since known by the name. Rome has the most ancient Jewish community in the world - and one of the few which is neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardi - the memory of great musicians from Palestrina to Liszt and Respighi, the grief and horror of the Second World War, great parks, buildings from every style and age from pre-classical to twentieth century modern (Palazzo Civilta' del Lavoro, in the EUR quarter, has often been used as the background or inspiration for science fictional or supernatural settings) - everything loaded with grandeur, emotion and significance. And then there is the rest of the country. A person who travels through Italy travels through his or her own life, in every way that is significant.