uncomelyandbroken

In the town hall of Sutri, one sees many an ancient inscription cemented into the walls. Somewhere, sometime, somebody on the world-wide web will care about these, and so, my friend, this is for you.

As everyone knows, Italians have a lively language of gesture. A few I observed, in context, during this recent trip:

1. Get Lost Hand Chop. I was on a train when a woman got on and systematically handed out pieces of paper to everyone except me. In Italian it said something slong the lines of I am poor, please give me money so i can feed my children, etc. After she covered a few train-cas, she came by to collect them and beg. One older guy let the piece of paper drop to the floor, and when he asked him for a contibution, he looked off into the middle distance, and did the “hand chop.” While articles on gestures describe this as an up-and-down motion of the right hand, his hand was cupped and it seemed more like he was rubbing a melon. She went away.

2. Eye Pull. I was in Milan buying a ticket to get into the Cathedral. When I got to the front of the line, inasked, “Do you take a card?” To which she replied, “Why wouldn’t we?” I told her I’d recently been in Naples, where plaves often didn’t take cards. “Ah, well they’re pooerer there–good people though, generous people. Still …” And she pulled down her lower right eyelid with her index finger to indicate, “but foxy, watch out for them.” I think she was ironically imitating a Southern mannerism with the gesture.

3. Chin Inquiry & Mezza Mezza. At a restaurant in Tivoli that specialized in grilling over a great big fire, the chef- owner had been sitting with some friends and letting the sous- chef do most of the work. Whenit came time to cook for this table, he went over to the grill himself, held up the steak with tongs for the male friend to see, and lifted his chin quickly. The friend made the mezza- mezza hand sign. I take it this exchange was, How do you want this cooked? With the reply, Medium.

4. Fist Push. On the train between Florence and Milan, I got into a conversation with a very nice guy and his Chinese wife and their adorable daughter. He’s from Milan, but works overseas, and was describing the work ethic of different countries. In the first class compartment, you’re supposed to get a free beverage, but the women pushing the cart breezed right past us. He looked at them leaving, then at me, and curled his hand into a fist which he then pushed away from his chest. “Fucking Italians, eh?” he said.

5. Patient Hand Clasp. I was at a trattoria in Rome and was asking the waitress to explain a few items. She leaned down slightly and clasped her hands in front of her, as if to say, You are vexatious with your many questions but I have infinite reserves of Stoic resolve.

Im sure others will occur to me.

Finding myself with a few hours in Milan between trains, I made a bee-line for the famous cathedral. Out of the subway I came and… Ecce Duomo! 

 It’s an astounding place, it’s white marble exterior covered with sculpture, and its interior blazing with color from the enormous stained glass windows. 

  Love the guards’ cockaded hats, by the way.

  
 One of the the main sights inside is Marco d’Agrate’s gruesome statue of St. Bartholomew, who was flayed in his martyrdom. 

  
Mark Twain had seen this statue in Innocents Abroad, and wrote,

The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture which he said was considered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since it was not possible that any other artist, of any epoch, could have copied nature with such faultless accuracy. The figure was that of a man without a skin; with every vein, artery, muscle, every fiber and tendon and tissue of the human frame represented in minute detail. It looked natural, because somehow it looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be likely to look that way unless his attention were occupied with some other matter. It was a hideous thing, and yet there was a fascination about it some where. I am very sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it now. I shall dream of it sometimes. I shall dream that it is resting its corded arms on the bed’s head and looking down on me with its dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between the sheets with me and touching me with its exposed muscles and its stringy cold legs.

It is hard to forget repulsive things.

Twain is being a little over dramatic here, of course, for the real point of this St. Bartholomew is to call into question worldly things. Still, it is repulsive. The best I can do to express that is to show you his foot.  

The Duomo used to be the tallest building in Milan until it was outdone by the Pirelli skyscraper in the 50s and more recently the Unicredit Tower.  Banking, after Fashion, is Milan’s biggest business, and its home is the Borsa a few blocks away.

Having done due diligence in seeing the Dupmo, I rushed on over to the Borsa to see Maurizio Cattelan’s L.O.V.E. (Liberté, Ofio, Vendetta, Eternità).I had written a post on this before, but had not seen it in the flesh, so to speak. An enormous hand recalls Constantine’s hand in Rome, of course–so an indictment of power–but also Adam Smith’s invisible hand–an indictment of the free market. People complain about the difficulty of modern art, but as a commentary of la crise in 2008, it could not be more clear. In its own way, it’s a caution against the things of this world.

Me and Doctor Freud know what you’re up to with the position of that harpe, Benvenuto! 

    This sight of Medusa’s head makes the spectator stiff with terror, turns him to stone. Observe that we have here once again the same origin from the castration complex and the same transformation of affect! For becoming stiff means an erection. Thus in the original situation it offers consolation to the spectator: he is still in possession of a penis, and the stiffening reassures him of the fact. 

And it doesn’t improve from different angles, you Mannerist old pervert.

I went up to the English Cemetery on Piazzale Donatello this afternoon to look at the tombstone of Theodore Parker. It’s a bit of a misnomer, Cimitero Inglese, as it’s really a graveyard for Swiss Protestants. But it is the final resting place of numerous Anglo-American ex-pats, like Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Henry Adams, Margaret Fuller, and the person I was looking for, Theodore Parker.

Although I now live in the South, I grew up in Boston. In fact ,the neighborhood I come from was West Roxbury, where, right in the middle of town, is a statue of Theodore Parker, in front of the Unitarian Church where he preached for many years. He is seated, holding the Bible, and has been looking out on Centre Street since the statue’s erection in 1902. His visage was one I saw nearly every day for my whole youth. There was a bus-stop I got off at right in front of Parker, and my dentist’s office was across from the church.  For most of my youth, the statue was covered in verdigris, but at a certain point it was cleaned up and made presentable. 

 Among everyone I knew in West Roxbury, Parker was a great unknown. Tha tells you a lot about the characer of the neighborhood, which had become largely Catholic as the 20th century progressed–we knew nothing about the large stone Protestant churches in the vicinity. Still, Parker’s name is not so well known in our time, which is too bad because in his own day, he was a giant.  A forceful opponent of slavery, he preached fiery sermons that electrified the abolitionist movement. Parker’s way with words influenced both the Gettysburg Address (it was Parker who has coined the phrase “of the people, by the people, and for the people”) as well as Martin Luther King, Jr. (again, Parker first said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, … And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice”). 

Parker’s career was a rocky one, given his principles, and his family life was not so placid either. In 1859, he left for Italy to recuperate with his friends, the Brownings, but developed tuberculosis after a short time and died in Florence.  Of his death and burial, New York Times (September 5, 1860) noted that a “simple, but tasteful monument had been put up at the grave,” which would later be replaced with a finer one by William Wetmore Story, one featuring Parker’s profile with a beard–very jarring to me, who knew his clean-shaven face from the West Roxbury statue.

“The first thing Mrs. Douglass and I did, on our arrival in Florence,” writes Frederick Douglasss in his Life and Times, “was to visit the grave of Theodore Parker … The brave stand taken by Theodore Parker during the anti-slavery conflict endeared him to my heart, and naturally enough the spot made sacred by his ashes was the first to draw me to its side. He had a voice for the slave when nearly all the pulpits of the land were dumb. Looking upon the little mound of earth that covered his dust, I felt the pathos of his simple grave. It did not seem well that the remains of the great American preacher should rest thus in foreign soil, far away from the hearts and hands which would gladly linger about it and keep it well adorned with flowers.”

I thought, while I was in Florence, I should go and have a look at his tomb, if only to pay homage to a great man who did so much to make our own age a little more just. So, earlier today, just after spending time at the Museo Archeologico, over to Piazzale Donatello I went. The main-door of the cemetery was slightly ajar, so I let myself in.  In fact, there is a pretty good website kept for the Cimitero Inglese by another Anglo-American ex-pat, Julia Bolton Holloway, so Parker’s grave was not hard to find.  What I found, however, was really quite shocking.

   
    
    
   
As you can see, Parker’s stone has fallen over and looks to have broken at the base. The area all around it is overgrown and disheveled. I suppose none of this should bother me– didn’t I spend the whole afternoon trolling around among Etruscan sepulchres and grave goods all displaced from their final resting places?– but somehow it does. 

Parker was a great man, a true and unfaltering voice for human liberty. The cemetery is maintained privately, and clearly does not have the funds for maintenance of one of the most important monuments it houses.  I have written to Dr. Holloway, and hope to hear back from her. Perhaps I should contact the Unitarian Church, or the West Roxbury Historical Society.  People i know in Sewanee have restored stones in old graveyards before, and perhaps will have thoughts. I guess I’m just not ready for it to be a ruin.

A Room with a View … and Voices

I’ve arrived to the Istituto Gould, where I’m staying in Oltrarno. It is a Waldensian institution, that is, a pre-Reformation Protestant sect that was mercilessly treated by the Church, despite their piety and devotion to Scripture. Indeed, a New Testament is prominently displayed in the room. There’s a courtyard attached to the school, both of which are off-limits to those of us in the guesthouse. Children play in the area below my winodw, and its quite charming. While there are cheaper hostels in the neighborhood (Santa Monaca, for instance, where I am going to hear some opera later tonight), Istituto Gould is private and pretty affordable by American standards. 

Next door, a young American woman is talking with her window open about her love life. Brayingly, she is saying things like, “I am sick of youre bullshit” and “Yeah, well, I slept with someone else too while you were away” and “”Fuck you, you’re not even a good friend” and “I *AM* sharing my feelings, you asshole.”  Is Florence actually Spring Break in Tuscany? #eavesdropping        

I could choose not to set up my blogging operation by the window, I suppose, but this is the view:

Postscript.

My immediate impression of Florence, to which I have not been since I was twenty, is that it’s much less filthy than Naples and Rome, and being smaller, far more crowded with tourists. The food is not as good but it is more expensive. But throughout the city there are these free Wifi points, which would just not be possible further south.

The bells ring at eight AM from a few area churches,  a lovely way to start the morning.

http://youtu.be/2YPLdHQBtN4

A Chapel and a Museum without Pity

Bright and early, I set out for coffee and a croissant, and then to the number one thing on my list, the Brancacci Chapel. I’m first in line, and rush in to see Massacio’s frescoes, which are bit as wonderful as I thought they’d be. The Expulsion from Eden is powerful, and has done as much to form modern conceptions of the Fall as as any theological work– Genesis doesn’t say that Adam and Eve wept, but here their mourning, and their nakedness, is overwhelming. It is interesting to see it in context, for they are heading toward the altar. Beside the Expulsion is the famous Tribute Money scene, which I’ve posted on before. Its great tose the look of surprise on Peter’s face when he’s told to get the money from a fish. Hey, youre a fisherman, right. I love his groovy gray afro, too. His finger and Christ’s point to the lake, but also across to Adam and Eve, perhaps suggesting that the price for their sin will also be paid for. 
      
Also in the chapel are scenes of Peter curing a crippled man with his shadow, and healing the emperor’s son.

    
I make my way