Toot Toot La Strega è Morta

Ha! Just last week I was making snide remarks about Italian military music, but here's a keeper: a chorus accompanied by (as it sounds to me) the same boop-boop brass. The mood is jubilant and perhaps no wonder: these are Italians celebrating the departure of their Prime Minister for whom, despite his 14 years in office, no Italian has ever admitting voting. More than the same brass: I'm not good enough at Italian street scenes to be sure, but wouldn't that be the same Palazzo Quirinale in the background?  

Just as a guess, I'd speculate that these are not generic "Italians" celebrating the departure but perhaps more likely musicians who have felt the sting of Berlusconi-era budget cuts. I admit I'm of more than one mind about State subsidy for opera. I recognize that big opera wouldn't survive without it, but if I'm so death on subsidies for farmers, oil companies, etc., why make an exceptiion for artists? I suppose the best that can be said that it's a crime to cut the opera money if you're going to replace it with pots of Euros for Disneyfied corporate consumer art, which ought to be able to carry its on load aat least as well as, say, ethanol. But I admit I don't think I have that one straightened out yet.   H/T Alex Ross. And if you care about this sort of thing, go back and pick up his terrific survey of the Italian opera scene. A year old but still catches the flavor, I think.

For up-to-the-minute news on the aftermath of Berlusconi, from at Italian economist whose name does not end with a vowel, go here.  For the best non-technical account I've seen lately as to why Italy (and Greece, and the rest of us) are in such a mess, go here.

Synchronicity

Source: Wiki Commons

Here's a pairing: tucked away in a small room that hangs like an appendage off the Doria Pamphilj Galllery in Rome you find (inter alia) two remarkable renderings of the same man.  The subject is Giovanni Battista Pamphilj,known to the world as Innocent X, Pope from 1644 to 1655.  On your left as you enter is a portrait by Diego Velázquez. Apparently it was a gift to the Pope, not a commission, and it is said that the Pope didn't like it--too true, he thought.

Meanwhile straight ahead is a sculpted bust, the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, whose handiwork virtually defines 17C Rome--indeed, perhaps defines Rome as a whole.

Source: Hans Ollerman

Tastes will differ but for my money the Bernini is far more flattering than the  Velázquez--more dignified and austere without the undertone of cruelty and rapacity that steals into its companion.  More flattering and thus perhaps less interesting: the Bernini is no doubt a prodigy of craft, but it isn't nearly as arresting as some others in the multitudinous array of Berninis around town.

But what a curious fate it is for such an unattractive man, the Pope--a world master at the art of private enrichment--to be so memorialized by two of the greatest artists of his or any other age.

BTW just across town you can pick up the thread of another diverting synchronicity..  In the Church of Saint Louis of France, you find the one painting which I would think out of all the world to be most worth saving: Caravaggio's Calling of St. Matthew.  Meanwhile in London--I take it for granted that they lived and died without hearing each others' name--Shakespeare would have been completing the world's greatest play.

Not a bad year for the arts.  But for context, one may wish to remember that on February 17 of that same year, in Campo de' Fiori, just blocks from the Gallery and the church, the heretic (by fiat of the Roman Inquisition) Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake.

The Big Theme

On their own feet they came, or On Shipboard,
Camel-back, horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilizations put to the sword. 

William Butler Yeats, Lapis Lazuli

Way back when I was first reading Faulkner novels, I took time out to take a look at a performance of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard (I'll bet it was PBS).  I was thunderstruck to discover they had the sane plot.

Think of it: decaying aristocracy, check. Energetic and amoral upstarts, check.  An underclass whose job is to bear and to suffer under any regime, oh triple checkeroo.  What I was discovering, of course, was one of the grand themes of the 19th Century novel: the tectonic plate-shift that moves the ground under our feet when one generation rises and another passes away.  In a broad sense you can find it all the way back in Le Père Goriot.  And it is a tribute to Balzac's imagination and originality that he knows how to end with young Rastignac as "he eyes that humming hive with a look that foretold its despoilation, as if he had already felt on his lips the sweetness of it honey, and said with superb defiance, 'It's war between us now!'"  You can't imagine Flem Snopes in quite so theatrical a flourish but the sentiment is not all that different.

And once you grasp the point, you can see how the theme (with variations) underlies so many of the icons of late-19th or early-20th-Century fiction.  It's certainly there in Buddenbrooks, and in its own way, in Proust's In Search of Lost Time.  One could go on.

Still exploring the phenomenon of unearned wealth in Italy, Mr.and Mrs. Buce gave over the last couple of evenings to a late entry in the decay sweepstakes: Il Gattopardo, The Leopard, the account by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, only lightly fictionalized, of his grandfather, the last truly princely prince in Sicily.That would be the Visconti film version--the whole 205-minute original with battles and ballrooms and a country picnic, the one where Italian sentences come out of Burt Lancaster's mouth (he seems to have been the third, maybe the fourth, choice for the role).

Lampedusa's (and Visconti's) Prince is a hero, the sort of person to whom Burt Lancaster can do justice (amusing to think that when he executed this magisterial portrait, he was about the age that our children have reached now).  One of the non-negligible lesser delights of watching the film is to recognize that they are almost certainly wrong: the Prince encountered in the eyes of an admiring grandchild was surely always so much more monumental than the real thing.

But that may be true of the history as well: perhaps it never did enjoy the grandeur and sweep that a great photographer can present on the wide screen.  No matter: there is a certain melancholy solace in cherishing the memory of a past that probably never was.

I'd say film is probably proving more durable than anything else Visconti ever did; probably the same goes for Lancaster.  It's a grand piece of spectacle that grandly prefigures not only the Sicily of The Godfather movies but the far more dignified world of Scorsese's Age of Innocence.

It's enlightening also to read David Thomson's half-hearted "appreciation" (in Have You Seen..., his "Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films").  Thomson can't quite resist liking the movie but he gives disapproval a game shot; mainly, so far as I can tell, because there aren't enough poor people in it. But I think the point is hiding in plain sight.  We don't see poor people (except incidentally) because the Prince never saw poor people.  The vastness of the narcissistic display among the favored was and is precisely why Sicily is such a mess.  The Prince seems to sense this tragedy--perhaps a bit of an artistic stretch, but forgivable.  Any but the crudest observer can see that the Prince's world will collapse because it must collapse, bloated and exhausted in its own success.  The legacy of misfortune, sadly, will be somebody else's to bear.

Oh That Olympia!

My friend Dicken liked to regale us with stories of his youthful days in the Navy.  He told us about the whores at Cadiz who would greet the enthsiastic debaerquaderos with cries of "Olympia! Olympia!" which, Dicken said, sounded far too athletic to him.  

Dicken said it meant "naked."  Putting "naked" together with "athletic," I figured the word he heard must have been "gynmasia," but no, Dicken insisted: "Olympia" was the ticket, if you had a ticket.

Dicken, my apologies for ever doubting you.  Now I'm reading Anthony Majanlahti's The Families Who Made Rome, and I come across Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj (1592-1657), the grasping, ambitious country girl who made herself into the Majorette-Domo of the Pamphilij clan.   Majanlahti calls her "a tough, rich, bossy woman with a reputation for avidity."  Her brother-in-law occupied the papal chair as Innocent X; satirists branded her la dominante or  la papessa; sometimes, more bluntly, la pimpaccia. They saw her as "the only gatekeeper to the pope's favour and a corrupt one at that."   Effectively exiled by Innocent's successor, she spent her sunset years giving away an impressive amount of money, but still died with a jaw-dropping two million gold scudi in cash.  But Majanlahti adds:

Donna Olimpias's memory remained, blurrily, as that of a famous harlot, sand 'Olimpia' became a popular prostitute's psuedonym for centuries, visible even in Manet's famous nineteenth-century portrait of a female nude.

So apologies, Dicken,and a retrospective salute to the girls of Cadiz who were merely taking their place in the narrative of western culture.  There's a copy of Manet's "Olympia" here (gymnasia), along with a background essay which, however, offer no hint of her sacerdotal provenance.

Italy and its Public

Idling around Rome one day last week, we found ourselves at the (overblown) public piazza in front of the (oveblown) presidential palace, the Quirinale.  I never cease to admire the sheer artless fraudulence of Italy's public face--that giant birthday cake outside the Forum, all those piazzi named after Cavour (who?) all those streets named after XX Settembre (what?).  There are are even streets named after Quattro Novembre, which I learned lately is supposed to commemorate an Italian military victory, and cool it with the giggling.

I have to concede, though--the view from the Quirinale piazza is one of the best in all of Rome and--wait a minute, folks, what have we here?  Why, it's an Italian military band.  At least I think it is a military band, though how, exactly, you would distinguish them from your neighborhood junior high school outfit is more than I can fathom, overtopped and perhaps overawed as they are by the sheer majesty of their surroundings.  I tried to snap a picture but I was disabled by a fit of paralytic hilarity, not lessened when I remembered one of my mother's favorite stories.  It's about the guy giving testimony for the Salvation Army where he talks about how he used to smoke and drink and hang around with loose women and "Now all I do is....

...stand and beat this God Damn Drum!

For more on the Italian government beating the God damn drum, go here.  For an unfairly comical shot of an Italian military  band, go here.

Bisbetica: My Word for the Day

Here's an Italian theatre company offering "un'opera di William Shakespeare, La bisbetica domata."

--Bisbetica?

--Oh, bisbetica. Shrew. It's "The Taming of the Shrew." 

--Not a very common word. 

--No, not very common. But once in a while you'll hear an old Italian lady say of her dear friend--the one she has known since school days--"Oh, she's such a bisbetica." 

My language (and culture) lesson for the day.

Barberini Taxes

Followup on the Barberini and the rentier class.   As with several other of the great Palazzi, the Barberini has reinvented itself as a kind of art gallery, heavy on 16th-17th Century.  Not very good stuff for the most part, although they do have a wonderful Caravaggio.  But set that aside.  My present point is that a lot of these 16th-17th Century paintings are, as far as the gallery goes, fairly recent donations--some, I believe, as late as the 1980s.  

Bully for all these donors, but could we be seeing here the working of modern inheritance tax law?  Consider: your family has been rich since you can't remember when or why but the great house is getting a little drafty and nobody around here has held down a fulltime job since the Battle of Sedan.  When grandpa kicks off, you'll face some awful death duties, but wait: the walls are covered with boring old paintings that nobody remembers and nobody wants.  What if we give them to the state (at a suitably puffed-up valuation, heh heh) and let the charitable deduction offset the tax bill?    Thereby we wiggle out of our obligations while basking in the warm glow of public gratitude.  Win-win, I'd say.  Well, except for the roughnecks down at the revenue office.

Papal Potentates, with a Note on the Rentier Class

In Rome last week, we made a project out of exploring the palaces of the great papal families, guided in large part by Anthony Majanlahti's instructive and entertaining The Families Who Made Rome (2006). We visited Palazzi of the Colonna, the Barberini and the Doria-Pamphilj clan (in a previous trip, we'd done the Villa Borghese and the Villa Farnese).

It was good fun and may even have offered a bit of insight into how the world works.  The Colonna, for example: "their" Pope, Martin V, born Odo Colonna, is the earliest of the lot; his incumbency extended from 1417 to 1431, effectively ending the great schism.  But as a monument, the Palazzo is the latest of the lot, completed only about 1703, i.e., after 170 years of consolidating wealth and power.  Its showcase is a grand ballroom designed by Bernini on the inspiration of the Versailles Hall of Mirrors, though for my money it works better than the Hall of Mirrors--better scaled, more adventurous and playful.  Still the showcase of the piece are two different renderings of an "apotheosis"--Colonna grandees being welcomed into heaven, with an ease and assurance that makes you think of nothing so much as Mel Brooks saying "it's good to be the king."  And it gets better: there is also a smaller painting, on the wall, of the Resurrection with assorted Colonnae arising from their graves, presumably so that God can sit at their right hand (the men are naked, the women fully clothed--a burial custom?).

But the really interesting stuff for me was what you might call the 17th-Century series: Borghese, Barberini and Pamphilj who do so much to consolidate wealth and power in the 17th Centuries.  Apparently all three of the relevant Popes saw themselves as sincere Christians, and not one saw the slightest inconsistency between professed piety and the campaigns of loot and pillage they deployed to line the pockets of their nearest and dearest.

The more interesting question that emerged for me as the week went on, however, was: just exactly where the hell did they find all these riches?  Rome was, after all, at this point a relatively second-rate power, drained by the counter-reformation and beleaguered by foreign enemies (it was Cardinal Mazarin in Paris who virtually dictated the election of the Barberini pope).  Majanlahti makes passing reference to the evils of oppressive taxation and that's all very well but you would think there must be some limit to how much you can squeeze out of the abused Roman poor.

The other point that came home to me is the notion of just how persistent this kind of wealth can be.  I'm shaky on details and I gather some of the grandee families (Orsini?) have indeed dribbled away into the delta of history.  But there seem to be any number with documented survivors still functioning today (Colonna, Borghese,Barberini, Doria-Pamphilj).    A visible contemporary Colonna bears the grand old family name of "Prospero," which strikes me as a nice touch (meanwhile, next door at the Colonna church, there is a (cardboard) placard soliciting "pane per i poveri"--"bread for the poor"--another nice touch) .  Back across the Corso, the most visible current Paphilj is a certain Jonathan, who narrates the audio guide to the Doria-Pamphilj Gallery with one of those British accents that makes it sound like is upper lip is stapled to his teeth.  Notably, Jonathan and his sister aren't even Pamphilj DNA--they were plucked out of an orphanage.  That hasn't prevented them from engaging in an acrimonious public conflict over which of their children will inherit the Doria Pamphilj wealth. 

All of which is a bracing reminder that there is nothing like picking the right parents or, in this case, great-great-great-great (etc.) grandparents (Arno J. Mayer wrote a pretty good book on this point a while back).  Shakespeare laments that neither "brass, nor stone, nor earth nor boundless sea" may resist the depredations of the "sad mortality."  If the "stone" takes the form of a Roman palazzo, then I'd say his theory remains to be tested.

Tourist Footnote:  Aside from the Villa Farnese, there is the Palazzo Farnese, long deployed as the French Embassy.  It has long been mostly closed to the public.  I learned too late that the Ambassador in his unfathomable generosity agreed to allow minimal touring.  You have to call and reserve and pay a guide fee, currently five Euros--pretty much of a bargain by the standards of Rome tour sites today.

Reading Notes: Buses and Planes

Reading notes, accumulated from recent plane and bus rides:

John E. McDonough, Inside National Health Reform.  You are most likely to read this if stuck in the middle seat in the back of coach, i.e., where there is nothing else to do and no escape.  This is no criticism of McDonough.  He's done a masterful job of laying out the skeleton of Obamacare in as comprehensive and comprehensible manner as possible.  Valuable and worth the effort, even if a bit of a slog. 

Geert Mak, Amsterdam.   Not easy to write a history of The City without writing a history of The Netherlands as a whole, and Mak doesn't always manage the organization as well as one might hope.  But he mostly delivers the goods and does a particularly good job of describing Amsterdam's afterlife--the time after the glory days of the Dutch Republic and the overseas empire had receded into senescence.  I hope to quote a bit once my mind clears.

Avhijir V. Banerjee and Erher Duflo, Poor Economics.   On what works in aid to the dollar-a-day cohort.  B and D present the world of development aid as a contrast between "supply wallahs" (Jeffrey Sachs) and "demand wallahs" (William Easterly).  B and D are really pretty close to the demand wallahs, though they would like to think of themselves as presenting a third view which you might call "it's complicated."  Or more grandly, the world is generally a messier but more interesting place than the threads economists spin out of their own gizzards.

David Bellos, Is That a Fish in your Ear?  Highly entertaining, anecdote-rich meditation on the translator's trade.  Probably better understood as a series of loosely-connected essays. If there is a theme, it might be "translators deserve more respect."  Seeing that almost anybody gets more respect than translators usually get, this assertion seems almost surely correct.

Rachel Polonsky, Molotov's Magic Lantern.  I didn't realize until after I had finished it that this was the book at the center of a gripping little academic tragi-farce a few  months back in which the Russian historian Orlando Figes made a perfect fool of himself.  Structurally, the book is a bit of a mess, but the atmospherics are powerfully persuasive and it is fun to read one where you really don't have to worry about following the argument because there isn't any.

Avanti! (aka "Today I am an Italian")

Italians are a pragmatic lot. Ask someone in Rome for directions: they will wave in (presumably) the right direction and say "Avanti!" roughly translatable as "go a few blocks that way and ask somebody else."
Anyway, the scene is a bright Sunday morning in late October.  I'm boppin' down the Via del Governo Vecchio, en route to the internet hotspot, with nothing on my mind more momentous than boarding passes.  I encounter three ladies of a certain age and dignity, decked out in their Sunday best.


--Lei parla Italiana?


Uh oh.  This is a test.  

--Un po', I exaggerated. And with greater accuracy: non abbastanza bene.   No, not well enough at all.
 
--Campo de' Fiori? one of the three asserted, with an interrogative upbeat. And the others chorused: Campo de' Fiori!

Ah.  Now that one I can handle.  I think.  Mutter mutter "al sud."  Mutter mutter "a destra."  Mutter mutter  "attraverso il Vittorio." 
 
And then it dawned on me.  There is an easy way out of this.

--Avanti!

--Grazie, signore!

And I gazed in admiration as they undertook their progress in the direction of Campo de' Fiori.

Today I am an Italian.

Roman Holiday

Back from Europe. More later but for now, here's this:

That's Pasquino, the legendary venue for protest in Rome.  He's just behind Piazzao Navona, in his very own Piazza Pasquina, though he's a modest little rascal and you'd have to have your eyes open to notice him (Cul de Sac, catty corner across the street, is a good wine bar, from which you can gaze in admiration).  


In his day, Pasquino was the pride of Rome's "talking statues."  "Talking,"  in the sense that Roman's liked to decorate him with scabrous verses and assorted political chitchat.  Some samples are in the lower right-hand corner above.  My old 1985 Blue Guide explains:

[A]s Stendhal noted on his visit to the city in 1816 'what the people of Rome desire above all else is a chance to show their strong contempt for the powers that control their destiny, and to laugh at their expense...'.

They still do decorate him, apparently.  As of last Thursday night, he bore the manifesto pictured at upper right above.  You  may not be able to read it, but trust me, it says "Siamo Il 99 %," "We are the 99 percent."  


It was gone by next morning.  Can't imagine why.