Henry
James on Lucca, Tuscany, Italy in about 1907. I think he gets it right.
Henry
James on Lucca, Tuscany, Italy in about 1907. I think he gets it right.
To Lucca I was not to return often -- I was to return
only once; when that compact and admirable little city, the very model of a
small pays de Cocagne [note defines this as Utopia],
overflowing with everything that makes for ease, for plenty, for beauty,
for interest and good example, renewed for me, in the highest degree, its
genial and robust appearance. The perfection of this renewal must indeed have
been, at bottom, the ground of my rather hanging back from possible excess of
acquaintance -- with the instinct that so right and rich and rounded a little
impression had better be left than endangered. I remember positively saying to
myself the second time that no brown-and-gold Tuscan city, could be as
happy as Lucca looked -- save always, exactly, Lucca; so that, on the change of
any shade of human illusion in the case, I wouldn't, as a brooding analyst, go
within fifty miles of it again. Just so, I fear I must confess, it was this mere
face-value of the place that, when I went back, formed my sufficiency; I spent
all my scant time -- or the greater part, for I took a day to drive over to the
Bagni -- just gaping at its visible attitude. This may be described as that of
simply sitting there, through the centuries, at the receipt of perfect
felicity; on its splendid solid seat of russet masonry, that is -- for its
great republican ramparts of long ago still lock it tight -- with its wide
garden-land, its ancient appanage or hereditary domain, teeming and blooming
with everything that is good and pleasant for man, all about, and with a ring
of graceful and noble, yet comparatively unbeneficed uplands and mountains
watching it, for very envy, across the plain, as a circle of bigger boys, in
the playground, may watch a privileged or pampered smaller one munch a
particularly fine apple. Half smothered thus in oil and wine and corn and all
the fruits of the earth, Lucca seems fairly to laugh for good-humour, and it's
as if one can't say more for her than that, thanks to her putting forward for
you a temperament somehow still richer than her heritage, you forgive her at
every turn her fortune out of which you may select almost any rare morsel
whatever. Looking back at my own choice indeed I see it must have suffered a
certain embarrassment -- that of the sense of too many things; for I scarce
remember choosing at all, any more than I recall having had to go hungry. I
turned into all the churches -- taking care, however, to pause before one of them,
though before which I now irrecoverably forget, for verification of Ruskin's so
characteristically magnified rapture over the high and rather narrow and
obscure hunting-frieze on its front -- and in the Cathedral paid my respects at
every turn to the greatest of Lucchesi, Matteo Civitale, wisest, sanest,
homeliest, kindest of quattro-cento sculptors, towhose works the Duomo
serves almost as a museum. But my nearest approach under the spell of so felt
an equilibirum, must have been the act of engaging a carriage for the Baths.
...
==================
Traveling in Italy with Henry James, ed by Fred Kaplan, pp
386, 387
No comments:
Post a Comment