Canada Slim and the Author’s Apartment 3: The Diplomat

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 8 September 2020

It must be difficult for followers of this first of two blogs to remain faithful and patient with the Chronicles of Canada Slim as they are not as often written as those of Building Everest.

 

 

 

To those who are new to the Chronicles, these posts are accounts of travels prior to the calendar year and have followed an alphabetical sequence of:

• Alsace
• Italy
• Lanzarote
• London
• Porto
• Serbia
• Switzerland

 

 

 

This post in the sequence is focused on Serbia and is the continuation of my story of a remarkable man and the museum in Belgrade that commemorates his achievements and prolongs the memory of the only Serbian (to date) to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature:

Ivo Andric.

 

 

 

 

Ivo Andrić (1892 – 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961.

His writings dealt mainly with life in his native Bosnia under Ottoman rule.

Born in Travnik in the Austrian Empire, modern-day Bosnia, Andrić attended high school in Sarajevo, where he became an active member of several South Slav national youth organizations.

 

 

Above: The house in which Andric was born

 

 

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Andrić was arrested and imprisoned by the Austro-Hungarian police, who suspected his involvement in the plot.

 

 

Above: The first page of the edition of the Domenica del Corriere, an Italian paper, with a drawing of Achille Beltrame depicting Gavrilo Princip killing Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo

 

 

As the authorities were unable to build a strong case against him, he spent much of the war under house arrest, only being released following a general amnesty for such cases in July 1917.

After the war, he studied South Slavic history and literature at universities in Zagreb and Graz, eventually attaining his Ph.D. in Graz in 1924.

 

 

 

 

He worked in the diplomatic service of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1920 to 1923 and again from 1924 to 1941.

In 1939, he became Yugoslavia’s ambassador to Germany, but his tenure ended in April 1941 with the German-led invasion of his country.

 

 

Above: Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia

 

 

Shortly after the invasion, Andrić returned to German-occupied Belgrade.

He lived quietly in a friend’s apartment for the duration of World War II, in conditions likened by some biographers to house arrest, and wrote some of his most important works, including Na Drini ćuprija (The Bridge on the Drina).

 

 

Above: Ivo Andrić monument in Belgrade, Serbia

 

 

Following the war, Andrić was named to a number of ceremonial posts in Yugoslavia, which had since come under communist rule.

 

 

 

 

In 1961, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, selecting him over writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck and E. M. Forster.

The Committee cited “the epic force with which he traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from his country’s history“.

 

 

 

 

Afterwards, Andrić’s works found an international audience and were translated into a number of languages.

In subsequent years, he received a number of awards in his native country.

 

 

Above: Front cover art for The Bridge on the Drina written by Ivo Andrić

 

 

Andrić’s health declined substantially in late 1974.

He died in Belgrade the following March.

 

 

 

 

In the years following Andrić’s death, the Belgrade apartment where he spent much of World War II was converted into a museum and a nearby street corner was named in his honour.

It is this author’s apartment, this Ivo Andric Museum in Belgrade which I visited in the spring of 2018.

 

 

Above: Ivо Andric Museum Building, Belgrade, Serbia

 

 

A number of other cities in the former Yugoslavia also have streets bearing his name.

 

 

 

 

In 2012, filmmaker Emir Kusturica began construction of an ethno-town in eastern Bosnia that is named after Andrić.

 

 

Above: Main entrance of Andrićgrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

 

As Yugoslavia’s only Nobel Prize-winning writer, Andrić was well known and respected in his native country during his lifetime.

 

 

 

 

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning in the 1950s and continuing past the breakup of Yugoslavia, his works have been disparaged by Bosniak literary critics for their supposed anti-Muslim bias.

 

Above: Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina

 

 

In Croatia, his works were long shunned for nationalist reasons, and even briefly blacklisted following Yugoslavia’s dissolution, but were rehabilitated by the literary community at the start of the 21st century.

 

Above: Flag of Croatia

 

 

He is highly regarded in Serbia for his contributions to Serbian literature.

 

 

Above: Flag of Serbia

 

 

I have aspirations of becoming a published writer and I have always been fascinated by the lives of other writers and how those lives led to the fine literature that these literary legends produced.

 

In parts one and two of the Author’s Apartment, I wrote of Andric’s life from his birth and childhood to his studies and suffering (1892 -1920).

 

 

 

 

In 1920, after a time as a civil servant with the Ministry of Religion in Belgrade, Andric was taken into diplomatic service and a new chapter of his life began.

 

 

Above: Church of St. Sava, Belgrade

 

 

On 20 February 1920, Andrić’s request was granted and he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry’s mission at the Vatican.

 

 

Above: Flag of Vatican City

 

 

The post of Ambassador was occupied by the famous linguist Lujo Bakotic.

 

 

Above: Lujo Bakotic

 

 

(Lujo Bakotić (1867 – 1941) was a Serbian writer, publicist, lawyer, lexicographer and diplomat.

Though he was Roman Catholic, Bakotić considered himself Serbian, as had his father.

He completed his high school (gymnasium) education in Split, and jurisprudence in Vienna and Graz.

He was a lawyer by profession who was also politically active, representing the Serbian Party in the Diet of Dalmatia.

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Dalmatia

 

 

Owing to his party’s ideals he had to flee to Serbia in 1913.

With the start of the Great War, he left Belgrade for Niš and then went to Paris and finally Rome, where he was made a secretary in the Vatican to work on a mission, preparing a Concordat between Serbia and the Vatican (which never materialized).

After the war, he was Yugoslavia’s envoy at the Vatican from 1920 until 1923.

 

 

Above: St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City

 

 

He represented the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at The Hague, and later he was sent by the Serbian government to Moscow.

 

Above: Kurhaus, The Hague, The Netherlands

 

 

He retired as a civil servant in 1935.

Classically educated, Bakotić spoke several languages fluently, including: French, Italian, German, English, Latin and a number of Slavic languages and dialects.)

 

 

Above: Lujo Bakotić

 

 

Andric enthusiastically read the works of Francesco Guicciardini.

 

 

 

 

(Francesco Guicciardini (1483 – 1540) was an Italian historian and statesman.

A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance.

 

 

Above: Niccolò Macchiavelli (1469 – 1527)

 

 

In his masterpiece, The History of Italy, Guicciardini paved the way for a new style in historiography with his use of government sources to support arguments and the realistic analysis of the people and events of his time.

 

 

 

 

The History of Italy stands apart from all his writings because it was the one work which he wrote not for himself, but for the public.

In his research, Guicciardini drew upon material that he gathered from government records as well as from his own extensive experience in politics.

 

His many personal encounters with powerful Italian rulers serves to explain his perspective as a historian:

“Francesco Guicciardini might be called a psychological historian—for him the motive power of the huge clockwork of events may be traced down the mainspring of individual behavior.

Not any individual, be it noted, but those in positions of command: emperors, princes and popes who may be counted on to act always in terms of their self-interest—the famous Guicciardinian particolare.”

 

 

Above: Villa Ravà, Arcetri, the former home of the Guicciardini family, where Francesco Guicciardini wrote The History of Italy

 

 

In the following excerpt, the historian records his observations on the character of Pope Clement VII:

“And although he had a most capable intelligence and marvelous knowledge of world affairs, yet he lacked the corresponding resolution and execution.

For he was impeded not only by his timidity of spirit, which was by no means small, and by a strong reluctance to spend, but also by a certain innate irresolution and perplexity, so that he remained almost always in suspension and ambiguous when he was faced with those deciding those thing which from afar he had many times foreseen, considered, and almost revealed.“

 

 

Above: Pope Clement VII (né Giulio di Guiliano de’ Medici)(1478 – 1534)

 

 

Moreover, what sets Guicciardini apart from other historians of his time is his understanding of historical context.

 

His approach was already evident in his early work The History of Florence (1509):

“The young historian was already doubtlessly aware of the meaning of historical perspective; the same facts acquiring different weight in different contexts, a sense of proportion was called for.”

 

 

Above: Guicciardini Family Crest

 

 

In the words of one of Guicciardini’s severest critics, Francesco de Sanctis:

“If we consider intellectual power, the Storia d’Italia is the most important work that has issued from an Italian mind.“)

 

 

Above: Francesco de Sanctis (1817 – 1883)

 

 

Andric travelled through Tuscany with Milos Crnjanski.

 

 

Above: Miloš Crnjanski, 1914

 

 

(Miloš Crnjanski (1893 – 1977) was a Serbian writer and poet of the expressionist wing of Serbian modernism, author, and a diplomat.

 

 

 

 

Crnjanski was born in Csongrád, Hungary, to an impoverished family which moved in 1896 to Temesvár (today Timișoara, Romania).

He completed elementary school in Pančevo and grammar school in Timișoara.

 

Above: Images of Timisoara, Romania

 

 

Then he started attending the Export Academy in Rijeka in 1912, and in the autumn of the following year he started studying in Vienna.

 

 

Above: Harbour, Rijeka, Croatia

 

 

At the beginning of World War I, Crnjanski was persecuted as part of the general anti-Serbian retribution of Austria to Princip’s assassination in Sarajevo.

Instead of being sent to jail, he was drafted to the Austro-Hungarian Army and sent to the Galician front to fight against the Russians – where he was wounded in 1915.

Crnjanski convalesced in a Vienna war hospital, although just before the end of the war he was sent to the Italian front.

 

 

 

 

After the war, he graduated in literary studies from the University of Belgrade.

After graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy in 1922, he taught at the Fourth Belgrade Grammar School and espoused “radical modernism” in articles for periodicals including Ideje, Politika and Vreme – sparking “fierce literary and political debates“.

 

 

Above: University of Belgrade logo

 

 

He entered the diplomatic corps for the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and worked in Germany (1935 – 1938) and Italy (1939 – 1941) before being evacuated during WWII to England.

 

 

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918 – 1941)

 

 

He took odd jobs and eventually became the London correspondent of the Argentinian periodical El economist.

During this period he wrote Druga knjiga Seoba (The Second Book on Migration) and Lament nad Beogradom (Lament over Belgrade).

 

 

Above. Tower Bridge, London, England

 

 

He returned to Belgrade after 20 years of exile in 1965 and shortly after published Sabrana dela u 10 tomova (“Collected works in 10 volumes”).

In 1971, he received the prestigious NIN award for Roman o Londonu.

 

 

Above: NIN Award logo

 

 

Crnjanski, aged 84, died in Belgrade on 30 November 1977.

He is interred in the Alley of Distinguished Citizens in the Belgrade New Cemetery.

He is considered a classic of Serbian literature by scholars as well as the public.

 

 

 

 

Crnjanski first books portrayed the futility of war.

He laid the foundations of the early avant-garde movement in Serbian literature, as exemplified by his 1920 Objašnjenje Sumatre (The Explanation of Sumatra):

“The world still hasn’t heard the terrible storm above our heads, while shakings come from beneath, not from political relations, not from literary dogmas, but from life.

Those are the dead reaching out!

They should be avenged.“

 

 

 

 

The Journal of Carnojevic is a lyrical novel by Miloš Crnjanski, which was first published in 1920.

 

 

 

The narrator of the novel is Petar Rajic, who tells his story in which there is no clearly established narrative flow, nor are events connected by cause and effect.

The protagonist of the book is a young Serbian soldier who lived in Vojvodina, now northern Serbia, which was, at the time, a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

When WW I began, he was, along with thousands of other young Serbs, recruited to the Austro-Hungarian army, and the war completely obliterated his image of the world.

Crnjanski himself had such a destiny, and he wrote the book right after coming back from the war – still as a young man.

The book is a combination of the present, the past and the future, strangely intertwined.

We can’t even say who he is – because of his alter ego, the sailor.

Just like the borders between the periods of life, the borders between persons are blurred and unclear.

 

“Autumn, and life without meaning.

I drag myself around taverns.

I sit by the window and stare at the mist and the yellow, wet, scarlet trees.

And where is life?”

 

“All they were doing, he said that somewhere, far away, on some island, was leaving a mark.

And when he would tell her that now, from her passionate smile, a red plant on Ceylon Island is drawing its strength to open, she would gaze at the distance.

She didn’t believe that all our actions could reach that far and that our power is so endless.

And that was the last thing he believed in.

Under the palm trees, in the hotel lobby, he told her that he didn’t believe someone could be killed, nor made unhappy.

He didn’t believe in the future.

He said his fleshly passions depended solely upon the color of the sky, and that life is being lived in vain – no, not in vain, but for the sake of a smile, with which he smiles to both plants and clouds.

He said that all his actions depended on some scarlet trees that he had seen on Ios Island.

She giggled.

Ah, he was funny and young.

So young.”

 

 

“I will go past borders and cities and villages and forests and waters and there will be nothing left on me but dust on my feet, silence in my heart and on my face a mild smile meaningless and burning.

So many are the places where something had been left, ripped out of my torn apart soul and my ragged life.“)

 

 

Above: Portrait of Milos Crnjanski

 

 

Andrić left Belgrade soon after, and reported for duty in late February.

At this time, he published his first short story, Put Alije Đerzeleza (The Journey of Alija Đerzelez).

 

 

 

 

(Gjergj Elez Alia or Đerzelez Alija is a popular legendary hero in epic poetry and literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gora and in northern Albania.

Muslims from Bosnian Krajina modeled the poetic image of Alija Đerzelez after the image of Serbian (Christian) Prince Marko, based on the historic person Ali Bey Mihaloğlu.

 

 

 

 

Marko Mrnjavčević  (1335 – 1395) was the de jure Serbian king from 1371 to 1395, while he was the de facto ruler of territory in western Macedonia centered on the town of Prilep.

He is known as Prince Marko and King Marko in South Slavic oral tradition, in which he has become a major character during the period of Ottoman rule over the Balkans.

 

 

Above: Portrait of Prince Marko

 

 

Marko’s father, King Vukašin, was co-ruler with Serbian Tsar Stefan Uroš V, whose reign was characterised by weakening central authority and the gradual disintegration of the Serbian Empire.

Vukašin’s holdings included lands in western Macedonia and Kosovo.

 

 

Above: King Vukasin

 

 

In 1370, he crowned Marko “young king“:

This title included the possibility that Marko would succeed the childless Uroš on the Serbian throne.

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbia

 

 

On 26 September 1371, Vukašin was killed and his forces defeated in the Battle of Maritsa.

About two months later, Tsar Uroš died.

This formally made Marko King of Serbia.

 

 

Above: Maritsa Valley

 

 

However, Serbian noblemen, who had become effectively independent from the central authority, did not even consider to recognise him as their supreme ruler.

Sometime after 1371, he became an Ottoman vassal.

 

 

Above: Ottoman Empire logo

 

 

By 1377, significant portions of the territory he inherited from Vukašin were seized by other noblemen.

King Marko, in reality, came to be a regional lord who ruled over a relatively small territory in western Macedonia.

 

 

 

He funded the construction of the Monastery of Saint Demetrius near Skopje (better known as Marko’s Monastery), which was completed in 1376.

 

Above: Marko’s Monastery

 

 

Marko died on 17 May 1395, fighting for the Ottomans against the Wallachians in the Battle of Rovine.

 

 

Above: Battle of Rovine

 

 

Although a ruler of modest historical significance, Marko became a major character in South Slavic oral tradition.

He is venerated as a national hero by the Serbs, Macedonians and Bulgarians, remembered in Balkan folklore as a fearless and powerful protector of the weak, who fought against injustice and confronted the Turks during the Ottoman occupation.

 

 

Above: A Herzegovinian sings with a gusle in an 1823 drawing.

Serbian epic poems were often sung, accompanied by this traditional instrument.

 

 

South Slavic legends about Kraljević Marko or Krali Marko are primarily based on myths much older than the historical Marko Mrnjavčević.

He differs in legend from the folk poems:

In some areas he was imagined as a giant who walked stepping on hilltops, his head touching the clouds.

 

He was said to have helped God shape the Earth, and created the river gorge in Demir Kapija (“Iron Gate“) with a stroke of his sabre.

This drained the sea covering the regions of Bitola, Mariovo and Tikveš in Macedonia, making them habitable.

 

 

Above: Demir Kapija

 

 

After the Earth was shaped, Marko arrogantly showed off his strength.

God took it away by leaving a bag as heavy as the Earth on a road.

When Marko tried to lift it, he lost his strength and became an ordinary man.

 

Legend also has it that Marko acquired his strength after he was suckled by a vila.

King Vukašin threw him into a river because he did not resemble him, but the boy was saved by a cowherd (who adopted him, and a vila suckled him).

 

 

Above: Serbian epic heroes Prince Marko and Miloš Obilić, and the vila Ravijojla

 

 

In other accounts, Marko was a shepherd (or cowherd) who found a vila‘s children lost in a mountain and shaded them against the sun (or gave them water).

As a reward the vila suckled him three times, and he could lift and throw a large boulder.

An Istrian version has Marko making a shade for two snakes, instead of the children.

In a Bulgarian version, each of the three draughts of milk he suckled from the vila‘s breast became a snake.

 

 

 

 

Marko was associated with large, solitary boulders and indentations in rocks:

The boulders were said to be thrown by him from a hill, and the indentations were his footprints (or the hoofprints of his horse).

He was also connected with geographic features such as hills, glens, cliffs, caves, rivers, brooks and groves, which he created or at which he did something memorable.

They were often named after him, and there are many toponyms (place names) — from Istria in the west to Bulgaria in the east — derived from his name.

In Bulgarian and Macedonian stories, Marko had an equally strong sister who competed with him in throwing boulders.

 

 

 

 

In some legends, Marko’s wonder horse was a gift from a vila (a mountain nymph).

A Serbian story says that he was looking for a horse who could bear him.

To test a steed, he would grab him by the tail and sling him over his shoulder.

Seeing a diseased piebald foal owned by some carters, Marko grabbed him by the tail but could not move him.

He bought (and cured) the foal, naming him Šarac.

He became an enormously powerful horse and Marko’s inseparable companion.

 

 

 

 

Macedonian legend has it that Marko, following a vila‘s advice, captured a sick horse on a mountain and cured him.

Crusted patches on the horse’s skin grew white hairs, and he became a piebald.

 

 

 

 

According to folk tradition Marko never died:

He lives on in a cave, in a moss-covered den or in an unknown land.

 

 

 

 

A Serbian legend recounts that Marko once fought a battle in which so many men were killed that the soldiers (and their horses) swam in blood.

He lifted his hands towards heaven and said:

“Oh God, what am I going to do now?”

God took pity on Marko, transporting him and Šarac to a cave (where Marko stuck his sabre into a rock and fell asleep).

 

 

 

 

There is moss in the cave.

Šarac eats it bit by bit, while the sabre slowly emerges from the rock.

When it falls on the ground and Šarac finishes the moss, Marko will awaken and reenter the world.

Some allegedly saw him after descending into a deep pit, where he lived in a large house in front of which Šarac was seen.

Others saw him in a faraway land, living in a cave.

 

 

 

 

According to Macedonian tradition Marko drank “eagle’s water“, which made him immortal.

He is with Elijah in heaven.

 

 

 

Mihaloğlu Ali Bey or Gazı Alauddin Mihaloğlu Ali Bey, (1425—1507) was an Ottoman military commander in the 15th century and the first sanjakbey (provincial governor) of the Sanjak of Smederevo (the territory of Belgrade).

He was one of the descendants of Köse Mihal, a Byzantine governor of Chirmenkia and battle companion of Osman Gazi.

 

 

 

 

I am not certain of why Ali Bey is so honoured, for it seems he was continuously defeated in almost every military campaign he was involved in.

 

 

 

Songs about Đerzelez Alija were transmitted by bilingual singers from South Slavic milieu to northern Albanian milieu, where he is known as Gjergj Elez Alia.)

 

 

The year 1920 was a year of great changes:

• the First Red Scare, a widespread fear of far left extremism in the United States, continues, as do the Palmer (after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer) Raids:  on one day alone (2 January) 4,025 people were arrested in several cities across the country – mostly Italian and Jewish immigrants were targeted.

 

• the Russian Civil War still raged

 

• the League of Nations began sessions in Paris before moving to Geneva

 

• the Netherlands refused to extradite exiled German Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 – 1941)

 

• Prohibition in the United States began

 

• the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded and women’s suffragism realized in the US

 

 

• the victorious Allies carved up the former Ottoman Empire and Hungary lost 72% of its pre-WW1 territory

 

Above: The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, by Sir William Orpen

 

• the German Workers Party renamed itself the Nazi Party

 

• Estonia, Lithuania and Syria all gain their independence this year

Above: Flag of Estonia

 

• the world’s first peaceful establishment of a social democratic government took place in Sweden

 

• the US Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles claiming that it was too harsh on the defeated participants of WW1

 

• the Summer Olympics opened in Antwerp, Belgium

 

• the Mexican Revolution ended

 

• the Polish – Russian War ended in a Polish victory

Above: Five stages of the Polish-Soviet War

 

• Albanian PM Essad Pasha Toptani (1863 – 1920) was assassinated in Paris

 

• the US Postal Service ruled that children cannot be mailed

 

• three African American circus workers were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota

 

• Arthur Meighen (1874 – 1960) became the 9th Prime Minister of Canada

 

• the Irish War of Independence still raged, including “Bloody Sunday“

 

• the HIV / AIDS pandemic began in Léopoldville (today’s Kinshasa)

 

 

With the end of World War I and the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires the conditions were met for proclaiming the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in December 1918.

The Yugoslav ideal had long been cultivated by the intellectual circles of the three nations that gave the name to the country, but the international constellation of political forces and interests did not permit its implementation until then.

However, after the war, idealist intellectuals gave way to politicians, and the most influential Croatian politicians opposed the new state right from the start.

It was not certain through much of 1920 whether the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) would survive its own internal divisions.

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

 

 

As for the Vatican, the Roman Question was still unresolved.

On 9 February 1849, the Roman Republic took over the government of the Papal States.

In the following July, an intervention by French troops restored Pope Pius IX to power, making the Roman Question a hotly debated one even in the internal politics of France.

 

 

 

 

In July 1859, after France and Austria made an agreement that ended the short Second Italian War of Independence, an article headed “The Roman Question” in the Westminster Review expressed the opinion that the Papal States should be deprived of the Adriatic provinces and be restricted to the territory around Rome.

This became a reality in the following year, when most of the Papal States were annexed by what became the Kingdom of Italy.

 

 

Above: the Italian peninsula, 1796

 

 

The Vatican is the religious centre of Catholicism, but the question raged as to whether it should also continue to have its own territory.

This question was not resolved until 1929.

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of the Bishop of Rome (aka the Pope)

 

 

In the midst of all this, Andric began his diplomatic career.

 

 

 

 

Andric complained that the consulate was understaffed and that he did not have enough time to write.

All evidence suggests he had a strong distaste for the ceremony and pomp that accompanied his work in the diplomatic service, but according to Hawkesworth, he endured it with “dignified good grace“.

Around this time, he began writing in the Ekavian dialect used in Serbia, and ceased writing in the Ijekavian dialect used in his native Bosnia.

 

 

 

Andrić soon requested another assignment.

 

In November, he was transferred to Bucharest.

Once again, his health deteriorated.

Nevertheless, Andrić found his consular duties there did not require much effort, so he focused on writing, contributed articles to a Romanian journal and even had time to visit his family in Bosnia.

 

 

Above: Flag of Romania

 

 

The Treaty of Bucharest was signed between Romania and the Entente Powers on 17 August 1916 in Bucharest.

The treaty stipulated the conditions under which Romania agreed to join the war on the side of the Entente, particularly territorial promises in Austria-Hungary.

The signatories bound themselves to keep secret the contents of the treaty until a general peace was concluded.

 

 

Above: Treaty of Bucharest

 

 

Romanians!

The war which for the last two years has been encircling our frontiers more and more closely has shaken the ancient foundations of Europe to their depths.

It has brought the day which has been awaited for centuries by the national conscience, by the founders of the Romanian State, by those who united the principalities in the war of independence, by those responsible for the national renaissance.

It is the day of the union of all branches of our nation.

Today we are able to complete the task of our forefathers and to establish forever that which Michael the Great was only able to establish for a moment, namely, a Romanian union on both slopes of the Carpathians.

For us the mountains and plains of Bukowina, where Stephen the Great has slept for centuries.

In our moral energy and our valour lie the means of giving him back his birthright of a great and free Rumania from the Tisza to the Black Sea, and to prosper in peace in accordance with our customs and our hopes and dreams. 

Part of the proclamation by King Ferdinand, 28 August 1916

 

Above: King Ferdinand I of Romania (1865 – 1927)

 

 

The concept of “Greater Romania“ materialized as a geopolitical reality after the First World War.

Romania gained control over Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania.

As a result, most regions with clear Romanian majorities were merged into a single state.

It also led to the inclusion of sizable minorities, including Magyars (ethnic Hungarians), Germans, Jews, Ukrainians and Bulgarians — about 28% of the country’s population.

The borders established by the treaties concluding the war did not change until 1940.

The resulting state, often referred to as “România Mare” or România Întregită (roughly translated in English as “Romania Made Whole“), was seen as the ‘true’, whole Romanian state, or, as Tom Gallagher states, the “Holy Grail of Romanian nationalism“.

The Romanian ideology changed due to the demographic, cultural and social alterations, however the nationalist desire for a homogeneous Romanian state conflicted with the multiethnic, multicultural truth of Greater Romania.

From 1918 to 1938, Romania was a monarchy whose liberal Constitution was seldom respected in practice.

 

 

Above: Greater Romania (1920 – 1940)

 

 

In 1922, Andrić requested another reassignment.

He was transferred to the consulate in Trieste, where he arrived on 9 December 1922.

 

 

Above: Flag of Trieste

 

 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Trieste was a bustling cosmopolitan city frequented by artists and philosophers such as James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Sigmund Freud, Zofka Kveder, Dragotin Kette, Ivan Cankar, Scipio Slataper, and Umberto Saba.

The city was the major port on the Austrian Riviera, and perhaps the only real enclave of Mitteleuropa (i.e., Central Europe) on the Mediterranean.

Viennese architecture and coffeehouses dominate the streets of Trieste to this day.

 

 

Above: Images of Trieste

 

 

Italy, in return for entering World War I on the side of the Allied Powers, had been promised substantial territorial gains, which included the former Austrian Littoral and western Inner Carniola.

Italy therefore annexed the city of Trieste at the end of the war, in accordance with the provisions of the 1915 Treaty of London and the Italian-Yugoslav 1920 Treaty of Rapallo.

 

 

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Italy (1861 – 1946)

 

 

The Treaty of Rapallo was a treaty between the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929), signed to solve the dispute over some territories in the former Austrian Littoral in the upper Adriatic and in Dalmatia.

The treaty was signed on 12 November 1920 in Rapallo, near Genoa, Italy.

 

Above: Rapallo

 

 

Tension between Italy and Yugoslavia arose at the end of World War I, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved and Italy claimed the territories assigned to it by the secret Treaty of London of 1915.

According to the treaty signed in London on 26 April 1915 by the Kingdom of Italy and the Triple Entente, in case of victory at the end of World War I, Italy was to obtain several territorial gains including former Austrian Littoral, northern Dalmatia and notably Zadar, Šibenik, and most of the Dalmatian islands (except Krk and Rab).

These territories had an ethnically mixed population, with Slovenes and Croats composing over the half of the population of the region.

The treaty was therefore nullified with the Treaty of Versailles under pressure of President Woodrow Wilson, making void Italian claims on northern Dalmatia.

The objective of the Treaty of Rapallo was to find a compromise following the void created by the non-application of the Treaty of London of 1915.

 

 

 

 

While only a few thousands Italians remained in the newly established South Slavic state, a population of half a million Slavs, including the annexed Slovenes, were cut off from the remaining three-quarters of total Slovene population at the time and were subjected to forced Italianization.

Trieste had a large Italian majority, but it had more ethnic Slovene inhabitants than even Slovenia’s capital of Ljubljana at the end of 19th century.

 

 

 

 

Andric’s Trieste assignment meant he was representing Slovenes in a predominantly Slovene-populated territory now under Italian control.

 

 

Above: Peter Kozler’s map of the Slovene Lands, designed during the Spring of Nations in 1848, became the symbol of the quest for a United Slovenia.

 

 

The Italian lower middle class—who felt most threatened by the city’s Slovene middle class—sought to make Trieste a città italianissima, committing a series of attacks led by the Black Shirts against Slovene-owned shops, libraries, and lawyers’ offices, even burning down the Trieste National Hall, a central building to the Slovene community.

On 13 July 1920, the building was burned by the Fascist Blackshirts, led by Francesco Giunta.

 

 

 

The act was praised by Benito Mussolini, who had not yet assumed power, as a “masterpiece of the Triestine Fascism“.

It was part of a wider pogrom against the Slovenes and other Slavs in the very centre of Trieste and the harbinger of the ensuing violence against  Slovenes and Croats.

 

 

Above: Fascist logo

 

 

By the mid-1930s several thousand Slovenes, especially members of the middle class and the intelligentsia from Trieste, emigrated to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or to South America.

Among the notable Slovene émigrés from Trieste were the author Vladimir Bartol, the legal theorist Boris Furlan and the Argentine architect Viktor Sulčič.

The political leadership of the around 70,000 émigrés from the Julian March in Yugoslavia was mostly composed of Trieste Slovenes: Lavo Čermelj, Josip Vilfan and Ivan Marija Čok.

 

 

Above: Flag of modern Slovenia

 

 

In 1926, claiming that it was restoring surnames to their original Italian form, the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovene and Croatian surnames.

In the Province of Trieste alone, 3,000 surnames were modified and 60,000 people had their surnames amended to an Italian-sounding form.

The psychological trauma, experienced by more than 150,000 people, led to a massive emigration of German and Slavic families from Trieste.

Despite the exodus of the Slovene and German speakers, the city’s population increased because of the migration of Italians from other parts of Italy.

Several thousand ethnic Italians from Dalmatia also moved to Trieste from the newly created Yugoslavia.

 

 

 

 

The city’s damp climate only caused Andrić’s health to deteriorate further.

On his doctor’s advice, he transferred to Graz in January 1923.

 

 

Above: Hauptplatz, Graz, Austria

 

 

Graz is the capital city of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna.

 

 

Above: Graz

 

 

Emerging from the war, Austria had two main political parties on the right and one on the left.

 

 

Above: Flag of Austria

 

 

The right was split between clericalism and nationalism.

The Christian Social Party, (Christlichsoziale Partei, CS), had been founded in 1891 and achieved plurality from 1907–1911 before losing it to the socialists.

Their influence had been waning in the capital, even before 1914, but became the dominant party of the First Republic, and the party of government from 1920 onwards.

The CS had close ties to the Roman Catholic Church and was headed by a Catholic priest named Ignaz Seipel (1876–1932), who served twice as Chancellor (1922–1924 / 1926–1929).

While in power, Seipel was working for an alliance between wealthy industrialists and the Roman Catholic Church.

The CS drew its political support from conservative rural Catholics.

In 1920 the Greater German People’s Party (Großdeutsche Volkspartei, GDVP) was founded from the bulk of liberal and national groups and became the junior partner of the CS.

 

 

 

On the left the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs, SDAPÖ) founded in 1898, which pursued a fairly left-wing course known as Austromarxism at that time, could count on a secure majority in “Red Vienna” (as the capital was known from 1918 to 1934), while right-wing parties controlled all other states.

The SDAPÖ were the strongest voting bloc from 1911 to 1918.

 

 

Between 1918 and 1920, there was a grand coalition government including both left and right-wing parties, the CS and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs, SDAPÖ).

This gave the Social Democrats their first opportunity to influence Austrian politics.

The coalition enacted progressive socio-economic and labour legislation, such as the vote for women on 27 November 1918, but collapsed on 22 October 1920.

 

In 1920, the modern Constitution of Austria was enacted, but from 1920 onwards Austrian politics were characterized by intense and sometimes violent conflict between left and right.

The bourgeois parties maintained their dominance but formed unstable governments while socialists remained the largest elected party numerically.

Both right-wing and left-wing paramilitary forces were created during the 20s.

The Heimwehr (Home Resistance) first appeared on 12 May 1920 and became progressively organised over the next three years and the Republikanischer Schutzbund was formed in response to this on 19 February 1923.

 

 

 

 

From 2 April 1923 to 30 September there were violent clashes between Socialists and Nazis in Vienna.

On 2 April, referred to as Schlacht auf dem Exelberg (Battle of Exelberg) involved 300 Nazis against 90 Socialists.

Further episodes occurred on 4 May and 30 September 1923.

A clash between those groups in Schattendorf, Burgenland, on 30 January 1927, led to the death of a man and a child.

 

Above: Schattendorf

 

 

Right-wing veterans were indicted at a court in Vienna, but acquitted in a jury trial.

This led to massive protests and a fire at the Justizpalast (Palace of Justice) in Vienna.

In the July Revolt of 1927, 89 protesters were killed by the Austrian police forces.

Political conflict escalated until the early 1930s.

 

 

Above: the Palace of Justice, Vienna, before the fire

 

 

Whether the violence that Vienna viewed was reflected in Graz was never recorded by Andric during his time there as both vice-consul and student.

 

Andric arrived in the city on 23 January 1923 and was appointed vice-consul.

Andrić soon enrolled at the University of Graz, resumed his schooling and began working on his doctoral dissertation in Slavic studies.

 

 

Above: University of Graz logo

 

 

In August 1923, Andrić experienced an unexpected career setback.

A law had been passed stipulating that all civil servants had to have a doctoral degree.

As Andrić had not completed his dissertation, he was informed that his employment would be terminated.

 

 

 

 

Andrić’s well-connected friends intervened on his behalf and appealed to Foreign Minister Momčilo Ninčić, citing Andrić’s diplomatic and linguistic abilities.

 

Above: Momčilo Ninčić (1876 – 1949), Serbian politician and economist, and president of the League of Nations (1926 – 1927)

 

 

In February 1924, the Foreign Ministry decided to retain Andrić as a day worker with the salary of a vice-consul.

This gave him the opportunity to complete his Ph.D.

 

 

 

 

Three months later, on 24 May, Andrić submitted his dissertation to a committee of examiners at the University of Graz, who gave it their approval.

This allowed Andrić to take the examinations necessary for his Ph.D to be confirmed.

He passed both his exams, and on 13 July, received his Ph.D.

 

The committee of examiners recommended that Andrić’s dissertation be published.

Andrić chose the title Die Entwicklung des geistigen Lebens in Bosnien unter der Einwirkung der türkischen Herrschaft (The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia Under the Influence of Turkish Rule).

In it, he characterized the Ottoman occupation as a yoke that still loomed over Bosnia.

“The effect of Turkish rule was absolutely negative,” he wrote.

“The Turks could bring no cultural content or sense of higher mission, even to those South Slavs who accepted Islam.“

 

 

 

 

Several days after receiving his Ph.D, Andrić wrote the Foreign Minister asking to be reinstated and submitted a copy of his dissertation, university documents and a medical certification that deemed him to be in good health.

In September, the Foreign Ministry granted his request.

 

Above: Bust of Ivo Andric, Graz

 

 

Andrić stayed in Graz until 31 October 1924, when he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry’s Belgrade headquarters.

 

 

 

 

During the two years he was in Belgrade, Andrić spent much of his time writing.

His first collection of short stories was published in 1924, and he received a prize from the Serbian Royal Academy (of which he became a full-fledged member in February 1926).

 

 

Above: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts plaque

 

 

The reader who takes the collected works of one writer, reads them as a connected whole, despite all the contradictions and breaks that the work of one writer carries within itself. 

He passes through that work as through a well-arranged street in which the facades of houses are interconnected, and everything comes to him as one more or less planned and well-connected whole. 

Because such a reader stands at the end point of the writer’s work, looks in the opposite direction from the one in which those works were created, observes them as a whole and continuity that they could not have when, one by one, they were slowly and difficultly created in long and restless periods of life.

Ivo Andrić
Signs by the Roadside

 

 

 

 

And what is, basically, a story?

How, in the shortest outline, could a story be described rather than precisely defined?

 

One of the most important features of the story is its size, ie the measure of its conciseness.

It depends on the extent of the compression of the form how the writer will arrange his material, how he will construct the plot and how to introduce his theme into it or network more motives, how he will explain his linguistic potential.

There is no doubt that the narrative is based on the categories of selection and summarization, on giving a restrictive, reduced form to the process of narration.

The concentration of attention, conciseness and interestingness of the narration must be in the foreground in order to achieve the impression of a unique whole.

That is why the story relies on a “limited world“, on a clearly emphasized detail, a motivated situation or an emphasized character.

 

 

 

 

But, the core, the essence, the justification of the existence of every story cannot be reduced only to its formal characteristics, because the most important thing is the story, the process of telling, the narration.

 

It gives meaning to human existence and its torment to reach the meaning and reason for the existence of the world.

 

From time immemorial, humanity has been telling stories, stories about heroism, love, suffering, betrayal, loyalty and friendship, the story is inherent in man, an integral part of his position in an interactive relationship with the world.

 

 

 

 

And it is no coincidence that Andrić put the words of his “uncle“, the late Fr. Rafa, into the mouth of his hero, Fr. Petar, who always joked:

“I could still do without bread, but without talking I can’t.“

 

 

 

 

In a thousand different languages, in various living conditions, from century to century, from ancient patriarchal stories in huts, by the fire, to modern narrators who are coming out of publishing houses in major world centers at the moment, the story of human destiny is being told, which people tell people without end and interruption.

The way and forms of that story change over time and circumstances, but the need for storytelling and storytelling remains, and the story flows on and the storytelling has no end.

So sometimes it seems to us that humanity, from the first flash of consciousness, through the centuries, tells itself, in a million variants, along with the breath of its lungs and the rhythm of its being, constantly the same story.

And that story seems to want, like the story of the legendary Scheherazade, to deceive the executioner, to postpone the inevitability of the tragic accident that threatens us, and to prolong the illusion of life and duration.

 

 

Above: Scheherazade, painted in the 19th century by Sophie Anderson

 

 

Perhaps the goal of that story is to light up, at least a little, the dark paths that life often throws us on, and to tell us something more about that life, which we live but which we do not always see and understand, than we, in our weakness, can know and understand.

Often only from the words of a good narrator do we learn what we have done and what we have missed, what we should do and what we should not.

Perhaps these stories, oral and written, also contain the true history of mankind, and perhaps one could at least sense, if not find out, the meaning of that history.

And that regardless of whether they are dealing with the past or the present.

Perhaps one could at least infer from them, if not find out, the meaning of that history.

 

 

Above: History by Frederick Dielman (1896)

 

 

Andrić in his imaginary “Conversation with Goya” in 1935, Andrić’s hero Goja, the narrator’s interlocutor, sees life and story as creatively intertwined.

Because without a story there is no real life.

And how to get to the story, that key to everything that “happened and is happening“, which is repeated in countless different forms?

Legends should be listened to:

“Those traces of collective human efforts through the centuries and the meaning of our destiny should be deciphered from them as much as possible”, says Andrićev Goja in one place, and further adds that the meaning should be sought “in those layers of humanity. ”

 

 

 

 

In 1924, the same year when he defended his doctoral dissertation in Graz, The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia under the Influence of Turkish Rule, Andrić published his first collection of stories under the simple title Pripovetke (Tales) in the Belgrade Serbian Literary Association.

 

 

 

 

In his dissertation, Andrić himself points out that “in its content and in its basic idea, this discussion is related to other works” that he prepared “in another form and on other occasions.”

We cannot help but wonder what that connection is.

What works does Andrić’s statement refer to?

How much did the research of the history of Bosnia in connection with the dissertation help Andrić to see the nature of life in the Bosnian backwater during the Turkish occupation?

Apparently, the research undertaken by the young doctoral student, and the insights he gained, became an inexhaustible source and raw material for his short stories, and not only for those printed in 1924.

“These tales about the Turks and about ours are only a part of one work, which began with the tale ‘The Way of Alija Đerzelez’,” Andrić wrote in the introductory note for Tales.

 

 

 

 

From the moment he went to study in Zagreb and then Vienna and Krakow, Andrić traveled frequently. 

Working as a diplomatic official in the Yugoslav embassies in some European cities, the writer got to know the people and regions of the countries in which he resided well.

 

 

 

 

Andrić published his first travelogue in 1914 under the title “Letter from Krakow” in the Croatian Movement, during his studies at the Jagiellonian University.

 

Above: Jagiellonian University logo

 

 

Living and studying in Graz, in 1923, Andrić translated his impressions of life and the country in the form of “notes from the road” into the text Through Austria.

 

 

 

 

Living in many capitals of interwar Europe inspired Andrić to write down his impressions.

However, he did not rely only on his own senses and observations, but carefully prepared for each trip and wrote in notebooks data from books on the history, culture and traditions of the country.

In his travelogues, Andrić primarily states what makes a country and its way of life specific.

 

Above: Europe, 1923

 

 

This is how I seek to write my travelogues.

 

In October 1926, he was assigned to the consulate in Marseille and again appointed vice-consul.

 

 

Above: Vieux Port, Marseille, France

 

 

On 9 December 1926, he was transferred to the Yugoslav embassy in Paris.

 

 

 

France suffered heavily during World War I in terms of lives lost, disabled veterans and ruined agricultural and industrial areas occupied by Germany as well as heavy borrowing from the United States, Britain, and the French people.

However, postwar reconstruction was rapid, and the long history of political warfare along religious lines was finally ended.

Parisian culture was world-famous in the 1920s, with expatriate artists, musicians and writers from across the globe contributing their cosmopolitanism, such as jazz music, and the French empire was in flourishing condition, especially in North Africa, and in Subsaharan Africa.

 

 

Above: Josephine Baker dances the Charleston at the Folies Bergère (1926)

 

 

Although the official goal was complete assimilation, few colonial subjects were actually assimilated.

Major concerns were forcing Germany to pay for the war damage by reparations payments and guaranteeing that Germany, with its much larger population, would never be a military threat in the future.

Efforts to set up military alliances worked poorly.

Relations remained very tense with Germany until 1924, when they stabilized thanks to large American bank loans.

 

Above: Germany (1919 – 1937)

 

 

France was part of the Allied force that occupied the Rhineland following the armistice.

Ferdinand Foch supported Poland in the Greater Poland Uprising and in the Polish–Soviet War and France also joined Spain during the Rif War.

 

Above: Ferdinand Foch

 

 

From 1925 until his death in 1932, Aristide Briand, as prime minister during five short intervals, directed French foreign policy by using his diplomatic skills and sense of timing to forge friendly relations with Weimar Germany as the basis of a genuine peace within the framework of the League of Nations.

He realised France could not contain the much larger Germany by itself or secure effective support from Britain or the League.

 

 

Above: Aristide Briand (1862 – 1932)

 

 

In January 1923, after Germany refused to ship enough coal as part of its reparations, France and Belgium occupied the industrial region of the Ruhr.

Germany responded with passive resistance, which included printing vast amounts of marks to pay for the occupation, which caused runaway inflation.

That heavily damaged the German middle class, whose savings became worthless, but also damaged the French franc.

 

 

 

 

The intervention was a failure, and in the summer of 1924, France accepted the American solution to the reparations issues, as expressed in the Dawes Plan.

It had American banks make long-term loans to Germany, which used the money to pay reparations.

The United States demanded repayment of the war loans although the terms were slightly softened in 1926.

All loans, payments and reparations were suspended in 1931, and everything was finally resolved in 1951.

 

 

 

 

In the 1920s, France built the Maginot Line, an elaborate system of static border defences that was designed to stop any German invasion.

However, it did not extend into Belgium, and Germany attacked there in 1940 and went around the French defenses.

Military alliances were signed with weak powers in 1920–21, called the “Little Entente“.

 

 

 

 

Domestic politics in the 1920s were a product of unresolved problems left by the war and peace, especially the economics of reconstruction and how to make Germany pay for it all.

The great planners were Raymond Poincaré, Alexandre Millerand and Aristide Briand.

France had paid for the war with very heavy borrowing at home and from Britain and the United States.

 

 

 

Heavy inflation resulted, and in 1922, Poincaré became Prime Minister.

He justified his strong anti-German policies:

Germany’s population was increasing, her industries were intact, she had no factories to reconstruct, she had no flooded mines.

Her resources were intact, above and below ground.

In fifteen or twenty years Germany would be mistress of Europe.

In front of her would be France with a population scarcely increased.

Poincaré used German reparations to maintain the franc at a tenth of its prewar value and to pay for the reconstruction of the devastated areas.

 

 

Above: Raymond Poincaré (1860 – 1934)

 

 

Since Germany refused to pay nearly as much as Paris demanded, Poincaré reluctantly sent the French army to occupy the Ruhr industrial area (1922) to force a showdown.

The British strongly objected, arguing that it “would only impair German recovery, topple the German government, and lead to internal anarchy and Bolshevism, without achieving the financial goals of the French.“

 

 

 

 

The Germans practiced passive resistance by flooding the economy with paper money that damaged both the German and French economies.

The standoff was solved by American dollars in the Dawes Plan.

New York banks lent money to Germany for reparations to France, which then used the same dollars to repay the Americans.

 

 

Above: Wall Street, New York City

 

 

Throughout the early postwar period, Poincaré’s political base was the conservative nationalist parliament elected in 1920.

However, at the next election (1924), a coalition of Radical Socialists and Socialists called the “Cartel des gauches” (“Cartel of the Left“) won a majority, and Herriot of the Radical Socialist Party became prime minister.

He was disillusioned by the imperialist thrust of the Versailles Treaty, and sought a stable international peace in rapprochement with the Soviet Union to block the rising German revanchist movement.

 

 

Above: Édouard Herriot (1872 – 1957)

 

 

Andrić’s time in France was marked by increasing loneliness and isolation.

His uncle had died in 1924, his mother the following year, and upon arriving in France, he was informed that his aunt had died as well.

“Apart from official contacts,” he wrote Alaupović, “I have no company whatever.“

Andrić spent much of his time in the Paris archives poring over the reports of the French consulate in Travnik between 1809 and 1814, material he would use in Travnička hronika (The Travnik Chronicle), one of his future novels.

 

 

 

 

(The Travnik Chronicle (1945) is a historical novel written during the Second World War, based on the model of a European realistic novel. 

It covers the period from 1807 until 1814 and therefore represents a classic novel more than any other Andrić’s novel.

The novel is narrated in the 3rd person and consists of a prologue, epilogue and 28 chapters.

Chronicle of Travnik is a seven-year fiction chronicle that deals with the stay of foreign consuls in that vizier’s city.

It begins with the arrival of the French consul, and ends with the departure of the second-appointed Austrian consul.

The novel is turned to history.

In the process of creating the Travnik Chronicle, Andrić used rich documentary material from the field of the history of civilization, ethnology and authentic writings about historical figures that are presented in the novel.)

 

 

Above: Travnik Fort

 

 

In April 1928, Andrić was posted to Madrid as vice-consul.

 

 

Above: Gran Via, Madrid, Spain

 

 

Spain’s neutrality in World War I spared the country from carnage, yet the conflict caused massive economic disruption, with the country experiencing at the same time an economic boom (the increasing foreign demand of products and the drop of imports brought hefty profits) and widespread social distress (with mounting inflation, shortage of basic goods and extreme income inequality).

 

 

Above: Flag of Spain

 

 

A major revolutionary strike was called for August 1917, supported by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the UGT and the CNT, seeking to overthrow the government by means of a general strike.

The Dato government deployed the army against the workers to brutally quell any threat to social order, sealing in turn the demise of the cabinet and undermining the constitutional order.

The strike was one of the three simultaneous developments of a wider three-headed crisis in 1917 that cracked the Restoration regime, that also included a military crisis induced by the cleavage in the Armed Forces between Mainland and Africa-based ranks vis-à-vis the military promotion (and ensuing formation of juntas of officers that refused to dissolve upon request from the government), and a political crisis brought by the challenge posed by Catalan nationalism, whose bourgeois was emboldened by the economic upswing caused by the profits from exports to Entente powers during World War I.

 

 

 

 

During the Rif War, the crushing defeat of the Spanish Army in the so-called “Disaster of Annual” in the summer of 1921 brought in a matter of days the catastrophic loss of the lives of about 9,000 Spanish soldiers and the loss of all occupied territory in Morocco that had been gained since 1912.

 

 

 

 

This entailed the greatest defeat suffered by an European power in an African colonial war in the 20th century.

 

 

Above: Images of the Rif War

 

 

Spanish King Alfonso XIII tacitly endorsed the September 1923 coup by General Miguel Primo de Rivera that installed a dictatorship led by the latter.

 

 

Above: Spanish Alfonso XIII (1886 – 1941)

 

 

The regime enforced the State of War all over the country from September 1923 to May 1925 and, in permanent violation of the 1876 Constitution, wrecked with the legal-rational component of the constitutional compromise.

Attempts to institutionalise the regime (initially a Military Directory) were taken, in the form of a single official party (the Patriotic Union) and a consultative chamber (the National Assembly).

Preceded by a partial retreat from vulnerable posts in the interior of the protectorate in Morocco, Spain (in joint action with France) turned the tides in Morocco in 1925, and the Abd el-Krim-led Republic of the Rif started to see the beginning of its end after the Alhucemas landing and ensuing seizure of Ajdir, the heart of the Riffian rebellion.

The war had dragged on since 1917 and cost Spain $800 million.

The late 1920s were prosperous until the worldwide Great Depression hit in 1929.

 

 

Above: Miguel Primo de Riviera (1870 – 1930)

 

 

While in Madrid, Andric wrote (though did not then publish) essays on Simón Bolívar and Francisco Goya.

 

Above: Simón Bolívar (1783 – 1830)

 

 

Above: Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828)

 

 

That year he published the stories “Olujaci”, “Ispovijed” (Confession) and Most na Žepi (Bridge on the Žepa).

 

 

Bridge on the Zepa describes the construction of the bridge on Žepa, a river that often swells, and which the inhabitants have not yet managed to tame with the bridge.

So far, the river has taken away several wooden bridges (a similar theme, 20 years later, is dealt with in the Nobel Prize-winning novel On the Drina Bridge, so the story on the Bridge on the Žepa is considered an overture to the novel.

The narrator tells us the whole story in clear sentences.

The different segments of the story are firmly connected, although the vizier, as a narrator, often returns to the past and recalls his childhood in retrospect.

 

 

 

 

In Most na Žepi, Ivo Andrić describes many values, but also universal truths. 

He emphasizes the efforts of man to adapt the world to himself and to fight against the forces of nature that sometimes destroy everything in front of him.

In a story such as The Bridge on Zepa, the symbolism of the bridge is reflected in the emphasized human urge to subdue the world and nature around it, but also to bring order to oneself – which the Grand Vizier Yusuf failed to do.

In the story, we can also see how art outlives the man who creates it, so it seems to overcome death itself.

On the other side of the story, we have a builder who does not seek friendship, praise or help from anyone.

He does not even crave material things, but lives for his work.

He did not ask for much, but with his work he provided a lot and made life easier for many people.

 

 

 

The story describes a number of difficulties encountered by the builder in the construction of the bridge, but in the end the successful outcome is successful. 

The bridge was built, but the two characters end tragically.

Neymar dies of the plague, and the vizier suffers from the traumas experienced during his captivity, which lead him on a path of self-destruction.

In a figurative sense, the narrative is about man’s search for meaning.

Even after the goal was achieved (the construction of the bridge was completed), the characters did not achieve a sense of life satisfaction.

The story is written in the 3rd person.

 

 

 

 

Andric began work on the novel Prokleta avlija (The Cursed Court).

In Andrić’s novel, The Cursed Court is the name of the famous Constantinople dungeon, which Fr. Petar from Bosnia came to for unjustified reasons, when they sent him to Istanbul to do some monastic work.

It happened that the Turkish authorities caught a letter addressed to the Austrian internment in Constantinople, in which the persecution of the faithful by the Turkish authorities was described and the suspicion fell on Fr. Peter.

He was arrested and imprisoned in the pre-trial prison – “the Cursed Court“, where he remained for two months until he was sent on.

In The Cursed Court, Fra-Petar meets several people, who in this novel turn into a gallery of interesting characters.

There is the warden of the “Cursed Court” of Latifaga called Karadjoz , a prisoner of Chaim, a Jew from Smyrna, and then the central character from this novel is the prisoner Ćamil-effendi, a rich young Turk from Smyrna.

Fra-Petar learns from Haim, a young man’s fellow citizen, that he was imprisoned on suspicion that his study of consciousness was aimed at a rebellious plot against the sultan’s court, which was completely untrue.

Young Camil, the son of a rich Turk and a Greek woman, devoted himself to science and the solitary and ascetic way of life from an early age, which was especially emphasized by an unhappy and unhealthy love.

Namely, Camil fell in love with the daughter of a young Greek merchant, but for nationalistic and religious reasons, he did not want to give her to a Turk for a wife, but forcibly married her to a Greek outside Smyrna.

After that event, Ćamil completely closed himself in and became a kind of individual.

He surrounds himself with books and throws himself into science, showing a special interest in the consciousness of the Turkish Empire, of which he is particularly interested in one particular period – the time of Bayezid II and Jam-Sultan, his brother, whom Bayezid defeated twice in battle for the throne.

Then Jam sought refuge on the island of Rhodes, where Christian knights ruled.

From then on, the odyssey of Cem begins, who as a prisoner passes from the hands of various European rulers, and even the Pope himself, and they all use him as a trump card against the Turkish Empire, that is they threaten Bayazit that he will release him if he does not satisfy their various demands.

Ćamil is suspected of studying precisely that historical period, because it has similarities with the current situation at the court, where the sultan also has a rival brother, whom he declared insane and holds him captive. Jamil was sent to the Cursed Court, where he met Fr. Peter and told him about the life of Jam-Sultan, claiming that his life was identical with Jamil’s and that their destinies were the same.

After a while, they took him to a special prison, and one night during the interrogation, a fight broke out between him and the police.

It is not known whether the camels are taken out – alive or dead.

Fra-Peter never saw him again.

 

 

 

 

In June 1929, Andric was named secretary of the Yugoslav legation to Belgium and Luxembourg in Brussels.

 

 

Above: Images of Brussels, Belgium

 

 

Belgian King Albert returned from exile as a war hero, leading the victorious army and acclaimed by the population.

 

 

Above: King Albert I of Belgium (1875 – 1934)

 

 

In contrast, the government and other exiles came back discreetly.

Belgium had been devastated—not so much by combat, but rather by German seizure of valuable machinery.

Only 81 operable locomotives remained, out of the 3,470 available in 1914.

46 of 51 steel mills were damaged, with 26 destroyed totally.

More than 100,000 houses had been destroyed, as well as more than 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres) of farmland.

 

 

Above: Flag of Belgium

 

 

Waves of popular violence accompanied liberation in November and December 1918 and the government responded through the judicial punishment of collaboration with the enemy conducted between 1919 and 1921.

Shop windows were broken and houses sacked, men were harassed, and women’s heads were shaved.

Manufacturers who had closed their businesses sought the severe repression of those who had pursued their activities.

Journalists who had boycotted and stopped writing called for harsh treatment of the newspapers that submitted to German censorship.

Many people stigmatized profiteers and demanded justice.

Thus in 1918, Belgium was already confronted with the problems associated with occupation that most European countries only discovered at the end of World War II.

 

 

 

 

However, despite the status quo, Belgium recovered surprisingly quickly.

The first postwar Olympic Games were held in Antwerp in 1920.

In 1921, Luxembourg formed a customs union with Belgium.

 

 

 

 

German reparations to Belgium for damage incurred during the First World War was set at £12.5 billion pounds sterling.

 

In 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles the area of Eupen-Malmedy, along with Moresnet was transferred to Belgium.

“Neutral Moresnet” was transferred to Belgium, as well as the Vennbahn railway.

 

 

Above: Map of the route of the Vennbahn

 

 

An opportunity was given to the population to “oppose” against the transfer by signing a petition, which gathered few signatures, in large part thanks to intimidation by local authorities, and all regions remain part of Belgium today.

Belgian requests to annex territory considered as historically theirs, from the Dutch, who were perceived as collaborators, was denied.

 

 

 

 

Between 1923 and 1926, Belgian and French soldiers were sent to the Ruhr in Germany to force the German government to agree to continue reparation payments.

The Occupation of the Ruhr led the Dawes Plan which allowed the German government more leniency in paying reparations.

 

 

 

 

The League of Nations in 1925 made Belgium the trustee for the former German East Africa which bordered the Belgian Congo to the east.

It became Rwanda-Urundi (or “Ruanda-Urundi“) (modern day Rwanda and Burundi).

 

 

Above: Coat of arms of Ruanda-Urundi

 

 

Although promising the League it would promote education, Belgium left the task to subsidised Catholic missions and unsubsidised Protestant missions.

As late as 1962, when independence arrived, fewer than 100 natives had gone beyond secondary school.

 

 

Above: The Cathedral of Our Lady of Wisdom at Butare (formally Astrida) in Ruanda

 

 

The policy was one of low-cost paternalism, as explained by Belgium’s special representative to the Trusteeship Council:

“The real work is to change the African in his essence, to transform his soul, and to do that one must love him and enjoy having daily contact with him.

He must be cured of his thoughtlessness, he must accustom himself to living in society, he must overcome his inertia.”

 

 

 

 

On 1 January 1930, Andric was sent to Switzerland as part of Yugoslavia’s permanent delegation to the League of Nations in Geneva, and was named deputy delegate the following year.

 

 

Above: Geneva, Switzerland

 

 

The League of Nations, abbreviated as LON (French: Société des Nations, abbreviated as SDN or SdN), was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.

It was founded on 10 January 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War.

In 1919 US President Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League.

The organisation’s primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.

Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.

The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920.

The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920.

The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years.

The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the victorious First World War Allies (France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan were the permanent members of the Executive Council) to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed.

The Great Powers were often reluctant to do so.

Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them.

 

 

 

 

Following accusations of forced labour on the large American-owned Firestone rubber plantation and American accusations of slave trading, the Liberian government asked the League to launch an investigation.

The resulting commission was jointly appointed by the League, the United States, and Liberia.

In 1930, a League report confirmed the presence of slavery and forced labour.

The report implicated many government officials in the selling of contract labour and recommended that they be replaced by Europeans or Americans, which generated anger within Liberia and led to the resignation of President Charles D. B. King and his vice-president.

The Liberian government outlawed forced labour and slavery and asked for American help in social reforms.

 

 

Above: Flag of Liberia

 

 

The Mukden Incident, also known as the “Manchurian Incident“, was a decisive setback that weakened the League because its major members refused to tackle Japanese aggression.

Japan itself withdrew.

Under the agreed terms of the Twenty-One Demands with China, the Japanese government had the right to station its troops in the area around the South Manchurian Railway, a major trade route between the two countries, in the Chinese region of Manchuria.

In September 1931, a section of the railway was lightly damaged by the Japanese Kwantung Army as a pretext for an invasion of Manchuria.

The Japanese army claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and in apparent retaliation (acting contrary to orders from Tokyo) occupied all of Manchuria.

They renamed the area Manchukuo, and on 9 March 1932 Japan set up a puppet government, with Pu Yi, the former emperor of China, as its executive head.

 

 

 

This new entity was recognised only by the governments of Italy, Spain and Nazi Germany.

The rest of the world still considered Manchuria legally part of China.

The League of Nations sent observers.

The Lytton Report appeared a year later (October 1932).

It declared Japan to be the aggressor and demanded Manchuria be returned to China.

 

 

Above: Chinese delegate addresses the League of Nations after the Mukden Incident in 1932

 

 

The report passed 42–1 in the Assembly in 1933 (only Japan voting against), but instead of removing its troops from China, Japan withdrew from the League.

In the end, as British historian Charles Mowat argued, collective security was dead:

The League and the ideas of collective security and the rule of law were defeated; partly because of indifference and of sympathy with the aggressor, but partly because the League powers were unprepared, preoccupied with other matters, and too slow to perceive the scale of Japanese ambitions.

 

 

Above: The Mukden Incident Museum (literally, “September 18th History Museum“) in Shenyang, China

 

 

The League failed to prevent the 1932 war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the arid Gran Chaco region.

Although the region was sparsely populated, it contained the Paraguay River, which would have given either landlocked country access to the Atlantic Ocean, and there was also speculation, later proved incorrect, that the Chaco would be a rich source of petroleum.

Border skirmishes throughout the late 1920s culminated in an all-out war in 1932 when the Bolivian army attacked the Paraguayans at Fort Carlos Antonio López at Lake Pitiantuta.

Paraguay appealed to the League of Nations, but the League did not take action when the Pan-American Conference offered to mediate instead.

The war was a disaster for both sides, causing 57,000 casualties for Bolivia, whose population was around three million, and 36,000 dead for Paraguay, whose population was approximately one million.

It also brought both countries to the brink of economic disaster.

By the time a ceasefire was negotiated on 12 June 1935, Paraguay had seized control of most of the region, as was later recognised by the 1938 truce.

 

 

Above: Paraguayan soldiers at Alihuatá, 1932

 

 

In 1933, Andrić returned to Belgrade.

Two years later, he was named head of the political department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On 5 November 1937, Andrić became assistant to Milan Stojadinović, Yugoslavia’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.

 

 

Above: National Assembly, Belgrade

 

 

Yugoslavia was a country in Southeast Europe and Central Europe for most of the 20th century.

It came into existence after World War I in 1918 under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by the merger of the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (it was formed from territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) with the Kingdom of Serbia, and constituted the first union of the South Slavic people as a sovereign state, following centuries in which the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary.

Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign.

The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris.

The official name of the state was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929.

 

 

 

 

On 20 June 1928, Serb deputy Puniša Račić shot at five members of the opposition Croatian Peasant Party in the National Assembly, resulting in the death of two deputies on the spot and that of leader Stjepan Radić a few weeks later.

 

Above: Punisa Racic (1886 – 1944)

 

 

On 6 January 1929, King Alexander I got rid of the constitution, banned national political parties and assumed executive power and renamed the country Yugoslavia.

He hoped to curb separatist tendencies and mitigate nationalist passions.

He imposed a new constitution and relinquished his dictatorship in 1931.

However, Alexander’s policies later encountered opposition from other European powers stemming from developments in Italy and Germany, where Fascists and Nazis rose to power, and the Soviet Union, where Joseph Stalin became absolute ruler.

None of these three regimes favored the policy pursued by Alexander I.

In fact, Italy and Germany wanted to revise the international treaties signed after World War I, and the Soviets were determined to regain their positions in Europe and pursue a more active international policy.

Alexander attempted to create a centralised Yugoslavia.

He decided to abolish Yugoslavia’s historic regions, and new internal boundaries were drawn for provinces or banovinas.

The banovinas were named after rivers.

Many politicians were jailed or kept under police surveillance.

The effect of Alexander’s dictatorship was to further alienate the non-Serbs from the idea of unity.

During his reign the flags of Yugoslav nations were banned.

Communist ideas were banned also.

 

Above: King Alexander I (1888 – 1934)

 

 

The king was assassinated in Marseille during an official visit to France in 1934 by Vlado Chernozemski, an experienced marksman from Ivan Mihailov’s Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization with the cooperation of the Ustaše, a Croatian fascist revolutionary organisation.

Alexander was succeeded by his eleven-year-old son Peter II and a regency council headed by his cousin, Prince Paul.

 

 

Above: The funeral of King Alexander at Belgrade

 

 

The international political scene in the late 1930s was marked by growing intolerance between the principal figures, by the aggressive attitude of the totalitarian regimes and by the certainty that the order set up after World War I was losing its strongholds and its sponsors were losing their strength.

Supported and pressured by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Croatian leader Vladko Maček and his party managed the creation of the Banovina of Croatia (Autonomous Region with significant internal self-government) in 1939.

The agreement specified that Croatia was to remain part of Yugoslavia, but it was hurriedly building an independent political identity in international relations.

The entire kingdom was to be federalised, but World War II stopped the fulfillment of those plans.

 

 

Above: Vladko Macek (1879 – 1964)

 

 

On 1 April 1939, Andrić was appointed Yugoslavia’s ambassador to Germany, presenting his credentials of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler on 19 April. 

This appointment, Hawkesworth writes, shows that he was highly regarded by his country’s leadership.

 

 

Above: Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)

 

 

As previously mentioned, Yugoslavia’s King Alexander had been assassinated in Marseille in 1934.

He was succeeded by his ten-year-old son Peter, and a regency council led by Peter’s uncle Paul was established to rule in his place until he turned 18.

Paul’s government established closer economic and political ties with Germany.

 

 

Above: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (1893 – 1976)

 

 

In March 1941, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact, pledging support for Germany and Italy.

Though the negotiations had occurred behind Andrić’s back, in his capacity as ambassador he was obliged to attend the document’s signing in Berlin.

Andrić had previously been instructed to delay agreeing to the Axis powers’ demands for as long as possible.

He was highly critical of the move, and on 17 March, wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking to be relieved of his duties.

 

 

Above: Signing ceremony for the Axis Powers Tripartite Pact

Seated at front left (left to right) are Japan’s Ambassador Saburō Kurusu, Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Galeazzo Ciano and Germany’s Führer Adolf Hitler.

 

 

Ten days later, a group of pro-Western Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers overthrew the regency and proclaimed Peter of age.

This led to a breakdown in relations with Germany and prompted Adolf Hitler to order Yugoslavia’s invasion.

 

 

Above: King Peter II of Yugoslavia (1923 – 1970)

 

 

Given these circumstances, Andrić’s position was an extremely difficult one.

Nevertheless, he used the little influence he had and attempted unsuccessfully to assist Polish prisoners following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939.

 

 

Above: Images of the German invasion of Poland

 

 

Prior to their invasion of his country, the Germans had offered Andrić the opportunity to evacuate to neutral Switzerland.

He declined on the basis that his staff would not be allowed to go with him.

 

Above: Ivo Andric

 

 

On 6 April 1941, the Germans and their allies invaded Yugoslavia.

The country capitulated on 17 April and was subsequently partitioned between the Axis powers.

 

 

Above: The invasion of Yugoslavia

 

 

In early June, Andrić and his staff were taken back to German-occupied Belgrade, where some were jailed.

Andrić was retired from the diplomatic service, but refused to receive his pension or cooperate in any way with the puppet government that the Germans had installed in Serbia…..

 

 

 

 

The greatest part of the interwar period, Andric had spent abroad.

Living in Europe’s capital cities broadened his views and offered him the opportunity to improve his language skills, to meet men of letters and have an immediate access to literature of the countries in which he served as a diplomat, as well as to gather materials for his future novels and stories.

 

 

 

 

Inside the Ivo Andric Museum, the years of the writer’s diplomatic service are documented by original archival material – appointment and government decrees, certificates, acts of the Ministries of Religion and Foreign Affairs, issued to Andric as a civil servant and a chargé d’affaires.

The exhibited archival materials are arranged so as to illustrate, year by year, his advancement in the civil service, transfers and appointments, vacation and sick leaves.

Photos taken of him in Bucharest in 1922, Marseilles in 1927, Geneva in 1931, and Belgrade in 1937, capture visitors’ attention because they show not only an officer in the diplomatic service of the Kingdom, but also a rising writer and a newly elected member of the Serbian Royal Academy.

Andric’s diplomatic passport, issued for 1939 to 1941, is particularly interesting both as an exhibition item and a historic document.

The same applies to the photos of Andric taken in Berlin in 1939, because they remind us of times and events in the eve of World War II fateful for the Kingdom – the Tripartite Pact and demonstrations in Belgrade on 27 March 1941.

Andric’s career as a diplomat ended prematurely in the Third Reich Germany and was accompanied with his unsuccessful attempts to help prominent Polish intellectuals exiled from Krakow after the occupation of Poland in 1939 using his position as an ambassador and diplomatic channels.

Ivo Andric’s diplomatic uniform with gold embroidery, a feathered hat and a sword in an elaborately decorated scabbard, as well as his travel case with leather and wooden reinforcements – a witness to the diplomat’s journeys to Europe’s capitals and back to Belgrade – occupy the central, open area of the Museum’s exhibition room.

 

 

 

 

It is very important to point out that throughout this period of life and diplomatic service Andric was involved in literary work, gathering historical evidence in foreign archives, intensive cooperation with Yugoslav literary reviews and publishers, and correspondence with writers and friends from Zagreb, Sarajevo and Belgrade, including Zdenko Markovic, Julije Benesic, Tugomir Alaupovic, Borivoje Jevtic, Isak Samokovlija, Isidora Sekulic, Jovan Ducic, Milos Crnjanski and Dr. Miodrag Iborvac.

 

 

Above: Bust of Ivo Andric, Ivo Andric Museum, Belgrade

 

 

(Tugomir Marko Alaupović (1870 – 1958) was a Yugoslav professor at First Grammar School ,Sarajevo, as well as a poet, storyteller and politician.

In addition to his rich political biography, he was also Minister of Religion in the government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

He has written several literary works that have been translated into French, German, Czech and Italian.

He was one of the initiators of the Croatian Society for the “Setting up of Children in Crafts and Trade” in Sarajevo and later initiated the change of the society name to Napredak.

He was a member of the Main Board of the Serbian St. Sava Society in Belgrade.

On 16 January 1934, after a serious operation, in a letter to Tihomir Djordjevic, a prominent Serbian ethnologist, he said:

“Unfortunately, my hopes have not been fulfilled and I will have to stay long or maybe even definitely in Zagreb.

It hurts and I’m sorry that for these reasons, I have to resign as a member of the Main Board of the St. Sava Society.

But rest assured that for the rest of my life, I will remain faithful to that beautiful and noble saying:

‘Everyone is my dear brother, be he any religion’“.)

 

 

Above: Tugomir Alaupovic

 

 

(Isak Samokovlija (1889 – 1955) was a prominent Bosnian Jewish writer.

By profession he was a physician.

His stories describe the life of the Bosnian Sephardic Jews.

 

 

Above: Isak Samokovlija

 

 

Samokovlija was born into a Sephardi Jewish family in Goražde, Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time of the Austro-Hungarian occupation.

While one side of his family came from Spain after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, “his great-grandfather moved to Bosnia from the town of Samokov in Bulgaria“, which led to the surname Los Samokovlis in Ladino or Samokovlija in Bosnian.

 

 

Above: Samokov Historical Museum with the statue of Zahari Zograf

 

 

After completing primary school Samokovlija went to Sarajevo.

He attended high school with Ivo Andric, the first Yugoslav to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

Above: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina

 

 

After graduating high school in 1910, he receive a scholarship from local Jewish charity La Benevolencija to study medicine in Vienna.

Later he worked as a doctor in the towns Goražde and Fojnica (1921–1925) before beginning a regular job at Sarajevo’s Koševo hospital in 1925.

 

 

 

 

At the beginning of the Second World War, he was a department head at the Koševo hospital.

In April 1941 he was discharged from service as well as other Jews, but soon he was mobilized as a medical doctor fights against a typhus epidemic.

It was not until 1945, he managed to escape Yugoslavia and hide until the country was liberated.

 

 

 

 

After the end of World War II, he held various positions in the Bosnian and Yugoslav literary circles.

From 1948 to 1951 he edited the magazine Brazda, and then, until his death he was an editor at the publishing company Svjetlost.

His first short story Rafina avlija was published in 1927 and two years later his first collection of stories, Od proljeća do proljeća, came out.

 

Several of his stories were made into television films and his book Hanka was made into a film of the same name directed by Slavko Vorkapić in 1955.

He did not live to see the film, dying at age 65 in January 1955.

 

 

 

He was buried in the old Jewish cemetery on the slopes of Trebević mountain, near Sarajevo.)

 

 

 

 

(Isidora Sekulić (1877 – 1958) was a Serbian writer, novelist, essayist, polyglot and art critic.

She was “the first woman academic in the history of Serbia“.

 

 

 

 

Sekulić was born in Mošorin, a village of Bács-Bodrog County, which is now in the Vojvodina.

Apart from her studies in literature, Sekulić was also well versed in natural sciences as well as philosophy.

She graduated from the pedagogical school in Budapest in 1892, and obtained her doctorate in 1922 in Germany.

 

Above: View of Baudapest, Hungary

 

 

Her travels included extended stays in England, France and Norway.

Her travels from Oslo through Bergen to Finnmark resulted in Pisma iz Norveške (Letters from Norway) meditative travelogue in 1914.

 

 

Above: Flag of Norway

 

 

Her collection of short stories, Saputnici, are unusually detailed and penetrating accomplishment in self-analysis and a brave stylistic experiment.

She also spoke several classical as well as nine modern languages.

Sekulić’s lyrical, meditative, introspective and analytical writings come at the dawn of Serbian prose writing.

Sekulić is concerned with the human condition of man in his new, thoroughly modern sensibility.

 

Above: Isidora Sekulić

 

 

In her main novel, The Chronicle of a Small Town Cemetery (Кроника паланачког гробља), she writes in opposition to the usual chronological development of events.

Instead, each part of the book begins in the cemetery, eventually returning to the time of bustling life, with all its joys and tragedies.

Characters such as Gospa Nola, are the first strong female characters in Serbian literature, painted in detail in all their courage, pride and determination.

Isidora Sekulić also wrote critical writings in the areas of music, theatre, art, architecture and literature and philosophy.

She wrote major studies of Yugoslav, Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Norwegian and other literature.)

 

 

Above: The Chronicles of a Small Town Cemetery (Serbian original)

 

 

(Jovan Dučić (1871 – 1943) was a Herzegovinian Serb poet-diplomat.

He is one of the most influential Serbian lyricists and modernist poets.

Dučić published his first collection of poetry in Mostar in 1901 and his second in Belgrade in 1908.

He also wrote often in prose, writing a number of literary essays, studies on writers, letters by poets from Switzerland, Greece and Spain and the book Blago cara Radovana for which he is most remembered when it comes to his writing.

Dučić was also one of the founders of the Narodna Odbrana, a nationalist non-governmental organization in the Kingdom of Serbia and he was a member of the Serbian Royal Academy.

 

 

Above: Jovan Ducic

 

 

Jovan Dučić was born in Trebinje, at the time part of Bosnia Vilayet within the Ottoman Empire.

In Trebinje he attended primary school.

 

Above: Jovan Ducic Monument, Trebinje, Bosnia and Hercegovina

 

 

He moved on to a high school in Mostar and trained to become a teacher in Sombor.

He worked as a teacher in several towns before returning to Mostar, where he founded (with writer Svetozar Ćorović and poet Aleksa Šantić) a literary magazine called Zora (Dawn).

 

 

Above: Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina

 

 

Dučić’s openly expressed Serbian patriotism caused difficulties with the authorities – at that time Bosnia and Herzegovina was de facto incorporated into the Austro-Hungarian Empire – and he moved abroad to pursue higher studies, mostly in Geneva and Paris.

 

 

 

He was awarded a law degree by the University of Geneva and, following his return from abroad, entered Serbian diplomatic service in 1907.

 

 

 

 

Although he had previously expressed opposition to the idea of creating a Yugoslavia, he became the new country’s first ambassador to Romania (in 1937).

 

 

 

 

He had a distinguished diplomatic career in this capacity, serving in Istanbul, Sofia, Rome, Athens, Cairo, Madrid and Lisbon.

Dučić spoke several foreign languages and is remembered as a distinguished diplomat.

 

 

Above: Images of Lisbon, Portugal

 

 

It was as a poet that Dučić gained his greatest distinctions.

He published his first book of poetry in Mostar in 1901 and his second in Belgrade, 1908.

He wrote prose as well: several essays and studies about writers, Blago cara Radovana (Tsar Radovan’s treasure) and poetry letters from Switzerland, Greece, Spain and other countries.

 

 

Above: Tsar Radovan’s Treasure by Jovan Ducic (Serbian original)

 

 

Dučić’s work was initially heavily influenced by that of Vojislav Ilić, the leading Serbian poet of the late 19th century.

 

 

Above: Vojislav Ilic (1860 – 1894)

 

 

Ducic’s travels abroad helped him to develop his own individual style, in which the Symbolist movement was perhaps the greatest single influence.

In his poetry he explored quite new territory that was previously unknown in Serbian poetry.

He restricted himself to only two verse styles, the symmetrical dodecasyllable (the Alexandrine) and hendecasyllable—both French in origin—in order to focus on the symbolic meaning of his work.

He expressed a double fear, of vulgarity of thought and vulgarity of expression.

 

 

Above: Death and the Grave Digger (La Mort et le Fossoyeur) (c. 1895) by Carlos Schwabe is a visual compendium of symbolist motifs.

The angel of Death, pristine snow, and the dramatic poses of the characters all express symbolist longings for transfiguration “anywhere, out of the world“.

 

 

In the autumn of 1893, during the party in the newly built Hotel Drina in Bijeljina, a young and ambitious teacher Dučić met recent School of Commerce graduate Magdalena Živanović.

 

 

Above: Assembly Building, Bijeljina, Bosnia and Hercegovina

 

 

They got engaged with on 5 November 1893, and their correspondence continued even Dučić’s departure from Bijeljina to Mostar to teach from 1895 to 1899.

A part of the correspondence is kept safe up to this day, as well as the letter which Dučić’s friend and poet Aleksa Šantić redirected to Magdalena on 6 April 1901, asking for help in collecting a subscription for his songs.

 

 

Above: Aleksa Santic (1868 – 1924)

 

 

Ljiljana Lukić, a retired professor, keeps a personal copy of the correspondence between Dučić and Magdalena.

Professor Ljiljana Lukić states that Dučić lived for a short time in the house of Magdalena Nikolić who lived with her sister.

After her break up with Dučić, Magdalena shouted that she would never leave home again.

 

Above: Zivanovic and Ducic

 

 

“Like a novel heroine, she lived by her memories and the only happy moments she had was in reading the letters and songs of the man she loved“, as Professor Lukić concludes.

Dučić’s secret fiancé left the following words to be written after her death on her monument, which can still be read today on the Bijeljina graveyard:

Maga Nikolić-Živanović, 1874–1957,

the poet herself and first inspiration of poet Jovan Dučić.

 

 

 

Twenty years before Magdalena’s death, while Dučić was the authorized minister of Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a request was received that testifies of the deep trace which Dučić left in Bijeljina.

Singing society Srbadija asked the minister to help in building a home for the needs of the society.

 

 

Above: Museum of Semberija, Bijeljina

 

 

The Embassy of Serbia in Hungary is in the house which Jovan Dučić received from a Hungarian woman, and then donated it to the state.

 

 

Above: Embassy of Serbia in Hungary, Budapest

 

 

Dučić went into exile in the United States in 1941 following the German invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia, where he joined his relative Mihajlo (Michael) in Gary, Indiana.

 

 

 

From then until his death two years later, he led a Chicago-based organization, the Serbian National Defense Council (founded by Mihailo Pupin in 1914) which represented the Serbian diaspora in the US.

 

 

 

 

During these two years, he wrote many poems, historical books and newspaper articles espousing Serbian nationalist causes and protesting the mass murder of Serbs by the pro-Nazi Ustaše regime of Croatia.

In Yugoslav school anthologies immediately after WWII he had been declared persona non grata and widely viewed as a Serbian chauvinist.

He died on 7 April 1943.

His funeral took place at the Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Gary, Indiana and he was buried in the Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery cemetery in Libertyville, Illinois.

He expressed a wish in his will to be buried in his home town of Trebinje, a goal which was finally realized when he was reburied there on 22 October 2000 in the newly built Hercegovačka Gračanica monastery.

His Acta Diplomatica (Diplomatic Letters) was published posthumously in the United States and in the former Yugoslavia. )

 

 

Above: Dučić’s grave site in the Hercegovačka Gračanica monastery in Trebinje

 

 

(Miodrag Ibrovac (1885 – 1973) was a Serbian and Yugoslav literary historian, novelist, academic and professor at the University of Belgrade.

He graduated from college in 1907, and from 1911 he taught at the Belgrade Lyceum.

From 1924 to 1958, Ibrovac was a full professor at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade in the Department of French Language and Literature where he succeeded Bogdan Popović.

He was a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1968 and a full professor in 1970.

He was a member of the Serbian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference that brought an end to the Great War with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

The delegation from Serbia consisted of Nikola Pašić, Slobodan Jovanović, Milenko Radomar Vesnić, Miodrag Ibrovac and others.

He is one of the founders of the Serbian PEN Center.

He was president of the Society for Cultural Co-operation Yugoslavia-France.)

 

 

Above: Miodrag Ibrovac

 

 

Andric’s years-long correspondence with Svetislav B. Cvijanovic, a Belgrade publisher, bookseller, writers’ great patron and Andric’s first publisher in Belgrade, is of particular significance.

 

There is much I learned from my visit to the Ivo Andric Museum, especially from his years as a diplomat:

• the importance of travel
• the importance of networking
• the importance of lifelong learning
• the importance of maintaining writing ambitions despite the demands of gainful employment
• the significance of the individual, especially in positions of persuasion

 

 

Above: Ivo Andric in his study in Belgrade

 

 

Andric, from penniless origins to highly educated academic, from obscure contributor to vice-consul to Nobel prize winner, is an inspiration.

 

Truly the record of a man is worthy of note.

 

 

Above: Ivo Andric

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Belgrade Memorial Museum of Ivo Andric / Ivo Andric, Signs by the Roadside

 

Canada Slim and the Lemon Mutants

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Saturday 14 March 2020

From Brescia Today, Friday 6 March 2020

There are 268 cases of corona virus infections confirmed in Italy’s Brescia Province, while deaths there have risen to 18.

Fifteen new municipalities have been added to the epidemic network, which previously had not presented any infection: Acquafredda, Borgosatollo, Castenedolo, Darfo Boario Terme, Gambara, Gottolengo, Isorella, Ospitaletto, Paratico, Pompiano, Provaglio d’Iseo, Roncadelle, San Gervasio Bresciano and Seniga.

 

Above: Province of Brescia (in red), Italy

 

As of 13 March, over 145,000 cases have been confirmed in around 140 countries and territories, with major outbreaks in mainland China, Italy, South Korea and Iran.

More than 5,400 people have died from the disease and over 72,000 have recovered.

 

Above: Electron microscope view of the corona virus

 

The virus primarily spreads between people in a way similar to influenza, via respiratory droplets from coughing.

The time between exposure and symptom onset is typically five days, but may range from two to fourteen days.

Symptoms are most often fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath.

Complications may include pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

There is currently no vaccine or specific antiviral treatment, but research is ongoing.

Efforts are aimed at managing symptoms and supportive therapy.

Recommended preventive measures include handwashing, maintaining distance from other people (particularly those who are unwell), and monitoring and self-isolation for fourteen days for people who suspect they are infected.

Public health responses around the world have included travel restrictions, quarantines, curfews, event cancellations, and facility closures.

 

Above: Map of the COVID-19 outbreak as of 12 March 2020.

Be aware that since this is a rapidly evolving situation, new cases may not be immediately represented visually. 

The darker the country, the more cases of the corona virus there are therein.

Countries with cases of the corona virus:

• Afghanistan
• Algeria
• Andorra
• Argentina
• Armenia
• Australia
• Austria 
• Azerbaijan
• Bahrain
• Bangladesh
• Belarus 
• Belgium 
• Bhutan
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Brazil 
• Brunei
• Bulgaria
• Burkina Faso
• Cambodia 
• Canada
• Chile 
• China
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Croatia 
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic 
• Denmark
• Dominican Republic
• Ecuador
• Egypt 
• Estonia 
• Finland 
• France 
• Georgia
• Germany 
• Greece 
• Hungary
• Iceland 
• India 
• Indonesia 
• Iran 
• Iraq 
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy 
• Japan 
• Jordan
• Kazakhstan
• Kuwait
• Latvia 
• Lebanon
• Liechtenstein
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg   
• Malaysia
• Maldives
• Malta
• Mexico 
• Moldova
• Monaco 
• Mongolia
• Nepal 
• the Netherlands 
• New Zealand 
• Nigeria 
• North Macedonia 
• Norway
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Palestine
• Panama
• Paraguay
• Peru
• the Philippines 
• Poland
• Portugal 
• Qatar
• Romania 
• Russia 
• San Marino 
• Saudi Arabia
• Senegal
• Serbia
• Singapore 
• Slovakia 
• Slovenia
• South Africa 
• South Korea 
• Spain 
• Sri Lanka
• Sweden 
• Switzerland 
• Taiwan 
• Thailand 
• Togo
• Tunisia
• Turkey 
• Ukraine 
• the United Arab Emirates 
• the United Kingdom 
• the United States 
• Vietnam 

 

These include the nationwide quarantine of Italy.

 

Above: (in red) Corona virus outbreak cases in Italy

 

On 9 March 2020, the government of Italy under Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte imposed a national quarantine, restricting the movement of the population except for necessity, work, and health circumstances, in response to the growing outbreak of COVID-19 in the country.

 

Above: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte

 

Additional lockdown restrictions mandated the temporary closure of non-essential shops and businesses.

 

 

This followed an earlier restriction announced on the previous day which affected 16 million people and included the region of Lombardy and fourteen provinces in Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Piedmont and Marche, and further back a smaller-scale lockdown of 11 municipalities in the province of Lodi that had begun in late February.

 

 

The first lockdowns began around 21 February 2020, covering 11 municipalities of the province of Lodi and affecting around 50,000 people.

 

 

Above: Piazza Duomo, Lodi

 

The epicentre was the town of Codogno (pop. 16,000), with police cars blocking roads leading to the quarantined areas and barriers erected on the roads.

Above: Ospedale Soave, Codogno

 

The quarantined “red zone” (zona rossa) was initially enforced by police and carabinieri, and by 27 February it was reported that 400 policemen were enforcing it with 35 checkpoints.

The lockdown was initially meant to last until 6 March.

While residents were permitted to leave their homes and supplies such as food and medicine were allowed to enter, they were not to go to school or their workplaces, and public gatherings were prohibited.

Train services also bypassed the region.

 

Above: The front page of Italian newspaper La Repubblica, reading “Tutti in casa” (“Everybody stay at home“), hung in a Bologna street on 10 March 2020, the first day of the nationwide lockdown in Italy

 

Early on Sunday, 8 March 2020, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced the expansion of the quarantine zone to cover much of Northern Italy, affecting over 16 million people, restricting travel from, to or within the affected areas, banning funerals and cultural events, and requiring people to keep at least one metre of distance from one another in public locations such as restaurants, churches and supermarkets.

Conte later clarified in a press conference that the decree was not an “absolute ban“, and that people would still be able to use trains and planes to and from the region for “proven work needs, emergencies, or health reasons“.

Additionally, tourists from outside were still permitted to leave the area.

 

Above: Areas quarantined on 8 March 2020

 

Restaurants and cafes were permitted to open, but operations were limited to between 06:00 and 18:00, while many other public locations such as gyms, nightclubs, museums and swimming pools were closed altogether.

Businesses were ordered to implement “smart working processes” to permit their employees to work from home.

 

 

The decree, in effect until 3 April, additionally cancelled any leave for medical workers, and allowed the government to impose fines or up to three months’ jail for people caught leaving or entering the affected zone without permission.

The decree also implemented restrictions on public gatherings elsewhere across Italy.

With this decree, the initial “Red Zone” was also abolished (though the municipalities were still within the quarantined area).

The lockdown measures implemented by Italy was considered the most radical measure implemented against the outbreak, outside of the lockdown measures implemented in China.

At the time of the decree, over 5,800 cases of coronavirus had been confirmed in Italy, with 233 dead.

 

 

A draft of the decree had been leaked to the media late on Saturday night before it went into effect and was published by Corriere della Sera, resulting in panic within the to-be-quarantined areas and prompting reactions from politicians in the region.

 

 

La Repubblica reported that hundreds of people in Milan rushed out to leave the city on the last trains on Saturday night, as a part of a rush in general to leave the red zone.

 

 

However, within hours of the decree being signed, media outlets reported that relatively little had changed, with trains and planes still operating to and from the region, and restaurants and cafes operating normally.

The BBC reported that some flights to Milan continued on 8 March, though several were cancelled.

New guidelines for the corona virus had assigned the responsibility of deciding whether to suspend flights to local judiciaries.

 

 

On the evening of 9 March, the quarantine measures were expanded to the entire country, coming into effect the next day.

In a televised address, Conte explained that the moves would restrict travel to that necessary for work and family emergencies, and all sporting events would be cancelled.

Italy was the first country to implement a national quarantine as a result of the 2020 coronavirus outbreak.

 

Above: Flag of Italy

 

On 11 March, Conte announced the lockdown would be tightened, with all commercial and retail businesses, except those providing essential services, like grocery stores and pharmacies, closed down.

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Luigi Di Maio has said that the lockdown has been necessary for Italy.

 

Above: Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Malo

 

The Italian authorities established sanctions for those who do not obey the orders, even those who, having symptoms of the virus, expose themselves in public places, being considered a threat of intentional contagion.

 

 

Responding to the thousands of people who evacuated from Lombardy just before the 8 March quarantine was put in place, police officers and medics met passengers from Lombardy in Salerno, Campania, and the passengers were required to self-quarantine.

 

 

Michele Emiliano, President of Apulia, required all arrivals from northern Italy to self-quarantine.

 

Above: Michele Emiliano

 

Similarly, Jole Santelli, President of Calabria, called for Calabrians living in northern Italy not to return home during the outbreak, and for the government to “block an exodus to Calabria“.

 

Above: Jole Santelli

 

Conte, alongside other leaders, called for Italians not to engage in “furbizia“—i.e. craftiness to circumvent rules and bureaucracy—when it comes to the lockdown.

Conte also told la Repubblica that Italy was facing its “darkest hour“.

In the initial quarantine, a special radio station (Radio Zona Rossa, or “Radio Red Zone“) was set up for residents of the Codogno quarantine area, broadcasting updates on the quarantine situation, interviews with authorities, and government information.

 

 

Catholic sermons were also broadcast through the radio.

 

Following the quarantine’s expansion, the hashtag #IoRestoACasa (“I stay at home“) was shared by thousands of social media users.

 

 

In compliance with regulations on keeping one metre of distance between each other in public locations, bars and restaurants placed duct tape on floors for their customers to follow.

Rushes to supermarkets in cities such as Roma and Palermo were reported as residents engaged in panic buying following the nationwide quarantine announcement.

 

 

After the national lockdown was announced, the Vatican closed the Vatican Museums and suspended Mass liturgies.

While St. Peter’s Basilica remained open, its catacombs were closed and visitors were required to follow the Italian regulations on the one-metre separation.

Catholic Mass in Rome and the Vatican were also suspended until 3 April, and Pope Francis opted to instead live stream daily Mass.

 

 

Dismayed by the Vicar General’s complete closure of all churches in the Diocese of Rome, Pope Francis partially reversed the closures, but tourists are still barred from visiting the churches.

 

Above: Pope Francis

 

The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom, praised Italy’s decision to implement the lockdown, stating that the Italian people and government were “making genuine sacrifices” with these “bold, courageous steps“.

 

Above: WHO Director General Tedros Adhamon

 

Among Brescian municipalities, Limone sul Garda is not listed among those with corona virus cases.

For now.

Though the virus is on Limone’s doorstep – in Gardone Riviera, Lonata del Garda and Moniga del Garda – one case in each town – it has yet to make its dark appearance felt within Limone itself.

Perhaps, miraculously, Covina-19 will avoid Limone, for Limone is a place of miracles….

 

 

Limone sul Garda, Italy, Tuesday 6 August 2018

Imagine a place where majestic mountains act as a backdrop for the infinite blue of Lake Garda.

Forget the impatience of the world for a moment and serenely choose a moment of tranquillity, to share with your loved ones.

The blue has never been as beautiful as it is now, in this natural backdrop of colours, tastes and perfumes.

 

 

Olives, lemons, oleanders, palms and bougainvilleas flourish in an enchanting inlet, where the mountains suddenly open up, mirrored in the intense blue of the water, like in a dream.

Limone, once a small fishing village, is today one of the most highly appreciated tourist centres, with a splendid lakeside promenade and camping grounds, hotels and modern residences, equipped with every comfort.

It has well-equipped beaches, street swarming with shops, bars and restaurants for every taste.

Limone, the home of tranquillity and courtesy, is the ideal place for a vacation on the Lake, year round.

 

 

The vestiges of the past are splendidly blended into the backdrop, conferring even greater harmony.

Thus, we can see the pillars of the ancient lemon houses rising from the shores exposed to the sun, which sweetly slope down towards the Lake.

In the surrounding area, the silvery foliage of centuries old olive trees ripple in the wind.

The old part of the village, set between the earth and water, opens up to reveal an infinite number of characteristic, peaceful corners.

The deep ties with the territory are still alive in the daily life that marches on: simplicity, hospitality and untiring work are the peculiarities of Limone entrepreneurs who make every effort, every day, to ensure that guests feel at home.

Nature alone generously offers considerable opportunities to enjoy leisure time, even for the less sporty: the Lake and its beaches, the itineraries that wind their way up to the ancient citrus fruit gardens, in the shade of the houses, the trails that branch out around the village, climbing up to the summits of the mountains that surround the village, providing uniquely beautiful views – an ideal habitat for mountain lovers and experts.

The multifunctional sports centre, the sports complex and the many tennis courts complete the array of proposals capable of meeting the requirements of both professional and amateur sportsmen.

 

 

Despite the presence of famous cultivations of lemons (the meaning of the city’s name in Italian), the town’s name is probably derived from the ancient lemos (elm) or limes (Latin: boundary, referring to the communes of Brescia and the Bishopric of Trento).

From 1863 to 1905 the denomination was Limone San Giovanni.

 

 

The first settlements found in the surrounding area of Benaco (the ancient name of the Lake) date back to the Neolithic period.

In fact, in the nearby Valley of Ledro you can visit a museum dedicated to the pile work houses from the Bronze Age found in that area.

 

 

In 600 BC, the Celtic tribes that inhabited the area were conquered by the Romans.

After this, the Lake’s historical development follows that of the rest of northern Italy: from the Longobards, to the arrival of Charlemagne, the Venetian Republic, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Italian Renaissance, the World Wars, up to the birth of the present Italian Republic.

 

 

However, the most important period of the social, economic and cultural development of Limone was the domination of the Venetian Republic or “Serenissima” (the Splendid) as it was called during the first half of the 15th century.

Due to the administration of the Serenissima, Limone developed from a typical rural village based on fishing and the growing of olives to the most northerly centre for the cultivation of citrus fruits, such as lemons, oranges and citrons.

 

Above: Flag of the Republic of Venice

 

They built the world famous lemon groves called Limonaia with high walls to protect the trees from the cold northeastern winds.

The huge columns in these groves were used to support wooden rafters which during winter covered the grove transforming it into a greenhouse.

 

 

However, things were not as easy as they may have seemed.

Soil had to be imported for the lemon trees from the southern part of the Lake, because the original soil was very poor as it consisted only of gravel.

The water supply for the lemon groves was a masterpiece of an irrigation system.

 

 

At the beginning of September 1786, when the famous German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had just turned 37, he “slipped away“, in his words, from his duties as Privy Councillor in the Duchy of Weimar, from a long platonic affair with a court lady, and from his immense fame as the author of the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther and the stormy play Götz von Berlichingen, and took what became a licensed leave of absence.

By May 1788, he had travelled to Italy via Innsbruck and the Brenner Pass and visited Lake Garda, Verona, Vicenza, Venezia, Bologna, Roma, the Alban Hills, Napoli and Sicily.

He wrote many letters to a number of friends in Germany, which he later used as the basis for Italian Journey.

 

Above: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)

 

Italian Journey initially takes the form of a diary, with events and descriptions written up apparently quite soon after they were experienced.

The impression is in one sense true, since Goethe was clearly working from journals and letters he composed at the time — and by the end of the book he is openly distinguishing between his old correspondence and what he calls reporting.

But there is also a strong and indeed elegant sense of fiction about the whole, a sort of composed immediacy.

Goethe said in a letter that the work was “both entirely truthful and a graceful fairy tale“.

It had to be something of a fairy tale, since it was written between 30 and more than 40 years after the journey, from 1816 to 1828-29.

 

Above: Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein’s Goethe in the Roman Campagna

 

The work begins with a famous Latin tag, Et in Arcadia ego.

This Latin phrase is usually imagined as spoken by Death — this is its sense, for example, in W. H. Auden’s poem called “Et in Arcadia ego” — suggesting that every paradise is afflicted by mortality.

 

Above: Wystan Hugh Auden (1907 – 1973)

 

What Goethe says is “Even I managed to get to Paradise“, with the implication that we could all get there if we chose.

If death is universal, the possibility of paradise might be universal too.

This possibility wouldn’t preclude its loss, and might even require it, or at least require that some of us should lose it.

The book ends with a quotation from Ovid’s Tristia, regretting his expulsion from Rome.

Above: Statue of Publius Ovidius Naso (aka Ovid) (43 BC – AD 18) commemorating his exile in Tomis (present-day Constanța, Romania)

 

Cum repeto noctem, Goethe writes in the middle of his own German, as well as citing a whole passage:

“When I remember the night…“

He is already storing up not only plentiful nostalgia and regret, but also a more complicated treasure:

The certainty that he didn’t merely imagine the land where others live happily ever after.

 

 

“We are all pilgrims who seek Italy“, Goethe wrote in a poem two years after his return to Germany from his almost two-year spell in the land he had long dreamed of.

For Goethe, Italy was the warm passionate south as opposed to the dank cautious North.

The place where the classical past was still alive, although in ruins.

A sequence of landscapes, colours, trees, manners, cities, monuments he had so far seen only in his writing.

He described himself as “the mortal enemy of mere words” or what he also called “empty names“.

He needed to fill the names with meaning and, as he rather strangely put it, “to discover myself in the objects I see“, literally “to learn to know myself by or through the objects“.

He also writes of his old habit of “clinging to the objects“, which pays off in the new location.

He wanted to know that what he thought might be Paradise actually existed, even if it wasn’t entirely Paradise, and even if he didn’t in the end want to stay there.

Some journeys – Goethe’s was one – really are quests.

Italian Journey is not only a description of places, persons and things, but also a psychological document of the first importance.

— W. H. Auden, Epigraph on Italian Journey

 

On 13 September 1786, Goethe passed by the village of Limone by boat and described with this words its lemon gardens:

“The morning was magnificent: a bit cloudy, but calm as the sun rose.

We passed Limone, the mountain-gardens of which, laid out terrace-fashion, and planted with citron-trees, have a neat and rich appearance.

The whole garden consists of rows of square white pillars placed at some distance from each other, and rising up the mountain in steps.

On these pillars strong beams are laid, that the trees planted between them may be sheltered in the winter.

The view of these pleasant objects was favored by a slow passage, and we had already passed Malcesine when the wind suddenly changed, took the direction usual in the day-time, and blew towards the north.“

(Italian Journey, Johann Wolfgang Goethe)

 

 

Apart from the cultivation of citrus fruits in the 19th century during the reign of the Habsburg family, Limone also offered other products such as magnesium, paper, quicklime and silkworms due to the mild climate.

Unfortunately, during World War I all these prosperous businesses came to a sudden end because of the geopolitical and strategic location of Limone.

The whole area, which was situated on the immediate border with Austria and which was in the active combat zone between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Italian Reign was completely evacuated.

When people returned to their homes after the war there was nothing left from the former activities and they had to start again by fishing and growing olives.

Throughout this whole period the only way to reach Limone was by water or through difficult mountain paths.

Until the 1940s the city was reachable only by lake or through the mountains, with the road to Riva del Garda being built only 1932, but today Limone is one of the most renowned tourist resorts in the area.

 

 

Limone’s hotel tradition has developed simultaneously with realization of the most important traffic artery of the Lake: the Gardesana Road.

Activities related to fishing and agriculture were gradually abandoned over the years, while increasing numbers of accommodation and commercial facilities have been created.

In the Seventies, many camping grounds grounds were transformed into hotels in order to meet the changing demands of the market and allowing entrepreneurs to extend the tourist season.

The expansion of the tourist season continued in the Eighties as well, as the village developed an accommodation capacity very similiar to the present day situation.

Over the last decade, collective efforts have privileged development of the quality of the offer:

This has led to important public and private works to requalify many areas, making Limone one of the most sought-after tourist destinations in the European market.

 

 

In order to document the socio-economic changes in Limone after the opening of the Gardesana Road the local council established a Museum of Tourism.

It was set up in the former local council building and inaugurated in 2011.

Inside the exhibition spaces display posters, calendars, holiday guides, souvenirs, etc.

 

 

A large area has also been dedicated to Limone’s citizen St. Daniele Comboni and the discovery of apoli protein A1, a good gene that helps to minimize the hardening of arteries and reduce heart disease.

 

Daniele Comboni, the founder of the Institutes for Comboni Missionaries, was born in Limone.

In the neighbourhood quarter Tesöl, Comboni’s life and work can be understood at the Tesöl Centre of the Comboni Missionaries.

Comboni (1831 – 1881) was an Italian Roman Catholic bishop who served in the missions in Africa and was the founder of both the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus and the Comboni Missionary Sisters.

 

 

Comboni was born on 15 March 1831 at Limone sul Garda in Brescia to the poor gardeners (working for a local proprietor) Luigi Comboni and Domenica Pace as the fourth of eight children.

He was the sole child to survive into adulthood.

At that time Limone was under the jurisdiction of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

 

Above: Austrian-Hungarian Empire before World War I

 

At the age of twelve, he was sent to school in Verona on 20 February 1843 at the Religious Institute of Verona, founded by Nicola Mazza.

It was there that he completed his studies in medicine and languages (he learnt French, English and Arabic) and prepared to become a priest.

 

Above: Images of Verona

 

On 6 January 1849 he vowed that he would join the African missions, a desire he had held since 1846 after reading about the Japanese martyrs.

 

(The Martyrs of Japan were Christian missionaries and followers who were persecuted and executed, mostly during the Tokugawa shogunate period in the 17th century.

More than 400 martyrs of Japan have been recognized with beatification by the Catholic Church, and 42 have been canonized as saints.

Martyrs of Japan can be seen within the context of Christian colonialism and Christianization.)

 

Above: The 26 Martyrs of Japan at Nagasaki. (1628 engraving)

 

On 31 December 1854 in Trento he received his ordination to the priesthood from the Bishop of Trent Johann Nepomuk von Tschiderer zu Gleifheim.

 

Above: Bishop of Trent Johann Nepomuk von Tschiderer zu Gleifheim (1777- 1860)

 

Comboni made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from 29 September to 14 October 1855.

 

(The Holy Land (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ הַקּוֹדֶשׁ Eretz HaKodesh, Latin: Terra Sancta; Arabic: الأرض المقدسة Al-Arḍ Al-Muqaddasah or الديار المقدسة Ad-Diyar Al-Muqaddasah) is an area roughly located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that also includes the Eastern Bank of the Jordan River.

Traditionally, it is synonymous both with the biblical Land of Israel and with the region of Palestine.

The term “Holy Land” usually refers to a territory roughly corresponding to the modern State of Israel, the Palestinian territories, western Jordan, and parts of southern Lebanon and of southwestern Syria.

Jews, Christians and Muslims all regard it as holy.

Part of the significance of the land stems from the religious significance of Jerusalem (the holiest city to Judaism), as the historical region of Jesus’ ministry, and as the site of the Isra and Mi’raj event of 621 in Islam.

The holiness of the land as a destination of Christian pilgrimage contributed to launching the Crusades, as European Christians sought to win back the Holy Land from the Muslims, who had conquered it from the Christian Eastern Roman Empire in the 630s.

In the 19th century, the Holy Land became the subject of diplomatic wrangling as the Holy Places played a role in the Eastern Question which led to the Crimean War in the 1850s.

Many sites in the Holy Land have long been pilgrimage destinations for adherents of the Abrahamic religions, including Jews, Christians, Muslims and Bahá’ís.

Pilgrims visit the Holy Land to touch and see physical manifestations of their faith, to confirm their beliefs in the holy context with collective excitation, and to connect personally to the Holy Land.)

 

Above: The map of the Holy Land by Marino Sanudo (drawn in 1320)

Map orientation: north pointing left.

 

In 1857 – with the blessing of his mother – Comboni left for Africa along with five other missionaries, also former students of Mazza.

His mother gave him her blessing and said to him:

“Go, Daniele, and may the Lord bless you“.

 

Comboni departed on 8 September 1857 with Giovanni Beltrame, Alessandro dal Bosco, Francesco Oliboni, Angelo Melotto and Isidoro Zilli who hailed from Udine.

 

Above: Piazza San Giacomo, Udine

 

Four months later, on 8 January 1858, Comboni reached Khartoum in Sudan.

His assignment was the liberation of enslaved boys and girls.

There were difficulties including an unbearable climate and sickness as well as the deaths of several of his fellow missionaries.

This, added with the poor and derelict conditions that the population faced, made the situation all the more difficult.

 

Above: Modern Khartoum

 

Comboni had written to his parents of the conditions and the difficulties that the group faced but remained resolved.

He witnessed the death of one of his companions and instead of deterring him he remained determined to continue and wrote:

“O Nigrizia o morte!” (translation: “Either Africa or death“)

 

 

By the end of 1859 three of the five had died and two were in Cairo as Comboni himself grew ill.

 

Above: Modern Cairo

 

Comboni was in his new surroundings from 1858 until 15 January 1859 when he was forced to return to Verona due to a bout of malaria.

He taught at Mazza’s institute from 1861 until 1864.

He soon worked out fresh strategies for the missions while back in his native land in 1864.

 

Above: Portrait of Nicola Mazza (1790 – 1865)

 

He visited St Peter’s Tomb in Rome on 15 September 1864 and it was while reflecting before the Tomb that he came upon the idea of a “Plan for the Rebirth of Africa” which was a project with the slogan “Save Africa through Africa“.

 

Above: St. Peter’s Tomb

 

Four days later, on 19 September, he met with Pope Pius IX to discuss his project.

 

Above: Pope Pius IX (1792 – 1878)

 

Comboni wanted the European continent and the Universal Church to be more concerned with the African continent.

He carried out appeals throughout Europe from December 1864 to June 1865 for spiritual and material aid for the African missions from people including monarchical families as well as bishops and nobles.

Travelling under an Austrian consular visa, he went to France and Spain before heading north to England and then setting off to Germany and Austria.

The humanitarian “Society of Cologne” became a main supporter of his work.

It was around this time that he launched a magazine – the first in his homeland to delve into the missions for it was designed to be an exclusive magazine for those in the missions.

 

Above: Cologne Cathedral (Köln Dom)

 

He established a male institute on 1 June 1867 and one for women in 1872 both in Verona: the Istituto delle Missioni per la Nigrizia (since 1894 the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus) and the Istituto delle Pie Madri (later the Comboni Missionary Sisters) on 1 January 1872.

On 7 May 1867, he had an audience with Pope Pius IX and brought with him twelve African girls to meet the Pope.

In late 1867 Comboni opened two branches of the order in Cairo.

 

Comboni was the first to bring women into this form of work in Africa and he founded new missions in El Obeid and Delen amongst other Sudanese cities.

Comboni was well-versed in the Arabic language and also spoke in several African dialects (Dinka, Bari and Nubia) as well as six European languages.

 

 

On 2 April 1868, he was decorated with the Order of the Knight of Italy but he refused this in fidelity to Pius IX.

On 7 July 1968, he left for France where he visited the shrine of La Salette on 26 July before heading to Germany and Austria.

 

Above: La Salette

 

On 20 February 1869 he left Marseilles for Cairo where he opened a third house on 15 March.

 

Among Comboni’s early companions during his early years in Africa was Catarina Zenab, a Dinka who would go on to serve as a missionary in Khartoum later in her life.

 

Above: Catarina Zenab (1848–1921)

 

On 9 March 1870, he left Cairo for Rome and arrived there on 15 March, where he took part in the First Vatican Council as the theologian of the Bishop of Verona Luigi di Canossa.

He formulated the “Postulatum pro Nigris Africæ Centralis” on 24 June which was a petition for the evangelization of Africa.

This received the signature of 70 bishops.

The First Vatican Council was terminated due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and the dissolution of the Papal States before the document could be discussed.

 

Above: First Vatican Council (1869 – 1870)

 

In mid-1877 he was named as the Vicar Apostolic of Central Africa and received his episcopal consecration as a bishop on 12 August 1877 from Cardinal Alessandro Franchi (1819 – 1878).

 

 

Comboni’s episcopal appointment was seen as a confirmation that his ideas and his activities – which some deemed to be foolish – were recognised as an effective means for the proclamation of the Gospel.

 

Above: St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Khartoum

 

In 1877, and again in 1878, there was a drought in the region of the mission while mass starvation ensued soon after.

The local population was halved and the religious personnel and their activities reduced almost to nothing.

 

 

On 27 November 1880, Comboni traveled to the missions in Sudan from Napoli (Naples) for the eighth and final time to act against the slave trade and, though ill, he managed to arrive in Khartoum on 9 August in summer and made a trip to the Nubia mountains.

 

Above: Images of Napoli

 

Above: The Nuba Mountains

 

On 10 October 1881, he died in Khartoum during the cholera epidemic at 10:00 pm in the evening.

He had suffered a high fever since 5 October.

His final words were reported to be:

“I am dying, but my work will not die.”

 

Pope Leo XIII mourned the loss of the bishop as a “great loss“.

 

Above: Pope Leo XIII (1810 – 1903)

 

Bishop Antonio Maria Roveggio (1850–1902) served as the order’s superior sometime after Comboni died.

 

Above: Bishop Antonio Maria Roveggio

 

The male order received the papal decree of praise on 7 June 1895 and full papal approval from Pope Pius X on 19 February 1910.

 

Above: Pope Pius X (1835 – 1914)

 

As of 2018, the men’s order operates in about 28 countries, including Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Brazil, Colombia and the Philippines.

The female order received the decree of praise on 22 February 1897 and papal approval on 10 June 1912, while in 2008 there were 1,529 religious in 192 houses.

That order operates in Europe – in countries such as the United Kingdom, in Africa – in nations such as Cameroon and Mozambique, in the Americas – in countries such as Costa Rica and Ecuador, and in Asia – in countries such as Israel and Jordan.

 

Above: Countries where the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus are active.

 

Above: St. Daniel Comboni Kindergarten in Eritrea

 

On 26 March 1994 the confirmation of Comboni’s life of heroic virtue enabled Pope John Paul II to title him as Venerable.

 

Above: Pope John Paul II (1920 – 2005)

 

The miracle required for Comboni to be beatified was investigated on a diocesan level in São Mateus from 10 December 1990 until 29 June 1992 before it received validation on 30 April 1993.

The miracle was the 25 December 1970 healing of the Afro-Brazilian child Maria Giuseppa Oliveira Paixão who underwent a stomach surgical procedure for an infection that grew worse over time.

But their attention turned to Comboni’s intercession and she was healed the next morning in a case that surprised the doctor.

The seven medical experts approved that science could not explain this cure on 9 June 1994, while six theologians agreed likewise on 22 November 1994, as did the C.C.S. members on 24 January 1995.

 

Above: Sao Mateus, Brazil

 

Pope John Paul II confirmed on 6 April 1995 that this healing was indeed a miracle and beatified Comboni in Saint Peter’s Basilica on 17 March 1996.

John Paul II confirmed this miracle on 20 December 2002 and scheduled the date for Comboni’s canonization in a papal consistory held on 20 February 2003.

The pope canonized Comboni in Saint Peter’s Square on 5 October 2003.

 

Above: St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City

 

The miracle in question was the healing of the Muslim mother Lubana Abdel Aziz (b. 1965) who – on 11 November 1997 – was admitted into a Khartoum hospital for a caesarean section.

The hospital was one that the Comboni Missionary Sisters managed.

The infant was born but the mother suffered from repeated bleeding and other serious problems and was on the point of death despite a blood transfusion.

The doctors were pessimistic about her chances but the nuns began a novena to Comboni.

The woman healed, despite the odds, on 13 November and was discharged from the hospital on 18 November.

 

Above: Panorama of Khartoum

 

At the Tesöl Centre in Limone, you can visit Comboni’s birth house, the Chapel (which was later built under the birth house) and the small but interesting Museum of Curiosities.

If you want to deepen your knowledge of Comboni, there is the possibility of visiting the multimedia exhibition and a thematic exhibition.

Or you can simply relax in the special and calm atmosphere present in the park that surrounds the Centre with a marvelous view over Limone and Lake Garda.

 

Above: Centro Comboniano Il Tesöl

 

In 1979, researchers discovered that people in Limone possess a mutant form of apolipo protein (called Apo A-1 Milano) in their blood, that induced a healthy form of high-density cholesterol, which resulted in a lowered risk of atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular diseases.

The protein appears to have given residents of the village extreme longevity – a dozen of those living here are over the age of 100 (for c. 1,000 total inhabitants).

The origin of the mutation has been traced back to a couple who lived in Limone in the 17th century.

Research has been ongoing to develop pharmaceutical treatments against heart disease based on mimicking the beneficial effects of the Apolipo A-1 mutation.

Above: Cartoon representation of the molecular structure of protein registered with 1nfn Code.

 

Apolipo proteins are proteins that bind lipids (oil-soluble substances, such as fat and cholesterol) to form lipoproteins.

They transport lipids (and fat soluble vitamins) in blood, cerebrospinal fluid and lymph.

The lipid components of lipoproteins are insoluble in water.

However, because of their detergent-like (amphipathic) properties, apolipo proteins and other amphipathic molecules (such as phospholipids) can surround the lipids, creating a lipoprotein particle that is itself water-soluble, and can thus be carried through water-based circulation (i.e., blood, lymph).

In addition to stabilizing lipoprotein structure and solubilizing the lipid component, apolipo proteins interact with lipoprotein receptors and lipid transport proteins, thereby participating in lipoprotein uptake and clearance.

They also serve as enzyme cofactors for specific enzymes involved in the metabolism of lipoproteins.

Apolipo proteins are also exploited by hepatitis C virus (HCV) to enable virus entry, assembly, and transmission.

They play a role in viral pathogenesis and viral evasion from neutralizing antibodies.

 

Apolipo protein A-1 Milano (also ETC-216 or MDCO-216) is a naturally occurring mutated variant of the apolipo protein A1 found in human HDL, the lipoprotein particle that carries cholesterol from tissues to the liver and is associated with protection against cardiovascular disease.

Apo A1 Milano was first identified by Dr. Cesare Sirtori in Milano (Milan), who also demonstrated that its presence significantly reduced cardiovascular disease, even though it caused a reduction in HDL levels and an increase in triglyceride levels.

 

Above: Logo of the University of Milano

 

The Apo A-1 Milano mutation was found by University of Milan researchers after their 1974 investigation of a low HDL / high triglyceride phenotype exhibited by Valerio Dagnoli of Limone.

Limone had only 1,000 inhabitants at the time and when blood tests were run on the entire population of the village, the mutation was found to be present in about 3.5% of the local population.

The mutation was traced to one man, Giovanni Pomarelli, who was born in the village in 1780 and passed it on to his offspring.

 

Above: Cartoon representation of Apo A-1

 

In the 1990s, researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center showed that injection of a synthetic version of the mutant Apo A-1 into rabbits and mice could reverse vascular plaque buildup.

 

Above: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles

 

Apo A-I Milano has been shown to reduce atherosclerosis in animal models and in a small phase 2 human trial.

Recombinant adeno-associated virus 8 (AAV8) mediated Apo A-I Milano gene therapy in combination with low-cholesterol diet induces rapid and significant regression of atherosclerosis in mice.

 

The first examination of using the mutant Apo A-1 in humans was conducted through a three way collaboration between the University of Milan and the companies Pharmacia and Upjohn in 1996, focusing on treatment of atherosclerosis.

 

 

The Apo A-1 Milano Trial, published in JAMA in 2003, was the first published placebo-controlled, two-dose level trial in humans.

This was a secondary prevention trial in that those included were individuals who presented to a participating hospital with unstable angina and agreed to consent to a rigorous trial, well beyond usual clinical practice testing and treatment, testing whether this HDL protein variant, which was so effective in animals, would also work in humans.

This trial was initiated by Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic after prompting by Roger Newton of Esperion to examine the effects of the mutant protein using intravascular ultrasound imaging.

 

 

Esperion provided the protein, code named ETC-216, for the duration of the trial.

 

 

Due to its potential efficacy, it was speculated that development of synthetic ApoA-1 Milano might be a key factor in eradicating coronary heart disease.

Esperion Therapeutics, a high tech venture capital start-up, demonstrated efficacy in both animals and humans, spending many millions of dollars over several years to conduct a single human trial which showed impressive and rapid efficacy by IVUS of coronary arteries.

However, over the course of the project they produced only enough Apo A-1 Milano to partially treat 30 out of the 45 people in the randomized trial, giving them one weekly dose each for five weeks.

The results of the trial were published in JAMA (5 November 2003).

 

 

Hoping to develop a more effective treatment than their current product Lipitor, Pfizer purchased and internalized Esperion shortly before JAMA published the results of the Apo A-1 Milano trial.

Currently, no drugs based on Apo A-1 Milano are commercially available.

 

 

Rights to Apo A-1 Milano were acquired in 2003 by Pfizer.

Clinically known as ETC-216, Pfizer did not move trials forward, probably because the complex protein is very expensive to produce and must be administered intravenously, limiting its application compared to oral medications.

 

Pfizer, after the CETP agent torcetrapib failed in a large human safety trial, decided to exit the cardiovascular market in 2008, though they continue to market Lipitor aggressively.

Esperion, divested by Pfizer in 2008, is back in business and continue to work on HDL mimetic therapies.

The company established an agreement with Trans Gen Rx as a protein source.

Calgary-based SemBioSys Genetics Inc. was a biotechnology company that was using safflower to develop commercial quantities of Apo A-1 Milano.

On 11 October 2011, SemBioSys Genetics signed a multi-product commercialization and platform collaboration agreement with Tasly Pharmaceuticals of Tianjin (China).

In May 2012, SemBioSys terminated its operations and announced that Tasly had terminated their agreement.

On 22 December 2009, the Medicines Company announced it had entered into an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with Pfizer Inc. for Apo A-I Milano which it then renamed MDCO-216.

On 12 July 2010, the Medicines Company signed a pharmaceutical development and manufacturing contract with OctoPlus (a Netherlands-based drug delivery and drug development company) to perform process development and clinical manufacturing of MDCO-216.

After a trial study failed to produce significant enough results compared to other drugs being tested, in 2016 the Medicines Company discontinued development of MDCO-216.

 

 

Cardigant Medical is a Los Angeles-based biotech company currently working to commercialize Apo A-1 Milano to treat various vascular diseases.

Above: Logo of Cardigant Medical

 

One man of Limone (Daniele Comboni) spread the word of God to the continent of Africa.

Another man of Limone (Giovanni Pomarelli) left a heritage of health for the entire world to benefit from.

 

 

Never underestimate the power of one person to make a difference in the world.

 

The wife and I were on vacation.

She was Bond, James Bond.

 

Above: Ian Fleming’s original sketch impression of James Bond

 

I felt as helpless as Mr. White, though not tossed into the boot (trunk) of an Aston Martin I was a front seat passenger in a Capri careening through the tunnels of the Strada della Forra, the prisoner of a wife driven by purpose, bound for Limone sul Garda.

 

Above: Jesper Christensen as Mr. White

 

Quantum of Solace is a 2008 spy film and the 22nd in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions.

 

 

Directed by Marc Forster and written by Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, it is a direct sequel to Casino Royale, and the 2nd film to star Daniel Craig as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond.

 

 

Moments after the end of Casino Royale, James Bond is driving from Lake Como to Siena, Italy, with the captured Mr. White in the boot of his Aston Martin DBS V12.

 

 

Quantum of Solace was shot in six countries.

Malcesine, Limone sul Garda and Tremosine in Italy during March 2008.

Four weeks were scheduled for filming the car chase at Lake Garda and Carrara.

 

 

On 19 April, an Aston Martin employee driving a DBS to the set crashed into the lake.

He survived, and was fined £400 for reckless driving.

 

 

Another accident occurred on 21 April, and two days later, two stuntmen were seriously injured, with one, Greek stuntman Aris Comninos, having to be put in intensive care.

Filming of the scenes was temporarily halted so that Italian police could investigate the causes of the accidents.

 

Above: Aris Comninos

 

Stunt co-ordinator Gary Powell said the accidents were a testament to the realism of the action.

Rumours of a “curse” spread among tabloid media, something which deeply offended Craig, who disliked that they compared Comninos’ accident to something like his minor finger injury later on the shoot (also part of the “curse“).

Comninos recovered safely from his injury.

 

Above: Gary Powell

 

Considering the speed with which my wife likes to drive I wondered whether I would recover from mine.

 

 

Where Goethe headed south from Limone to start a new life, we headed north from Limone to soon resume our old lives.

It was summer and it was hot, unbearably hot.

But on this day everything changed.

 

We arrived during a storm.

Though the winds were violent and the sky threatened I was jubliant.

I had found the days insufferable and the nights intolerable.

Being August and high season, everywhere seemed overflowing with everyone.

Even though Limone is a popular tourist destination there were fewer tourists on the streets and in the shops on this day.

 

 

In a sense, the present lockdown of Limone (and the rest of Italy) is somewhat reflected in my memories of the town.

Folks huddled indoors, afraid to face the current situation.

 

 

We shopped and ate outside during breaks in the weather.

 

 

Our feet found the way to the Museum of Tourism and the Castèl Lemon Grove.

 

 

My memory sees white tiles in the pavement and cobblestone leading to the white pillars and walls of the limonaie facing the sun so as to catch life-sustaining, life-affirming rays of the distant star.

 

 

The lemon groves stand proudly above the lake shore.

There may have been no more than 100 citrus plants lovingly assembled between stone pillars and beneath wooden frame roofs that could be covered during a storm and left bare during days of sunshine and warmth, but the visitor feels dwarfed and insignificant in an orchard that feels larger than its reality.

 

 

I have no memory of whether we visited the town’s fishing museum or olive oil exhibition.

Where the former contains a typical boat with the tools used everyday for fishing by Limone’s forefathers, the latter holds an olive grove with silver leaves upon timeless trees and an ancient mill that coldly presses olives that produce an oil of very high quality.

 

 

Our path following led us to the Parish Church of the Holy Benedict built in 1691 on the ruins of a former Roman basilica mentioned in Pope Urbano III’s Papal Bull in 1186.

In the past it was the duty of the church to keep records up to date and so the parish church contains the oldest known record of Limone’s social events.

Holy Services are held daily “where the three men I admire the most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost” smile upon this citrus coast amongst masterpieces of ecclesiastical art dating back to the 16th century.

It was here that Carboni was baptized as a boy.

We light a candle in memory of my wife’s beloved grandfather, a prayer for his eternal salvation.

 

Above: The Parish Church of St. Benedict

 

We stumble upon the Church of St. Peter, the oldest church in Limone, dating back to the 9th century.

On the road to Tremosine on via San Pietro among olive trees, St. Peter is a simple church with a single nave and a white marble stoop.

The eyes and the spirit are drawn to the Church’s beautiful frescoes of the Last Supper and portraits of Saints Peter, Lucia and Zeno.

The simplicity of this small church evokes the essential inspiration of a community once deeply inspired by deep religious sentiment.

Until post-war years the population of Limone used St. Peter’s for penitentiary processions to implore the success of sowing and harvesting their crops, as well as to occasionally beseech immunity from natural disasters, illnesses and epidemics.

I wonder if the present lockdown allows the faithful of Limone to beseech God for deliverance from Covina-19.

The outside of the Church is powerful in its simplicity.

A small portico is inscribed with phrases bearing witness to important events that affected the town deeply, such as the plague of 1630, the defeat of Napoleon, bad olive harvests and seasons of sorrow.

Until the First World War, the portico was attached to a bell tower which was intentionally demolished because it was considered a dangerous landmark for the nearby artillery installations in Crocette.

What remains of this miniature House of God is therefore extremely precious.

St. Peter’s is an artistic, historical and religious relic, bearing truth to the town’s legacy of longevity, that Limone will endure while that which tests the resolve of the town will eventually pass.

 

Above: The Church of St. Peter

 

Another church, the Church of St. Rocco, situated at the northern end of the town centre, was built during the 16th century by those who survived the Plague and is dedicated to the patron saint believed to have saved the settlement from extinction.

Sadly time has not been gentle to St. Rocco as the Church’s frescoes and tiny tower were seriously damaged during World War I.

Stone steps lead up to the Chapel where faith has not faltered though the Church crumbles.

 

Above: The Church of San Rocco

 

In the historical town centre stands the former Chapel of St. Charles, built in 1905 by a Limone citizen in memory of her husband.

During WWI, the Chapel was used as a food stuffs cache for the town’s troops.

In 1930, the Chapel’s alter and sacred furnishings were removed and the premises used for civil events.

During the Second World War, the Chapel was again requisitioned for military use.

It now sits in silence, neither sacred or sublime, neither religious or secular.

 

Above: the former Chapel of San Carlo

 

Limone believes in miracles, in the divine.

In addition to churches and chapels, frescoes and crucifixes, niches, commonly referred to as “capitèi“, testify to the profound faith that endures.

Symbols of faith, icons of hope, images of gratitude, are triumphiantly displayed upon the facades of houses, at crossroads, along the road that connects the village to the countryside and on the paths that climb up towards the mountains that scratch the heavens.

Via Capitelli is typical of this ecclesiastical expression as the population was particularly devoted to the capitèi of the Madonna del Bis on this road, St. Louis on Via Fasse, St. Marcus on Nanzéi and St. John Nepomuceno on the bridge of Via Tamas.

 

 

Limone was a town in which I wish we had lingered longer, for days rather than hours.

We strolled between stalls selling nuts and candy, handbags and backpacks, lemons the size of melons on display amongst bottles of limoncello, packages of pasta and flasks of olive oil.

Our kitchen still contains a butter dish, a brightly painted memento of Limone sul Garda.

Temptations were many: caffes and gelaterias and ristorantes offering cucina italiana.

 

 

From here the world feels small and I wonder, as I often do, what it would be like to be in Limone walking the early morning streets in an off-season month.

 

 

When I consider Limone I think of a place that abides.

A place that awaits my return.

I only need to believe that the virus that despoils Italy will pass.

I only need to believe in miracles.

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Lonely Planet Italy / Rough Guide Italy / http://www.visitlimonesulgarda.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Humanitarian Adventure

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 10 December 2019

There are things in Switzerland (and in our existence) that we simply take for granted:

And the thing about Swiss stereotypes is that some of them are true.

Diplomatic?

Yes.

Efficient?

Absolutely.

Boring?

Only at first glance.

Despite being one of the most visited countries in Europe, Switzerland remains one of the least understood.

It is more than simply the well-ordered land of cheese, chocolate, banks and watches.

It is more than a warm summer mountain holiday upon a cobalt blue lake, more than skiing down the slopes of some vertiginous Alp, more than postcard pristine beauty.

It is easy for the tourist to remain blissfully unaware of Swiss community spirit, that it speaks four official languages, that it possesses stark regional differences from canton to canton, that it has exubrant carnivals, culinary traditions and sophisticated urban centres.

 

 

With its beautiful lakeside setting, Geneva (Genève) is a cosmopolitan city whose modest size belies its wealth and importance on the world stage.

French-speaking and Calvinistic it is a dynamic centre of business with an outward-looking character tempered by a certain reserve.

Geneva’s major sights are split by the Rhône River that flows into Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) and through the city’s several distinct neighbourhoods.

On the south bank (rive gauche), mainstream shopping districts Rive and Eaux-Vives climb from the water’s edge to Plainpalais and Vieille Ville, while the north bank (rive droite) holds grungy bars and hot clubbing Pâquis, the train station area and some world organizations.

 

 

A little over 1 km north of the train station is the international area, home to dozens of international organizations that are based in Geneva –  everything from the World Council of Churches to Eurovision.

Trains and buses roll up to the Place des Nations.

Gates on the Place des Nations open to the Palais des Nations, now occupied by UNOG, the United Nations Office at Geneva, the European headquarters of the United Nations, accessible only to visitors who sign up for a tour.

The huge monolith just off the square to the west, that looks like a bent playing card on its edge, is WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization), the highrise to the south is ITU (the International Telecommunications Union), just to the east is UNHCR (the United Nations High Commission for Refugees), and so on, and so on, and so on, an infinite combination of letters of the alphabet in an infinite variety of abbreviations and acronyms.

The giant Broken Chair which looms over the square was installed in 1997 for the international conference in Ottawa (Canada’s capital) banning the use of land mines, a graphic symbol of the victims of such weapons.

 

 

Geneva is also the birthplace of the International Red Cross / Crescent / Crystal Movement.

And it was the latter, along with the International Museum of the Reformation, that compelled me to visit Geneva.

 

 

(For details about the Musée Internationale de la Réforme, please see Canada Slim and the Third Man in my other blog, The Chronicles of Canada Slim.)

 

Genevè, Suisse, mardi le 23 janvier 2018

Housed within the HQ of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Musée International de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant Rouge chronicles the history of modern conflict and the role the Red Cross has played in providing aid to combatants and civilians caught up in war and natural disasters.

Enter through a trench in the hillside opposite the public entrance of UNOG and emerge into an enclosed glass courtyard beside a group of bound and blindfolded stone figures.

The stone gathering represents the continual worldwide violation of human rights.

 

 

Inside, above the ticket desk, is a quotation in French from Dostoevsky:

“Everyone is responsible to everyone else for everything.”

 

Above: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881)

 

A free audioguide takes you through the Museum.

 

Twenty-five years ago, Laurent Marti, a former ICRC delegate, had the idea of creating the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum.

 

Above: Laurent Marti

 

Marti won the wives of US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Gorbachev over to his cause in a bid to obtain the support of their respective countries, together with that of local and international societies and personages and of various multinational companies representing a full range of human activities.

 

Above: Nancy Reagan (née Davis) (1921 – 2016)

 

Above: Raisa Gorbacheva (née Titarenko) (1932 – 1999)

 

The goal of the Museum is to emanate a very powerful atmosphere where no one leaves without having been shaken and deeply moved by what they had seen.

Suffering, death, wounds and mutiliations can be followed by a time of healing, restoration, reunification and an opportunity to be happy again, a right that seemed to have been withdrawn.

Of course, the scars remain deep within the human soul, but the hope of restoration and of a return to normalcy is the message of the Museum.

 

 

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is dedicated to preventing and alleviating human suffering in warfare and in emergencies, such as earthquakes, epidemics and floods.

The Movement is composed of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the 188 individual national societies.

Each has its own legal identity and role, but they are all united by seven fundamental principles:

•  humanity
•  impartiality
•  neutrality
•  independence
•  voluntary service
•  unity
•  universality

The interactive chronology covers one and a half centuries of history, starting with the creation of the Red Cross.

For each year, the events listed include:

•  armed conflicts which caused the death of more than 10,000 people and/or affected more than one million people
•  epidemics and disasters that caused the deaths of more than 1,000 people and/or affected more than one million people
•  significant events in the history of the Movement
•  cultural and scientific milestones

 

 

In 1859 Henri Dunant was travelling on business through northern Italy.

 

Above: Henri Dunant (1828 – 1910)

 

He found himself close to the Solferino battlefield just after the fighting.

The battle of Solferino was a key episode in the Italian Wars.

 

 

With the support of France under Napoleon III, Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, King of Piedmont, endeavoured to unite the different Italian states.

In spring 1859 the Piedmont forces clashed with the Austrian Empire, which had control over Lombardy and Venetia.

On 24 June 1859, the Franco-Piedmontese troops defeated the Austrians at Solferino, in a battle that left more than 40,000 dead and wounded.

Overwhelmed by the sight of thousands of wounded soldiers left without medical care, Dunant organized basic relief with the assistance of the local people.

 

 

“On that memorable 24th of June 1859, more than 300,000 men stood facing each other.

The fighting continued for more than 15 hours.

No quarter is given.

It is a sheer butchery, a struggle between savage beasts.

The poor wounded men that were picked up all day long were ghastly pale and exhausted.

Some, who had been the most badly hurt, had a stupified look.

How many brave soldiers, undettered by their first wounds, kept pressing on until a fresh shot brought them to earth.

Men of all nations lay side by side on the flagstone floors of the churches of Castiglione.

The shortage of assistants, orderlies and helpers was cruelly felt.

I sought to organize as best I could relief.

The women of Castiglione, seeing that I made no distinction between nationalities, followed my example.

“Siamo tutti fratelli” (we are all brothers), they repeated feelingly.

 

Above: Ossuary of Solferino

 

But why have I told of all these scenes of pain and distress?

Is it not a matter of urgency to press forward to prevent or at least alleviate the horrors of war?

Would it not be possible, in time of peace and quiet, to form relief societies given to the wounded in wartime?

Societies of this kind, once formed and their permanent existence assured, would be always organized and ready for the possibility of war.

Would it not be desirable to formulate some international principle, sanctioned by a Convention inviolate in character, which, once agreed upon and ratified, might constitute the basis for societies for the relief of the wounded?”

 

Above: Ossuary of Solferino

 

Back home in Geneva, Dunant wrote A Memory of Solferino.

The book was published in 1862 and was an immediate success.

 

 

In it, Dunant made two proposals:

• the formation of relief societies which would care for wounded soldiers
• the establishment of an international convention to guarantee their safety

Those ideas led, the following year, to the foundation of the Red Cross, and ten months later to the first Geneva Convention.

 

 

In 1863, in response to Dunant’s appeal, Gustave Moynier persuaded the Geneva Public Welfare Society to consider the possibility of training groups of volunteer nurses to provide relief for the wounded.

A committee was set up, the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, the future ICRC, was born.

 

Above: Gustave Moynier (1826 – 1910)

 

The need to defend human dignity has been a constant concern throughout history.

From the Code of Hammurabi (1750 BC) to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), texts from all periods and cultures exist to testify to that.

Those texts were frequently written in response to incidents in which human dignity was shown no consideration – slavery, chemical weapons, civilian bombing, concentration camps, atomic bombing, sexual violence, landmines, child soldiers, prisoners with no legal status.

Throughout time mankind has determined:

• that the strong should not suppress the weak (Code of Hammurabi – Mwaopotamia 1750 BC)

Above: Stele of the Code of Hammurabi

 

• that peace is possible between warring nations (Treaty of Kadesh, the oldest peace treaty known to man and the first written international treaty –  Egypt 1279 BC)

Above: Treaty of Kadesh

 

• that we should be free to practice our own religions (Cyrus Cylinder – Persia 539 BC)

Above: Cyrus Cylinder

 

• that we should not do unto others what we don’t wish done to ourselves (The Analects of Confucius – China 480 BC)

Above: The Analects

• that we should live lives of non-violence with respect towards all (The Edicts of Ashoka – India 260 BC)

Above: The Edicts of Ashoka

 

• that power should not be used arbitrarily nor imprisonment without just cause (The Magna Carta – England 1215)

Above: Magna Carta

 

• that all persons are free and that no one is a slave to another (The Manden Charter – Mali 1222)

Above: The Manden Charter

 

• that women and children and the insane have dignity and rights that must be respected (The Viqayet – Muslim Spain 1280)

 

• that mankind has natural and inalienable rights (freedom, equality, justice, community) (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen – France 1789)

 

• that the wounded need to be treated regardless of nationality, that all human beings are free and equal in dignity and in rights (Universal Declaration of Human Rights – United Nations 1948)

 

The original title of the initial Geneva Convention was the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.

It had only ten articles and one sole objective:

To limit the suffering caused by war.

Article 7 provided for the creation of the protective emblem of the red cross.

This document laid the foundations of international humanitarian law, marks the start of the humanitarian adventure.

By 2013, 194 nations are party to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949.

(See http://www.icrc.org for the complete list.)

 

The Museum explains how the Geneva Conventions developed from one man’s battlefield encounter.

After Dunant’s publication of A Memory of Solferino in November 1862, Gustave Moynier (1826 – 1910), chairman of the Geneva Public Welfare Society, in response to Dunant’s appeal, persuaded Society members the following February to consider the possibility of training groups of volunteer nurses to provide relief for the war wounded.

An ad hoc committee was set up – the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded.

The future ICRC was born.

 

Above: ICRC Headquarters, Geneva

 

“Ambulances and military hospitals shall be recognized as neutral and as such protected and respected by the belligerants as long as they accommodate wounded and sick.” (Article 1)

“Inhabitants of the country who bring help to the wounded shall be respected and shall remain free.” (Article 5)

“Wounded or sick combatants, to whatever nation they may belong, shall be collected and cared for.” (Article 6)

“A distinctive and uniform flag shall be adopted for hospitals, ambulances and evacuation parties.” (Article 7)

A red cross on a white background was adopted in 1863, followed by a red crescent, a red lion and red sun (1929) and a red crystal (2005).

 

To protect the victims of conflict, the ICRC has at its disposal several instruments defined by international humanitarian law.

“At all times, parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick.”

“The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack.”

“The parties to the conflict shall endeavour to conclude local agreements for the passage of medical personnel and medical equipment.”

“Civilian hospitals may in no circumstances be the object of attack.”

“It is prohibited to commit any acts of hostility directed against historic monuments, works of art or places of worship.”

“Works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear stations shall not be made the object of attack.”

“It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensible to the survival of the civilian population.”

 

Above: The Red Cross in action, 1864

 

The Second World War (1939 – 1945) involved 61 countries in war and caused the death of around 60 million people, more than half of whom were civilians.

In 1945 more than 20 million people had been displaced.

In 1995 the ICRC publicly described its attitude to the Second World War Holocaust as a “moral failure“.

 

Above: Images of World War II (1939 – 1945)

 

The persecution of the Jews by the Nazis began shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933 and subsequently continued to intensify, culminating in systematic extermination from 1942 onwards.

 

Above: Auschwitz, Poland, May 1944

 

At the time, the ICRC had no legal instrument to protect civilians.

The 1929 Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War applied only to members of the armed forces.

The organization thus considered itself powerless in the face of the anti-Semitic fury of the Nazi dictatorship.

 

 

Thus in October 1942 the Committee refused, in particular, to launch a public appeal on behalf of civilians affected by the conflict.

Although the International Red Cross endeavoured to provide aid for Jewish civilians, it erred on the side of caution.

 

Above: Jewish women, occupied Paris, June 1942

 

It was not until the spring of 1944 that a change of strategy took shape.

As Germany’s war efforts collapsed, ICRC delegates belatedly managed to enter some concentration camps, becoming voluntary hostages in order to prevent the further massacre or forced evacution of the prisoners.

 

Above: Auschwitz, May 1944

 

The harsh lesson of the Second World War had been learned.

In 1949 the Fourth Geneva Convention was adopted:

It provides protection for civilians during armed conflict.

It was complemented in 1977 by additional protocols which reinforce the protection given to victims of armed conflicts, international or domestic.

In particular, the additional protocols established the distinction between civilians and combatants.

 

In an armed conflict, the ICRC’s mandate is to ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions.

When the ICRC observes serious violations of the Conventions, it points them out to the countries concerned in confidential reports.

However, on occasion, that information has been published in the press:

• Le Monde during the Algerian War

Above: Images of the Algerian War (1954 – 1962)

 

• The Wall Street Journal about Abu Ghraib Prison

Above: Lynndie England with “Gus“, Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq

 

• The New York Review of Books / Wikileaks about Guantanamo Prison

Above: Guantanamo “Gitmo” Prison, Cuba

 

Such leaks put the ICRC in a difficult position as discretion is a necessary part of its work and its discussions with the authorities.

Its confidentialiy policy actually facilitates access to detainees, wounded people and groups of civilians.

When humanitarian diplomacy fails, the ICRC then resorts to a more open form of communication.

It then issues press releases publicly condemning serious violations of the Conventions.

In the 1980s the United Nations Security Council set up ad hoc tribunals to judge the crimes committed in former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda.

In 1998 the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established.

It was a permanent institution with the power to open investigations, to prosecute and to try people accused of committing war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity.

The ICC began its work in 2005 by opening three investigations into crimes:

• in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• in Uganda
• in the Sudan

The existence of a permanent international court gives the world the means of determining facts and of punishing those responsible for the crimes.

It gives victims an opportunity to have their voice heard.

 

Above: Logo of the International Criminal Court

 

Poverty, migration, urban violence….

All of them are present-day threats to human dignity.

All over the world, large sections of the population are living in extremely precarious hygenic conditions.

 

Economic changes are forcing more and more people to emigrate.

Those migrants, who frequently have no identity documents, are exploited and ostracized.

In some megacities, whole districts are at the mercy of armed groups which terrorize the inhabitants.

Each of those situations presents a challenge to which a response must be found.

 

Above: Syrian refugees, Ramtha, Jordan, August 2013

 

Since the First World War, the ICRC has had the right to visit prisoners of war and civilian detainees during an international armed conflict.

In other situations, the right to meet prisoners must be negotiated with the authorities.

Visiting prisons, talking to the detainees and making lists of their names are ways of preventing disappearances and ill treatment.

After each prison visit, ICRC delegates write a report.

They must have access to all places of detention and be allowed to repeat their visits as often as necessary.

The visits always follow the same procedure.

Following a meeting with those in charge of the prison, the delegates inspect the premises: cells, dormitories, toilets, the exercise yard, the kitchen and any workshops.

They draw up a list of prisoners and interview them in private without witnesses.

At the end of the visit, the delegates inform those in charge of the prison of their observations.

They then prepare a confidential report for the authorities.

 

 

The visitor sees many photographs of prison visits, including those to a German POW camp in Morocco, to French POWs in a German Stalag, political detainees in Chile, detainees in Djibouti….

But it is items from these visits given by prisoners to the ICRC delegates that tell far more emotional stories.

Some examples:

• a model village showing ICRC activities in Rwanda
• a doll figure of a female delegate made in an Argentinian prison
• a pearl snake made by Ottoman prisoners
• a necklace with a Red Cross pendant made by a lady prisoner in Lebanon
• a ciborium (a container for Catholic mass hosts – symbols of the body of Christ) made of bread by Polish prisoners of conscience
• a bar of soap carved into the shape of a detainee in a cell made by a Burmese artist imprisoned for suspected ties to the opposition party

 

An installation in the Museum that followed seemed somewhat incongruous….

Therein the visitor can change and produce large flows of different colours by touching a wall.

The idea is that the larger the number of visitors, the richer the flow of colours, so as to provide an interactive experience that appeals to people’s senses, emotions and feelings, thus all visitors become part of a colourful celebration of human dignity.

Honestly….

This felt more like a gimmick to capture children’s hyperactive attention than an exhibit that strengthens human unity, designed more to entertain than educate.

 

 

Human beings are social beings who are defined by their links with others.

When those links are broken, we lose part of our identity and our bearings.

Of the many activities the ICRC performs, the giving and receiving of news and finding one’s loved ones again are understood to be elements of stability that are critical during crisis situations.

 

 

This Museum has, like the Reformation Museum in this city, as other museums in other cities and countries I have visited, its own Chamber of Witnesses – video testimonials whose lifelike likenesses are meant to invoke within the voyeur a sense of how we are not unlike those speaking with us electronically.

We see Toshihiko Suzuki, a dentist and specialist in craniofacial anatomy, tell us how he identified victims of the 2011 tsunami.

We learn of the experience of Sami El Haj, an Al Jazeera journalist held in Guantanamo from 2002 to 2008.

We consider the life of Liliose Iraguha, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide.

We marvel at the resilience of human beings by listening to Boris Cyrulnik, a French neuropsychiatrist and ethologist.

 

 

During a conflict or a natural disaster, many people are cut off from their families – by capitivity, separation or disappearance.

Tracing one’s loved ones and passing on one’s news become basic needs.

 

 

Originally intended for victims of war, the ICRC tracing services subsequently expanded to include persecuted civilians.

More recently, tracing activities have been extended to families who have become separated as a result of natural disasters or migration.

The International Prisoners of War Agency (1914 – 1923) was established by the ICRC, shortly after the start of the First World War – which involved 44 states and their colonies and caused the death of more than 8 million people, 20 million wounded and in the immediate post-war period of epidemics, famine and destitution another 30 million deaths.

Organised in national sections, its archives contain six million index cards that document what happened to two million people: prisoners of war, civilian internees and missing civilians from occupied areas.

The cards contain information about individual detainees. when they were taken captive, where they were held and, if relevant, when they died.

People who were without news of a loved one could present a request to the Agency, which would then send them what information it had.

Today the Agency’s documents are still used to reply to requests from families as well as to enquiries from historians.

And, as far as I could tell, the Agency is now in the Museum.

It contains:

• 5,119 boxes with 6 million index cards
• 2,413 files containing information provided by the belligerents
• 600,000 pages filling 20 linear metres of general files

This location is fitting for it was in the Rath Museum in Geneva where the Agency once was.

In all, more than 3,000 volunteers, most of them women, worked there during the conflict.

During the War, the Agency dispatched 20 million messages between detainees and their families and forwarded nearly 2 million individual parcels as well as several tonnes of collective relief.

The Agency’s role was also to obtain the repatriation of prisoners who had been taken captive in breach of the Geneva Conventions: doctors, nurses, stretcher bearers and military chaplains.

It helped to ensure that the wounded were returned home or interned in neutral countries.

 

 

The pacifist writer Romain Rolland was one of the Agency’s first volunteers:

“Its peaceful work, its impartial knowledge of the actual facts in the belligerent countries, contribute to modify the hatred which wild stories have exasperated and to reveal what remains of humanity in the most envenomed enemy.”

 

Above: Romain Rolland (1866 – 1944)

 

It was not until the end of the Second World War that Europe realized the extent of the tragedy affecting civilians.

The International Tracing Service (ITS) was then established.

The ITS has files on more than 17 million people: civilians persecuted by the Nazis, displaced persons, children under the age of 18 who had become separated from their families, forced labourers and people held in concentration camps or labour camps.

The ITS was set up in Bad Arolsen, Germany, and has helped millions of people to trace their loved ones.

 

Above: International Tracing Services, Bad Arolsen, Germany

 

Nowadays, the need to trace missing people also extends to the victims of natural disasters and to migrants, using not only index cards, but photo tracing (used to find nearly 20,000 children missing during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda), distributions of name lists (for example, the Angola Gazette – a list of people who went missing during the Angolan Civil War from 1975 to 2002) and the Internet (for example, http://www.familylinks.icrc.org).

 

Despite all tracing efforts, sometimes missing people do not get found, do not go home.

In that case, receiving confirmation of death puts an end to uncertainty and enables families to begin the process of mourning and to start to rebuild their lives.

The erection of memorials is one way of honouring the dead and of giving them a place of dignity in the collective memory.

 

 

For example, in 1995 the city of Srebrenica was attacked by forces under the command of General Radko Mladic.

 

 

Mladic had the women and children of this refuge of hounded Muslim civilians separated from the men and forced to leave Srebrenica.

The men were hunted down and killed.

More than 8,000 people went missing.

By 2010 only 4,500 victims had been identified and buried.

 

 

When faced with a collective tragedy and without a dead body, families are completely at a loss.

A memorial is sometimes their only means of paying tribute to the dead, of giving them a place in the collective consciousness and of recalling the events that led to those disappearances.

Examples include victims from:

• the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima

Above: Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbuko Dome)

 

• the deportation of Jews from France

 

• the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia

 

• the Soviet gulags

 

• the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine

 

• the civil war in Peru

 

• the earthquake in Sichuan, China

 

• the 9/11 attack in New York City

 

Communication is often disrupted during a conflict or a natural disaster.

In circumstances like that, receiving news from one’s family is a source of joy and relief.

There are different ways of sending news:

• Red Cross messages (in use for more than a century)
• Radio messages
• Videoconferencing
• Satellite telephones

 

A Red Cross message is a short personal missive that was first used in the Franco-Prussian War (1870 – 1871).

It is still in use today.

Each year, thousands of messages are distributed in more than 65 countries with the help of the ICRC.

To make sure that they reach the addressees, messengers sometimes travel long distances to extremely remote areas.

The messages themselves are generally very simple.

The main thing is to enable people to pass brief news on to their loved ones – their state of health, their place of shelter or detention.

 

 

For example, the Museum shows messages:

• sent by a French POW to his godmother in Switzerland
• exchanged by a French POW in Morocco and Algeria and his family in France
• written by aircraft passengers taken hostage in Jordan in 1970
• illustrated by children during the Yugoslav conflict in 1994
• by a Sudanese detainee in Guantanamo
• from a Greek child refugee following the Cyprus conflict of 1974
• from a mother to her son in Liberia
• from a little girl writing to her parents in the Congo
• written by a woman to her brother in prison in Kirghizstan

 

In Columbia, the radio programme Las voces del secuestro broadcasts family messages to people held hostage in the jungle, enabling more than 18,000 people to send news to their loved ones.

 

 

In Bagram Prison in Afghanistan, no family visits are allowed, so in 2008 the ICRC and the American authorities developed a videoconferencing system to enable the detainees to communicate with their loved ones.

In the space of just a few months, 70% of the detainees were able to contact their families.

 

Above: Parwan Detention Facility, Bagram, Afghanistan

 

And finally the Restoring Family Links exhibition concludes with works by Congolese artist Chuck Ledy and Benin artist Romuald Hazouma.

 

 

Humanity has progressed by refusing to accept the inevitability of the phenomena that endanger it.

In the face of natural disasters and epidemics, communities take action to prevent the worst, to save lives and to preserve resources.

Another Chamber of Witnesses:

• Benter Aoko Odhiambo, the head of a Kenyan orphanage and the initiator of a market gardening programme
• Abul Hasnat, a Bangladeshi school teacher and a Red Crescent volunteer
• Madeleen Helmer, the Dutch head of the ICRC Climate Centre
• Jiaqi Kang, a Chinese student in Switzerland

 

After all, prevention concerns us all.

Blast Theory, a group of British artists, designed the game Hurricane to test the effectiveness of natural disaster preparedness activities.

Planting mangroves, constructing high-level shelters, building up reserve stocks of food and organizing evacuation exercises are all part of the game and involve actors such as ICRC delegates, village leaders, experts and volunteers.

As the hurricane strikes, the players have to evacuate the villagers.

At the end of the game tells us how many lives were saved.

 

 

Posters are key communication instruments in prevention initiatives.

The link between pictures and text makes the messages easy for everyone to understand.

The Museum’s collection of some 12,000 posters from more than 120 countries tells of the many different activities developed by the ICRC.

Nowadays, as the impact of global warming becomes clearer, the ICRC is increasingly involved in natural disaster preparedness.

 

 

The ICRC was very quick to perceive the role that the cinema could play in promoting its activities.

Some films focused on prevention – hygiene, epidemics and accidents.

Others on training volunteers in first aid or life saving.

While preventing illnesses and accidents is ancient history, the management of risks associated with natural disasters is a more recent development.

A workshop at the Haute école d’art et de design (Gèneve) was given a free hand to create new montages using more than 1,000 films from the Museum’s collection.

 

Above: Haute école d’art et de design, Genève

 

Prevention is first and foremost about saving lives.

A number of different measures can be taken to provide protection: building shelters, installing early warning systems, carrying out evacuation exercises and providing hygiene education.

All these activities mobilize the local communities and the humanitarian organizations.

They sometimes call for substantial investment.

It is easy to raise funds during disasters when emotions are running high.

It is more difficult to raise funds for longer-term work.

Nonetheless, one dollar invested in prevention is two to ten dollars saved in emergency relief and reconstruction work.

 

 

All of this is brought into sharp focus by the three “théâtres optiques” (Cyclone, Tsunami and Latrines), created for the Museum by the French artist Pierrick Sorin.

 

Above: Pierrick Sorin

 

Let’s take, for example, Bangladesh.

 

Above: Flag of Bangladesh

 

In 1970, Cyclone Bhola caused one of the worst natural disasters in history.

A 10-metre high wave and winds of 220 km/hour caused the death of 500,000 people here.

A cyclone preparedness programme was then launched, which included an early warning system, the construction of shelters and the training of evacuation volunteers.

 

 

In November 2007, Cyclone Sidr, one of the most powerful ever recorded, hit parts of Bengal and Bangladesh, affecting nearly 9 million people and causing vast economic damage.

1.5 million people were evacuated before the Cyclone struck.

Although 3,500 people died, this number of deaths was far below the 1970 disaster.

 

 

Or let’s consider Brazil.

 

Above: Flag of Brazil

 

Infectious diarrhoea can affect people throughout the world.

It is most frequently caused by water that has been contaminated by faeces.

Around 2 million people die from diarrhoea every year, most of them children in developing countries.

In 2008 more than 2 billion individuals were without suitable latrines.

Almost half of them defecated in the open air.

In 1997, the authorities in Salvador de Bahia in Brazil launched a water purification programme in the city.

A university team monitored 2,000 children under the age of 3, most of whome were living in impoverished urban districts.

The results showed that water purification had a direct impact on health:

The overall number of cases of diarrhoea fell by 22% in the city and by 43% in the poorest areas.

 

Above: Images of Salvador de Bahia, Brazil

 

The Museum was never designed with the intention of casting blame or lavishing praise upon particular countries or particular individuals, but rather it shows the situations, both general and particular, in which the ICRC functions and to further a better understanding of what they do.

The ICRC aids victims, not on account of their particular nationality or their particular cause, but purely and simply because they are human beings who are suffering and are in need of help.

It strives to assuage all human distress which has no hope of effective aid from other sources.

The ICRC desires to relieve above all that suffering which is brought about by man, brought about by man’s inhumanity to man, and is more painful on that account and more difficult to relieve.

 

The most terrible form of man’s inhumanity to man is war and that is why the idea of the Red Cross was born in the field of battle.

The Red Cross is a third front above and across two belligerent fronts, a third front directed against neither of them but for the benefit of both.

The combatants in this third front are interested only in the suffering of the defenceless human being, irrespective of his nationality, his convictions or his past.

The ICRC fights wherever they can against all inhumanity, against every degradation of the human personality, against all injustice directed against the defenceless.

These neutrals on this humanitarian front are free of the prejudice and hostility which is so natural to men engaged in warfare.

The dominant idea and the essence of the Geneva Convention is equality of treatment for all sick and wounded persons whether they are friends or enemies.

 

It is the fulfilment of the cry of Solferine:

Siamo tutti fratelli.

We are all brothers.

 

 

The Museum is a living embodiment of that humanitarian adventure.

It is an edifice of humanity working for humanity.

And it is good.

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Lonely Planet Switzerland / Rough Guide to Switzerland / Red Cross Museum, The Humanitarian Adventure / The International Committee of the Red Cross, Basic Rules of the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols / Dr. Marcel Junod, Warrior without Weapons

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Italian Twilight

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Tuesday 23 July 2019

There are advantages and disadvantages to everything.

 

In less than a fortnight I shall board a train to Romanshorn, followed by a ferry across the Lake of Constance (Bodensee) to Friedrichshafen then a train to Lindau, another to Kaufbeuren, another to Füssen and finally a bus to Schwangau to join my wife for a long weekend break.

 

Above: Schwangau

 

This entails taking the second earliest departing train at 05:55 from our local station and a journey of five and a half hours to be reunited with the wife on holiday for her birthday at a spa resort in the Allgäu region of Bavaria.

I do not enjoy spas, wellness centres, health farms, but I do enjoy my wife’s companionship.

 

 

The things we do for love.

 

It is this romantic compulsion, this sweet surrender of one’s will for the beautiful harmony found with another person that makes me recall some compromises I have made for my better half on some journeys we have made together.

Unlike my wife whose ambition is fixed once she has determined to do something, I rarely kick when her female perogative decides that what I planned will now not happen.

I have wanted to climb the Tour Eiffel in Paris, drive to Roscommon in Ireland, and stop more often en route from Freiburg im Breisgau to Bretagne, but her jaw was set, her foot was put down, her nerve defiant.

Ultimately life somehow went on without the tower ascent, the Irish detour or the frequent French stops, but my childish petulence of wishes denied is still remembered.

Such pettiness a husband can harbour!

 

 

There was another such moment last year on our northern Italian vacation….

 

Highway 45 between Gardone Riviera and Limone sul Garda, 6 August 2018

Barely 3 km east of Gardone, the road passes through the twin comune of Toscolano-Maderno, which straddles the delta of the Toscolano River.

Toscolano is predominantly an industrial centre while Maderno is exclusively a tourist centre, stretching in a picturesque gulf with a wonderful promenade among villas and gardens and a decent beach.

 

Above: Toscolano – Maderno

 

According to a legend, the ancient, mysterious town of Benaco, sunk into Lake Garda owing to an earthquake in 243, was built near Toscolano.

A memorial tablet on the bell tower of Chiesa San Andrea (St. Andrew’s Church) in Maderno bears a dedication of the Benacensi to Marcus Aurelius.

 

 

The Orto Botanico “G.E. Ghirardi” is a botanical garden operated by the University of Milan, and located on via Religione, Toscolano-Maderno.

The garden was established in 1964 as the Stazione Agricola Sperimentale Mimosa under the direction of Professor Giordano Emilio Ghirardi.

In 1991 it became part of the University of Milan, and today primarily cultivates plants of interest for medicine and pharmaceutics, but also supports research in transgenic plants, rice, etc.

Collections include Camptotheca acuminata, Eschscholzia, Nicotiana, Nigella, Scutellaria, and Solanaceae.

 

 

A car ferry crosses from here to Torri del Benaco on the eastern shore of Lake Garda.

 

 

The valley behind the comune has a tradition of paper-making dating from the 4th century.

Following the riverside road up into this beautiful, wooded valley brings the traveller past many disused paper mills to the Fondazione Valle delle Cartierie, with a well-presented museum offering an insight into the processes and importance of the industry.

 

 

Toscolano-Maderno is a Shangri-la for shady walks or sumptious picnics, but this day we have no time for a stroll nor food in the car for a sit-down meal.

We are on the way to Riva del Garda, our next night’s stop, the weather is sweltering and all we dream about is the AC promised at the Hotel ahead.

We left this morning after two nights in Sirmione, spent much of the day exploring Gardone Riviera and still had some distance to travel.

I was complacent, quiet and uncomplaining.

 

 

We arrived at Gargnano, said to be the prettiest village on Lake Garda.

Traffic ran above and inland from the town, leaving old Gargnano mostly noise-free.

The narrow difficult road north of town means tour buses don’t bother trying to reach Gargnano.

It is more workman’s base than tourist resort.

 

Above: Gargnano

 

Nonetheless Gargnano has a few claims to fame:

 

The naval operations on Lake Garda in 1866 during the Third Italian War of Independence (20 June – 12 August 1866) consisted of a series of clashes between flotillas of the Kingdom of Italy and the Austrian Empire between 25 June and 25 July that year, as they attempted to secure dominance of the lake.

The Austrian fleet, based on the eastern bank of the lake, was larger, more modern and better-armed than their Italian counterpart, and successfully maintained control of the waters, hindering the movement of Italian troops.

 

Above: The Austrian Steamer Hess

 

At the outset of the war, the border between Austria and Italy ran down the middle of the lake.

The Brescia region to the west lay within Italy while Verona and the lands east of the lake were Austrian.

 

 

Austria controlled Riva del Garda at the northern tip of the lake, as well as the important fortress of Peschiera del Garda on the west bank of the River Mincio at its southern end.

Peschiera was part of the so-called ‘Quadrilateral‘ of strong core Austrian defences, leaving the exposed eastern shore of Lake Garda an area of potential weakness, vulnerable to Italian infiltration.

This might have involved a strike from the north end of the Lake up the valley of the Chiese River to threaten Trento and cut off the supply lines of the Austrian forces in the Veneto.

It might also have involved a landing of forces behind Peschiera to threaten Verona.

 

Above: Peschiera

 

On the Italian side, the buildup of Austrian naval strength caused concerns about a possible Austrian attack across the lake towards Brescia.

At the start of hostilities of 25 June, the Austrians immediately sailed out to threaten Salò and prevent any movement of Italian troops.

On 30 June, the Austrian ships bombarded the railway station at Desenzano, a supply and communications point for the Italian Volunteer Corps of Giuseppe Garibaldi, but caused only minor damage.

 

Above: Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807 – 1882)

 

More substantial action took place on 2 July, at 5 am, when four Austrian gunboats, including the Hess and Franz Joseph, bombarded the centre of Gargnano, where there was a strong concentration of Garibaldi’s forces.

The bombardment caused extensive damage to homes, one dead and eight wounded among the defending volunteers of the 2nd Regiment.

 

 

The Austrian flotilla was eventually compelled to withdraw under fire from an Italian battery commanded by Captain Achille Afan de Rivera.

 

Above: Captain Rivera (1842 – 1904)

 

Other skirmishes took place on the lake every few days.

On 6 July, Italian volunteers forces, equipped with nine long-range guns borrowed from a coastal battery at Maderno, ambushed the Austrian gunboat Wildfang at Gargagno.

The gunboat was hit twice, for no losses for Garibaldi’s army.

 

At the same time, the Italian flotilla sailed out from Salo to chase the armoured gunboat Wespe, on patrol off Maderno.

The Austrian vessel managed to disangage after receiving support from Speiteufel and Scharfschütze.

Italian sources claim that the Wespe was forced to seek shelter at Malcesine.

 

Above: Malcesine

 

The next significant combat occurred on 19 July when the Italian paddle steamer Benaco head out from Salo for Gargnano towing the sailboat Poeta, both ships carrying reinforcement troops and loaded with supplies for the volunteers in the mountains of Valvestino and Tremosine.

The Benaco was suddenly attacked by two Austrian gunboats, the Wildfang and Schwarzschűtze, which forced it in to shore near Gargnano, where most of the crew, troops and supplies were landed during the night.

 

The next morning Austrian whalerboats were able to capture the abandoned Benaco, still with a small gun and some rifle ammunition in her holds, and tow it away as a prize to Peschiera.

One of the whalerboats capsized under Italian fire, but was eventually recovered by the Austrian flotilla.

Three Austrian sailors were wounded, while heavy shelling on Gargnano killed two Italian volunteers.

The Poeta managed to sail away, only to sink shortly after off San Carlo.

 

A second convoy from Salo, consisting in another sailboat escorted by the Italian flotilla, was forced back two days later by the Austrian gunboats Speiteufel, Uskoke and Wespe.

The Benaco was handed back to the Italian government at the end of the hostilities.

 

Above: Flag of the Kingdom of Italy (1861 – 1946)

 

The final action of the war took place at the north end of the Lake.

After skirmishes on the Lake on 24 July, Manfroni learned that the Austrian army had abandoned Riva del Garda, which was one of his key supply points.

To prevent the town falling to Garibaldi, he steamed north and occupied the fortifications in the town with his marines, and on 25 July his forces were able to hold off Garibaldi’s volunteers until nightfall.

 

Above: Moritz Manfroni von Montfort (1832 – 1889)

 

At 10 p.m. the Hess arrived with a telegram confirming that a ceasefire had been declared between Austria and Italy.

 

Above: Flag of the Austrian (Habsburg) Empire (1804 – 1867)

 

Giovanni Beatrice known as Zanzanù (1576 – 1617) was an Italian bandit of the Republic of Venice .

He was one of the most heinous bandits of the Serenissima responsible, with his band, between 1602 and 1617, of about 200 murders, according to the testimony of the bandit and assassin Alessandro Remer of Malcesine , who was hired in 1609 by a group of merchants from Desenzano del Garda to exterminate the Zannoni band.

From the 22 sentences of bans pronounced by the Venetian magistrates against Beatrice, from 1605 to 1616, the murders clearly attributed to him did not reach 10 and those that were committed in the years 1605 – 1609 were against those who had killed his father.

This is the image that emerges from the judicial sources that testify both the numerous sentences imposed against him, and the activity of the ruthless bounty hunters aiming to obtain prizes and benefits offered by the Republic of Venice in exchange for his killing.

 

Above: Giovanni Beatrice (aka Zanzanù)

 

In fact, a more accurate examination of the same sources allows us to outline the figure of a man who became an outlaw to defend his honor and that of his family.

A bandit who soon became legendary for the abuses and injustices that were committed against him.

The vicissitudes of the life of this man and the extreme complexity of the social relations within which they took place are emblematic of the transformations that affected Europe, determining the figure of the traditional bandit and of the conflicting dynamics that animated it, in that the outlaw was considered a dangerous enemy of social tranquility.

 

Giovanni Beatrice (or Beatrici), nicknamed by the locals “Zanzanù” or “Zuan Zanone” (Giovanni Zanone), was born in Gargnano in 1576, to Giovanni Maria Beatrice of the “Zanon” family and his wife, Anastasia.

His wife Caterina had numerous children: Anastasia born in 1598, Margherita in 1599, Pietro Antonio in 1601, Anastasia in 1602, Elisabetta Antonia in 1604, Giovan Maria in 1608.

 

He acted with a band of accomplices, known as the “degli Zannoni“, and a dense network of connivances, even high positions, in the Riviera di Salò, territory of the Republic of Venice , and in the Upper Garda of the episcopal principality of Trento, killing, stealing and extorting anyone.

In a short time with his criminal enterprises Zanzanù became the terror of the population and the concern of the Veneto supervisors.

 

Above: Flag of the Republic of Venice (697 – 1797)

 

The first news of Beatrice dates back to 24 March 1602, when in Bogliaco, during a military parade of the “cernide“, the Venetian popular militia, of which he was a part, wounded by stabbing – with the complicity of his uncle Giovanni Francesco Beatrice called “Lima” – Francesco Sette of Maderno, the son of Riccobono, a bitter rival of his family and killed a friend of the Seven who had intervened in defense.

The two fugitive assassins were subsequently banished from all the territories of the Serenissima, but despite this they enjoyed high protection as guests of Giovanni Gaudenzio Madruzzo, captain of the Rocca of Riva del Garda and related to the prince bishop of Trento, Carlo Gaudenzio Madruzzo.

 

Above: Bogliaco

 

This first and convulsive period was marked by the killing of his father Giovan Maria, which took place in 1605 by some of his enemies.

A period that he would remember for the rest of his life:

“The father of I, Giovanni Zannoni of the Riviera of Salò, the ordinary son of those who descend to the lake, and from whom he derived the food of all his poor family, while he lived quietly, founded a solemn peace with a signed oath, over the sacrament of the altar, was wickedly slain by someone of the Riviera.

For this so inhumane and barbarous act, being sure of the cruelty of men, induced by desperation, I resolved to avenge such a serious offense and to secure my own life, having taken the path of arms, I avenged with the deaths of the enemy the loss of the father and the privation of the way of supporting my family, for which operations I was banished and persecution continued, I  responded with new vendettas.”

 

The whole affair, which had as its decisive and ruthless protagonist the young Zanzanù, is in fact understandable only in the light of a harsh conflict in the years 1602 – 1605 between the Beatrice di Gargnano and the Sette families of Monte Maderno.

A conflict that most likely originated from a rivalry, for reasons of honor, between the sons of Giovan Maria Beatrice and those of Riccobon Sette, a wealthy landowner of Vigole in Monte Maderno.

However the wounding of Francesco Sette by Giovanni Beatrice did not constitute itself as the triggering element of the struggle without quarter which in the following years would see the two families facing each other.

 

In 1603 both Riccobon and Francesco Sette suffered the repercussions carried out by the administrator of Salò and the Venetian magistrates against their respective son and brother Giacomo.

For the protection and aid granted to Giacomo, Riccobon Sette ended up in prison in Salò, while his brother Francesco was in turn forced to leave the State.

 

Above: Salò

 

The situation precipitated at the beginning of the spring of 1603, when Giacomo Sette was killed in Armo on 14 April by his accomplice, Eliseo Baruffaldo di Val Vestino, who took his head to Salò for the ritual recognition.

These were perhaps the events that led Riccobon Sette to restore peace with the Beatrice of Gargnano.

The peace act was stipulated in August 1603 in the monastery of San Francesco di Gargnano, by Fra Tiziano Degli Antoni, a common friend of both parties.

The Beatrice were represented by Giovan Maria himself, while the archpriest of Gargnano, Bernardino Bardelli, brother-in-law of Riccobon Sette, was engaged for the opposing faction.

Riccobon Sette, in fact, was still in prison, while his son Francesco was banished.

However, the killing of the latter by some bounty hunters precipitated the situation.

 

Above: Monastery of San Francesco di Gargnano

 

On 16 June 1604 Riccobon Sette, still in prison in Salò , addressed the representatives of the Magnifica Patria, lamenting the loss of his two children and the difficult situation in which he found himself.

Upon leaving prison the opposition between the two families was rekindled.

The murder of Giovan Maria Beatrice by assassins sent by the archpriest of Gargnano pushed the conflict to extremes.

 

In the years 1605 – 1607 Beatrice in fact carried out several coups against his adversaries and enemies, always managing to escape the numerous ambushes by the bounty hunters on his trail.

It was not so for two of his companions, Eliseo Baruffaldo and Giovan Pietro Sette. known as Pellizzaro, who in November 1606 were killed by some bounty hunters and some enemies of the Beatrice whom the Provveditore General in the Mainland, in all secrecy, had sent on their trail.

The two were killed on 11 November 1606 in a night ambush stretched over the mountains of Gargnano, and their severed heads displayed in the square of Salò.

 

The spiral of violence that followed the feud between the two families helped to define the image of Zanzanù, especially starting from the years 1608 -09, when he was now unable to defend himself by resorting to the ordinary ways of justice.

He was thus credited with many crimes of which he was certainly not responsible (such as robberies and thefts).

 

 

He remembered, in 1616 in a plea directed to the Council of Ten:

“I confess to being guilty of many notices, but all for private crimes and none for the slightest of public and state affairs, nor with conditions excluded from the present I am not even entitled to compensate anyone, but let me be quite right in saying that, since many excesses have been committed by others under my name, of those who are out of hope of being able to free me, I have never cared to get rid of them.”

 

On 13 February 1609 in Tremosine, Zanzanù attacked, robbed and injured the doctor Oliviero, killed Gabriele Leonesio and stole an arquebus in a house.

Escaping to Limone sul Garda, on the night of February 13, he fell in an ambush at the port of Riva del Garda, where the band led by his uncle Giovanni Francesco “Lima” was targeted by the bandit Alessandro Remer of Malcesine who intended to claim the bounty.

Giovanni Beatrice was saved by jumping into the lake and swimming, while his brother Michele Zanon, Bernardo and Giovanni Battista Pace, known as “Parolotto“, of Salò were killed.

Giovanni Francesco “Lima“, although wounded in the thigh, managed to take refuge in Limone sul Garda, where he was, the next day, shot and then barbarously beheaded.

 

Above: Limone sul Garda

 

The most striking action of Giovanni Beatrice took place on 29 May 1610, when he was involved, according to the accusations of the Venetian magistracy, in the murder in the Cathedral of Salò of the Brescia magistrate Bernardino Ganassoni, podestà of the place, who was attending the solemn mass in honor of Saint Herculaneum.

The murder was carried out by Antonio Bonfadino who shot point-blank, and despite the presence of the escort soldiers he managed to escape.

 

Above: Salò Cathedral

 

In the following days Beatrice tried to approach the Brescian representatives who came to Salò during the process.

To them the bandit reported that, in exchange for a pardon, he would reveal the main culprits of the killing of Ganassoni.

 

 

Giovanni Beatrice’s involvement in the murder of the podestà Bernardino Ganassoni was in reality the work of the convergence of interests of administrator Giovan Battista Loredan, merchant Alberghino Alberghini and inquisitor Oltre Mincio Leonardo Mocenigo.

Loredan was worried that the motives that led to the murder of the podestà would emerge, so the involvement of the feared bandit would in fact make the procedural position of Martin Previdale and the other defendants definitively unrecoverable with him and with the same mayor.

The merchant Alberghino Alberghini, present in Salò in early June 1610 , together with the band of bounty hunters led by Alessandro Remer, pursued the same goal, aiming in turn to involve the two brothers Bonifacio and Ambrogio Ceruti.

 

Arriving on the Riviera in the first days of October 1610, Leonardo Mocenigo promptly endorsed the work of Loredan condemning to the scaffold one of the false witnesses involved in the trial.

 

 

Among the mountain shelters, in the cave called “Cùel Zanzanù“, in the locality of Martelletto, near Droane, in Val Vestino, they killed and plundered, according to the report by administrator Lunardo Valier of 15 April 1606 and sent to the Senate of Venice, on 29 September 1611, the wealthy Stefano Protasio of Toscolano with ten accomplices.

 

 

Despite the harsh repression carried out by Antonio Mocenigo, captain of Brescia, against banditry prevailing in the Riviera of Salò, through executions, the confiscation of property and banning from the Serenissima, Beatrice continued undaunted in his criminal exploits.

Between 1602 and 1609 the band “Zanoni” robbed the “cavallari” (travellers on the public road), assaulted boats on Lake Garda laden with goods, tyrannized the rural population, robbed the “mountains of mercy” of Manerba del Garda and Portese taking away 6,000 scudi and killed, according to estimates by bandit Alessandro Remer of Malcesine, about 200 people.

 

Above: Manerba del Garda

 

Hunted by the administrator Giovanni Barbaro, Zanzanù contacted the duchy of Parma, offering himself as a mercenary for Ranuccio I Farnese with the rank of lieutenant of infantry, then moved to the Cremonese until 1614 .

Returning to the Riviera in 1615, Zanzanù resumed his criminal activities.

 

Above: Duchy of Parma flag (1545 – 1731)

 

On 24 June 1615 the administrator and Captain of Salò, Marco Barbarigo, informed the Senate that Zanzanù was sheltered in Val Vestino, the jurisdiction of the lords of Lodrone, with two priests of that valley who he had made his prisoners.

 

On 27 June, in the municipality of Capovalle, the Beatrice gang clashed with a department of cappelletti.

After furious gunplay they wounded the governor’s lieutenant Vucocrutt.

 

Above: Capovalle

 

The repressive activity carried out against Beatrice in this period is attested by the sentences pronounced by, the Provveditore and Capitano of the Riviera, Marco Barbarigo, in June and July 1615.

The administrator turned to the numerous supporters of the bandit, who did not disdain to help him and to host him, despite the severe penalties, threatening them on several occasions.

In particular, two women of Gargnano were condemned who, regardless of the grave consequences, were banished because, as the sentence said, they were “so bold and fearless as to leave their homes and rejoice with said Zanone, touching their hands and making them different welcome.”

 

The following year, Beatrice proposed the payment of a substantial sum of ducats to the municipalities of Tremosine and Maderno in exchange for his enlistment in the service of the Republic of Venice engaged in the Gradisca war against Austria.

The community of Gargnano, in June 1616, presented a petition from Beatrice to have it forwarded to the Heads of the Council of Ten.

In it the famous bandit, seizing the opportunity of the ongoing war with the Archdukes, offered himself, together with some of his companions, “to come and serve where your Serenity will appeal to me .“

Even if the proposal was not accepted it however reveals the desire of the feared bandit to return to the places where he had lived serenely his youth.

 

Above: Greatest extent of the Venetian Empire

 

On 17 August 1617, following the attempted kidnapping of the wealthy Giovanni Cavalieri di Tignale, Zanzanù was chased by armed youths from the village to the Valle del Gianech, and after a furious gunfight that caused four deaths among the bandits and six among the Tignalese, Beatrice fell at last.

His body was taken to Salò on the 19th.

Hanging from the gallows his body was exposed to the public until consummation, while the head was delivered to the authorities in Brescia.

 

Above: Brescia Castle

 

A large part of the adult population of the six villages that made up the Tignale community took part in the battle.

Among the five who fell during the bloody battle there were also some of the older and wealthy men of the community, who were more motivated to settle accounts with the famous outlaw.

Zanzanù was almost certainly killed by Antonio Bertolaso ​​of Aer who, along with Maderno’s cousin Girolamo Gasperini and the group of soldiers who accompanied them, joined the bandits who were attempting their last escape.

Zanzanù and his two companions, survivors of the previous clashes, faced with the arrival of Gargnano’s men, had in fact been forced to retreat and find a last and improvised refuge in the valley of the Monible.

 

 

In reality the provincial of Salò was not satisfied.

Suspicious of the number of deaths among the six villages that made up the Tignale community, he ordered an investigation to see if there had been any complicity or aid from some sectors of the local population towards the killed bandit.

Even if this suspicion was not ascertained, the investigation reveals the inherent mistrust of the authorities towards the obvious support and aid that a small part of the most humble people of the Riviera del Garda had for some time offered to Beatrice.

 

The controversial and legendary figure of Giovanni Beatrice is still remembered today by the people of the area of Alto Garda and Val Vestino.

Here, in fact, children born out of wedlock are still called fiöi del Zanzanù (sons of Zanzanù).

If some people have no hesitation in pointing it out the terrible bandit was the author of many murders and heinous actions, others believe that his figure enjoyed a certain sympathy and consensus among the people.

The latter believe that it was not the common people who hunted the brigand, but were instigated or hired by those lords (nobles, landowners, wealthy merchants) against whom Zanzanù was raging.

 

 

Pietro Bellotti (1625–1700) was an Italian painter active in the Baroque period.

 

Above: Self portrait of Pietro Bellotti

 

Born in Volciano di Salò in 1625, he gained fame as a painter of portraits and heads of characters.

He worked for Cardinal Mazzarino, Cardinal Ottoboni (the future Pope Alexander VIII), the Elector of Bavaria and others.

He was patronized by Pope Alexander VIII and by the Duke of Uceda.

In Mantova he was “superintendent of the city and villa galleries” for Gorizaga.

After wandering from court to court he returned to Lake Garda and died in poverty in Gargnano in 1700.

His principal works are:

• La Parca Lachesi (1654) at the Museum of Stuttgart
• The Parcae Lachesis, private collection, Brescia
• Self-Portrait (1658) at the Uffizi Gallery, where he is depicted with a cup in his hand and a scroll with the inscription: “Hinc Hilaritas“
• Two Peasants’ Heads at the Pinacoteca di Bologna;
• Philosopher in the Pinacoteca di Feltre;
• Old Head at the Correr Museum;
• Medea at the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo;
• Maiden with a Turban in the Braunschweig Museum

 

Above: The Old Pilgrim, Pietro Bellotti

 

Enrica Bianchi Colombatto is an Italian actress, usually known by her stagename of Erika Blanc.

Her most notable role was as the first fictional character Emmanuelle in Io, Emmanuelle (A Man for Emmanuelle)(1969).

 

 

Blanc starred in several cult European horror films, including:

• The Third Eye (Il Terzo Occhio)(1966)
• Kill, Baby, Kill (Operazione Paura)(1966)

• So Sweet… So Perverse (Cosi’ Dolce… Cosi’ Perversa)(1969)
• The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (La Notte Che Evelyn Usci’ Dalla Tomba)(1971)
• The Devil’s Nightmare (La terrificante notte del demonico)(1971)

• The Red Headed Corpse (La rossa dalla pelle che scotta)(1972)

• Mark of the Devil, Part II (1973).

Her other film credits include roles in:

• Django Shoots First (Django spara per primo)(1966)
• Target Goldseven (Tecnica di una spia)(1966)
• Blood at Sundown (La più grande capina del West)(1966)
• Halleluja for Django (1967)
• The Longest Hunt (Spara, Gringo, spara)(1968)
• Seven Times Seven (7 volte 7)(1968)
• Hell in Normandy (Brigada suicida)(1968)
• Long Arm of the Godfather (La mano lunga del padrino)(1972)

• Tony Arzenta (1973)

• The Stranger and the Gunfighter (La dove non batte il sole)(1974)
• Il domestico (The Domestic)(1974)
• I figli di nessuno (Nobody’s Children)(1974)
• Eye of the Cat (Attenti al buffone)(1976)
• La portiera nuda (The Naked Doorwoman)(1976)
• Dream of a Summer Night (Sogno di una notte d’estate)(1983)

 

She recently returned to films with small but intense roles under the direction of Turkish-born director Ferzan Özpetek, acting as Antonia’s mother in Le fate ignoranti (The Ignorant Fairies)(2001) and as the sensitive, alcohol-addicted Maria Clara in Cuore Sacro (Sacred Heart)(2005).

In 2003 she starred as the grandmother in Adored (Poco più di un anno), directed by Marco Filiberti.

 

In 1943 Gargnano hosted Mussolini who arrived there on 10 October, where he occupied, in the San Giacomo area, Villa Feltrinelli (now a luxury hotel).

The Duce, who had recently established the Italian Social Republic, lived in the villa with his wife, Donna Rachele, and children Romano and Anna Maria.

 

Above: Benito Mussolini (1883 – 1945)

 

Diodato “Uto” Ughi is an Italian violinist and conductor.

He is considered one of Italy’s greatest living violinists and is also active in the promotion of classical music in today’s culture.

When he was young he started to play the violin and he made his debut at 7 years old, at the Teatro Lirico di Milano.

At 12 years he was considered a mature artist.

Ughi involves himself in many activities to promote music culture.

He is the founder of several music festivals, namely “Omaggio a Venezia“, “Omaggio a Roma” and “Uto Ughi per Roma“.

In tandem with Bruno Tosi, Uto Ughi instituted the musical prize “Una vita per la Musica“. (“A life for music“)

On 4 September 1997, Ughi was commissioned Cavaliere della Gran Croce by the Italian President and in 2002 he received a degree honoris causa in Communication studies.

He has won various awards, the most prestigious “Una vita per la musica – Leonard Bernstein” (23/6/1997), “Galileo 2000” prize (5/7/2003) and the international prize “Ostia Mare” (8/8/2003).

 

Above: Uto Ughi

 

Oscar Alberto Ghiglia (born 13 August 1938) is an Italian classical guitarist.

Born in Livorno to an artistic family – his father and grandfather were both famed painters, his mother an accomplished pianist – Oscar Ghiglia had to choose between a path strewn with brushes and colours and a world cut into harmony and melody.

Though his early choice produced a few hundred water colours and a number of oil paintings, he soon realized music was his way.

For this decision he thanks his father, who one day made him pose for a painting showing a guitarist.

For this he had to hold his father’s guitar, a companion to his artistic musings in front of his forming works.

This painting was the start to a lifetime of disciplined dedication to music.

Oscar Ghiglia graduated from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and soon began study with Andrés Segovia, who was his major influence and inspiration during his formative years.

Later Oscar Ghiglia “inherited” Segovia’s class in Siena’s Accademia Chigiana and spread his own teaching around the five continents in a sister vocation to his concerts.

Oscar Ghiglia founded the Guitar Department at the Aspen Music Festival, as well as the Festival de Musique des Arcs and the “Incontri Chitarristici di Gargnano“, was artist in residence or visiting professor in such centres as the Cincinnati and San Francisco conservatories, the Juilliard School, the Hartt School and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

In all these centres and elsewhere Ghiglia has been nurturing talents and forming or perfecting young artists’ musical outlook and interpretation.

He has been teaching at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana since 1976.

Besides touring as a solo performer, Oscar Ghiglia has played and recorded with such names as:

• Victoria de Los Angeles
• Jan de Gaetani
• Gerald English
• John McCollum
• Jean-Pierre Rampal
• Julius Baker
• the Juilliard String Quartet
• the Emerson String Quartet
• the Cleveland String Quartet
• the Quartetto d’archi di Venezia
• the Tokyo String Quartet
• Giuliano Carmignola
• Franco Gulli
• Salvatore Accardo
• Régis Pasquier
• Adam Krzeszowiec
• Albert Roman
• Laszlo Varga
• Eliot Fisk
• Shin-Ichi Fukuda
• Letizia Guerra
• Antigoni Goni
• Elena Papandreou.

Oscar Ghiglia was a founding member of the International Classic Guitar Quartet.

After his CD Manuel Ponce Guitar music, a new set of recording projects was under way and his teaching continued, year long, in Basel, where he held the professorship in guitar at the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel from 1983 to 2004.

Founder of the International Guitar Competition of Gargnano, Ghiglia boasts a very high number of first prize winners among his students, in competitions around the world.

In 2006, after retiring from the Basel Musik-Akademie, he moved to Greece, following his marriage to colleague and former pupil Elena Papandreou, now guitar professor in the University of Makedonia in Thessaloniki.

 

Above: Basel Music Academy

 

Following his CD  J.S. Bach Lute Works, and a DVD of his favourite repertoire, he continued giving concerts across the oceans, has residencies at the universities of Cincinnati and Evanston, Illinois, and does as well summer teaching at the Accademia Chigiana of Siena and his “Incontri Chitarristici di Gargnano“.

 

 

Certainly Gargnano as home to a bandit, a painter, an actress, a dictator and two world-class musicians is extremely interesting.

But it was the presence of a famous English writer in Gargnano that left me feeling frustrated at our failing to stop there in our haste to reach Riva del Garda before nightfall.

For there is much in his story that fascinates me, much that I can relate to.

 

Above: Gargnano

 

When someone visits a place for a day and decides to stay for six months you know they must have discovered something quite special.

 

It was 1912 and David Herbert (D.H.) Lawrence (1885 – 1930) was having an affair with Frieda von Richthofen (1879 – 1956), the wife of his university professor.

 

Above: D. H. Lawrence

 

Wanting to escape from both her husband and the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution in full swing in England, the pair decided to set off on their travels to discover new people, cultures and a more relaxing lifestyle.

Their first destination was Frieda’s homeland of Germany, but soon they wanted to travel further south, so, after a short stay in the Tyrol, they set off, with their knapsacks on their backs, on a long trek over the Dolomites, via Bolzano and Trento.

 

 

By September 1912 they reached the northern end of Lake Garda and the town of Riva del Garda.

Like so many authors, Lawrence fell in love with the Lake and the endless inspiration it could provide a creative mind, but Riva proved too expensive for them to set up a permanent residence.

 

Above: Riva del Garda

 

On Wednesday 18 September 1912, David and Frieda left Villa Leonardi di Riva del Garda and decided to go on a boat trip to the smaller town of Gargnano and heard by chance about a flat that was available to rent within their budget.

It became their home from 18 September 1912 until 30 March 1913.

 

Above: David and Frieda

 

Even though a century has passed since Lawrence and Frieda arrived in Gargnano, little has changed in the town, apart from a few essential roads now winding their way through the centre and more houses popping up to extend the town’s boundaries.

Gargnano has essentially escaped the tourist trappings of many of the Lake’s most popular locations, and so it is still possible to walk around the area and follow Lawrence’s footsteps to recreate a few of his experiences.

Lawrence and Frieda’s Lake Garda flat was located on the second floor of a large yellow-painted building at via Colletta 44 called Villa Igea, which now wears a discreet white marble plaque revealing its most famous resident.

 

Above: Villa Igea, Villa, Gargnano

 

“VILLA IGEA

DIMORA DI D.H. LAWRENCE

DAL SETTEMBRE 1912 ALL’ APRILE 1913”

 

 

No explanation of Lawrence’s identity is given.

 

Situated in San Gaudenzio di Muslone (known today as simply Villa), a small village on the outskirts of Gargnano, the rent was cheap but the flat still benefited from stunning views of the Lake.

The house became, for the two lovers, a refuge from which to observe the daily life of the country, the changes of nature with the arrival of spring, the spectacular scenery and local traditions.

Lawrence transcribed all of his impressions of this long exploration in numerous letters sent to England to family, friends, fellow writers and editors.

Lawrence often commented on how he would lie in bed of a morning and watch the sun rise over the mountains, eventually filling the room with light.

To him, this was paradise.

 

 

Gargnano was an escape from the culture of money and machinery that he so deeply detested, and the people of Gargnano the keepers of an ancient and impassive world that remains unruffled by and resistant to the upheaval of tumultuous modernity.

Lawrence used the most beautiful and fascinating words to capture daily moments and images of a landscape and nature that managed to soothe the pains of the young writer.

 

 

Though not everything Lawrence wrote was so pleasant:

“When at night the moon shines full on this pale facade, the theatre is far outdone in staginess.

Now everything is theatrical.”

 

 

Like living on a set where everything demanded literary criticism.

 

He wrote that the theatrical performances that he witnessed in Castellani Hall did not leave a very positive impression and he did not write an overly complimentary account of the teacher Feltrelline from whom they received lessons in French, German and Italian.

 

 

The sunshine and climate were actually the main motivations for Lawrence and Frieda to stay on Lake Garda.

Lawrence was suffering from tuberculosis and the sun was thought to offer a vital source of energy to help battle the disease.

 

 

But it provided him with inspiration too, and far from being a holiday or time for convalescence, Lawrence wrote many of his best works while staying in Villa Igea.

He finished Sons and Lovers, started work on The Lost Girl which would later be called The Rainbow and The Sisters which became Women In Love, plus penned his first travel book Twilight In Italy.

 

 

(Catherine Brown attended the 13th International D.H. Lawrence Conference held in Gargnano in 2014:

“One evening we saw a performance, by local actors (plus John Worthen) of The Fight for Barbara.

Written by Lawrence during his stay in Gargnano, this play thought through the difficulties and possibilities (including disastrous ones) of his elopement with Frieda.

Yet the play is of questionable comprehensibility to Italians.

The husband threatens Barbara with his own suicide.

An Italian husband of Lawrence’s period would have killed her or her lover, or abducted her, or at least threatened some such thing.

Certainly not talked about suicide.

Barbara’s father reminds the lover that married women are out of bounds.

An Italian man of Lawrence’s period would have seen a married woman as a particular prize, and certainly not have lectured another man to the contrary.”)

 

 

It was not an easy time for the two young lovers.

They lived in a precarious position, with Lawrence trying to support them both with his writing, hoping not to be forced to look for a job as a teacher, a profession he hated.

Frieda lived with the hope of seeing her children as soon as possible, having left them to escape with Lawrence, pending the conclusion of her divorce from her husband Ernest Weekley.

 

Above: Frieda and D.H.

 

It is in Twilight In Italy that we discover most about Lawrence’s time on Lake Garda, as he takes us with him on his day-to-day encounters with the locals and explores his surroundings.

One such encounter involved visiting his landlord, who he refers to as the padrone.

The padrone lived in a grand house called Villa De Paoli set just behind Lawrence’s flat.

It has now been transformed into offices and a car park, but next to the building you will find a garden shaded by beautiful olive trees and featuring a pergola under which Lawrence liked to sit and watch the daily comings and goings of the boats on the Lake.

 

 

It was in the grounds of Villa De Paoli that Lawrence had his first experience of Lake Garda’s iconic lemon houses.

Unlike anything he had ever seen before, in Twilight in Italy he described them as looking like naked pillars, rising out of the green foliage like ruins of temples.

While the fruit was growing and the sun shining on the leaves Lawrence thought the houses were beautiful, but as soon as winter arrived he regarded them as sordid and ugly because of the big wooden shutters that were put up to protect the trees from the inclement weather.

Before he knew the purpose of the wooden greenhouses he was confused by the sight of men climbing up ladders and leaping from one small ledge to the next, in order to lay the large wooden panels across the pillars and hammering loudly as they did so.

Having just left behind an industrial England, it was also odd for him to see everything being done by hand.

Despite hating the machines, Lawrence saw the Italian way of doing things as backwards, as if they were living in the past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today the only sign of Villa De Paoli’s lemon house is the presence of a few pillars hidden behind the car park.

A sad reminder of a once majestic past.

As you walk along the main road from Villa to Gargnano you will however come across La Molora, a private lemon house that the owner is working hard to restore to its prime.

Here you can see for yourself the imposing pillars and lemon trees working their way up the hill, in the way that Lawrence was so intrigued and perplexed.

 

 

From his flat, Lawrence could see a church set on a slight hill overlooking the village, that he often glanced at but never thought to visit.

One day when he heard the gentle ringing of the church bells he decided to try and find out more about it.

There was no obvious path to the church, so Lawrence went out the back door of his house and made his way through the narrow side streets,  unsure of quite where he was going.

It was while walking these side streets of Villa that Lawrence felt the most alien and alone during his time on Lake Garda.

 

Above: San Tommaso, Villa, Gargnano

 

In Twilight in Italy he describes how odd it was walking through the narrow passageways, which were dark and shady compared to the brightly-lit paths by the lakeside.

He could see the town’s inhabitants staring at him suspiciously through their windows, wondering who this stranger was.

Gargnano wasn’t often visited by tourists and so Lawrence felt that his pale skin shone out even more here, and feared that it turned him into something of a spectacle.

 

 

Lawrence writes about the church and cloister of San Francesco on via Roma in Gargnano.

He put the simple Romanesque church of San Francesco (built in 1289) in the category of churches of the dove, which he defined as “shy and hidden“.

“They nestle among trees or they are gathered into silence of their own, in the very midst of the town so that one passes them by without observing them.”

He says of San Francisco:

“I passed it several times in the dark, silent little square, without knowing it was a church.”

(The road has since been widened so the square is no longer discernible.)

 

 

Lawrence was captivated by the cloister, which became a citrus fruit warehouse at the end of the 19th century, with “its beautiful and original carvings of leaves and fruits upon the pillars“.

 

 

After several unsuccessful attempts to reach the San Tomasso church, Lawrence eventually discovered a long broken stairway that led him to the courtyard of San Tommaso, or one of the churches of the eagles – which “stand high, with their heads to the skies, as if they challenged the world below” –  which still provides access to the building today.

 

 

He “came out suddenly, as by a miracle, clean on the platform of my San Tommaso, in the tremendous sunshine.

It was another world, a world of fierce abstraction.

The thin old church standing above the light, as if perched on the house roofs.

Its thin grey neck was held up stiffly.

Beyond was a vision of dark foliage and high hillside.”

 

 

When you reach the summit you will be greeted by a similar sight as Lawrence’s.

Countless red-slated roofs spread out beneath you, giving way to the seemingly never-ending water of the lake.

It’s hardly surprising that Lawrence described this platform as suspended above the village like the lowest step of heaven or Jacob’s ladder.

The terrace of San Tommaso is let down from heaven and does not touch the Earth.

 

 

Everywhere Lawrence went in Villa and Gargnano seemed to provide him with the new experiences and inspiration he had been searching for when he first embarked on his travels.

San Tommaso certainly found a special place in his heart.

 

 

As you wander the streets of Villa and Gargnano,  stopping briefly at the pretty little harbour where Lawrence first arrived in the town and passing by the theatre which remains as it would have looked to Lawrence on the outside, you can see why he chose to stay here so long.

Italy and Lake Garda are familiar destinations for us today, but for Lawrence there was still so much to explore and understand, so much that was alien and intimidating and yet at the same time captivating and exciting.

He couldn’t help but be drawn to the unique character of the town, the intriguing local people and the beauty of the lake itself.

 

 

The Hotel Gardenia al Lago is a hotel in Villa, a romantic little village administered by Gargnano, the largest and most distinctive municipality on the “lemon Riviera”.

It stands, proud and elegant, with its Mitteleuropean architecture, right on the shores of Lake Garda, with the mountain peaks of the Parco Alto Garda Bresciano nature reserve as its backdrop.

The waters of the Lake lap the edges of the magnificent garden and surround the panoramic lookout point in the dining room, and on the opposite shore stands the majestic Monte Baldo mountain range, which generously lays on the most unforgettable displays of light and colour at both sunrise and sunset.

Hotel Gardenia al Lago has a particular charm and aura, not due to the opulence and richness of its décor, but to its harmonious setting, the elegance of its rooms, furnished with pieces from the old house dating back to 1925, and to the warm welcome given by the Arosio family, who have owned and run the hotel personally for three generations.

 

 

Inside the Hotel, on the 4th floor, guests will find an exhibition dedicated to Lawrence, organized in 2012 by the Historic Gargnano Committee, on the centennial of the writer’s residence.

Through the descriptive panels and photographs, you can trace the life of the writer, famous for having written Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Sons and Lovers.

 

 

I longed to visit Villa.

I longed to relax in a waterfront café by the port of Gargnano.

 

 

I wished to wander around the abandoned olive factory, the lakefront villas with their boathouses, the Palazzo Comunale with the two cannonballs wedged in the walls from the aforementioned naval bombings.

 

 

I longed to stroll along the road which leads out of Gargnano from the harbour for 3 km past the beach and through olive and lemon groves, past the Villa Feltrinelli – the grand lakeside house / world-class hotel with tastefully furnished rooms (€1,380 per night) where Mussolini once ruled….

 

 

To the tiny 11th century Chapel of San Giacomo di Calino.

I wanted to look, on the side facing the lake, under the portico where fishermen keep their equipment, at the 13th century fresco of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travellers.

 

 

But we were not travellers.

 

 

We were tourists, and tourists by their very nature value the destination far more than the journey.

We do not linger in Toscolano-Maderno.

We do not stroll through Gargnano.

We do not detour down the road to Lake Idro through the hills of Valvestino.

 

 

We are on a mission.

We will not procrastinate.

We do not see the green of olive trees or the blue of the sky and the Lake.

 

 

I love my wife, so practical and pragmatic.

A better wife than I will ever deserve.

 

 

But a quiet voice within me weeps.

It longs to one day find a place and on that day spontaneously decide to linger there for six months or for a lifetime.

 

I say nothing as we zoom past Toscolano-Maderno.

I am silent as we speed past Gargnano.

 

 

My mind’s eye sees sailboats afloat on turquoise waters, orchards of olives and groves of lemons, huge stone walls and tall pillars, testaments of memory.

 

 

The Buddha is rumoured to have said that the greatest folly of men is that we believe that we have more time to live than we are actually granted.

 

 

Nonetheless I find myself thinking about retracing the routes followed and described in Lawrence’s Twilight in Italy.

To walk from Innsbruck to Riva del Garda or from Schaffhausen to Milan, time and money be damned….

That would be amazing.

 

 

But as the years zoom by at breathtaking speed I find myself entering a state of obscurity, of ambiguity, a general decline.

 

It is twilight when we reach Riva.

 

The soft gleaming glow of the sky is light clinging to a descending sun disappearing below the horizon, a semi-darkness, the gloom of a dying day.

So much to see, so much to do, so little time before night falls.

 

Such is twilight in Italy.

And everywhere else.

 

 

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Sally Fitzgerald, “D.H. Lawrence’s Lake Garda”, http://www.travelandlife.com / http://www.lakefrontboutiquehotels.com / http://www.gargnanosulgarda.com  / Gaby Logan, “Gargnano Celebrates D.H. Lawrence Centennial“, http://www.italymagazine.com / D.H. Lawrence, Twilight in Italy

 

Canada Slim and the Shrine of Italian Victories

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 25 December 2018

Picture if you will a lake without compare, a Mediterranean oasis immersed in the savage grandeur of alpine mountains.

A merger of nature and history brought together to form a corner of Paradise, where sandstone meets spinosa, and lemons are kissed by oleander, where bay and cedar and orange dance together by shores where virgin waters gush out of living rock formed by ancient volcanoes encircled by periwinkles, heather, daisies and geraniums.

Where once the deer played, the wolf howled and the wild boar foraged and eagles and hawks once filled the skies, now ancient monasteries quietly crumble invisible as speed boats race and only the carp seem unimpressed by man’s ceaseless destructive cycles.

This is a land where the restless never lingered.

Through here marched Ligurians and Euganians, Etruscans and Enetites, Isarcs, Erectus and Celts.

Rome would drive an empire through here but all empires fall.

Let us speak mere mentions of the tribes Fabia and Polibia before they too fall before Ostrogoths, Goths and the Alemanni, who themselves were supplanted by Byzantines and Longobards.

Bishop saints and ancient churches stand and fall before Carolingian and Hun.

A lake that held secure in its bosom widows and heretics greeted Guelphs and Ghibellini and trembled as emperors rose and fell and Verona fought Venice.

Fall, Venice to Napoleon, the French to Austria.

Then cry the winds of freedom and join to form the new Rome, a proud Italy defiant regardless of the odds or whether king or Fascist, democrat or autocrat sits above all others in power and glory.

Upon this guarded Garda there is a spot of elegance and beauty, where magnificent vegetation thrives within a mild climate and where a famous, international sojourn lies among bright hills, large gardens, voluptuous villas and halycon hotels.

This is Gardone Riviera, a small town with a short history, designed by a German fighting for Italian independence whose peculiar impulses caused him to love the locale at once, inspiring him to construct hotels and found initiatives and cultivate contacts with the cosmopolitan world.

Soon would follow promenades and villas and the casino, but of all these nothing and no one enlivened this artificial tourist town more than Gabriele D’Annunzio: child prodigy of outstanding talent, poet, lover, man of society, father, journalist, novelist, playwright, pilot, francophile and art collector, war hero and conqueror, Fascist and anti-Fascist, architect and adventurer.

Ask not what did D’Annuzio do, for it is more remarkable how little he didn’t do.

On reading D’Annunzio’s tale and of his labour and the legacy of love that remains here, you may very well find yourself absolutely loving or loathing the man, but once you learn of this man you may find it difficult to forget the man or the mansion he built and named the Shrine of Italian Victories.

This is his story.

D’Annunzio was born in the township of Pescara, in the province of Abruzzo, the son of a wealthy landowner and mayor of the town Francesco Paolo Rapagnetta d’Annunzio (1831–1893) and his wife Luisa de Benedictis (1839-1917).

Above: Gabriele D’Annunzio Birthplace Museum, Pescara

 

His father had originally been born plain Rapagnetta (the name of his single mother), but at the age of 13 had been adopted by a childless rich uncle Antonio d’Annunzio.

Legend has it that he was initially baptized Gaetano and given the name of Gabriele later in childhood, because of his angelic looks.

His precocious talent was recognised early in life and he was sent to school at the Liceo Cicognini in Prato, Tuscany.

He published his first poetry while still at school at the age of 16 — a small volume of verses called Primo Vere (1879).

Influenced by Giosuè Carducci’s Odi barbare, he posed side by side some almost brutal imitations of Lorenzo Stecchetti, the fashionable poet of Postuma, with translations from the Latin.

His verse was distinguished by such agile grace that Giuseppe Chiarini on reading them brought the unknown youth before the public in an enthusiastic article.

In 1881, D’Annunzio entered the University of Rome, where he became a member of various literary groups, including Cronaca Bizantina, and wrote articles and criticism for local newspapers.

In those university years he started to promote Italian irredentism.

 

(Italian irredentism was a nationalist movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Italy with goals which promoted the unification of geographic areas in which indigenous ethnic Italians and Italian-speaking persons formed a majority, or substantial minority, of the population.)

 

He published Canto novo (1882), Terra vergine (1882), L’intermezzo di rime (1883), Il libro delle vergini (1884) and the greater part of the short stories that were afterwards collected under the general title of San Pantaleone (1886).

Canto novo contains poems full of pulsating youth and the promise of power, some descriptive of the sea and some of the Abruzzese landscape, commented on and completed in prose by Terra vergine, the latter a collection of short stories dealing in radiant language with the peasant life of the author’s native province.

Intermezzo di rime is the beginning of D’Annunzio’s second and characteristic manner.

His conception of style was new and he chose to express all the most subtle vibrations of voluptuous life.

Both style and contents began to startle his critics.

Some who had greeted him as an enfant prodige rejected him as a perverter of public morals, whilst others hailed him as one bringing a breath of fresh air and an impulse of new vitality into the somewhat prim, lifeless work hitherto produced.

 

Meanwhile, the review of Angelo Sommaruga perished in the midst of scandal and his group of young authors found itself dispersed.

Some entered the teaching career and were lost to literature.

Others threw themselves into journalism.

Gabriele D’Annunzio took this latter course, and joined the staff of the Tribuna, under the pseudonym of “Duca Minimo“.

Here he wrote Il libro d’Isotta (1886), a love poem, in which for the first time he drew inspiration adapted to modern sentiments and passions from the rich colours of the Renaissance.

Il libro d’Isotta is interesting, because in it one can find most of the germs of his future work, just as in Intermezzo melico and in certain ballads and sonnets one can find descriptions and emotions which later went to form the aesthetic contents of Il piacere, Il trionfo della morte and Elegie romane (1892).

 

D’Annunzio’s first novel Il piacere (1889, translated into English as The Child of Pleasure) was followed in 1891 by Giovanni Episcopo, and in 1892 by L’innocente (The Intruder).

These three novels made a profound impression.

 

L’innocente, admirably translated into French by Georges Herelle, brought its author the notice and applause of foreign critics.

His next work, Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death)(1894) was followed soon by Le vergini delle rocce (1896) and Il fuoco (1900).

The latter is in its descriptions of Venice perhaps the most ardent glorification of a city existing in any language.

D’Annunzio’s poetic work of this period, in most respects his finest, is represented by Il Poema Paradisiaco (1893), the Odi navali (1893), a superb attempt at civic poetry, and Laudi (1900).

A later phase of D’Annunzio’s work is his dramatic production, represented by Il sogno di un mattino di primavera (1897), a lyrical fantasia in one act.

His Città Morta (1898) was written for Sarah Bernhardt.

Above: Poster of Sarah Bernhardt (1844 – 1923)

 

In 1898 he wrote his Sogno di un pomeriggio d’autunno and La Gioconda.

In the succeeding year La gloria, an attempt at contemporary political tragedy, met with no success, probably because of the audacity of the personal and political allusions in some of its scenes.

Francesca da Rimini (1901) was a perfect reconstruction of medieval atmosphere and emotion, magnificent in style, and declared by an authoritative Italian critic – Edoardo Boutet – to be the first real, if imperfect, tragedy ever given to the Italian theatre.

At the height of his success, D’Annunzio was celebrated for the originality, power and decadence of his writing.

Although his work had immense impact across Europe, and influenced generations of Italian writers, his fin de siècle works are now little known, and his literary reputation has always been clouded by his fascist associations.

Indeed, even before his fascist period, he had his strong detractors.

 

A New York Times review in 1898 of his novel The Intruder referred to him as “evil“, “entirely selfish and corrupt“.

Three weeks into its December 1901 run at the Teatro Constanzi in Rome, his tragedy Francesca da Rimini was banned by the censor on grounds of morality.

 

A prolific writer, his novels in Italian include Il piacere (The Child of Pleasure)(1889), Il trionfo della morte (The Triumph of Death)(1894) and Le vergini delle rocce (The Virgins of the Rocks)(1896).

He wrote the screenplay to the feature film Cabiria (1914) based on episodes from the Second Punic War.

 

D’Annunzio’s literary creations were strongly influenced by the French Symbolist school and contain episodes of striking violence and depictions of abnormal mental states interspersed with gorgeously imagined scenes.

One of D’Annunzio’s most significant novels, scandalous in its day, is Il fuoco (The Flame of Life)(1900), in which he portrays himself as the Nietzschean Superman Stelio Effrena, in a fictionalized account of his love affair with Eleonora Duse.

His short stories showed the influence of Guy de Maupassant.

 

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica wrote of him:

The work of d’ Annunzio, although by many of the younger generation injudiciously and extravagantly admired, is almost the most important literary work given to Italy since the days when the great classics welded her varying dialects into a fixed language.

The psychological inspiration of his novels has come to him from many sources—French, Russian, Scandinavian, German—and in much of his earlier work there is little fundamental originality.

His creative power is intense and searching, but narrow and personal.

His heroes and heroines are little more than one same type monotonously facing a different problem at a different phase of life.

But the faultlessness of his style and the wealth of his language have been approached by none of his contemporaries, whom his genius has somewhat paralysed.

In his later work, when he begins drawing his inspiration from the traditions of bygone Italy in her glorious centuries, a current of real life seems to run through the veins of his personages.

The lasting merit of D’Annunzio, his real value to the literature of his country, consists precisely in that he opened up the closed mine of its former life as a source of inspiration for the present and of hope for the future, and created a language, neither pompous nor vulgar, drawn from every source and district suited to the requirements of modern thought, yet absolutely classical, borrowed from none, and, independently of the thought it may be used to express, a thing of intrinsic beauty.

As his sight became clearer and his purpose strengthened, as exaggerations, affectations and moods dropped away from his conceptions, his work became more and more typical Latin work, upheld by the ideal of an Italian Renaissance.

In Italy some of his poetic works remain popular, most notably his poem “La pioggia nel pineto” (The Rain in the Pinewood), which exemplifies his linguistic virtuosity as well as the sensuousness of his poetry.

 

In 1883, D’Annunzio married Maria Hardouin di Gallese, and had three sons, Mario (1884-1964), Gabriele Maria “Gabriellino” (1886-1945) and Ugo Veniero (1887-1945), but the marriage ended in 1891.

In 1894, he began a love affair with the actress Eleonora Duse which became a cause célèbre.

Above: Eleonora Duse (1858 – 1924)

 

He provided leading roles for her in his plays of the time such as La città morta (The Dead City) (1898) and Francesca da Rimini (1901), but the tempestuous relationship finally ended in 1910.

After meeting the Marchesa Luisa Casati in 1903, he began a lifelong turbulent on again off again affair with Luisa, that lasted until a few years before his death.

Above: Luisa Casati (1881 – 1957)

 

In 1897 D’Annunzio was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for a three-year term, where he sat as an independent.

By 1910, his daredevil lifestyle had forced him into debt and he fled to France to escape his creditors.

There he collaborated with composer Claude Debussy on a musical play Le martyre de Saint Sébastien (The Martyrdom of St Sebastian)(1911), written for Ida Rubinstein.

 

The Vatican reacted by placing all of his works in the Index of Forbidden Books.

The work was not successful as a play, but it has been recorded in adapted versions several times, notably by Pierre Monteux (in French), Leonard Bernstein (sung in French, acted in English) and Michael Tilson Thomas (in French).

In 1912 and 1913, D’Annunzio worked with opera composer Pietro Mascagni on his opera Parisina, staying sometimes in a house rented by the composer in Bellevue, near Paris.

 

After the start of World War I, D’Annunzio returned to Italy and made public speeches in favor of Italy’s entry on the side of the Triple Entente of Russia, France and Great Britain.

Since taking a flight with Wilbur Wright in 1908, D’Annunzio had been interested in aviation.

Above: Wilbur Wright (1867 – 1912)

 

With the war beginning he volunteered and achieved further celebrity as a fighter pilot, losing the sight of an eye in a flying accident.

 

In February 1918, he took part in a daring, if militarily irrelevant, raid on the harbour of Bakar (known in Italy as La beffa di Buccari, literally the Bakar mockery), helping to raise the spirits of the Italian public, still battered by the Caporetto disaster.

Above: The harbour of Bakar

 

On 9 August 1918, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron “La Serenissima“, he organized one of the great feats of the war, leading nine planes in a 700-mile round trip to drop propaganda leaflets on Vienna.

This is called in Italian “il Volo su Vienna“(the flight over Vienna).

 

The war strengthened his ultra-nationalist and irredentist views and he campaigned widely for Italy to assume a role alongside her wartime allies as a first-rate European power.

 

Angered by the proposed handing over of the city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) whose population, outside the suburbs, was mostly Italian, at the Paris Peace Conference, on 12 September 1919, he led the seizure by 2,000 Italian nationalist irregulars of the city, forcing the withdrawal of the inter-Allied (American, British and French) occupying forces.

Above: Fiume, September 1919

 

The plotters sought to have Italy annex Fiume, but were denied.

Instead, Italy initiated a blockade of Fiume while demanding that the plotters surrender.

D’Annunzio then declared Fiume an independent state, the Italian Regency of Carnaro.

Above: Flag of Carnaro

 

The Charter of Carnaro foreshadowed much of the later Italian Fascist system, with himself as “Duce” (leader).

Some elements of the Royal Italian Navy, such as the destroyer Espero joined up with D’Annunzio’s local forces.

He attempted to organize an alternative to the League of Nations for selected oppressed nations of the world (such as the Irish, whom D’Annunzio attempted to arm in 1920) and sought to make alliances with various separatist groups throughout the Balkans (especially groups of Italians, though also some Slavic and Albanian groups) without much success.

D’Annunzio ignored the Treaty of Rapallo and declared war on Italy itself, only finally surrendering the city in December 1920 after a bombardment by the Italian navy.

 

D’Annunzio is often seen as a precursor of the ideals and techniques of Italian fascism.

His political ideals emerged in Fiume when he coauthored a constitution with syndicalist Alceste de Ambris, the Charter of Carnaro.

Above: Alceste De Ambris (1874 – 1934)

 

De Ambris provided the legal and political framework, to which D’Annunzio added his skills as a poet.

De Ambris was the leader of a group of Italian seamen who had mutinied and then given their vessel to the service of D’Annunzio.

The constitution established a corporatist state, with nine corporations to represent the different sectors of the economy (workers, employers, professionals) and a tenth (D’Annunzio’s invention) to represent the “superior” human beings (heroes, poets, prophets, supermen).

The Carta also declared that music was the fundamental principle of the state.

 

It was rather the culture of dictatorship that Benito Mussolini imitated and learned from D’Annunzio.

Above: Benito Mussolini (1883 – 1945)

 

D’Annunzio has been described as the John the Baptist of Italian Fascism, as virtually the entire ritual of Fascism was invented by D’Annunzio during his occupation of Fiume and his leadership of the Italian Regency of Carnaro.

These included the balcony address, the Roman salute, the cries of “Eia, eia, eia! Alala!” taken from the Achilles’ cry in the Iliad, the dramatic and rhetorical dialogue with the crowd and the use of religious symbols in new secular settings.

It also included his method of government in Fiume: the economics of the corporate state, stage tricks, large emotive nationalistic public rituals and black-shirted followers, the Arditi, with their disciplined, bestial responses and strongarm repression of dissent.

He was even said to have originated the practice of forcibly dosing opponents with large amounts of castor oil, a very effective laxative, to humiliate, disable or kill them, a practice which became a common tool of Mussolini’s black shirts.

D’Annunzio advocated an expansionist Italian foreign policy and applauded the invasion of Ethiopia.

Above: Flag of Italian East Africa

 

After the Fiume episode, D’Annunzio retired to his home on Lake Garda and spent his latter years writing and campaigning.

 

Although D’Annunzio had a strong influence on the ideology of Benito Mussolini, he never became directly involved in fascist government politics in Italy.

As John Whittam notes in his essay “Mussolini and The Cult of the Leader“:

This famous poet, novelist and war hero was a self-proclaimed Superman.

He was the outstanding interventionist in May 1915 and his dramatic exploits during the war won him national and international acclaim.

In September 1919 he gathered together his ‘legions’ and captured the disputed seaport of Fiume.

He held it for over a year and it was he who popularised the black shirts, the balcony speeches, the promulgation of ambitious charters and the entire choreography of street parades and ceremonies.

He even planned a march on Rome.

One historian had rightly described him as the ‘First Duce’ and Mussolini must have heaved a sigh of relief when he was driven from Fiume in December 1920 and his followers were dispersed.

But he remained a threat to Mussolini and in 1921 Fascists like Balbo seriously considered turning to him for leadership.

In contrast Mussolini vacillated from left to right at this time.

Although Mussolini’s fascism was heavily influenced by the Carta del Carnaro, the constitution for Fiume written by Alceste De Ambris and D’Annunzio, neither wanted to play an active part in the new movement, both refusing when asked by Fascists to run in the elections of 15 May 1921.

 

D’Annunzio was seriously injured when he fell out of a window on 13 August 1922.

Shortly before the march on Rome, he was pushed out of a window by an unknown assailant, or perhaps simply slipped and fell out himself while intoxicated.

He survived but was badly injured and only recovered after Mussolini had been appointed Prime Minister.

Subsequently the planned “meeting for national pacification” with Francesco Saverio Nitti and Mussolini was cancelled.

Above: Francesco Nitti (1868 – 1953), Prime Minister (1919 – 1920)

 

The incident was never explained and is considered by some historians an attempt to murder him, motivated by his popularity.

 

Despite D’Annunzio’s retreat from active public life after this event, the Duce still found it necessary to regularly dole out funds to D’Annunzio as a bribe for not re-entering the political arena.

When asked about this by a close friend, Mussolini purportedly stated:

“When you have a rotten tooth you have two possibilities open to you:

Either you pull the tooth or you fill it with gold.

With D’Annunzio, I have chosen for the latter treatment.”

 

In 1924 D’Annunzio was ennobled by King Victor Emmanuel III and given the hereditary title of Prince of Montenevoso (Italian: Principe di Montenevoso).

Above: Italian King Victor Emmanuel III (1869 – 1947)

 

Nonetheless, D’Annunzio kept attempting to intervene in politics almost until his death in 1938.

 

He wrote to Mussolini in 1933 to try to convince him not to take part in the Axis pact with Hitler.

Above: Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)

In 1934, he tried to disrupt the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini after their meeting, even writing a satirical pamphlet about Hitler.

Again, in September 1937, D’Annunzio met with the Duce at the Verona train station to convince him to leave the Axis alliance.

 

Mussolini in 1944 admitted to have made a mistake not following his advice.

 

In 1937, D’Annunzio was made president of the Royal Academy of Italy.

 

D’Annunzio died in 1938 of a stroke at his home in Gardone Riviera.

He was given a state funeral by Mussolini and was interred in a magnificent tomb constructed of white marble at Il Vittoriale degli Italiani.

D’Annunzio’s life and work are commemorated in a museum, Il Vittoriale degli Italiani.

The Vittoriale degli italiani (English translation: The shrine of Italian victories) is a hillside estate in the town of Gardone Riviera overlooking  Lake Garda.

It is where the Italian writer Gabriele d’Annunzio lived after his defenestration in 1922 until his death in 1938.

 

The estate consists of the residence of d’Annunzio called the Prioria (priory), an amphitheatre, the protected cruiser Puglia set into a hillside, a boathouse containing the MAS vessel used by D’Annunzio in 1918 and a circular mausoleum.

Its grounds are now part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani.

 

The Prioria itself consists of a number of rooms opulently decorated and filled with memorabilia.

Notable are the two waiting rooms: one for welcome guests, one for unwelcome ones.

 

It is the latter where Benito Mussolini was sent to on his visit in 1925.

A phrase was inscribed specifically for him above the mirror:

To the visitor:

Are you bringing Narcissus’ mirror?

This is leaded glass, my mask maker.

Adjust your mask to your face,

But mind that you are glass against steel.

 

The leper’s room is where D’Annunzio’s wake was held upon his death.

Its name comes from the fact that D’Annunzio felt that he was being spurned by the government due to their continued efforts to keep him in Gardone, rather than possibly in the limelight in Rome.

 

The relic room holds a large collection of religious statues and images of different beliefs, purposely placed together to make a statement about the universal character of spirituality.

The inscription on the inner wall reads:

As there are five fingers on a hand, there are only five mortal sins.

D’Annunzio wished to make clear hereby that he didn’t believe that lust and greed should be considered sinful.

 

A most unlikely relic is the distorted steering wheel of racing speedboat Miss England II, donated after the coppa dell oltranza powerboating trophy, organized under D’Annunzio patronage, was held in 1931.

Miss England II had crashed in a world speed record attempt, killing her pilot, Sir Henry Seagrave in 1930 (though winning the record nevertheless) and was rebuilt to race and win at Lake Garda the following year with Kaye Don at the helm.

D’Annunzio, who was a syncretist (believer in all religions), deemed the distorted steering wheel “a relic of the religion of courage“.

 

The amphitheatre is the first major structure one comes across after entering the estate and was clearly based upon classic models, the architect Maroni even visiting Pompeii for inspiration.

Its location, like the other buildings of the Vittoriale undeniably offers a majestic view of Lake Garda, it is still used for performances today.

 

References to the Vittoriale range from a “monumental citadel” to a “fascist lunapark”, the site inevitably inheriting the controversy surrounding its creator.

He planned and developed it himself, adjacent to his villa at Gardone Riviera on the southwest bank of Lake Garda, between 1923 and his death.

Now a national monument, it is a complex of military museum, library, literary and historical archive, theatre, war memorial and mausoleum.

The museum preserves his torpedo boat MAS 96 and the SVA-5 aircraft he flew over Vienna.

The house, Villa Cargnacco, had belonged to the German art historian of the Italian Renaissance Henry Thode from whom it was confiscated by the Italian state, including artworks, a collection of books, and a piano which had belonged to Liszt.

D’Annunzio rented it in February 1921 and within a year reconstruction started under the guidance of architect Giancarlo Maroni.

 

Due to D’Annunzio’s popularity and his disagreement with the fascist government on several issues, such as the alliance with Nazi Germany, the fascists did what they could to please D’Annunzio in order to keep him away from political life in Rome.

Part of their strategy was to make huge funds available to expand the property, to construct or modify buildings and to create the impressive art and literature collection.

 

In 1924, the airplane that D’Annunzio used for his pamphleteering run over Vienna during World War I was brought to the estate, followed in 1925 by the MAS naval vessel used by him to taunt the Austrians in 1918 in the Beffa di Buccari.

In the same year the protected cruiser Puglia was hauled up the hill and placed in the woods behind the house and the property was expanded by acquisition of surrounding lands and buildings.

Jutting out of one of the hilltops the cruiser Puglia makes a surreal sight.

It was placed there, with its bow pointing in the direction of the Adriatic, “ready to conquer the Dalmatian shores”.

The ship was equipped with a main armament of four 15 cm (5.9 in) and six 12 cm (4.7 in) guns, and she could steam at a speed of 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph).

88.25 meters (289.5 ft) long overall and had a beam of 12.13 m (39.8 ft) and a draft of 5.45 m (17.9 ft).

She displaced up to 3,110 metric tons (3,060 long tons; 3,430 short tons) at full load.

Her propulsion system consisted of a pair of vertical triple-expansion engines, with steam supplied by four cylindrical water-tube boilers.

Puglia was capable of steaming at a top speed of 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph).

The ship had a cruising radius of about 2,100 nautical miles (3,900 km; 2,400 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

She had a crew of between 213 to 278.

Puglia was armed with a main battery of four 15 cm (5.9 in) L/40 guns mounted singly, with two side by side forward and two side by side aft.

Six 12 cm (4.7 in) L/40 guns were placed between them, with three on each broadside.

Light armament included eight 57 mm (2.2 in) guns, eight 37 mm (1.5 in) guns, and a pair of machine guns.

She was also equipped with two 45 cm (18 in) torpedo tubes.

Puglia was protected by a 25 mm (0.98 in) thick deck.

Her conning tower had 50 mm thick sides.

Puglia served abroad for much of her early career, including periods in South American and East Asian waters.

She saw action in the Italo-Turkish War in 1911–1912, primarily in the Red Sea.

During the war she bombarded Ottoman ports in Arabia and assisted in enforcing a blockade on maritime traffic in the area.

She was still in service during World War I.

The only action in which she participated was the evacuation of units from the Serbian Army from Durazzo in February 1916.

During the evacuation, she bombarded the pursuing Austro-Hungarian Army.

After the war, Puglia was involved in the occupation of the Dalmatian coast, and in 1920 her captain was murdered in a violent confrontation in Split with Croatian nationalists.

The old cruiser was sold for scrapping in 1923.

While the ship was being dismantled, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini donated the ship’s bow section to the writer and ardent nationalist Gabriele D’Annunzio, who had it installed at his estate as part of the Vittoriale degli italiani museum.

 

In 1926, the government donated an amount of 10 million lire, which allowed a considerable enlargement of the Villa, with a new wing named the Schifamondo.

In 1931, construction was started on the Parlaggio, the name for the amphitheatre.

 

The mausoleum was designed after D’Annunzio’s death but not actually built until 1955 and D’Annunzio’s remains were finally brought there in 1963.

The circular structure is situated on the highest point on the estate.

It contains the remains of men who served D’Annunzio and died during the Fiume incident and d’Annunzio himself.

Luigi Barzini once argued that Gabriele D’Annunzio was perhaps more Italian than any other Italian, because for Italians the first purpose of life is to make life acceptable.

Life in the raw is notoriously meaningless and frightening, therefore dull and insignificant moments in life must be made decorous and agreeable with decoration and ritual.

Everything must be made to sparkle whether it be a simple meal, an ordinary transaction, a dreary speech, or a cowardly capitulation, all must be embellished and ennobled with euphemisms, adornments and pathos.

Not because Italians find life rewarding and exhilarating but because Italians are a pessimistic, realistic, resigned and frightened people.

Even though D’Annunzio was a penniless provincial son of a small merchant, he lived like a Renaissance prince, a figure of voluptuousness, surrounding himself with a gaudy clutter of antiques, brocades, rare Oriental perfumes and flamboyant, inexpensive jewellery.

He dressed like a London Beau Brummel, slept with duchesses, world famous actresses and mad Russian ladies, wrote exquisitely wrought prose and poetry, rode to hounds, hounded Italian politics with extreme right politics.

Like his role model Cola di Rienzo, D’Annunzio believed that facade and reality were one and the same thing.

Thus in seeking to disguise an ordinary origin in extraordinary finesse, D’Annunzio would lead an exceptional life.

As much as I am disgusted by his aggressive nationalism and appalled by his reckless reputation as a womanizer, D’Annunzio lived a life of overheated emotion and sexuality and was a man of original talent remarkable not only in his time but as well in the ambigous legacy he left behind.

I cannot but notice.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Gabriele d’Annunzio: An Exceptional Life (Skira editore Vittoriale souvenir album) / The Rough Guide to Italy / Writers: Their Lives and Works (Dorling Kindersley) / Luigi Barzini, The Italians

Canada Slim and the Magnificent Homeland

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 26 August 2018

There is something about the politics of a number of nations today (the United States, North Korea, the Philippines, Venezuela) that reminds me again and again of the late Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Above: Il Duce Benito Mussolini (1883 – 1945)

I have written about Mussolini before – his birth and his youth, his exile in Switzerland, his rise to power, his reign as Il Duce, his fall from power, his temporary reprieve through German assistance, his capture and his death – (See Canada Slim and the Apostle of Violence) – when speaking of the Lake Como town of Dongo and the village of Giulino de Mezzegra.

Above: Dongo, where Mussolini was captured while fleeing to Switzerland

But I feel the need to speak of him again for we (the wife and I) visited the Lake Garda town of Salò which served as Mussolini’s de facto capital of the Italian Social Republic (23 September 1943 – 25 April 1945), a German puppet state of the Third Reich.

How did a man who once possessed absolute power over the whole of Italy (28 October 1922 – 25 July 1943) find himself reduced to being a mere figurehead for Nazi Germany?

And could one get a sense of that by visiting Salò over half a century later?

 

Salò, Lake Garda, Italy, Sunday 6 August 2017

Salò is one of the most important commercial and tourist centres of Lago Garda.

It lies in a spacious, seductive gulf on the slopes of Monte San Bartolomeo.

From the hills, resplendent in villas and olive yards, the viewer is rewarded by the grand immensity and glory of the Lake.

Above: Aerial view of Salò

According to a legend, Salò was founded by the Etruscan Queen Salonica.

There are some traces of the Roman colony Pagus Salodium: in the Lugone necropolis at via Sant’ Jago and findings of vase flasks and funeral steles in the Civic Archaeological Museum within the Communal Palace.

In 1377 Beatrice della Scala, Bernabó Visconti’s wife, chose Salò as the capital of Magnifica Patria (“the Magnificent Homeland“).

Above: Bernabo Visconti (1323 – 85) and Beatrice della Scala (1331 – 84)

Beatrice had walls propped up and a new castle built, of which sadly nothing remains.

On 13 May 1426, after a long period of war, the towns of the western bank  of Lake Garda spontaneously joined the Republic of Venice wherein they would remain for the following three centuries.

Above: Winged lion column of St. Mark (symbol of Venice)

Sansovino built the Palace of the Captain Rector (now the town hall) and during the 15th and 16th centuries the Duomo (Cathedral) took form.

Among the famous men who were native to Salò we must remember:

• Gaspare Bertolotti (1540 – 1609) aka Gasparo da Salò, a famous maker of stringed instruments and inventor of the violin, whose bust is kept in the town hall.
• 
• Above: The bust of Gasparo da Salò
• Pietro Bellotto (1625 – 1700), a painter who painted portraits for cardinals, popes and dukes and who after wandering from court to court he returned to Lake Garda to die
• 
• Above: The Old Pilgrim, by Pietro Belloto
• Ferdinando Bertoni (1725 – 1813), composer, organist and prolific writer of church music and 70 operas
• 
• Above: Fernando Bertoni
• Marco Enrico Bossi (1861 – 1925), composer, organist and music teacher, who established the standards of organ studies still used in Italy today and made numerous international organ recital tours
• 
• Above: Marco Enrico Bossi
• Sante Cattaneo (1739 – 1819), painter known for his religious painting
• Angelo Zanelli (1879 – 1942), sculptor who created the large Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the statue of Goddess Rome
• Luigi Comencini (1916 – 2007), film director known for his Commedia all’italiana (Italian-style comedy) movies:
  • La bella di Roma (The Belle of Rome)
  • Tutti a casa (Everybody Go Home)
  • La ragazza di Bube (Bebo’s Girl)
  • Incompreso (Misunderstood)
  • Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio)
  • Lo scopone scientifico (The Scientific Cardplayer)
  • La donna della domenica (The Sunday Woman)
  • Buon Natale…buon anno (Merry Christmas…Happy New Year)
  • Un ragazzo di Calabria (A Boy from Calabria)
  • La storia (History)
  • Voltati Eugenio (Turn Around Eugenio)
  • L’ingorgo (Traffic Jam)
  • Signore e signori, buonanotte (Good Night, Ladies and Gentlemen)
  • Quelle strane occasioni (Strange Occasion)
  • Delitto d’amore (Somewhere Beyond Love)
  • Senza Sapere niente di lei (The Unknown Woman)
  • Infanzia, vocazione e prime esperienze di Giacomo Casanova, veneziano (Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence)
  • Il nostro agente Natlino Tartufato (Italian Secret Service)
  • Le bambole (The Dolls)
  • Il commissario (The Police Commissioner)
  • A Cavallo della tigre (On the Tiger’s Back (US) / Jailbreak (GB))
  • Und das am Montagmorgen (And That on Monday Morning)
  • Le sorprese dell’amore (Surprise of Love)
  • Mogli pericolose (Dangerous Wives)
  • Mariti in città (Husbands in the City)
  • La finestra sul Luna Park (The Window to Luna Park)
  • Pane, amore e gelosia (Bread, Love and Jealousy)
  • Pane, amore e Fantasia (Bread, Love and Dreams (GB)/ Frisky (US))
  • La valigia dei sogni (Suitcase of Dreams)
  • La Tratta delle bianche (Girls Marked Danger)
  • Heidi
  • Persiane chiuse (Behind Closed Shutters)
  • L’imperatore di Capri (The Emperor of Capri)
  • Proibito rubare (Hey Boy)
  • Tre notti d’amore (Three Nights of Love)
  • La mia Signora (My Wife)
  • Il compagno Don Camillo (Don Camillo in Moscow)
  • La bugiarda  (Six Days a Week)
  • Mio Dio come sono caduta in basso! (Till Marriage Do Us Part)
  • Il gatto (The Cat)
  • 
  • Above: Luigi Comencini

Comencini’s films tell wonderful stories:

• A missionary on his way to Africa has his suitcase stolen in Naples and, while trying to locate it, he comes to realize the suffering and poverty in the city needs his attention more.
• A beautiful gold digger, mistakes a waiter in a Neapolitan hotel, for an Arab prince.
• A woman searches for her missing sister in the morally degraded seaside of Genoa.
• A police chief wants to marry and selects a woman as his bride but she is already in love with his shy constable.  Rejected, the chief turns his attention to the town midwife who returns his love but is hiding a secret….
• A junior officer is shocked when Germans storm the base where he is stationed and his fellow Italian officers simply want to go home.
• After receiving a tractor as a gift from a Soviet village, the mayor plans to twin the village with theirs. The priest tricks the Mayor into including him on the trip to Russia.
• An aging American millionairess journeys to Rome each year with her chauffeur to play cards with a destitute man and his wife.  The annual scenario never changes: she donates the money so the Romans can play, then she wins the game shattering their dreams of escaping their poverty.  But now the Roman couple’s daughter wants revenge….
• A girl raised by nuns marries a man only to discover on her wedding night that she married her brother….
• Thousands of motorists are stuck in a terrible traffic jam for 24 hours.

But as films go the Italian horror art film Salò: The 120 Days of Sodom, directed by Paolo Pasolini, is shockingly more frightening than the Italian Social Republic ever was.

Salò focuses on four wealthy, corrupt Italian libertines, during the time of the Social Republic, who kidnap 18 teenagers and subject them to four months of extreme violence, sadism, perversion, sex and fascism.

Salò has been banned in several countries because of all the graphic sex and violence and portrayals of rape, torture and murder.

Pasolini’s intentions were to use sex as a metaphor for the relationship between power and its subjects.

In Salò, the historically-informed mind is filled with confusion about a place so filled with contradictions:

Musicians and painters and movies that bring to brightest light the glorious potential that is man’s creative genius contrasted with a Führer’s puppet fascist frontier and a pornographic snuff film intended to somehow make a political statement revealing the darkest depths man can sink to.

 

But what can the visitor see today?

The Duomo di Santa Maria Annunziata has a memorable Renaissance portal by Gasparo Cairano and Antonio Mangiacavalli, 16th century paintings by Zenone Veronese, a polyptych of Paolo Veneziano and a Madonna and Saints by Romanino.

The Palazzo della Magnifica Patria is home to the Historical Museum of the Azure Ribbon, an exhibition of documents on Renaissance history, on Italy’s colonial wars, the Spanish Civil War and the resistance against fascism.

This latter part of the museum may feel ironic at first glance as Salò was the seat of government of Mussolini’s Nazi-backed puppet state, the Italian Social Republic.

Villa Castagna was the seat of the police headquarters, Villa Amedei was the head office of the Ministry of Popular Culture, Villa Simonin (today’s Hotel Laurin) was the seat of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and on via Brunati was located the Stefani Agency, Italy’s leading press agency during World War II.

Salò is a seismicity.

As the area around the lake is a seismic zone (a good place to measure earthquakes), in 1877 a meterological observatory and in 1889 a geophysical observatory (seismic station) were built, which became an important scientific research centre after the 1901 and 2004 earthquakes.

Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone.

Salò and Mussolini?

The former by earthquake one day?

The latter by gunfire.

 

Salò, despite its beauty, despite its importance, despite its hard work and industry, is a town branded by history, a place forever associated with a dying republic and a failed leader.

So as the mind meanders through the streets of Salò, let’s consider the man Mussolini and wonder how his personality compares with politicians of today.

 

What follows is a description of Il Duce as remembered by one of his contemporaries Luigi Barzini:

Above: Luigi Barzini, Jr. (1908 – 1984)

 

Mussolini grew up hating:

The Church, the army, the king, the police, the law, the rich, the well-educated, the well-washed, the successful, any kind of authority….

All the things he was later to defend.

 

He was a turbulent boy, determined to be first at everything, proud, quarrelsome, boastful, superstitious and not always very brave.

He picked quarrels for the sake of the fight.

When he won at games he wanted more than the stake.

When he lost he refused to pay.

He was expelled from two schools for having knifed two schoolmates.

Many of his companions hated him.

A few loved him dearly, fanatically, and followed him as their leader.

He is remembered for his harsh charm, his winning smile and his fierce loyalty to his friends and followers.

 

He was always persuaded that a great destiny was reserved for him.

Benito said to his mother when he was still a boy:

“One day I will make the earth tremble.”

He did.

 

Mussolini became a school teacher in 1901.

The following year he fled to Switzerland to avoid conscription.

At that time, the duty of a serious revolutionary.

Above: Police record of Benito Mussolini following arrest (19 June 1903)

He returned to Italy in 1904, as an heir had been born to the king and a general amnesty had been granted.

He became a village school teacher, served in the army (He turned out to be a good soldier, after all.), earned a new diploma as teacher of French in high schools, and did odd jobs as a journalist, socialist agitator and organizer.

Above: Young Benito Mussolini

He began to improve his oratory, slowly developing a technique which was to make him one of the best and most moving speakers in Italy.

He paid little attention to the logic and truth of what he said as long as it was energetic and stirring.

His gestures had rhythm and vigour.

He used short, staccato sentences, with no clear connexion between them, often with long and dramatic pauses, sometimes changing voice and expression in a crescendo of violence and ending in a tornado of abuse.

When the audience was carried away by his oratory he would sometimes stop and put to them a rheotrical question.

They roared their answer.

This established a sort of heated dialogue, through which the spectators became involved in decisions they had no time to meditate on.

 

By means of violent writing and incendiary eloquence, Mussolini rose in the socialist organization until, by 1912, he was made editor of the party newspaper, Avanti!.

Above: Benito Mussolini as editor of Avanti!

He was a very successful editor.

The paper’s circulation rose from 50,000 copies to 200,000 under his leadership.

The role of journalist was one of the few in his life he did not have to act.

He really was one, perhaps the best popular journalist of his day in Italy, addressing himself not to the sober cultured minority, but to the practically illiterate masses, easily swept by primitive emotions.

Those very qualities which made him an excellent rabble-rousing editor made him a disastrous statesman:

• His intuitive and superficial intelligence
• His capacity to oversimplify and dramatize
• A day-by-day interest only in the most striking events
• A strictly partisan point of view
• The disregard for truth, accuracy, objectivity and consistency when they interfered with his aims
• The talent for doing his job undisturbed by scruples, doubts or criticisms
• Above all, an instinctive ability to ride the emotional wave of the day, whatever it was, to know what people wanted to be told and by what low collective passions they would more easily be swept away.

He made strange grimaces when he talked, used violent and unprintable words, had an impatient temper….

 

Yet Mussolini managed to attract faithful friends and fanatical followers.

Some of whom clung to him until the end.

 

There was something about him that startled and fascinated almost everybody, including some of his enemies.

Most people who knew him well, who spoke frequently with him, who worked for him, were the victims of his inexplicable charm.

They fell in love with him, unreasoningly and blindly, ready to forgive him everything: his rudeness, his errors, his lies, his pretentiousness, his obstinacy and his ignorance.

 

One of the men who had worked for him since 1914, Manlio Morgagni, committed suicide in July 1943, after writing these words on a piece of paper:

“Il Duce has resigned.

My life is finished.

Viva Mussolini!”

 

Mussolini attracted many women.

He treated them roughly, as he had the peasant girls of Forli (where he grew up), taking them without preliminary explanation on the hard floor of his study or standing them against a wall.

 

Few sensed his timidity, his insecurity, his desire for admiration and affection.

Mussolini was obstinate, deaf to criticism, self-willed and suspicious, as well as erratic and indecisive most of the time, prone to adopt the most recent opinion he heard.

He was irresolute and afraid.

 

In the summer of 1914, Mussolini denounced warmongers.

He headed one of his violent articles:

“Who drives us to war betrays us“.

 

But then the journalist in him wavered when he felt he would lose followers by supporting the cautious government policy.

On 18 October 1914, without taking orders from or consulting the party leaders, Mussolini published an editorial urging war.

He was immediately dismissed from his job and expelled from the party in a stormy session.

He walked out crying dramatically:

“You hate me because you cannot help loving me!”

 

With foreign and Italian money, Mussolini started his own newspaper, Popolo d’Italia (People of Italy), which came out on 14 November 1914.

He immediately managed to gather more followers than he had had when editing Avanti! and more readers.

 

Italy entered World War I on 24 May 1915.

Mussolini went to war when he was called and served well as a corporal until he was wounded.

Above: Soldier Mussolini, 1917

After the war, when the frail structure of Italian political unity was endangered by civil strife, economic difficulties and the collapse of government, Mussolini used his paper to give vent to all his passions, to rally all the hot-headed veterans who found it difficult to return to dull civilian life, the very young men who felt that they had been cheated by not having been in the war, and all those who wanted a revolution, any kind of revolution.

 

On 23 March 1919, in Milan, he founded I Fasc (the League), a vague but determined organization which adopted a fiery and contradictory programme, so contradictory that it attracted dissatisfied and restless men from the right and left, anarchists and conservatives, businessmen and artists.

The confusion of the Fasci di combattimento (ex-servicemen league) reflected the disorderly but brilliant mind of Mussolini, his lack of principles and his constant inconsistency.

 

What Mussolini’s rheotric created, other men developed and their successes he would claim as his personal own.

Disgruntled anarchists across Italy violently seized regions and called them Fascist.

The March on Rome that would convince the King to make Mussolini Prime Minister wasn’t joined by the Fascist leader.

He arrived by train in Rome, borrowed a black shirt from one of the marchers and presented himself to the King as leader of the defiant assembly.

Even the black shirts themselves had been inspired by another man, Gabriele d’Annunzio, poet and self-proclaimed world’s greatest lover, who on 12 September 1919 led a band of 1,000 men to Fiume and conquered it for an Italy that had felt, despite being on the winning Allied side, that it had been cheated of territory and martial glory.

Above: Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863 – 1938)

 

And in one of history’s ironies, Hitler would borrow from Mussolini’s ideology his own brand of fascism and soon the student would far surpass and finally control the teacher.

 

Mussolini was dictator of Italy for two decades (1922 – 1943).

He was 39 when he seized power and 60 when he was forced to relinquish it.

Above: Mussolini, at start of his dictatorship

He had shaped Italy according to his wishes, organized according to his theories, staffed by men educated and selected by him.

His powers were limitless.

Where his legal prerogatives ended, his undisputed authority and immense personal prestige began.

He ran the only official political party, so invasive and widespread that it interfered with the daily habits of millions of people 24/7 from the cradle to the tomb.

He decided the contents of all written material.

He had no opposition.

Mussolini was sole legislator, judge, censor, policeman, ambassador, general, the head of government, president of the Grand Council, President of the Council of Ministers, Minister of the Interior, of Foreign Affairs, of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, of Corporations.

What he didn’t run he controlled indirectly.

 

He was defeated by one man alone.

Himself.

 

He would become impotent in front of his enemies and of the arrogant ally he had encouraged and cultivated.

His grasp of world politics was over-rated.

He chose the wrong commanders, wrong strategies and wrong weapons.

He underestimated the will of the Italian people to suffer and die for a war they did not understand.

He believed his own propaganda.

He thought he had all the answers to all the riddles of the modern world.

 

He lacked raw materials, fuel and food to wage a long world war.

 

He lacked merchant ships to supply the far-flung theatres of war he had chosen to fight in.

 

His tanks were small, weak, slow, tin affairs, easily pierced by machine gun fire.

He had chosen them because they were cheaper and could buy them in bulk.

He said they were faster than the heavier models and more “attuned to the quick reflexes of the Italian soldier“.

 

He had no aircraft carriers.

His planes were good but too few to count and were not replaced fast enough.

 

His navy was efficient but not big or advanced enough to challenge the combined fleets he attacked.

They lacked radar which they never suspected existed.

What was missing in Italy wasn’t the courage or the will to fight but rather any kind of serious planning and organization behind the fighting men.

 

What had Mussolini really done with his time as dictator?

He promoted public works, built harbours, railways, roads, schools, autostrade, monuments, aqueducts, hospitals, irrigation and drainage networks, public buildings, bridges, etc.

But to get the exact measure of his achievements one must, first of all, subtract from the total all that would have been accomplished by any government in his place.

Subtract again how many projects that were just plain mistakes, decided for political and spectacular reasons rather than the hope of practical results.

Calculate how much money disappeared into the hands of dishonest contractors.

As a result, the sum total of Mussolini’s achievements is far out of proportion to the noise surrounding them, their fame and their moral cost.

 

What is the explanation for the inaction and ineffectiveness of Mussolini and why did he fail?

Mussolini was not stupid.

He was shrewd, quick to learn, wary, astute.

He could grasp a complex circumstance in a few minutes, face resolute opponents with success and usually take what intuitive decision any situation required.

The explanation of his failure is that he was not a failure.

He lost the war, his country, his mistress, his place in history and his life, but he succeeded in what he had always wanted to do.

It was not to make Italy safe and prsoperous.

It was not to organize Italy for a modern war and victory.

Mussolini had dedicated his life just to putting up a good show, a stirring show.

He played versatile and multi-faceted roles: the heroic soldier, the cold Machiavellian thinker, the Lenin-like leader of a revolutionary minority, the steely-minded dictator, the humanitarian despot, the Casanova lover,  the Nietzschean superman, the Napoleonic genius and the socialist renovator of society.

He was none of these things.

In the end, like an old actor, he no longer remembered what he really was, felt, believed or wanted.

As a showman his success was incredible.

Mussolini was more popular in Italy than anybody had ever been and possibly ever will be.

His pictures were cut out of newspapers and magazines and pasted on the walls of poor peasant cottages.

Schoolgirls fell in love with him as with a film star.

His most memorable words were written large on village houses for all to read.

One of his followers exclaimed, after listening to Mussolini announce in May 1936 that Ethiopia had been conquered and that Rome had again become the capital of an empire:

“He is like a god.”

Another responded:

“Like a god?

No, no, he is a god.”

We laugh now when we see him in old newsreels.

His showmanship is like some wines which do not last or travel well, but which are excellent when consumed the year they are made in their native surroundings.

His technique was flamboyant, juvenile, ridiculous and highly effective.

Mussolini deceived the people.

He enjoyed a monopoly and was able to multiply his deceit by making good use of the newest communication techniques.

His slanted views and fabrications filled newspapers, posters, the radio, film screens, books, magazines and public discourse.

The majority of his captive audience believed most of what he wanted them to believe.

He loved a good show, enjoyed a good military parade, was comforted by a naval review and strengthened by a vast ocean of supporters in a city square.

He believed his own slogans.

He was amazed by the statistics he invented, thrilled by the boasts he made, stirred to tears by his own oratory.

He confused appearances for reality.

Truth was what it looked like and what most people liked to believe.

His show was always new and startling.

Only by keeping his public interested, thrilled, puzzled, frightened and entertained, could he make them forget the sacrifice of their liberty and their miserable poverty, unite them behind him, dishearten and divide his opposition, assure internal order and international prestige.

Mussolini was corrupted by his own spectacle and the people who surrounded him.

 

Great leaders, drunk with their own great importance and vast intelligence, think themselves infallible, surrounded by sychophants, all stumble and commit fatal mistakes.

Mussolini thought World War II was almost over when he entered Italy into it in June 1940.

He counted on the aid of Hitler in an emergency.

He trusted his own intuition and his luck.

But any reasonably prudent dictator should also have been prepared for unforeseen circumstances.

Mussolini was not.

He never knew what every military attaché in every foreign embassy in Rome knew.

Italy was ridiculously and tragically unprepared.

What blinded him?

He never even suspected that practically nothing was behind his show.

He never knew how really weak, disarmed and demoralized his country was.

He was badly informed, but he wanted to be badly informed.

The master of make-believe could not detect make-believe when practised by others on him.

His resistance to deception, which was never very strong, gradually dwindled and eventually disappeared altogether.

He needed bigger and bigger doses of flattery and deception each year.

In the end, the most sickening and improbable lies, as long as they adulated his idea of himself and confirmed his prejudices, seemed to him the plain and unadorned expression of objective truth.

In the end, Mussolini lived within his own private imaginary world of his own making.

He was shown only the things and the people that would please and comfort him.

Everything else was efficiently hidden.

 

The technique was so smooth that it even deceived Hitler.

Hitler’s favourable opinion of Mussolini, of Italian military preparations and the people’s devotion to the régime and to the Axis, made him commit several miscalculations which cost Germany the war.

Hitler had taken a big risk when he attacked Russia and tried to fight the war on two fronts, but he had a reasonable chance of winning despite heavy odds.

Hitler believed that he lost the Russian campaign because he had started four weeks too late.

He was four weeks too late because he wasted time to rescue the Italians bogged down in Albania in Mussolini’s ill-prepared attack on Greece.

 

Mussolini fell from power on 25 July 1943.

The allied armies had invaded Sicily only a few days before, all overseas possessions were lost, the Italian army had been destroyed in Russia, in the Balkans and in Africa, Italy was battered and paralysed by massive air bombardments, Germans were retreating.

All the big Fascist chiefs took part in a fateful meeting of the Grand Council and demanded that the command of all armed forces be turned over to the King.

Mussolini pleaded with them, cajoled them, threatened them and finally accepted his demotion.

 

The following day King Victor Emmanuel received Mussolini in his private villa and ordered his arrest.

 

There was no Fascist revolt when the news spread.

No faithful followers rose in arms.

Nobody kept the Fascist oath:

“I swear to defend the revolution with my blood.”

Nothing happened.

The show was over.

That’s all.

The people rejoiced simultaneously, for Mussolini had cost them much.

 

Mussolini was transported here and there in search of a place the Germans could not reach, to some islands at first, then to a ski resort hotel in the mountains of Abruzzi.

The Germans found him anyway, in spite of the fact that there was no road to the hotel and only a cable railway connected it with the lowlands.

They used gliders.

 

Mussolini arrived at Hitler’s headquarters, thanked his liberator, donned his old uniform and was named president of the puppet régime, the Italian Social Republic.

Mussolini’s capital was in Salò, comfortably on the direct road to the Brenner Pass, in case of sudden retreat to Switzerland.

As puppet president, Mussolini’s life was dismal.

He knew everything was lost.

He was a failure.

He had plunged Italy into the wrong war, at the wrong time, with practically no weapons.

The few moral and materialistic resources which existed, including the heroic courage of thousands of soldiers, were squandered by an amateur strategist who wanted to show his ally that he too was a mastermind.

Mussolini paid no attention to current affairs, read many books, wrote an enormous quantity of insignificance.

He was interested in only one thing:

How history would see him.

 

He knew the end had come.

 

Mussolini decided to trust his art as an actor: to disguise himself and flee.

He made up his mind to go directly to Switzerland, without wasting time in futile and bloody heroics, carrying all his money and documents to defend himself if he were tried as a war criminal.

On the road to Switzerland, he was found and arrested.

On 25 April 1945, Mussolini was executed and his body hung on display above a Milan petrol station.

Above: Mussolini (second from left)

Even in disgrace and death Mussolini had put on a public show.

 

In our journeys through Lombardy and around and amongst the northern Italian lakes, we neither sought out nor were overly interested in the life of this man over half a century deceased, but somehow Mussolini’s legacy quietly lingers here.

We would drive through Brenner Pass and later find ourselves spontaneously detour our Lake Como travels to the ornate gate of the pompous villa in the tiny village where he was executed, fascinated by the morbidity of everything.

Now on our homeward journey along the shores of Lake Garda we once again encounter the dark spectre of the man-monster that was Mussolini.

Salò once the home of musical genius and artistic endeavour seems now reduced to the embarrassing legacy of failed Fascist capital and unsavoury snuff film locale.

The August sun and horrid humid air seems somewhat chilled by the ghosts of the past.

Only the ignorant feel bliss here.

 

I wonder where and when the next dark Salò will be:

Somewhere in America?

Deep within North Korea?

On an island of the Philippines?

A village in Venezuela?

And as the world burns someone plays the violin….

Above: Coat of arms of the Italian Social Republic (or the Republic of Salò)

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / The Rough Guide to Italy / Lonely Planet Italy / Luigi Barzini, The Italians / R.J.B. Bosworth, Mussolini

Canada Slim and the Battlefield Brotherhood

Landschlacht, Switzerland, Sunday, 8 July 2018

Sometimes it is difficult not to believe in fate.

It strikes me as curious how my life, without planning it at times, seems to lend my writing its directions.

My wife and I live only a stone´s throw away from Arenenberg (a chateau famous for being the final domicile of Hortense de Beauharnais (1783 – 1837), the mother of French Emperor Napoléon III, 1808 – 1873) to the west of Landschlacht and the village of Heiden (final residence of Red Cross founder Jean-Henri Dunant) to the southeast.

Above: Arenenberg

Above: Henri Dunant Museum, Heiden

For my research on the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli I travelled to Geneva to visit the Museum of the Reformation, and while I was there I visited the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) Museum in that same city.

Above: The ICRC Museum, Geneva

(Future posts on Zwingli and Dunant´s legacies are coming soon to you, my gentle readers, God willing.)

 

Last year´s summer vacation in northern Italy, without planning, found itself leading us to a place where the Swiss locales of Arenenberg and Heiden and Geneva all intersect: the village of Solferino.

Above: Solferino

 

Lake Garda, Italy, Sunday, 6 August 2017

A glorious summer vacation found the wife and I travelling by car from Landschlacht in northeastern Switzerland to the Italian towns of Como, Bergamo and Sirmione since the last day of July.

We spent Friday and Saturday in Sirmione at the southern end of the Lago di Garda and were now driving to the northern end of the lake to the town of Riva del Garda for a further two nights.

Above: Lago di Garda from space

(From there we would travel to Trento and Tirano and spend a night in Sils Maria back in Switzerland before returning home.)

(For an account of the adventures from Landschlacht to Sirmione, please see Canada Slim and the….

• Land of Confusion
• Island of Anywhere
• Lady of Lovere
• Dance Macabre
• Company Town
• City of the Thousand
• Unremarkable Town
• Voyageur´s Album
• Holiday Chronicles
• Borders
• Smarter Woman
• Distant Bench
• Life Electric
• Inappropriate Statues
• Isle of Silence
• Injured Queen
• Quest for George Clooney
• Road into the Open
• Apostle of Violence
• Evil Road
• Lure of Italian Journeys

….of this blog.)

 

Lake Garda is a unique romance between the Mediterranean and the alpine, between nature and history.

Carlo Cattaneo described this corner of Paradise in 1844, a description still fitting 134 years later:

“Amazement would take the traveller to a place where the interference of man has been respectful of nature, the environmental beauty reaches levels it would be difficult to surpass.”

Above: Carlo Cattaneo (1801 – 1869)

 

Six miles south of the lakeshore of Garda from whence the Peninsula of Sirmione stretches outwards is the small town (2,700 residents) of Solferino.

Like nearby San Martino, Solferino belongs to the history of Italy because of the Battle of Solferino and San Martino on 24 June 1859 between the allied French Army under Emperor Napoléon III and the Piedmont-Sardinia Army under King Victor Emmanuel II (together known as the Franco-Sardinian Alliance) against the Austrian Army under the Emperor Franz Joseph I (1830 – 1916).

Above: Adolphe Yvon´s La Bataille de Solférino

 

It was the last major battle in world history where all the armies were under personal command of their monarchs.

 

Perhaps 300,000 soldiers fought in the important battle, the largest since the Battle of Leipzig in 1813.

 

There were about 130,000 Austrian troops and a combined total of 140,000 French and allied Piedmontese troops.

Above: The Piedmontese camp, 23 June 1859

After the battle, the Austrian Emperor refrained from further direct command of the army.

Above: Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria

The Battle of Solferino was a decisive engagement in the Second Italian War of Independence, a crucial step in the Italian Risorgimento.

The war’s geopolitical context was the nationalist struggle to unify Italy, which had long been divided among France, Austria, Spain and numerous independent Italian states.

Above:  Major battle sites of the Austro-Sardinian War of 1859

 

The battle took place near the villages of Solferino and San Martino, Italy, south of Lake Garda between Milan and Verona.

The confrontation was between the Austrians, on one side, and the French and Piedmontese forces, who opposed their advance.

Above:  Sardinian troops charge at San Martino (by Luigi Norfini)

In the morning of 23 June, after the arrival of emperor Franz Joseph, the Austrian army changed direction to counterattack along the river Chiese.

At the same time, Napoléon III ordered his troops to advance, causing the battle to occur in an unpredicted location.

Above: Napoléon III, le Bataille de Solférino, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier

While the Piedmontese fought the Austrian right wing near San Martino, the French battled to the south of them near Solferino against the main Austrian corps.

Above: The battle of San Martino

Above:  French infantry advances (by Carlo Bossoli)

The battle was a particularly gruelling one, lasting over nine hours and resulting in over 2,386 Austrian troops killed with 10,807 wounded and 8,638 missing or captured.

The Allied armies also suffered a total of 2,492 killed, 12,512 wounded and 2,922 captured or missing.

Reports of wounded and dying soldiers being shot or bayonetted on both sides added to the horror.

In the end, the Austrian forces were forced to yield their positions.

The allied French-Piedmontese armies won a tactical, but costly, victory.

 

Napoléon III was moved by the losses, and for reasons including the Prussian threat and domestic protests by the Roman Catholics, he decided to put an end to the war with the Armistice of Villafranca on 11 July 1859.

The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861.

Above: The flag of Italy

 

Henri Dunant already knew as a boy growing up in Geneva the value of social work, as his father worked in a prison and an orphanage helping parolees and orphans, while his mother worked with the sick and poor.

Dunant grew up during the period of religious awakening known as the Réveil and at age 18 he joined the Geneva Society for Almsgiving.

In 1847, together with friends, Dunant founded the Thursday Association, a loose band of young men that met to study the Bible and help the poor.

He spent much of his free time engaged in prison visits and social work.

On 30 November 1852, Dunant founded the Geneva chapter of the YMCA, and three years later he took part in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of the YMCA´s international organization.

Above: Henri Dunant (1828 – 1910)

In 1849, at age 21, Dunant was forced to leave the College Calvin due to poor grades and began an apprenticeship with the money-changing firm Lullin et Sautter.

After the apprenticeship was successfully concluded, Dunant remained as an employee of the bank.

 

In 1853, Dunant visited Algeria, Tunisia and Sicily on assignment.

Despite having little experience, Dunant was successful.

 

Inspired by his success, Dunant, in 1856, created a corn-growing and trading company called the Société financiere et industrielle des Moulins des Mons-Djémila on a land concession in French-occupied Algeria.

However, the land and water rights were not clearly assigned and the colonial authorities were not especially cooperative.

As a result, Dunant decided to appeal directly to the French Emperor Napoléon III, who was with his army in Lombardy at the time, his headquarters in the town of Solferino.

Dunant wrote a flattering book full of praise for Napoléon III with the intention of presenting it to the Emperor in return for the assignation of the land and water rights he needed in Algeria….

 

“I was a mere tourist with no part whatever in this great conflict, but it was my rare privilege, through an unusual train of circumstances, to witness the moving scenes that I have resolved to describe.

In these pages I give only my personal impressions…”

(Henri Dunant, A Memory of Solferino)

Above: Henri Dunant at the Battle of Solferino

Horrified by the suffering of wounded soldiers left on the battlefield, Dunant completely abandoned the original intent of his trip and for several days he devoted himself to helping with the treatment and care for the wounded.

Dunant succeeded in organizing an overwhelming level of relief assistance by motivating the local villagers to aid without discrimination.

 

“Here is a hand-to-hand struggle in all its horror and frightfulness.

Austrians and Allies trampling each other under foot, killing one another on piles of bleeding corpses, felling their enemies with their rifle butts, crushing skulls, ripping bellies open with sabre and bayonet.

No quarter is given.

It is a sheer butchery, a struggle between savage beasts, maddened with blood and fury.

Even the wounded fight to the last gasp.

When they have no weapon left, they seize their enemies by the throat and tear them with their teeth….

 

The guns crash over the dead and wounded, strewn pell-mell on the ground.

Brains spurt under the wheels, limbs are broken and torn, bodies mutilated past recognition.

The soil is literally puddled with blood and the plain littered with human remains.

From the midst of all this fighting, which went on and on all over the battlefield, arose the oaths and curses of men of all the different nations engaged – men, of whom many had been made into murderers at the age of twenty!….

 

The Army, in its retreat, picked up all the wounded men it could carry in military wagons and requisitioned carts, how many unfortunate men were left behind, lying helpless on the naked ground in their own blood!

Toward the end of the day, when the shades of night began to cover this immense field of slaughter, many a French officer and soldier went searching high and low for a comrade, a countryman or a friend.

If he came across someone he knew, he would kneel at his side trying to bring him back to life, press his hand, staunch the bleeding, or bind the broken limb with a hankerchief.

But there was no water to be had for the poor sufferer.

How many silent tears were shed that miserable night when all false pride, all human decency even, were forgotten.

During a battle, a black flag floating from a high place is the usual means of showing the location of first-aid posts or field ambulances, and it is tacitly agreed that no one shall fire in their direction.

But sometimes shells reach them nevertheless, and their quartermaster and ambulance men are no more spared than are the wagons loaded with bread, wine and meat to make soup for the wounded.

 

Wounded soldiers who can still walk come by themselves to these ambulances, but in many cases they are so weakened by loss of blood and exposure that they have to be carried on stretchers or litters….

The poor wounded men that were picked up all day long were ghastly pale and exhausted.

Some, who had been the most badly hurt, had a stupified look as though they could not grasp what was said to them.

They stared at one out of haggard eyes, but their apparent prostration did not prevent them from feeling their pain.

Some, who had gaping wounds already beginning to show infection, were almost crazed with suffering.

They begged to be put out of their misery and writhed with faces distorted in the grip of the death struggle….

 

Anyone crossing the vast theatre of the previous day´s fighting could see at every step, in the midst of chaotic disorder, despair unspeakable and misery of every kind….

 

They fought all day long, pushing further and further ahead and finally spent the night near Cavriana.

Above: Modern Cavriana

 

Next morning at daybreak they went back for their knapsacks, only to find them empty.

Everything had been stolen in the night.

The loss was a cruel one for those poor soldiers.

Their underclothes and uniforms were dirty and stained, worn and torn, and now they found all their clothing gone, perhaps all their small savings with it, besides things of sentimental value that made them think of home or of their families – things given them by their mothers or sisters or sweethearts.

Looters stole even from the dead and did not always care if their poor wounded victims were still alive….

 

Some of the soldiers who lay dead had a calm expression, those who had been killed outright.

But many were disfigured by the torments of the death-struggle, their limbs stiffened, their bodies blotched with ghastly spots, their hands clawing at the ground, their eyes staring widely, their moustaches bristling above clenched teeth that were bared in a sinister convulsive grin.

It took three days and three nights to bury the dead on the battlefield, but in such a wide area many bodies lay hidden in ditches, in trenchesm or concealed under bushes or mounds of earth, were found much later.

They and the dead horses gave forth a fearful stench.

In the French Army a certain number of soldiers were detailed from each company to identify and bury the dead….

Unhappily, in their haste to finish their work, and because of the carelessness and gross negligence….

There is every reason to believe that more than one live man was buried with the dead.

 

A son idolized by his parents, brought up and cherished for years by a loving mother who trembled with alarm over his slightest ailment….

A brilliant officer, beloved by his family, with a wife and children at home….

A young soldier who had left sweetheart or mother, sisters or old father, to go to war….

All lie stretched in the mud and dust, drenched in their own blood.

 

The handsome manly face is beyond recognition, for sword or shot has done its disfiguring work.

The wounded man agonizes, dies, and his dear body, blackened, swollen and hideous, will soon be thrown just as it is into a half-dug grave, with only a few shovelfuls of lime and earth over it.

The birds of prey will have no pity for those hands and feet when they protrude as the wet earth dries from the mound of dirt that is his tomb….

 

Bodies lay in thousands on hills and earthworks, on the tops of mounds, strewn in groves and woods, or over the fields and plains….

Over the torn cloth jackets, the muddy grey great coats or once white tunics, now dyed red with blood, swarmed masses of greedy flies and birds of prey hovered above the putrefying corpses, hoping for a feast.

The bodies were piled by the hundreds in great common graves….

 

The crowding in Castiglione della Stivere became something unspeakable.

Above: Modern Castiglione della Stivere

The town was completely transformed into a vast improvised hospital….

….all filled with wounded men, piled on one another and with nothing but straw to lie on….

Men of all nations lay side by side on the flagstone floors of the churches of Castiglione….

They no longer had the strength to move or if they had there was no room for them to do so.

 

“Oh, Sir, I´m in such pain!”, several of these poor fellows said to me.

“They desert us, leave us to die miserably and yet we fought so hard!”

They could get no rest, although they were tired out and had not slept for nights.

They called out in their distress for a doctor and writhed in desperate convulsions that ended in tetanus and death….

With faces black with the flies that swarmed about their wounds, men gazed around them, wild-eyed and helpless.

Others were no more than a worm-ridden, inextricable compound of coat and shirt and flesh and blood….

 

There was one poor man, completely disfigured, with a broken jaw and his swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth.

He was tossing and trying to get up….

Another wretched man had had a part of face – nose, lips and chin – taken off by a sabre cut.

He could not speak, and lay, half-blind, making heart-rending signs with his hands and uttering guttural sounds to attract attention….

A third, with his skull gaping wide open, was dying, spitting out his brains on the stone floor.

His companions in suffering kicked him out of the way, as he blocked the passage….

 

Every house had become an infirmary….

It was not a matter of amputations or operations of any kind, but food, and above all drink, had to be taken around to men dying of hunger and thirst.

Then their wounds could be dressed and their bleeding, muddy, vermin-covered bodies washed.

All this in a scorching, filthy atmosphere in the midst of vile, nauseating odours, with lamentations and cries of anguish all around….

 

“Don´t let me die!”, some of these poor fellows would exclaim – and then, suddenly seizing my hand with extraordinary vigour, they felt their access of strength leave them, and died.

 

“I don´t want to die.  I don´t want to die.”, shouted a Grenadier of the Guard fiercely.

This man who, three days earlier, had been a picture of health and strength, was now wounded to death.

He fully realized that his hours were inexorably counted and strove and struggled against that grim certainty.

I spoke to him and he listened.

He allowed himself to be soothed, comforted and consoled, to die at last with the straightforward simplicity of a child….

 

The women of Castiglione, seeing that I made no distinction between nationalities, followed my example, showing the same kindness to all these men whose origins were so different and all of whom were foreigners to them.

“Tutti fratelli” – (all are brothers) – they repeated feelingly….

The feeling one has of one´s own utter inadequancy in such extraordinary and solemn circumstances is unspeakable….

The moral sense of the importance of human life, the humane desire to lighten a little the torments of all these poor wretches or restore their shattered courage, the furious and relentless activity which a man summons up at such moments: all these combine to create a kind of energy which gives one a positive craving to relieve as many as one can….

But then you feel sometimes that your heart is suddenly breaking – it is as if you were stricken all at once with a sense of bitter and irresistable sadness, because of some simple incident, some isolated happening, some small unexpected detail which strikes closer to the soul, seizing on our sympathies and shaking all the most sensitive fibres of our being….

 

You cannot imagine how the men are stirred when they see the Post Corporal appear to hand out letters….

He brings us….news of home, news of our families and friends.

The men are all eyes and ears as they stretch out their hands greedily towards him.

The lucky ones – those for whom there is a letter – open it in hot haste and devour the contents.

The disappointed move away with heavy hearts and go off by themselves to think of those they have left behind.

Now and then a name is called and there is no reply.

Men look at each other, question each other, and wait.

Then a low voice says “Dead”, and the Post Corporal puts aside this letter, which will return with the seals unbroken to the senders….

 

On 24 June 1859, the total of killed and wounded Austrians and Franco-Sardinians numbered three Field Marshals, nine Generals, 1,566 officers of all ranks and some 40,000 non-commissioned officers and men.

Two months later, these figures (for the three armies together) had to be increased by 40,000, dead or in hospitals from sickness or Fever, either as the result of the excessive fatigues undergone on 24 June and the days immediately preceding or following, or else owing to the pernicious effects of the summer climate and the tropical heat in the Lombardy plain – or, in some instances, owing to the accidents due to the soldiers´ own carelessness.

Leaving all questions of strategy and glory aside, this battle of Solferino was thus, in the view of any neutral and impartial person, really a European catastrophe.”

(Henri Dunant, A Memory of Solferino)

 

Back in his home in Geneva, Dunant would write….

“As it was more than three years before I decided to put together these painful recollections, which I had never meant to print….

But if these pages could bring up the question (or lead to its being developed and its urgency realized) of the help to be given to wounded soldiers in wartime, or of the first aid to be afforded them after an engagement – if they could attract the attention of the humane and philanthropically inclined – in a word, if the consideration and study of this infinitely important subject could, by bringing about some small progress, lead to improvement in a condition of things in which advance and improvement can never be too great, even in the best-organized armies, I shall have fully attained my goal.”

 

Dunant set about a process that led to the Geneva Conventions and the establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross by writing A Memory of Solferino, which he published with his own money in 1862, thus initiating the process.

From 23 to 28 June 2009, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the battle, a series of events gathering thousands of Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers from all over the world took place in Solferino.

Today, the area contains a number of memorials to the events surrounding the battles of Solferino and San Marino.

There is a circular tower, the Tower of San Martino della Battaglia, dominating the skyline, a memorial to King Victor Emmanuel II.

Built in 1893, it stretches 70 metres high above the battlefield.

In the town of San Martino is a museum with uniforms and weapons of the time and an ossuary chapel.

In Solferino is also a museum, displaying arms and mementos of the time and an ossuary containing the bones of thousands of victims.

In nearby Castiglione delle Stiviere, where many of the wounded were taken after the battle, is the site of the Museum of the International Red Cross, focusing on the events that led to the formation of that organization.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning´s (1806 – 1861) poem “The Forced Recruit at Solferino” commemorates this battle.

Jospeh Roth´s (1894 – 1939) Radetzky March opens at the Battle of Solferino.

The battle was depicted in the 2006 drama Henri Dunant: Du Rouge sur la croix (English: Henry Dunant: Red on the Cross), which tells the story of the signing of the Geneva Convention and the founding of the Red Cross.

 

The weather is warm, owing to the pernicious effects of the summer climate and the tropical heat in the Lombardy plain, but the visitor instead feels cold.

The feeling one has of one´s own utter inadequancy in such extraordinary and solemn circumstances is unspeakable….

The moral sense of the importance of human life….

You feel that your heart is suddenly breaking – as if you were stricken all at once with a sense of bitter and irresistable sadness.

Leaving all questions of strategy and glory aside, this Battle of Solferino is a catastrophe.

Without the suffering we would not have the Red Cross nor understand why the cross is red.

“That moves you? Nay, grudge not to show it,

While digging a grave for him here:

The others who died, says your poet,

Have glory – Let him have a tear.”

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Stanza XI, “A Forced Recruit at Solferino”)

Sources:  Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Last Poems / Henri Dunant, A Memory of Solferino / Francesco Martello, Lake Garda: Civilization, Art and History / Wikipedia

Canada Slim and the Land of Confusion

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 12 April 2018

Of the problems that plague me, one of the biggest is persistence:

The ability to keep on keeping on.

I have to constantly remind and encourage myself that “a professional writer is simply an amateur who didn´t quit”. (Richard Bachman)

With my two blogs – this one and Building Everest – I have to remind myself that I cannot get people interested in what I have to say if I myself am uninterested in what I am saying.

In Building Everest I force myself each day to examine that day and ask myself what was interesting and unique about that day.

With this blog, which has (mostly) evolved into a travel blog in the two years since I´ve started it, I ask myself what was interesting about the places I visited and then I search for the words that will (hopefully) make you interested in (one day) visiting those places I´ve described.

As an English teacher I constantly remind my students that in all communication we must keep in mind one question: WIIFM.

What´s in it for me (the reader or recipient of this communication)?

 

Some places seem to sell themselves.

How many millions of words have been devoted to places like Paris or Venice?

And rightly so.

Others, especially the less known or least promoted places, need more time and imagination not only to convince you of their merits, gentle reader, but as well to convince me that writing about them is worthy of my time and effort.

 

Both blogs are practice, a honing process, the necessary training ground for developing the skills to becoming a paid published writer.

 

But what´s in it for you, gentle reader?

Two things (I hope).

 

First, I want you to see that you and I are similar in our shared humanity and desire to understand.

In a travel article, one does not burden the reader with prologues such as this one, but immediately hooks the reader into involving him/herself in the middle of the promoted place.

I include these Landschlacht prologues to show the process by which I write this blog and thus hopefully encourage you to share your world and experiences, for I don´t wish to write alone but rather as a voice in a united chorus.

Second, I want you to see what I see.

I not only want you to travel with me on my travels and share my experiences but I want to encourage you to travel and share your experiences and realize that travelling is not only a search to make the exotic seem familiar but as well it is the realization that the everyday familarity that surrounds us where we are is to someone else exotic.

 

I want to take you now, gentle reader, on a journey both in space and time.

I want you to come with me to a place that has drawn others to it for centuries, a place not so famous in international circles but beloved at least by her countrymen.

And as we travel I want to introduce you to a travel companion on this particular journey, a man confused about who he was and what he wanted – a man much like myself (and perhaps like you yourself) – who possessed a bravery – as uncharacteristic today as it was in his day – to openly express his feelings in a manner so candid that it still continues to shock the reader centuries later.

I want you to imagine him not as buried bones and forgotten words inside dusty tomes but as a living, breathing man walking beside us.

For his thoughts and feelings of yesterday are thoughts and feelings still thought and felt today.

Though time and progress have changed the place he once knew, there is much that remains that he could still relate to.

And much about the place and the man I hope that you can relate to.

Come with us now to Sirmione….

Sirmione, Lago di Garda, Italy, 4 August 2017

Lago di Garda is the largest, cleanest, least scenic, most overdeveloped and most popular of the Italian lakes.

Lying between the Alps and the Po Valley, this 370 square kilometre pool of murky water is firmly on many tour operator schedules.

Garda enjoys mild winters and breezy summers.

The northern sover wind blows down the Lago from midnight through morning.

The southern ova wind breezes up the Lago in the afternoon and evening.

This temperate climate is, these Riviera Bresciana resorts are, invaded by large mobs of package holiday clients and locust-like throngs of Austrians, Germans, Italians and Swiss.

To the north, the Lago is hemmed in by mountain crags and resembles a fjord.

On the most sheltered stretch of the Lago´s western shore lush groves of olives, vines and citrus trees grow, resulting in olive oil, citrus syrups and Bardolino, Soave and Valpolicella wines.

As the Lago broadens towards the south, it takes on the appearance of an inland sea backed by a gentle plain.

The restless winds here have created one of Europe´s best windsurfing sites around Torbole and Malcesine on the eastern shore.

Within easy striking distance of the Milano-Venezia autostrada as well as rail and bus Connections from the main Lombardy towns, the southern shore of Lago di Gardo is particularly well-touristed.

Desenzano del Garda, the Lago´s largest town, is a major rail junction where buses connect with trains and several ferries ply their trade up to the northwest tip of the Lago and the town of Riva del Garda stopping off at other resorts on the way.

Desenzano doesn´t detain the visitor for long, though the lakefront is lined with bars and restaurants, though the castle has spectacular views and the Roman villa  preserves some fine mosaics, the busy road running alongside and the constant traffic on the Lago is an everlasting siren call to leave that few can resist.

So, why linger?

Instead….

 

“Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione, row!

So they rowed and there we landed – O pretty Sirmio!

There to me through all the groves of olive in the summer glow,

There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,

Came that “hail and farewell” of the Poet´s hopeless woe,

Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,

“Brother, hail and farewell” – as we wandered to and fro

Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda lake below

Sweet Catullus´s all-but-island, olive silvery Sirmio!”

(Alfred Tennyson)

Above: Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

 

The Roman poet Catullus (87 – 54 BC) celebrated Sirmione, this narrow peninsula jutting out from the southern shore of Lago di Garda, as “the jewel of all islands”, thus his name is constantly invoked in connection with the place.

Above: Bust of Catullus, Piazza Carducci, Sirmione

Starting from the 1st century BC, Sirmione became a favourite resort for rich families coming from Verona, then the main Roman city in northeastern Italy.

Catullus praised the beauties of Sirmione and spoke of a villa he had in the area.

Sirmione remains a popular spot in a beautiful setting suffocated by luxury hotels, souvenir stands and tourists.

Go beyond the town battlements, away from the Rocca Scaliagara, that fairytale turreted fortress.

Escape, flee the throngs.

Walk out beyond the town to the peninsula´s triangular hilly head and lie in the shade of cypress and olive groves.

Linger not long, but pass San Pietro, for church frescoes won´t free you from the folks that follow you in search of food, alcohol, cool water and warm rocks.

Boldly march, tracing the path that runs along the edges of the Peninsula.

Ignore the warning signs of slippery rocks and tumbling landslides and continue up to the gate leading to the Grotte di Catullo, where the locals brag was Catullus´ villa.

It wasn´t.

What this was, what this is,  is the semblance of a Roman spa, white ruins where Romans came to take the waters from the hot sulphur spring that lies 300 metres under the Lago.

The scattered ruins, ageless and beautiful, bake quietly in the sun amongst ancient olive trees.

Fragments of frescoes and superb views of the Lago await the valiant wanderer.

We know from historical records that Catullus did retire to Sirmione, coming all the way from the Black Sea by boat, hauling it overland (!) when necessary so he could sail upon Lago Garda.

But what of the man Catullus and why do the folks of Sirmione insist he not be forgotten, even if his actual villa´s location remains uncertain?

For he was one of the Roman Republic´s greatest poets rivalling his contemporaries Lucretius and Cicero in the creation of a golden age of Latin literature.

 

62 BC, Rome

Quintus Valerius Catullus (22) had come to Rome from Verona, where his father was of sufficient financial and social standing to be frequent host to Julius Caesar himself.

Quintus himself owned villas near Tibur and on Lake Garda and had an elegant house in Roma.

Catullus speaks of these properties as choked with mortgages and repeatedly pleads his poverty, but the picture preserved of him by posterity through his poetry is that of a polished man of the world who did not bother to earn a living but enjoyed himself as a bon vivant among the wild set of the capital.

Despite his father´s friendship with Caesar, or because of this, Catullus – a familiar amongst Rome´s keenest wits and cleverest orators and politicians – opposed Caesar with every epigram at his disposal, unaware that his literary revolt reflected the revolutionary times in which he lived.

Catullus had tired of the old forms of Latin literature.

He wanted to sing the sentiments of his youth in new and imaginative ways.

Catullus was resentful of old morals perpetually preached by exhausted elders.

He announced the sanctity of instinct, the innocence of desire and the grandeur of dissipation.

He found life, love and literature revolved around every woman, married or not, who inspired him with comfortably casual love.

Catullus cultivated his friendship with the liveliest woman in his privileged circle, Clodia, whom he named Lesbia in memory of the Greek poetess Sappho of Lesbos whose works he translated, imitated and loved.

Above: Catullus at Lesbia´s, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Quintus was fascinated by Clodia the moment she “set her shining foot on the well-worn threshold”.

She was his “lustrous goddess of the delicate step”.

Her walk, like her voice, was sufficient seduction for any man.

Clodia accepted Quintus graciously as one of her admirers and the enraptured poet, unable to match otherwise the gifts of his rivals, laid at her feet the most beautiful lyrics ever produced in Latin.

A lover´s frenzy raged within him….

“Sparrow, delight of my beloved.

Who plays with you and holds you to her breast?

Who offers her forefinger to your seeking

And tempts your sharp bite?

I know not what dear jest it pleases my shining one

To make of my desire!”

Quintus was consumed with happiness, paid attendance upon her daily, read his poems to her, forgot everything but his infatuation….

History does not record how long this ecstasy lasted, but she who had betrayed her husband for Quintus found it a relief to betray him for another.

Quintus madly envisioned her “embracing at once 300 adulterers.”

In the very heat of his love he came to hate her and rejected her protestations of fidelity:

“A woman´s words to hungry lover said

Should be upon the flowing winds inscribed,

Upon swift streams engraved.”

When sharp doubt became dull certainty his passion turned to bitterness and coarse revenge.

He accused her of yielding to tavern habitués, denounced her new lovers with obscene abandon and meditated suicide, poetically.

But Quintus was capable of more nobler feelings.

He addressed to his friend Manlius a touching wedding song, envying him the wholesome companionship of marriage, the security and stability of a home and the happy tribulations of parentage.

Quintus travelled to Bithyia (Black Sea coastal Turkey) to find the grave of a brother.

Over it he performed reverently the ancestral burial rites and soon afterward he composed tender lines….

“Dear brother, through many states and seas

Have I come to this sorrowful sacrifice,

Bringing you the last gift for the dead.

Accept these offerings wet with fraternal tears,

And forever, brother, hail and farewell.”

His time in Turkey changed and softened Catullus.

The skeptic who had written of death as “the sleep of an eternal night” was moved by the old religions and ceremonies of the East.

In a small yacht bought at Amastria (Amasra), Quintus sailed through the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Adriatic, up the Po Valley to Lago Garda and his villa at Sirmio (Sirmione).

“Oh, what happier way is there to escape the cares of the world than to return to our own homes and altars and rest on our own beloved bed?”

 

Men begin by seeking happiness and are content at last with peace.

 

Sirmione, Lago di Garda, Italy, 4 August 2017

Our bed and breakfast accommodation, adequate though not overly attractive – (much as women describe me these days!) – lay three kilometres from the centre of Sirmione.

As the B & B was destined to be beyond bus line access and my wife determined to save costs by our not employing taxis our three-day/two-night sojourn in Sirmione meant one hour´s walk between the B & B and the city centre.

We who had been driving everywhere that past week found ourselves wearily trudging back and forth alongside busy boulevards lined much like North American City access ways with anonymous forgettable shopping malls and restaurants forever ignored by the Michelin Guide.

Concrete under our feet, the lakeshore invisible and unattainable, carbon monoxide replacing sea breeze and breath.

Still we made the best of the Sirmione experience that we could.

We ate expansively, drank copiously, swam gloriously in the Lago and in the pools of the Terme di Sirmione spa and bathed ourselves in the warm Italian sun on unforgiving rocks.

We walked about Roman ruins searching for an ever-elusive emotional link with the ancient past.

 

One should not go to Sirmione in search of happiness but one can find contentment here.

Other English speakers did.

 

The Greek American soprano Maria Callas (1923 – 1977) had, like Catullus centuries before, a villa here.

Above: Maria Callas

The English writer Naomi “Micky” Jacob (1884 – 1964) moved to Sirmione because the weather was kinder to her tuberculosis-stricken lungs.

She was well-known in the town and her home was known as Casa Micky.

Micky wrote more than 40 novels and nearly a dozen autobiographies.

Her novels, best described as romantic fiction, tackled the problems of prejudice against Jews, domestic violence and the political consequences of pogroms in the 19th century.

Although not well-known nowadays, in her day Micky was a well-loved and much respected figure.

She, like Catullus´ poetic inspiration Sapphos, had intimate relationships with other women that were an open secret but never publicly disclosed during her lifetime.

She never gave up her home in Sirmione and died there in 1964.

 

Charles Schulz, the American creator of the famous Peanuts cartoons, on his way to Venice with his family lingered in Sirmione for a week in the 1950s.

He left against his heart describing Sirmione as “extraordinary”.

Above: Charles Schulz (1922 – 2000)

 

The Pace (pah-chay) Hotel in Sirmione occupies a building with a particularly significant history – the union of an old hotel (Hotel Eden) and the Santa Coruna religious institute for children with heart problems or for persons suffering from nervous complaints.

At a time when medicine wasn´t particularly evolved, the Lago di Garda was believed to infuse tranquillity and aid convalescence and healing.

Of the many visitors the Pace has hosted, including the aforementioned Charles Schulz, Catullus probably would have most connected with the American poet Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972).

Above: Ezra Pound

Like Pound, Catullus loved and hated in equal measures of extreme intensity, was capable of generous feeling, was unpleasantly self-centred, deliberately obscene and merciless to his enemies.

Both men danced poetically between love and lust, kisses and kaka, a mix of primitive coarseness with civilized refinement.

Their lines are salted with dirt to give literature taste.

Time magazine in 1933 described Pound as “a cat that walks by himself, tenaciously unhousebroken and very unsafe for children”.

 

During the winter of 1913 Ezra Pound was in Sussex (England) with William Butler Yeats, acting as the elder poet´s secretary.

Above: William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

Temporarily free of the rush of London, each was assessing the other´s work and laying out new directions.

When Pound had almost completed an anthology of new poets, he asked Yeats if there was anyone he had forgotten to include.

Yeats recalled a young Irish writer named James Joyce who had written some polished lyric poems.

Above: James Joyce (1882 – 1941)

One of them had stuck in Yeats´ mind.

Joyce was living in Trieste.

Why not write to him?

Pound wrote Joyce at once.

He explained his literary connections and offered help in getting Joyce published.

A few days later Yeats found Joyce´s “I Hear an Army Charging upon the Land” and Pound wrote again to ask Joyce if he could use the poem in his anthology.

Joyce, who had been on the Continent for nearly ten years, cut off from his nation and his language and so far all but unpublished, was surprised and encouraged.

He gave Pound permission to use the poem and a few days later sent a typescript of his book of short stories Dubliners and a chapter of a new novel called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, along with news that he would soon have a play ready.

A prolonged correspondence began, which grew into a long-standing friendship.

Because of World War I, the two innovators of modern fiction and poetry would not meet until June 1920, when Pound persuaded Joyce to come to Sirmione.

If seen through Pound´s eyes, one wonders if the men were satisfied with the results of their meeting….

 

2 June 1920, Sirmione

“In vainest of exasperation

Mr. P passed his vacation.

The cause of his visit

To the Eyetaliann cities

Was blocked, by a wreck, at the station.”

 

“A bard once in landlocked Sirmione

Lived in peace, eating locusts and honey

Till a son of a bitch

Left him dry on the beach

Without clothes, boots, time, quiet or money.”

 

Sirmione, Lago di Garda, Italy, 4 August 2017

I think much about Pound and Catullus during our long walks to and fro between B & B and town.

I think about how both men resolved in their lifetimes to know more about poetry than any man living.

I think about how both men were really at heart very boyish fellows and incurable provincials, both driven by a thirst for romance and colour, who stumbled magnificently in their individual follies at great cost to themselves.

 

I think about how Clodia, Catullus´ lover, epitomizes today´s modern woman in her determination to lead her own life as she chose, free to love and be loved by whomsoever she desired, a woman who lived and loved with irresistable grace and whose greatest sin was not adultery or lechery as it was her underestimation of the effects that lovers wronged could enact upon her.

 

A woman´s body and soul are hers to decide how they are to be shared.

It is the dimmest of hopes that a mere man is worthy of being her sole obsession throughout her lifetime.

 

I think of how the love of a woman (19) caused Ezra Pound (58) to walk from Verona to the town of Gais, Switzerland, a distance of over 450 miles.

He was so dirty and tired when he arrived that his girlfriend Mary almost failed to recognize him.

The lengths that love drives a man….

 

I think of the lengths my own personal Lesbia has driven me over the past two decades, including the three-kilometre concrete trudge twice a day.

Perhaps marriage is a lot like Sirmione.

One might not always be made happy here, but one is usually contented.

Sources: Wikipedia / Will Durant, Caesar and Christ / Reay Tannahill, Sex in History / The Pace Hotel, Sirmione / The Rough Guide to Italy / Lonely Planet Italy

 

 

 

 

Canada Slim and the Island of Anywhere

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 14 January 2018

“This could be Rotterdam or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome. 

´Cause Rotterdam is anywhere. 

Anywhere alone.  Anywhere alone.”

(The Beautiful South, “Rotterdam (or Anywhere)”, Blue is the Colour)

There are a couple of songs that I enjoy listening to from this group:

“Don´t Marry Her” – purely for its shock value.

“Rotterdam (or Anywhere)” – for the feelings its lyrics inevitably generate within me.

Above: Rotterdam

My wife recently bought me a new computer whose kinks and quirks I have yet to comprehend and overcome.

But these First World problems could have happened to anyone anywhere in the First World.

The sadness and annoyance at yet another piece of technology in my possession suddenly becoming obsolete, the frustration of having to master yet another new machine, I believe, are common emotions of someone of my generation trying to cope with the tools of a more modern time that make us sometimes feel obsolete as well.

During a break between completed errands in town and waiting for a train to take me to my only teaching job (at present) I spontaneously decided to visit the public library across the square from the Bahnhof (Train Station) St. Gallen.

Above: Bahnhof St. Gallen

To the library´s credit they do possess more English language books than I do in my own personal library (though my wife doesn´t believe this to be true).

Spontaneously I grab the works of three authors whose writing I have hesitated to read for various irrational reasons: Jonathan Ames (because he has struck me as being elitist), Maya Angelou (too urban with themes common to the USA but almost unrecognizable to white Canadians) and Margaret Atwood (out of pure and simple jealousy for her success rather than any logical premise at all).

I need to grow beyond myself and try to read authors for the value and power of their words rather than reject them without reading their works because of stupid preconceptions.

I begin with Ames´  Wake Up, Sir! for the simplest reason of all: his name takes precedence alphabetically.

My attempts to dispel my prejudices about Ames do not begin well….

In Chapter One, the damned hero of the book has a valet!

But I must admit that the opening situation of the book is one with which I can relate to….

Alan Blair, the protagonist of the novel, is awoken by his valet and informed that – Horror of Horrors! – his uncle is already up and about.

“It was only under these alarming circumstances that Jeeves would interrupt my eight hours of needed unconsciousness.

He knew that the happiness of my morning was dependent on having as little contact with said uncle as possible.”

I love my wife, but, like Blair´s uncle, she does not see how important solitude is to producing literature (or in my case, semblances of literature).

Like Uncle Irwin, my wife (being the well-organized German woman she is) has schedules that she adheres to, with a discipline well-trained soldiers would appreciate.

So, when she alters her schedule, I find myself suddenly in a funk and am uncertain as to how to recapture my muse with the alarming alteration of her presence demanding attention to herself rather than any attempts of creation I might be fostering.

Art is more akin to spontaneous ejaculations of expression and emotion, but even I realize that some amount of order and self-control are required to produce something worthy to be published.

Much like Uncle Irwin, my wife views sitting down and producing words on a computer (dead laptop or recently acquired mystery machine notwithstanding) akin to a kind of laziness.

For surely there are better things I could be doing with my time, such as household duties (husbands are, after all, unpaid valets), finding more employment as a teacher or requesting more hours at my “temporary” job as a barista.

She feels, and rightly so, that the inequality of our incomes puts an unjust burden upon her, but, in my defence, I argue that her education should leave her with a larger income than me and that money, as pleasant as it can be, is not the only criteria when it comes to devoting 80% of our lives to a job.

When work presents itself I do not shirk my responsibilities, but by the same token I do not want my life to be nothing more than living to pay bills.

I have more leisure time than she does as a doctor, but I would be lying if I said that I am not glad that I do.

I like having mornings to myself when I can write, or evenings when she has gone to bed exhausted and I am writing my electronic journal.

I like working weekends when the Café closes earlier than weekdays, leaving me free during the week – when I am not teaching – to go hiking or travelling while average people are chained to their workplaces.

It is a fine thing to go hiking on a Sunday, but nature is truly a wonderland on a Wednesday when most everyone is working leaving the wilderness to myself alone.

That having been said, my ability to travel would not be possible (at least in the same manner I have grown accustomed to since we got married) were it not for her superior income.

And, understandably, she wants to have leisure time to travel as well, though her desire for solitude is rarer for her than mine is.

So, except for conferences, when she travels I usually accompany her.

And, it must be said, as too swift as our travelling together can be, travelling alone can, on occasion, make a place feel like Rotterdam or anywhere.

I can appreciate a sunset alone, but sharing that same sunset does lend the dying day a certain poignancy that solitude does not.

There is an Island that we both visited this past summer that listening to “Rotterdam (or Anywhere)” always brings to mind, for had I not been with her not only might I not have seen the Island, I might not have appreciated it without her by my side.

Monte Isola, Italy, 4 August 2018

Traffic-free Monte Isola, Italy´s largest lake island, at over 3 km long and 600 metres / 1,969 feet high, at the south of the Lago d´Iseo, is defined by Italian legislation as an “area of particular importance from the natural and environmental point of view”.

Above: Monte Isola

(Bureaucrats should never write travel literature.)

Accessible by hourly ferries from the lakeside ports of Iseo and Sulzano, Monte Isola is a magnet for daytrippers in summers and at weekends, so the Island then is unlikely to provide much solitude.

Still, mid-season or out of season, the Island is well worth a visit, to walk or cycle around the edge of the Island and for great views of the lake.

The population of the Island (1,800 inhabitants) is spread over 11 villages and hamlets.

There are several churches built between the 15th and the 17th centuries with frescoes, statues and altars in vernacular art.

With a total area of 12.8 square kilometres / 4.9 square miles, Monte Isola ranks as the largest lake island not only in Italy, but also in Central and South Europe.

(The world´s largest lake island is Canadian: Manitoulin Island.)

The Island is served and reached by two main ports: Carzano to the north and Peschera Maraglio to the south.

There are indications of a Roman settlement, but the Island is first mentioned in a written document in 905 when it was listed among the properties of the monastery of San Salvatore in Brescia.

The family Oldofredi, rulers of Iseo, built two strongholds on the Island in the 11th to the 19th centuries.

One of these, on the lower promontory of the Island, covered by olive tree and wine cultivation, is the Rocca Oldofredi-Martinego, built in the 14th century as a strategic and defense point and then turned into a residence by the Martinegos during the Italian Renaissance.

Members of the powerful Visconti family came to the Island to hunt in 1400.

In 1497 Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan, gave the islanders some fishing rights and reduced their taxes.

Above: Francesco Sforza (1401 – 1466)

In the same year, Caterina Cornaro, Queen and last monarch of Cyprus, resided a while on the Island.

Above: Caterina Cornaro (1454 – 1510)

During the 19th century the main industry on the Island was the construction of boats and the manufacturing of fishing nets.

In 2016, Monte Isola was the site of the Floating Piers by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

Above: The Floating Piers

In Peschiera Maraglio is the single-nave Church of San Michele Arcangelo.

Consecrated in 1648, this baroque church is notable for the many frescoes on the walls and ceiling and for its wooden carvings.

Climb the mountain from the small village of Cure in the middle of the Island.

The peak offers the most panoramic site of the Lago and from here it is possible to admire all the villages of both lakeshores, the natural reserve of Torbiere del Sebino and a large part of the mainland.

At the top, amongst walnut woods and ancient dolomite rocks stands the Shrine of the Madonna della Ceriola.

This 13th century church was the first parish church on the Island and the Madonna, the protectress not only of the inhabitants of Monte Isola but the entirety of Lago Iseo, is represented by a 12th century seated wooded sculpture carved from the trunk of a turkey oak.

Wander the Island and feel soothed by the barely tamed bushy copse woods containing oak, bay, hornbeam, ash and fruit chestnut trees.

Brown kites fly above, while wild ducks and great crested grebes swim below.

Agriculture, once an island mainstay, is nowadays practised more as a hobby, yet, nonetheless, it is the maintenance of this ancient art that still plays a crucial role in the preservation of the landscape heritage, preventing the Island being overdeveloped as a Tourist resort similar to other major northern Italian lakes such as Garda and Como.

The 1,800 inhabitants of this lake oasis move about by motorcycle or mini-buses which connect all hamlets and the two main ports.

All connections to and from the mainland run between Peschiera Maraglio and mainland Sulzano (the route we took) or between Carzano and mainland Sale Marasino.

This ferry service, operated by Navigazione Lago d´Iseo, runs every 15 to 20 minutes from 0500 to midnight and every 40 minutes between midnight and 5 a.m.

On Monte Isola cars are banned and the only cars allowed are the ones used for community services (ambulance, doctor, police, priest and taxi).

Motorcycles are for the exclusive use of permanent Monte Isola residents.

Bicycles can be rented in Peschiera Maraglio and Carzano.

It takes about an hour to circumnavigate the Island by bike.

But it is recommended to walk.

Stroll down the old mule tracks….

(The tracks are old.

Not sure about the mules.)

And the paths leading from the Lago to the top of the Island and to the Shrine.

This is an extremely interesting site, both from a natural and an artistic point of view.

The island´s littlest church contains contemplative quiet beauty and is both the oldest and the highest point on Monte Isola.

The rest of the Island itself is worth a look and a linger.

Artistic churches surrounded by tiny squares and large pale stone houses, sunny arcades, companionable courtyards, lovely landscapes, a rough and simple people  –  some still using ancient wooden farm tools – set in a solid and certain architecture and proud heritage.

Siviano, the most populated hamlet, is the central core of the community.

Above: Siviano

Here, here, is the town hall, the Kindergarten, the Primary School and the Secondary School, the post office, the bank, the two supermarkets.

Peschiera Maraglio, the main harbour of Monte Isola, has a tourist office, another bank, a chemist´s, another Kindergarten, many restaurants, hotels and shops.

Here we gather at the water and cast our nets.

Above: Peschiera Maraglio

Carzano was also a fishermen´s village, also all about the fish and fish preservation.

Here, every five years, the fishing folk decorate all the streets of the village with handmade paper flowers to celebrate the religious feast of the Holy Cross, drawing more than 10,000 visitors to watch the spectacle.

Here on Monte Isola it is possible to sleep in small silent hotels and to savour the endless ways to eat a fish.

Here the olive oil is extra virgin…

(Not sure about the girls…)

The lake sardines are salted, dried and bottled in oil….

(Much like the tourists…)

And salami flavoured in unique Monte Isola ways….

(Similar to the local ladies?)

The wife and I strolled from Peschiera´s docks, occasionally popping into shops and then settled ourselves down by the shore to watch children splash joyfully in the water.

Ute swam for hours while I read some forgettable tome important only at that and for that moment.

Day Five of our vacation and this day we had driven (or to be precise she drove us) from Bregamo to Sulzano, via Crespi d´Adda and Clusone.

We parked the car near the ferry port in Sulzano and waited for the boat to arrive.

A man in an ambulance gurney is taken off the boat, an ambulance waiting to take him to an emergency room in some nearby town with a hospital.

Was he a resident?  A tourist?

Neither our Italian nor our courage was up to the task of enquiring as to the patient´s identity or circumstances.

On the Island while my wife waded amongst the crowd of mer-children the chilly recollection of the gurney man remained with me but not in a sad or morbid way.

I love my wife, but I won´t deny that my brain wanders off and wonders what it would be like to go somewhere, anywhere, and retreat to an “isolated” spot and devote myself solely to my writing.

(Of course, this is with the assumption that I have the financial means to do this, which, sadly, I do not.)

I fantasize about finding some remote village like Ezra Pound´s Rapallo, or some tranquil wilderness vista like Henry David Thoreau´s Walden Pond, or some artistic alcove like Ernest Hemingway´s in Paris, and devote myself purely to doing nothing but creation.

In my mind´s eye I see myself typing some novel or a magazine article in the early hours before dawn, strolling through the just-waking village to watch the sunrise and smell the baker´s first bread and rolls being prepared for sale, more writing in my small den until lunchtime, lounging in some intimate café soaking the afternoon sun into my bones like some self-indulgent cat, strolling to the harbour to see what cast of characters the lake has spawned this day, more writing just before sunset, down to the beach to watch the sun dissolve into dream tides of amnesiac waters, then walk with purpose and anticipation to my favourite restaurant and slowly sip glass after glass of some local wine until fatigue quietly whispers to me to return back to my bed.

I am not quite certain exactly where my writer´s retreat would be or whether it even could be.

My mind has had this writer´s retreat in Paris, in Ticino and Graubünden, in Lisbon, in Istanbul, and now on Monte Isola.

It wouldn´t have to be in Monte Isola or Istanbul, Lisbon or Paris, or in some remote hamlet in southern Switzerland or northern Italy.

It could be here.

It could be anywhere.

Wherever I go, there I am.

I think about the story of Caterina Cornaro (1454 – 1510), the last Queen of Cyprus (1474 – 1510), how she came to be a temporary resident here on Monte Isola after her husband died and Venice claimed control over Cyprus.

What must it have been like to be an exiled and deposed queen and living in isolation in an old fortress on an Island which has always been barely recognized by anyone?

Did she see her future as nothing more than a destiny of disillusioned despair and diminishment?

Does one need to be defeated, disillusioned and diminished before escaping to a retreat?

(Similar to Colin Firth´s character Jamie, in the film Love…Actually, retreating to a French cottage after he discovers his girlfriend having an affair with his brother.)

I hope not.

Though my time on Monte Isola was short, decidedly too short –  time (and my wife) waits for no one and we had booked accommodation down the road some distance in Sirmione by Lago di Garda – I am still left with the desire to return some day to Monte Isola.

As good a place as anywhere.

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir! / The Rough Guide to Italy / http://www.comune.monteisola.it

 

 

Canada Slim and the Lady of Lovere

Landschlacht, Switzerland, 1 January 2018

As another New Year begins the question turns to New Year´s resolutions, to make them or avoid them, and if made what those resolutions should be.

Above: New Year´s Eve, Sydney, Australia

For example, some of us resolve to become fitter in the following twelve months, but those that know us know better than us that the sacrifice of time, effort and money required to do so isn´t truly who we are or really want to be.

Sometimes a person can be too close to a situation to properly see it for what it is.

Two women in my life recently caused themselves and others great friction, because they never accepted that their behaviour is harmful and refused to change their behaviour, despite being warned of consequences.

In fairness to them, it is often difficult to see beyond our own perspectives, regardless of what is said to us or what happens around us.

For example, I never truly appreciated how much I am liked by some of my regular customers when two evenings ago one of them spontaneously entered the Café and gave me a hug wishing me “Happy Holidays”.

It wasn´t until I have reflected upon this several hours later that I realised that my response might not have been as warm and welcoming to him as it should have been.

Visiting him at his place of business bearing gifts of apology and remorse for my unintended coldheartedness is the first of my New Year´s resolutions.

For every person there are also situations that trigger a kind of blindness that makes it difficult to see anything besides the emotions the situations generate.

For example, nothing makes me see red more than bullies.

So, as a result, I have the most difficult time seeing American, Turkish or Filipino politics open-mindedly, for Trump, Erdogan and Duterte strike me as being the epitome of bullies in their behaviour.

Above: Donald Trump, 45th US President since 20 January 2017

Above: Recep Erdogan, 12th President of Turkey since 2014, 25th Prime Minister of Turkey (2003 – 2014)

Above: Rodrigo Duterte, 16th President of the Philippines since 2016

These leaders and their followers can´t see, won´t see, what they are doing is wrong and truly believe that they are doing what is best and can´t comprehend, won´t comprehend, why others don´t see things as they do.

I was reminded of this last summer when we visited Lovere…..

Lovere, Italy, 4 August 2017

The Rough Guide to Italy doesn´t love Lovere very much.

“Lago d´Iseo raises your expectations:

Descending from Clusone, the road passes through steep gorges, thick forests and stark angular mountains, at the foot of which lies the Lake.

(For a description of Clusone, please see Canada Slim and the Dance Macabre of this blog.)

As Iseo is the 5th largest of the northern lakes and the least known outside Italy, you would imagine it to be more undiscovered than the others but the apartment blocks, harbourside boutiques, ice cream parlours and heavy industry of Lovere put paid to any notions that Lago Iseo might have escaped either tourist exploitation or industrialization.”

Lonely Planet Italy isn´t complimentary either.

“Lago d´Iseo is the least known and least attractive of the lakes.

Shut in by mountains, Iseo is scarred by industry and a string of tunnels at its northeastern end around Castro and Lovere, although driving through the blasted rock face at the water´s edge can be enjoyable.” 

And herein lies the problem.

Because so many English-speaking readers trust and faithfully follow the advice given by these two popular travel guides, they fail to discover that there might be more to Heaven and Earth than is expounded by these two guidebooks´ philosophies.

Automobiles are quick, efficient and quite liberating from the quirks of predetermined routes and set schedules, but much is missed if the destination is deemed superior to the possible discoveries that can be made if one stops and explores along the journey.

My wife and I, like many other automobile travellers, were restricted by time and money to how often we could leisurely stop and explore.

And that is a shame.

For had we taken the train from Bergamo to the harbour town of Iseo then a ferry from there to Lovere, we might have discovered a town far more deserving of compliments than the aforementioned guidebooks give it credit.

Lovere is much like Lecco in that it is considered far more unremarkable than it truly is.

(For Lecco, see Canada Slim and the Unremarkable Town of this blog.)

At first glance of Lovere a person might be forgiven for thinking that somehow the road had led the traveller somehow back to Switzerland, for the houses in this town (of 5,000 residents) have overhanging wooden roofs, typical of Switzerland, yet united with the heavy stone arcades of Italy.

Lovere faces the Lago Iseo and is held in the warm embrace of a semi-circle of mountains behind.

The Tourism Council of the Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani includes Lovere as one of the I Borghi piu belli d´Italia, one of the small Italian towns of artistic and historical interest and one of the most beautiful villages in Italy.

Being part of the crossroads of culture and conflict that this region has been for centuries, Lovere has seen different peoples struggle to possess it: the Celts, Romans, Lombards, Franks, the monks of the Marmoutier Abbey (Tours, France), the Bishops of Bergamo, the Republic of Venice, the Napoleonic French, the Austrians and finally Italians.

There are a few sights in town worthy of a look and a linger of a few hours: the Church of Santa Maria in Valvendra with works by Cavagna, Carpinoni and Marone; the Palazzo Tadini which is both historic palace and art gallery, with many beautiful paintings and magnificent marble sculptures, along with terracotta, porcelain, antique armaments, furniture and zoological collections; the Church of San Giorgio with Cavagana´s Last Supper and Palma the Younger´s Trinity with the Virgin; the Clarissan monastery of Santa Chiara; the frescoes of the Oratorio San Martino; the ancient fortifications of Il Castelliere Gallico.

Above: Basilica Santa Maria in Valvendia, Lovere

Above: Palazzo Tadini, Lovere

Above: Church of San Giorgio, Lovere

Above: Convent of Santa Chiara, Lovere

Above: Church of San Martino, Lovere

Above: Fortifications of Castelliere Gallico, Lovere

This town is truly deserving of mention and preservation.

Yes, Rough Guide and Lonely Planet, there is industry here in Lovere, for the town possesses a metallurgic plant, Lucchini, which employs about 1,300 people and specializes in the manufacture of railroad wheels and axles.

But this town is more than industry and churches and it has produced or adopted a few folks worthy of mention:

The English aristocrat, letter writer and poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689 – 1762) resided in Lovere for ten years.

Above: Lady Mary Montagu (1689 – 1762)

The 1906 Nobel Prize for Medicine recipient Camillo Golgi studied in Lovere´s Liceo Classico.

Above: Camillo Golgi (1843 – 1926)

(Golgi was known for his work on the central nervous system and his discovery of a staining technique called black reaction or Golgi´s method, used to visualize nerve tissue under light microscopes.)

The all-time leader in victories in motorcycle Grand Prix history, Giacomo Agostini was born in Lovere in 1942.

Above: Giacomo Agostini

Leading cinema critic and author Enrico Ghezzi was born in Lovere in 1952.

Above: Enrico Ghezzi

And while these abovementioned four have world recognition (at least in their day), Italians and the locals of Lovere also won´t forget that the town has also produced Santa Vincenza Gerosa, Santa Bartolomea Capitanio, acrobatic pilot Mario Stoppani, as well as Italian liberators, athletes and politicians.

Of the more famous four the person that captures my imagination the most is the Lady Montagu.

The Lady Mary Pierrepont Wortley Montagu (1689 – 1762) is today chiefly remembered for her letters from travels to the Ottoman Empire as wife to the British Ambassador, which have been described as “the very fine example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient”.

Aside from her writing, Lady Mary is known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation in Britain after her return from Turkey.

Her writings address and challenge the hindering contemporary social attitudes towards women and their intellectual and social growth.

Mary began her education in her father´s home and to supplement the instruction of a despised governess, Mary used the library in Thoresbury Hall to “steal” her education, teaching herself Latin, a language reserved for men at the time.

By 1705, at the age of 14, Mary had written two albums filled with poetry, a brief epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of documents), and a romance modelled after Aphra Behn´s Voyage to the Isle of Love (1684).

By 1710, Mary had two possible suitors to choose from: Edward Wortley Montagu (1678 – 1761) and Clotworthy Skeffington.

May corresponded with Edward, but Mary´s father rejected Edward as a prospect pressuring her to marry Skeffington.

In order to avoid marriage to Skeffington, Mary and Edward eloped in 1712.

The early years of Mary´s married life were spent in the countryside.

She had a son, Edward Jr., on 16 May 1713.

On 1 July 1713, Mary´s brother died of smallpox, leaving behind two small children for Mary and Edward Sr. to raise.

On 13 October 1714, Edward Sr. accepted the post of Junior Commissioner of the Treasury.

When Mary joined him in London, her wit and beauty soon made her a prominent figure at court.

Her famous beauty was marred by a bout with smallpox in 1715.

In 1716, Edward Sr. was appointed Ambassador to Istanbul, where they remained until 1718.

After unsuccessful negotiations between Austria and the Ottoman Empire, the Montagus set sail for England via the Mediterranean, finally reaching London on 2 October 1718.

The story of this voyage and of her observations of Eastern life is told in her Letters from Turkey, a series of lively letters full of graphic descriptions.

Above: Flag of Turkey

Letters is often credited as being an inspiration for subsequent female travellers/writers.

During her visit Mary was sincerely charmed by the beauty and hospitality of the Ottoman women she encountered and she recorded her experiences in a Turkish bath.

She recorded a particularly amusing incident in which a group of Turkish women at a bath in Sofia, horrified by the sight of the corset she was wearing, exclaimed that “the husbands in England were much worse than in the East, for they tied up their wives in little boxes, for the shape of their bodies”.

Mary wrote about misconceptions previous travellers, specifically male travellers, had recorded about the religion, traditions and the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire.

Mary´s gender and class status provided her with access to female spaces that were closed off to males.

Her personal interactions wth Ottoman women enabled her to provide, in her view, a more accurate account of Turkish women, their dress, habits, traditions, limitations and liberties, at times irrefutably more a critique of the West than a praise of the East.

Above: Lady Mary Montagu in Turkish dress

Mary returned to the West with knowledge of the Ottoman practice of inoculation against smallpox.

In the Ottoman Empire, Mary visited the women in their segregated zenanas, making friends and learning about Turkish customs.

There she witnessed the practice of inoculation and eager to spare her children, she had Edward Jr. vaccinated.

On her return to London, Mary enthusiastically promoted the procedure, but encountered a great deal of resistance from the medical establishment, because vaccination was an Eastern custom.

In April 1721, when a smallpox epidemic struck England, Mary had her daughter inoculated and published the event.

She persuaded Princess Caroline to test the treatment.

Above: Caroline of Ansbach (1683 – 1737), Queen of England (1727 – 1737)

In August 1721, seven prisoners at Newgate Prison awaiting execution were offered the chance to undergo vaccination instead of execution.

All seven survived and were released.

After returning to England, Mary took less interest in court compared to her earlier days.

Instead she was more focused on the upbringing of her children, reading, writing and editing her travel letters – which she then chose not to publish.

In 1736, Mary met and fell in love with Count Francesco Algarotti.

Above: Francesco Algarotti (1712 – 1764)

She wrote many letters to Algarotti in English and French after his departure in September 1736.

In July 1739, Mary departed England “for health reasons” declaring her intentions to winter in the south of France.

In reality, Mary left to visit and live with Algarotti in Venice.

Their relationship ended in 1741, but Mary stayed abroad and travelled extensively.

She would finally settle in Avignon and then later Lovere.

After August 1756, she resided in Venice and resumed her relationship with Algarotti.

Mary received news of her husband Edward´s death in 1761 and left Venice for England.

En route to London, she handed her Letters from Turkey to Benjamin Sowden of Rotterdam, for safekeeping “to be disposed of as he thinks proper”.

Mary´s Letters from Turkey was only one set of memoirs written by Europeans who had been to the Ottoman Empire:

Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522 – 1592) was a diplomat in the Holy Roman Empire sent to the Ottoman Empire to discuss the disputed territory of Transylvania.

Above: Ogier de Busbecq

Upon returning to his country Busbecq published the letters he had written to his colleague Nicholas Michault under the title Turkish Epistles.

Busbecq is also known for his introduction of the tulip from Turkey to Europe.

Above: Tulip cultivation, Netherlands

Kelemen Mikes (1690 – 1761) was a Hungarian essayist, noted for his rebellious activities against the Habsburg Monarchy.

Above: Kelemen Mikes

Although backed by the Ottoman Empire, Hungarian rebels were defeated and Mikes had to choose a life in exile.

After 1715, Mikes spent the rest of his life in Tekirdag (near Istanbul).

His work is known as Letters from Turkey.

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800 – 1891) was an officer in the Prussian army.

Above: Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

He spent four years in the Ottoman Empire as a military advisor between 1835 and 1839.

Upon returning to Germany, Moltke published Letters on Conditions and Events in Turkey (1835 – 1839).

As I ponder my visit to Lovere and think of how necessary and important the Lady Montagu observations about Turkey were, I am left with two distinct impressions:

First, Lady Mary saw what others did not see.

She viewed Turkey through her own perspective, inspiring generations of writers and travellers to express themselves in their own unique fashion.

Second, Lady Mary saw something about Lovere, a town possibly as ignored in her day as it is ignored in these modern times, that inspired her to remain until the siren call of love compelled her return to Venice and an old flame.

All of which reminds me that I, in my own humble way, have my own unique perspective on places that guidebooks ignore and that people might be inspired to visit.

And, as well, perhaps my observations about places and politics that are often misunderstood or ignored might encourage others to advocate positive changes to both our perspectives on these places and a rallying call to empathise with people rather than judging them for the inadequate governments that suppress them.

So, if I have any New Year´s resolutions, it would be to continue reading, travelling and writing about places both near and far.

Who knows what ripples my wee pebbles can cause?

Sources: Wikipedia / Google / The Rough Guide to Italy / Lonely Planet Italy