I did not like this book, so I am probably not the best person to review it. Why, I'd like to ask Mr. Charles Dickens, would you go to visit a place you find to be dirty and dilapidated and filled with people that are dirty and dilapidated? He seemed to like a couple of spots in Italy, especially parts of Rome and Florence, but the rest? It was hard for me to listen him tear down the spiritual practices of the people and the life in small villages and the art. On and on he went.

I wish I had skipped this book.

χρόνος ανάγνωσης κριτικής: 23 δευτερόλεπτα

Σε αντίθεση με την ελληνική έκδοση εδώ,
η αγγλική περιέχει εικόνες και από την Φλωρεντία (κούκλα πόλη που επίσης
επισκέφτηκα τον περασμένο Σεπτέμβρη), εικόνες από την Βενετία και την Βερόνα,
που επισκέφτηκα το 2010, όπως επίσης και από πολλές άλλες πόλεις της Ιταλίας,
Γένοβα, Πάρμα, Μιλάνο, Νάπολη, Πίζα Πάδοβα, Μπολόνια κλπ.
Εξού και ο τίτλος: Εικόνες της Ιταλίας αντί Δύο εικόνες της Ρώμης

No offence, αλλά παρόλο που είναι πολύ παλιότερός του, η γραφή του Ντίκενς
είναι πολύ πιο ενδιαφέρουσα από του Καζαντζάκη η οποία όπως έχω ξαναπεί
είναι τίγκα στη φιλοσοφία αντί να μας ταξιδέψει με εικόνες των τόπων που πάει.

Fun book

I really liked this book. It was adventurous. And, it reminds me of how much fun I had when I took a trip to Italy.

The volume, while not as good as "American Notes," has its strengths. It seems to me that much of this is written to counter the nostalgia for Italy created by picturesque travelling, and the lingering notion that young men of substance need to go on a Grand Tour (which often became an excuse to remain inexcusably childish for much longer than women--or men lacking money--were allowed). The most powerful sections of the text are those that deal with Pompeii and Florence, which come toward the end of the memoir.

I love reading what people have written about of my favourite places I've been, and Dickens does it in style.

You get the distinct impression when reading this that Dickens did not enjoy Italy. Eventually he finds some beautiful building and impressive landscapes and there are convincing deceptions of adventurous jaunts up mountains. Earlier parts of the text merely describe squalor and untidiness. He doesn't present his normal cast of fascinating characters here and there are far too many paragraphs that go on for a page or more. Not the Dickens I know.

Dickens wrote Pictures of Italy during his year there in 1844, two years after his first tour of America, and about 7 years after he lived in the house now a museum on Doughty Street, London, and wrote both Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby there. Also, it was four years before the Italian Revolution, which began in 1848, finished in 1871. (Garibaldi, during his first attempt to free Rome in 1849, lived in the same place I did at the American Academy, the Villa on the Gianicolo hill; part of our residence was the Ancient Roman wall built by Aurelius.)
All over Italy, Dickens finds some doubtful inns, “your own horses being stabled under the bed, that every time a horse coughs, he wakes you” but even the worst Italian inn will entertain you, “Especially, when you get such wine in flasks as the Orvieto, and the Monte Pulciano”(103).

Before Italy, in Avignon, Dickens saw the cell where Rienzi was held, and the instruments of Inquisition torture. He disparages Marseilles, but loves the sail on the vessel Marie Antoinette, to Genova, so beautiful and layered in the sun as they arrive late afternoon, “its beautiful amphitheater, terrace rising above terrace, palace above palace, height above height, was ample occupation for us, until we ran into its stately harbour”(23). Walking uphill, he finds many women wearing blue—to honor the Madonna for a year or two: “blue being (as is well known) the Madonna’s favorite colour. Women who have devoted themselves to this act of Faith, are very commonly seen walking in the streets”(43).
One of the three Genovese theaters is open air, Teatro Diurno, the audience’s faces turned this way, “changed so suddenly from earnestness to laughter; and odder still, the rounds upon rounds of applause, rattling in the evening air, to which the curtain falls”(48). The Marionetti—a famous company from Milan— is, without any exception, the drollest exhibition I have ever beheld in my life. I never saw anything so exquisitely ridiculous”(44).

Of Milano, where I have lived almost yearly, two weeks or a month, Dickens notes the Duomo spire into the fog might as well have ended in Bombay. He mentions La Scala, and the Corso Garibaldi where the gentry ride in carriages under the trees, “and rather than not do which, they would half starve themselves at home”(88). But he astutely notes the city is “not so unmistakeably Italian,” it has an admixture of the French and the north generally…not to mention, now, the world.
Dickens made it to Carrara. When I lived there a couple weeks translating Bruno’s hilarious Candelaio, I loved the huge Meschi sculpture to Union workers, and the small Cathedral, my favorite in Italy —along with San Marco Venice, Dickens’ favorite, “a much greater sense of mystery and wonder” than at St Peter’s (107). I parked on the marble sidewalks while translating. Marble sidewalks sound better than they are when there’s a garage and cars drip oil on ‘em. My Milan daughter’s relative drove us up to the marble caves—the great profit now’s in the marble dust they make kitchen counters from. The trucks with huge marble blocks are dangerous, descending; their brakes don’t suffice, so they depend on low, low gear. If the truck gets away, they’re dead over the side. One monument stands beside the road for many accidents. When Dickens went up to the caves he rode a pony, and he learned some of the mines went back to Roman times (95). He tells of the signal for an explosion, a low, “melancholy bugle” upon which the miners would retreat expecting the blast.

He sees many processions, such as a Roman one after dusk, “a great many priests, walking two and two, and carrying—the good-looking priests at least—their lighted tapers, so as to throw the light with a good effect upon their faces”(143). He witnessed the climbing of the Holy Stairs, one man touching each step with his forehead, a lady praying on each one, but every penitent came down energetic, “which would take a good deal of sin to counterbalance”(147). He calls such a scene “droll enough.” At a dinner where the Pope “served” thirteen Cardinals, the latter “smiled to each other, from time to time, as if they thought the whole thing were a great farce.”

Our Victorian describes exactly what I saw during my N.E.H. seminar in Naples under Jean D’Amato, “The fairest country in the world, is spread about us. Whether we turn towards the Miseno shore of the splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo and away to Baiae: or the other way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of delights”(156). “Everything is done in pantomime in Naples,” with hand gestures—but also with Neapolitan proverbs which I learned to be accepted by the nearest pizza-maker off Via Carraciolo to accept my order for Pizza Napolitano. He talks of Via Chiaja, my route to the Spanish palace with the National Library, and San Carlo Opera house (so that as I studied Bruno their local boy, I heard vocal and instruments practice for the opera). Off of Chiaia the first pizza, Pizza Margherita named for the Queen of Naples, was made; the shop’s still open, Pizzeria Brandi.
He tells of ladies being carried down Vesuvius on litters, until the litter-bearers slipped, of Leghorn / Livorno being famous for knifing, with an assassin’s club recently jailed, and visits to Herculaneum (which the British largely unearthed a century before) as well as Paestum, where three of the finest Greek temples, built “hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, and standing yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild, malaria-blighted plain” (161). I was so exhilarated to tour those temples, where the stone altars are outside, of course, for sacrifice, and only more exhilarated to learn Zeno the Greek Stoic lived there.

He happened across a beheading in Rome, which disgusted Dickens. The gallows had been set up before San Giovanni Decollata. It was supposed to occur at 8:45, but was delayed 'til after 11 because the condemned young man, barefoot on the scaffold, had refused to confess until his wife was brought to him. He had accompanied a Bavarian countess for forty miles pretending to guard her, then killed her, took her clothes and jewelry, gave 'em to his wife, who had seen the countess walk through town, so she told the priest.

Dickens in his junkie era?

Δύο μικρές, dry, λεπτομερέστατες περιγραφές δύο Ρωμαϊκών εικόνων, με αυστηρά φωτογραφική ματιά του Dickens και ανεπαίσθητο σνομπισμό.

One of two non-fiction pieces I have read by Dickens. How amazing that he thought to create a travelogue of his journey. Just like his novels, he fleshed this out with a cast of characters (people and types he encountered), and rich details of every scene. It seemed much more harrowing than my travels in Italy, but he was clearly more adventurous than I. Climbing up a smoking Mount Vesuvius for a peek into the caldera?
When you've made it through the essential Dickens, give this a try.

Excellent stuff from the master.

Beautifully written, incredibly descriptive and, at times, hilarious, I enjoyed this book, especially recognising in his account things which are still true of Italy today.