One room has a wall hung with framed maps, some old and beautiful, hand-tinted, others engraved on ivory-paper.
There are modern maps of geological structures and primaeval seabeds, land-locked now, but in their aridity yielding Giotto’s landscapes.
Les Estats de l’Eglise et de Toscane speak of religious power ceded long ago, while Magni ducis Hetruriae status, in ditiones tres Primariis tribus, Urbibus cognomines confims the survival of ancient divides into the present day.
L’Italie, Golfe de Venise lays out Dalmacie with the Republ. de Raguse and its glittering city Ragusa (how ugly the name Dubrovnik) facing its mother state across what now is called the Adriatic.
Across from Venice itself Istria and the city of Fiume speak in the lost voice of d'Annunzio (who, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", in aeroplanes of such beauty they take the breath away, will always be a fallen hero).
A map of Illyrium offers the scale in Roman miles of 5000 feet each - I can see more calculation of the ‘190 kilometres divided by five eighths is - what dear - oh, now I’ll have to start again’ kind, during long journeys.
One group of maps is not framed. Folded and repeatedly refolded into a military pocket or pouch sized wedge, they show where they are only by the lettering . There are sets of numbers and marks and scrawls hand-written in, which are to me as indecipherable as the printed cyrillic script denoting this lost terrain. These are the maps of an artilleryman. A pen and ink sketch of huge skies with rolling clouds, orderly family houses with hayricks, groves of poplars beside water, entitled ‘Tappa nella Steppa verso il Don - Luglio 1942’ is framed on the wall; it speaks volumes.
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You may not be right-of-centre, HG, but you are certainly a conservative
There's a strong streak of individualism (I avoid the word anarchy) in conservative thinking. It's self-protection that comes from long habits of self-reliance.
That's why conservatism isn't necessarily to do with wealth. The loss of the self reliant skilled workers by upper case 'c' conservatism has been a political disaster.
I disliked enormously at university the patronising way the Left tried to herd us 'workers' into the fourth International; our families didn't even vote Labour, never mind subscribing to mucky, continental ideologies. (That's falsely, or over simply, put but approaches how it felt).
Mind you, fascism had never been on offer, or had made very little headway (see mucky, continental etc., above); it is now but will it be feared for what it is?
Yes - provided we have good maps!
thousands are the cities of men that I have seen, and I have known their minds
ND What are you quoting? Dune?
Homer
Ha ha ha ha I bet the Drew loved that , but Dune it could have been. Good Lord HG do you read such things ,for truly you are the quizatch Haderach...yikes its just occurred to me you are probably one of that Bene Gesserit order just don’t use " Voice", on me OK .
Where is the room HG ? Is it at the Vatican I seem to recall were loads of maps along the corridors probably including details of where the most vulnerable choirboys could be found . One of the Oxford colleges has a large collection but I `m plumping for Rome or is it actually in Venice?
Levity aside , I like the tone you achieve here its a good way into writing poetry just to describe what you see and then organise into meaning but this is has the feeling of a fragment of a story which is itself a rather beautiful thing.
I imagine you skipping about Italy like the Brownings or the girl in a room with view , or George Elliot .There in the scented Lemon Gardens , in the sacred dusk of Umbria anything might happen..... and in R4 afternoon plays it, usually does. A young soldier carrying a battered copy of the Iliad stumble down the dusty track and you eye beams entwine perhaps ?
Intrigue and mystery have always surrounded you HG now you have added romance to the heady brew . Phew!
Enjoyable .
On Fascism I have read some thing Mussolini said that I find worryingly appealling.
some thing Mussolini said that I find worryingly appealling.
Share it, N.
Well I wish I could it was a speech he made early on and it defined Fascism Romantically against Communism and as human against scientific , poetry and spirit against rationality . Suffused with ideas of country and wordless ties ....ahem
Anyway it had a great appeall to me Conservatism seems so "Shop Talk " sometimes and while one goes along being a hobbit it would be nice to be a horseman
I`ll fish around
Phrases like 'devil has all the best....'
Fascism had some amazing poets, architects, painters, sculptors, philosophers
Pity about the castor oil.
nulab can't even be fascist properly; they're illiterate and unimaginative.
in the end the castor oil is all they'll offer.
You're so right , Godless. In the last century the Labour movement stood against real social suffering and deprivation. It had an important part in educating every one who'd missed an education when young; it engaged all governments, whatever party, in thinking how meeting housing and health needs could only be done quickly enough and on a big enough scale where there was been no provision at all by some planning and directed investment. It didn't destroy self reliance, it was committed to enabling all to enjoy the best lives they could make for themselves.
It's over now, different world. NuLab feed on it and prevent any worthwhile political growth in case it challenges their power. But their dead hand is spread all over the arts and academia too; there's little creativity there either,not just in politics and thinking. Sigh
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