Florence 2019

“The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. 

Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”

The October Country, Ray Bradbury

Florence and Dante

       "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"

       Rutger Hauer

This weekend Helen and I went to the Wallace Gallery to see a Toni Onley Exhibition. The watercolours were quite good and the collages were a revelation. We love this gallery, we can have breakfast at Gruman's Deli and then walk over to see wonderful Canadian art. 

https://wallacegalleries.com/exhibitions/toni-onley

http://grumans.ca/home (potato latkes my favourite)

Venice

"The day was now departing; the dark air
released the living beings of the earth
from work and weariness; and I myself
alone prepared to undergo the battle
both of the journeying and of the pity."

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri
(trans. Allen Mandelbaum)

Boboli Gardens - Florence (How many translations does he have they ask?)

" So the brownout evening and the dark air
Let go the sleepy earthly animals
and I alone Got ready for the combat, both with the path

and also with the weeping.

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri
(trans. Mary Jo Bang)

Florence - Arno River

 

"The day was going, and the darkened air 

Was taking from its toil each animal 

That is on the earth; I only, alone there, 

Essayed to arm my spirit against all

The terror of the journey and pity's plea. 

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri  

(trans. Laurence Binyon) 

More Dante and Florence (Warm day)

"The light was departing. The brown air drew down
all the earth's creatures, calling them to rest
from their day-roving, as I, one man alone,
prepared myself to face the double war

of the journey and the pity,"

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri
(trans. John Ciardi)

To celebrate the return of warmer temperatures we had lunch at Native Tongues (scrumptious) and visited the wonderful Shelf Lifebooks were I purchased Gou Tanabe's magna of HPL's At the Mountains of Madness V.1

https://www.nativetongues.ca

https://shelflifebooks.ca

Venice - Masks and the night. (and Walking New York)

"Day was departing, and the darkening air
Called all earth's creatures to their evening quiet
While I alone was preparing as though for war

To struggle with my journey and the spirit
Of pity,"

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri
(trans. Robert Pinsky)

Last night Helen and I watched a great film called the world before your feet. From Rotten Tomatoes.

"There are 8,000 miles of roads and paths in New York City and for the past six years Matt Green has been walking them all - every street, park, cemetery, beach, and bridge. It's a five-borough journey that stretches from the barbershops of the Bronx to the forests of Staten Island, from the Statue of Liberty to Times Square, with Matt amassing a surprisingly detailed knowledge of New York's history and people along the way. Something of a modern-day Thoreau, Matt gave up his former engineering job, his apartment, and most of his possessions, sustaining his endeavor through couch-surfing, cat-sitting and a $15-per-day budget. He's not sure exactly why he's doing it, only knowing that there's no other way he'd rather spend his days. Executive produced by Oscar (R) nominee Jesse Eisenberg, The World Before Your Feet is a tribute to an endlessly fascinating city and the freedom to be found, wherever you live, in simply taking a walk."

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_world_before_your_feet

I loved this film, New York has always fascinated me and I love walking around cities taking photos and generally observing things. Venice is a perfect place for this, no cars. Green has a lovely blog detailing his walks. It is found here. 

https://imjustwalkin.com/

Venice - Dante visited Venice shortly before his death ( & Soviet Photos Link)

     

"Day was departing and the dusk drew on,
Loosing from labour every living thing
Save me, in all the world; I -I alone -
Must gird me to the wars - rough traveling,

And pity's sharp assault upon the heart - "

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri
(trans. Dorthy L. Sayers)

Helen sent me this link, we loved the photos.

The Village Genius: Astonishing Photos Of Soviet Life Found In An Abandoned House

https://www.rferl.org/a/astonishing-photos-of-soviet-village-life-discovered-in-abandoned-house-in-moldova/30383072.html

Dante's Florence

"The light was failing, and the growing gloom

relieving every creature on the earth

Of all it's toil and trouble, I alone

Was getting ready to endure the stress 

Both of the road and the resultant anguish,"

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri 

(trans. J.G. Nichols) 

Florence

 "Day was departing, and the dark air was

taking the creatures on earth from their labors;

and I alone was making ready to sustain

the strife, both of the journey and of the

pity, "

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri 

(trans. Charles S. Singleton) 

Dante and Florence

 

"Day is departing, and the embrowned air

Released the animals that are on the earth

From their fatigues; and I the only one

Made myself ready to sustain the war, 

Both of the way and likewise of the woe,"

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri 

(trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) 

Dante - Florence Since it is very cold here -28 C (-14.8 F) WC -36 how about some photos of Italy

"The day was fading and the darkening air

was releasing all the creatures on our earth

from their daily tasks, and I, one man alone,

was making ready to endure the battle 

of the journey, and of the pity it involved,"

Inferno, Canto II, Dante Alighieri 

(trans. Mark Musa) 

The River Arno, Florence

AND I: “Through midst of Tuscany there wanders
A streamlet that is born in Falterona,
And not a hundred miles of course suffice it; Dante, Purgatory, Canto XIV, trans. Longfellow

Dante and Florence

"But I will make another tongue arise

As lofty and more sweet, in which expressed 

The hero’s ardour, or the lover’s sighs,

Shall find alike such sounds for every theme

That every word, as brilliant as thy skies 

Shall realise a Poet’s proudest dream"

from The Prophecy of Dante

Lord Byron

The Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence (Dante is actually buried in Ravenna)

"When Truth shall strike their eyes through many a tear,

And make them own the Prophet in his tomb "

from The Prophecy of Dante

Lord Byron

Florence 2019

“Rejoice, Florence, seeing you are so great that over sea and land you flap your wings, and your name is widely known in Hell!”

 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy 

"As in the Arsenal of the Venetians 

Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch 

To smear their unsound vessels o’er again,

 For sail they cannot; and instead thereof 

One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks 

The ribs of that which many a voyage has made; 

One hammers at the prow, one at the stern, 

This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists, 

Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen; 

Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine, 

Was boiling down below there a dense pitch 

Which upon every side the bank belimed."

Dante Inferno Canto XXI, Longfellow trans.

Our trip to Venice offered the opportunity to experience a number of things. Great art, wonderful food, spectacular buildings and a palpable sense of history.

I have two individuals whose work and life I have been keenly interested in Charles Darwin and Dante, okay a bit of a contrast but whatever. So I was really ecstatic one foggy morning to see the Venetian Arsenal the site of so much of the naval power of the Venetian Republic at the height of it's power. It was also the subject of a metaphor in Dante's Inferno, so for me to see it was to experience both history and literature.

"The image of the busy shipyard with its activity revolving around a vat of viscous pitch establishes the tone for this canto (and the next) as one of tense and excited movement. Also we once again see Dante imitating the action with his language: the busy syntax reflects the activity of the shipyard" 

from the notes to Mark Musa's translation of the Inferno (probably my favourite)

"The Arsenal at Venice ( built in 1104 and greatly enlarged in 1303-4 and 1325 ) was one of the most important shipyards in Europe in Dante's time. About two miles in perimeter, it was enclosed within high walls surmounted by battlements and flanked by towers. See F.C. Lane (1934) ,pp. 129-31" 

from the Charles S. Singleton's  Commentary to the Inferno. p. 365

"Midway this way of life we're bound upon,

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Ay me! How hard to speak of it that rude

And rough and stubborn forest! The mere breath

Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood;

It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death;

Yet there I gained such good, that, to convey

The tale, I'll write what else I found therewith."

Dark wood - Maundy Thursday Night

Dante The Inferno Canto I Lines 1-9 

Dorothy Sayers Translation

"Recall, reader if ever in the mountains 

a mist has caught you, through which you could not 

see except as moles do through the skin

how when the moist vapours began to dissipate,

the sphere of the sun enters freely through them ,

and your imagination will quickly see how, at first 

I saw the sun again, which is now at its setting"

from Purgatory X11, 1-9

by Dante translator Charles S. Singleton

One morning at the cabin I looked out so see a stream of

fog running thru a low spot where the land dips between the

 ridge where the cabin sits before it rises again, slightly to form 

a finger like peninsula jutting into the slough. The fog moved out

through the brush along the edge of the slough becoming a water

fall of mist pouring down the bank to the water and eventually 

dancing like the narrows before burning off in the morning sun.

Fog is the stuff of magic and mystery.

"In the morning, mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs 

beyond Kingsport. White and feathery it comes from the deep 

to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures 

and caves of leviathan. And later, in still summer rains on the 

steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of those dreams,

that men shall not live without rumor of old strange secrets, 

and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the night. 

When tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conchs in 

seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, 

then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and 

oceanward eyes on tile rocks see only a mystic whiteness, 

as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth, and 

the solemn bells of buoys tolled free in the aether of faery. "

from The Strange High House in the Mist

by H.P. Lovecraft

"At the hour when the swallow, close to dawn

begins to sing her melancholy lays

perhaps remembering her ancient woes,"

and when our mind, far straying from the flesh,

less tangled in the network of its thoughts,

becomes somehow prophetic in its dreams,

dreaming I seem to see hovering above,
a golden-feathered eagle in the sky,
with wings outspread, ready to swoop down:"

from Canto IX, Dante's Purgatory

translated by Mark Musa

One of the fun parts of reading Dante's Comedy is that you can

speculate, based on what ever criteria you like, which of the

countless translations are the best. So I am offering the same 

passage from two, one in poetry one in prose. The Barn Swallow was 

photographed from the living room window there are nest on either 

side of it. The branch is about 8 feet away. The window opens out and

when the window is open the swallow often perches on the top edge of

the window it's back to the room. This entertains the cat and we are just

happy we have a screen.

"At the hour, near dawn, when the swallow  begins her sad songs, 

in memory, perhaps, of her former pain, and when the mind is 

almost prophetic, more of a wanderer from the body, and less 

imprisoned by thought, I imagined I saw an eagle, in a dream, 

poised in the sky, on outspread wings, with golden plumage, 

and intent to swoop." 

from Canto IX, Dante's Purgatory

translated by Charle S. Singleton