Excerpts from "Diary Written at Night 1993-1996"

Abstract

NAPLES, DECEMBER 5, 1993 Lovely Cortona, a little town located exactly on the border of Umbria and Tuscany, to which I often used to go for longer or shorter visits, was at first just trove of treasures for me. Luca da Cortona (Signorelli) mourning the dead Christ; Beato Angelico, the Angelic Brother, the most chaste author of The Annunciation; the tiny marketplace with its medieval Municipal Palace and Renaissance Palazzo del Cristofanello, both set in a landscape so beautiful it would seem that it, and not the site's strategic location, was what inspired the builders to found a city here. With the passing of time, I noticed more and more things in Cortona, as a journal entry following my last visit in 1989 testifies: the Saturday fair; the cemetery right next to the wall circumscribing the town; the union of two different pieties, the wonderful heavenliness of Fra Angelico and the grim earthliness of Luca da Cortona. Yet even then I could discern only faintly the sum of Cortona's elements, her demeanor of a closed universum, a microcosm cast, or perhaps lost, by the Creator on his way through these fields and hills grown harmoniously into one. Precisely, the word harmony is essential to any tribute to this Tusco-Umbrian town. The outer harmony of the environs and the inner harmony of the town; the harmony of the city walls, reinforced with their contents through the centuries; and that of the background, all the way to the horizon. I succeeded in apprehending what was the essence of life for Cortona's inhabitants, from daylight's first appearance to its gradual darkening at the end of the earth's trek. Trek? More like a brief passage that the string of days, months, and years had turned into a slow and arduous procession. From the well-trodden, rounded space designated for the Saturday fair, through the piazza and the narrow alleys to the small gallery with images of the Mother-to-be and her tortured Son; and further, at the end, especially on Sundays, to the view onto the cemetery springing up down below among trees at the foot of the city's stone girdle. My last visit, in April 1989, was occasioned by an international colloquium to which I was invited as an auditor. The topic? I can no longer remember. All international colloquia are like machines for threshing chaff; and the moment they end, the wind picks up the chaff and scatters it over an empty field. Given the date, which coincided with the death throes of communism (los ultimos podrygos,* as Witkacy used to say), the du jour topics of Marxism and democracy, Marxism and culture, etc., might already have been superseded by Christianity and democracy, Christianity and culture, etc., with the participation of the same lecturers as ever. In any case, as rarely as I take part in international colloquia, I always have the impression that rather than pronouncing audible sentences, the speakers noiselessly move their lips and wave their arms about, as if they were with great expertise rhythmically hacking through straw. Often they can be seen reaching for a glass of water, which seems to indicate a continual need to extinguish flames invisible to the audience. It was Saturday, and I remembered that there was a weekly fair in Cortona. After a brief and ineluctable act of presence (one must somehow pay one's dues for the room and board), I ran down the steps of the Municipal Palace and soon found myself in the midst of booths and stalls. In Umbria and Tuscany a fair is synonymous with abundance, gaiety, and conviviality. From the void of the colloquium to the plenitude of the market, few things are more satisfying. I knew that around noon, when the sacks and barrels empty out, hams and cheeses dwindle, and wreaths of sausages almost vanish, the market bids farewell to the crowd on its way home for dinner with a spectacle. Usually it is a show of acrobats, a folk ensemble, or tricks performed by monkeys or other trained animals. This time, after a saddlecloth had been laid on the ground and a wooden trunk set on top of it, a fire-eater appeared. …