Rome Diaries II: Napoli

Judging by the journal entries, some of the highlights of George's time in Italy were the trips-within-the trip: day trips to to small towns and ruins within shooting distance of Rome, and longer excursions to Florence, the Abruzzi, Puglia, Sardinia, Naples, Venice.  He always seemed to enjoy the adventure but was rarely unequivocally impressed with these places; about Florence, for example, he writes “on the whole didn’t really like the city itself apart from the incredible art works--rather Northern, very American, cold, narrow streets, dull colors--not unpleasant, but not magical either.” 


Napoli is something of a different story: this is no cold, touristy art-town but a chaotic, teeming metropolis.  Naples is the closest thing I've seen to India in Europe, and for my father in the Spring of 1974 it made a big impression, which he however distills into a few characteristically terse phrases ("crowded streets, insane vitality, extreme contrasts...the contrasts in the same streets from day to night"). 


The account begins with the drive toward Naples. 

Reach the massif around 5, incredible drive along the coast to Vieste.  Very poor ugly town with cheesy modern tourist hotels--very sad. At restaurant a local buys us drinks--which end up on our bill.  Hotel is freezing--haven’t been so cold at night since camping in winter.  Wake up in middle of night with a horrifying vision of returning to U.S. to teach at Harvard--based on previous day’s conversation at G. Bar with Leon + the frightening realization at the concert of the total irrelevancy of a teaching “career” for a composer.

...waiter did the classic hand-biting forehead-hitting routine to perfection.

...get lost going into city, which gives a pretty good idea of Naples--crowded streets, insane vitality, extreme contrasts. Finally find the hotel, Albergo Colombo, near Stazione Centrale, walk down Corso Umberto at rush hour, stop for cinzano at galleria, check out the opera, have excellent, inexpensive meal at Ciro’s - obviously the tourists are not flocking to Napoli. 

[Next day] Walk around the fish markets, go to Pompey, there from 9-4 with a break for lunch--much bigger than I expected--very curious place, since there’s little of artistic interest + since I am repelled by the morbidity of its appeal, why is it so interesting? apparently it’s the possibility, given a little imagination, of evoking a way of life which is both very distant + very close (“cave cave”) to life since. late afternoon trip up Vesuvius--mostly by car, then easy climb, guide is evidently a sort of patronage job. impressive view (the weather has cleared since leaving Naples), the cone is quiet but threatening (at the end the guides drop the garbage into it, which seems almost sacrilegious); am impressed by the lava flows, which are still obvious.  After meeting at hotel, go to a fancier 1-star Michelin restaurant towards S. Lucia, which isn’t really better than Ciro’s, but more elegant.

Sunday 24th March  - Our taste for ruins temporarily satisfied, we take the boat to Capri, spend the day enjoying the sun, sea + landscape, without doing or seeing more. very pleasant, even though we didn’t really see enough to even decide whether it would be worth coming back.  but my taste doesn’t run towards fashionable international resorts; it might be a nice place to grow up, or to spend a few weeks on vacation. Beautiful return trip via Sorrento.  

Monday 25th - Plans disrupted by Dan’s losing car-key, so we stay in Naples--national archeological museum, much of which is closed + which seems to be falling apart, then lunch and aquarium, back to Ciro’s. Naples is definitely not beautiful, but it’s quite an experience--the locksmith, the flea-bag hotel, the 10 lire “private” sidewalk, “sprika dish,” the world war II GI fascination with Americans, the contrasts in the same streets from day to night--it’s very enlivening, yet there’s no reason to go back.

And he never did. His few days' experience in Naples crystalized over the years into a two or three well-loved anecdotes, and a smile-and-shake of the head whenever he mentioned Naples.  I remember him telling the story of the vendor dumping his garbage into the crater of Vesuvius at the end of the day.  The "10 lire 'private' sidewalk" refers to a narrow street he was traversing when suddenly--thwap--a stick comes down in front of him, barring the way.  He looks over to see an old woman, who matter-of-factly demands 10 lire (probably less than 2 cents) to pass.  It's a tough town, but also a "vital" one, full of expressive energy: the waiter's "classic hand-biting forehead-hitting routine" upon realizing he had brought the wrong dish out was a gesture my father would imitate for decades to come.  Here's how it's done. First you slap your forehead, then bring your hand, fingers extended, down to your mouth and place the blade of your hand squarely between your teeth. The very picture of contrition. Solo in Italia!

Rome Diary Diaries I: Late 1973 - Arrival and Settling In

George Edwards on Squirrel Island, Maine, in 1968.  

George's early entries, starting in October 1973, are pithy, almost written in short-hand, with incomplete punctuation and fragments of sentences.  What was to become an at-times obsessively comprehensive record of his time in Italy and of his mental-emotional life begins much more haphazardly, and its pithiness gives an impression of non-chalance.  There must be so much to say upon arrival in a new place, but all we get is scattered notes, probably scribbled down in a minute or two before bed.  Evidently he's too busy getting his feet under him to reflect on it much, at first--or is pouring that reflective energy more into letters.  Thus the main impression that emerges from the first weeks of the journal is that George is adapting remarkably fast to his new circumstances, even as he does occasionally marvel at the new world he finds himself in:

Couldn’t find cambio (wrong address).  Bus + train strikes.  Italian life is crazy.  Street numbering! (wrap-around)

A few other typically concise entries, detailing the progress of his composing and exploring his new environs, from his first few weeks in country:

Compose early AM, go with Jean Michel + Jacqueline to Subraco, incredible hills, hill towns, autumn colors + monastery of St. Benedict, 13th Century, very beautiful, simple, wild situation overlooking a gorge.  

Then drive thru almost lunar hills to Alatri -- ancient walled town (walls 4th cent. BC), Romanesque church -- too bad we didn’t have more time.  

Party after at Kircheners.  Cold still going strong.

To Eurocambio, walk most way back.  Dislike the way I am known for an American (the scarf?), + the sense of the foreign domination of the city.  Back for rather distressing meeting with Millan.  “Toilet paper shortage” in U.S. gets big play in the papers.  After lunch tennis + coffee with Sharon, work a little.  Beautiful cold day.

To 'Pat Garett + Billy the Kid' with Sharon, then to dinner.  Get tired of these films of lyrical violence, but at least it's better than Clint Eastwood.

From the start, whether it comes to music or art or film, or the personalities of all the new people in his life, George's critical mind is up and functioning.  The work of a photographer fellow of his at the American Academy is "extremely proficient, deadly," while a colleague's concert is rife with "bad music, virtuoso stuff."  At a concert at the Foro Italiano: 


Leo Smit - cutesy pie marches alla Stravinsky; Hellerman - rather simple, Ligeti-like, not too much to listen to, clear     shape; lousy Italian piece badly played; Leon’s piece not well paced in the performance; more disturbed than on the tape by its incessant lushness, touching all bases - still, much better than the rest. Very tepid audience.


His sharp mind can be double-edged: he has no difficulty earning his colleague's respect, but less success forming personal bonds with people whose music he has reservations about.  Quick to judge, he can be scathing and abrasive.  [Ann recalls that the key quality he lacked during his grad school years was warmth.] If my own personality is any indication, he probably found it nearly impossible to pay anyone a compliment if he didn't really mean it.  And since his standards for artistic maturity (in composition in particular) were so high, such compliments were probably few and far between. It's easy to imagine he earned a reputation amongst his American Academy fellows for brilliance, a sharp wit and sharp tongue, and narrowly exacting aesthetic standards bordering on elitism. 

Compared with what comes later, there are few really substantive entries from the early months. One can imagine how busy he is adjusting to life in Italy, and probably his literary energies go more into correspondence with the friends he's only recently left in the States.  Some descriptive tidbits in December: so-and-so is "a red-bearded, disgusting little gnome." And, he writes, the Italian expression for "to make a bridge" refers to how to avoid working at all between a Thursday holiday and the following Sunday--I see the twinkle in his eye as he writes down this little gem of an Italianism.


As it went to some degree throughout his life, how his composing is going is a source of constant pre-occupation in the diary.  When the music is flowing through him, George is high on life. When work isn't going well, he loses heart, sometimes plummeting into depression.  “there is definitely something wrong here...” “much of the day pleasant, but still very intense periods of loneliness--desire to be alone.”  He will later refer to these depressive states as periods of "nothingness" or "non-existence," times when he feels outside of the flow of life,  waiting on the sidelines.  At their worst, he likens them to the period of his "nervous crisis" at Princeton--a psychological breakdown of some sort that he experienced around age 27.  



Is his mood a response to his work, or the quality of his work a result of his mental state? It's hard to say which way the causality runs, and it's probably not as simple as one way or the other. Realizing this, George makes a point of tracking his cycles of creative energy and high spirits.  Indeed, at one point he writes that "if this record has any value, it will be to chart my manic-depressive cycles and perhaps eventually indicate their causes." 


But that's getting ahead of ourselves; in December 1973 his highest highs and lowest lows in Italy were yet to come.  We'll pick up next time with George's account of his memorable trip to Naples, source of a number of anecdotes I grew up with, and the point his life in Italy starts to hits its stride.