Et in Arcadia ego: Brideshead Revisited, Revisited

 I drank soda water and smoked and freted

until light began to break 

 and the rustle of a rising breeze 

turned me back to my bed.  
Charles Ryder, Brideshead Revisited

 

April 2022: the weather remains oddly cold, dreary.  Where, oh where is our Spring?

Nature's chill sends me back to my relationship with Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. I am now Charles Ryder at the beginning of the novel, dealing with middle age--some regrets, some peace at where I am.

I came to the novel through the heralded 1981 Granada TV adaptation, which was the most lyrical, visually stunning program anyone had ever seen produced for TV.

The novel was one of many that my father picked up for me in the church thriftstore he and my mother visited every week, quietly building an impressive library for me until I was ready to partake.

The beauty of Brideshead is that it gives several of the ages of man a touchstone: I was in college when Sebastian & Charles seduced a TV generation. It was a thrill to be so young and read so young, to feel an affinity for the elan of their Oxford even in the quads of Rutgers.  Now I feel the weight and lightness of Charles's middle age, loving/understanding with a middle-age depth that the sanctuary light at the end does make all the difference.  (It's a nice touch that the first American edition of the novel was printed with a "sanctuary light" red cover. )

 ******

I first wrote this post several years ago when I had a very visceral reaction to a freakishly cold August. Same now for April 2022.

Thoughts of Brideshead flooded my thinking, along with long forgotten, but very stirring memories of my own visit to Oxford during my college years.

Midautumn has descended into the beauty of April. No, no, I’m not ready. I long for the warmth of air and brightness of the spring sun.

The relentless chill to rain will not last, they say.

This unnatural coldness has a strange affect on memory, summoning long unvisited thoughts. As I put on yet another sweater, Oxford 30 years ago fill my consciousness.

It’s Eights Weeks, and visitors are teeming everywhere. I’m with friends of friends at Wadham College boathouse to watch the races, followed by an "End of the Empire" dance.

We see a musical Alice in Wonderland performed in the Christ Church Cathedral Gardens. It is a magical, site-specific event: the Dean of Christ Church in Dodgson's day was Dr. Liddell & it was his daughters that Carroll wrote for. The Dean's Garden is next to the Cathedral Garden. The chestnut tree in the Dean's Garden is the one in which the Cheshire Cat sat, and Alice's little green door joins the two gardens. I feel like I have gone beyond the looking glass.

We attend a sung Eucharist at Christ Church Cathedral, the exquisite lines of Victoria Missa O Quam Gloriosum soaring up to Heaven. It was my fist experience of an English choir, and I did not know the tradition of boy sopranos. I kept looking for the women who were singing such extraordinary notes.

Then over to the Turf for lunch. In memory there is much sunshine and warmth and beauty.

These real experience of Oxford entwine in my heart with Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

In the coldness of August I feel his epithet for book 1: Et in Arcadia ego: the haunting Latin phrase on the tomb in Poussin’s pastoral painting, considered to be uttered by Death, “I am also in Arcadia.” I quietly despair the mirror Ryder is for me "I'm homeless, childless, middle-aged, loveless, Hopper."

The cold days in a New York August--a memento mori in the summer of a life. Yet. I am glad to be reminded of mortality, and Waugh, but thrilled that the warmth and sun of the season are coming back. It’s not over, there is eternally more. Something Captain Charles Ryder himself "found this morning, burning anew amid the old stones." I quickened my pace to the subway . . .

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 Mapeel     4/26/2022     current events, literature, Travel   

History of a Two Weeks' Tour Through Switzerland

One night—it was in 1816, and one of those nights the Swiss believe God made for them alone—a boat approached silently, leaving behind her a wake brilliantly broken in the light of the moon. She drifted in towards the whitened walls of Chillon Castle and touched the bank without any shiver, without a sound, like a settling swan.

From it stepped a pale-faced man with piercing eyes, his uncovered head held proudly. He was wearing a black cloak that reached to his feet, which however, did not entirely hide the fact that he limped slightly. He requested to be shown Bonnivard’s cell. There he remained, alone, for a long time. When he had gone, another name was inscribed on the martyr’s pillar—Byron.

Alexandre Dumas, Travels in Switzerland, 1832, published 1843

It is now nearly three weeks since my Journey took place, and the journal I then kept was not very copious; but I have so often talked over the incidents that befell us, and attempted to describe the scenery through which we passed, that I think few occurrences of any interested will be omitted. 

My opening mirrors Mary Shelley's 1817 History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. You can read the whole "little volume" on Gutenberg.

I came to Switzerland because of family, but I found myself living in the footsteps of long-beloved writers. My journey became my own bookshelf writ large, as I joined Dumas, the Shelleys, Byron, Mark Twain, J. W. Turner, Charles Dickens, Gibbon, Rousseau, Chateaubriand, and many others through the German- and then French-speaking parts of the extraordinary country.

My great grandfather Sebastian Anton Waldis was Swiss, his daughter was my maternal grandmother, Regina Caroline Waldis Brown. She passed down to us a small wooden box with the word Rigi carved on the bottom that her father brought with him on his long immigration journey. In our own middle age, my brother and I became interested in the Swiss heritage that we had long ignored, given the ethnic dominance of being O’Neill’s from Brooklyn.

Sebastian’s marriage certificate listed Arth, Switzerland as his birthplace. Odd sounding town. Google maps showed it to be a tiny hamlet on Lake Zug, about an hour south of Zurich, in the canton of Schwyz.  I planned a trip to visit his hometown, and to see more of country, then join with an organized bike tour out of Lausanne. And that is how I came to live in the heady world of Mt. Rigi and the surrounding towns of Weggis, Vitznau, Arth, and Lucerne, then over to Lake Geneva, Gstaad, and Bern.


Mark Twain's “Sunrise” on Mt. Rigi

Dining in a cable car from Weggis

“In a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us, and dead to everything else. The great cloud-barred disk of the sun stood just about a limitless expanse of tossing white-caps—so to speak—a billowy chaos of massy mountain domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow and flooded with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors, while through rifts in a black cloud-bank above the sun, radiating lances of diamond dust shot to the zenith. The cloven valleys of the lower world swam in a tinted mist which veiled the ruggedness of their crags and ribs and ragged forests, and turned all the forbidding region into a soft and rich and sensuous paradise.  

We could not speak. We could hardly breath. We could only gaze in drunken ecstasy and drink it in.”  Mark Twain, Tramps Abroad, 1880

There is still a rush to be on the top of Mt. Rigi, called Rigi Kulm, at dawn to see the sunrise. I was happy to summit at midday. Mark Twain’s attempt is wrapped in his signature comedic happenstances: he and his traveling companion had slept all day.  What they first thought was the sunrise, they realized was sunset.  Which I saw from a unique dining experience in the cable car to Rigi Kaltbad from Weggis.  You can see how easily sunset and sunrise could be confused.

Arth, Brunnen, and Lucerne, as I fall into the footsteps of the Romantics

The hand-carved box great granddad brought from Switzerland, on Lake Lucerne

The Rigi-Bahn station at the top of Mt. Rigi

Arth itself having no good hotels, I stayed in Vitznau—the town Sebastian’s own grandfather Franz Joseph was from—on Lake Lucerne. Everything that has been written about the beauty of the Swiss lakes is weak in the face of their actuality. I brought GGdad's wooden box with me, to the shores of the lake. Arth being on the other side of Mt. Rigi, I needed to take the amazing cog wheel up one side of the mountain, and down the other.

The journey from Vitznau is the more dramatic as you ride at an astounding incline into the air, the town falling away as you enter the clouds. The journey down to Arth is miles and miles of the forest primeval. In Arth I visited the church of Sebastian’s baptism. Built in 1694, the baptismal font looked like it could be from 1854, and that brought his past into my present, into my journey.

Next I went to the Staatsarchiv in Schwyz to inquire for more details about Sebastian’s life, where I learned that he was in prison in the neighboring Brunnen for 4 years. Privacy laws attach to all court records from 1848 onward, and so I’m working with an archivist to get the record unsealed. My heart tells me it was for stealing a loaf of bread. This is a man who carried a tiny wooden box on the long journey from Switzerland, and named my grandmother after his mother and sister.

Mary Shelley had a very different experience of Brunnen:

“The summits of several of the mountains that enclose the lake to the south are covered by eternal glaciers; of one of these, opposite Brunen, they tell the story of a priest and his mistress, who, flying from persecution, inhabited a cottage at the foot of the snows. One winter night an avalanche overwhelmed them, but their plaintive voices are still heard in stormy nights, calling for succour from the peasants.

Brunen is situated on the northern side of the angle which the lake makes, forming the extremity of the lake of Lucerne. Here we rested for the night, and dismissed our boatmen. Nothing could be more magnificent than the view from this spot.  The high mountains encompassed us, darkening the waters; at a distance on the shores of Uri we could perceive the chapel of Tell, and this was the village where he matured the conspiracy which was to overthrow the tyrant of his country; and indeed this lovely lake, these sublime mountains, and wild forests, seemed a fit cradle for a mind aspiring to high adventure and heroic deeds.

Yet we saw no glimpse of his spirit in his present countrymen. The Swiss appeared to us then, and experience has confirmed our opinion, a people slow of comprehension and of action; but habit has made them unfit for slavery, and they would, I have little doubt, make a brave defence against any invader of their freedom.”  Mary Shelley, History of Six Weeks' Tour

The steamboat serving Vitznau to Lucerne across Lake Lucerne

I took the steam boat from Vitznau to Lucerne. The water, the landscape: the very same the Shelleys experienced. It was like walking into the timeless spaces in Mary Shelly’s own travelogue. What delights me about travelogue is the voice, the voice of a writer you enjoy, now more directly speaking to you, sharing details with you, the potential fellow traveler.

“We departed the next morning for the town of Lucerne. It rained violently during the first part of our voyage, but towards its conclusion the sky became clear, and the sunbeams dried and cheered us. We saw again, and for the last time, the rocky shores of this beautiful lake, its verdant isles, and snow-capt mountains.”

The Shelleys and I Go Over to Lausanne 

“The rain detained us two days at Ouchy. We however visited Lausanne, and saw Gibbon's house. We were shewn the decayed summer-house where he finished his History, and the old acacias on the terrace, from which he saw Mont Blanc, after having written the last sentence. There is something grand and even touching in the regret which he expresses at the completion of his task. It was conceived amid the ruins of the Capitol. The sudden departure of his cherished and accustomed toil must have left him, like the death of a dear friend, sad and solitary.

My companion gathered some acacia leaves to preserve in remembrance of him. I refrained from doing so, fearing to outrage the greater and more sacred name of Rousseau; the contemplation of whose imperishable creations had left no vacancy in my heart for mortal things. Gibbon had a cold and unimpassioned spirit. I never felt more inclination to rail at the prejudices which cling to such a thing, than now that Julie and Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman Empire, compelled me to a contrast between Rousseau and Gibbon.” Percy Bysshe Shelley's July 12 letter in Mary's Travelogue

Is there a more naturally literary soul than Shelley? I love his angst about contrasting Gibbon and Rousseau.  I feel connected to the literary continuum by the nestling dolls of literary fandom. Shelley is moved by seeing where Gibbon finished Roman Empire in Lausanne, and he visited Vevai/Vevey where “Rousseau conceived the design of Julie.” For Dumas, it was tracking down Chateaubriand.

Hotel Angleterre, Lausanne

In Lausanne I did not make it to the plaque that shows where the Hotel Gibbon stood with its garden of acacia trees, but I made sure to see Hotel Angleterre et Residence where Byron wrote The Prisoner of Chillon.

My bike tour met up in a hotel next to Hotel Angleterre. We biked through the UNESCO Lavaux vineyards—producer of the lovely grape Chasselas—over to Vevey, on Lake Geneva.  From the town, we started biking around the glorious lake, through the district of Montreux, until the celebrated castle was in sight.




The Prisoner of Chillon

The display about Francois Bonivard at Castle Chillon, the inspiration for Byron's poem

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old

“We passed on to the Castle of Chillon, and visited its dungeons and towers. These prisons are excavated below the lake; the principal dungeon is supported by seven columns, whose branching capitals support the roof. Close to the very walls, the lake is 800 feet deep; iron rings are fastened to these columns, and on them were engraven a multitude of names, partly those of visitors, and partly doubtless of the prisoners, of whom now no memory remains, and who thus beguiled a solitude which they have long ceased to feel. One date was as ancient as 1670. ” Shelley's letter in Mary's Travelogue

Byron's signature carved into the pillar he thought was "the" pillar; or added by savvy Castle staff

The first thing every guide says at the Castle is how it is the most visited cultural site in all of Switzerland because of Byron. To this day.

The other tidbit is editorial: that things couldn’t have been too bad for Francois Bonivard because when he was freed, he married four times, and was always in debt because of his extravagant lifestyle. The implication being that he wasn’t damaged by being in prison from 1530 to 1536, and chained to a pillar for the last four of them. He was a prisoner of Switzerland’s religious wars: he was a Catholic monk who started fighting for the rights of the Genevese  not be ruled by the Duke of Savoy. He became a celebrated Protestant on his release, and so the marriages.

Bryon paints a very different, though mythical picture.  The real Bonivard had no 5 brothers (although one of the guides thought he perhaps had one sibling, but he was not imprisoned with him.)

Byron’s poem is a masterpiece of darkness and suffering. If Bonivard himself perhaps was not in extreme pain during his imprisonment, many people were devastated by the cruelty and barbarity of the religious wars

Their belief with blood have seal'd,
Dying as their father died,
For the God their foes denied;—

Sir Walter Scott's review Quarterly Review 16 (October 1816) 172-208:
"It will readily be allowed that this singular poem is more powerful than pleasing. The dungeon of Bonivard is, like that of Ugolino, a subject too dismal for even the power of the painter or poet to counteract its horrors. It is the more disagreeable as affording human hope no anchor to rest upon, and describing the sufferer, though a man of talents and virtues, as altogether inert and powerless under his accumulated sufferings. Yet as a picture, however gloomy the colouring, it may rival any which Lord Byron has drawn, nor is it possible to read it without a sinking of the heart, corresponding with that which he describes the victim to have suffered."

Is the signature Byron’s? I would think not. There's too much space between the "B" and "Y," which has lead to an odd dot being added through the years.

Lake Geneva/Leman is well served by a fleet of steamboats. You can see the enormous pistons

From the Castle, we took the steamboat back to Vevey.

“We sailed from Clarens to Vevai. Vevai is a town more beautiful in its simplicity than any I have ever seen. Its market-place, a spacious square interspersed with trees, looks directly upon the mountains of Savoy and La Valais, the lake, and the valley of the Rhone. It was at Vevai that Rousseau conceived the design of Julie.” Shelley's July 12 letter in Mary's Travelogue

Alphorn players on Lake Lucerne in Vevey for the Fete des Vignerons, 2019

The next day we headed for Gstaad, where Hemingway is still remembered, and then on to Bern. Making the journey to great grandfather’s hometown was a privilege. It was even more of a privilege to journey with the good education that brought me the richness of the Romantics in Switzerland.

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 Mapeel     8/03/2019     Byron, Shelley, Swizerland, The Romantics, Travel   

Giving Deep Thanks for My Courageous German Great Grandmother

"Mareichtag and I are speaking nothing but English now. So we should feel at home when we get to America."

"To America!" [Watch the wonderful scene.]

I am a life-long fan of Casablanca, and as the years have gone by, I have discovered more and more cosmic connections to it.

Ten years after I moved to West 103 Street in Manhattan, another fan succeeded in documenting that Humphrey Bogart was born right across the street from our apartment. The city put up an official street sign and plaque, and Lauren Bacall and Stephen Bogart came to the unveiling. It was my beloved film coming to life right on my doorstep.

 I now have a new connection the classic: the short scene of Herr and Frau Leuchtag on their way to America.

Because, it turns out, I am truly part German. My great grandmother on my mother's side--Susanna Sander Waldis--was German and came to America in 1875 as a 10-year-old girl.

On Saturday I am on my way to Trier, Germany—Prussia in her day—which we now have documentation to prove is the town of her birth.

Wherein My Brother Discovers a Talent for Ancestry Research
It’s been quite the road of discovery. As an O’Neill, the Irish/Brooklyn Irish Catholic American-ness was the dominant culture growing up. My identity as a daughter of Erin is very strong, forged from the Clancy Brothers/Bing Crosby-fueled spirit in the household led by my dad and his best friends, my faux uncles.

My mother’s side of the family was quieter. And Lutheran. Growing up we knew that her maiden name—Brown—had been changed at Ellis Island, when her paternal grandfather came over from Norway. His name was Jacob Jacobsen. He returned to Norway late in life, and relatives sent a photo of his gravestone to show the money they were sent to bury him had been correctly spent. So that was clear.

There was also a family story about four china plates that my maternal grandmother had, that her mother had “brought over on the boat from Germany.”

That might seem clear, but it was fuzzy. There was just that one story, and nothing else. So growing up, being one-part German had no resonance. It didn't seem quite true.

My brother became interested in our ancestry some years ago when the confluence of the DNA companies and records of all types being scanned made amateur  research possible.

Working Backwards: Finding the Immigrant Ship from Liverpool
We knew our great grandmother’s name: Susanna Sander (or Saunders). Pat found the record of her marriage certificate in Manhattan in 1885 to Anthony Waldis, a man from Switzerland!  And the marriage certificate had the names of both sets of parents and where they were born. That is how we learned of Lorenz Sander and Helene Berrens, from Trier, Germany.

Patrick next found a 10-year-old Susanna Sander on a ship manifest, leaving Liverpool, England in 1875.  It was the SS Kenilworth, and it docked in the port of Philadelphia on January 7, 1875.

The beauty of this: there are guilds of volunteers who type hand-written ship manifests into databases that can be searched.  Isn’t that wonderful.  If no one did that, then the handwritten documents would be completely silent.

As it happens, I had the opportunity to be in Liverpool in June. And so I found myself at Albert Dock, and the Maritime Museum, which is more and more exploring the enormous historical significance of Liverpool in the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. The museum has a permanent exhibit where they try to re-create the experience of those ships in the late 1800s. I walked between the wooden bunks, around the large galley tables, all on an angle with the sound of water lapping against the walls, but I knew nothing can re-create immigrant steerage travel conditions in 1875.

Maritime Museum Immigrant Ship Experience; Liverpool, England

I tried to imagine little Susanna and her 44-year-old mom and 5 siblings, speaking no English, making their way to Liverpool--how?--and then waiting for their ship.

There is a statue on Albert Dock commissioned by the Mormons--the MVPs of genealogy--called The Crossing. It shows a 19th century immigrant family-- a mother and father with the kids--but I imagine the reality was many women traveled alone, crossing with their children, joining the husbands who went over earlier.

Liverpool, England; Albert Dock

The Maritime Museum has a great restaurant on the top floor. I raised a glass of wine to Susanna and her brave mother and siblings, getting on that ship, not knowing the language, not knowing what that 2-week voyage would be like, and what was ahead.

Liverpool, England; Maritime Museum at Albert Dock

Susanna grew up and made her way in the New World, married a man from Switzerland in Manhattan, and they moved to a farm near Honesdale, Pennsylvania.  Farm life is harsh, I don't think she had a particularly happy life. She had 10 children, only 2 of whom survived childhood: my grandmother Rena, and her sister, my great aunt Helen. My grandmother is the one who escaped the farm by becoming a maid for a Lutheran minister who lived in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.  She is one of the links that gave me the enormous gift of being born in Brooklyn. My great aunt Helen never escaped rural Pennsylvania.

I guess it's not so unusual that there weren't more family details of Susanna's immigrant experience. She had made it to America and did not want to be seen as an outsider.  She came to live with her daughter and my mom in Brooklyn around 1938 when she was in her 70s. My mom says that she spoke without any accent. How/when she learned English is not known. She was a voracious reader--mom says my grandmother was always going to the library to bring her new books. That makes me feel close to her, and I hope she found great enjoyment there.

Susanna died in Brooklyn in 1950 at 85, and is buried with her people back in Pennsylvania.

So, Which Religion Are We?
And now I have the very great privilege to return to Trier. I have never been to Germany, I’ve had no particular desire to visit, but I want to see where the Sanders came from, and great grandmother Susanna lived until she was 10.  Lost to history is any reason why they left.

There is one more little twist to this lineage tale. My mother was baptized Lutheran, as was her mother, and we assumed,  Susanna and her husband from Switzerland. My grandmother married a Norwegian American in the Swedish Seamen’s Church in Brooklyn, a Lutheran church.

I have an appointment at the Trier Diocese Archives office. They verified that they have parish records from 1800s showing the Sander family baptisms and deaths at Saint Gervasius Church.

Trier is a Catholic city. Saint Gervasius is a Catholic Church. So Susanna came to the US a Catholic.

Hmm.

We knew about the sadness of Susanna's 8 children dying.

We only recently learned a crucial detail from a cousin of my mom's: when the local rural priest came to bury one of the children, Susanna gave him some money (which is customary). He threw it on the ground and said it was not enough.

It’s an ugly, heartbreaking story. When Susanna’s later children were born, she had them baptized Lutheran.

In a twist of fate, my mother married a Roman Catholic, she later converted to Catholicism, and I was baptized Catholic. So I will return to Susanna’s homeland as a daughter of her original faith. It sadly made me pause to think of the thousands who have died over the centuries in religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, when it's really all in the family.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I'll continue the story on the other side.

Susanna Sander Waldis, circa 1930, rural Pennsylvania

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 Mapeel     11/22/2017     family, Film, Travel   

Kairos in Croatia, aka Carpe Diem, Trogir-Style

Left: Trogir, Croatia, Town Hall. Bas relief of Croatian hero, Petar Berislavić sculpted by  Ivan Meštrović. Right: Full-size bronze statue of Ivan Meštrović sculpted by American Malvina Hoffman.

I spent the week of Labor Day in the extraordinary country of Croatia, where history lives in layers and layers and layers.  And to these ancient layers I experienced current day, living layers of history that felt so dense I found it hard to think about, hard to write about when I got home. The trip was another in the series of "sing Renaissance polyphony and see the world."  I met up with a an international group of singers, brought together by an Englishman who runs Lacock Courses, in Trogir for a week of rehearsals, followed by a free concert in the famous St. Lawrence Cathedral.

When I got back to Gotham I found myself in the Brooklyn Museum, where I had not been in more than a decade, because a niece has moved into Brooklyn, right down the block.

It is a particularly wonderful museum. One exceptional feature is the Visible Storage on the 5th floor, where you can wonder amongst lots of the collection in storage while not on display. The space has a magical feel to it, like you have passed through some secret panel at the back of a closet into a realm of secret treasures.

The treasures are behind glass--that is how they store them. But in the middle of it all was a large-as life piece of sculpture. Because of the hand gesture I first thought it was Shakespearian of some sort. But the tag identified the figure as

Ivan Meštrović.

A month ago that would not have meant anything. But I now know that he is one of the master sculptors of the 20th century. And Croatian. And I have pictures of his work in Trogir. See photo above.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Kairos Among the Winding Streets

Trogir was named a UNESCO Heritage site in 1997:

Because of the continuity of of its settlements since Ancient Greece. It is the best-preserved Romanesque-Gothic complex not only in the Adriatic, but in all of Central Europe. Trogir's medieval core, surrounded by walls, comprises a preserved castle and tower and a series of dwellings and palaces from the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Even a cursory synopsis of its history (courtesy Wiki) is dense:

Trogir was founded by Greeks 3 BC.  In the 9th century there were Croatian rulers, then 1123 it was nearly completely demolished by the Saracens. But the people rebound, and prosper. 1420 they are ruled by Venice, until its fall in 1797, when Trogir becomes part of the Hapsburg Empire, which ruled until 1918 (except for the French Occupation of 1806 to 1814). After WWI Trogir, along with Croatia, gets subsumed into Yugoslavia. During WWII it was occupied by Italy until 1944, when it was subsumed into second Yugoslavia. Croatia declared independence in 1991 and when the fighting stopped in`1995, it was a sovereign nation.

One of the city's treasures is a bas relief of Kairos, from the 3rd century BC.

Kairos is the god "of the moment" of the "fleeting opportunity."

He is an embodiment of the idea of Carpe Diem, from Horace's Odes. And he is almost a symbol of the city, you can find his likeness on every conceivable souvenir.

The poet Posidippos explained the iconography of the figure:

"He walks on tiptoe with wings on his feet because he's always in a hurry; clutches a razor because he is sharper than the tips of a knife; he has a tuft of hair over his forehead but he's bald in the back because people must grab him as they approach. Once he's gone by, it is too late."

And because of the layers of Trogir, this very important Hellenistic treasure is in the Benedictine monastery of St. Nicholas. I loved learning of this impish Greek god, the embodiment of the most human of desires to not miss out, and to see it everywhere in this ancient town.

Trogir is small, with narrow winding streets. I found it a little claustrophobic, and was very glad to be staying across the bridge, where there was more space, more air.

The church of St. Peter, where we had rehearsal each day.

The view of the walled city of Trogir from my B&B in  Ciovo, across the bridge

The Kamerlengo Fortress Castle, at the end of the town

Night in the Trogir town square

The Modern Layers Amidst the Ancient Stones 

As I wandered about this intriguing Eastern European nation, I was conscious of a complex intersection of current and recent tragedies. 

•The exodus from Syria, which has been going on for years,  hit a new critical point the end of August/beginning of September. The coverage was wall-to-wall on BBC.  The enormity of the suffering, the impotence of "Europe" to deal with it, were juxtaposed for me with holiday makers of every nationality on the beautiful island that is Trogir.  For the most part, my fellow vacationers looked like the solid middle class trying to enjoy its measured time away from work.  And then the enormous yachts came in. . . . 

•Burning Man 2015 paralleled my Croatian sojourn, Aug. 30 to Sept. 7.  70,000 + people choosing to wonder in the desert of Nevada, searching for creativity amidst the harsh conditions of the Playa,  paralleled 100,000 + immigrants in various deserts facing daily, literal,  life and deaths situations.  The two extreme ends of the human condition weighed upon my heart.

•Hope in the Turmoil of Tudor England: This was the theme of the week, devised by Patrick Craig, an English countertenor superstar.  He has an extraordinary talent to bring the historical context that music is written in to life and  is the most empathetic person I have ever met.

Patrick described--from his imagination--what it might have been like for Catholics during the English Religious Wars (I'm paraphrasing): 'So you are having your Mass at home, because the government will not allow you to worship how you wish. If there is a knock on the door--because you have been ratted out---everyone in the room would have a job: you scoop the Bible & the chalice into a basket, you help the priest into the "priest hole," you hide any music. And the music itself, from the genius of Byrd, reflected a depth of conviction combined with a frisson of people under constant siege." And most poignant of all to me: Patrick isn't Catholic.

*14 year anniversary of 9/11: This was the first 9/11 I have not be at home, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It happened that the free concert the group was giving in the town's St. Lawrence Cathedral was on Sept. 11. And it happened that the dress rehearsal was at 3:00pm, which is 9:00am New York time.  And it happened that the first piece we rehearsed was a setting of the Lord's Prayer by John Sheppard.  So it happened that at 9:03 am NY time I was singing, "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them which trespass against us." No one ever said Christianity is easy.  And then I was more than happy to sing "but deliver us from evil . . . "

8:46 first plane hit North Tower; 9:03 second plane hit South Tower; 9:37 Pentagon hit; 9:59 South Tower falls; 10:03 Shanksville; 10:29 North Tower Falls.

The concert on September 11, 2015 in St. Lawrence Cathedral, Trogir. 

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 Mapeel     10/06/2015     9/11, polyphony, Travel   

Leaving for the Land Where "Games of Thrones" & "Doctor Who" Film: aka, Croatia

I leave tomorrow for an end-of-summer,  Labor Day weekend vacation. Destination: Croatia. Trogir, to be exact. The entire island is an UNESCO heritage site.

Why write new, when you can just quote Wiki:

Trogir has 2300 years of continuous urban tradition. Its culture was created under the influence of the ancient Greeks, and then the Romans, and Venetians. Trogir has a high concentration of palaces, churches, and towers, as well as a fortress on a small island, and in 1997 was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List. "The orthogonal street plan of this island settlement dates back to the Hellenistic period and it was embellished by successive rulers with many fine public and domestic buildings and fortifications. Its beautiful Romanesque churches are complemented by the outstanding Renaissance and Baroque buildings from the Venetian period", says the UNESCO report.

Trogir is the best-preserved Romanesque-Gothic complex not only in the Adriatic, but in all of Central Europe. Trogir's medieval core, surrounded by walls, comprises a preserved castle and tower and a series of dwellings and palaces from the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque periods. Trogir's grandest building is the church of St. Lawrence, whose main west portal is a masterpiece byRadovan, and the most significant work of the Romanesque-Gothic style in Croatia.

Pretty amazing, yes?

I am drawn there by the prospect of a Renaissance Polyphony workshop, lead by the extraordinary Patrick Craig.  The music and theme of the week he has chosen: "Hope Amidst Turmoil in Tudor England," with brilliant compositions by the usual suspects: Tye; Sheppard; Taverner; Morely; Weelkes; Tompkins; and my favorite: Byrd. Whom we Catholics claim as our own, though scholarship has placed him on various sides of the Reformation divide through the years.

After a week of rehearsal, we will give a free concert of this extraordinary music in the famous St. Lawrence Cathedral. Anyone in the neighborhood, please come by.

And as fate would have it: that concert is on 9/11. This is the first 9/11, I will not be home. And so for that day, I again offer my own witness.

If I have to be anywhere other than NYC on this most New York City of all days, giving a free concert in an Eastern European city that has known great strife and sadness itself seems like a good place to be.
And now for the pop cultural conundrum: Game of Thrones films in Split (nearby to Trogir), and there is a now a tour: "Get a behind-the-scenes look at the hit HBO series ‘Game of Thrones’ on this 3.5-hour tour of the show’s filming locations in Split. Hear insider gossip about the series, see where Daenerys Targaryen plotted her return to power, and creep around the cellars where the slaves conspired with the Unsullied Army to overthrow the masters."

Now, I don't watch Game of Thrones. But, it's unlikely I'll ever be back in the region. So, do I find time to take that tour? More importantly, I'm hoping to stumble on some of the streets from Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor in Trogir. 

Doctor Who: Vincent and the Doctor, recreating Van Gogh paintings in Trogir

Please follow me @mapeel on Twitter for dispatches during the week. 

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 Mapeel     9/03/2015     Travel, TV   

Mont Saint Michel For Earth Day: Where Nature and Man's Most Ingenious Architecture Meet & Spirits Live

In the television adaptation of this blog, there would be a lovely fade from the illustration in this book page to the real thing, just like the opening of Moonlighting's "Atomic Shakespeare."

The drawing is from an essay by Christopher Morely called  "A Sea Shell in Normandy" in the collection of his essays, The Romany Stain, which I have had since high school because my father picked it up in a used book store for me.

The photo is from my iPhone last month.

Although Morely's essay on Mont Saint Michel from 1926 has quietly been a part of my literary life for decades—looking up at me every time I dipped into the collection because it is the first page of the first essay—I had no particular desire to go see it.  Being there in person was a series of random events: I met singers in Assisi last summer, who have been meeting up in Brittany for years for a privately organized workshop that they invited me to join. I said yes without looking into many details, including where the small villages of La Fontenelle (the birthplace of composer Jean Langlais) and Antrain actually are.  Turns out Antrain is a 1/2 hour drive from Mont Saint Michel, which is technically in Normandy, et voila. It was a lovely small emotional connection back to my father, who died a few years after he gave me the book, made more poignant because it was unexpected.


Happy Earth Day: No Man Is an Island, But Mont Saint Michel Is

I visited the Mount driving from Portorson, which brings you to the large car park and from there walked the two miles on the new causeway to the entrance. The tide was extremely low, so I did not experience the "island"-ness, but the relentless, driving rain for two miles gave me the sense of achieving some kind of pilgrimage, and it kept the crowds way down, which astonished the friends I traveled with who had visited when there were wall-to-wall tourists.

Earth Day is a lovely time to consider other pilgrims, new and old, who approach from the small village of Genet, walking across an enormous expanse of mud flats that disappear under high tide.  To do that walk you need to go with a certified guide.  Pilgrims of yore were killed when the high tide came in quickly and swept them away, or they wondered into a quicksand patch, which Morely notes in his essay. This photo beautifully captures the expanse of those plains, and the small humans trekking across to the abbey, seen in shadow.

There is a lot of discussion going on in France now about how/if the tides should be controlled/damned or not. One faction fears that if the they aren't controlled, the amount of silt build-up will actually connect the island to the mainland by 2040, and the Mount will lose its distinctive character. (Photos from this Smithsonian article.)

An American on the Mount

"With the genuine thrill and and tingle of the pilgrim you climb, cricking your neck at the noble sheer of those walls and struts that lean upward and inward to carry to the needle of the spire. You can almost feel the whole roundness of earth poise and spin, socketed upon this stoney boss of peace.

You think of the Woolworth Building. "  Christopher Morely

The Mount's origins are in AD 708 when the Bishop of nearby Avranches saw the Archangel Michael in a dream who told him to built a sanctuary on an existing Mont Tombe, and it was renamed "Mount Saint Michael at the peril of the sea." The Archangel Michael is the head of the heavenly militia. (John Travolta made an interesting Michael in Nora Ephron's 1996 film, although it was odd for the great warrior to be playing Cupid.)

The Benedictines moved into the Mount in the 10th century and it became a great pilgrimage site as the the village grew outside its walls. The abbey continued with various eras of construction over hundreds of years under several patrons.

And it is the construction of the enormous abbey that astounds. From the Mount's info pamphlet:
"Constrained by the pyramidal shape of the Mount, the medieval  builders wrapped the buildings around the granite rock."

From an excellent Smithsonian article:
"But only about half of the church sits solidly on rock; the other half, called the choir, is perched somewhat perilously on top of the two levels of buildings below."

As the builders built up, they had to continue to build down,  creating huge crypts that would offset the upward weight.

Morely: "You saw, I hope, those great columns in the crypt, where the veins of stone rise to their task as smoothly, as alive with living strength, as the cords of a horse's haunch."

I did indeed.  This picture does not do justice to the enormity of these columns.





The cloister is stunning, the Knight's Hall is an amazing expanse, the view from the town below, looking straight up, gives a good sense of the perch, the rock the abbey is sitting on . . .

And Then There Are the Spirits

The Mount has been a very holy place, and then a very unholy place. It was an impregnable stronghold during the Hundred Years War, its ramparts and fortifications able to resist all of England's assaults, which they say lead to the abbey being a symbol of national identity.

During the French Revolution—with the dissolution of the religious communities—and through to 1863, the abbey was used as a prison.

Between the lives of the monks, the killing of English, and the torture of the prisoners, a lot of souls have passed through those towering walls.

Now, the north-south stairs run below the west terrace, which is the main circulation axis of the Romanesque monastery. The stairs are very steep, and for some reason as I was walking up them I stopped to take a picture, and was amazed at what I saw through the iphone:

An optical illusion, surely. If I took one step more, it went away. If I went back a step, it disappeared. It only materialized from one, specific, space.

It was a wonderful interplay of Nature with the genius of human engineering. Or was it . . .

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 Mapeel     4/22/2015     literature, Travel   

Good Friday, 2015: Pilgrims & Grief of All the Ages

A country road in the small town of Antrain, Brittany, France, a remnant of the path pilgrims used to take to the nearby Mont Saint Michel (much more about that later). The modern-day pilgrims/sightseers take a different route now. But we are all pilgrims of many kinds throughout our life, with many journeys having nothing to do with religion, as by pure happenstance is beautifully signaled by the telephone poles that visually mirror the crucifix but are only of the mortal world.

I had the privilege of spending the 5th week of Lent with Catholics in Suffolk, England, in Aldeburgh; then Palm Sunday with the Bretons in Antrain; and back with the home team for the Triduum. Worship on the parish level is incredibly nourishing. The nationalities are important, but the Catholic bond is deeper and the shared knowledge of the Mass and what it means is a moment of human connection like no other.

I also happened to be away when the Germanwings plane was deliberately crashed by the copilot. The European coverage was extensive and beyond heartbreaking, from the 16 German teenagers from the same school returning from their cultural exchange in Barcelona, to the mother and daughter from Virginia, Yvonne and Emily Selke.

Then the third American killed was identified, Robert Oliver Calvo.  And that lead me to learn this: he worked for the Barcelona-based design company Desigual.  I have a lovely Desigual coat that I bought in Century One last year. I get many compliments on it, because it is very striking. Now, when I thank the women who stop me in the street to say how much they like it,  I will remember Robert Oliver Calvo, married with 2 children, and his colleague Laura Altimara, who recently married, in my heart. May they rest in peace and their families find consolation—maybe in the great love of the top picture, or wherever they can.

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 Mapeel     4/03/2015     England, France, holidays, singing, Travel   

A Trip to Assisi, the Land of Saint Francis

Another summer, another workshop of Renaissance polyphony. This year, it's Assisi, Italy. The repertoire is yummy: Palestrina, Victoria, Josquin, Richafort, Clemens, Morales, Gesualdo.

I have never been particularly drawn to St. Francis. The Pope taking the monk's name was the first tangible sign that he would try to bring a sense of simplicity  and sanity back to that exalted office, which much of the world found encouraging.

The Feast of St. Francis means the blessing of the animals in many Catholic & Protestant churches, because of the monk's association with nature.

To prep for my trip I read Chesterton's appreciation of the saint, and found that he tried to reestablish the seriousness of the Friar, and save him from the Disney-fication that is easy to do when nature is invoked. Case in point: the drawing below looks like it's right out of Enchanted, with Amy Adams just out of the frame.

"St. Francis was not a lover of nature. Properly understood, a lover of nature was precisely what he was not. The phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental pantheism. In the romantic period of literature, in the age of Byron and Scott, it was easy enough to imagine that a hermit in the ruins of a chapel (preferably by moonlight) might find peace and a mild pleasure in the harmony of solemn forests and silent stars, while he pondered over some scroll or illuminated volume, about the liturgical nature of which the author was a little vague.

"In short, the hermit might love nature as a background. Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting,  in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man." G. K. Chesterton

The other thing that I learned is that Wiki says that "The Prayer of Saint Francis," which most of contemporary Christendom knows well because of its hymn setting, is not from Francis's writings at all. There is no record of it before 1912, in French! 

It's one of those odd cultural mistakes. It's a shame, because it does "sound" like the teachings of Francis, so I doubt he minds the error.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is discord, harmony;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

 Follow me on Twitter for thoughts from Rome & Assisi. 

Westminster Abbey Choir, singing the hymn at Lady Diana's funeral.

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 Mapeel     8/06/2014     Italy, Travel   

Ash Wednesday at the 2013 Venice Biennale

I am not much of a photographer, and my mind thinks in words before images. But these pictures I took at the 55the Venice Biennale have stuck with me. Sculptor Pawel Althamer installed Venetians (2013), life size sculptures of local Venetians, casting their faces and hands in plaster before joining them to bodies composed of extruded ribbons of gray plastic. Althamer: "It is a major achievement to realize that the body is only a vehicle for the soul."

Josef Koudelka's work in the historic first ever pavilion from the Vatican (Holy See). A look at the the decay of man's world. I get an Ozymandias vibe from the hand.

Mia Xiaochun of the People's Republic of China work The Last Judgment of Cypberspace is a virtual, digitzed version of Michelangelo's The Last Judgment. Xiaochun has replaced the 400 individual images of people in Michelandelo's with one cyber person.

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 Mapeel     3/05/2014     art, Travel