Letters from Italy/Chapter 16

According to various reports the so-called Riviera di Levante is a beautiful land, maritime, and justly renowned, as testify such names as Rapallo, Sestri, Portofino, Nervi and others. I cannot well judge, as the train runs through this earthly paradise exclusively underground, through tunnels, as at Genoa itself. At Genoa I ultimately arrived on land surface, and found there a region wonderfully hilly, which gives Genoa streets a course unusually capricious; you descend in the hope that down there must be the sea, and then you find a salita (ascent) with a climb to some problematical height. For the rest there are steps, lifts, cable tracks, tunnels, and viaducts, then a mass of palaces, which instead of courtyards and gardens have porticos and staircases leading up or down, which is a speciality of Genoa, and finally the harbour, an enormous harbour, effervescent, congested, and worthy of admiration, with which you cannot be satiated either from a near view or from the huge height of Castellaccia. It is an overcrowded cowhouse, where iron and wooden cows bellow after one another, discharge water, ruminate coal and iron, jostle each other, nuzzle, wear down, intrude, ​and give way; there are trans-oceanic cows, black and red, crammed to bursting, and fine large sailing vessels, and steam gadflies circling round these great cattle, and paunchy towing boats like sleeping sows, gnatlike skiffs, fishing smacks, white steamers with shining brass, chimneys, masts, spars, a confused tangle of masts and rigging, a harbour abundant and primitive, wealthy and mediaeval like the whole of Italy. And now forgive me that I know so little of Genoa; I became bewildered in this harbour panorama, and I only know that the guardians of the peace wear long caftans (Tartar coats) and instead of truncheons carry canes, that Genoa has in history a bad reputation, and instead of skies there are lines with dirty linen; the streets are so narrow that a man with a basket on his head must call out so that other people may clear out of his way. And these marble palaces, whether styled Doria, Balbi, or Cambiaso, are to-day entirely occupied by banks; but I am not going to utter what I think of this, but I found it everywhere. Such a fate certainly awaits the churches; behind the side altars will sit treasurers and their procurators, behind the high altar will sit the deputy director, and the chief director will sit higher still.

And then I saw a Babylonish tower where languages have been confused for five centuries, i.e., Milan Cathedral. From a distance it looks like a gigantic piece of dazzling antimony, which ​crystallises into such slender needles, or like an uneasy marble artichoke; every needle is a little spire or gilliflower, and when you split one it is full of statues with a statue on top, which can only be seen when you climb the roof; there are on the outside only 2,300 of these statues, so Baedeker states in figures always very moderate, but I think he has not counted little figures which are only in relief. It is one of the greatest aberrations I have ever seen, and will bewilder you with its extensive fantasies; these statues certainly are not worth much, its feathered arches are parched, the needles and steeples are senseless, but so is the whole thing, and at last it entirely relies on its fantastic, crazy, whitish phantom intemperance.

But there are some churches, bathed in shadow, venerable, and cheering, e.g., Sant’ Ambrogio or San Lorenzo, where much has remained after the red-haired Lombards, others all decorated by sweet Luini, others charmingly and severely Bramantesque, but all these have nothing to do with Milan of to-day. Milan, the most populous of Italian princedoms, wants itself considered as a little London. Therefore there are so many carriages, motors, confounded bicycles, noises, banks, colporteurs, tramways, marble lavatories, illuminated advertisements, people and bustle, and guardians of the peace with black helmets who look like undertakers' assistants, and commerce, yells, haste, and all possible things; the ​people there are godless, do not keep saints’ days and even disregard other traditions, as lazzaroni, mendicancy, and picturesqueness, do not sleep on the footpaths, or hang out dirty linen in the streets, or knock cattle about, or sew boots in the middle of the street, or sing barcarolles: in fact they do nothing picturesque; and so one can breathe better there, since there is not even the atmosphere of the glorious past.