Letters from Italy/Chapter 3

Ravenna itself is a half-dead city without individual character: beyond that it is a sort of holiday resort for Fascisti, and these “black shirts” parade the town with guns and bands, the real fascio, Garibaldian grandfathers, musicians, processions and delays. In passing, Fascisti in uniform closely resemble our chimney-sweeps; they even wear the same kind of black cap with a tail and their teeth gleam: a curious impression.

This Ravenna has of course nothing to do with dead Ravenna, the Ravenna of the oldest Christian architecture and the finest mosaics in the world. Were I to write exhaustively on what I saw—which I certainly shall not—Ravenna mosaics would form the most impressive discourse. I confess that even at the tomb of Dante I was not overcome by actual religious emotion, but at San Celso e Nazario I longed to kneel. San Vitale is the finest architectonic area that I know, San Apollinare in Classe is sublimity itself, but the rotunda of Galla Placidia, where from gloomy little arches gleam sacred mosaics of a grace really heavenly, that is one of the artistic summits of Christianity. But I dare not forget you, holy virgins of San Apollinare Nuovo, nor you, ​heavenly lambs in San Apollinare in Classe fuori. I shall never forget you, unutterably Christian grace, which cheered me so at Ravenna. But thou, Rimini, art in no wise least among the cities of Italy. And even if all besides were of little value thou hast the Malatesta temple of Leone Battista Alberti; an unfinished façade and the interior half decorated in Baroque, but what remains over by Alberti makes up for this: it reconciles me with the Renaissance which left me so cold at Venice. History styles Alberti “the theoretician of early Renaissance”; but if you understand how to read traces and memorials of human hands, then you will read in the Malatesta temple such a tremendous exertion of will, such perfect and graceful strength and purity of style in every plastic detail, that you will be miserable sceptics in art if you do not give the pre-eminence to this magnificent wreck before the best by Sansovino and the other masters of the splendid Renaissance.

Style, above all purity of style! And take care to get clear of what is merely pretty and lax, if you would make architecture. Style, that is everything, that is more than man, for with style man aims directly at the Absolute.

And lo, while I have been meditating on style and prettiness, fate punished me for prettiness. A spacious motor-car with the inscription “Rimini–San Marino” bore me off to what is said to be the smallest Republic in the world. ​These lines are written in the very centre of the Republic. Many of the beauties of this honourable state escaped me, for on the journey we were surprised by heavy rain, fog, and clouds; I only know that we proceeded in an alarming way uphill, straight up among the clouds, and now I am sitting simply amidst clouds, in a wonderful rocky nest surrounded on every side by clouds and vaporous precipices. Instead of streets there are merely steps, a rocky castle set on a vertical peak, every house like a bastion on a rocky terrace, vertical bluffs above unknown depths whence rolls up mist—in short, the wildest eagle-like picturesqueness that you can possibly imagine.

While in the representative hotel of the Republic I feasted on a beefsteak in oil and goats-milk cheese, all San Marino assembled hurriedly and gazed at me. A native, engineer by profession, entered into conversation with me: in a frightful verbal duel (he struggled with French and I with Italian, in the course of which both languages landed us in maddening contradictions) he explained to me that San Marino is actually an independent Republic, which during the war only raised volunteers; that it has altogether five thousand inhabitants over which Signore Gozzi holds sway in a blessed and comfortable manner, though I noticed on corner-stones inscriptions proclaiming evviva for some other grandeur, evidently an opponent. This accessible native tried to give me a sketch of the ​history of San Marino, but that did not go well by employing manual gestures. He supposed the Czechs were some Greek tribe. I could not establish closer inter-state contact for the difficulty already mentioned, but if anyone else would follow in my track, let him choose a day when it does not rain incessantly and mists do not cover this wonderful rocky summit, this steep islet, this best preserved European Republic.