Letters from Italy/Chapter 8

I should much rather not write this at all, as I am ashamed to say that I shall not succeed in stating precisely whether there is anything more beautiful in the world than a sea voyage, or Monreale, or the little garden at San Giovanni degli Eremiti. As regards Palermo, I should have written to you yesterday that this is the cleanest city in all Italy; to-day, having wandered round the harbour of Cala, I think it is the foulest, taking into account Naples and Rocca di Papa. The indisputable pre-eminence of Sicilians is that they almost never ask alms; they seem certainly more self-respecting and worthy than the curly-headed Neapolitans above there, perhaps through the influence of Spanish culture. The Spanish influence came last; the first was Greek, the second and third Saracen and Norman; Renaissance here only amounts to a fraud. Strew all these different strata of culture with a dazzling sun, African soil, a heap of dust, and splendid vegetation, and there you have Sicily.

But surely not, there is still a domestic culture, and you see it on the carts of all the peasants of the whole Golden Mussel. These carts are all magnificently painted: complete legends, ​ ​knightly duels, historical scenes, wars, dramatic pictures of contemporary life, all is painted with Gothic primitiveness or a little in the style of old playing-cards. Like this is painted the ceiling of the Tribunal, of the fifteenth century I guess. I wanted to buy the first car on the spot; it struck me as worthy of a museum. In two days I had seen a few thousands of them, among them real polychrome wonders. If popular art exists anywhere in richness of life it is here.

And now Monreale, a marvel, a highly rich ark of Romanesque art; a cathedral overlaid from crown to base with golden mosaics. These certainly have not the superb beauty of the Ravenna mosaics, which are some centuries older, but are perhaps the finest and most monumental treasuries of Romanesque decoration, equally with the Palatine Chapel at Palermo, which sets the head in a whirl, and equally with the cloisters at Monreale, where one is driven crazy with some three hundred figured columns, of which every capital is different and quite an inextricable skein of ornamentation, legendary scenes, animals, and mosaic work. Then finally the displayed ornamental zones, floors, and friezes at Monreale, which surpass all that I had hitherto imagined about the possibilities of pure geometrical ornamentation. And then Monreale itself, this wondrous city stuck on a slope among tree-like cactus, palms, figs, and I know not what marvellous trees, a city full of Spanish ​and Saracen lattice-work, gentle and unusually picturesque Baroque, dirty linen, little donkeys, children, pigs, coats of arms, and lovely views as far as the Lipari isles—the first town, in fact, where my eyes grew moist.

And then again something entirely different: the little garden in the old half-ruined cloisters of San Giovanni degli Eremiti. The little church itself is an old mosque with Moorish cupolas; and on this handful of soil between the shattered Moorish arches of the circumscribed area grows and blooms everything that a recklessly generous sky has poured into the lap of the Golden Mussel of the Gulf of Palermo. A few orange and lemon trees bow beneath their ripe fruit with blossoms erect; date palms, roses scattered round, bushes with reedlike flowers which could well contain a litre, vegetation unknown to me, a bewildering mass of blooms and odours. Towards the amazing blue sky tower five purple Saracen cupolas resembling wonderful globes. My goodness, this corner was really the most beautiful of all.

At Monreale there are wonderful mosaics of the Creation; Michael Angelo in the Sixtine Chapel has not more deeply grasped the creation of light, the waters, the dry land, and the heavenly bodies, and above all has forgotten or not known how to depict how God on the seventh day “saw that it was good” and rested. God at Monreale rests, slumbering like a husbandman after labour, ​with hands folded in his lap. But there, even God the Creator has forgotten something: He certainly charged Adam to name all beasts and aquatic creatures, but did not charge him to designate all kinds of odours. But at the same time human language is incapable of expressing nice and nasty odours. Mix jasmine, rotten fish, goatsmilk cheese, rancid oil, human exhalations, sea air, orange extract and odours of cats, and you have a tenth diminished degree of description of the atmosphere in a harbour street. And do not forget infantile dribbling, decayed vegetation, tobacco, dust, wood coal, and pomade. Add mould, slops, damp washing, and burnt oil, And even that is not enough. It is inexpressible.

The beauties and wonders of the world are inexpressible.