Letters from Italy/Chapter 9

Pay me in solid gold for these lines, not for their special charm but as I had to pay as much on their account. But when I reckon for each starlet ten centimes and one for each deep sea murmur, ten lire for the little red fire on the summit of Etna, and half a lira an hour for the balsamic odour—you will see that I do not take into account sea reflections, palm trees, the old castle, nor even the Greek theatre, which at night have no charm—well, it is worth it all, and fate be praised that it sent me to these parts.

Fate conducted me on a wondrous night direct from Palermo right across Sicily, over a mass of bare, remarkable, and melancholy hills, through an avenue of cactus and sulphurous valleys to Girgenti, a townlet on a hill, and a little farther right through a whole series of Greek temples. They are all Doric and therefore very graceful. Just then was the festival of the Assumption, and the natives assembled from far and near to these well-preserved Greek remains, drank and ate and explained to the children that these were Greek temples; others solemnly measured with pocket knives columns and square stones, and were decidedly proud of the temples aforesaid. ​On the return journey, some Girgenti stripling attached himself to me, speaking what he thought to be French; I do not know how it happened, but all at once I was surrounded by some dozen very pretty girls, and after them followed a crowd of handsome boys, and the whole party was surrounded by a herd of goats with white silky fur and twisted horns. Thus I wandered in the golden dust of the sunset, speaking in turn Czech, Italian, and French, like the leader of some bacchante procession; whoever met us, a rider on ass or mule, removed his hat and gazed at us for some time. As long as I live I shall never understand this antique event.

Heaven then led me by some very complicated paths from the African to the Ionian sea. Along the way are again hills, with green or white crests, sulphur hills or pierced with grottoes like a cheese, and marvellous towns which have crept to the summits of exceedingly high mountains, like Enna “the unconquerable,” or Castrogiovanni, situated in the clouds above a small railway station, almost squeezed into a tunnel, and then above ripening cereals towers Etna which loses itself in the clouds; then come malarial swamps and blue sea, then Siracusa, a town on an island, a small fragment of ancient Syracuse. The latter lay on the mainland and occupied an extensive area, with a theatre, amphitheatre, and famous quarries, and in addition the Christians built enormous catacombs. ​These quarries are called latomie and are very fine they form a paradise of flowers surrounded by rocky walls; the single entrance is kept by a guardian to whom payment is made, and the tyrant Dionysius confined prisoners in these latomie. Also in Siracusa peasants have painted carts, but instead of historical pictures they prefer scenes from the life of exalted ranks: among them are really charming specimens. It seems that I say little of monuments of antiquity. I could certainly write more about them; it is all set forth in the guide-book, the century of erection, thickness and number of columns. But perhaps I have a spirit far too unhistorical; my best impressions of the antique are rather derived from the order of nature, e.g., the golden sunset in the golden temples of Girgenti, or the white noonday glow in the Greek theatre, where beautiful green lizards run along the seats; or a solitary laurus nobilis by a split column, an enormous black adder in the courtyard of the house of the tragic poet at Pompeii, the odour of mint and begonias—ah, the most beautiful and boundless in the world are not things but moments, seconds that cannot be detained.

At last Taormina, an earthly paradise above the murmuring sea, an island of scents and flowers among rocks, a tiny light by the sea, Etna in red glow. No—think now of home: and were it a hundredfold more beautiful think of the ​ ​native land, the land of flowing streams and rustling woods and its most modest, intimate grace.

You cannot go astray if you turn your face homewards.