Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines
BY THE IONIAN SEA
NOTES OF A RAMBLE IN SOUTHERN ITALY
BY
GEORGE GISSING
CONTENTS
I FROM NAPLES
II PAOLA
III THE GRAVE OF ALARIC
IV TARANTO
V DULCE GALAESI FLUMEN
VI THE TABLE OF THE PALADINS
VII COTRONE
VIII FACES BY THE WAY
IX MY FRIEND THE DOCTOR
X CHILDREN OF THE SOIL
XI THE MOUNT OF REFUGE
XII CATANZARO
XIII THE BREEZY HEIGHT
XIV SQUILLACE
XV MISERIA
XVI CASSIODORUS
XVII THE GROTTA
XVIII REGGIO
CHAPTER I
FROM NAPLES
This is the third day of sirocco, heavy-clouded, sunless. All the
colour has gone out of Naples; the streets are dusty and stifling. I
long for the mountains and the sea.
To-morrow I shall leave by the Messina boat, which calls at Paola. It
is now more than a twelvemonth since I began to think of Paola, and an
image of the place has grown in my mind. I picture a little _marina_; a
yellowish little town just above; and behind, rising grandly, the long
range of mountains which guard the shore of Calabria. Paola has no
special interest that I know of, but it is the nearest point on the
coast to Cosenza, which has interest in abundance; by landing here I
make a modestly adventurous beginning of my ramble in the South. At
Paola foreigners are rare; one may count upon new impressions, and the
journey over the hills will be delightful.
Were I to lend ear to the people with whom I am staying, here in the
Chiatamone, I should either abandon my project altogether or set forth
with dire misgivings. They are Neapolitans of the better class; that is
to say, they have known losses, and talk of their former happiness,
when they lived on the Chiaia and had everything handsome about them.
The head of the family strikes me as a typical figure; he is an elderly
man, with a fine head, a dignified presence, and a coldly courteous
demeanour. By preference he speaks French, and his favourite subject is
Paris. One observes in him something like disdain for his own country,
which in his mind is associated only with falling fortunes and loss of
self-respect. The cordial Italian note never sounds in his talk. The
_signora_ (also a little ashamed of her own language) excites herself
about taxation--as well she may--and dwells with doleful vivacity on
family troubles. Both are astonished at my eccentricity and hardiness
in undertaking a solitary journey through the wild South. Their
geographical notions are vague; they have barely heard of Cosenza or of
Cotrone, and of Paola not at all; it would as soon occur to them to set
out for Morocco as for Calabria. How shall I get along with people
whose language is a barbarous dialect? Am I aware that the country is
in great part pestilential?--_la febbre_! Has no one informed me that
in autumn snows descend, and bury everything for months? It is useless
to explain that I only intend to visit places easily accessible, that I
shall travel mostly by railway, and that if disagreeable weather sets
in I shall quickly return northwards. They look at me dubiously, and
ask themselves (I am sure) whether I have not some more tangible motive
than a lover of classical antiquity. It ends with a compliment to the
enterprising spirit of the English race.
I have purchases to make, business to settle, and I must go hither and
thither about the town. Sirocco, of course, dusks everything to
cheerless grey, but under any sky it is dispiriting to note the changes
in Naples. _Lo sventramento_ (the disembowelling) goes on, and regions
are transformed. It is a good thing, I suppose, that the broad Corso
Umberto I. should cut a way through the old Pendino; but what a
contrast between that native picturesqueness and the cosmopolitan
vulgarity which has usurped its place! "_Napoli se ne va_!" I pass the
Santa Lucia with downcast eyes, my memories of ten years ago striving
against the dulness of to-day. The harbour, whence one used to start
for Capri, is filled up; the sea has been driven to a hopeless distance
beyond a wilderness of dust-heaps. They are going to make a long,
straight embankment from the Castel dell'Ovo to the Great Port, and
before long the Santa Lucia will be an ordinary street, shut in among
huge houses, with no view at all. Ah, the nights that one lingered
here, watching the crimson glow upon Vesuvius, tracing the dark line of
the Sorrento promontory, or waiting for moonlight to cast its magic
upon floating Capri! The odours remain; the stalls of sea-fruit are as
yet undisturbed, and the jars of the water-sellers; women still comb
and bind each other's hair by the wayside, and meals are cooked and
eaten _al fresco_ as of old. But one can see these things elsewhere,
and Santa Lucia was unique. It has become squalid. In the grey light of
this sad billowy sky, only its ancient foulness is manifest; there
needs the golden sunlight to bring out a suggestion of its ancient
charm.
Has Naples grown less noisy, or does it only seem so to me? The men
with bullock carts are strangely quiet; their shouts have nothing like
the frequency and spirit of former days. In the narrow and thronged
Strada di Chiaia I find little tumult; it used to be deafening. Ten
years ago a foreigner could not walk here without being assailed by the
clamour of _cocchieri_; nay, he was pursued from street to street,
until the driver had spent every phrase of importunate invitation; now,
one may saunter as one will, with little disturbance. Down on the
Piliero, whither I have been to take my passage for Paola, I catch but
an echo of the jubilant uproar which used to amaze me. Is Naples really
so much quieter? If I had time I would go out to Fuorigrotta, once, it
seemed to me, the noisiest village on earth, and see if there also I
observed a change. It would not be surprising if the modernization of
the city, together with the state of things throughout Italy, had a
subduing effect upon Neapolitan manners. In one respect the streets are
assuredly less gay. When I first knew Naples one was never, literally
never, out of hearing of a hand-organ; and these organs, which in
general had a peculiarly dulcet note, played the brightest of melodies;
trivial, vulgar if you will, but none the less melodious, and dear to
Naples. Now the sound of street music is rare, and I understand that
some police provision long since interfered with the soft-tongued
instruments. I miss them; for, in the matter of music, it is with me as
with Sir Thomas Browne. For Italy the change is significant enough; in
a few more years spontaneous melody will be as rare at Naples or Venice
as on the banks of the Thames.
Happily, the musicians errant still strum their mandoline as you dine.
The old trattoria in the Toledo is as good as ever, as bright, as
comfortable. I have found my old corner in one of the little rooms, and
something of the old gusto for _zuppa di vongole_. The homely wine of
Posillipo smacks as in days gone by, and is commended to one's lips by
a song of the South. . . .
Last night the wind changed and the sky began to clear; this morning I
awoke in sunshine, and with a feeling of eagerness for my journey. I
shall look upon the Ionian Sea, not merely from a train or a steamboat
as before, but at long leisure: I shall see the shores where once were
Tarentum and Sybaris, Croton and Locri. Every man has his intellectual
desire; mine is to escape life as I know it and dream myself into that
old world which was the imaginative delight of my boyhood. The names of
Greece and Italy draw me as no others; they make me young again, and
restore the keen impressions of that time when every new page of Greek
or Latin was a new perception of things beautiful. The world of the
Greeks and Romans is my land of romance; a quotation in either language
thrills me strangely, and there are passages of Greek and Latin verse
which I cannot read without a dimming of the eyes, which I cannot
repeat aloud because my voice fails me. In Magna Graecia the waters of
two fountains mingle and flow together; how exquisite will be the
draught!
I drove with my luggage to the Immacolatella, and a boatman put me
aboard the steamer. Luggage, I say advisedly; it is a rather heavy
portmanteau, and I know it will be a nuisance. But the length of my
wanderings is so uncertain, its conditions are so vaguely anticipated.
I must have books if only for rainy days; I must have clothing against
a change of season. At one time I thought of taking a mere wallet, and
now I am half sorry that I altered my mind. But----
We were not more than an hour after time in starting. Perfect weather.
I sang to myself with joy upon the sunny deck as we steamed along the
Bay, past Portici, and Torre del Greco, and into the harbour of Torre
Annunziata, where we had to take on cargo. I was the only cabin
passenger, and solitude suits me. All through the warm and cloudless
afternoon I sat looking at the mountains, trying not to see that
cluster of factory chimneys which rolled black fumes above the
many-coloured houses. They reminded me of the same abomination on a
shore more sacred; from the harbour of Piraeus one looks to Athens
through trails of coal-smoke. By a contrast pleasant enough, Vesuvius
to-day sent forth vapours of a delicate rose-tint, floating far and
breaking seaward into soft little fleeces of cirrus. The cone, covered
with sulphur, gleamed bright yellow against cloudless blue.
The voyage was resumed at dinner-time; when I came upon deck again,
night had fallen. We were somewhere near Sorrento; behind us lay the
long curve of faint-glimmering lights on the Naples shore; ahead was
Capri. In profound gloom, though under a sky all set with stars, we
passed between the island and Cape Minerva; the haven of Capri showed
but a faint glimmer; over it towered mighty crags, an awful blackness,
a void amid constellations. From my seat near the stern of the vessel I
could discern no human form; it was as though I voyaged quite alone in
the silence of this magic sea. Silence so all-possessing that the sound
of the ship's engine could not reach my ear, but was blended with the
water-splash into a lulling murmur. The stillness of a dead world laid
its spell on all that lived. To-day seemed an unreality, an idle
impertinence; the real was that long-buried past which gave its meaning
to all around me, touching the night with infinite pathos. Best of all,
one's own being became lost to consciousness; the mind knew only the
phantasmal forms it shaped, and was at peace in vision.