When our cats were dragged away from a bird or other prey they had caught, they would go, for several days afterwards, straight back to exactly the same place to look for it; in the same way all of those who were present when my brother found a 100 franc note on the pavement on the boulevard St Germain, by place Maubert, always look there in the hope of finding another one. So when in Rome, as I was in February, I go back to the same places, on my first day. Things do not change much in Rome; noticing any small differences reinforces one’s feeling of familiarity with the city, of owning it. Starting with the piazza Navona, where the statues have been cleaned to within an inch of their lives, they positively dazzled in the sun. The Pantheon (still uncleaned), but not inside because now you have to pay, although that doesn’t seem to have deterred the numbers of people waiting outside. The French church, S. Luigi dei Francesi, doesn’t change, or didn’t seem to have at first, but now you cannot get as close to the Caravaggios as you could in the past. There too it used to get very crowded, but on a morning in February I had them all to myself.
The French bookshop, Libreria Stendhal, is almost next door to the church, and buying a book there is an example of actually catching one’s prey, this year the first volume of Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’outre-tombe (in a paperback edition, rather than the beautiful Pléïade one that lies unread at home). Chateaubriand was twice ambassador in Rome; there is a curious monument to him, just his head on a pillar, near the Villa Medici.
I wanted to read this because of Proust, who was influenced by him, and because he also wrote about memory. His Mémoires were originally in twelve volumes, the paperback has them in four, but I have not reached his description of memory yet, only a teaser on page 98, a reference to ‘another, more singular, kind of memory, which I may perhaps have occasion to discuss.’
There was an exhibition in Trastevere about the oak tree under which the poet Torquato Tasso used to sit on the Janiculum hill, near the church of S. Onofrio, which is one of my favorite places in Rome. I went there often during the time when I had a whole glorious month to myself in the city; there is a bench, there were palm trees, and a view over the city which always makes me think of Leopardi’s view, towards infinity (‘This lonely hill was always dear to me’). There are hardly ever any other people there; once I saw an artist sketching the church, the same view as a print I have of it. There is a plaque on the church, with a quotation by Chateaubriand from beyond the grave, hoping that he may end his days here (‘Si j’ai le bonheur de finir mes jours ici…’), a tribute to Tasso, who died there in 1595 and is buried in the church. I have often tried to visit Tasso’s room, or cell, in the monastery, but never succeeded; the monks don’t answer their phone. But perhaps after this Holy Year, now the statues have been bleached and the bus shelters refurbished, it may at last be possible. Rome would not be a bad place to end one’s days.
I did see one new thing, in a place I usually avoid, and that was men hoovering up numbers of coins on the edge of the Trevi Fountain, the ones that had fallen short of the water. The fountain too is whiter than white, and was empty, presumably for cleaning. When I go back to Rome there are all the same places, as familiar now as places here in Leiden. Except that in Rome I also have an old friend. This is ancient history, from Paris, more than fifty years ago, when I was wildly in love with him, and he is one of the few people I still know from that time. Foreigners in a strange city can easily lose touch with each other. But when I return to Rome I see him, confirming that I am still here, and so is he, both of us living in places we could not have dreamed of then, and then together, old explorers, we go and visit the ruins of Etruscan temples.
Mixed Feelings 