Whether we’re in a red, orange or yellow day in Italy may matter little to today’s five big points for me:
First, it’s a beautifully sunny day,
It’s one of the last such days we’ll be having before Christmas, for soon the real below-freezing winter will start and our plants will have to be protected if they are not to die.
Second, it’s going to be a rerun of the Star of Bethlehem as seen by the three Wise Men in AD zero. Jupiter and Saturn are in conjunction and it will be a treat to see such a bright light in the sky tonight. Let’s not miss this sight since another eight hundred years may pass before we get a similar chance.
Third. It’s the year’s shortest day…and the longest night. As John Donne writes in that quintessentially sad poem ‘A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day’ “this both the year’s, and the day’s deep midnight is”.
Fourth. If the UK has shut the door on Europe, Europe has done the same on Britain. But this time it’s not because of a misplaced political choice but because of a very real health emergency. The Continent (and the rest of the world) do not wish to be invaded by mutants, especially if they originate from Dover or Heathrow.
Fifth. For many people (like us) it’s going to be a zoomingly whatsapping Christmas with virtual lunches (but some real conversations at least). Yes we’ve been marooned: Sandra in the UK and I in Italy. All those cancelled flights, all those false hopes etc. It’s only the fourth time we’ve not spent Christmas together since we married over forty years ago. This is pretty good going, however, and for so many of us Christmas can be any day we wish. Like Miss Havisham with her cancelled wedding party I’ll keep the decorations up but will refrain from having rats on the dining table rushing about eating the panettone and may even do a bit of dusting to wipe those cobwebs away.
I will also not continue to wear my Santa Claus hat when going out. And as for those Christmas carols…
If anything this Christmas season will teach us many things. We are all refugees in our own countries and all in need of that little extra piece of love and humanity from others. Let’s trust we all receive that as a present at least.
When towards the end of his life the philosopher Bertrand Russell was asked what he thought the most important axioms were he replied:
“I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say…I should say love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more closely and closely interconnected we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way and if we are to live together and not die together we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”
It would certainly be lovely to be able to tolerate other people’s views without question even if one believed that the facts they were based on were largely fanciful. After all, that other great philosopher Voltaire is said to have uttered:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.
We are about to end this year with a double whammy, at least as far as the UK is concerned. The first is the unending saga of Brexit. I voted to remain as I felt the devil one knows was better. Certainly the EU is full of imperfections but it still adheres to the ideals of its original founders and has preserved us from the worst forms of worker exploitation and, above, from the threat of an endemic state of war which has tortured the European continent since the fall of the Roman Empire. Yet I continue to receive these messages from persons I not only tolerate but still respect:
“Ibelieve that the EU which is a corrupted organisation and involved in the most dishonest financial and political crimes will be dismantled, once lots of truths will be coming out in the near future.
I do believe it from the bottom of my heart. What we have been living for the past nine months is the most important time in history in a long time. It is a time of awakening to the false truths and that we have been fed for a very long time. It is not political. But I would say biblical.
It is literally the third world war. It is a fight between The Dark and the Light. And the Light will win.”
The other thing I find hard to take is the conspiracy theories of those who believe that Covid-19 is a tool of a carefully engineered totalitarian scheme to reduce us to obedient servants of an oppressive world government. Like this other message I received:
“Listen to the true scientists – Nobel Prize medical scientists. People that have actually been involved in making them for military purpose like Montanari and Gatti.
There are two kind of science. One is the corrupted science that has been giving us all lies up to now and that has the monopoly with giant pharmaceutical companies. The other is an independent science that has been squashed and silenced by the ones in power.”
Another message on this same theme comes from someone I used to play chess with before covid concerns entered into the equation. I certainly could not accuse good chess players of lacking logic:
“The masks are the symbol of the muzzle and the gag to silence those who are not in line, just like dog- owners, to prevent them from barking or biting. Nature has taught us to breathe pure air and we pollute it. Just use appropriate masks where the air is not pure, but outdoors and above all it is more harmful to use them. Furthermore, as indicated on the packaging, they only serve to protect our interlocutor from any Covid transmitted by you, not the other way around. The virus is a millionth part of a millimetre and a normal tissue is not able to stop it. It can only stop a drop that contains it by fixing it on the mask but then it is not enough. On the other hand, you breathe in the carbon dioxide you emit. So when in doubt it should be used in closed places in contact with others, not to defend you but them and in the shortest possible time.”
The problem is that the quotations I have printed above are all from people I have considered friends and in some cases worked alongside in artistic projects. Have they been brainwashed rather like the way Winston was by the end of Orwell’s ‘1984’? Or is it I who is the brainwashed victim?
Does ‘doublethink’ really exist? As Winston, in ‘1984’, mused in front of the telescreen while doing his morning exercises as instructed.
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic”
Now what am I supposed to do? Refuse to talk about religion and politics and stick to safe subjects like what will the weather be like tomorrow or what is the best way to cook lasagne?
Of course, we are all entitled to our opinions. That surely must be the basis of a democratic and balanced civilization. However, there is this significant difference. There is a tone of almost messianic ranting, of belief that unless we believe the messages’ viewpoint we are all doomed to enslavement and eventual extermination.
I look forwards to two world developments once I have tried to forget all these tantalizing thoughts during Christmas: the state of the UK after New Year’s Eve and the covid vaccination programme. Will we still have to continue double-thinking for long after that I wonder?
As I wake up to the following gloriously expansive view from my bedroom window with its clear blue Mediterranean sky and autumnally tinged forests it’s easy to momentarily forget that the world is living through some cataclysmic crises: climate change, species extinction, covid-19 for starters, and that so many countries, in addition, are having to face wars whether they be arms or trade ones.
As I write this large areas of our planet are being devastated by fires, by sea level rises, by military destruction and…by a new Kentish lorry park, digging into the idyllic landscape of the North Downs, in preparation for the impending brexit deadline of January first 2021. (To be suggestingly named, according to some wags, the ‘Nigel Farage Memorial Park’).
I just wonder how many New Year’s eve parties will be celebrated at the end of this year what with the strictures imposed by pandemic rules and the growing doubt among believers that what they voted for might have all been a con and that they were sold a pup.
I have sadly come to the view that there is a close relationship between those people who still deny climate change, those who are against any form of vaccination, those who affirm covid-19 is a hoax and those who believe that brexit is the best thing since sliced Hovis. Of course this is not to say that these belief systems completely tally one with the other but there is a far more intense overlap between them than between their opposites.
OK, we have earned the essential privilege, after centuries of feudal oppression and crass totalitarianism, of individual freedom as encapsulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We have evolved considerably from being the huddled masses exemplified in the hierarchical ideology of so many societies – from the caste system in the Indian sub-continent to the class system still prevalent in the British Isles – towards the individualism which has arisen out of it.
However, if we all continued to behave in a highly individual manner as before – refusing to wear face masks in prescribed areas or failing to differentiate our household waste – then many of us will be in the same position as those inhabitants of German towns, just after World War 2 had ended, who were escorted into the remnants of concentration camps to witness their own country’s version of man’s inhumanity to man on a scale never before seen. I doubt there could have been any holocaust deniers left after these visits to their local extermination camp.
Yes, regretfully there’s also a connection, in my mind, between pandemic deniers and holocaust deniers. Perhaps visits to the local intensive care unit (where I was a denizen earlier this year) might be organized to dispel this belief if health restrictions did not permit it.
In Bagni Di Lucca I have come across people who blatantly remain mask-less in the middle of the Saturday morning market. They don’t even seem to carry one on their arms. I just wonder if they ever step into a store for their shopping; shop-keepers would never let them in for they too are subject to hefty fines for breaking anti-virus regulations. Other people have asked me ‘do you know anyone who has died of Covid-19?’ Sadly I do now and tell them so. They still appear to remain unconvinced, however.
The conspiracy theorists spread far and wide into that dark area of persons known as members of Q-anon who apparently are now considerably influencing the forthcoming US elections.
How does one relate to those who believe in these conspiracy theories? Bertrand Russell said that tolerance is necessary in any human relationship. All well and good but then are we to tolerate FGM, Suttee or legalised lethal injections? The other thing Russell said was ‘confirm the veracity of the facts’. That is clearly more difficult to handle and that’s where conspiracy ideology finds an easy way to worm itself into the collective subconsciousness.
Whatever happens in all this mess one thing is clear. Unless British residents in Bagni Di Lucca confirm their residence permission documents, obtain their Italian medical cards, exchange their UK drivers license for an Italian one and ensure their now European-citizenship-less passports are up to date they are going to find that discovering any brexitian benefits will be as difficult as locating the proverbial needle in a haystack. I just hope they will at least wear their ‘mascherine’ (as sanitary masks are called in Italy.)
Carrying on from my previous post on the benefits of improving one’s language skills by following some italian quiz shows I mentioned that I too have been involved in these often entertaining and educational programmes.
The first time was in 1966 when I was chosen by my school to be part of a team of four contestants in Granada television’s less senior version of ‘University Challenge’, this time called ‘Sixth Form Challenge.’ I don’t quite know how I was chosen as I felt I was not a particularly distinguished pupil at Dulwich College. Furthermore, my school had great reservations about entering a television quiz show and almost refused the invitation to participate in one. I think it was the father, who worked in media, of another pupil who suggested the idea in the first place.
Anyway, we were whisked off to Manchester on my only trip so far to that northern city and were televised on video tape for the TV broadcast which took place in spring 1966.
I don’t remember much about the questions asked except for two of them. One was on Rossini overtures: I had to guess four of them and if anyone knows anything about Rossini overtures then they’ll realise it’s really easy to get them mixed up for one overture’s crescendo sounds so similar to another’s. In retrospect I feel it was a very unfair question to ask a seventeen-year old and I suspect that some sort of machination was behind it. In any case I managed to answer the last question which was about a Britten opera. I blurted out ‘Peter Grimes’, the gong went and we found we had beaten our opponents, Wellington College.
I viewed the broadcast in the company of my family and a gathering of friends at our home in Forest Hill, London. Of course, we had no VHS machines in those days but I managed to record the programme’s sound on a reel-to-reel tape . Goodness knows where that tape has gone now. However, I still have the Shorter Oxford Dictionary which Granada generously donated to the victors. It remains the thickest book on my shelves.
Our quiz-master was not the Bamber Gasgoigne of University Challenge fame but Chris Kelly who has also presented such programmes as ‘Wish you were here…?’ and ‘Clapperboard’.
My second foray into the television quiz world was less successful. It was ‘Mastermind’, famous for its original presenter Magnus Magnusson and his catchphrase: ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ which was also the title of Magnusson’s book on the show’s history. I was invited to turn up at the BBC’s television centre in White City and told that I had been privileged to be asked to be there and that I would have to pass a final test before being given a chance to sit on the programme’s menacing black armchair. Unfortunately I failed a question on cricket, not my forte, and so left the interview room without ever having had an opportunity of getting the prized winner’s crystal goblet.
I’ve often thought of joining in pub quizzes but not being a traditional pub goer never have. The most I dabble in quizzes these days is on-Line at Quiz Planet! Any one wish to challenge me or, better, anyone wish to start a bar quiz in Bagni Di Lucca?
It’s now a month ago since we were whisked back from Sri Lanka to the UK and safety. True, it was good to get home in a very difficult situation for there are still hundreds of Brits stuck in various parts of the globe waiting to get back to their loved ones.
At the time, however, Sandra felt that Sri Lanka was the safer place to be in. I replied that it wasn’t and, besides, that if we caught the virus it would be a totally unfair weight on the local health services which, anyway, wouldn’t be half as well-equipped as our own NHS.
This morning I looked again at the world statistics illustrating those affected by the pandemic and was somewhat surprised. Sandra was indeed right!
The UK has now exceeded the 20,000 limit of deaths from the virus which it thought would contain it. Sri Lanka, instead, has just 7 dead. OK, the population of the UK is 65 million and that of Sri Lanka is about a third of that at 21 million. In this case, however, either the UK should have had 21 dead or Sri Lanka should have had a thousand times more deaths than its actual figures.
What does this mean? Clearly there are other factors involved, one of which is the point that those returning to the UK are still not being properly checked, that the first UK deaths were reported two weeks before Sri Lanka’s first victim and, most importantly, that the figures in the two countries may not accurately reflect the real situation.
Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that, as the nation with the fifth highest number of deaths from Covid-19, there is going to be a need for unravelling loads of explanations and investigations when the pandemic terminates (if it ever really going to end entirely)….
Meanwhile our beloved leader is back in no 10 after his spell in ICU and jollifying up the nation with his unique brand of rhetorically enhanced humour, his expansive bonhomie and his unperturbed sang froid. How long further are we going to believe him?
I conclude with a further load of hot air, this time from the festival of hot air balloons held annually in the autumn at the Villa Mansi. I discovered these photographs of mine dating from 2005. Could that be really have been that many years ago!
The intensity of the split between those British citizens who still wish to remain within the European Community and those who are gladly leaving it will, in my opinion (despite a so-called ‘democratic referendum which actually showed that the majority wanted to remain) only increase in its force after this January 31st 2020.
There can be no wait for another general election: the referendum result – although it was merely advisory and although no legitimate quorum was allowed – is speciously moulded in stone; indeed sculpted in Carrara marble for that stalwart band of brits (some even resident in Italy (!!!)) who gladly leave a club from which they felt they never got free drinks, or even any nibbles, a referendum ‘result’ which is truly cast in already rotting concrete mocking all those who care for a Europe that has the integrity and force to stand up and be counted before the mega-economies of China and the US of A.
I can only be grateful that I have chosen to become a member of the European community as my area to live, work and love in and never relinquish my European citizenships. I don’t think I would psychologically last very long in the burgeoning eruption of false economic, trade and social promises which an utterly dishonest quasi-totalitarian police-state regime (labelled ‘airstrip one’ in 1984) is now foisting on an island which our greatest poet once described as ‘This other Eden, demi-paradise’.
Don’t forget Brexit has not been done today …it has barely begun! The worse is yet to come…it will NEVER be done.
The really awful thing is that the leavers are ever more believers in the fatuous righteousness of their decision (just like the cult members of Guiana’s Jonesville – remember that one?) while the remainers are now taking shelter either by leaving the country or by seeking pockets of sanity (like my city of birth and breeding, London).
I am reminded of the harsh criticism in a sonnet by a poet who really cared for his country, William Wordsworth:
England … is become a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
Meanwhile, leavers do enjoy yourselves this Friday night at 11pm!
After forty seven years in which the UK has been lifted from the doldrums of British Leyland-style strikes, power cuts and much else that was grey and loathsome and embraced almost half a century of increasingly successful membership, the sceptered isle leaves the European Union.
You injudicious Brexiteers enjoy your party in college green! There will be fireworks, Big Ben bonging and a rousing address from your beloved leader (sorry….our prime minister). Wonderful speeches are promised by stars like Ann Widdecombe, Tim Martin and Julia Hartley-Brewer all bathed in the Uk’s traditionally forecast drizzle.
As George Orwell wrote in his essay ‘England your England’ (note no ‘Scotland’, ‘Wales’ or ‘Ireland’) – an essay which still has immense value especially that part centred around the word ‘hypocrisy’, especially aptly featured in those brexiteers who have become residents in Italy and deluding themselves of having their cake and eating it.
“…as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’. Nor is this because they are ‘practical’, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply, their obstinate clinging to everything that is out of date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis, and a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy – their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance – is bound up with this. Also, in moments of supreme crisis the whole nation can suddenly draw together and act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated. The phrase that Hitler coined for the Germans, ‘a sleep-walking people’, would have been better applied to the English. Not that there is anything to be proud of in being called a sleep-walker.”
That ‘nation of sleep-walkers’ sums it up quite brilliantly. Will you accept one of those newly minted ‘celebration’ fifty pence pieces? Will you sleep walk off the white cliffs?
Happily if I ever return to my birthplace, it will be to the inimitable, cosmopolitan and glorious metropolis of London, the city that has given shelter and hospitality to the world’s greatest defenders of freedom (Mazzini from Italy, Ho Chi Min from Vietnam and Marx from Russia just to name three). I would, in my dreams, make London into a free city, Hanseatic league style: a city that stands apart from that crass diminutive mentality so aptly described by Orwell; a city that on a genuine day of sunshine rises proudly astride the great river Thames. As Joseph Conrad (another foreigner, this time from Poland, made welcome by the great Wen) wrote:
What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men and the seed of commonwealths.
I return to Wordsworth who, on Westminster Bridge, wrote:
Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
This end of January is truly a day of dark foreboding but we believers in the Community of Europe will never give up, never surrender that which is God-given, the beating heart and unity of one of the world’s great continents. Long live the European Community!
My professional introduction as a lecturer to Italy, by means of work placements and seminars, took place through a EU agency, Comenius. Named after the renowned seventeenth century Czech pedagogue and philosopher, Comenius provides funds for teacher and student development within a EU framework. Among my Comenius experiences was a teacher exchange with a secondary school, the ‘Martin Luther King’ in Genoa. Looking through my report for this I realise how enjoyable and uplifting this time was for me. From Lavagna, a delightful resort facing the Tyrrenian sea, I would take the train daily to the school where I taught in the morning. In the afternoon, my return journey would allow a stop at one of the many beaches and coves on the Ligurian coast: Rapallo, Portofino, Nervi among many. It certainly made a difference from my more mundane journeys on London’s South Circular road…
Another EU funded venture was my time in Salzburg, again in an exchange with a secondary school. Summery Mediterranean waters were discarded for alpine winter snows, the characteristic Christkindlmarkt and gluhwein.
Again, reading through my Austrian report I see how enriching the experience was and how important it was in giving me further insights into the incredible variety that is Europe.
The EU funds also enabled me, at my college in London, to set up student interchanges and internet chat rooms between our students and their peers in continental European countries.
Of one seminar held in Athens I have particularly vivid memories: the Parthenon, revisited after many years, the very productive conferences and a wonderful evening in a bar in Piraeus listening to Rembetiko, the Greek equivalent of ‘the blues’.
What, however, is less admirable in retrospect is that the EU funds available for all these activities were not immediately apparent or publicized by our educational authority; it needed a particular member of the teaching staff, with whom I collaborated closely, to ‘discover’ these EU opportunities. Furthermore, the college gave no remission of time for the considerable paper-work involved in laying the foundations of a successful project to teaching staff.
The lecturer who had me interested in Comenius and related EU projects was truly inspirational. As she stated ‘the EU money’s there so why not use it?’ Regrettably, her attitude was an exception; other lecturers were less enthusiast about being involved and some were really not interested at all: ‘why should I spend time in this European nonsense?’ was what one person uttered.
Now all this happened years before the infamous 2016 referendum, so ill-conceived, so divisive and so, seemingly still without any satisfactory resolution. However, my experience does represent one important point: that, before the referendum highlighted it, the average inhabitant of the British Isles was not particularly interested in things dealing with the EU and, indeed, found large parts of the institution risible (as one can judge from episodes of that immortal sitcom ‘Yes Minister – and Prime Minister’, ‘Eurotrash’ and Terry Wogan’s memorable jibes when presenting the Eurovision Song Contest).
From lack of interest (apart from the extreme ERG section of the Tory party) before Cameron’s referendum to the positively hostile atmosphere of the leavers today towards the Nobel peace prize-awarded European Union is a sad path which is littered with gross misunderstandings, antiquated world views, utter provincialism, the most appalling descent into sub-parliamentary barbarism, the weird ideology that believes it is better to die ‘euro-free’ rather than strive to improve life quality and enhance chances for the new generations within Europe, the complete disregard of the lessons only history can teach us regarding the fall of empires and the blind following of emotive slogans…..
I have said before: delivering on ‘the will of the people’ is dangerously redolent of the phrase ‘the triumph of the will’, the title of the pioneering Riefenstahl film documenting and glorifying the rise of the Third Reich. The foundations for the present division of the UK into yet another ‘two nations’, more unbearable than those divisions between rich and poor, Tory and Labour, Left and Right, Irish and English, graduates and non-graduates were already present in popular attitudes for many years.
This horrendous division can only be described as a monstrous nuisance; like all nuisances the only way out is to get rid of it once and for all: may brexit be thrown into the cesspool of history for ever!
La chiesa parrocchiale di Arundel, dedicata a Saint Nicholas e che risale al trecento, è uno dei pochissimi edifici religiosi inglesi che sono divisi in due parti di culto, una cattolica e un’anglicana, con il lato occidentale dell’edificio della chiesa occupato dalla parte anglicana di San Nicola.
La cappella cattolica FitzAlan, ora mausoleo privato dei Duchi di Norfolk, si trova nella parte orientale ed è dedicata alla Santissima Trinità. Richard FitzAlan, decimo conte di Arundel, era responsabile per la sua costruzione in stile gotico perpendicolare.
Tra le due parti fu costruito un muro dopo lo schisma del 1534. Questo muro me lo ricordo nella mia prima visita ad Arundel quando ero uno scout a campeggio e stavo facendo un’escursione a piedi. Mi sorprese e mi rattristò allo stesso momento.
Il muro è ora stato demolito e invece c’è un cancello di ferro battuto che divide le due parti.
Per le occasioni religiose importanti il cancello è aperto e la chiesa diventa unita, non solo architettonicamente, ma anche ecumenicamente.
La parte anglicana della chiesa è stata fedelmente restaurata dal grande architetto vittoriano Gilbert Scott ed è molto suggestiva con le sue arcate gotiche e rimasti di antichi affreschi.
La cappella, invece, fu gravemente danneggiata nel 1643 durante l’assedio del castello di Arundel dai cannoni parlamentari nella guerra civile inglese. Rimase trascurata per tutto il diciottesimo secolo e usata perfino come stalla. Ora è stata rimessa accuratamente al suo stato originale.
Come mausoleo dei Duca di Norfolk contiene questi monumenti funebri particolarmente eccezionali.
Ho scritto una poesia su uno di questi monumenti. Ecco l’originale inglese, seguito dalla mia tradizione italiana:
ARUNDEL TOMB
Is this the altar of our dusty lives?
Upon this plinth of wealden stone we rest
and wait until the judgement day arrives
and grants the chaliced merit of our quest.
Our helms and girdles unremoved, with hands
unclasped upon the bier, love petrified
in chiselled folds before time’s endless sands,
we lie beyond dusk bodies, side by side.
Behind this masque our hearts still circulate;
above our heads a minute cosmos gleams
in crumbling paint, and stars compose our fate
while planets rise upon unfinished dreams.
For by our flanks the children stilled at birth
outstretch their little limbs upon this earth.
TOMBA DI ARUNDEL
È questo l’altare delle nostre vite polverose?
Su questo piedistallo di pietra ci riposiamo
e aspettiamo che arrivi il giorno del giudizio
e ci dona il merito del calice della nostra inchiesta.
I nostri elmi e le cinture sono rimasti immobili, con le mani
strinte dalla bara, l’amore pietrificato
nelle pieghe cesellate davanti le infinite sabbie del tempo,
riposiamo oltre i corpi del crepuscolo, fianco a fianco.
Dietro questa maschera i nostri cuori circolano ancora;
sopra le nostre teste luccica un minuto cosmo
in vernice sgretolata, e le stelle compongono il nostro destino
mentre i pianeti sorgono sui sogni incompiuti.
Poiché dai nostri lati i bambini morti alla nascita
Vi ricorderete forse di quell’adorabile film con Fred Astaire e Ginger Rogers, ‘Top Hat’. A un certo punto, mentre la Ginger, attraversa il ponte di Westminster in una carrozza Hansom, si apre una botola nel soffitto e si vede Fred, che la stava inseguendo, e che si è fatto il cocchiere della Hansom.
L’Hansom cab (abbreviazzione per ‘Cabriolet’ – carrozza leggera a due ruote) fu un tassi, tirato da cavallo e usato nell’ottocento e i primi novecento inglese, inventato da un certo Joseph Hansom che fu anche un sommo architetto.. Tra i suoi capolavori si trova la cattedrale di Arundel.
La posizione, la costruzione, il design e la dedizione della cattedrale devono molto al Duca di Norfolk, conte of Arundel, il primo tra i Lord inglesi e l’unico rimasto Cattolico dopo lo schisma di Re Enrico VIII.
Nel 1868 Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15º duca di Norfolk, incaricò l’architetto Joseph Hansom di progettare un nuovo santuario cattolico come controparte del suo castello di Arundel. Lo stile architettonico della cattedrale è il gotico francese, uno stile che sarebbe stato di moda tra il 1300 e il 1400, il periodo in cui Howard e i duchi di Norfolk salirono alla ribalta nazionale in Inghilterra. L’edificio è considerato uno dei migliori esempi di architettura neo-gotica in stile francese nel paese.
E’ un edificio veramente maestoso con degli elementi spettacolari come i contrafforti volanti, l’apside a forma di chevet semi-rotonda francese, una flèche alla Notre-Dame di Parigi, così gravemente incendiata di recente e che condivide lo stesso stile architettonico.
La chiesa era originariamente dedicata alla Madonna e San Filippo Neri, ma nel 1971, in seguito alla canonizzazione di Filippo Howard, 1º conte di Arundel e il trasporto delle sue reliquie nella cattedrale, la dedica fu cambiata alla Madonna e San Philip Howard.
Philip Howard, il ventesimo conte di Arundel, fu imprigionato a vita nella Torre di Londra, quasi decapitato e morì con solo il suo cane per tenerlo compagnia. Fu fatto Santo da Papa Paolo VI nel 1970 e divenne uno dei ‘quaranta martiri dell’Inghilterra e del Galles’.
La statua di Saint Philip, col fedele compagno a quattro zampe, si può vedere nel transetto della magnifica cattedrale in stile ‘flamboyante’ di Arundel.
Ogni anno per la festa del ‘Corpus Domini’ si prepara per la cattedrale uno spettacolare tappetto di fiori, proprio come si fa in molti luoghi d’Italia.
Purtroppo, non ci furono fondi a sufficienza per costruire la guglia della cattedrale ed esiste solo un mozzo di torre. Chissà se un ricco orientale non doni dei soldi per il suo completamento?
Durante la nostra visita facevano le prove per la Messa in do maggiore di Beethoven (la prima delle sue due) e la Messa a quattro voci , detta di Gloria, di Giacomo Puccini.
Che meraviglia sentire le loro devote sonorità echeggiare nelle volte maestose della cattedrale: armonie tedesche e poi toscane rinate in un edificio gotico francese in una cittadina tipicamente inglese illuminata da un sole di calore d’estate mediterranea. Veramente un miscuglio di squisitezza!
Uno dei più grandi paradossi della nazione paradossale del Regno Unito è che il cugino della regina, il Conte di Arundel, duca di Norfolk e primo Lord della Regina – che è capo della Chiesa protestante Anglicana – è cattolico e lo è sempre rimasto anche dopo il grande schisma del Re Enrico Ottavo che, con Lutero, divise L’Europa nei due campi opposti: protestanti e cattolici.
Questa situazione dei Cattolici inglesi, opposti alla fondazione della ‘Church of England’, creò gravi problemi, anche se si era un potente nobile. Infatti, Philip Howard, il ventesimo conte di Arundel, fu imprigionato a vita nella Torre di Londra, quasi decapitato e morì con solo il suo cane per tenerlo compagnia. Fu fatto Santo da Papa Paolo VI nel 1970 e divenne uno dei ‘quaranta martiri dell’Inghilterra e del Galles’.
Il santuario di Saint Philip, col suo fedele compagno a quattro zampe, si può vedere nella magnifica cattedrale di stile ‘flamboyante’ di Arundel.
Inoltre, il Conte di Arundel possiede anche il titolo di Duca di Norfolk, e, come ‘Earl Marshall’ si occupa di tutte le cerimonie imponenti del sovrano: dalla sua incoronazione, alla sua morte e dai matrimoni ai battesimi e l’inaugurazione del nuovo parlamento.
(I figli del Duca in attesa di Sua Maestà all’inaugurazione del Parlamento)
La ridente cittadina di Arundel si trova presso le gentili pendici dei South Downs, che riflettano, con la loro geologia di gesso, le North Downs al sud di Londra. Arundel è piena di caratteristiche case antiche a graticcio, cioè con strutture fatte di travi di legno. La ‘High Street’ ha seducenti negozi, specialmente quelli di antichità e librerie. Fu al ‘House on the Hill’ in questa via che abitarono i novelli sposi Dino e Elia, genitori di mia moglie Alexandra. Andavano a prendere il latte alla latteria del castello che possedeva a quel tempo una mandria di mucche.
E’ il castello, però, che domina Arundel, in una maniera spettacolare. La dimora del duca di Norfolk (del quale i Verdiani ricorderanno che Falstaff, ora vecchio e obeso, fu una volta paggio:
Quand’ero paggio
Del Duca di Norfolk ero sottile,
Ero un miraggio
Vago, leggero, gentile, gentile.
Quello era il tempo
Del mio verde Aprile,
Quello era il tempo
Del mio lieto Maggio,
Tant’ero smilzo, flessibile e snello
Che avrei guizzato attraverso un anello. )
Assume il castello, con le sue massicce torri e gli imponenti muraglioni, possesso del paese in una maniera che ho visto raramente negli altri ‘città castello’ inglesi. (Forse Carnarvon e Conway nel Galles si avvicinano a questa imperiosità).
La nostra mattina fu passata nell’esplorazione del castello. Prima ci siamo avviati nella parte più antica, il mastio, che risale al secolo undicesimo. Infatti, il castello fu fondato il giorno di Natale del 1067 da Roger di Montgomery, il primo conte di Arundel.
Il mastio ha panorami mozzafiato su l’idillica campagna della contea di Sussex e sull’incantevole borgo di Arundel.
Nella 1643, durante la guerra civile inglese, il castello fu assediato per diciotto giorni e molto danneggiato. Fu l’unica volta che fu messo alla prova.
Cominciando dal secolo XVIII, i conti di Arundel iniziarono a restaurare la loro dimora prodigiosamente tale che quando la regina Vittoria fece visita nel 1846 scrisse nel suo diario che un castello cosi bello non l’aveva mai visto.
Il castello possiede la sua cappella.
Una grande sala per ricevimenti:
Una squisita biblioteca:
Delle camere carine per gli ospiti:
Il gabinetto usato dalla regina Vittoria:
Il salotto per i banchetti:
E molte altri vani prelibati:
Mi sento quasi un ‘castellano’ nel numero dei castelli che ho visitato. Questo di Arundel, rimane, uno dei più magnifici e monumentali nel Regno Unito che abbia mai visto ed è tenuto a perfezione poichè rimane sempre la casa principale del conte e della sua famiglia.
(Il Conte di Arundel in visita a San Giovanni Paolo II)
Per parlare, in seguito, dei castelli francesi, quelli tedeschi, quelli giapponesi e, specialmente, quelli italiani – ognuno ha le sue caratteristiche, i suoi tesori, i suoi angoli emozionanti. Forse il più bel castello che si possa visitare è quello che si costruisce nell’immaginazione, che è fatto di pane pepato, che trattiene una bella damigella con i capelli lunghissimi in una torretta e che vola sulle nubi.
