Provoked in Venice: The Rider Quintet, vol. 3

The "Real" Revolt

T H E " R E A L " R E V O L T "16 aug 38, appalling to read poems by shelley (not to speak of ancient egyptian peasantsongs from 3000 years ago) in which he laments oppressionand exploitation, is this how they will read us, still oppressedand exploited, and will they say:was it alreadyas bad as that?" BERToLT BREcHT, Journalsiy}4~iy^ After an afternoon of walking through ruins and trying to imagine the wholeness before it was lost, we thread our way unknowingly through the narrow and tortuous Via di Lorensi and find ourselves on the Piazza Navona at nightfall. Ragazzi: kick a soccer ball between the Fontana del Moro and the Fontana dei Fiumi as if it were still the stadium and racecourse Domitian had built something less than a hundred years after Jesus is said to have died. An athlete himself, my own kid complains about his feet and laments that he can't play soccer with the other kids. Strange how context alters energy flow. Or is it desire? There appears no way home across the Tiber to Trastevere and the steep uphill steps other than to walk. The piazza, is so deserted I find it hard to believe that days before, on the feast of the Epiphany, which Vico might have rejoiced in, it was chockfull, thronged: carousels and painted balloons, silver balloons with faces outlined in white, like the ghosts of all the political rallies that have taken place there. Disoriented, travel-weary, my eyes burn now as halogen lamps flare and a camera crew appears, wanting to catch the light while it is still in the act of vanishing, crepuscular. An aquiline actor, dressed in early nineteenth century garb, waistcoat, ruffled shirtfront, the whole-bit, mutters beside the fountain, and he is then interrupted by someone who could be his hologram or double but in modern dress. I ask a member of the crew as he opens up a fresh pack of Lucky Strikeswhat the film is about and he answers in American-English that "It's a film about Brecht writing a play about Shelley." "Can we watch?" "Aslong as you don't cross over the chalk." Fatigue from wandering brings on 22 disconnected forms of wondering. The play may be the thing but I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a pack of Lucky's in the U.S.A. Shelley: Who remembers the Roman wilderness before Romulus forged refuges, transformed crags into caves, fashioned dwellings or ventured like Aeneas into the Lupercal cave? Did the sublimely insightful German, in Los Angeles, know that my "Peter Bell" was a parody of another "Peter Bell," penned by one W.W., whose hard-earned renown for the great works written in his youth, such as the 1805 version of The Beginning worked inadvertently to eclipse the generation after (the public being somewhat limited as to what it can take in; digest). It was enough for my generation to carve a niche in the wake of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, but to contend with a living monument's monumental accomplishment, his alter-ego's rapturous propaganda, "explaining metaphysics to the nation" while never failing to extol— to his own disadvantage in the end!— the pioneer's pioneering virtues— was a bit much. . . .Are Byron, poor John Keats and I mere standard bearers for their "romantic movement" instead of revolutionaries? (Pauses.) Originals! (Pauses.) I fear I have not expressed myself clearly. 23 It's that. . . that deadly duo takes up so much of the available oxygen . . . , and I would lay down my life for Lord Byron, fiend, friend, incomparablegin drinker, swimmer, and man of principles . . . (With both hands he brushes back the forelock falling over his eyes.) It's time to set the record straight, to spring me from the preciosity trap, to detach the words I took pains to compose from the romantic images of me physically. [Aside.] Besides, whatever the screenwriters who imagine they are putting these very words into my mouth at this moment imagine, David Herbert Lawrence was right to nail me for hailing that skylark as a bird that never existed. And it's true that my images weren't always precise. You'll remember that somewhat epicene Italophile American novelist James, yes Henry James, said that Nathaniel Hawthorne's flaws were the result of his isolation from the company of other writers...