Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Fellini’s dreaming

The great Italian film director, Federico Fellini, died 30 years ago today. He won four Oscars for best foreign language film, more than any other director, and is considered to be one of the most important and influential European directors of the 20th century. Although not a diarist, he did, for many years, keep a record of his dreams, with descriptions and richly-coloured illustrations. These were given a lavish publication a few years after his death. 

Fellini was born in 1920 to middle-class parents in Rimini, on the Adriatic Sea. He was educated locally in Catholic schools, though ran away once to join a circus. He and his younger brother, as teenagers, joined the Avanguardista, the compulsory Fascist youth group for males. Lacking any interest in his education, Fellini began drawing comic portraits, and writing humorous articles. He enrolled in law school at the University of Rome in 1939, but barely attended, and continued trying to earn money by selling portraits.

Fellini worked for a short while as a local news reporter, but gravitated quickly to Marc’Aurelio, the highly influential biweekly humour magazine, for which he wrote a regular column for several years, and through which he met many other writers and artists. He composed monologues for the comedian Aldo Fabrizi and collaborated with variety radio shows, on one of which he met a young actress, Giulietta Masina, who he married in 1943. Their only child died soon after birth.

Through the 1940s, Fellini developed a name for himself, as a scriptwriter on some of Fabrizi’s films, with Roberto Rossellini on films such as Roma città aperta and Paisà, and in partnership with the playwright Tullio Pinelli. One of the directors he and Pinelli worked for, Alberto Lattuada, wanted Fellini to co-direct a film, Luci del varietà - it was self-produced and left them both in debt.

Fellini’s first sole directorial debut, Lo sceicco bianco, was also a failure. Thereafter, though, his films earned huge international praise. He won four Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film (La Strada in 1954, Le notti di Cabiria in 1957, 8 1/2 in 1963, and Amarcord in 1974), and was much honoured for others, such as La dolce vita and Satyricon. In 1993, just months before his death on 31 October, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, the Fondazione Federico Fellini, The New Yorker, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or IMDB.

Although not a conventional diarist, Fellini did, at the suggestion of the Jungian analyst Ernst Bernhard, keep a diary record of his dreams, and these records, along with his illustrations of them, were first published in 2007 by Rizzoli International Publications as Il libro dei sogni di Federico Fellini, and then in English as The Book of Dreams.

The publisher says: ‘A unique combination of memory, fantasy, and desire, this illustrated volume is a personal diary of Fellini’s private visions and nighttime fantasies. Fellini [. . .] kept notebooks filled with unique sketches and notes from his dreams from the 1960s onward. This collection delves into his cinematic genius as it is captured in widely detailed caricatures and personal writings. This dream diary exhibits Fellini’s deeply personal taste for the bizarre and the irrational. His sketches focus on the profound struggle of the soul and are tinged with humor, empathy, and insight. Fellini’s Book of Dreams is an intriguing source of never-before-published writings and drawings, which reveal the master filmmaker’s personal vision and his infinite imagination.’

A review can be read at Frieze, and there are a few extracts from the contents available at Penguin Random House which brought out a new edition in 2020. 

23 June 1974
‘It’s nighttime. What an awful night. I am driving a black car that’s racing dizzyingly down a path that spirals down around a mountain. I can’t seem to stop despite the fact that I’m pushing the brake pedal. On my right there’s a precipice. Other cars are coming up, flashing their lights with fear.’

27 June 1974
‘A wooden root falls from the sky. “It’s the wooden harp!” someone tells me with a tone of devotion and exultation as if a miracle had taken place. “Play it!” Dressed like a monk/mendicant, I (but was it me?) draw incredibly sweet sounds from the rough piece of wood. They make people cry. Even I am moved to tears. This last part of the dream was followed by me commenting on the dream itself, as if it were a film created for television by a young director. My comments were very positive.’

14 September 1974
‘I am on the dock in Rimini on an extremely stormy night, a violent gusty wind is blowing in off the sea toward the land, raising the waves. I’m drawing. Behind me, Peppino Rotunno is sitting in an attitude of indifferent and peaceful detachment. Norman lifts my drawing, which shows a black ship daring set sail up into the water-filled air on a night similar to the one we’re experiencing. Then he puts the drawing into a hiding place.’

15 September 1974
‘Where am I going? Confused, I know that I have to leave. Are we looking for track 26 for Paris? I follow my porter, who has my bags on a car, in a disordered procession of baggage carriers. Now we’ve gotten down and lost among the others, it seems that we have to struggle to get back on.’

20 September 1974
‘In Piazza Barberini in the middle of the day, in the midst of all the traffic, I’m completely naked in bed with Sandrocchia, who is also nude. Maybe we’re making love, but nobody pays any attention, nobody notices us, as if doing so were the most normal thing in the world. Later Sandrocchia (in P.P. she vaguely resembles A, as well) says to me “When I think about you I cry right away. I always cry when I think of you.” This was her way of telling me that she loves me very much.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 31 October 2013.

Monday, February 6, 2023

Piero Manzoni’s torment

Piero Manzoni, an Italian avant-garde artist famous for canning his own excrement, died 60 years ago today, still only 30 years old. Though not a diarist by nature, he left behind one year-long diary, published in 2013 which reveals what he called his ‘torment, i.e. waverings, changes of mind and doubts about art, religion and politics. Unfortunately, copies of the book are difficult to find; and, across the internet, I can find no extracts from the book, in Italian or translated into English.

Count Meroni Manzoni di Chiosca e Poggiolo was born in 1933 in Soncino, northern Italy, the eldest of five children in a family with aristocratic roots. However, he grew up in Milan. He studied at the Jesuit Liceo Leone XIII, and then at the law faculty of the Catholic University of Sacred Heart. During the summer holidays, he stayed in Albisola where he came into contact with avant-garde artists such as Lucio Fontana. 

Self-taught as a painter, Manzoni first exhibited in Soncino in 1956, with his early works showing the influence of Enrico Baj. But in early 1957, he visited an exhibition of Yves Klein’s blue paintings at Galleria Apollinaire in Milan, and thereafter his own art changed dramatically. In 1958, for example, he created a series of plain white, ‘achrome’ pictures, and the following year he drew lines on sheets and sealed them in boxes. 

Manzoni eschewed normal artist’s materials, instead using everything from rabbit fur to human excrement. His work is widely seen as a critique of the mass production and consumerism that was changing Italian society after the war. According to Phaidon, ‘Manzoni’s great legacy seems to lie in his prescient satire of a kind of art where the artist’s name is crucial, while his or her direct involvement or talents seem to be immaterial, and where a global market can buoy even the most lowly objects.’ Famously or infamously, he produced, in 1961, his work Artist’s Shit - 90 cans, each numerically labelled with title labels in German, French or English. He died tragically of a heart attack on 6 February 1963. His work is said to have directly influenced a younger Italian artists brought together by the critic Germano Celant in the first Arte Povera exhibition held in Genoa in 1967. Further information on Manzoni is also available at Wikipedia, Tate, Guggenheim and Artland Magazine.

In early 1954, Manzoni began to keep a diary and, apart from odd gaps, managed to maintain it for about 16 months, producing almost 300 hand-written pages. The text was ‘curated’ by Gaspare Luigi Marcone and published in its original unedited format by Electa as Diario. Electa says the book reveals ‘precious information about what Manzoni read (Ariosto, Hemingway, Proust and so on), the art exhibitions he visited, his first encounters in the art world, the many films he saw at the cinema and his numerous travels in Italy and Europe.

Electa adds: ‘One of the most interesting things to emerge from the manuscript is what [Manzoni] calls his ‘torment’: waverings, changes of mind and doubts about art, religion and politics. He also pondered about his future, oscillating constantly between optimism and pessimism, seriousness and irony. In fact, at that time, Manzoni was still undecided whether to devote himself entirely to painting or to become a writer. His first attempts at writing about themes connected with philosophy, existentialism and esthetics, some of which he was to refer to again later in his artistic career, are especially important. In fact, it was probably his interest in these subjects which, between the end of 1954 and January 1955, eventually persuaded him to abandon his law studies at the Sacro Cuore University in Milan to devote himself to the study of philosophy at Rome University. A remarkable but ‘complex’ read, both because of the subjects tackled and due to the author’s handwriting, which verges on the illegible at times. It’s probably the first true ‘Manzoni workshop’.’

I can find no extracts online from Manzoni’s diary in English or Italian, and there is only one second hand copy currently available for sale - at Abebooks, costing over £50.

Saturday, December 17, 2022

For the expense of my time

‘I keepe a dayere . . . for the expense of my time, as I doe for that money I spend . . .’ This is Bullen Reymes - a courtier, diplomat and politician who died 350 years ago today - explaining why he kept a diary. Interestingly, he was a contemporary of, and friends with, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. Reymes’s diary didn’t come to light until the 1950s, when it was used by Helen Andrews Kaufman as the basis for her biography of the cavalier.

Reymes was born in 1613, the eldest son of Bullen Reymes of Westminster and his wife Mary Petre, daughter of William Petre of Torbryan, Devon. He was educated privately, at Merton College, Oxford, and at Middle Temple. He travelled widely on the Continent, was attaché at the Paris embassy from 1631 to 1632, and in Venice twice between 1632 and 1637. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Gerard of Trent, in 1640, an heiress with an estate in Dorset. They had three sons and two daughters. After Elizabeth’s death, he remarried in 1661.

Reymes was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber from 1641 to 1646, and actively supported the King during the Civil War. He helped defend Exeter and was made a freeman in 1645. The city, though, surrendered in 1646 and he laid down his arms. He managed to hold on to his heavily mortgaged estate, and, by the time of the Restoration, had cleared his debts. He took no part in the second Civil War, but was imprisoned in Taunton Castle in 1650, and helped some Royalists to escape across the Channel after the battle of Worcester. 

In 1660, Reymes was elected Member of Parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in a by-election to the Convention Parliament. At the same time, he resumed his position as gentleman of the privy chamber. He served as commissioner for assessment for Dorset from 1660 to 1669. He was commissioner for sick and wounded in Hampshire and Dorset 1664 to 1667 and was appointed commissioner for Tangier from 1664 until his death. He became a freeman of Portsmouth in 1665 and was deputy treasurer of prizes at Portsmouth from 1665 to 1667. He also developed a sailcloth business, and supplied the navy at the time of the second Dutch war.

Reymes was friends with both the great 17th century diarists, Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, and was a keen theatre-goer and gardener. He is mentioned several times in Pepys’s diary. For instance, on 24 January 1668, Pepys wrote: ‘I to the King’s playhouse, to fetch my wife, and there saw the best part of The Mayden Queene, which, the more I see, the more I love, and think one of the best plays I ever saw, and is certainly the best acted of any thing ever the House did, and particularly Becke Marshall, to admiration. Found my wife and Deb., and saw many fine ladies, and sat by Colonell Reames, who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for it.’ Reymes died on 18 December 1672. Further information is available from Wikipedia and The History of Parliament.

In the second half of the 1950s, Kaufman, an English teacher at the University of Washington, came across the archived papers of Bullen Reymes, and edited them for publication as Conscientious Cavalier: Colonel Bullen Reymes (Jonathan Cape, 1962). She says in her foreword to the book: ‘Because Bullen Reymes kept a diary, wrote many and voluminous letters, and because he carefully preserved the scores of papers relating both to his public activities and his private life, there remains an unusually full and exact account of the man himself and of the background and personalities of the seventeenth century. In fact it would be difficult to find, in the first half of that century, an individual who has left so complete a record of himself.’ In the work - which is available to borrow digitally at Internet Archive - Kaufman quotes often from Reymes’s diary, but usually as part of her narrative - the diary entries are usually incomplete and without any date. 

Nevertheless, here are three short sections from her book with actual quotes (which I’ve italicised for clarity) from Reymes’s writings.

‘On the first day of the new year Bullen started his diary: “Heare beginneth my Diere it being the first of Janewary in the yeare of our lord 1632 . . .

I rise in the morning about 10 of the clock, when afterwards I heard prayers, and then theare dined with us Mr. Gosling and Mr. Barker and Courteane. After dinner La Peare came to see me and about eavning prayer Sr. Thomas Wharton came from Charington whear thear was kept a proclamed fast. And about supper I betoke me to my chamber for to writ into Ingland and came nomore downe that nite and sat up till 12 of the eavene writing.” ’

***

‘Although [a] long letter to his father - almost 1,600 words - was “frayghted” with the old problem of money, it spoke of other things as well. After asking again about his uncle’s legacy, and after pointing out once more that his quarterly payment is long overdue, Reymes describes his new lodgings, “right against Mr. Mervilles of whome I intend to learne of . . . on the lute . . . (who plays best of any one in Paris).” Then, apparently, in answer to some question of his father, Bullen turns to his diary, or rather, to his reason for keeping a diary. He does his best to explain this almost universal urge. Unlike many, he did not write with a wary eye on a possible reader. His scribbled, blotted, and well-nigh illegible entries, with their careless spelling and syntax, were obviously meant for no eye but his own. The reason he gives is neat, to the point, and completely characteristic. His diary is an expense account of his time. “I keepe a dayere . . . for the expense of my time, as I doe for that money I spend . . .” ’

***

‘Whatever their significance, the pages of Reymes’s diary are full of references to the ‘beautiful churches’ whose services he attended [in Venice].

We were at the church of Nostre Dame [Santa Maria della Salute], where there was a great service to commemorate the late deliverance from the plague. I saw many processions of many different members of all the different orders . . . I was with Mr. Carnarvon and Mr. Montagu at the church of St. Caterina, where I heard wonderful music. The church was beautifully decorated . . . I heard two masses.

And so on. Stirred though he was by the splendour of the Venetian churches, Bullen was even more profoundly moved by the music he heard in these candle-lit edifices. It is to this that he alludes most often, and little wonder, for much of the religious music of seventeenth-century Venice was inspired by great masters. To one of these, Claude Monteverdi, Reymes alludes often.

After dinner I was with Mr. Porter and Mr. Jacob to hear the music of the Friars . . . Signor Claude Monteverdi composed the music . . . I was at St. John de Paulau where I heard the beautiful music of Claude Monteverdi.

On two other occasions he must have seen Monteverdi himself, for one Sunday in December he writes, “I was at St. Johns [SS. Giovanni e Paolo] where I heard Claude Monteverdi and his music,” and another time, “I was at St. Juliano [Giuliano] where Monteverdi conducted.

The last days of December were crowded with festivities. It was the season of the fairs, of the carnival, of the plays - the theatres had opened on the 22nd - and of la guerre de poignée, the war of fists. “gare”, as Reymes calls it, was a battle on one of the bridges between young men from either side of the Grand Canal, in which no weapons, only fists, were allowed.

I saw a contest between certain of the common people which is fought now every day. One side is called the Castilean and the other Niccolet. The Castileans won.

On December 26th Bullen made his first visit to St Stefano, both “in the morning and after dinner”. What interested him was not the old Gothic church but the long, narrow piazza adjoining it. As in Paris at carnival time, he and his friends went in masquerade.

After dinner we were all at St. Steffino and then we went everywhere and to the house of ___ where we danced with the ladies. I played the lute everywhere we went. . . I paid six realls for our costumes. We went to the comedy but got there only in time for the end.

The last entry for 1633 reads:

I was at the Rialto where Mr. Rowlanson asked me to dine with him tomorrow . . . I went out again in masquerade and I played before the whole world in la piazza de St. Steffino. I was also at the Comedy.” ’

Sunday, November 20, 2022

I always see the ruin of Italy

‘Am listless and sleepy, as I have never been before. I sleep little at nights: before me I always see the ruin of Italy, . .’ This is from the diaries of the Italian writer and philosopher Benedetto Croce, who died 70 years ago today. Reluctantly, he took on, briefly, active political roles before and after Mussolini’s rise and fall, but he is best remembered for his philosophical works and contributions to liberal political theory.

Croce was born in 1866 in Pescasseroli (Abruzzi region of Italy) into a Catholic and wealthy landowning family. In 1883, he lost his parents in an earthquake on the island of Ischia, and went to live with an uncle in Rome, where he studied law at university. There he abandoned his religious faith, but also became disillusioned with the university, returning to Naples. Having inherited his family’s fortune, he had the freedom to devote time to personal studies, such as on historical realism. He traveled in Spain, Germany, France, and England, but in 1893, influenced by the Neapolitan-born Gianbattista Vico, he turned his learning towards philosophy (even buying the house in which Vico had lived). Friends persuaded him to read Hegel, and in 1907 he published a commentary on the German philosopher - What is Living and What is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel - which brought him increased attention.

Croce published other significant works around this time, not least Aesthetic (1902), Logic (1908), and Philosophy of the Practical (1908). In 1903, he also founded (in collaboration with his friend the philosopher Giovanni Gentile) La Critica, a journal of cultural criticism in which, over the next 40 years, he would publish nearly all of his writings. Hitherto, he had eschewed interest in politics, but in 1910 he was persuaded into a more public role, being appointed to the Italian Senate. In 1914, he married Adela Rossi, with whom he had four daughters. He opposed Italy’s participation in the First World War. In 1919, he supported the government of Francesco Saverio Nitti, and was appointed Minister of Public Education - a position he held between 1920 and 1921. 

Initially, he supported Mussolini’s fascist government, but by 1925 he had written and signed a Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals. After Mussolini’s fall, in 1943, he became Minister without Portofilio of the new democratic government and a member of the Constituent Assembly. From 1943 to 1947, he was President of the reconstituted Liberal party. In 1947, he retired from politics and established the Institute for Historical Studies in his Naples home, where he had an extensive library. From 1949 until 1952, he was president of PEN International, the worldwide writers’ association, and he was nominated 16 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died on 20 November 1952. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and the New World Encyclopedia.

Croce kept a diary for much of his life; and at some point had them privatively printed in six volumes. But after the Second World War, a year’s worth of his diary entries in 1943/1944 were published in Quaderni della Critica. These were then translated into English by Sylvia Sprigge for publication by George Allen & Unwin in 1950 as Croce, the King and the Allies: Extracts from a diary by Benedetto Croce July 1943 - June 1944. This was re-published in 2019 by Routledge - an edition which can be sampled at Googlebooks. Extracts of Croce’s diaries from other periods in his life can also be found in the biography Benedetto Croce and Italian Fascism by Fabio Fernando Rizi (which can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive).

A foreword to the 1943/1944 diary extracts provided by Croce for Quaderni della Critica was also included in the English editions. He wrote: ‘Historical accounts are beginning to appear in print of the nine months from early September 1943 to June 1944, a period when Government and political party activity could only take place in southern Italy and in the islands. I thought I might correct and integrate certain errors and certain omissions not easy to avoid in such accounts, with these notes from a diary, which I have been keeping these last forty years in a fairly brief form, at the beginning or end of my day, and whose purpose has been to note the course of my literary work. But after July 25th 1943, owing to the rush of events, the diary gradually filled with notes on political matters. In the following pages are extracts without the literary and private notes, of which I have left only a few in the early pages so that the character and nature of the Diary may be kept in mind. The political notes were a part of it, and at first were entered occasionally and almost involuntarily. Some details of little importance I have left in, being desirous and careful not to offend the susceptibilities or rouse the resentment of any one, for my purpose is solely that which I have already outlined. I do not know whether I have always succeeded in this, despite the goodwill which I have put into it.’

And here are three extracts (including the first) from Croce, the King and the Allies.

25 July 1943, Sorrento
‘In the morning, historical reading; but in the afternoon, visits from friends. Parente, both the Morellis, Zanotti Bianco, Petaccia. The Dohrns are here too. I was tired and had gone to bed at eleven o’clock when a telephone call from Signorina Elena di Serracapriola’s villa brought the news that Mussolini had resigned and that the new Government had been entrusted to Badoglio by the King. Parente and the Morellis, who had gone away half an hour ago, on hearing the news also arrived, jubilant, and we talked of the event. Back to bed, but I could not close my eyes till four o’clock or later. The feeling I have is of liberation from an evil which weighed upon the heart’s core; derivative evils and dangers remain, but that evil will not return.’

20 August 1943
‘Am listless and sleepy, as I have never been before. I sleep little at nights: before me I always see the ruin of Italy, and the news of Giovanni Laterza’s bad health, rapidly deteriorating, depresses me. When they brought the news of the fall of Fascism to his sick-bed on July 26th, he ordered the words “God be praised” to be written at the head of all letters and bills of that day. In the afternoon, as best I could, took up the threads of work in hand, including the revised elaboration of Blanch. The Giornale d’ltalia has printed my article on the Italian Academy despite the veto of the censors which Bergamini has overridden. But other articles on the subject are forbidden. I am told that the King said, “The Academy is not to be tampered with any more than the Senate.” But the Senate too, unworthy and corrupt as it is, will have to be ‘tampered with.’

17 September 1943
‘In the morning a visit from an American journalist, Kearney, who asked me some political questions, which I answered as best I could, what with being tired, not having slept and it being stiflingly hot. While Elena was helping to translate my answers into English, the English Admiral, J. B. Morse, came to visit me with his aide, Richard Long, and we had a short conversation. The lieutenant asked me who were the dangerous or Fascist people in Sorrento, and I asked to be excused because I could not, in my old age, begin doing things I had never done in the course of my life, to which the lieutenant agreed and said he well understood. The Germans left over there were mentioned in the conversation; but the Dohrn family, although attached to their country, has been noted as ‘neutral.’ In the evening a much famed journalist, Knickerbocker, came to say a lot of kind things to me, and then talked for a long time with my daughters, and wanting to give proof of his admiration, he wrote some lines by which to remember him in a copy of Shakespeare which they had with them.’

22 September 1943
‘Raimondo has left again. Suffocating heat continues. Tight feeling about the heart for Naples in the hands of the Germans. From here we hear explosions and see fires, and get rumours of people killed, devastation and looting. General Donovan and a journalist called Whitaker, together with an American officer called Tomkins, whom I got to know in the last few days and who has been in Italy previously for a long time, came to see me. The General told me that large supplies have been prepared for Naples, to be landed ten or fifteen days after the occupation. He said it might be a good thing if I let this be known in Naples. I said I would spread the news among people I shall see, but that I have no means of communicating with Naples. Similarly, with another of his suggestions that the Neapolitans should try to prevent the Germans from destroying the port. Whitaker offered me presses, paper and ink with which to print a paper here! General Donovan asked me how the spirit of the Italians was, and I said that what all the best Italians wanted, and what would most encourage them, would be permission to form a combatant legion under the Italian flag to co-operate with the Anglo-American armies in liberating Italian soil from the Germans; and then, when he asked me whether there was anybody who could command such a legion, I gave him General Pavone’s name, a man of an old southern family, a patriot and a liberal, and presently a member of the Party of Action.’


Monday, August 15, 2022

La Foce is liberated

Today marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated English biographer, Iris Origo. She spent most of her life in Italy; there she married, and there, with her husband, she developed a ramshackle farming estate at La Foce, in Tuscany. Famously, during the Second World War, the estate took in refugee children and sheltered escaping prisoners. Her diary of that time has become a classic of war literature.

Iris Margaret Cutting was born on 15 August 1902 in England, the child of an Anglo-Irish mother and a rich American father. She was educated privately in Florence, Italy, and, with inherited wealth, spent much time in her youth travelling. She married an Italian nobleman, Antonio Origo, and together they developed a rundown farming estate, La Foce, some 150km north of Rome. They had one son who died young of meningitis, and two daughters.

In the 1930s, Origo turned to writing, publishing biographies of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi and Cola di Rienzo, a fourteenth century Roman politician. During the war, the family stayed at La Foce where they secretly took in refugee children and helped escaping Allied prisoners. After the war, the Origos lived in both Rome and La Foce, and Iris continued writing biographies and autobiographical books. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1976, and died in 1988. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, The Florentine and The Guardian.

Origo’s first published autobiographical work was a diary she kept during the war - War in Val d’Orcia (Jonathan Cape, 1947, but reissued several times since then, most recently by Pushkin Press). The book’s publicity material says: ‘In a corner of Tuscany, one woman - born in England, married to an Italian- kept a record of daily life in a country at war. Iris Origo’s compellingly powerful diary, War in Val d’Orcia, is the spare and vivid account of what happened when a peaceful farming valley became a battleground.’ Some pages can be previewed online at Googlebooks.

 9 June 1943
‘At four am in the Clinica Quisisana, my second daughter, Donata, is born. During the long night before her birth I heard from the room, through my own pain, the groans for morphia of a young airman whose leg had been amputated.’

10 June 1943
‘The third anniversary of Italy’s entry into the war. No celebrations. A rumour had spread that there were to be air-raids all over Italy, and all day many mothers have kept their children at home. Nothing, however, occurred until six pm, when a few enemy planes flew over the town - and a few more during the night. The air-raid warnings in the hospital (even though nothing happens) are rather uncomfortable, owing to one’s enforced immobility and the jumpiness of some of the patients.’

24 January 1944
‘The German officer turns up: a parachutist, covered with medals of both this war and the last, in which he served as a volunteer at the age of sixteen. He inspects the Castellucio, is unfortunately delighted with it, and a notice, stating that the castle has been requisitioned, is placed on the door. Mercifully, our own house is not required - as yet. In the afternoon we walk up to Pietraporciana - a lonely farm on the hill-top at the top of our property - to see if we could take all the children there, if we are turned out. There would be thirty-six of us.’

26 January 1944
‘Spend the day sorting furniture and books to be hidden in outlying farms. Schwester Marie, the babies’ charming Swiss nurse, who was to have returned home at this time, decides to stay on with us and see us through, in view of the possibility of our being arrested and the children left alone. Our relief is very great, but she may soon be completely cut off from her home.’

29 June 1944
[. . .] The Germans have gone. [Later] Not only have they gone, but the Allies are here! The first good news came to Antonio, who (while standing beside one of the Germans who are still left in town) was hurriedly summoned by a partisan: some English soldiers, he said, were looking for him. He accordingly hurried down into a wheatfield, and there found a small patrol, headed by a subaltern in the Scots Guards, who had actually come from La Foce. He wanted information as to the number of Germans who are still in town, the lie of the land, the bridges that had been blown up, and so on, all of which Antonio gave him, and in return, he gave us fairly good news of La Foce. The house has only been hit in two or three places, and though the damage inside is considerable, it is not irremediable. All this conversation took place hurriedly, hidden in the wheat, with sentries posted, and just as it was over, a pretty peasant-girl came up with a basket on her head, on her way to town. What next? She said she would hold her tongue, but it seemed safer for the soldiers to take her off with them for a few hours, to which indeed she agreed very willingly. The plan is for the regiment to occupy the town this afternoon. Meanwhile, we are having some German shelling for a change, and Palazzo Ricci and some other buildings have been hit. La Foce has had the honour of being mentioned in the midday bulletin as ‘liberated’ - together with Pienza and Montalcino. But we can hardly listen to the news now: we want to see with our own eyes. Every minute, now, the Allies may arrive!

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 August 2012.

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Death of a bandit

Walter Scott, one of Britain’s greatest writers and the first to gain international celebrity status, was born a quarter of a millennium ago today. His novels - such as Ivanhoe - and poetry are still widely read today, but his diaries, though still in print and considered by some to be a ‘superb work’, are less well known. They cover only the last years of his life. In the very first entry, Scott explains how he came to be inspired to start writing a journal; and, in another entry, a few months before his death, the adventure writer in him is anxious to record details he has heard about a notorious bandit.

Scott was born in Edinburgh on 15 August 1771; but, when only 18 months old, he contracted polio, which left him lame for the rest of his life. He trained as a lawyer, like his father, but without much commitment. He did work in his father’s office for a while, but preferred to travel, and to read. In 1797, he married Margaret Charlotte Carpenter, from a French Royalist family, even though he knew very little about her. They lived happily to her death, a few years before his own, and had four children. Also in 1797, Scott first volunteered for the Royal Edinburgh light dragoons, and acted as its secretary and quartermaster.

Scott’s career in writing began with translations of German Gothic romances; he then produced his own ballads, such as The Lay of the Last Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake, which proved immensely popular. He also worked on new editions of writings by Dryden and Swift. In the 1810s, Scott turned to novels, and found a new level of success with, what became known as, his Waverley novels, including Rob Roy and Ivanhoe among many others. However, these novels were published anonymously, and though some reviewers were identifying him as the author from the first, he continued denying the fact until 1827.

The income from his popular novels gave Scott the wherewithal to build a mansion in the Scottish borders, 35 miles southeast of Edinburgh, which he called Abbotsford. By 1820, when he was knighted, Scott was a celebrity and important public figure. He organised the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822. He helped created the Edinburgh Academy. He was chairman of the Edinburgh Oil Gas Company in 1824, was a governor of the Scottish Union, and an extraordinary director of the Edinburgh Life Assurance Company.

In 1826, though, his world collapsed with one of the worst financial crises of the century. The financial burden of Abbotsford, and the bankruptcies of his publisher and printer, left Scott in financial ruin. Rather than declaring bankruptcy himself, he worked hard for the rest of his life to repay his debts - to the detriment, some say, of his later novels, which were, in modern parlance, churned out. He died in 1832, having cleared around three-quarters of his debt (the rest was partly repaid through the sale of his copyrights). Almost all newspapers - according to his biographer J. G. Lockhart - ‘had the signs of mourning usual on the demise of a king’. Further biographical information is available at Edinburgh University’s Walter Scott Digital Archive and Wikipedia.

In 1837-1838, Lockhart, who married Scott’s daughter Sophia and was editor of the Quarterly Review, published the seven volume Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott. He was only able to write the lengthy, and much respected, biography because he had inherited the rights to all of Scott’s literary remains, including a wealth of letters and two volumes of a diary which Scott wrote from 1825 until his death. Lockhart explained, in the biography, he could not use the diary as freely as he might have wished ‘by regard for the feelings of living persons’. It was not until 1890, that the full diary manuscript was published, by David Douglas in two volumes, as The Journal of Sir Walter Scott.

David Hewitt writing Scott’s entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says of the journal: ‘[Scott] is endlessly interesting; he records what he had been doing; he comments acutely on what goes on around him; he works out intellectual positions; he analyses himself; he lays himself out on the page. The Journal is a superb work, but its greatness is ultimately due to an accident of timing. It opens with Scott at the height of his fame and prosperity. Within six months he was ruined and his wife was dead. He undertook to repay all his debts, and the Journal records how a heroic decision to do right and to act well gradually destroyed him mentally and physically.’

An 1890 set of both volumes can be bought from Abebooks for as little as £30; and there are many more modern reprints available. The text of the 1890 version is also freely available at Internet Archive (as is Lockhart’s biography).

Here are two extracts: the very first entry in Scott’s journal; and one of the last entries, written a few months before his death (which seems an appropriate extract to use, given Scott’s legacy as one of the world great writers of adventure stories).

20 November 1825
‘I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular Journal. I have myself lost recollection of much that was interesting, and I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information, by not carrying this resolution into effect. I have bethought me, on seeing lately some volumes of Byron’s notes, that he probably had hit upon the right way of keeping such a memorandum-book, by throwing aside all pretence to regularity and order, and marking down events just as they occurred to recollection. I will try this plan; and behold I have a handsome locked volume, such as might serve for a lady’s album. Nota bene, John Lockhart, and Anne, and I are to raise a Society for the suppression of Albums. It is a most troublesome shape of mendicity. Sir, your autograph, a line of poetry, or a prose sentence! Among all the sprawling sonnets, and blotted trumpery that dishonours these miscellanies, a man must have a good stomach that can swallow this botheration as a compliment.’

15 April 1832
‘Naples. I am on the eve of leaving Naples after a residence of three or four months, my strength strongly returning, though the weather has been very uncertain. What with the interruption occasioned by the cholera and other inconveniences, I have not done much. I have sent home only the letters by L. L. Stuart and three volumes of the Siege of Malta. I sent them by Lord Cowper’s son Mr. Cowper returning, his leave being out and two chests of books by the Messrs. Turner, Malta, who are to put them on board a vessel, to be forwarded to Mr. Cadell through “Whittaker. I have hopes they will come to hand safe. I have bought a small closing carriage, warranted new and English, cost me 200, for the convenience of returning home. It carries Anne, Charles, and the two servants, and we start to-morrow morning for Home, after which we shall be starting homeward, for the Greek scheme is blown up, as Sir Frederick Adam is said to be going to Madras, so he will be unable to send a frigate as promised. I have spent on the expenses of medical persons and books, etc., a large sum, yet not excessive.

Meantime we [may] have to add a curious journey of it. The brigands, of whom there are so many stories, are afloat once more, and many carriages stopped. A curious and popular work would be a history of these ruffians. Washington Irving has attempted something of the kind, but the person attempting this should be an Italian, perfectly acquainted with his country, character, and manners. Mr. R , an apothecary, told me a singular [occurrence] which happened in Calabria about six years ago, and which I may set down just now as coming from a respectable authority, though I do not [vouch it].

DEATH OF IL BIZARRO.
This man was called, from his wily but inexorable temper, Il Bizarro, i.e. the Bizar. He was captain of a gang of banditti, whom he governed by his own authority, till he increased them to 1,000 men, both on foot and horseback, whom he maintained in the mountains of Calabria, between the French and Neapolitans, both of which he defied, and pillaged the country. High rewards were set upon his head, to very little purpose, as he took care to guard himself against being betrayed by his own gang, the common fate of those banditti who become great in their vocation. At length a French colonel, whose name I have forgot, occupied the country of Bizarro, with such success that he formed a cordon around him and his party, and included him between the folds of a military column.

Well-nigh driven to submit himself, the robber with his wife, a very handsome woman, and a child of a few months old, took a position beneath the arch of an old bridge, and, by an escape almost miraculous, were not perceived by a strong party whom the French maintained on the top of the arch. Night at length came without a discovery, which every moment might have made. When it became quite dark, the brigand, enjoining strictest silence on the female and child, resolved to steal from his place of shelter, and as they issued forth, kept his hand on the child’s throat. But as, when they began to move, the child naturally cried, its father in a rage stiffened his grip so relentlessly that the poor infant never offended more in the same manner. This horrid [act] led to the conclusion of the robber’s life.

His wife had never been very fond of him, though he trusted her more than any who approached him. She had been originally the wife of another man, murdered by her second husband, which second marriage she was compelled to undergo, and to affect at least the conduct of an affectionate wife. In their wanderings she alone knew where he slept for the night. He left his men in a body upon the top of an open hill, round which they set watches. He then went apart into the woods with his wife, and having chosen a glen an obscure and deep thicket of the woods, there took up his residence for the night. A large Calabrian sheepdog, his constant attendant, was then tied to a tree at some distance to secure his slumbers, and having placed his carabine within reach of his lair, he consigned himself to such sleep as belongs to his calling. By such precautions he had secured his rest for many years.

But after the death of the child, the measure of his offence towards the unhappy mother was full to the brim, and her thoughts became determined on revenge. One evening he took up his quarters for the night with these precautions, but without the usual success. He had laid his carabine near him, and betaken himself to rest as usual, when his partner arose from his side, and ere he became sensible she had done so, she seized [his carabine], and discharging [it] in his bosom, ended at once his life and crimes.

She finished her work by cutting off the brigand’s head, and carrying it to the principal town of the province, where she delivered it to the police, and claimed the reward attached to his head, which was paid accordingly. This female still lives, a stately, dangerous-looking woman, yet scarce ill thought of, considering the provocation. The dog struggled extremely to get loose on hearing the shot. Some say the female shot it; others that, in its rage, it very nearly gnawed through the stout young tree to which it was tied. He was worthy of a better master. The distant encampment of the band was disturbed by the firing of the Bizarro’s carabine at midnight. They ran through the woods to seek the captain, but finding him lifeless and headless, they became so much surprised that many of them surrendered to the government, and relinquished their trade, and the band of Bizarro, as it lived by his ingenuity, broke up by his death.

A story is told nearly as horrible as the above, respecting the cruelty of this bandit, which seems to entitle him to be called one of the most odious wretches of his name. A French officer, who had been active in the pursuit of him, fell into his hands, and was made to die [the death] of Marsyas or Saint Polycarp that is, the period being the middle of summer, he was flayed alive, and, being smeared with honey, was exposed to all the intolerable insects of a southern sky. The corps were also informed where they might find their officer if they thought proper to send for him. As more than two days elapsed before the wretched man was found, nothing save his miserable relics could be discovered.

I do not warrant these stories, but such are told currently.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 15 August 2011.

Saturday, July 4, 2020

The ‘canali’ of Mars

Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, the Italian astronomer, died one hundred and ten years ago today. He is particularly remembered for his observations and descriptions of the planet Mars, as well as for his studies of ancient astronomy. He kept diaries, mostly scientific, for some of his working life, often illustrating them, and, although not published, they have been used as a primary source for some astronomy history papers.

Schiaparelli was born in Savigliano, northern Italy, in 1835. He graduated in engineering from the University of Turin in 1854, and, with the help of influential friends, went on to study and research astronomy at Berlin Observatory under Johann Franz Encke, and at Pulkovo Observatory near St Petersburg. Returning to Italy in 1860, he was appointed second astronomer at the Brera Astronomical Observatory, in Milan, becoming its director in 1862, and remaining so for the best part of 40 years. He married Maria Comotti in 1865, and together they parented five children. His first discovery at Brera
, in 1861, was the asteroid Hesperia. This was followed in 1886 by the discovery of a connection between the orbits of comets and meteors (for which he was awarded he Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1872).

In 1875, with a new refractor telescope, Schiaparelli began measurements of double stars, and then, from 1877, during the Mars opposition that year (when Mars is closest to Earth), he launched a long and ultimately important series of observations of the planet over a 20 year period (benefiting from a new telescope and rebuilt dome in 1885). His work was published in several papers by Reale Accademia dei Lincei (of which he was a member) together amounting to the then most detailed monograph on the physical appearance of Mars. In 1893, he published his main work on the subject, La vita sul pianeta Marte (Life on Mars). Interestingly, when he first described (and illustrated - see photo of stamp) a dense network of linear structures that he had found on the surface of the planet, he called them ‘canali’ or channels, but the word was mis-translated in English as ‘canals’ - i.e. artificial constructions. The mistake led to a wave of popular theories about potential life on Mars which carried on through the first half of the 20th century.

Schiaparelli was also a senator of the Kingdom of Italy. After his retirement, he studied the astronomy of the ancient Hebrews and Babylonians and wrote L’astronomia nell’antico testamento, 1903 (Astronomy in the Old Testament). He died on 4 July 1910. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Osservatorio Astronimoco di Brera, Encyclopaedia Britannica, a biography in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association (available at Astrophysics Data System), or David Darling’s website.

There is not much information in English about Schiaparelli’s diaries online, other than a 2011 paper on The Diary of Schiaparelli in Berlin (26 October 1857-10 May 1859): a guide for future scientific activity by P. Tucci. This can be found online at the Journal of the Italian Astronomical Society. According to Tucci, ‘the diary is very important for the reconstruction of Schiaparelli’s training as an astronomer.’ He goes on: ‘The Diary is written in a nice calligraphy, especially the section on the lectures of the winter semester 1857-’58. The Diary contains a wealth of relevant information on the training of the young scientist and the emergence of the wide spectrum of interests. The first part is basically focused on a detailed account of the first semester of the academic year 1857-’58. Almost every lesson is told with great details and the writing is probably a transcript of notes taken during the lesson. Over the months, however, more space is gradually won over by the tale of personal stories and unfolding of episodes of common everyday life, all at the expense of the University lectures.’ Tucci’s paper focuses on astronomy rather than the ‘personal stories’.

Here is an extract from Tucci’s analysis of Schiaparelli’s diary: ‘With the beginning of 1858. Giovanni Virginio began to attend the Berlin Observatory, headed by Encke. It’s firstly quoted in Friday. January 8. when he claims: “I went to the Observatory to find Encke, and gave him the reduction of the observations made on last 8 September of which he was very happy”. After being in the library, Giovanni Virginio came back again to the Observatory, where he was able to observe “. . . quite well at the meridian passage of the Sun”; he also took the opportunity “. . . to see in a very clear way how the Sun is able to change the shape of the instruments.” Also Sunday, 17 Giovanni Virginio “. . . went to the Observatory, first to observe the Sun at noon, then in the evening, where in spite of fresh air I gathered a harvest of at least 24 passages. It’s strange that the Observatory was empty, and no one observed except me. Is this a work of slaves?” ’

Another 2011 paper on Schiaparelli and his legacy, by A. Manara and G. Trinchieri, includes several images (illustrations and texts) from the diaries - as shown here. The manuscript diaries are held in the archives at the Brera Observatory.

Friday, February 21, 2020

Accompanied by ghost

‘[. . .] We enter the Reflector Dome in garden. They begin showing Venus, though it was low; no clamping; no clockwork; with powder of 170. Very brilliant, very white and well defined but accompanied by ghost . . .’ This is from the diaries of Charles Piazzi Smyth, a 19th century Astronomer Royal for Scotland, who died 110 years ago today. His diaries, which contain informal jottings of scientific and personal experiences, have not been published, but in 2003 one of his biographers, the Irish astronomer Mary T Brück put together a few extracts for publication in an astronomy journal.

Smyth was born in 1819 in Naples to a captain (later an admiral) of the Royal Navy. He was named Piazzi after his godfather, the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, whom his father had met at Palermo. The family subsequently settled in Bedford, England, where his father built an observatory. Charles was educated at Bedford School until the age of 16 when he was appointed assistant astronomer (to Sir Thomas Maclear) at the Cape Observatory, South Africa. By 1845, aged just 26, he had been appointed Astronomer Royal for Scotland at the Calton Hill Observatory in Edinburgh (though it remained chronically underfunded for years), and also Professor of Astronomy in the University of Edinburgh. In 1853, he was responsible for installing the time ball on top of Nelson’s Monument in Edinburgh to give a time signal to the ships at Leith.

In 1856, Smyth married Jessie Duncan who became his devoted assistant in many scientific endeavours, though they had no children. He spent their honeymoon making astronomical observations from the peaks of Tenerife in the Canary Islands to test the benefits of a mountain observatory (indeed, he is credited with pioneering the practice of positioning telescopes on mountain tops to obtain better observations). In 1857, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. A visit to Russia - visiting observatories - followed in 1859, and in the 1860s he visited Egypt and surveyed the Pyramids. This latter project resulted in a popular book, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864), which drew him a large cult following.

Smyth’s other activities included: work in spectroscopy (for which he equipped his new house on Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, in 1871); the study of telluric absorption; the construction of a map of the solar spectrum; work with Professor Alexander Herschel on the harmonic character of the carbonic-oxide spectrum; the measuring of the ‘citron-ray’ of the aurora; gathering meteorological data; the construction of a large solar chart; and, the study of cloud forms using photography. He died on 21 February 1900. He bequeathed a large collection of photographs, watercolours, and his scientific records to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Wikipedia, Charles Piazzi Smyth website, The Royal Society, Undiscovered Scotland or Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (log-in required)

According to Smyth’s biographer, the Irish astronomer Mary T Brück, Smyth kept ‘informal diaries in which he recorded his day to day experiences and impressions, personal as well as scientific’. In 2003, she assembled and edited a few extracts from the diaries for publication in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, under the title: An astronomer calls: extracts from the diaries of Charles Piazzi Smyth. This can be freely read online at the website of ADS operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory under NASA. Here are several of those extracts.

2 December 1864
‘[Lassell’s Observatory, Valetta] Pass through Palau Gardens. Trees growing well in courts, Norfolk Island pine, oleander, pomegranate, oranges and a plant with its branches tipped with red leaves looking like bright red flowers. Down again on opposite side of ridge through streets where two modern English ladies can hardly pass with their hoops. Note the Maltese lace with the Maltese crosses worked therein; at last reach quarantine harbour, looks blue, bright but very lovely compared with the other. On opposite shore, see Mr Lassell’s telescope, white and twin tower like. Take a boat and on landing find it on top of a bare ridge within a walled enclosure, a few houses and a few small streets in the way, all blazing yellow. Walled enclosure looks expensive and solid. Knock at small private-looking door, where is only a small keyhole, clearly an astronomer’s night latch key. Man appears, half English, half Maltese; admits party and goes off with letters and cards to Mrs Lassell at the house, some half a mile off. We are then seated in the workshop which runs all along one side of the enclosure, guess length of room 70 feet, part being given to a steam-engine room; the engine shaft entering the other bigger room and capable of being connected with the polishing machinery which appears made in excellent engineering style; but cumbersome of course for mirrors 4 feet in diameter. Lathes, benches, work tables and side shelves with tools innumerable and rafter space stored away with all sorts of bar-iron and wooden planking.

Mr Lassell presently comes in from Valetta; recognises and begins explaining. Mrs Lassell and daughters from the house, who carry off Jessie and Miss Stanley [their travelling companion] there, and Mr Lassell again explains that everything there within, including that enclosure, was put by himself. Steam engine and workshop, of course, for he cannot polish the speculum without steam engine. (At this point, amongst the bundles of iron bars, ask him for a piece of one, 1 foot long, for material for making a standard rule for the Pyramid. He did not seem at first well inclined to part with anything but a scrap upon the floor straight on one side and cut into an arc on the other; but finally directed his man to file off a foot from a large double bar of this iron, about 20 foot long, which I thanked him for).

Then to telescope again; 4 foot mirror, 40 feet long, his old Liverpool construction of Polar axis. Motion in AR given by a man turning an endless screw 1 inch in a second agreeably with motion of pendulum which he sees just before him. This rather wet; and this first screw and its handle have a large flywheel to equalise the man’s efforts. The first second’s worm acts on the endless screw of AR circle only through train of wheels and pinions. Tube of telescope novel in being open, formed of longitudinal laths of iron bar traced with rings; Mr L. says it decidedly performs better than the solid tube and eliminates most of the twirling and twitching of stars’ images. Observer brought to end of telescope by a tower which has 3 separate observing stories one above the other and can be advanced to and from centre and all round centre on a great circular stage and railway.

At this point came up his assistant Mr Marth, the German, with a paper of places for the next few nights of the 4 modem satellites of Uranus, for without the plans compiled beforehand it is very difficult to say which are satellites and which are small stars in certain parts of the sky. Consider Mr L. has settled the non-existence of 4 out of Sir W. Herschel’s 6 satellites of Uranus, for 2 of the modem 4 will not answer to any of the old 6. Negative discovery seems all that has crowned Mr L.’s vast labour. He has found no new satellite of Neptune or Uranus and no rings; apparently nothing planetary. Obs[ervations] of nebulae going on also.

This result apparently unsatisfactory in face of such appalling works, engineering and architectural i.e. appalling to anyone who has not the means (money) and whose hobby it is not. Seems to have had a depressing and rigidifying effect on Mr L. Wonder, with all his old deference to Mr Airy that he takes for an assistant Mr Marth, the German whose only great work hitherto has been his reputedly evil attack on Mr Airy and the Greenwich observations. . . But with all this assistance, no discovery yet.

Went down to the house with Mr Lassell; really a splendid house, for size of halls, rooms and staircases, paved with stone and 20 feet high (the rooms). All had a very good luncheon or early dinner and family were very kind. Took notes of precession in RA and NPD for α Draconis and ε Tauri [significant stars to be observed in Egypt]. Mr Lassell only stiller and stiffer and when at last Pyd [pyramid] and standard measures were introduced by Jessie he declared that he could not see any possible method by which the proportion of the Earth’s diameter on any scale could be ascertained! And that was given out in a manner implying that it would be a waste of time for anyone to be occupying himself with any questions thereanent.

So left them at 2.15 p.m., glad to have seen them and obliged to them, but with a something, somewhere, wanting in mental satisfaction.’

12 March 1872
‘[Palermo] At 9 p.m. with Miss Yule to the observatory to sec M. Cacciatore. Ascend to top of Palace by broad flight of low stairs generally constructed in marble; pass under a long verandah with glass ornaments and groves of shrubs to M. Cacciatore, finding him with a brother and brother-in-law, the former bearing the name of Piazzi and the latter holding a foundation situation called after Piazzi. He speaks French, the others not. Room abundantly decorated but with paintings mostly very bad. He then takes us upstairs and along gallery after gallery floored and lined with marble all along. Shows two paintings and one bust of Piazzi. then shows the Ramsden alt-azimuth under a dome with white marble pillars beneath, and then to the new meridian circle room (Piston and Martin’s), Equatorial by Merz (9.5 inch object glass), chronograph room, Secchi’s grand meteorograph etc etc. - each room with the name in golden letters outside. Instruments in good state of preservation and cleanliness, and are generally kept under linen covers. Spectroscope is direct vision from Leipsic: no makers in Palermo.

Return to Hotel at 11 p.m.; many shops still
open.’

20 March 1872
‘By cab to the Observatory. Saw S[ignor] Cacciatore and S. Tacchini. Spoke to former chiefly on meteorology, and to the latter on spectroscopy. Former to copy out for me the Met[eorological] journal for the first two weeks of March as descriptive of storm on SS Kedar [experienced on the voyage]. Touching the blue sun, he says that that came from dust in the atmosphere, for dust fell that day on the roof of the Observatory and was gathered up: he gave us a specimen. S. Tacchini similarly gave me a specimen from Genoa, collected similarly in 1870.

On speaking of spectrum of zodiacal light. Signor T. has not observed it himself but speaks as though all Italian astronomers were sure the aurora, zodiacal light and solar corona gave one and the same spectrum line, and he gave me two papers and a mss page to prove the same [by Secchi and other Italian astronomers].’

22 March 1872
‘At the Observatory 9.30. Sig. Cacciatoro [sic] receives us urbanely. The dust on the roof of the observatory was caught on the morning of the 10th but might have fallen the previous night or day, but not the previous 3 days because the wind was so strong . . . he supposes the dust came from Africa.

To observatory to see Signor Tacchini. Spectroscope attached to the end of 9 inch equatorial. Two black curtains fitted up temporarily for eye end to move between and also [to shield] from sun. No clock work; used RA and dec[lination] handles combined with Sp[ectroscope’s] own circle of position. Slit is used very narrow - solar prominence seen thus, in narrowest sections as it passes slit. . . . Sp[ectroscope] only for mapping shapes and sizes or red prominences. Tacchini observes sunspots by projection on screen and fixes angles and draws circle on a board with circles of position and radii. Has observed Saturn |in the same way] and drawn it accurately . . . 

At 9 p.m. return by invitation to observatory to look through equatorial. Tacchini works; Cacciatore looks on. Moon three quarters full . . . Jupiter not very well defined, and from power 150 and its small disk Tacchini with a short sharp pencil puts in details on a circle drawn on paper 6 inches in diameter. The central zone is certainly rosy. I could not pretend to see all that he put down. . . . He showed the Linnhe crater as a nebulous white spot on Mare Serenitatis.

Jessie complains of the cold at the observatory, overwalks herself for warmth in returning and falls ill again.’

21 May 1876
‘[Toulouse] Sunday. List of 15 questions [regarding observatory and university duties] in readiness for M. Tisserand on visit to Observatory; answered that night. 8 - 8.30 p.m. walk to observatory. Steep hill. M. Tisserand obliging and merry as ever. He got 2 observations of Jupiter’s satellites in the early hours of this morning. Had been spending his Sunday in preparing a mathematical-astronomical lecture to be given tomorrow at 8 a.m. in the university and was ready for a night’s work now. He answered my questions; then with addition of M. Perrotin we enter the Reflector Dome in garden. They begin showing Venus, though it was low; no clamping; no clockwork; with powder of 170. Very brilliant, very white and well defined but accompanied by ghost . . . Next looked at Vega. No finding by setting of circles but only by pointing along tube (needs 2 men to turn dome). Companion to Vega surprisingly distinct. Nebula (annular) in Lyra a great triumph, so brilliant in so dark a field yet nebular in texture. [Observed] Jupiter [and] Polaris.

What birds are these whose songs come in at the open shutter from the garden? asks Jessie. Nightingales, responds M. Tisserand; and so it is, they abound in this obs[ervatory] of dead men’s bones. Most complaisant doorkeeper shows us halfway down the hill and we proceed, the fair and the shows and the cafes are still at 11 p.m. in full swing; a rotating system of wooden horses and carriage is in great request among men and women and children of all degrees. They revolve most quickly and most smoothly: an example to the dome revolvings of an observatory. A horse turning in a small circle inside seems to do it all.’

Monday, February 17, 2020

The slander of inquisitors

Giordano Bruno - described as an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist - died all of 420 years ago today. It was very early days for diarists in Europe, and Bruno himself was not one. However, he was in the habit of visiting the Abbey of Saint Victor near Paris, to consult books in its library, and the librarian there, Guillaume Cotin, was a diarist. Indeed, Cotin’s diary entries are an important first hand source of information about Bruno.

Bruno was born in 1548, in Nola (then in the Kingdom of Naples), the son of a professional soldier. From 1562, he studied at an Augustinian monastery in Naples, and aged 17 he entered the Dominican Order at the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, taking the name Giordano. He developed a particular expertise in the art of memory, which brought him to the attention of patrons, as well as an invitation to Rome to demonstrate his abilities to the Pope. He was ordained a priest in 1572, and, subsequently, began to study theology formally, obtaining his doctorate in 1575.

By then, however, Bruno had developed various heretical views and become a target of the Inquisition in Naples. He fled the city and religious life, becoming a fugitive from his order, an excommunicate, and spent the next 14 years travelling through Europe - France, England, Germany. The works he wrote and published (in Latin and Italian) during this period are those that survive to this day. He is mainly remembered today for his cosmological theories, that the universe was infinite with numberless solar systems. 


Wherever he went, Bruno’s passionate outpourings led to opposition. He worked when he could, teaching sometimes, and lived off the munificence of patrons, though he invariably tried their patience. In 1591 he accepted an invitation to live in Venice. But, once there, he was arrested by the Inquisition and tried. He recanted, but was sent to Rome, in 1592, for another trial. He was kept imprisoned for eight years, and interrogated periodically. But, ultimately, he refused to recant enough, and was declared a heretic. He was burned at the stake on 17 February 1600. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or The Galileo Project. All of Bruno’s extant published words are available online thanks to The Warburg Institute.

In the mid-1580s, Bruno found himself in Paris, and took to visiting the Abbey of Saint Victor to consult books housed in the library there. The librarian at the time, Guillaume Cotin, was an early diarist (as were his predecessors at the abbey), and mentioned Bruno several times in his journal. Some details about Cotin’s diary (and about the long-standing tradition at the abbey for brothers to keep journals) can be found in A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris edited by Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau (Brill, 2017) - see Googlebooks.

‘Bruno visited Saint Victor to consult certain texts in the abbey’s library,’ the book explains, ‘and Cotin evidently enjoyed several long conversations with him. He learned where Bruno was living in Paris, what he was writing, what he was reading, and some of his ‘theses’. Cotin noted that Bruno fled from Italy to avoid the inquisitors and to elude authorities seeking him on charges that he had murdered a fellow monk. He also described Bruno’s celebrated debate over certain ‘errors of Aristotle’ with royal lecturers at the College of Cambrai.’

Actual quotations from Cotin’s diary can be found embedded in Squaring the Circle, Paris, 1585-1586 one of the chapters in Ingrid D. Rowland’s biography Giordano Bruno - Philosopher/Heretic (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

7 December 1585
‘Jordanus [Bruno] came back again. He told me that the cathedral of Nola is dedicated to Saint Felix. He was born in 1548; he is thirty-seven years old. He has been a fugitive from Italy for eight years, both for a murder committed by one of his [Dominican] brothers, for which he is hated and fears for his life, and to avoid the slander of the inquisitors, who are ignorant, and if they understood his philosophy, would condemn it as heretical. He said that in an hour he knows how to demonstrate the artificial memory . . . and he can make a child understand it. He says that his principal master in philosophy was [Fra Teofilo da Vairano], an Augustinian, who is deceased. He is a doctor of theology, received in Rome . . . He prizes Saint Thomas . . . he condemns the subtleties of the Scholastics, the sacraments, and also the Eucharist, which he says Saint Peter and Saint Paul knew nothing about; all they knew was “This is my body.” He says that all the troubles about religion will be removed when these debates are removed, and he says that he expects the end to come soon. But most of all he detests the heretics of France and England, because they disdain good works and prefer the certainty of their own faith and their justification [by it]. He disdains Cajetan and Pico della Mirandola, and all the philosophy of the Jesuits, which is nothing but debates about the text and intelligence of Aristotle.’

2 February 1586
‘Jordanus told me that Fabrizio Mordente is here in Paris, sixty years old, the god of geometers, and in that field he surpasses everyone who has gone before and everyone today, even though he knows no Latin; Jordanus will have his works printed in Latin.’

Saturday, August 10, 2019

First circumnavigation of the globe

Half a millennium ago this very day, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan launched a Spanish expedition that would complete the first ever circumnavigation of the world - it is, thus, one of the most famous exploration voyages in history. Magellan himself, however, was killed in a battle with native Philippines, and four of the expeditions five ships, along with most of their crews, were lost. Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian scholar and explorer, kept a journal of the entire journey. Although the original was lost, four manuscript copies - one in Italian and three in French - survived. Of these, one held by Yale University is considered the most complete and handsomely produced. Digital images of this are freely available online, as are texts of the journal in English.

On 10 August 1519, Magellan set sail with 270 men and five ships - the Armada de Molucca - from Seville, descending the Guadalquivir River to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the river, where they remained more than five weeks before finally setting sail on 20 September. The main goal of the expedition - largely financed by King Charles I of Spain - was to find a western route to the Moluccas or Spice Islands (as the eastern route was controlled by Portugal under the terms of a treaty). The expedition crossed the Atlantic and discovered the strait that bears Magellan’s name, allowing it to pass South America into the Pacific Ocean (which Magellan named).

The fleet reached the Philippines, where it remained for some while, engaging frequently with the local indigenous people, some of whom were friendly and some not. Magellan was murdered in a battle on 27 April 1521, as were many others. Within a few weeks, the fleet was reduced to two ships, with Juan Sebastián Elcano eventually captaining the Victoria. By November, the expedition had reached the Moluccas - completing its mission. The following month, Elcano sailed for Europe, but the other ship - Trinidad - remained behind for repairs, and was eventually captured by the Portuguese then wrecked in a storm. After numerous other hardships during the three years, not least mutinies, starvation, scurvy, storms, only 18 men and the one ship (the Victoria) completed the return trip to Spain, arriving at Seville on 8 September 1922. Further details are available at Wikipedia.

One of the 18 survivors of the voyage was the Italian Pigafetta (see The Diary Junction) whose detailed journal has become the most important primary source of information about the expedition. He was born into a rich family in Vicenza in northeast Italy, around 1480-1491 (his exact birthdate being unknown). He studied astronomy, geography and cartography before serving the Knights of Rhodes on board their vessels. Until 1519, he accompanied the papal nuncio, Monsignor Francesco Chieregati, to Spain. He was in Seville when he heard of Magellan’s forthcoming expedition and was taken on as a supernumerary with a modest salary. He was wounded in the same skirmish as Magellan was killed, but survived the expedition, and returned to the Republic of Venice where he wrote up his journal, and made handwritten copies for distribution to European monarchs. He died around 1531.

Although the original journal kept by Pigafetta has long since been lost, four hand-written copies of the manuscript have survived into modern times - three in French and one in Italian. At least one of these can be viewed online at the World Digital Library, which says of it: ‘This version, in French, is from the library of Yale University, and is the most complete and handsomely produced of the four surviving manuscripts. It includes 23 beautifully drawn and illuminated maps.’

Published versions of Pigafetta’s journal have appeared over the years in various forms. An English translation (by Lord Stanley of Alderley) was issued by the Hakluyt Society in 1874 - see Internet Archive. But in 1906, a more rigorous edition was published by The Arthur H. Clark Company as Magellan’s Voyage Around the World (also available at Internet Archive). This was translated, edited and extensively annotated by James Alexander Robertson, who says: ‘The present edition first gives the English reader access to a translation of the true text of Pigafetta [. . .] together with the original Italian of Pigafetta [. . .] (the oldest and most complete of the four existing manuscripts).’ For more on the 500th anniversary of the Magellan voyage see The Magellan Project, España Global, VCentenario or The Daily Beast

Meanwhile here is an extract - detailing the death of Magellan - from the 1906 edition in English of Pigafetta’s text.

26-27 April 1521
‘On Friday, April twenty-six, Zula, a chief of the island of Matan [Mactan, and island in the Philippines] sent one of his sons to present two goats to the captain-general, and to say that he would send him all that he had promised, but that he had not been able to send it to him because of the other chief Cilapulapu, who refused to obey the king of Spagnia. He requested the captain to send him only one boatload of men on the next night, so that they might help him and fight against the other chief. The captain-general decided to go thither with three boatloads. We begged him repeatedly not to go, but he, like a good shepherd, refused to abandon his flock. At midnight, sixty men of us set out armed with corselets and helmets, together with the Christian king, the prince, some of the chief men, and twenty or thirty balanguais. We reached Matan three hours before dawn. The captain did not wish to fight then, but sent a message to the natives by the Moro to the effect that if they would obey the king of Spagnia, recognize the Christian king as their sovereign, and pay us our tribute, he would be their friend; but that if they wished otherwise, they should wait to see how our lances wounded. They replied that if we had lances they had lances of bamboo and stakes hardened with fire. [They asked us] not to proceed to attack them at once, but to wait until morning, so that they might have more men. They said that in order to induce us to go in search of them; for they had dug certain pitholes between the houses in order that we might fall into them. When morning came forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our thighs, and walked through water for more than two crossbow flights before we could reach the shore. The boats could not approach nearer because of certain rocks in the water. The other eleven men remained behind to guard the boats. When we reached land, those men had formed in three divisions to the number of more than one thousand five hundred persons. When they saw us, they charged down upon us with exceeding loud cries, two divisions on our flanks and the other on our front. When the captain saw that, he formed us into two divisions, and thus did we begin to fight. The musketeers and crossbowmen shot from a distance for about a half-hour, but uselessly; for the shots only passed through the shields which were made of thin wood and the arms [of the bearers]. The captain cried to them, “Cease firing! cease firing!” but his order was not at all heeded. When the natives saw that we were shooting our muskets to no purpose, crying out they determined to stand firm, but they redoubled their shouts. When our muskets were discharged, the natives would never stand still, but leaped hither and thither, covering themselves with their shields. They shot so many arrows at us and hurled so many bamboo spears (some of them tipped with iron) at the captain-general, besides pointed stakes hardened with fire, stones, and mud, that we could scarcely defend ourselves. Seeing that, the captain-general sent some men to burn their houses in order to terrify them. When they saw their houses burning, they were roused to greater fury. Two of our men were killed near the houses, while we burned twenty or thirty houses. So many of them charged down upon us that they shot the captain through the right leg with a poisoned arrow. On that account, he ordered us to retire slowly, but the men took to flight, except six or eight of us who remained with the captain. The natives shot only at our legs, for the latter were bare; and so many were the spears and stones that they hurled at us, that we could offer no resistance. The mortars in the boats could not aid us as they were too far away. So we continued to retire for more than a good crossbow flight from the shore always fighting up to our knees in the water. The natives continued to pursue us, and picking up the same spear four or six times, hurled it at us again and again. Recognizing the captain, so many turned upon him that they knocked his helmet off his head twice, but he always stood firmly like a good knight, together with some others. Thus did we fight for more than one hour, refusing to retire farther. An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the captain’s face, but the latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian’s body. Then, trying to lay hand on sword, he could draw it out but halfway, because he had been wounded in the arm with a bamboo spear. When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him. One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide. When they wounded him, he turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats. Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated, as best we could, to the boats, which were already pulling off. The Christian king would have aided us, but the captain charged him before we landed, not to leave his balanghai, but to stay to see how we fought. When the king learned that the captain was dead, he wept. Had it not been for that unfortunate captain, not a single one of us would have been saved in the boats, for while he was fighting the others retired to the boats. I hope through [the efforts of] your most illustrious Lordship that the fame of so noble a captain will not become effaced in our times. Among the other virtues which he possessed, he was more constant than ever any one else in the greatest of adversity. He endured hunger better than all the others, and more accurately than any man in the world did he understand sea charts and navigation. And that this was the truth was seen openly, for no other had had so much natural talent nor the boldness to learn how to circumnavigate the world, as he had almost done. That battle was fought on Saturday, April twenty-seven, 1521. The captain desired to fight on Saturday, because it was the day especially holy to him. Eight of our men were killed with him in that battle, and four Indians, who had become Christians and who had come afterward to aid us were killed by the mortars of the boats. Of the enemy, only fifteen were killed, while many of us were wounded.

In the afternoon the Christian king sent a message with our consent to the people of Matan, to the effect that if they would give us the captain and the other men who had been killed, we would give them as much merchandise as they wished. They answered that they would not give up such a man, as we imagined [they would do], and that they would not give him for all the riches in the world, but that they intended to keep him as a memorial.’

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Nothing but snow and icy wind

‘Finally reach Camp 3 at 6 a.m., almost totally exhausted. While the others prepare something to eat. I massage Canali’s feet. The pains begin to lessen. Outside the tent there is nothing but snow and icy wind, and so it remains for the entire day. We stay in the tent for just so long and then decide to continue our descent. To remain much longer at this height would be extremely dangerous, especially for Canali. Yet, as we attempt to go a few paces beyond the tent, we are soon driven back, convinced that to descend under such conditions is tantamount to suicide.’ This is from a dramatic diary kept by Riccardo Cassin, one of the most famous mountaineers of the mid-20th century, on the descent from a pioneering a climb - now called Cassin Ridge - on Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. Cassin died 10 years ago today, having reached the ripe old age of 100.

Cassin was born in 1909 in the village of San Vito al Tagliamento, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but now part of Italy, 80km northwest of Trieste. When only three, his father emigrated to Canada where he died within a short time. Cassin left school at the age of 12 to work for a blacksmith; aged 17 he moved to Lecco where he took a job at the steel factory. Although he was interested in boxing for a while, he turned to climbing in his early 20s, and by 1935 had made the first ascent of Piccolissima of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo in the Dolomites. He started climbing on the granite of the Western Alps in 1937, and the following year made one of his most celebrated ascents, Walker Spur on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses in the Mont Blanc massif. He became one of the leading mountaineers of the inter-war period, making a total of 2,500 ascents, of which over 100 were first ascents. In 1940, he married Irma with whom he had three sons.

During the war, Cassin fought with the partisans against the German occupiers, being decorated for his actions in the partisan campaign during the years 1943-45. From 1947 or so, he started designing and producing mountaineering equipment, pitons, ice aces, caribiners and harnesses. In 1954, Cassin felt slighted by Ardito Desio, the chief expedition leader for the Italian Alpine Club, who left him out of the Italian expedition that made the first ascent of K2 in 1954; thereafter, he concentrated on organising and leading expeditions himself. In 1961, he planned the expedition that made the first ascent of (what is now known as) Cassin Ridge on Mount McKinley in Alaska, an achievement that earned him a telegram of congratulation from President Kennedy. In 1967, Cassin’s production firm became a limited company, and, in 1997, the Cassin brand was bought by CAMP, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of equipment for climbing and associated activities. Cassin lived to be 100 years old, dying a few months later on 6 August 2009.

The Guardian obituary has this assessment: ‘Tough, warm and good-humoured, Cassin had an obstinate, down-to-earth approach to the practicalities of climbing, underpinned by shrewd intelligence and an artist’s eye for the most beautiful routes up the most difficult peaks. Cassin’s legacy is a series of new climbs completed around the world before and after the second world war, climbs that still dominate the sport's consciousness as immutable landmarks.’ Further biographical information can also be found at Wikipedia, Summit Post, or in obituaries at The Independent and The New York Times.

Cassin kept a diary of the Mount McKinley expedition in 1961, and filled it in with some notes afterward. The diary was published within a few weeks by Life magazine (25 August 1961), and this is freely available at Googlebooks. Here are a few extracts.

17 July 1961
‘The weather is bad from early morning on; the air is thick with snow and the wind threatens to carry away everything at Camp 1. To the right and to the left of us there are almost sheer walls and we remain tied together at all times. Beneath us awaits 6,000 feet of nothing.

Toward 5 p.m. the snow stops and the storm calms down a bit. We don’t lose a minute. All of us leave at once for Camp 2, carrying food and equipment. We climb on two separate ropes for three hours, three men to each rope.’

18 July 1961
‘We leave very early, carrying two tents, food and other supplies. At about 7 p.m. we finally arrive at the site selected for Camp 3. We set up the tents in the face of freezing winds.’

19 July 1961
‘It’s decided that today we'll set out for no less than the summit. Canali and I are tied together. From the spur we pass slightly leftward to the mouth of a couloir [gorge] filled with snow and ice where we are able to climb more swiftly. It is no longer snowing, but strong winds attack us from the west without respite and make every forward step a torture. Icicles bristle from the rocks on either side and cut our faces. By 10 p.m. we have finally reached the base of the rocks that stand between ourselves and the summit.

We are exhausted and numb from the cold. The temperature is down to 30-40 below zero.

Our crampons [spiked boot-attachments] and boots are frozen together into a single mass, and for the first time Canali complains that his feet are cold.

It is Zucchi now who takes the lead; he struggles desperately and nothing can stand in his way. The summit cannot be far away now. Canali does the best he can to reactivate the circulation in his feet which he knows are little by little freezing up.

The summit is close and an unconquerable will takes hold of us and aids us tremendously in our progress. Finally at 11 p.m. and almost in darkness we reach the mighty summit. Filled with emotion, we throw our arms about each other. The icy wind prevents us from opening our mouths to speak, even for a moment; but in our eyes is written anything that our lips might speak.

But we cannot wait, we must descend again directly. Alippi, I, Canali, Perego, Airoldi and Zucchi, in this order, take leave of the summit after spending barely 15 minutes atop it.

Canali is not well. I ask him what’s wrong and he fails to answer. He begins to vomit, although he has had nothing to eat for 17 hours.

Once off the rocks immediately beneath the summit, we descend the steep couloir, all roped together.

Suddenly I hear sounds of scuffling behind me. I turn about and see Canali falling down the couloir. In an instant I plunge my ice ax into the hard snow, whip the rope once quickly around it and rapidly bring Canali to a halt. I begin to wonder whether he can proceed much further. For safety’s sake I change our order on the rope. I remain last with Canali close to me so as to keep a better eye on him. Several times during the descent of this very steep couloir, I must take pains to prevent him from slipping.

We reach the base of the couloir and begin the traverse to Camp 3. I try to give Canali a couple of vitamin tablets but he refuses them and continues to complain of the terrible cold in his feet.

The wind continues to harangue us without respite and the snow begins to fall again. But we keep on descending as the storm becomes more and more violent.’

20 July 1961
‘Finally reach Camp 3 at 6 a.m., almost totally exhausted. While the others prepare something to eat. I massage Canali’s feet. The pains begin to lessen. Outside the tent there is nothing but snow and icy wind, and so it remains for the entire day. We stay in the tent for just so long and then decide to continue our descent. To remain much longer at this height would be extremely dangerous, especially for Canali. Yet, as we attempt to go a few paces beyond the tent, we are soon driven back, convinced that to descend under such conditions is tantamount to suicide.’

21 July 1961
‘Until 11 a.m. the weather continues to be unspeakable, but then calms down a bit and we set out. But though the wind is no longer tormenting us, the snow begins to fall more and more thickly.

Canali can no longer get into his shoes. There is now no alternative for Canali but to change to a pair of boots lined with reindeer fur; but it is impossible to attach crampons to such boots. They are too soft and the toe folds up, rendering the crampons useless.

Both for Canali and for his companions on the same rope, it is extremely difficult to go on in this manner. Yet there is no other way. Canali’s own efforts at this point are superhuman and heroic, and even Zucchi and myself seem to exceed our own capacity in assisting him.

In this way we finally reach the glacier halfway down the wall.

Alippi, who has given his reindeerskin boots to Canali, is now shod in four pairs of woolen socks, and he too, unable to use crampons, must submit to a continuous martyrdom.

At one point I was standing close to Perego in an effort to ease Alippi down a slope when suddenly the latter slipped and all but dragged the three of us down the wall. Fortunately he fell onto a stretch of soft snow.

We reach Camp 2. Perego, Alippi and Airoldi prefer to bivouac there. But Canali's condition has me greatly worried. Visibility is still zero and, to make matters worse, all of our tracks upward are now concealed by fresh snow.

At this point the spur is extremely narrow and steep, and on both sides the slope falls off perpendicularly. We are forced to grope for foot and handholds under the snow. Fortunately these suffice. The effort is killing. At long last we arrive at Camp 1, completely done in. We know that Base Camp means salvation, yet Canali’s condition is such that we cannot proceed a step further at the moment.

Yet even here our difficulties are not over. None of the provisions left at this camp can be eaten without being heated first, and our stoves no longer function. After a great while we succeed in melting a liter of snow, but nothing else.

I set to work massaging Canali’s feet. The drugs that I’ve given him begin to work. Zucchi and I are despondent at being unable to do more for him. At Base Camp we have everything, but we are too exhausted to get there. We attempt to sleep, but Canali moans throughout the night and we remain awake.’