Born in Dublin in 1899, Elizabeth Bowen moved in elite literary
circles and is perhaps best known for her novel The Death of the
Heart. In this memoir, first published in 1960, she describes with
a novelist's touch her experience of a season spent in the Eternal
City. The result is most emphatically not a guidebook - the
potential tourist should look elsewhere - but rather an atmospheric
meditation in which she shares her 'loverlike ambiguous taste for
Rome'. The book takes some getting into, but perseverance is
rewarded with an intriguing collection of observations on
architecture and history. Anyone who has walked through the Forum
pondering its lost ancient wonders will be moved by Bowen's
description: 'Dregs of echoes have seeped down into the cracks in
the sunken pavements; the ripple of excavations up the long valley
is glacier-still, now and for evermore. The glare from above, so
annulling elsewhere, falls here on nothing it can annul: rather, it
gives void porticoes, unequal columns, sagging ascents of steps
additional hardness, which becomes them.' Elsewhere Bowen considers
the effects of Roman reclining on the digestive system, and evokes
life in ancient Rome after dark, when the wagons and chariots
prohibited during the day would be unleashed on a city attempting
to sleep. She is equally marvellous when imagining the duty of a
Vestal Virgin, painting a vivid picture of a young woman struggling
to stave off unconsciousness while 'hypnotized by the flame's
flutter' and listening to the furtive night-time noises of an
insomniac metropolis. Much more than mere 'scribblings on the
margins' of a guidebook, Bowen's reflections on Rome are both
erudite and idiosyncratic. Now available to a wider audience in
this Vintage Classics edition, they will awaken a new appreciation
of an eternally fascinating city. (Kirkus UK)
Elizabeth Bowen's account of a time spent in Rome between February and Easter is no ordinary guidebook but an evocation of a city - its hisotry, its architecture and, above all, its atmosphere. She describes the famous classical sites, conjuring from the ruins visions of former inhabitants and their often bloody activities. She speculates about the immense noise of ancient Rome, the problems caused by the Romans' dining posture, and the Roman temperament, which blended 'constructive will with supine fatalism'. She envies the Vestal Virgins and admires the Empress Livia, who survived a barren marriage.
She evokes the city's moods - by day, when it is characterized by golden sunlight, and at night, when the blaze of the moon 'annihilates history, turning everything into a get together spectacle for Tonight.
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