Naples - fast faded glory...

Naples is quite a shock. Having been in Tuscany in June, Naples feels like a different world - poorer, shabbier. The faded elegance of eighteenth century glamour is covered with graffiti as far as arm can stretch and on virtually every available space. Litter covers the streets and many things look as if nature bids to reclaim it - grasses and weeds emerge from between the cracks even on obviously used buildings. People linger begging - the obvious Roma - but also at a supermarket entrance a young Italian woman in stretched cardigan and sagging T-shirt. The shops are antique - much sold from behind counters (including the bookshops) and every one over-manned. Manned being the right word - even at the hotel, apart from the woman who cleared up at breakfast, they are all men (even the 'chamber person' who brought me a second pillow. It is different here.

I went to the Archaeological Museum which was beautiful - a converted Neopolitan palace with a striking collection from Pompeii. I especially liked the early paintings - so vivid, complex and realistic. The latter true even when dealing with the worlds and behaviour of the gods - they were simply part of the mental furniture of the world. Their stories, our story; however, that was configured in the mind of the beholder (metaphysically or culturally). The mosaics too - refined products carefully constructed out of minute stones and both intimate scene and grand display. I saw the famous mosaic of Alexander pursuing the Persian king in victory and it tastes battle, triumph and fear. There was also rooms of erotica - no shrinking violets here - I especially liked the clay lamp of an ageing scholar reading a text from the underneath of which emerges a (relatively) vast phallus - as if his unconscious dreams of past opportunity, faded hope.

I am in Naples for UN Habitat's World Urban Forum - 11,000 people discussing cities for four days and networking furiously (and moonlighting I expect too).

Comments

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...

Richard Hauser and the evils of Marx

Richard was a distinguished Austrian sociologist who had contributed to the Wolfenden report that led to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England, Wales and Scotland in the late 1960's. I was remembering him on the plane today because I saw a reference to his wife, Hephzibah Menuhin, pianist sister of the violinist Yehudi and human rights activist. I met him after responding to an advertisement in the New Society. He lived in a house in Pimlico, a widower, with a clutch of young people, running an ill-defined (for me) social research/action institute, that I visited several times and to which Richard wanted to recruit me. I was never clear as to what my responsibilities might be and resisted co-option. He was, however, extraordinarily charismatic and as a Jew had fled Austria in 1938 not without receiving permanent damage to his hearing, courtesy of Gestapo interrogation. I vividly remember one story he told me that gives you an idea of his character. He was invit...

Golgonooza

Search This Blog