The story of Manius Papirius Lentulus & Massimo has been totally rewritten (as a draft, of course.) You can read it here.
α
The Samnite: “What are you talking about?”
Giorgio: “Well, you know that novel we were discussing here in our living room a couple of months ago.”
The Samnite: “You mean the story on both Ancient Britannia & today’s Rome?”
Giorgio: “Exactly. It foresees at least two universes, but I would say infinite ones, as Giordano Bruno had imagined – the one burned by the Catholic Church in the late Counter Reformation Renaissance – & as modern physicists imagine today too.”
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Ok, readers, words are enough.
All the best,
MoR
[*enjoying Brazil- Germany on TV, and feeling sorry for the humiliation of a great soccer team. They have to react, damn! Massimo, soccer ex promising star: “Their defence is too weak, although it has always been like that …” Giorgio: Brazil 1-7 Germany. Astonishing. Not that I am not glad for Germany, although I am thinking of those favelas where soccer is the salt of life …*]
Italian American Rosaria has written on Facebook today:
“To our veterans:
You were willing to pay the ultimate price to defend the principles your country stands on. We are glad you came back to your home and friends. We are glad your life was spared, so that we can hear your story, of combat, of living away from the familiar, of worrying each minute of each day if you, or your comrades were going to make it out alive, if the war was worth all the pain and resources and damages it caused.
It is that story of courage and fear and …”
ψ
I had replied in my usual dialectic-moronic way:
[paraprased, since I can’t find the original words in Facebook, MoR]:
“Stai parlando dello sbarco in Normandia, oggi, credo. Anche io come italiano sono contento di quello sbarco anche se noi eravamo i nemici. In realtà gli italiani capirono molto prima dei tedeschi che Mussolini era diventato lo schiavo di un pazzo e fu per questo che se ne liberarono. Molti criticarono l’Italia per aver lasciato l’alleato germanico. Ma chi fu più etico, i tedeschi che obbedirono al male fino alle fine, o gli italiani, che rifiutarono il male?
Forse è un dilemma etico insolubile …[e poi un antico romano avrebbe fatto la stessa cosa dei tedeschi, ndr]”
“Only one thing, Rosaria Williams, since the Romans are stubborn. I’ll speak in your maternal language.
Una volta nel mio blog parlai (it, eng) delle Torri Gemelle, the Twin Towers, viste dai tunisini e dagli arabi. Quacuno fu sorpreso? Non so. Ma tu dicesti:
“This post brings a new perspective to the problem of 9/11”
What is so new (I raise my voice for the sake of a discussion that will not occur, I shoot too many posts) dear Italian American woman?
For heaven’s sake, is it THAT hard to see things placing ourselves into the others’ boots?
Gli Americani pensano ai loro caduti, ok, ma perché non ai caduti (to name just a few) inglesi, canadesi, indiani, tedeschi, marocchini ecc. ? E RUSSI? The Russians? 20 milioni di morti! Non saranno loro, forse, ad aver sconfitto Hitler, mi domando? PLus, why don’t Americans care too about the deaths of the losers? (Italians, most of the French, the Germans, the Japanese?) Because, as protestants, the losers are in hell? [changing the text altogether, MoR]
US President Barack Obama flanked by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski attends the Ceremony at Sword Beach to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Allied invasion at Normandy. Gettyimages, click for source
Speaking of Italy, my country was accepted this year in Normandy for the first time.
I used to play a few of those outstanding variations on the piano, 40 years ago although Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier was my playground.
I luvSokolov’s performance though I deem Maria Tipo to be a bit better (if only she danced more: Bach danses)
[Maria tipo btw was awarded the “Diapason d’Or” for her Goldberg Variations recording]
ψ
[Fulvia (100% real): “Too ambitious, Giorgio, I am afraid for your health, dear man. C’mon, I mean: you stopped playing for 40 years …”]
ψ
3) Making a novel out of his blog which has been a terrific wisdom journey that possibly confused readers but did greatly enriched he who is writing.
[Flavia (80% fictional) : “You pallonaro romano, swollen head!! False prophets btw clearly disconcert those who meet them, which doesn’t necessarily imply they’re unhappy. The prophets of malchance. Ah! What kind of perverse reward do you get from all that???”]
“You just shut the fuckup” (non ehm fictional)
Rude, ok, but not in slightly Romanesco-spoken Italian.
(its regularity, incidentally, not diminishing its effectiveness)
😈 😳 😳 ]
Performing. How
Performing, in MoR’s book (in everybody’s lol) means enacting before an audience.
An uploaded YouTube video – where he who is writing can be seen and heard – is a sure output.
Whether the video will be shot in MoR’s studio or on a stage, with just one person or another guitarist or whatever interacting and jazzing back, it remains to be seen.
One post a week
(at least)
Thus having been fussily said, and needing MoR some more time to lazily reflect & relax (otium) in order not to fail reaching 1) 2) 3):
We’ll post once every 7 days, id est Man of Roma might even post repost one / three / ten times ecc a day should he feel like it, although every seventh day starting from today – unless the unwanted guest arrives – and article will appear.
All the best
From Mediterranean West
ψ
Related posts from the MoR (on the connection between relax and creativity)
Massimo:“Giovanni told me it’s because of the Germans.” Extropian: “What??” Massimo: “He met two extremely charming German ladies at Lo Spartito in via Cavour.”
“Plus he was in that store in order to buy a real gem: The Golberg Variations BWV 988 by Johann Sebastian Bach for guitar by Hungarian genius József Eötvös”
Fulvia*rolling her eyes*: “Got it. He’s delighted by Bach & by the Germans (of the female kind, surtout.) So he went home and, still under the spell of ehm German Kultur, played the Variations and all …”
A silly story I wrote over at The Critical Line, where Richard, a witty lawyer from London, entertains his guests with his vast knowledge and adorable English humour.
Richard though has a problem.
He’s terribly profound in mathematics and so are many of his guests who seem to share the same horrible contagion.
But, it’d be fair to say, I amthe oneto have a big problem, and, what is this tale but a burst of frustration because of my mathematical ineptitude?
The Tale of Manius
Britannia, 526 CE, in a parallel (and almost identical) universe.
The Western Roman Empire has collapsed. Angles, Saxons and Jutes are invading the Roman province of Britannia from the East. All continental Roman soldiers have gone – but the Romano-Celtic in the West are resisting bravely. Only Manius Papirius Lentulus from Roma has stayed. He lives with the barbarians but risks nothing…
An image of the Roman Ghetto. The famous Giggetto restaurant on the left with Augustus’ Porticus Octaviae in the background
“Who’s more Roman than the Roman Jews? Some of us date back from the times of Emperor Titus [39-81 AD]” – Davide Limentani told me in the early 80s.
Limentani was (and perhaps still is) at the head of a big wholesale and retail glass and silver company in Rome. I had phoned him three days earlier for an interview that had to be published on the Roman daily La Repubblica.
I remember a lovely spring day in the old alleys of the Roman Ghetto, with swallows crying over a glorious blue sky. He was sitting at his desk in the aisle of an impressively ramified, catacomb-like store in via Portico d’Ottavia 47 (look at its stripped-down sign above,) crammed with an immense variety of crystal, pottery…
[Draft. We’ll stop posting for a few days, this blog crying badly for graphical renovation]
A Berber jeweler,
in today’s Subura
Not far from our house and from Rome’s ancient Subura there’s a little shop where a Berber Tuareg – a tall, dark-skinned man of a majestic beauty – makes splendid jewels that perpetuate a multimillenial tradition – married, inter alia, with an equally beautiful woman from Northern Italy.
ψ
The Samnite: “An ‘acquired’ Roman, one might say.” The Tobacconist *nodding, with a radiant smile*
A Berber metaphysician
2,000 years ago
Saint Augustine and Saint Monica, his mother. 1846 painting by French Ary Scheffer (Wikipedia, click for credits and larger image)
Another ‘acquired’ Roman – born almost 2000 years earlier (and Berber too from his mother’s side) was Augustine of Hippo.
More precisely, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis (354 – 430 CE,) his family having been legally Roman for more than a century.
Augustinus didn’t make jewels but he almost certainly wore some very similar to those made in the small shop of the Monti rione.
The African sage ruminated, instead, his vast soul tormented.
Augustine praying in his study, by Sandro Botticelli, 1480 (detail.) Chiesa di Ognissanti, Florence, Italy. Credits and entire painting
From such torment stemmed The Confessions and most of all The City of God – two visionary works that only a Berber-Punic Algerian could conceive.
The myth of Rome was nearly destroyed – the City of God, metaphysically celestial, going way beyond the Urbs beacon of the Orb (though Rome adapted and survived, licking her wounds.)
Governess of a billion souls (of nations no more), with a Pontifex Maximus, Francesco, shepherd at last and close to the poor (like Augustine), Rome the eternal looks today at the greatest intellectual of the first millennium CE (on this side of the planet.)
With deep love and profound respect.
ψ
We, in our lowest pochezza, nurture the same feelings.
Without forgetting, allow us, that our roots are, and remain, pagan.
Nota. L’idea mistico terrena di Roma, cemento ideologico dell’Impero Romano, venne indebolita, e l’impero con essa, dall’esplosione creativa di Agostino.
Ma l’idea non morì (e mai morirà).
ψ
Si pensi solo che gli ultimi due imperi del continente europeo dissoltisi con la prima guerra mondiale erano guidati da uno Zar, russo, e da un Kaiser, tedesco. Sia Zar che Kaiser significano Cesare, ovvero:
Gaius Julius Caesar, Pontifex Maximus e iniziatore dell’impero romano.
[We’ll stop posting for a few days, this blog crying badly for graphical renovation]
Gioiellere berbero,
nella Suburra, oggi
Non lontano da casa nostra e dalla Suburra c’è un negozietto dove un berberoTuareg – uomo alto, dalla pelle scura e di maestosa bellezza – fa gioielli meravigliosi che continuano una tradizione plurimillenaria (tra l’altro essendosi unito a una donna anch’essa molto bella, del Nord Italia).
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The Samnite: “Un romano ‘acquisito’, si potrebbe dire”. The Tobacconist *annuendo, un sorriso luminoso*
Pensatore Berbero,
2000 anni fa
Saint Augustine and Saint Monica, his mother. 1846 painting by French Ary Scheffer (Wikipedia, click for credits and larger image)
‘Acquisito’ lo fu un altro romano di quasi 2000 anni fa, berbero anch’egli da parte di madre, Agostino d’Ippona. Per la precisione, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis (354 – 430 d.C), di famiglia legalmente romana, appunto, da più di un secolo.
Augustinus non faceva gioielli (ne avrà solo indossati di simili a quelli del Tuareg di Monti).
Augustinus in verità pensava. E si travagliava.
Augustine praying in his study, by Sandro Botticelli, 1480 (detail.) Chiesa di Ognissanti, Florence, Italy. Credits and entire painting
Da tale travaglio nacquero Le Confessioni e soprattutto La Città di Dio, due libri geniali che solo un punicoberbero algerino poteva scrivere.
ll mito di Roma ne fu quasi distrutto – la Città di Dio metafisicamente celeste andava oltre l’urbe faro terreno dell’orbe (ma Roma si adattò e sopravvisse, leccandosi le ferite).
Governatrice di un miliardo di anime (non più di popoli), con un Pontifex Maximus, Francesco, finalmente pastore e vicino alla povera gente (come Augustinus), Roma l’eterna guarda oggi al più grande intellettuale del primo millennio d.C.
Con amore profondo, e con rispetto.
ψ
Noi, nella nostra infima pochezza, proviamo gli stessi sentimenti.
Pur non dimenticando, ci sia concesso, che le nostre radici sono erestano pagane.
Nota. L’idea mistico terrena di Roma, cemento ideologico dell’Impero Romano, venne indebolita, e l’impero con essa, dall’esplosione creativa di Agostino.
Ma l’idea non morì (e mai morirà).
ψ
Si pensi solo che gli ultimi due imperi del continente europeo dissoltisi con la prima guerra mondiale erano guidati da uno Zar, russo, e da un Kaiser, tedesco. Sia Zar che Kaiser significano Cesare:
Giulio Cesare, Pontifex Maximus e iniziatore dell’impero.
“Now that I am finishing the damned thing I realise that diary-writing isn’t wholly good for one, that too much of it leads to living for one’s diary instead of living for the fun of living as ordinary people do.”
What is said above applies equally to blog-writing / writing tout court since, when dealing with passions the challenge is always the right measure.
The ancient Romans developed the fine art of cuisine so that the delights of life were augmented, but there was undeniably gluttony in some milieus.
I remember that, much younger, I stopped composing music since it had become an obsessive pastime that basically swallowed me up.
Life should be harmonious. A single part should not devour the rest (as Benedetto Croce, master of harmony, reminds us.)
Benedetto Croce (1866 – 1952), filosofo italiano
Christopher: You wrote: “Life should be harmonious. A single part should not devour the rest”
If everyone lived according to this precept there would be no civilisation and we would all be living short and brutish lives.
MoR: “Hard to say, although my post regards happiness more than creativity in the arts & sciences. Besides, creativity seems related to both balance and unbalance (take Vincent van Gogh etc.).
You possibly suggest that big creators lived disharmony in their life. Frank Lloyd Wright devoted *most* of his time to architecture, Einstein to physics etc.
Ok, but one has to see how these people actually spent their days.
I remember a Roman top advertising agency, at the end of the 80’s, where extremely well-paid copywriters and art directors were walking around in robes and were sunbathing on an elegant terrace overlooking the Parioli district’s skyline (where the rich and famous live, or lived).
I was puzzled at first because these creativi seemed to do everything except what they were paid for. The agency’s output was though brilliant and rivalled Milan’s creativi (the best we’ve got in this country).
One often needs quiet and relaxation to produce ideas, which suggests ‘balance’.
Moving to bigger examples, Beethoven’s music conveys to me the image of an unhappy person.
There are many elements of anger, of obsession, in his music. His life was almost certainly disharmonious: Beethoven’s father was an alcoholic; Karl, the composer’s nephew, whose custody Beethoven had obtained, attempted suicide. And so forth.
Johann Sebastian Bach aged 61 (1685 – 1750). Click for source
Bach’s music on the contrary (with its powerfully abstract architectures that unfold like a majestic river flowing) is much more enriching consoling, imo, and well fits the image of the patient German artisan, whose methodical, quiet work was conceived as a service to God. Bach was a musician but also a good Christian, a good father, a good husband and a good teacher – which suggests harmony of life.
Which doesn’t mean many breakthroughs weren’t the product of unbalanced lives. The commonplace of the deranged genius is more than a commonplace imo, though it’s not my post’s point.
Cheri: “Your point is well taken. My grandfather always told me that moderation is the key to a balanced and contented life.”
MoR: “Hi Cheri! I like roots (as you probably like your Jewish or whatever roots), this blog being a search for roots from a past that, I believe, is still working on us Latins, though not only on us.
Enjoying the pleasures of life without excess, drinking without getting drunk, a life outside compulsions or obsessions – I am often obsessing / obsessed – is not only wise, it is part of a lifestyle, and an element of grace.
To me this is particularly evident in the French, the Latin people I possibly love most.
Neapolitan Benedetto Croce, ‘master of harmony’ …
Incidentally, the Olympian beauty seeping through his works is probably of Hellenic origin, and, like the Hellenic miracle arose from formidable difficulties (if we may compare a huge thing to a small one) Croce’s serene attitude and sharp mind came at a hard price: at 17, on vacation with his parents and his sole sister, their house being wiped out by an earthquake he barely survived and remained alone.
Potsoc: “I agree with Cheri. Many creators were, indeed, unhappy people but as many had a relatively simple and happy life. The examples given speak by themselves.”
MoR: “Someone must have already done it, Potsoc le Canadien, but it’d be interesting to systematically analyse the biographies of creators (in both arts & sciences) in search of a correlation between creative intelligence and lifestyles.
My post was more about the gratification from a life with nicely distributed, non compulsive, activities, but one can blabber a bit and wonder if Balzac, for example, was compulsive in his writing.
He may have been, but his work – so vital, energetic & rich with an immense number of vividly depicted characters – suggests a life not spent exclusively on a desk with a pen in his hand.
A correlation between scientists’ lifestyles and their innovation level seems much harder to establish. They (seem to me to) reveal less about themselves.
ALL this, in any case, is a-blowing in the wind, Paul.”
Potsoc: “I guess nobody wrote a Ph.D thesis on the subject and I will not write it.”
MoR: “Ah ah ah, right Paul 🙂 Getting stuffy, I know.”
Sledpress: “The need for quiet and mental space in which to be creative can’t be denied, but does that support an argument against being too obsessional as a creative person?
I can only write fiction (or songs, or music) when I’m in an obsessional fugue, and it is bitter for me, because I want to have at least something of a life otherwise — probably few people are willing to have their spouse or friend snarl “GO AWAY!” should they be so unfortunate as to come ask about dinner or the water bill when one is creating.
But if I put the chisel down, it’s cold when I pick it back up, and what I wrote mocks me. (Blog posts and so on don’t count; those are five finger exercises.) I can’t start the fire again if I’ve let myself be jollied into putting it out so as to make nice on the rest of the human race. And if I don’t create something, who cares if I lived? It won’t matter.
I’ve already lost the thread of so many good ideas (maybe not lightning genius, but worth something) that I could spend the rest of my life in mourning, and for what in the end? People who really were only bored or wanted me to do them something. I vote for the obsessed people, myself.”
MoR: “You say, Sled:
“I can only write fiction (songs, music) when I’m in an obsessional fugue, and it is bitter for me, because I want to have at least something of a life otherwise …”
“If I don’t create something, who cares if I lived? It won’t matter”
Well, if creation & obsession necessarily go together with us, and creativity is our top priority, let us embrace obsession, why not.
Besides, obsession, as far as I can tell, may produce compellingly emotional results etc.
As for my experience, the insignificant (though much important to me) things I have written or composed were produced in both situations: within a quiet, balanced routine of life; or via obsession, pain, sacrificing the rest.
I sometimes think that, had I more discipline, I’d be able to kill two birds with a stone and reach a synthesis.
What I mean, I’m witnessing an example of creative discipline in my neighborhood, where a certain Paolo Buonvino is leaving a couple of blocks away from my home (it, en wikies.)
Italian from Sicily, conductor, composer of film scores, Buonvino’s music is extremely good, Sicilian-sunny and much appreciated. I exchanged a few words with him. He gave me some inspired advice on related-to-music stuff. Flavia and I have visited him once at his home.
In short, he’s the classic example of one who, compelled to compose scores at appalling speed, is nonetheless able to enhance productivity by finding the right breaks, walking about the rione, enjoying something at a bar (an ice-cream, a coffee, a cake) or watching trees or the sky on a park bench.
You see him around, always relaxed, a mobile at his ear, talking quietly with loads of people (this amazing ease with human relationships being typical of many Italian from the Mezzogiorno.)
So Paolo Buonvino, despite high productivity rates, manages to live quite well. A gift from heaven? Hard to say but some creative discipline should be taught when very young, I believe.”
Sledpress: “There is a trapdoor when someone has asked a creative person to produce something. I say this from experience.
Somehow it frees you to be both creative and human. I don’t know how this works. Only that knowing someone *wants* what you can create substitutes for the energy that otherwise only comes from obsession and a sort of rage against the people who don’t understand why you are working so hard to produce a composition or poem or story, however minor.”
Potsoc: “I moderate a group called “Imaginations”, each week we meet around a theme, different each week, and we write a short piece on the week’s theme that we will read to the group the following week. It’s much fun…and work but we all enjoy it and it has been going for most of ten years with a core of 5 steady participants and another 5 or 6 that come and go.”
MoR: “Sledpress, Paul, you two imply that creating for someone ‘waiting’ for your production can release the pressure?
I agree, an act of communication, then, almost always good. When I was writing the Manius so-to-say novel my motivation were you, the bloggers of my circle, ‘waiting’ (so I felt) for each new installment and the resulting fun, as Paul says, the jokes that we shared etc.
When a publisher told me one day that he was interested, the magic vanished. I tried to continue, but felt only the obsession (plus depression for my failure, lack of discipline.) I quit writing.
Potsoc: “Being approached by a publisher is an altogether other proposition, I agree. Sharing with friends is just plain fun.”
Sledpress: “Yes! You are touching on something that I meant.
If a publisher dangled money in front of me I might still be motivated. Because money is something squeezed out of one’s bloodstream (unless one is one of the one-per-cent who wallow in it), so it is like enthusiasm.
However the biggest fun was an experience like yours, of people hanging on for the next installment to find out what happened!!!
Stephen King writes of something like this in his classic novella “The Body” which became the film Stand By Me.
The pathetically young kid with the gun in this clip — earlier the film shows him telling stories around a kids’ camp fire with everyone asking him what comes next, what comes next. King later called this “the *gotta.*” “I gotta find out what happens.”
I miss having people who cared about that, which happened to me for five minutes.”
MoR: “You’ve said, Sled:
“the biggest fun was an experience like yours, of people hanging on for the next installment to find out what happened!!! I miss having people who cared about that, which happened to me for five minutes.”
When was that and where? Can we reach it?”
Sledpress: “Oh, that was my silly detective novel, an inner circle read every chapter as I wrote it — the way Dickens used to work, releasing installments before the story was all set down. Then as I wrote, with caricatures of everyone who is politically active around here, I looked forward to the public consternation it would cause, another incentive.
And oh yes, I made it look as if the author was a local newspaper editor who had been a real jerk to me a couple of times — it was easy to lift little quirks of style from his editorials. People pestered him about it for years.
Along the way it let me say and even discover a lot about my outlook on the whole “res publica”, the “public thing” that constitutes local political life, which both attracts and repels me — so many people trying to be important, yet actually doing important things despite their flaws. It is really the only thing I ever finished.
Everything else I ever did disappointed me and I threw it over or put it in the drawer, but I had people asking for this, so I had to finish it, amateurish as it may be. I wrote like hell for two months and was burned-out for two more but I wish I could do it again. Only I’m afraid to yell GO AWAY at the few friends I really have.”
MoR: “Wow. Quite a good review. I’ll read the book as soon as I can, or rather buy it (I also missed your poems over at your blog: my next comment)
In the meanwhile, a portion of the review, to the benefit of readers:
“Is this story (MURDER ACROSS THE BOARD by *******) of local interest? Sure. But the writing here is so good it is irrelevant. This is just as good a murder mystery as you will find anywhere, with a compelling story and clever writing to match. The story is truly twisted […] and the murder-mystery here is fun and energetic. No one is who they seem in this fast read, and as the story unfolds, the plot rolls along like a freight-train. What may have started as a goof on some friends or a dig at local politics has turned into a clever, engaging page-turner.”
Sledpress: “Mind you, another reader said it was cliched and awful. Then again, the point was to throw every trope of gritty detective stories into a story about local politics. Looking back I thought it needed tightening, but I’ve always hugged that one rave review to my heart.
I’m editing the pseudonym in your comment just because it really did piss off a number of people, one of whom is a habitual troll, and I’d prefer they didn’t find this blog too easily.”
Sledpress: “Oops, I was on a dashboard when I wrote the above reply and thought we were talking on my page. Oh well — if you wouldn’t mind “asterisking” the author name. Trolls shouldn’t find you either. ”
MoR: “Well, there are good and there are bad reviews, always. Who the hell cares?
I have ‘asterisked’ the author’s name, as you asked me.
And, tell this troll I am ready here waiting.”
An image of the Roman Ghetto. The famous Giggetto restaurant on the left with Augustus’ Porticus Octaviae in the background 
I remember a lovely spring day in the old alleys of the 
Man of Roma 