Italian Escapades, part 1

This story, taking place in 1920, was read by Ulla Bjerne on the Swedish language radio in Finland (YLE) in 1957. She was 67 years old, looking back at her life and she read in a colloquial manner, improvising, I should think, from a written script. (On the picture above, from 1920, she was 30 years.)

I did the transcription and translation from Swedish. I have also split the text in six parts so as not to have anybody fall asleep.

- - -

Italian Escapades

1.

I always believed in fate and still believe everything of importance that happened to me in life was predestined.

How could I expect that, when on New Year's Day 1920 I broke up from a stay of many years in Copenhagen och went to Italy, Destiny awaited me there. Please don't believe that it was in a banale way in the shape of some kind of Italian man popping up. No, it was all much more artful than that.

As my books sold well back then my publisher Olle Dahlberg had not been stingy but given me a check of 5 000 kronor. That was a lot of money back then, the krona was highly valued so one got 25 lire for five kronor. I remember it because all summer long I stayed at one of Capri's most distinguished hotels, La Palma, and paid five kronor for a full board. But first and foremost I was, naturally, in Italy to experience Rome, so upon arrival I rented a room in a private villa on Via Cristina, close to Piazza del Popolo on Monte Pincio.

Since I hadn't come to Italy as a tourist but to stay as long as possible I didn't tire myself with unnecessary visits to all kinds of museums, nor did I look at too many ruins. I let everything come to me in due time and as it happened. The main thing for me was to get started right away with my new life in Italy and experience its people. And I knew the language well enough after having taking Italian classes, so I managed, if poorly, to begin with.

Already on the train to Milan I met some young Italian officers who belonged to the Queen's regiment in Rome. They recommended their own restaurant on the via Nazionale. To get a cotoletta alla milanese or a spaghetti I would every day walk through the most busy streets of Rome. The traffic, compared to the noise and roaring lambrettas of today, seemed almost peaceful.

Among the officers there were cheerful and handsome fellows attired in light blue romantic uniforms and gold braid hats. As the only woman in the group I was properly appreciated but I soon learned that as a female type they didn't understand me at all.

When one of them on a daily basis started harassing me with rather base declarations of love I refrained from joining the circle of light blue cloaks and instead I met some Swedish painters who had come to Rome. They were Leander Engström, Einar Jolin and Ewald Dahlskog.

Also, Frank Heller hade found his way to Rome and he was falling in love with Danish Annie Krogh whom he later married. Incessantly, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes arrived who once a week met at the Circolo Scandinavo where they would chat and drink wine.

For a Scandinavian, the warm sunny Roman spring with a profusion of flowers and blue Chinese wistaria clinging over ancient front doors and garden walls was a seductive experience.

We would make excursions to Tivoli and Gianicolo and stroll around the old neighborhood Trastevere with its winding narrow alleys and old dilapitated palaces and churches. However, foremost in my memory live the Sunday outings with Gladys Heyman and a bunch of Italian young artists.

Beautiful Gladys, who later married the composer Gösta Nystroem, had already since long lived in Rome and studied sculpture. Because of this she knew some Italian artists and as I had come to Italy to meet the locals and not Scandinavians I was soon made part of her gang. Besides Gladys the company consisted of seven happy Italian youngsters and one of them I remember specifically, a giant painter, a gladiator type whose name was Del Neri.

Early Sunday mornings we met and wandered out to some village on the Roman campagna, had breakfast there and dozed off during the late hours in the shade of a tree.

Our merry picnics usually ended at some small trattoria close to via Margutta where we had grilled lamb roast with a tasty and inexpensive wine.

They were very childish those Italians, keen on pranks and larks.

(To be continued)

Almost there

This was a very big overcoming-vertigo-moment for J. He also got great pictures of the villa. And wouldn't you know it, my battery gave up right about here. Maybe I'll go back one day.

Hey, I got my first glimpse. See the rooftop between the trees?

Approaching Casa Malaparte

This is on a scarry off-beat path that ends up in front of a locked gate. It did not look particularly inviting.

Walking towards Casa Malaparte

The walkway to Casa Malaparte, passing Grotta di Matermània. How close would we be able to get?

Manifesto for the beauty of Capri

In Naples I found the book ”Capri Futurista” with this manifesto, written by Italo Tavolato. The manifesto was presented at Il Convegno del Paessagio (The landscape meeting) on Capri in 1922, when building traditions and architecture on the island were discussed.

After this convention it was decided that the traditional ways of building were to remain on the island. The Futurist ways were not approved.

The manifesto doesn't appear particularly futurist in its defending ”of our ancient tradition” ”against the insults of materialistic modernity”. I could use some expert knowledge on this. Anyone..?

Now I would like to know how Tavolato presented his text. Sometimes the futurists would present their arguments in theatrical form.

(I would also like to know more about Tavolato's relation to Ulla Bjerne and what happened when they met on Capri in 1920. I just received a big letter from Åbo Akademi with copies of his letters to her! More soon.)

- - -

MANIFESTO FOR THE BEAUTY OF CAPRI

(Translation from Italian by Johan Kilander)

With graceful easiness, the island rises out of the ancient sea, reaching with agitated plastic forces for the confidential proximities of the sun. Formed out of the poetics of dreams, Capri stages silently on the halcyonic Tyrrhenian. Beauty is the prize of its perfection: on its serene shores birth is given over and over again to the myth of the sun, the pagan soul, the idea of the south.

As love and art, so beauty is sacred while it illuminates the essence of things. In other places, in countries desolated and without grace, the creative forces of nature display themselves in titanic violence or in barbaric individualistic shivers of forms. In the land of the Sirens, though, the formations truthfully portray the essential images and harmonies established by the creator, far away from the transitional, accidental and imperfect, realisations. Here nature doesn’t involve in experiments, but it reveals to us the completed work, the Opus Dei. Favoured by the principle of ingenuous limitation of initiative, the beauty of the south concentrates itself in some typical motives, hence, for instance, the hill of Tuoro replicates the formal aspects of Vesuvio, the mount Solaro those of mount Pellegrino in Palermo, the Faraglioni at Capri the Sicilian Faraglioni. The conformity and the concordance of forms generate a perfect harmony where the occasional particularity serves the dominant effect of the whole.

[…]

The musical harmony of nature’s formations induces serenity in the spirit of the meridional people. Of the same divine substance are both man and things made. Under the meridional sun, all nature’s creations, men and stones and works, share the same somatic sense.

In the architecture of the villages of the island, the thought of the archaic giant Thales, to whom even the stone were alive, becomes visible. Pondering in the dream, although manifest, are these cubic houses, inserted in the sweet movement of vale and hill. Those grew, concrete and together, as the likes of vegetal creations. As the Doric column expresses to perfection the proportions of the human body, these huts turn into organic structures and body parts. Here even architecture has corporality, and it’s a genuine manifestation of the sense of vitality.

With harmony of the substances achieved the senses make themselves organs of the thought: the meridional beauty gives us access to the sensual knowledge of the spirit.

Today more then ever, it’s all about defending this beauty, the core of our ancient tradition and that which makes us susceptible to humanitas, against the insults of materialistic modernity, mechanical and industrial.

Döderhamn

When Ulla Bjerne died in 1969, her and Léon's home (link in Swedish only) in Lovisa was donated to the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland (Finlands svenska författareförening). Finnish authors or poets who write in Swedish can apply for a grant to stay there with no rent for three years.

On the picture above from 1940 Ulla is standing in her and Léon's home next to a 1918 painting by Einar Jolin. The legendary Danish silent movies actor Nils Asther is knealing at her feet so it's probably painted in Copenhagen. Ulla smokes the pipe like in many other pictures of her.

At Åbo Akademi in Turku (Finland) I have gone through Ulla Bjerne's archives of letters and manuscripts on several occasions, always kindly assisted by the people working there. The collection has been a treasure for me, offering new directions in my research, for instance leading me to Capri to learn more about Ulla's visits here, specifically about her friendship with the Italian author Italo Tavolato, who I just recently learned was part of the Futurist movement.

Oh, and I've been to Söderhamn a number of times. That's where we have our common roots, where my grand grandfather and Ulla's father, who were brothers, lived.

Söderhamn is also where Ulla grew up. She called the small town Döderhamn (pun in Swedish; Söderhamn means ”South harbor” but if you change to Döderhamn the name becomes ”Death harbor”).