Statuesque Intrigue

Got statues and sculptures on the brain today, thinking about my upcoming trip to India and the first port of call, the Caves of Elephanta to see the large, rock-cut Hindu sculptures there.

We love statues as symbols, they give us something to hold onto, if only metaphorically. Hegel said that the statue of an altar was the metaphysical crux of a church as it was the presence of the deity, surrounded by the sacred space of the cathedral, surrounded by the congregation of paintings and stained-glass windows which view the statue.

I like statues out in the open air, al fresco, if you will, and Italy is full of them. However, upon reflecting about Italy today, three of them stick out in my mind that I would advise you to see, should you happen to be traveling to Italy any time soon. For me, these three statues capture the essence of what is appealing to me about Italy as a whole.

The first one is on the Campo di Fiori (the Field of Flowers) in Rome. This is a great piazza to people watch on, and for buying flowers, of course. However, the figure who presides over the Campo di Fiori is a bit ominous as it is none other than Giordano Bruno, who was burned in 1600 for heretical beliefs about the nature of Good and Evil. Bruno, as Stephen Dedalus says, "was badly burned" for his beliefs, something that seems so foreign to us now, but is actually quite recent in our history. Many a good man and woman have perished at the stake for their beliefs. What is interesting to me about Bruno is his idea of coincidentia oppositorum, or the concept that opposites attract. For Bruno, however, this is merely an illusion that there is actually something that can be opposite to another. Instead, there are merely two ends of a the same spectrum and ultimately like a wormhole in space and time, when the spectrum is bent, the opposite ends are actually the same. 


Something similar is described in the Phaedo of Plato when the friends of Socrates feel both pleasure and pain at the knowledge that Socrates is to die that day. Plato introduces the myth of Aesop that   pleasure and pain are like a saftey pin and are joined by a single joint and indeed are merely two ends of a single entity, beyond pleasure and pain. Well, when Bruno takes his idea to the logical conclusion, the granddaddy of opposites, Good and Evil, you can see where he got in a bit of tiff with the local Church, that being the Roman Catholic one... When people ask me about Italy, it is this strange attraction of opposites that comes to mind. Italy is one, gigantic living contradiction, but it works. I have a feeling that my trip to India will show me this contradiction exponentially.


So, Bruno's statue stands there mutely amongst the throngs of lascivious Roman men hunting unsuspecting American tourists for wallets and "romance" and reminds us of the odd chemistry that binds Italy together.


The second statue is Dante's but not in Florence,  rather in Verona. Verona's main attraction is the famous balcony from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, so it is almost ironic to find Dante's statue there. Go see the balcony for sure, it is worth the spectacle with graffiti messages all over it and the statue of poor Giulietta's breast rubbed endlessly for good luck and "romance". But, Dante serves as a reminder of the fact that Italy is the source of so much inspiration, such as the backdrop for the Elizabethean play. Italy has been part of the Grand Tour for artists, writers, and lovers long before the Grand Tour was even a concept, and much, much longer before Italy was even a country instead a bunch of territorial city-states at constant war with each other, centuries and milennia before Victor Emmanuel ever conceived of "Italia" as a country. So, visiting Verona, give ol' Dante a nod after you payed tribute to the "second-best" surrogate bard of Italy.


Finally, what would Italy be without Savonarola? "Who's that?" you ask. Well, he's the guy whose memorial that millions of tourists to Florence walk over every year without ever noticing. Next time you are in Florence, and you happen to be on the Piazza della Signoria, mistakenly looking at the fake David colossus (the real one's not there, but at the Academia), look down. In front of the ducal palace and next to the Uffizi is a commemorative disk that tells of the fate of the Monk on the Edge of Nervous Breakdown. Savonarola had his moment before he hit the flames. He preached a life of piety mixed with poverty, which worked for the über-rich Florentines, for a while, that is.


Savonarola got everyone worked up into a frenzy in Florence and had them stripping themselves of their Venus in Furs, paintings, rich linens, and most notably, their leather-bound books. Savonarola was the MC for many a public book-burning festivity to purge the city of its secular leanings. As I say, this worked for a while. Until the Florentines started missing their luxury goods. Then, as the fickle crowd often turns, they looked for something else to burn instead of the expensive wares and words. They found a crazy, gesticulating Monk from Ferrara that would do just fine, Savonarola himself. In the blink of an eye, the wealthy Florentines got religion in their material goods and decided to make a mark on the Piazza with Savonarola's ashes. Apparently, the crowd, which only a few months before had cheered on the Monk, was now charing him. The public burning was reportedly stopped several times so that the executioner could mix up Savonarola's charred remains, and then relighting the pyre to ensure that not a single earthly, material remain remained. If nothing else, those wascily Tuscans were thorough.


The statue of Savonarola, however, is in his birthplace, Ferrara. It is an eerie, eerie statue. With arms outstretched and a wild look of possession, you can almost hear the enchanted Monk delivering one of his (in)famous sermons that would wind up a crowd as frenzied as if they were listening to Paganini himself on the violin. I remember seeing this statue on a very foggy, autumn afternoon while visiting Ferrara from nearby Bologna, where I was living at the time. Ferrara is rumored to be a place of secret, dark magic, and seeing Savonarola's wild gaze stare out into the misty distance, I am willing to believe.