ETERNAL ROME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25735, 5 January 1945, Page 2

ETERNAL ROME

TREASURE HOUSE OF WORLD

DUNEDIN SOLDIER’S VISIT

Though the rigours of the Italian campaign have increased with the onset of winter, members of the 2nd N.Z.E.F. have found some compensation for their hardships by ' visiting the great historical sights which abound in many parts of the country. Most New Zealanders spend their leave periods in this way, and an interesting account of a four days’ visit to Rome is contained in a letter received from a former member of the staff of the Otago Daily Times. “ I took organised tours to see the most important places,” he writes, ‘‘The only time I retraced my steps was to the Vatican museum and galleries. They are the treasure house of the world, with miles of marble corridors and acres of frescoes, mosaics, and paintings. The beauty of some of the old masterpieces is enough to make one weep. But when you sit in the Sistine Chapel and gaze at the ceiling by Michelangelo it fills you with awe—the terrific power of the man’s genius. They show you the mutilated torso of the Belvedere, magnificently muscled, headless, armless, legless; and they tell you how Michelangelo, after he was stricken with blindness, used to have himself brought to it so that he could run his hands over it, feeling the details of a craftsmanship which he felt to be greater than his own. The Pantheon and St. Peter’s “We went to the Castel of San Angelo—originally Hadrian’s tomb, but later made into a prison and a fortress, and then to the Pantheon, with its walls and mosaics almost untouched by the batterings of 2000 years. It is the best preserved monument of antiquity I have seen. It was the hall of the Roman pagan gods, later purified and dedicated to the Christian religion. We were walking round it when a concealed organ began quietly to play Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria.’ I won’t forget the impression it made. “In St. Peter’s, which we next visited, there is a perspective which is too vast to register all at once—so vast and so richly adorned with many types of marbles and other stones, with the statuary groups £>f the Papal tombs and -the mosaics. One thing that impressed me here—and the impression deepened as I saw more of the churches —was that all this was to the glory of Peter and Paul, the saints and the succession of Popes. It is almost as if Rome was still a pagan city, with her pagan deities renamed as saints, almost obscuring the highest worship of the omnipotent Jupiter-God. It seemed to me that the Temple at Jerusalem was a far more direct expression of man’s aspiration to his Creator. Rome of the Seven Hills

“We drove through the gardens of the Roman princely families up to. the Janiculum Hill, and beside Garibaldi’s equestrian statue we looked out over the celebrated panorama of the city. Before us lay Rome of the Seven Hills, mists veiling their sides and hiding the buildings, but revealing the trees and giving an impression of what the city must have been like centuries ago. We had seen the paintings of Raphael and how he introduced time and again in different guises the portrait of his mistress, La Fornarina —the Baker’s Daughter. Now we saw the Bakdir's house and the little Gothic windows under the eaves where he made his trysts. “We walked among the pines and cpyresses of the English Cemetery, and found the stone where Shelley’s heart, is buried, ‘Cor Cordium.’ His great friend, the adventurous Trelawney, rests beside him. Elsewhere in the cemetery there is a stone with no name on it, and an inscription, the saddest I have seen: ‘Here lies all that is mortal of a young English poet who.. died broken-hearted by the malice of his enemies, and who desired that on his tomb be written only the words, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.’” It is the grave of John Keats; but he, too, found a friend to rest beside him, the artist Severn. It is a lovely place, a place where one could return again. Palaces of the Caesars

“We climbed the massive stairways’ of the Colosseum and sat there gazing down on the exposed cells and dungeons which lay under the arena and tried to imagine the sights it had witnessed. Nearby were the ruins of the ancient city—the the old temples and palaces of the Caesars, the. broken columns and statues, and everywhere those letters, SP.Q.R. (the Senate and Roman People). We went down into the Mammert ne Prison to the cells which had held captives for two centuries before Paul and Peter were chained there until their execuwandered along the great ViaNazionale looking at the shops full of goods, a display we had not seen since leaving Egypt. While we stood looking a neat, quiet little lady touched my arm and spoke in English. She. was ‘gentlefolk,’ but only when you looked again did you see that those neat clothes were draped to hide theirrags and her shoes and stockings were tatters. There were food and clothes to be had, but at prices which the ordinary people could not pay, and pensioners, such as this woman must have been, could barely exist without begging. An Unchanging City “ We went to a concert at the Royal Opera House. A full orchestra played Schubert’s Sixth Symphony. Then a single act of Mozarts ‘Marriage of Figaro ’ was staged. There was a chorus of over 50, all richly costumed. Each Saturday night there is a really lavish entertainment of this sort. On several week nights there’ are operas, ballets, or orchestral concerts. “ Before I went to Rome,” the letter concludes, “ I had met a . clever research chemist, a refugee from Poland, who had travelled widely on the Continent. He said, ‘ Rome is unique. She has something which I have found nowhere else. Rome is always—Rome. Conquerors may come and go, but Rome remains untouchable, always the same. The people there know that they are “ Romans,” and that sets them apart from everyone else in the world.’ I spent only four days there, but I had begun to gain an impression of what he meant.”