La Grande Ballezza – the great beauty of emptiness. The great problem of beauty. Jep is arriving at a sort of terminus – his 65th birthday rather than Roma termini. Railways might suggest a grittiness, smoke and grime or perhaps the romance of travel or there again engineering solutions and purposeful action. Jep arriving at his metaphorical terminus is forced to dwell on the emptiness of his particular terminus. Is there anything one can do with this fundamental emptiness: reaching 65, wondering if there is anything of value to be gleaned from his memories or his friends and the whirl of hedonism set against the endlessly fading glory and beauty of Rome’s myths of itself.
The doorbell rings, breaking into my thoughts, and it’s Spencer, a witness to Jehovah, wanting to talk to me. I decline the invitation but think about his mind: how is it organised? Is it tidy? What does he do with the bits that don’t quite fit into the group ideology? Can he allow mess to exist in his mind? Might his mind be like a tidy house? The result of incessant tidying? What sort of meaning does he attach to Jehovah? At this rate I should have invited him in. Perhaps he could have helped me clear up the mess that is my mind and the mess that occupies every horizontal plane in this place.
I was in Rome in March and after wandering through Trastevere we climbed up the steps towards Monte Gianicolo but first arrived at the Fontana dell’acqua Paola – here in the photo – which is also the opening scene in La Grande Ballezza. The cool waters from Lago Bracciano, the cool beauty of the women’s choir . . . but actually it is hot, this heat in which a tourist collapses and dies, presumably of a heart attack.
Toes edging towards the emptiness how do we find the means to go on. Or to put it another way, how do we find the meanings to go on. Are we more like Don Quixote or Gabriele d’Annunzio? How about the spice of madness or the spice of decadence. But in their different ways dreaming of military glory; harmlessly quixotic or the oceans of blood that d’Annunzio longed for even if it was mostly other people’s blood. Different sorts of inflation. Different dreams. Did Bush and Blair share the same sort of dreams, the same sort of inflation, the gamble that comes with identification with power.
Perhaps Jep chose not to write another novel because he had a glimpse of celebrity and power. Skilled with words he undermines power but does he regret his choices leaving him a mourning Prince of State rather than a Casanova.
There are so many stories to be told from our confrontation with emptiness.
