Desiring Italy by Susan Cahill

Author:Susan Cahill [Cahill, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77837-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

I wouldn’t live anywhere else but in Rome, if you would give me the Gates of Paradise and all the Apostles thrown in.…

—Harriet Hosmer (1830–1908), the first American

woman to make her career in Italy as a sculptor

The wonder and beauty of Italy later brought healing and some relief to the paralyzing sense of the futility of all artistic and intellectual effort when disconnected from the ultimate test of the conduct it inspired. The serene and soothing touch of history also aroused old enthusiasms, although some of their manifestations were such as one smiles over more easily in retrospection than at the moment. I fancy that it was no smiling matter to several people in our party, whom I induced to walk for three miles in the hot sunshine beating down upon the Roman Campagna, that we might enter the Eternal City on foot through the Porta del Popolo, as pilgrims had done for centuries. To be sure, we had really entered Rome the night before, but the railroad station and the hotel might have been anywhere else, and we had been driven beyond the walls after breakfast and stranded at the very spot where the pilgrims always said “Ecco Roma,” as they caught the first glimpse of St. Peter’s dome. This melodramatic entrance into Rome, or rather pretended entrance, was the prelude to days of enchantment.…

—Jane Addams, from Twenty Years at Hull House

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.