Vann Molyvann: Letters to My Dear Friends from Florence, Italy

Translated from French by Sokharay Ell

Featured Image by Jonathan Körner on Unsplash

First Letter.

« Old friend,

« This is it; this is the grand departure.

« 8 a.m. I could glimpse the Alps, fantastically blue with clouds at the top like white covers. Then the Lakes, with their blue and grey boulders. 

« Modane: endless customs operations; the Italian customs officers dressed like Generals, with the decorations in all the colours of the rainbow. 

« At last, here is Italy. As luck would have it, on the slope of the Alps, the sun appears to celebrate with us. On the roads, cyclists went at full speed to catch up with us. Impression of a brutal escape and liberation, from the greyness of lakes, to a sight of these landscapes that release explosive and sonorous colours…

« 3 p.m. Here we are at Genoa. The city is built on a hill, with narrow streets, with real cut-throats, and in the business district, a luxury of fluorescent lamps hidden behind very old and very respectable façades. The Genoa Cathedral with its white stones alternating with bands of black marble gives off a rather grandiose effect. A picturesque loggia perfectly adorns the Piazza San Giorgio. Adjoining this loggia, we found a small courtyard, very dark at the bottom, with a gradient of light coming from above, all this creating a bundle of silence in the middle of the swarming and bustling streets.  

« First conversation with the Italian people. They talk a lot and wear impeccable uniforms and the police officers at the crossroads make grand gestures of opera singers. Genoa, very cosmopolitan, offers a spectacle of dirty laundry on the windows, of shady nightclubs filled with women and passing-through sailors.

« 1.05 a.m. We leave Genoa for Florence. 

« It is kind of funny traveling in the Italian wagons. The locals chitchat without interruption and their eloquence drives away sleep like the orthédrine. They talked about everything, about their lives, about Mussolini’s, vive le Duce !, etc., etc. And all this makes the noise of a coffee grinder which wakes you up each time with a startle, if you have the misfortune of dozing off for a moment. 

« 8 a.m. It’s Florence. 

« First visit. We stroll along the Arno, in the Palazzo Pitti, in the Boboli gardens … Here is the Dome, the Baptistery, with the famous Ghiberti’s porches. Between two streets, two house in ruins, I could glimpse the small, lovely cloisters, the house of Dante, the Orsanmichele Church with its niches and statues of Giambologna, the lodge of the Lances, the Palazzo Vecchio which has a very small pink courtyard, the New Market which doesn’t have a scale at all (I believed it was much smaller) … The Arno that cuts through Florence is dirty to an improbable degree. However, the kids bask there like Pashas. « Bagnarse e morire » (bathe and die). 

« There is no corner in Florence without its own charm. The watercolourist is at work, the discovery is perpetual and being an image chaser is a pure dilettantism. 

« The big modern squares are « pompous ». The Italians adore triumphal arches and by the love of grandiosity, erect them as highest as possible. The ensemble will serve as their apotheosis.  

« Many tourists, mostly French. One time, we were sitting on the steps of the Santa Maria Novella Church, and we saw a group passing by, speaking French with liveliness. One of our fellows then started to imitate the Italian street hawkers and to chase after, with his assiduities as a street hawker… a young girl. This one, not understanding a single Italian word, replied shyly « non, merci ». The story ended with a great laugh and a collective walk between the two groups who have now merged.  

« An Italian woman wanted at all costs to take me as a Japanese, perhaps because of my kepi: « You’re not Japanese? So you’re Chinese, then. » And thus began a long talk on the culture of Mao Tse Tung’s China, Chang Kai Chek, the Travels of Marco Polo « a great Italian », and Confucius « a great Chinese ». I was swallowing at the time a candy and was swimming in the high atmosphere of bliss, that a mint lozenge can provide me during this dry period.

Second Letter.

 « Still in Florence. 

« The campers near us have an old Panhard car which, judging from its not-so-shiny and prehistoric aspect, could barely hold the road. All of our camping is the object of intense curiosity for the Florentines, who round up here like a circus. They refuse, however, to think that the notorious Panhard could leave Paris to come this far to Florence and claim to reach Venice later. 

« We have merged with the Panhard group and we are now in total eight youngsters who decided to storm the ice cream vendors and the tramways. 

« You should have seen these eight absolutely shaggy individuals, sloppy until the belt, wearing the espadrilles of all colours, you should have seen them strolling in the streets of Florence in a single queue like… a Donatello’s frieze. They walked everywhere, in synchronized military steps and in a single line, along a tramway’s track or along the sidewalk, one foot on the ledge, another on the pavement. If any Italian starts to notice and to look at them in a way a bit too much, the line stops automatically and with the same mechanical movement, the eight heads twist and turn and stare at the intruder with a more or less silent look. Normally, the intruder does not insist to stare any further and start moving at all haste. 

« Yesterday afternoon, it was time to drive the Panhard. The eight youngsters piled up inside the small car, that should take up no more than six occupants, and in the clouds of dust, the car ran off to San Miniato. The red lights and the no-entry signs were passed by at full speed without stopping. At every turn, eight arms of all the colours stretched out and the music did not fail. 

« Back to camp, fed up with the indecent curiosity from the Italians, one of the young girls of the group took off her cap and started collecting money like in a circus. The Italians, of course, gave us nothing, as one would expect. 

« Our whole day is spent on visiting museums and monuments. The cameras and the Kodak films were raked on the Palazzo Vechhio, that somehow changes appearance at every moment of the day. The Palace’s tower displays, at every point we look at, its graces of photogenic coquet. 

« Visit to the St. Marc’s cloister: patio with arcades; in the middle there’s a magnificent tree and a fountain, all of these bathed in a dazzling light. The monks’ units are small, with minuscule windows. Here, there are a lot of memories of Savonarola, the fanatic priest who was burned alive at the Piazza della Signorie. The atmosphere is morbid, due to asceticism. There are, in this cloister, very beautiful collections of Fra Angelico, the primitive Italians some of which have a surprisingly surrealist spirit.  

« Another museum: beautiful cantoria of Della Robbia, the beautiful plates in haut-reliefs representing groups of children praying, singing or dancing, a frieze of Donatello that catches the light wonderfully, huge choir books illustrated with much finesse and above all the large statues of Donatello, powerful and ascetic that look over us with firmness. The highlight of yesterday’s visit was the museum of the School of Fine Arts. It was the apotheosis of Michelangelo, of David and of huge blocks of stone, unfinished drafts. A pietà, in particular, neatly shows the composition: the play of continuously linked curved lines, and the sections of light and shadow that contribute powerfully to highlight this research on linearity.  All these drafts are remarkable to study. The inspiration creates here its first form and kneads the stone in non-plastic form, while on the finished pieces, the eye lingers more on the detail, on the anecdote and does not grasp at first glance the original intention, the creative idea. 

« We painted and drew a lot. I found myself discouraged to make this light of Italy so light and at the same time so violent, so colourful and so passionate…

« Florence, like Genoa, have excessively narrow streets, and at the end of which, brutally modern stores of dernier cri. Everything is Americanised. Outdoor cinema, hair salons with music, milk-bars, and an abusive profusion of fluorescent lamps in technicolor at every corner. 

« But next to all this, there are dark corners, dark alleys that are dimly lit, there is the Arno, quiet and calm. I always had the pleasure in contemplating the reflections of the lamps in the water, I silently watched the Arno flows, streaked with reflections, under a starless sky. The Ponte Vecchio lit by the phosphorescence wave of water has lost its picturesque character. It becomes ghostly and strangely unreal… 

« It appeared to me almost as a sacrilege, to hear by the waves a jazz music played on the accordion, in a nightclub not far from there. 

« Florence at night is very picturesque. The monuments are discretely illuminated by spotlights arranged high up, which dispenses a uniformity of light that underlines the reliefs and the hollows, with small shadows. It is done so effortlessly, same as at the Étoile or at the Sacré-Coeur in Paris where the spotlights, even placed at the ground, flatten out a violent gradient of light from bottom to the top and where the effect is frankly theatrical.

Third Letter.

 « We took a walk to Fiesolles, a few kilometres from Florence. Splendid views of the city: the tumbling grey-blue of the olive trees punctuated by dark green spots of the cypresses and the pines outlining their sombre silhouettes on the red, sonorous earth. And on top of all this, a dust of the setting sun that vibrates lightly like in an Impressionist painting. Fiescolles is located on a small hill. There are many ruins Roman theatre here and the splendid escapes to the valley.

« The walk on the winding road is a pure delight. The air is wonderful with lightness. We were climbing onto an esplanade. And there, from a dark arcade, we saw a valley of houses superimposing of blond, white, ochre, red, cubes and parallelepipeds warmed by the yellow chrome sun and highlighted by the black streaks of the cypresses and the pines. A unique spectacle. The cubism is real and colourful. Three isolated tourists were soaking up this ambiance. First attitude: one of them, with a feverish hand, paints. Second attitude: another one of them writes. Third attitude: the last one just lies there, arms dangling and silent. Triptych of the human communion in an atmosphere full of poetry and beauty. 

« On the same esplanade, there’s a small church and through the gate, two small cloisters flowered by a lyrical and disorderly profusion of colours, one source of light only, an atmosphere of real, solid and almost palpable serenity. I can assure you that in front of this spectacle I don’t really know what to say. I feel small and distraught at the idea that no modern architect will ever manage to achieve this atmosphere, that was born here by miracle, under a blessed sky, in a wonderful country. Everything is blessed, in a wonderful country. All so slowly, the organs begin to echo the atmosphere. All colours. No human description will ever be able to translate this colour-sight, colour-sensation, colour-mysticism, colour-poetry. Perfection has been achieved.  

« Despite all these superlatives, I did not manage to transcribe this vision with all its vivacity and all its reality. 

« Everything of course has its end, we had to head back. None of us spoke. What’s even the point? A setting has already escaped us. 

Fourth Letter.

« There are still so much things to see in Florence. The Boboli gardens, with an order based on the axes of symmetry, the Isoletto with a magnificent statue by Giambologna dominating a huge basin. And these Florentine sunsets that make such postcards: the Arno in technicolour shining in the opalescent pink, Florence on both sides with red spots. It’s a bath of colours. To produce these qualities, these colours on a canvas!… There is a sort of nervousness, a feverish tension under your paintbrush to liberate all these colours, all these sensations that vibrate through all your pores. 

« And there is the Uffizi Museum with the works of Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, the famed group of « Primavera » and the « Birth of Venus »: the painting takes precedence over the colour that highlights it and the resulting effect is a little flat, due to the discretion of Venus; but the general tints under dominant light, the composition and the extraordinary purity of details are absolutely thrilling. I had a revelation of Ghirlandaio whose brutal vigour I had never suspected and of Filippo Lippi of a very gothic style and composition. 

« Thursday evening. Before leaving Florence for Perugia. 

« I was able to listen for one hour through a half-open door to excerpts of « La traviata ». I said excerpts because the opera was given in a former cloister adjoining a street and the starting of tramways and of motorcycles causes the unexpected cuts in this piece of Verdi. There were quite a few Italians enjoying a little bit of music by that same door. There was even a dog. Every time everyone in the cloister clapped, the dog would start barking and everyone would say « shush » to the dog, who then would go away with his ears flopped down before the angry gaze of his music-loving master. 

« At midnight, we leave Florence with regret. A mirage flees into the night, but others will be reborn tomorrow along with the sun. 

« And then it will be Perugia, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Capri, Palermo and Tunis. 

« The circuit will close in Paris in a month. And the vertigo will continue to twist the nerves, to exacerbate the nervous senses by these immense yellow, red, ochre veneers, to knock out a delirious inspiration and to leave incendiary glare in the blinded eyes. The memory is unique, superlative. 

« The impression of beauty, high in colours and in light, that will never occur again.

V.M.