As I struggle to separate myself from this place I have come to love so much in a short time, I wonder why it is so hard. David (aka Herc) handed me the answer in an article by Jeanette Winterton in the Wall Street Journal. Manic-Depressive, she was exploring the connection between her disease (the same as mine) and her creativity. She made this very revealing comment: “Art isn’t a surface activity. It comes from a deep place and it meets the wound we each carry.”
I have struggled to express this same thought so many times, mostly to beginning writers. I have called it “writing from your bones.” I think the reason I am so attached and fulfilled by this place is because there is a spirit that accompanies the huge collection of art and architecture that is this city. That art represents victory over darkness in each of those artists’ minds. When we choose to create, we choose not to die or give up. I have always understood that in a literal sense, but it is true for great art in a figurative sense as well. Michelangelo is not dead. At some level, he knew that he would continue to live in his David, a sculpture that is stuffed full of life, more so than many people.
The geniuses of the Renaissance were dealing with the “divine void” (aka existential darkness) because they were coming out of the darkness that had enveloped their world for a thousand years. The beginning of the Renaissance was an incredible explosion of creativity that began in Florence, but quickly spread across Italy and from there throughout western Europe. After hundreds of years during which everything remained the same, incredible change happened from year to year, decade to decade in the 15th century.
Some thought that darkness was caused somehow by the church, but they didn’t understand that what the church had come to be was not representative of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Maybe this is why as I sat in the Firenze Second Branch this morning, I was suddenly filled with the desire to learn Italian and come here (with Herc) on a couples mission. Herc, who has a tin ear for language, has even decided to take Italian with me.
Maybe my novel won’t be suspense after all. That would be the easy way out. I guess we’ll see.
Think of my poor husband following me around Florence ohhing and ahhing the males nude statue that reside on every corner. Me not him. Well, his day is finally come. In an extensive and never-to-be forgotten tour of the Medici’s Pitti Palace today, I saw him on the ceiling of one of the rooms! He had a lot more hair when his likeness was taken in the 1500’s, but I’d know those thighs and shoulders anywhere. David aka Hercules. Since we have been married, the main endearment I have always used is “hund.” Yes, I know that means dog in German, but it is actually the diminutive of Me-Hunda (my man in a language David made up), which I have sometimes been known to shorten to “hundi”. This is very puzzling to everyone, because he calls me the same thing, Me-Hunda also meaning “my woman.”
Somewhere in the middle of the Pitti Palace, I realized that Italy has changed me. The creative juices are all juiced up and ready to go. I am dying to learn Italian. I want to come back here and live for several months in order to write a time-travel novel where a hip young 21st century young lady is swept back in time to one of the rooms of the Pitti Palace in the 16th century. And because Italy makes you believe that dreams can come true, I just might do it!!!
For those of you whose visit to this wonderful place is in the future, see the Pitti first, before the Ufizzi. It is uncrowded and much more magical a setting for the paintings. Plus it contains my two favorite Raphael’s. I am inexpressibly sad to see this time almost at an end, but I know I will visit it again and again in my heart. With Herc.
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