Durante la chiusura al pubblico dell’Istituto, in questa pagina vi proponiamo testi e riflessioni di amici e scrittori, talvolta scritti per l’occasione, scelti ogni giorno per voi. Oggi, Boyd Tonkin.
‘Lerici’
Historians often remind us that much of British history – in its military, mercantile and imperial aspects – took place not on these islands but elsewhere. The same applies to cultural and literary history. From Geoffrey Chaucer, discovering Dante and Boccaccio as he did diplomatic business in 1370s Milan, to Zadie Smith, easing the pressures of youthful fame through a spell in 21st-century Rome, Italy has hosted the birth of more significant English literature than any other part of Continental Europe. Although I’ve known that truism for many years, the atmosphere of some places can still clarify and amplify these voices of the past. And in few spots do they speak more directly than the town of Lerici and the Golfo dei Poeti, which curves south from La Spezia as the southern tip of Liguria touches the Tuscan borders.
Plenty of local authors have celebrated this lovely coast (the “Gulf of Poets” tag came from dramatist Sem Benelli), among them Eugenio Montale, Mario Soldati and Attilio Bertolucci. Still, Lerici and its nearby villages have, for some reason, occupied a special position in the careers of visionary English writers. With his partner Frieda von Richthofen, DH Lawrence settled in Fiascherino, a hamlet outside Lerici, late in 1913. “It is so beautiful, it almost hurts,” he wrote. He worked on the novel that became The Rainbow here, in his “little pink four-roomed cottage” beside the “wonderful Mediterranean” where the sun set like “a long gold shaky road across the milky waves”. On the other side of Lerici, Casa Magni became the final home, in 1822, of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley before Percy drowned while returning across the bay from Livorno. It stands, flanked now by cafés and hotels, in the little resort of San Terenzo. Percy loved it here; Mary thought his months in Lerici “the happiest he had ever known”. Mary, however, felt isolated in a house that then seemed “lonely” and forlorn. Percy’s “Lines written in the Bay of Lerici” record his own plunge into foreboding, as the night-fishermen’s boats set sail while “disturb’d and weak/ I sat and saw the vessels glide/ Over the ocean bright and wide”.
Two years ago, I came to Lerici as a guest of the Suoni dal Golfo festival founded by locally-born conductor Gianluca Marcianò. I even listened to a superb string quartet rehearse in the very salon where the Shelleys had gazed across to Porto Venere. The group, from Israel, had two Jewish and two Palestinian members. That fusion of artistry and solidarity did the Shelleys’ spirit proud. Indeed, the festival has sought not just to stage world-class performances but to explore the ways that art can nurture peace. Last summer, I was fortunate enough to revisit Suoni dal Golfo as co-host of a series of talks with musicians and authors, “Sea of Stories”, programmed by the strand’s artistic director, Maya Jaggi. Among our guests was the novelist, poet and essayist Ben Okri – another visionary idealist. As the sun dipped into the bay and laid that “long gold shaky road” across the waters, he talked of art as a healing and transforming force in terms that Lawrence, the Shelleys and Virginia Woolf (another happy visitor) might all have echoed. Sadly, in this pandemic summer, I and others will not be able to return. Lerici, however, will wait to welcome again the artists, from near and far, who have for so long found solace and inspiration around the Bay of Poets.
Boyd Tonkin, writer and critic
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