San Michele, the cemetery island of Venice in Italy:
And this is how you get there:
Venice has the dubious distinction of being home to the world’s original ghetto, the area where in 1516 all the city’s Jews were ordered to move to. This came on top of other economic and social restraints, although the oppression was still less severe than in other parts of Europe and, ironically, these Dark Ages were not as dark as the allegedly enlightened 20th century.
The Jews of Venice only achieved equal rights with other Venetians after the Unification with Italy in 1866. The following plaque honors the Venetian Jews who fought and died for Italy in World War I,
but like in other Fascist/Nazi countries in Europe, this did not protect the community from the Holocaust only a few decades later. The memorial The Last Train commemorates the Venetian Jews deported to concentration camps.
There is a Jewish Museum in the ghetto, but you shouldn’t get the wrong impression that the whole ghetto is a museum. People, now of all religions, live there, as this active bakery attests to.
Despite my best efforts at revealing a lot of personal information about myself on this blog, most people don’t understand me at all. It’s not for lack of trying, they inquire about my life’s story, they spend days talking with me, they use psychoanalysis. But they never leave their own world. Because I live in a different world, they can’t understand me, try as they might. Most people just cannot imagine that someone is free of almost all bourgeois dreams and fears, that he doesn’t seek or need anything materialistic, that he is happiest when alone and that the conventional definition of success has absolutely no meaning for him.
Then there are the rare occasions when I read a novel and I think to myself that a particular fictional character would understand me. And I almost shudder at the thought that a real person, the author, is behind that fictional character. But so far, these authors have all been dead by the time I read their books.
Journey by Moonlight by Hungarian writer Antal Szerb is one novel that had this effect on me.
Mihály leaves his wife a few days into their honeymoon and goes off to explore Italy. Very soon he realizes that not only has he no desire to return to Budapest and the job at his father’s company, but that this is such an undesirable prospect that it simply isn’t an option anymore.
He knew that there was no going back. The whole horde of people and things pursuing him, the lost years and the entire middle-class establishment, fused in his visionary consciousness into a concrete, nightmarish shape. The very thought of his father’s firm was like a great steel bar raised to strike him.
And later:
His life would begin anew, not as it had been during all the wasted years. Incipit vita nova.
Mihály is so fixated on remembering, reliving and in a way returning to the happy days of his youth that he seeks out – and finds – his friends from that time. After decades have passed, these encounters naturally lack the satisfaction sought from them.
On this point, I am actually the opposite, for I am good and quick at laving things and people behind. I am a much more forward-looking person who thinks that a new experience is worth much more than doing the same thing again, even if I don’t know if the future will be better. It’s enough that it will be different.
But I find my views expressed very well in the words of Waldheim, a scholar whom Mihály encounters in Rome:
Anyone who isn’t actually stupid ought to study, in the interests of his soul’s salvation. It’s the only thing worth doing. […] To spend your time doing anything else, like working in a commercial company, for a man who isn’t totally stupid, I’ll tell you what that is: affectation.
And:
An intelligent person doesn’t have a spiritual life.
I have always thought that I should come with certain warning labels. In Journey by Moonlight, I have discovered the perfect description of my attitude which frustrates women in particular and makes relationships almost impossible:
He did not understand her since it never occurred to him that people other than himself had an inner life in which he might take an interest.
Apart from that personal resonance, I find the book very erudite and beautifully written. It is equally a feast for the brain and the soul. Although Journey by Moonlight has become one of my favorite novels, I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, though. The plot is rather constructed with the coincidental encounters with long-lost friends piling on top of each other implausibly. And if you hate people like me, then you might dislike the protagonist as well.
Antal Szerb died at age 43, in a death so unfitting for such a marvelous writer, yet so symptomatic for the time he lived in. In January 1945, he was beaten to death by guards at Balf concentration camp in Hungary.
In Venice, there aren’t really and dead ends, at last if you know how to swim.
I am surprised how few people fall into the canals. Do Venetians drink less?
… but in reality, the clouds did.
Photographed in Targu Mures, Romania on 19 September 2015.
Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of the Ice Bucket Challenge yet. You soon will, because as so often before, I will probably start a trend.
I explain everything in this video:
Honestly, I think it’s a stupid idea. If you want to fund medical research, fund it. If you want to make a donation, do so. To me, this looks like a rather obvious ploy to get girls to pour water over them in bikinis or in tight T-shirts.
What kind of a country is that which celebrates having had the same un-elected head of state for 63 years?
Walking through Venice on a cold February morning, I saw a row of houses along the Grand Canal which I thought I had seen before. It was my first day in Venice, I don’t believe in reincarnation, so my recollection must have come from a film.
And indeed: This is where the ultimate fight in the James Bond film Casino Royale takes place and one of the houses slowly sinks into the water.
You will notice that the red house (second from right in the two first photos), which stands conveniently apart from the houses to the left and right of it, has been replaced by a fake house in the movie. So, you needn’t worry! No real Venetian house was destroyed for this movie.
Tonight, the three dozen or so Republican contenders for the presidential nomination will come together for their second televised debate. All of them will lambast the Iran deal, will say that the end of the world is near and will fail to mention that Iran already has nuclear power (also thanks to the support of American companies and previous US administrations). They won’t say how the US pulling out of a deal agreed on by six other nations would stop that deal or what they want instead. They won’t notice that the agreement doesn’t deny any of the military options some of them cherish so much.
Except for Ted Cruz, whose hero is Egyptian dictator al-Sisi, the Republican hopefuls will then all say something along the lines of “I would do what Ronald Reagan would do” or “Ronald Reagan never would have signed such a deal”. Which is not only weird, given that it’s 2015 and Reagan has been dead for a while, but which also displays a shocking lack of knowledge of recent history.
Here’s a brief refresher on Ronald Reagan’s policy towards Iran:
The Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran, breaking US laws and an arms embargo. The goal was to secure the release of US hostages (“we don’t negotiate with terrorists”). Hundreds of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles were sold to Iran.
Interestingly, because some Republicans accuse anyone supporting the Iran deal of being soft on Israel’s security, the weapons to Iran were provided via Israel. Earlier in the Iran-Iraq war, Israel had already helped Iran considerably by destroying Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Osirak. (To my big surprise, I discovered on both my trips to Iran that many Iranians actually have fond memories of the cooperation between Iran and Israel, that a number of Iranians have a much more favorable view of Israel than of the Palestinians, and that nothing happened to me when I disclosed – during an interrogation by the Iranian Intelligence Service – that I had been to Israel before.)
Ronald Reagan lied to the American people in a televised speech and had to admit later that he had knowledge of the Iran-Contra dealings. His administration destroyed evidence.
So, could the candidates tonight please specify which part of President Reagan’s Iran policy they want to emulate?
Photographed in Targu Mures, Romania.
The Happy Hermit 