The Light In The Piazza Quotes

Beauty in the European sense has always had a premeditated quality to it. We've always had an aesthetic intention and a long-range plan. That's what enabled western man to spend decades building a Gothic cathedral or a Renaissance piazza. The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human designt, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with with a sudden wondrous poetry...Sabina was very much attracted by the alien quality of New York's beauty. Fran found it intriguing but frightening; it made him feel homesick for Europe.

I'm a new man, Giovanni. If you want to imitate me, you'll have to abandon the mask and get a face like this one." Erik smiled mirthlessly at his young nemesis, his teeth shining madly in the dim light of piazza. "You can't have her! She loves me. The mask won't do. You could never giver what she wants, because she wants me!" Giovanni tried to follow Meg and Roul, but each time he shifted Erik was there.

At the end of ten minutes fifty thousand lights glittered, descending from the Palazzo di Venezia to the Piazza del Popolo, and mounting from the Piazzo del Popolo to the Palazzo di Venezia. It seemed like the fete of jack-o'-lanterns. It is impossible to form any idea of it without having seen it. Suppose that all the stars had descended from the sky and mingled in a wild dance on the face of the earth; the whole accompanied by cries that were never heard in any other part of the world.

Longueville, every morning after breakfast, took a turn in the great square of Siena—the vast piazza, shaped like a horse-shoe, where the market is held beneath the windows of that crenellated palace from whose overhanging cornice a tall, straight tower springs up with a movement as light as that of a single plume in the bonnet of a captain.

In ten minutes, fifty thousand lights glittered all the way from the Palazzo di Venezia to the Piazza del Popolo, and back up from the Piazza del Popolo to the Palazzo di Venezia. It was like a vast congregation of will-o’-the-wisps, impossible to envisage if you have never seen it: imagine that all the stars in the sky were to come down and dance wildly about the earth, to the accompaniment of cries such as no human ear has ever heard elsewhere on its surface.

As we walk through Savignio, the copper light of dusk settling over the town's narrow streets, we stop anyone we can find to ask for his or her ragù recipe. A retired policeman says he likes an all-pork sauce with a heavy hit of pancetta, the better for coating the pasta. A gelato maker explains that a touch of milk defuses the acidity of the tomato and ties the whole sauce together. Overhearing our kitchen talk below, an old woman in a navy cardigan pokes her head out of a second-story window to offer her take on the matter: "I only use tomatoes from my garden- fresh when they're in season, preserved when it gets cold." Inspired by the Savignio citizenry, we buy meat from the butcher, vegetables and wine from a small stand in the town's piazza, and head to Alessandro's house to simmer up his version of ragù: two parts chopped skirt steak, one part ground pancetta, the sautéed vegetable trio, a splash of dry white wine, and a few canned San Marzano tomatoes.

I’ve known Florence long, sir, but I’ve never known her so lovely as to-night. It’s as if the ghosts of her past were abroad in the empty streets. The present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a dream made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling up in couples to pass judgment on the last performance of Michael, of Benvenuto! We should come in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what they say. The plainest burgher of them in his cap and gown had a taste in the matter! That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! But do you know I fancy—I fancy”—and he grew suddenly almost familiar in this visionary fervor—“I fancy the light of that time rests upon us here for an hour! I have never seen the David so grand, the Perseus so fair! Even the inferior productions of John of Bologna and of Baccio Bandinelli seem to realize the artist’s dream. I feel as if the moonlit air were charged with the secrets of the masters, and as if, standing here in religious contemplation, we might—we might witness a revelation!” Perceiving at this moment, I suppose, my halting comprehension reflected in my puzzled face, this interesting rhapsodist paused and blushed. Then with a melancholy smile, “You think me a moonstruck charlatan, I suppose. It’s not my habit to hang about the piazza and pounce upon innocent tourists. But to-night I confess I’m under the charm. And then somehow I fancied you too were an artist!

Walked on the battery with Louis Young† in the moon-light. It was lovely! The tide was full. The waters of the bay rippled up against the stones with a pleasing gurgle. The shores of the opposite island of St John’s were seen dimly in the distance; the clump of tall pines standing out a darker shade in the haze. The whole bay was light, silver-like, with ships spotting it, their watch-lights trembling like stars, and reflected below in the water. The sky was perfectly cloudless, intensely blue. The moon full and sharply defined—no haze tip there. The air full of fragrance. The houses along the bay with their piazzas, so strange, so tropical-looking. All still and calm. Is it reality? or I am dreaming, and in fancy conjuring up the shadow of some half-forgotten story? It is real. I have seen it. And I love to remember it as the farewell scene of Charleston. Taken

My sister is the beautiful day. Oh beautiful day, my sister, wipe my nose, swaddle me in fresh-smelling garments. I nurse at the adamantine nipple of the beautiful day, I quaff the milk of the beautiful day, and for the first time since 1956, I cheese on the shoulder of the beautiful day. Oh beautiful day, wash me in your lake of cloudless azure. I have overdosed on television, I am unresponsive and cyanotic, revive me in your shower of gelid light and walk me through your piazza which is made of elegant slabs of time. Oh beautiful day, kiss me. Your mouth is like Columbus Day. You are the menthol of autumn. My lungs cannot quench their thirst for you. Resuscitate me—I will never exhale your tonic gasses. Inflate me so that I may rise into the sky and mourn the monotonous topography of my life. Oh beautiful day, my sister, wipe my nose and adorn me in your finery. Let us lunch alfresco. Your club sandwiches are made of mulch and wind perfumed with newsprint. Your frilly toothpicks are the deciduous trees of school days.

The night of 'the look' on the avenue de New York. People drift along not seeing each other. It is like a vernissage without paintings. It could be the Exterminating Angel or 'Pure Festival' - pure in the sense of Virilio's 'pure war' - on screen. The only hot spot is the trap-door through which the champagne arrives. Peculiar feverish, power-mad tribe, dissolute yet oversensitive, metaphysics with infrared lighting. Nothing in their gaze, everything in the way they look, nothing in their eyes, everything in the decibel level. The gentle air of the Piazza Navona in December, with the acetylene lamps and the reflections of the turquoise water on the Bernini horses. A beauty that is purely Roman. In the Campo dei Fiori someone has laid fresh flowers at the foot of the statue of Giordano Bruno, burned for heresy on this very spot four centuries ago. The touching loyalty of the Roman people; where else would you see such a thing? The hot December multitudes spill out into the street: Christmas is almost as mild here as in Brazil. The city is only beautiful when the crowd invades it. So many people on the streets always gives the impression of a silent uprising. Everyone walks along in the luminous muted buzz of voices and the narrow streets. Everything is transformed into a silent opera, a theatrical geometry. Everything sings in this part of the city.

Silvia lets out a laugh at something Donato has said. She’s moved so she can stretch her tan legs across him. I’m watching him massage her feet. “Did Donato show you Santa Maria del Popolo?” she’s asking me. “It has my favorite Caravaggio.” Donato says something in Italian, which makes her laugh again. “It’s where Nero’s ghost lives,” one of the British sisters says to me. “Do you know Nero?” I remember Donato pointing out a domineering building in the piazza. But I don’t remember him telling us about any ghosts. Cristiano is rolling a joint on his lap. “Omicida.” He lights it. “He dipped Christians in oil,” another one of them is saying as they pass the joint around. “And set them on fire to light his garden at night.” “He killed his mother.” The smoke is very strong, the air suddenly stagnant. “How do you live with so many reminders of death everywhere?” I ask. The breeze returns and I shiver. “It reminds us to live well,” Donato says, puffing on the joint. “That this life is short. You have to take what you want.” I have not thought about my wants in so long that the flood of them makes me light-headed. A drip-irrigation system for the garden, my own Tiffany stud earrings so I don’t have to always be borrowing Mom’s, one of those mid-century modern houses in Benedict Canyon, a buzzy TV show—Guy.

the man vaulted over an embankment, rolled across a boat prow, and sprang up the side of a building, finding hand-and footholds on downspouts and window shutters. Even as he went vertical, his momentum barely slowed. That particular brand of obstacle-course discipline—parkouring—had come into popularity after Harville’s training, and he couldn’t help but watch with a touch of awe now. The man hauled himself through a third-story window, scaring a chinless woman smoking a cigarette back onto her heels. An instant later the man flew out of a neighboring window on Harville’s side of the waterway. Harville had lost precious seconds. He reversed, splashing through a puddle, and bolted. The narrow passages and alleys unfolded endlessly, a match for the thoughts racing in his head—Giovanna’s openmouthed laugh, their freestanding bathtub on the cracked marble floor, bedside candles mapping yellow light onto the walls of their humble apartment. Without a conscious thought, he was running away from home, leading his pursuer farther from everything he held dear. He sensed footfalls quickening behind him. Columns flickered past, lending the rain a strobe effect as he raced along the arcade bordering Piazza San Marco. The piazza was flooded, the angry Adriatic surging up the

The dead here seem really dead, and bone lonely, unlike the graves in Italian cemeteries, bedecked with fresh flowers, red votive lights, and photos of the deceased. I always imagine that they must rise at night and visit among themselves, the way they used to in the piazza. I did cry over Absalom, Absalom!