Antal Szerb: The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy

There, at the foot of the Third Tower, I understood everything. My restlessness — on the train, in the various hotels and inns, in the periods between excursions, indeed whenever during the entire journey I had been forced into contact with that collectivity of the lonely, the euphoric Italian collectivity. I shielded my solitariness from them, and from the European future that they represented for me. I felt my solitary happiness threatened by their happiness of the herd, because they were stronger than I was.

The happiness I feel here at the foot of the Third Tower is something I must not give up for anyone: for anyone, or anything. I cannot surrender my soul to any nation state, or to any set of beliefs.

IN TIME you get used to it. Having been on the road for two to three weeks, I now find it quite natural. You arrive in a town towards evening. You ask your way to the square, throw a glance over the palazzo, with its vast tower and bristling battlements, and seek out the inevitable, everywhere-the-same albergo that comes with it. You dine, drink a little wine, and the next morning you tour the town. There is always a cathedral, a slanting tower, and some unique local attraction. In Ferrara, for example, it is the d’Este Castle: ancient, forbidding and grim, in the very heart of the town and surrounded by a moat filled with water. Later, in the evening, this moat came to inspire a certain respect, though I had my suspicions of it from the first. Sadly, my worst fears were to be realized.

In the hotel, when I went to draw back the curtain and open the window, the chambermaid stopped me and pointed out the great number of zanzare : mosquitoes. She was right. My suspicions of that moat had been fully justified. None of these great medieval institutions comes without some drawback. I barely closed my eyes the entire night. Since then I have always thought bad thoughts about the d’Estes. And yet, if the Scaligers and the Polentas opened their doors to Dante, they did the same for Ariosto and Tasso. The latter, it’s true, went mad in their care.

Baedeker had mentioned the danger with reference to Ravenna: Im Sommer viele Stechmücken. Now why should the German word be so much more comical than its Hungarian or Italian equivalents? What is so utterly impossible about a Stechmücke, compared to a nünüke or a rézsüke ?

The Stechmücken were, for me, analogous with the heat. I had heard so much about them that I had ceased to believe it, and the first time I awoke with an inflamed and puffy head (in Verona) I felt deeply offended. They have been the faithful companions of my journey ever since. They are much more nimble than the mosquitoes of our own Margaret Island.

TRIESTE IS a really fine city, by nature of its quarter of a million contending ideals. I take a look at a cathedral, then a castle, then the sea.

Along the Corso Emmanuel, one of the principal streets, I notice a shop window full of enamel chamber pots. Below them is the proclamation: “Our national enamelware competes with the best in the world!” Well, so it does. But all the same, these Italians… They are certainly not to be trifled with. They will vie with anyone, and, when they choose to, they certainly let you know. Everything here is done for the greater glory of the nation.

Trieste feels somehow like home. It is a product, like myself, of the Dual Monarchy. Its streets are wide — impressive Austro-Hungarian streets. The buildings are aligned in symmetrical patterns, like the side whiskers of Franz Joseph. The beer is cold and wonderful, just as it is at home. After all that wine and orange juice, I can’t get enough of it. The women are blonde and beautiful. Apropos of which… it will indeed be good to go home.

Yes, the time has come. I am tired. And perhaps I don’t love Italy all that much. Just as, it seems, I don’t love anyone or anything “all that much”. Even myself I can no longer love as tenderly and attentively as when I was younger.

I am tired. It will be very good to go home. The panic is over, I have calmed down, my inner reserves are exhausted. Somehow, all it needs now is courage. Just don’t surrender your solitude for anything or anyone. How does Milton’s Satan put it? “What matter where, if I be still the same?” Whatever becomes of Europe, trust in your inner stars. Somewhere, always, a Third Tower will be waiting for you.

It’s enough.

p. 32 · Piazza San Marco, Venice

© 2013 Getty Images

p. 47 · Exterior view of the Villa Rotonda Palladiana in Vicenza

© Bettmann/CORBIS

p. 56 · Piazza delle Erbe in Verona with the market, 1936

© Mary Evans/Alinari Archives

p. 60 · Beach promenade of Gardone Riviera on Lake Garda, 1935

© Mary Evans/SZ Photo/Scherl

p. 72 · Façade of the central station of Milan, c. 1935

© Mary Evans/Alinari Archives

p. 81 · The two towers, Bologna

© Mary Evans Picture Library/Pump Park Photography

p. 86 · The theory of the Virgins and Saints, detail of the mosaic decoration, in the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna

© Alinari Archives, Florence/Mary Evans

p. 90 · The Mausoleum of Theodoric, Ravenna

© Alinari via Getty Images

p. 105 · Miramare Castle, Trieste

© Walter Sanders