Verona

Tender papyrus, tell the poet
to come to Verona...
Catullus.

…And they come, O divine singer. They need little urging, and with delight the new Germans throw themselves into the arms of enchanting Verona, into your arms, O Lesbia ^{(1)Lesbia. The poetic beloved addressed in Catullus’s love poems.}! Just like the barbarians of old, who, drawn by the fame of your beauty and hearing from afar your siren songs, came down from the Alps in endless ranks, marching with the measured tread of an army, clad in iron armour. As in those days when:

upon their wagons passed
the fair-haired, upright beloved women,
into beautiful Verona,
chanting songs of Odin.... ^{(2)The quoted verses are from Carducci’s poem Davanti il Castel Vecchio di Verona in Odi barbare, describing the Ostrogothic entry into Verona under Theodoric.}

What has the ancient and venerable city on the Adige not witnessed! Heine ^{(3)Heinrich Heine. German poet and writer.} calls it the great “refuge of peoples”; we, as specialists in such matters, call it the “great inn of peoples”: Olympus, Valhalla, and Eden all at once; a mighty inn, crowned with laurels and haloed with poetry—the inn of Italy! Grant me, O Jupiter, eternal youth, and I would willingly go, even crawling on my knees, to Verona, to dream at twilight in the shadow of the Scaligeri palace ^{(4)Scaligeri. The ruling family of medieval Verona.} and drink a toast with Can Grande ^{(5)Can Grande. Cangrande della Scala, ruler of Verona and patron of Dante.}, with Romeo, and with Dante. And when night has fallen upon the mysterious waters of the Adige, I, a new Endymion ^{(6)Endymion. In Greek mythology, a beautiful youth loved by the Moon (Selene), who visited him as he slept.}, shall let myself be carried away by the Moon, beneath that well-remembered inn sign before the gate of San Zeno ^{(7)Porta di San Zeno. One of Verona’s historic city gates, near the Basilica of San Zeno, long associated with travellers entering the city.}. And may the fifteen daughters whom the Moon bore to her first Endymion be fifteen casks of that heavenly drink that pearls the glass!...

Ah, to linger in the ancient little streets, and to make one’s comforting pilgrimage from one tiny shrine to the next! At every other doorway there is a little wineshop—but what wineshops, and what innkeepers! Here Horace ^{(8)Horace. Roman poet (65–8 BC).} would have had no reason to pronounce his famous verdict: Oste e frodatore (Caupo atque malignus) ^{(9)Caupo atque malignus. Latin: “The innkeeper is a cheat.”}, for only a few steps from these taverns the Adige flows by, murmuring criminal temptations into their ears; yet no Veronese innkeeper has ever poured a single drop of the Adige into his wine. Catullus, who was born near Verona, condemned wine adulterers ad severos ^{(10)Ad severos. Latin: “To the devil.”} (“to the devil”), and ever since then only honest wine merchants have been found in Verona, unlike that fellow from Ravenna of whom Martial ^{(11)Martial. Roman epigrammatist (c. AD 38–104).} complains: “A few days ago a crafty innkeeper in Ravenna cheated me: instead of watered wine, the rogue served me pure wine.”

Our first destination shall be old Verona. In the heart of the ancient city, not far from the lofty tombs of the princes ^{(1)Arche Scaligere. Monumental Gothic tombs of the della Scala family, beside the church of Santa Maria Antica in Verona.}, stands a tall and imposing palace. One side overlooks the narrow street where the house of the unfortunate Romeo is found; the other faces Piazza Indipendenza (the central post office). Here is L’osteria Scaligera ^{(2)Scaligeri. The ruling family of medieval Verona.}.

...though it bears the modest name: Antica Salumeria ed Osteria Mazzon ^{(3)Antica salumeria ed osteria Mazzon. Historic delicatessen and tavern in Piazza Indipendenza, Verona.}, Piazza Indipendenza 2 and 3. It is an old building, shored up, restored and, of necessity, modernised: part of the Scaliger palace. The cellar of cured meats, with its intoxicating aroma, invites us into the world of legend. Perhaps in that enormous cauldron, where cotechino ^{(4)Cotechino. Italian pork sausage traditionally served cooked.} now steams and sends its promising fragrance as a tribute to our noses, Ezzelino ^{(5)Ezzelino. Ezzelino III da Romano, thirteenth-century Ghibelline lord.}, the fiercest of all the Ghibellines ^{(6)Guelfi e Ghibellini. Rival medieval Italian political factions.}, once boiled his Guelf enemies.

Hanging all around are sides of bacon suspended from the ceiling, hams, pyramids of cheeses, and an almost fantastical forest of sausages and salamis. The proprietor welcomes us warmly with a calm and kindly face, while the attractive landlady—lively, engaging and pleasantly plump—smiles with quiet satisfaction.

But let us leave the prose of the ground floor and climb into the romantic sphere of the first floor, among colossal ancient columns and towering walls. Here we find ourselves in a magnificent hall with a vaulted ceiling, where memories have accumulated: a refectory in which every table carries the scent of history and every tablecloth bears historic stains.

What excellent sparkling white wine our Mentor ^{(7)Mentor. Used here in the sense of a trusted guide or companion.}—the painter from the White Goose ^{(8)Oca Bianca. “L’Oca Bianca” (“The White Goose”), a well-known Veronese inn mentioned by Barth.}, renowned the world over—has poured into our cups! How much this “dry white” has to tell me; it has quite a talkative air! “The great poet Catullus,” it says of me, “already delighted in me as he gazed into his beloved’s eyes, when he sang:

A good and splendid ^{(9)Bona atque magna / Cena non sine candida puella. Latin quotation from Catullus: “A good and splendid dinner, not without a fair maiden.”}
Dinner, not without a fair maiden.

Of my blood, he continues, grim Alboin ^{(10)Alboin and Rosamund. Alboin, king of the Lombards, was said to have forced his wife Rosamund to drink from the skull of her father, Cunimund.} certainly filled the skull of his father-in-law when he spoke the fatal words: “Drink, Rosamund, drink”; into my vein plunged and drank their fill the Scourge of God, Attila ^{(11)Attila, “the Scourge of God”. Attila the Hun was traditionally known in Christian Europe as the “Scourge of God”.}, with his hawk-like eyes, and the lord Charlemagne, blond Alaric sleeping in the Busento ^{(12)Alaric and the Busento. Legend says that Alaric, king of the Visigoths, was buried with his treasure in the bed of the Busento river near Cosenza.}, Conrad, the treacherous offspring of Henry IV ^{(13)Conrad and Henry IV. Conrad was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and rebelled against his father in the conflicts surrounding imperial power in Italy.}, and even young, gentle Conradin of Swabia ^{(14)Conradin of Swabia. Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen claimant in Italy, was defeated by Charles of Anjou in 1268 and later executed in Naples.} with his bold warriors. For three months they stayed carousing in this Capua of the Germans ^{(15)Capua of the Germans. Capua was proverbial as a place of luxurious delay after Hannibal’s troops were said to have been softened there by comfort and pleasure.}, admiring black eyes and golden throats, pawning their swords for wine, and so allowed the cunning Angevin to complete his plan. But all of them, all of them, fought with German valour against the giant called “Thirst”, as Dietrich fought the giants Sigenot and Eck ^{(16)Dietrich, Sigenot and Eck. Dietrich von Bern is the legendary Germanic version of Theodoric the Great; “Bern” refers to Verona, and Sigenot and Eck belong to the heroic cycle surrounding him.} with the flame-armed beast, symbol of the “Kater.” ^{(17)Kater. Kater is German slang for a hangover, literally “tomcat”; Barth turns it into a comic monster defeated in the taverns of Verona.} But the hero Dietrich had at least conquered, and never, in any way at all, in the taverns along the Adige was anything more heard of that terrible beast.

From the venerable hall one enters the medieval kitchen, which gives the impression of the witches’ cavern in the poem of Faust ^{(18)Faust’s witches’ kitchen. Barth is alluding to the witches’ kitchen scene in Goethe’s Faust, Part I.}. A monumental fireplace is lit by the flames, and an old woman busies herself there. Is she perhaps the old witch of Verona? On the walls and ceiling hang branches of every kind, almost prehistoric, flasks, salami, plates, and a little lamp burning. Through the fearful shadow run murmurs and laughter, as of spirits and goblins. And yet how well one warms oneself at this fire when the tramontana ^{(22)Tramontana. The tramontana is a cold north or north-east wind that blows from the Alps into northern Italy.} howls through the gorges of the Alps! The old woman—was she not perhaps once Juliet’s nurse?—invites Romeo to a colloquy of spiritual intimacy. And meanwhile a delicate little voice issues from the chimney and murmurs sarcastically: Lugete Veneres-Cupidinesque; passer mortuus est meae puellae ^{(19)Catullus quotation. The Latin line comes from Catullus, Carmen 3, his mock-elegy on the death of his lover’s sparrow. Translation: “Mourn, O Venuses and Cupids; my girl’s sparrow is dead.”}. Evidently it is that greedy little Catullus, who would like to taste the stew; but the old woman comes quickly with ladle and rosary, and the pagan spirit has barely time to climb back up the smoky flue and fly off towards the amphitheatre ^{(20)The amphitheatre. The “amphitheatre” is Verona’s Roman Arena, one of the city’s best-known ancient monuments.}, where he lives with free Lesbia ^{(21)Lesbia. The poetic beloved addressed in Catullus’s love poems.}, in a little unfurnished flat.

Not every day is a feast-day, and not every night can one linger with spirits and spectres, not even in Verona. There is also, in the centre, convenient, pleasant and clean, the little of the Sterzi Brothers ^{(1)Fratelli Sterzi. The Sterzi Brothers ran the small Veronese establishment Barth is describing.}, Scudo di Francia 3 ^{(2)Scudo di Francia, 3. The address is Via Scudo di Francia 3, in central Verona.}, not far from Via Nuova ^{(3)Via Nuova. Via Nuova was the older name of what is now Via Mazzini.}. There one meets serious people, “citizens of Verona, several men and women, relatives of the two families, musicians, servants, guards, etc.,” ^{(4)citizens of Verona.... Barth is jokingly borrowing from the dramatis personae, or cast list, of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.} as Shakespeare says in the frontispiece to Romeo and Juliet.