Great photos, evocative piece. I'm at the beginning of what I call The Bourbon Capitals Tour. It's a multi-year project that started last year with Paris-Versailles and is continuing next month with Parma (as an add-on to a stay in the Veneto with friends). Naples and Palermo will be next year, I hope, and Madrid, possibly also Seville, the year after that. In any case, your description of Naples has whetted my appetite as a former denizen of several Asian metropolises, so, thanks!
Your take on Ferrante is interesting - she is not a Neapolitan (so they say) and never lived there. To me, her style reads better in translation than in the original (being a native speaker, I can dare such a remark - it is tuffy). Just as the Aragonese or the Anjou, she came from outside and threw a suitable cover over the reality so as to suit her.
You may have mentioned Herling - a Pole who settled there after WWII and was the son-in-law of Benedetto Croce, or Norman Lewis (Naples '44).
This being said, congratulations on your sensing the complexity of Naples' culture on such a short visit. Just as in Chinese calligraphy, there is a deep core below the bewildering phantasmagory. Naples is the only Italian town that revolted and threw the Nazis out - and paid for it. Kesselring had to withdraw and the town was spared Florence's fate.
Great photos, evocative piece. I'm at the beginning of what I call The Bourbon Capitals Tour. It's a multi-year project that started last year with Paris-Versailles and is continuing next month with Parma (as an add-on to a stay in the Veneto with friends). Naples and Palermo will be next year, I hope, and Madrid, possibly also Seville, the year after that. In any case, your description of Naples has whetted my appetite as a former denizen of several Asian metropolises, so, thanks!
Your take on Ferrante is interesting - she is not a Neapolitan (so they say) and never lived there. To me, her style reads better in translation than in the original (being a native speaker, I can dare such a remark - it is tuffy). Just as the Aragonese or the Anjou, she came from outside and threw a suitable cover over the reality so as to suit her.
You may have mentioned Herling - a Pole who settled there after WWII and was the son-in-law of Benedetto Croce, or Norman Lewis (Naples '44).
This being said, congratulations on your sensing the complexity of Naples' culture on such a short visit. Just as in Chinese calligraphy, there is a deep core below the bewildering phantasmagory. Naples is the only Italian town that revolted and threw the Nazis out - and paid for it. Kesselring had to withdraw and the town was spared Florence's fate.