Note 34

Italy was like a dream; it sleeps fervently; the buildings like the closed face of a coloured curtain withdrawn from the world into the hills, into the dressing-gown cupboard that locked hidden things. Shadows plague the puppet architecture of the walls; grand mausoleums of society; emptying of space but filled with directionless, decaying spirit. The inescapable foreignness of the country is an exotic starting point where one plays out one's drama of the unknown: the grotesque yet charming preservation of the spirit of the dead (Italy is its coffin), strikes one as necrophilia, while the strangely useable beauty of the shaded streets seems to remind one of the crevices in our mind that remain stuck in the past.