Great Ravenna!
Oscar Wilde visits a ruin
Ravenna by Oscar Wilde
O! how fine it is to see even those streets and fora that are decayed. Those now-empty squares and once-full thoroughfares. Buildings gone, done down to the foundations, what is left spared only by looters – looting men, lifting material with which to build their own vain lesser dwellings. We see a palace, once white, now grey. It is before us. Its walls no longer decked with tapestry; no ladies there at embroidery; no singing, no fine playing, no laughter left at all.
Once this was a way-station, store-house city, location past Rome, of the onward march of eagles. Now smaller birds, meaner birds, nest in its old high places. Few buildings seem to stand in this deserted land.
What remains is in pieces, torn and weathered. The wind has – these last two thousand years – abrased, crumbled as the sea smooths once great boulders into pebbles, although with greater abandon, more cruelty. Those things that once stood are now slanting; one may only ponder the finitude of all human accomplishment, all manner of human life. Such thoughts occur to one.
And yet, is it not sometimes springtime? That season when the flowers emerge as if anew and for the first time, their eagerness fresh and novel, though one has lived, in one’s own time, these many summers. The spring is yet upon us, once again, anew! The butterflies move with gay abandon; the bees do as nature compels – they take part in its ballet. It is springtime! Do not the flowers rest the eyes; do not their scents entrance the nose? And do not those animals we see a-gambolling – do they not gambol yet, even in the ruins? Do not the birds sing? Are they not insensible to what they see and move upon?
It is not, as I sit to write, a year that I was in Ravenna. In imperial capital now gone of a state long since departed.
They are beautiful, these ruins – though foul-smelling weeds, grey moss and lichen darken their fey facades. This was a noble place once – a place from which men departed, perhaps: to Grecian fields, like Byron, to meet their holy fate; for late emperors and kings, to the distant frontiers, with which to defend the Roman state. Such is Ravenna, and though it is not, as Rome, a place of what is now nobility and light, its wrecks are great – they show that time may enervate but cannot truly kill.
Those silks that once were sold here, in the full marketplaces – they are gone. Once ladies talked of them to each other; thought this one more meet, this one more modest; this one worth cost at the price. Those silks yet had new owners. They wrapped perhaps the bodies and the goods of those northmen, the savage kind (Theodoric, Odoacer) and their bands, who chased from thrones then-toppled poor Romulus and did the Romans down. Now dissipate those goods, those delicate things; silk yet rends to pieces, does it not? The better parts of life are transitory – yet this means not that the good and the beautiful cannot endure. In memory alone, they may cast a great shadow – its darkness the backing of a mirror, a calling from beyond, a statement of hopeful intent.
Dante, the poet – he was so ill-treated by those who should his talent have seen and loved. Separated by death and by the biddings of others, deprived of his gifts even as his own life faded, the great man has still, as he lies still, a monument worthy of such a name. Encircled as it is now with the laurels that in life were denied him, it is a testament, a testimony, a vouchsafing of fame, jealous guardian of reputation. Unvisited though it may on occasion be.
The poet’s own rivals – and many kings and fair, seemly queens – did, at his death, visit his tomb and surround it yet with garlands. As heroes of antiquity were so honoured. Sweet words receive a sweet reward most fitting – though reward not come in those years spent living. Is it not show of something oft remarked: that what man says lives long beyond him – may still make one yet unborn laugh, or force tears to cross, unevenly, her smooth, pale cheeks?
Think still of Byron, who lived with haste. Think of him, while yet wandering, who in his own day loved this place. The poet Dante shelters yet from pain. He is hidden now beneath this monument. Thus the teller – and hence the tale. The city, fair city, is is no longer great. But it is not yet gone.