Those Deep Places
Why travel? Why live?
The Art of the City: Rome, Florence, Venice by Georg Simmel, translated by Will Stone
It is a big city and it is an ancient one and you are there, and you see the ancient stones and you wonder what it was like to live, not when you do, but when they did – that great race of people that came before you, captained by those vast names you know, that you first heard in childhood, that you grew up knowing.
What was it like for them? Did they feel that their own lives were greater than ordinary ones? That their times were more vital, more potent, than others? If all men are considered vain and deluded in their sense that this time, in these years, things are really happening, that it is all taking place now, were those people – living then – right? Were those people right?
In the Rome of the days of the Caesars, for a city whose political class were household words two millennia later, was daily life eclipsed by all that was historic? How much did those who sold at the markets, who traded and who farmed, who lived day by day and not well – what did they know of the history that was taking place all around him? Those who heard Cicero speak at the law courts, did they think him dull and predictable? Was Cato a noble sacrificer of himself, or a foolish man with philosophical pretensions? His slaves, did they laugh at him and steal his things when he was not around? And Rome, the city not of eternity but of reality: how did it feel to live there in cruel reality and not the eternity of foreign dreams?
And Venice, a great performance, a confection, ever sinking into the sea, ever about to be drowned beneath rising waters and descending tourists. What of it? Such a place used to have real inhabitants, used to be a true city and not a show put on for foreigners. When did it change, this place? When did it all come to such a screeching end?
And in Florence, when did they know that this was the place? They must have known, even the illiterates in the street, that when the Duomo was built it would bestride not only their city but the world. Yet how much did they know of the artists who met far from the people in the chambers of the powerful and who made works not for them, the citizens, but for the patron class. What did they know of the political philosophy discussed with only some knowledge by the men of the Councils? What business was it of theirs if their city’s patrons and protectors declared that from now on, things would change because they must? That new forms of life must now be lived, public morality demanding it. Life must change so deeply and profoundly because of the fear of God.
One man, living many centuries later, said that he too went to Florence to learn to paint. But he did not learn how to paint. He only knew that once, people came to Florence not because of what it was, but because of who was there; because of what was happening there. Go to Florence now and there are galleries and museums, he said. It was once the place, the very place, he said sadly. It was once the place it now pretends to be.
Why travel and why live and why do anything much, anything at all? Simmel wonders these things although, quite naturally, he does not articulate them. Those cities, the ancient ones, they are works of art in themselves. Works of art made by millions of hands. Millions of unaware minds, minds preoccupied, thinking of other things. Of course it is worth living to participate in such a human chain. A chain that cannot be broken for the sake of those who arrive long after.