HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATHERINE MANSFIELD!

Oct 14, 2008 marks the 120th anniversary of Katherine Mansfield’s birthday. The year 2008, celebrates the centenary of her arrival in London from New Zealand, “ a little land with no history,” as she once described it. She had studied in England previously from 1903-1906, and had hoped to make a musician’s career there, but had soon discovered she had no real talent for it. The petite, plump girl in glasses lugging a ‘cello up the stairs to her unheated bedsitter was destined to find other means of expression for her immense talents and ambitions. No one back in New Zealand who had read her girlish writings -- some of which had shocked her elders -- would ever have imagined that she would have ended up changing the face of modern English literature.

Traditionally Mansfield has been seen as a pioneer of the short story in English. Some detractors have tried to lessen her reputation in recent years by overemphasizing her debt to Chekov. Feminists and gender studies scholars, like Angela Smith, see her as a representative of “liminal experience,” that which lies beyond the fixed boundaries of gender, identity, self. Friends and biographers alike have puzzled over her penchant for “playing” with many masks and names and with the mendacious lives that seeped from her fiction into fact and then back again. Her death in January 1923 at Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau is an enigma to many – how did she end up there and why? Reading the last stories, the last journals and letters, one finds many glimpses of her hunger for a more “permanent core” of self which attracted her to the teachings of Gurdjieff.. Perhaps this is what Virginia Woolf alluded to when, writing of Katherine’s diary, she remarked, “ But writing, the mere expression of things adequately and sensitively, is not enough. It is founded upon something unexpressed; and this something must be solid and entire.”

A few of Mansfield’s stories may seem dated today – but most have stood the test of time. Many are masterpieces: The Woman at the Store, The Daughters of the Late Colonel, The Fly, Prelude, The Man without a Temperament. Her journal, diaries, and letters remain among her best loved works – and, like Virginia Woolf’s diary,
give us a full portrait of Katherine as a woman as well as a writer. The moods, flashes, experiments; the epiphanies and the anxieties , the make-overs and the mistakes
of a writer’s working life are all there to be pondered, sifted through, studied, absorbed.
Though Mansfield lamented the “fragmentary” nature of her work – and strove despite the pressures of her illness continually for a higher level of achievement, many readers find a mysterious “wholeness” and sense of unity in the stories, diaries, letters, and fragments all taken together, in a seamless coalescing of art and life. Mansfield was not only a story-teller – she herself was the story, a story whose quality fascinates and yet refuses to be defined.

This may be why she has appeared often in the fiction of her own day and later times as a “character.” She appears as Gudrun in DH Lawrence’s great novel , Women in Love and as the protagonist of his late short story, “Mother and Daughter.” She appears as Walter Bidlake’s pitful wife in Huxley’s Point Counterpoint. More generous snapshots of Katherine appear throughout Woolf’s diary and writings, showing us how deeply Mansfield continued to influence her, even long after her death. Nelia Gardner created a fictional portrait in an early fictionalized biography: Daughter of Time. CK Stead has recently given us a portrait of Mansfield’s early years, in Mansfield.

To this list must be added now my own novel Katherine’s Wish, (www.wordcraftoforegon.com) which had the following genesis. After a visit to the Prieure, I wrote an essay about my pilgrimage there later published in the Southwest Review. David Applefield suggested I turn it into a short story. Later, Thomas E Kennedy suggested I turn the story into a novel. And hence Katherine’s Wish came into being. Though some have suggested this book may be considered “creative nonfiction” I prefer to think of it as a “fictional biography” for it is first and foremost a work of fiction, not a historical narrative, and for this reason I have taken liberties to compress time sequences and rearrange a few details in the chronology of some events in order to shape and give pace to the story. My portrayal of the major relationships and events in her life, and my recreation of her inner musings about writing, religion, and art are based on textual evidence, but I have re-imagined, re-interpreted, and fleshed out some episodes which have been documented by various and often conflicting sources. In this book I have tried to adhere to an overall sense of “truth” rendered as a mosaic. The novel is faithful to Mansfield’s voice and spirit as conveyed through her journals, letters, and other writings.

Pane e Pecorino

From a Country Diary, Pane e Pecorino
In this old farmhouse near Siena where I have come to live for awhile, the kitchen is the heart of the house. My local history book tells me that in the middle ages “tutta la vita del castello si svolge in cucina,” the whole life of the castle was carried on in the kitchen, a statement that holds true for me today although this house is not a castle. It is old, however, and was probably built around the year 1000, although its precise origins are unknown. It may have been part of a convent of Benedictine nuns, or it may have been part of a fulling mill where wool was cleaned and thickened. Today it belongs to an Australian woman for whom I am house sitting for a few months.

This kitchen has high vaulted ceilings and a red brick floor. One wall is occupied by an enormous fire place, another by a wood burning stove and a cooking range, the third by an antique dish cupboard crammed with jars of brown rice and orange lentils, and rows of chipped brown terracotta dishes. An ancient, battered stone sink is set below the only window looking out over a meadow where dirty sheep graze.
On the hill above the meadow stands a tower built in the thirteenth century where a shepherd lives. Just beyond the hill I can make out the tip of a magnificent oak tree, and beyond that, the wooded slopes of the Sienese Montagnola. On the windowsill are pots of flourishing geraniums, fuchsia and vermillion, and plenty of fresh herbs: sage, chives, rosemary, dill, coriander, basil, and tarragon. In the center of the room is an old, scarred, oak table radiating a presence of its own. Overhead dangle bundles of pungent dried fennel and sage Downstairs is shed for wood and tools, a cellar for storing wine and preserves, and an old wood oven.
Since my arrival I have bottled tomato conserve and made jam with wild plums and blackberries. I have dried cannellini beans for winter soups, and collected mushrooms from the mossy floor of the chestnut forest. I have also set myself the task of baking my own bread. It is the simplest bread I know how to make: whole wheat flour, water, salt, and a cup of sour dough, all kneaded together on a wooden surface, left to rise twice, and baked in the wood oven downstairs. A slab cut from this fragrant, crusty loaf, seasoned with a drop of piquant, dark green olive oil and a sprinkling of salt is one of the most satisfying meals I have had in a long time.
Bread has always been the main staple of the peasants here. In Italy cheese and prosciutto, mortadella, or anything else that might go with bread is known as “companatico,” more a garnish or an accompaniment rather than the main thing. Bread was the main thing, always.

Here in Tuscany the peasants baked their bread made of coarse flour with no salt, in huge loaves weighing several pounds that would feed a numerous family of eight or ten for a week. This gigantic loaf was wrapped in a hemp cloth to keep it fresh so that it would last until the next baking. Baking was done once a week. The dough was mixed in a special cupboard with a trough, called a “madia,” found in every farmhouse kitchen. There was generally one large oven for every village and an inexorable hierarchy governed who could put their loaves in first.
Last week’s bread never went to waste, soups were made of it like the famous acquacotta, or salads, like the summer panzanella still a popular dish in Florence, made of dry bread softened in water, seasoned with olive oil and served with ripe tomatoes, basil, and black olives. Old bread was never thrown away. To do so was a crime. Many older people in Italy still feel that way, although the bread they buy is not what they remember from their youth before the War. Despite the proliferation of bread boutiques in the larger cities, it is difficult to find a loaf of bread made of stone ground whole grain flour, kneaded by hand and baked in a wood oven. Such bread, the meal that the poorest peasant once enjoyed, has almost disappeared.
The best companatico I know for homemade bread is pecorino cheese – cheese made from sheep’s milk. I have heard that the shepherd who lives up in the tower sells pecorino, so one evening returning from a long ramble through the woods, I venture up to his tower. The yard is strewn with unsightly objects: an abandoned car, rusted pieces of corrugated metal roofing. A rusted bedframe resting on its side wired to a post serves as his gate. The shepherd, dressed in patched, dirty clothes, comes to meet me and I tell him I have come to buy some cheese. His wife, a neat, plump woman wearing granny glasses and a floral apron, appears immediately on the door step, peering at me and wanting to know who I am and what I want from her husband.
“The signora has come for some cheese,”he says. Then he turns to me and says, “ But first I have something to tend to,” and he signals me to follow him into a shed next to the tower.

There in the shed, a sheep stands placidly by a table. Grunting, the shepherd hoists it up on the table without soliciting the slightest reaction from the animal. Then he turns on a high power lamp and begins examining its hoof. The sheep submits docilely as the shepherd cleans and disinfects a wound. Then he scratches its head and lowers it gently to the ground. “I really love these little beasts,” he says. His affection sounds sincere.
He indicates that I should now follow him into the tower. Inside the kitchen is dark but tidy and permeated by the pungent smell of smoke and cheese. A huge fireplace fills one wall and an old stone sink another. Although it is late summer and quite warm outside, a fire has been lit in the fireplace, where a terracotta pot is bubbling on a grate over live coals raked in a corner. There are several shelves lined with rounds of cheese near the only window where the glowing disk of the rising moon now appears. The woman turns on a very dim electric light, selects three cheeses, and cuts a large slab from each one. She puts these on a plate and sets them on the table next to a flask of red wine. “C’ e quello stagionato e quello fresco” the shepherd explains. One is aged, one is very fresh, and one is in the middle. She invites me to taste them and pours me a glass of wine. The aged one is crumbly, dry, and very tangy. The fresh one is white, creamy, and mild. The one in between is waxier, barely pungent.
She and her husband do not join me as I taste the three cheeses but simply watch me, or rather study me, the way you might study an unfamiliar animal with interest and curiosity. I compliment them on how good the cheese and wine are, but the shepherd simply brushes off my enthusiastic comments with a nod. He knows they are good; there is no need to say anything about that. They are good not thanks to any merit of his own, but to the power and the essence of the things themselves.
I tell them that I prefer the fresher cheese. The woman nods with satisfaction at my choice, takes a round from the shelf and wraps it in rough brown paper. I pay her and get ready to leave, but it seems she isn’t quite ready for the visit to end. There must be more to this momentary exchange between us than just a financial transaction. This “something more” takes the form of a bit of folk wisdom that she passes on to me, unasked for but appreciated.

“You know,” she says , first touching the sleeve of my white blouse and then pointing out the window at the rising moon. “The best way to keep clothes white is to leave them hanging out on the line all night in the light of the full moon.”
“Sciochezze!,” says her husband, “ Nonsense,” and he goes on to explain. “ Nowadays the air is polluted even here. If you leave them out all night, they just go grey and stink.”
“That is not true,” says his wife peevishly. “Don’t listen to him. Men don’t know about things like that. You just try it, though, and you’ll see.” Then to her husband, “And your sheep would stay whiter, too.”
I thank her for the advice and say good evening. On the way home I stop by the garden to water the cabbages and pumpkins. I sit for awhile on an overturned bucket, watch the moon rising high above the hill and contemplate a green and silver beetle that has alighted on a wilted yellow pumpkin blossom. Then I go inside for a dinner of wine, cheese, and bread. After dinner I read for awhile, and then retire for the night, leaving the shutters open. Late in the night I hear the soft tinkling of many bells, so I get up out of bed to investigate.
The pond in the meadow glistens with the reflection of the full moon at the zenith. Up on the hill outside the tower, the shepherd’s wife has left her sheets out on the line to blanch in the moonlight. Beneath the stars, the huge white sheets sway in a slight breeze. Below, scattered down the flanks of the hill, are her husband’s sheep, bleating softly beneath the moon now whitening their wool with its special bleaching rays. I take the blouse I was wearing that evening and hang it in a patch of moonlight invading the room -- you never know, she might be right. It might just work.

Banishing The Magic

This article first appeared in The American

A while ago, walking through the piazza in the town of Vitorchiano north of Rome I noticed that something — someone, I should say — was missing. The night had made off with Moai, the authentic Easter Island sculpture that for 17 years had kept vigil outside the town’s old gateway.

“What’s become of Moai?” I asked a shopkeeper, whose store stocks postcards of the now-missing monolith. “He’s in Sardinia for an exhibit,” responded the shopkeeper. “He’ll be back next year. But then they’ll be putting him out near the highway. “

I then felt a tug on my arm — a customer with a secret to share. “People didn’t want them to take him away,” he said. “They say he protects the town from misfortune. But they came with a crane and dismantled him.”

Now there was no doubt: Moai was indeed gone.

Moai had been a source of contention since his birth in Vitorchiano, a medieval town in Tuscia, a rugged stretch of Lazio that abuts Tuscany to the north and Umbria to the east. The area is steeped in mystical Etruscan lore. But Moai was no exotic souvenir. Improbably, he was created by visiting Easter Island sculptors and carved from local stone. His story is as intricately entwined in local legends as those of Archangel Michael or Saint Rose.

Situated near a canyon, Vitorchiano boasts one of Italy’s most beautifully preserved medieval centers. Its citizens are fiercely proud of their medieval heritage and religious and artistic traditions, stonework among them. For generations, quarrying and sculpture nurtured the area’s artisans. Their ancestors carved the famous fountains of nearby Villa Lante and the mysterious beasts of Bomarzo, which some theorize were designed by Michelangelo. Even the humblest village homes have exquisite stone decorations, though the art has been in decline for more than a decade.

Toward the end of 1980s, in response to a global appeal from Polynesian sculptors to help save decaying Easter Island statues, Vitorchiano’s carvers volunteered to chip in. To their surprise, they found that the Easter Island statues came from peperino, the same rock quarried in Vitorchiano. It’s a grey volcanic tufa peppered with black grains, a common building material in Italy.

Enter the Catholic Church and Italian television. Catholic missionaries in Rapa Nui (with ties to the town) and a Discovery-style TV program called “In Search of the Ark” sponsored a visit from a group of Easter Island sculptors to help draw attention to the plight of the Pacific statues. They decided to apply their skills locally to raise public awareness. A nearby quarry donated a huge chunk of stone and the Rapa Nui artists went to work on a statue using traditional methods and primitive tools.

The result was the imposing Moai, nearly four meters tall and carved from a single slab of grey peperino. He wore the ritual headdress that distinguishes many of his elegant Rapa Nui counterparts. The island artists then performed a ritual ceremony in which the Moai’s eyes were opened, endowing him with protective powers. With the mayor’s approval, he was raised in the town square. National television filmed the ceremony and the Easter Islanders departed soon thereafter.

Moai remained behind to testify to the solidarity among stone-workers, a link between two profoundly different communities that shared a way a life. The tolerance represented by the statue was remarkable in a community where even residents of neighboring towns are often considered “outsiders.” Under new and strict European Union immigration laws, it’s unlikely the Easter Islanders craftsmen would have been permitted into today’s Italy.

From the outset, some townsfolk saw Moai as an interloper. He usurped a place once occupied by a monument to the town’s war dead, which was moved across the street. Others insisted that a Polynesian sculpture had no business in an Italian civic setting. The resistance concealed deeper doubts, including religious embarrassment. Though his makers were Polynesian Catholics (Rapa Nui is a province of a deeply Catholic Chile) and guests of Vitorchiano’s Dehonian mission, the ritual of “the opening of the eyes” gave skeptics an opportunity to attack what they saw as a pagan monument.

Though the moai are often labeled as “heads,” they actually combine heads with abbreviated torsos. On Easter Island, they are thought to honor dead priests and ancients. Some think they help crops grow. Their influence was always viewed as anything but sinister. No one ever accused a moai of going bump in the night. Given such an exotic history, it’s no wonder Vitorchiano’s Moai fans numbered the superstitious and the wide-eyed, children in particular — in essence, those who relished the quirky and the fanciful. In this landlocked town, the incongruous statue evoked imagined sea voyages and exotic discoveries.

Outsiders who hear the story tend to side with Moai’s critics. What, detractors demanded to know, was an Easter Island statue doing outside the gates of a medieval Italian town with Christian roots? His defenders shot back that the spot he occupied was outside the medieval precinct and used mostly for parking. Nearby, a shopping mall is under construction. There’s a gas station, a bus stop, and a dumpster area. Moai was by far the friendliest of these sights.

Moai also gave his name to two cafés in town — “Bar del Moai” and “Mojito,” the latter combining a local craze for all things Hispanic with a pun on the statue’s name. Inscribed at his feet was a legend saying, “Touch his belly for good luck.” Taking visitors to visit the sculpture and stopping for a drink in the square was lazy Sunday entertainment. Now, puzzled visitors flock to the tobacco shop to buy postcards of a vanished monument.

For the moment Vitochiano’s Moai has been planted outside a museum in Sa Corona Arrùbia in Sardinia, where he is the centerpiece of an exhibit of Polynesian art. Maybe he’s happier overlooking the sparkling Mediterranean — an ideal environment for a statue of island ancestery. Perhaps he broods over his displacement and demotion from honored guest and goodwill ambassador to handsome exile.

In his old home, his absence is felt. “What will happen to the town now?” a troubled local man asked me. “Those people who made it really believed in what they were doing...”

And what about the statue’s protective powers? Townsfolk may have reason to worry. An online encyclopedia entry published by DeAgostini warns that the removal of a moai invites catastrophe.

The controversy even generated a response from the local priest. “As if our own protectors [the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Michael] were unable to shield us and were only good for inspiring festivals and processions,” he admonished unhappily in a parish newsletter. The message was clear. When it came to holy protection, local saints, not foreign icons, would take up the slack.

Once again, symbolism and not location seemed at the center of the debate. Changing views of non-Catholic beliefs as well as racial prejudice spurred by illegal immigration and a growing fear of fanaticism did poor Moai no good.

With Italy’s Asian population burgeoning, the town council faced a thorny question: “Do we really want a symbol of an Asian race and a Polynesian religion in the heart of our medieval town?”

Moai’s transfer suggests the answer was “no.”

There were also bureaucratic concerns. State officials noted that town officials had never registered the statue with the national archive of artworks and monuments. To them, Moai was a nobody, lacking pedigree and status as a work of art.

Go tell that to Sardinia, where local papers have hailed the Moai as “among the most famous of the Easter Island statues” and labeled him a cultural and financial treasure.

Transporting the artifact to Sardinia didn’t come cheaply and many now wonder who’ll pay the return ticket. Vitorchiano officials are hardly rolling out a welcome mat. The town council has ruled that Moai, should he return, will be relegated to a strip of land near a highway in the view of whizzing cars headed south toward Rome.

Will he be happy in a lonely corner far from the flux of town life? Perhaps his protective powers could be extended to shield motorists from the speed traps that notoriously dominate the highway. Meantime, the café in Vitorchiano’s square is closed for remodeling.

So don’t go looking for Moai postcards. The few that remained are sold out.

— Update March 2008 -- after a year's absence, the sculpture returned a whole year earlier than expected, but has been placed across the canyon looking wistfully into the windows of the houses along the western gorge.

Lifestyle: Ignoble Farmhouse

This article first appeared in The American

After years of living in a rental apartment, I grew convinced that the best way to consolidate my life-long romance with Italy was to own a house. But the high costs of property in Rome, Tuscany, and Venice put the idea discouragingly beyond my means. Through my work, I’d become acquainted with Tuscia, a ragged, rustic corner of undiscovered Italy nestled not far from Rome between Tuscany and Umbria. It was mostly unknown to tourists and investors.

Here was an unspoiled countryside set amid rounded mountains covered with chestnut trees. Lower down on the slopes were olive groves, pastureland, and tidy vineyards. An endless array of medieval hill towns dotted the horizon: San Martino al Cimino, Soriano, Vitorchiano, Calcata, Bolsena, Marta. The area was blessed with pristine lakes, hot springs, an abundance of Etruscan ruins, baroque villas and sculpture gardens to explore. And, most amazingly, as I learned while sipping cappuccino and perusing newspapers in a Rome cafe, houses there were still unbelievably cheap.

One particularly intriguing ad read:

“Portion of 18th century noble farmhouse. 3 floors, 2 bedrooms. Spacious kitchen with wood oven. Ready to live in, some repairs necessary. Located in charming borgo, near century-old oak trees.”

The price was a ludicrously low €10,000.

Like any serious house-hunter, I had focused on my essential needs: a bedroom-studio for myself, a kitchen with fireplace, a small bathroom, and guest room. A borgo — a cluster of old houses often near or in the country — sounded perfect. There’d be neighbors, and probably shops nearby. I phoned and was given an appointment for the next day.

Noble farmhouse... Those words conjured up a stately building with high-ceilinged rooms, tall, arched windows overlooking cypress trees. The fact that it was habitable was ideal. Repairs could be done slowly when time and money were available. And a wood oven! I imagined myself pulling loaves from the fire.

The owner, a Rome architect, accompanied me to see the place. She told me the house had been occupied for years by an elderly aunt, now in a nursing home. She also explained that she had drawn up some plans for remodeling it, which the buyer was under no obligation to purchase along with the property.

“You did say that it is ready to live in?” I asked.

“Oh yes, except for a couple of minor details,” came the reply.

We turned off onto a side road, lined with giant cypress trees, leading across parched fields. We passed several dreary houses and came to a halt outside a grey stone building with a narrow flight of stairs that led up to a porch. Above the porch hung a coat-of-arms. It represented the noble Farnese family, once powerful landowners in the area.

But the coat-of-arms was the only aristocratic feature of this shabby little house surrounded by rabbit hutches and chicken coops.There was no vegetation in the vicinity, save an enormous oak tree beside the house, which was completely covered in scaffolding — presumably to keep the tree from crushing the roof if it fell.

“This is it?”

“Wait till you have seen the inside.”

We entered through an arched door to a big, dark, and dank room on the ground floor. In the broad beam of the architect’s flashlight, I saw it was festooned with spider webs suspended from the ceiling beams, which emitted the whirring sound of voracious wood worms.

“This is the kitchen.”

There was a wood oven and wood stove, a long plank table, and a row of dusty, empty demijohns along one wall. A few bottles of tomato sauce were lined upon a shelf. It looked more like a cellar than a kitchen. There were no windows, and no stairs connecting it to the upper floors.

“The oven is original,” she said proudly, pointing out the date 1785 chiseled in the blackened wall over the oven door. “And over here is another original feature hard to find these days.”

She turned the beam of her torch on a trough carved along one wall.

“That’s where they soaked the laundry in ashes.”

“Very interesting,” I murmured politely.

Evidently the house once lodged Prince Farnese’s washer woman.

To reach the upper floors, we had to go back outside and up the stairs. The door opened onto a tiny room, where a bed was crammed along one wall near a fireplace. A kerosene lantern hung from a nail, confirming my suspicion that the house was not wired for electricity. A rickety, ancient-looking ladder led up about eight feet to the next floor.

“The other bedroom is upstairs,” she said, pointing up the stairs. There was no use risking my life on that ladder. This was a house I wasn’t going to buy, no matter how cheap it was, and besides I would have needed a parachute to get back down again. Her auntie must have been a very nimble old lady.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not right for me. But please — “ I said, suddenly looking around me, aware that something was missing, “Where’s the bathroom — I’d like to use it, if I may.”

The architect gave me a quirky smile.

“Well, actually, there isn’t one.”

My puzzled expression prompted her to continue. “The addition of a bathroom is included in our plans,” she said. “The pipes are all there, it’s just the hook up to the city water and sewer lines that is missing.”

“Your aunt lived here without a bathroom?”

“Oh yes, until last spring.”

“How did she manage ?”

“My aunt is an old fashioned woman. She used a chamber pot.”

And as she pointed towards the bed, I now noticed that object discreetly tucked beneath the bed.

“Is it urgent?” She asked warily. “You can use it if you need to.”

Library of the Tuscia: Recent and Rediscovered Readings on Bomarzo, the Monster Park.

Since its creation in the mid 16th century, the “Sacred Wood” or “Monster Park” of Bomarzo near Viterbo has astonished visitors and puzzled scholars who continue to debate such key issues as the precise dating, artistic attribution, and meaning of the bizarre sculptural composites it contains – a hell mouth concealing a secret room which resembles the interior of an Etruscan tomb, sculptures of giants, dragons, elephants, sirens, and a small leaning palace designed to throw you off your balance. No certain evidence remains to document the names of the artists and workmen who designed and sculpted these creatures or, more importantly, to testify to their creator’s intention, and a number of interesting questions remain open to interpretation. Was the garden the brainchild solely of its patron, prince Vicino Orsini, a fanatical hemeticist and alchemist, or was the whole designed by a single artistic genius? Were the individual sculptures executed by rough local workmen, by Turkish prisoners , or by a group of artisans connected to an illustrious school in Rome? Were these strange beasts plucked from Vicino’s imagination, or perhaps, from some of his worst nightmares? Or are they meant to be symbolic? Various scholars have interpreted them as: representations of the seven cardinal sins, illustrations of Italian epic poetry, witty allegories of important political events of the period, pictograms of the milestones in Vicino’s personal life and career, alchemical symbols linked by an esoteric itinerary of initiation.
Another mystery concerns the relationship between the sculptures. How are they to be read? Is there a prescribed order to follow in viewing them? Do they conceal Christian meanings or are they rebelliously anti-Christian and pro-pagan? These are only some of the unresolved issues, but several recent and not so recent publications offer curious angles of interpretation which are worth exploring to anyone who has fallen under the spell of this place of dark enchantment.

Enrico Guidoni’s new book, Il Sacro Bosco nella Cultura Europea, (Vetralla, Davide Ghaleb Editore, 2006: www.Ghaleb.com ) is bound to shatter some conservative views of the Sacred Wood. Guidoni has painstakingly pieced together textual and iconographic evidence which would suggest that the Sacred Wood was by no means an isolated experiment sprung from the maniacal imagination of its princely patron, but a complex sculptural composite conceived and designed by Michelangelo and technically executed by a group of artisans closely linked to the era’s greatest sculptor. The text includes an alphabetical “bestiary” with entries dedicated to each of the sculptures and major decorative elements, explaining their basic symbolism. The book is handsomely illustrated with photographs from diverse periods dating back fifty years,offering a rapid glance at the deterioration to which the garden and its environment have been subject. Given the importance of this study, one hopes that the publisher will bring forth an English edition.

Maurizio Calvesi instead, in Gli Incantesimi di Bomarzo: Il Sacro Bosco tra Arte e Letteratura, (Bonpiani, 2000) reads the sculptures in relationship to the poetry of the era. His research focuses on literary allusions incarnated in the weird figures and explores the significance of the many cryptic inscriptions which appear throughout the park and in nearby palazzo Orsini.

Whereas the focus of Peter Lamborn Wilson’s essay, Oneiriconographia: Entering Poliphilo's Utopian Dreamscape, in issue 5 of the review Alexandria, is Francesco Colonna’s emblematic Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Strive of Love in a Dream), he relates his reading of this cryptic text to his explorations of Bomarzo and other sites outlying Viterbo, which had been suggested to him by a Roman alchemist as stations in an initiatory journey. For Lamborn Wilson, the absence of Christian symbols in the garden ( with the exception of the octagonal temple) would confirm Vicino’s rebellious attitude towards the ecclesiastical hierarchy. His garden is written in an alchemical code which makes use of the language of emblems, bypassing linguistic discourse to communicate meaning to the unconscious mind. Francesco Colonna’s emblems invite the reader to interpret their meaning on multiple levels simultaneously, and to read himself/​herself into the narrative, to become a performer of the text, reenacting Poliphilio’s dream- quest. This intriguing idea could be applied to the Sacred Wood itself, in which each visitor plays the role of quester, re-enacting the search for the philosopher’s stone amid these giant emblems hewn in stone. I had not read this essay when I began work on my new novel, Signatures in Stone set in Bomarzo, but in a curious way, this is exactly what happens to Daphne Dubois, the heroine, who in order to solve a mystery and save herself from unjust accusation, must "write" herself into the Sacred Wood as a "quester", interpreting its figures and emblems with relation to a few dark episodes of her past.