Aetherial Worlds

Without

What if there were no Italy? What if it simply never existed—no such geological configuration in the shape of a boot? Perhaps it was flooded in Noah’s days. Or perhaps it collapsed as a single block, with its Alps and Apennines, with its rosebushes and lemon trees, and—why not—along with Sicily and Sardinia, into blue waters during an earthquake, the sea formless and empty, only the Holy Spirit hovering above the salty abyss. Where would the Albanians, who steal laundry from clotheslines, steer their rubber boats? Let’s pull out a map and duly look: the closest laundry is hanging in Corsica—too far to swim, and the locals might respond with a knuckle sandwich, although there wouldn’t be any locals, would there, and no Frenchmen, either, only Gauls, unconquered and thus never having been ennobled by the Romans. Ipso facto, farther west there would be no Spaniards and no Portuguese, only wild Iberians, most likely under the reign of the Moors. Obviously there wouldn’t be any Romanians or Moldovans, and Chișinău would be inhabited by an altogether different tribe, perhaps one unable even to mix lime paint in a bucket or to replace a windowpane. The English language as we know it—that is, with its almost sixty percent of words derived from Latin—simply wouldn’t exist. And there wouldn’t be any Latin letters, either; we’d write everything with Greek ones, although I’ll grant that, practically speaking, the difference is small.

Greeks would be everywhere, there having been no Romans to conquer them—though that would, most likely, have been done, with great satisfaction, by the Persians once Alexander the Great died. Persians are pretty clever engineers; they are wonderful at building bridges and know how to irrigate, so no need to worry about pavements and water supply. The post office would also run smoothly, especially when serving the royal family. But when it comes to marble statues, mosaics, encaustic painting, and small bronze statuettes, things don’t look so good. No doubt the Greeks can invent anything, make anything, build, write, and paint anything, but what about the small matter of taste? Persian style can be somewhat heavy-handed. Lapis lazuli. The battle of a king with a lion. Golden floor-length robes and hats piled high reflecting the ethos of Ivan the Terrible’s court. Same goes for social mores. Abuse and tyranny, dark anger bubbling underneath: “Everyone! On your knees, bow with your forehead to the floor!” Keep all the women under lock and key and no funny business; drill a hole in the prisoner’s shoulder blades and thread a rope through it. And where is political thought? Consuls, proconsuls, the senate, political parties, the patricians, the plebeians, and, last but not least, the Republic? Where is Roman Law? Helloooo? Where are the orators? The historians? The theaters? Would the Persians really give a crap about the accrescent hum of an assembling crowd, the crepuscular sky above the amphitheater, the sweet scent of the oleander, the last bit of light from Venus, the evening star that’s not really a star at all? About historical scrolls, the adversarial legal system? Would they be captivated by Ciceros, or, given the absence of such, by Demostheneses; would they come to respect them and create public forums where any deadbeat can let his big mouth run? Impale, impale on a stake, clean the forums with quicklime, and farewell, civil rights leaders and advocates. Where are the baths, the flowing summer robes, the shaved chins, the terraced villas? Where are respected women, worthy mothers of worthy citizens? What about honoring agreements? Projects for the common good? Poetry, where is the poetry? Satire!!! Would a Persian tolerate satire? Or privacy of correspondence? Or doing sports in the buff? Or a relaxed attitude toward the gods?

Subtract from our culture the Roman and Gothic styles; subtract arches, vaulted structures, keystones; take away city planning, gardens, fountains, all European cities, castles, fortresses, spires, humpback bridges, colonnades and atriums; erase Saint Petersburg from the picture and shake its ashes from your hands as if it never existed. Send it all to hell in a handbasket. Off with the Renaissance. Giotto, Michelangelo, Raphael—shoo shoo shoo. Forget about pictorial art—it was but a dream. Down with opera, singing in general, just puncture your eardrums. Pour away the wine, you’ll be drinking barley hooch from now on.

Tear up Dante, erase the Mona Lisa, raze the Vatican to the ground. There are no Catholics, no popes, no antipopes, no cardinals, no religious hypocrites, no Galileo or Giordano Bruno and none of their tormentors, no Guelphs and Ghibellines; there’s no Western Roman Empire, and then no Eastern one, either, for there is no West. Absolutely no West at all. There are no brutal gladiators and no poisoning seductresses. There are no Seven Hills of Rome; the stripy Siena Cathedral does not exist; the blue expanse of Tuscany can’t be seen from any window. It’s not crimson bellicose Mars, not diamantine Venus up there in the sky.

Nothing, nothing exists—there is no pasta, no Fellini, no pizza, no bel canto, no Pinocchio, no Sophia Loren, no teary-eyed Maksim Gorky in Capri, no Cipollino the Onion Boy, no Neapolitan mastiffs, no Carrara marble, no carnivals, no pesto sauce, no Romeo and Juliet, no mozzarella, no cappuccino, no eruption of Mount Vesuvius, no perdition of Pompeii, no Italian mafia, no Italian fashion, no Mussolini, no Armani, no Pontius Pilate, no Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. The leaning tower of Pisa isn’t leaning; the sinking town of Venice isn’t sinking. There is no Catullus’s sparrow. There is no one to discover America. No one to build Moscow’s Kremlin.

Gogol has nowhere to run from the encroachment of Mirgorod, no sunny haven where he can lie supine, arms stretched out, gazing for hours into the blueness of the sky, purifying his dark, northern, frosty soul from the debris and detritus of his pale, sluggish, fat-assed homeland. “It’s mine! No one can take it away from me! I was born here. Russia, Saint Petersburg, the snow, the scoundrels, the office, the university, the theater—it was all but a dream! He who has been to Italy will say farewell to other lands. He who has been to heaven will not want to come down to earth…. Oh, Italy! Whose hand will pluck me from here? Oh, the sky! Oh, the days! It’s not quite summer and not quite spring, but better than any springs or summers that exist in other corners of the world. Oh, the air! I can’t stop drinking it in. There are skies and paradise in my soul.”

Without Italy, there are disputes in matters of taste. Money does stink. You can speak ill of the dead.

And all roads lead to nothing.