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Etruscan Places |
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written
by joelnish / 09.03.2005 |
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Part 1: |
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It is a special kind of enlightenment to be able to see and appreciate completely the fullness of life. I find this in Lawrence’s description of the tombs. Every word that Lawrence writes in his description is filled with a vibrant self assured but never pretentious energy. My favorite images are those of the dolphins and fishermen and birds and rocks. Even the rock “rises” as though it were as alive as the dolphins. The sky is not merely light it is a “sky of light”. The tomb comes alive, containing the same “quick” that a real bird or sky would have. Under Lawrence’s pen the tombs cease to be a documentation but a spontaneous moment, flowing and ethereal.
Part of the tragedy of human existence is how hard it is to appreciate something until it is slipping away. I can’t say that reading it through the first time I could extrapolate that Lawrence was dying but with that foreknowledge everything fits. It is his impending death that forces Lawrence to see the fullness of life in the Tombs. Finding magic in the simple acts of living that he will not know again.
Yet the sadness that I detect in Lawrence goes beyond the simple sadness of losing the everyday, it is that Lawrence was never able to truly shake his moralistic roots. He longs for the afterlife he finds with the Etruscans, but having invented the Etruscan afterlife how can he truly believe in it? To me it seems Lawrence is in a similar situation to the ancients that Flaubert mentioned, except in perhaps reverse. To Flaubert the ancients existed “when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come.” I think Lawrence exists in the opposite space, between Christ and the more ancient gods of the Etruscans. Forced to live in the moment and the past.
Of Lawrence’s future? He’ll die looking out the window.
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Part 2: |
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I would like to say that the dominant image I took back from Tarquinia would be something obviously profound or brilliantly subtle. However, the dominant image I took back from Tarquinia was that of the two guys nailing that one woman in the tomb of the Fustigazione. I'm not quite sure exactly what draws me to that image though I have been trying to come up with some excuses.
I think part of what I found the most amazing is how shocking I first found the image. As if sex should be divorced from a recollection of life. How messed up is that? Why shouldn’t we be allowed to celebrate everything? Perhaps it’s this question that makes that the dominant image.
Or maybe I’m amazed more at the honesty of the Etruscans than our own repression. What an amazing culture could be so free and open? The men run around nude and tombs display sexual scenes, how delightful to live in a culture with such openness.
Or perhaps it merely taps into my own carnal desires and wants. Lust fostered and grown in a country thousands of miles away from my lover. That would be the simplest answer. It does seems a reoccurring theme of this class is the way that History is seen and rewritten for each viewer in the context of that individual’s understanding of the moment.
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