Going back

One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was going to the Villa d'Este just outside Rome.  I arrived there one spring afternoon, taking the local train from the capital. I strolled out into the beautiful warming sunshine, and walked down to the Villa.  As I entered, I passed through into a magic kingdom that seemed other-worldly in its beauty and perfection: the steep downward slope with its terraces, each filled with ever more artful fountains whose jets played in the wind, and whose drops caught and fragmented the sun's rays; the huge dark cypresses, swaying slowly, their black greenness a counterpoise to the fountains’ brilliant transparency.  I could readily understand why Liszt was so moved here that he wrote not just one but two of his greatest pianistic masterpieces in an attempt to capture and hold those fountains and those cypresses.

I stayed there for hours, unwilling to leave this extraordinary creation. But eventually I dragged myself away, casting a last glance over my shoulder.  I walked round the town, still dazed from the experience. I remember I bought an ice-cream, real Italian ice-cream, and something about eating it suddenly made me want to see those gardens again.  I gobbled down the rest, and rushed back; it was nearly closing time.  But the gods of the place appeared to be on my side; I paid for the second time, and hurried through to this lost world regained.  As I did so, and began to savour once more the unique sights, something terrible happened: they turned off the water. Before my very eyes the huge and glorious fountains sank down into the ground like deflating balloons.  I was devastated, and left with only the dead husk of my vision.

I learnt from that mistake never to return to somewhere that has provided a perfect experience of this kind.  Or rather never to return soon afterwards.  Because attempting to repeat exactly is bound to fail, bound to disappoint. And yet the urge to return is still there, as it should be for sights really worth seeing. The resolution of this apparent paradox is to wait.  In doing so you can return, and can recapture something - not the same experience, certainly, but a cognate one.

I have now learnt that one of the greatest pleasures is that of returning after some time to places that are rich enough to sustain several visions of themselves.  Visiting New York again, say, you recognise your favourite features - the elegant Chrysler Building, the Citicorp slab, the treasures of the museums, the view from the Windows on the World restaurant - but each trip with its different seasons and circumstances adds something new, provides a different perspective of this city's constant metamorphosis. Staying in Venice again is even richer, a constant re-encounter with your memories, themselves many-layered products of other visits.

And so it is that each fresh view builds these special places in time as well as in space.  In a sense they are made of a special, infinitely absorbent material that can hold each of your key experiences without mixing or vitiating them.  But as I learnt that afternoon outside Rome, this material requires a further special ingredient, which cannot be omitted or skimped: time.  Going back to a place is always safe provided we and the place itself also go back - preferably a long way.

(22.2.92)

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