Pagan Light

by Jamie James

  To liken Capri to Coney Island is a stretch (unless one considers the funicular from the Marina Grande to the Piazzetta as a sort of carnival ride), and one man’s vulgarity is another man’s good fun. A more just complaint, often heard, is that Capri has become a shopping mall. That must be the impression carried away by day-trippers who browse the smart shops in the village and have an early dinner before catching the last ferry to Naples. Yet on my sojourn in Capri in the spring of 2016, I found the island to be in remarkably good form for a limestone rock four square miles in extent, with a year-round population of some thirteen thousand people who play host to millions of visitors annually. If I were looking for a complaint, it would be that the place is too perfectly preserved, a trifle overscrubbed, every wall freshly painted and every flower box in full bloom—rather like a Las Vegas replica of a quaint Italian village. But that would be peevish: since antiquity, the genius of the island has been hospitality, and a good host wants to keep the place looking its best.

  A more profitable way of viewing Capri in the twenty-first century might be as a museum, not an awesome mausoleum like Venice, but a modest provincial museum, which has let the gift shop and food-and-beverage outlets take over. As I walked around the island, I found it easy to escape the mob (admittedly, not as thick in April as it would be a few months later), simply by venturing beyond the shopping district in the central village. Villa Behring, where Gorky and Lenin played chess, is now a middle-class apartment building, fifty paces from the Piazzetta down a crooked stone lane, where I met no one but housewives doing their errands and children kicking a soccer ball. When I strolled up to the Belvedere Cannone, the former Malerplatte, where German watercolorists once painted the views and Norman Douglas found Heinrich Lieber writhing on the ground after shooting himself with an absurd Browning pistol, it was deserted except for some local teenagers furtively smoking marijuana. Visitors attuned to the eccentric cultural legacy of Capri will find mementos of it at every turn in the island’s winding footpaths.

  If Capri is a museum, its curators are the publishers of Edizioni La Conchiglia, a small press that operates out of a narrow shop in the village, which opened its doors in 1981. Conchiglia has published more than 350 exquisitely designed books, most of them in a small format, with covers in Wedgwood blue and gray or shocking purple and pink. The Conchiglia catalogue comprises the best literature produced in Capri, including many works that had gone out of print long ago, as well as Italian translations of books by Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, Norman Douglas, Compton Mackenzie, and the rest. One recent title, by Francesco Durante, a native of Anacapri, is a comprehensive literary history of the island, starting with the Greek poet Blaesus, born in Capri in the sixth century B.C., of whose work but a single verse survives (“Pour out for us seven cups of your sweetest [wine]”), down to the present day. The index of the book has 494 names.

  Conchiglia is a family business run by Riccardo Esposito, his wife, Ausilia Veneruso, and their son, Vincenzo Sorrentino. I met Riccardo Esposito one day when he saw me wandering down Via le Botteghe, trying to find the shop. He presented an extravagantly romantic appearance, wearing a cashmere scarf wrapped around his neck and a pince-nez like Yeats’s, dangling on a black velvet ribbon. Esposito is a native of the island, descended from a family of hoteliers and restaurateurs, and a distinguished writer himself, who has taken as his theme the transformation of the island from a legendary international cultural enclave to a byword of chic.

  He led me to his shop and sat me down in the one little chair, and there we talked as best we could in his bad English and my worse Italian. He reminisced about Moravia in Capri, “serious, very serious, solitary. You saw him go around the island with a great burden on his shoulders.” Esposito made a stirring defense of Malaparte, which elicited a cheer from his wife, sitting in the office behind us. He proudly told me about meeting Ezra Pound in Venice, in 1969.

  “Capri was an international laboratory for the avant-garde,” he said, “a place where ideas were born, a new artistic vision, and given to the world.” With an air of resignation, sad but not bitter, Esposito concluded, “In the past, intellectuals and artists came here to live. Now people come just to use our name. Now Capri is a brand.”

  Where do they go now? I asked. Where is the laboratory for a new artistic vision today?

  He lifted his shoulders and eyebrows in eloquent synchrony. “Yes, where is it?”

  In this small fresco from Pompeii, Odysseus sails past the Sirens, who play pipes and horns to lure his ship to destruction. Skeletons of previous victims litter the shore.

  A sardonyx cameo of Augustus deified, carved soon after the emperor’s death

  Engraving of Tiberius, by Balthasar Moncornet (ca. 1600–1668)

  Bust of Tiberius at the Louvre

  The ruins of Villa Jovis, Tiberius’s palace atop Capri’s highest cliff

  A fanciful reconstruction of the palace by the German antiquarian C.F.W. Weichardt, 1900

  Thomas Spencer Jerome and Charles Freer in the garden of Villa Castello

  Jacques d’Adelswärd Fersen at twenty

  Villa Lysis, Fersen’s mansion in Capri, “dédiée à la jeunesse d’amour,” dedicated to the youth of love

  Salon of Villa Lysis

  The terrace, overlooking the Marina Grande

  Period photograph of the salon of Villa Lysis

  Period photograph of a bronze sculpture of Nino Cesarini riding a dolphin, by Francesco Ierace, now presumed lost

  Mimì Ruggiero, Capri’s master gardener

  Baron Jacques at forty

  Nino Cesarini in a classical pose, photograph by Wilhelm von Plüschow

  Casa Rossa, home of John Clay MacKowen, in Anacapri, which now houses the municipal art collection

  Coastline of Capri near the White Grotto, oil painting by Michele Federico (1884–1966), the only native Capriote artist represented in the collection

  Studio portrait of Romaine Brooks, circa 1915

  At the Seashore (In riva al mare), self-portrait by Romaine Brooks, oil on canvas, 1914

  Romaine Brooks at Villa Cercola, circa 1920

  Photograph of Villa Cercola around the time that Romaine Brooks lived there

  Gabriele D’Annunzio, le poète en exil, oil painting by Romaine Brooks, 1912

  Portrait of Ida Rubinstein, by Romaine Brooks, 1917

  Allers at Home Again (Allers Wieder daheim), self-portrait of the artist in Capri, by Christian Wilhelm Allers, 1898

  Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Capri Girl, oil on cardboard, by John Singer Sargent, 1878

  Zum Kater Hiddigeigei café, meeting place for foreign travelers in Capri, circa 1880

  Villa Discopoli, residence of Rainer Maria Rilke in Capri. Oil painting by Giuseppe Ferrarini (Parma, 1846–?)

  Maxim Gorky in Capri village, around the time of his meeting with Rilke

  Villa Behring, Gorky’s residence after 1909, where Lenin, Feodor Chaliapin, and Ivan Bunin stayed as houseguests

  NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The page numbers for the notes that appear in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-­reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  In addition to citing the sources of quotations, these notes incorporate the bibliography of my research, with occasional brief comments about the works I consulted and grateful acknowledgment of assistance from colleagues and friends. I did much of the research for this book in libraries and archives in Capri, Paris, and London, but I often had recourse to electronic books. I live in Indonesia, a country that lacks research libraries and well-stocked bookstores, and many of the texts I write about are easily obtainable online. Therefore, in these notes I provide page numbers only for books that actually have pages; for electronic books, I cite chapters or other markers where possible. Of course, one advantage of electronic books is that a passage may easily be located by a global search.

  In quotations, a
part from silently changing British to American usage in modern texts, I follow the spellings of the original, in the belief that archaic forms and competing scholarly notions of correct usage hold some interest, but I have freely edited punctuation in the belief that it does not (and often does not reflect the writer’s intentions at all but is rather imposed by the publisher). In other words, all the quotations here are verbatim and faithful to their sources, with omissions noted by ellipses, but I groom them as it suits me.

  Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

  * * *

  PAGAN LIGHT, my title, comes from Norman Douglas’s South Wind. The phrase makes several appearances in the novel as Douglas’s attempt to encapsulate the source of Capri’s transformative effect on visitors, yet none of them quotes very well. In the first occurrence, Mr. Keith, a wealthy, worldly hedonist long resident in Nepenthe, Douglas’s fictional Capri, encounters Bishop Heard, Douglas’s protagonist, while he is swimming in the sea. Mr. Keith invites him aboard his luxurious boat and delivers a witty discourse expounding the author’s views on life and opinions about life on Capri. He mentions Denis Phipps, a melancholy undergraduate who has confided in the two older men. Mr. Keith (his full name in the novel) remarks, “Have you seen Denis lately? We must be friendly to that young man, Heard. I don’t think he is altogether happy in this clear pagan light.” Later in the book, the bishop, full of doubts about his vocation after his experiences in Nepenthe, seeks Keith’s advice. “You seem to have a quarrel with Moses and his commandments,” the bishop says. “I want to listen to the opinions of a man so different from myself as you are. It may do me good.” He concludes by quoting Keith back to himself: “I think I could stand almost anything in this landscape—in this clear pagan light, as you call it.”

  Goethe attempted to visit there: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italienische Reise, chap. 53.

  “the sage surrenders”: Norman Douglas, South Wind (London: Martin Secker, 1917), chap. 39.

  “Come hither, renowned Odysseus”: Homer, Odyssey 12.184–91.

  Apragopolis: The location of Suetonius’s Apragopolis is an insoluble problem. In his Vita divi Augusti 98.4, Suetonius writes, “Vicinam Capreis insulam Apragopolim appellabat,” which would ordinarily be translated “an island in the vicinity of Capri called Apragopolis.” However, there is no inhabited (or habitable) island in the vicinity of Capri, much less one large enough to accommodate a polis, a city or small state. Classical scholars have offered several theories to explain this passage, none of them satisfactory. One scholar proposed an emendation in the text that enabled it to be translated “the neighboring part of the island of Capri,” that is, the part facing Campania, where the Marina Grande is located and where Augustus built his villa. I have followed this reading: it is sketchy Latin, but at least it makes sense. For a full discussion of this issue, see Walter Brooks McDaniel, “Apragopolis, Island-Home of Ancient Lotos Eaters,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 45 (1914): 29–34.

  “were adorned not so much”: Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, Vita divi Augusti 72.

  “the first paleontological museum”: Norman Douglas, Siren Land (London: Martin Secker, 1929), chap. 4.

  tristissimus hominum: Gaius Plinius Secundus, Naturalis historia 28.5.23.

  “For the first time”: Douglas, Siren Land, chap. 4.

  “for the most part”: Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Annales 4.57.

  “The solitude of the place”: Ibid., 4.67.

  “In the years that he went into exile”: Ibid., 1.4.

  One modern military historian: David L. Woods, A History of Tactical Communication Techniques (Orlando, Fla.: Martin-Marietta, 1965). Also see John Kingman, “The Isle of Capri: An Imperial Residence and Probable Wireless Station of Ancient Rome,” National Geographic, Sept. 1919, 224.

  “The more intent”: Tacitus, Annales 4.67.

  “In Capri, they point out”: Suetonius, Vita divi Tiberii 62.2.

  “Like a royal despot”: Tacitus, Annales 6.1.

  “On retiring to Capri”: Suetonius, Tiberius 43. On the life of Gilles de Rais, I consulted Jean Benedetti, Gilles de Rais (New York: Stein and Day, 1972).

  “He hath his boys”: Ben Jonson, Sejanus, His Fall, act 4, scene 5, lines 392–95, 398–401.

  “This Emperor hath no son” and Charles Dunster’s note: John Milton, Paradise Regained, ed. Charles Dunster (London: T. Cadell, 1795), 196–97.

  “the only writer”: Francine du Plessix Gray, At Home with the Marquis de Sade (New York: Penguin, 1999), 11.

  “The palace is perched”: Marquis de Sade, Juliette, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Grove Press, 1968), 992–95.

  “a fanatic sparkling with wit”: Unsigned review, Analytical Review (London: J. Johnson, 1790), 568. See also Edwin Bowen, “Did Tacitus in the Annals Traduce the Character of Tiberius?,” Classical Weekly 6, no. 21 (1913): 162–66.

  “that the first Pope”: John Rendle, The History of That Inimitable Monarch Tiberius (Exeter: Trewman and Son, 1813), 432.

  “foreigners had been coming”: Compton Mackenzie, Vestal Fire (London: Hogarth Press, 1985), 93.

  “possessed of much fondness”: Thomas Spencer Jerome, The Orgy of Tiberius on Capri: Source of the Story: A Paper Read at the International Congress of Historical Studies, London, April 1913 (Rome, 1913). A copy of this privately printed pamphlet is held by the library of the Centro Caprense Ignazio Cerio. .

  Thomas Jerome’s life began: For information about Jerome’s life, I consulted John G. Winter’s preface to Thomas Spencer Jerome, Aspects of the Study of Roman History (London: Mills & Boon, 1914), iii–ix, and Carlo Knight, L’avvocato di Tiberio (Capri: La Conchiglia, 2004).

  “His pictures—picturesque corners”: E. F. Benson, Final Edition (London: Hogarth Press, 1988), 113.

  “The rooms were lofty”: Allan McLane Hamilton, Recollections of an Alienist (New York: George H. Doran, 1916), 173.

  “After I left”: Ibid., 174.

  “One evening he was sitting”: W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Short Stories (New York: Penguin, 1978), 4: 173–75.

  “When [Scudamore, the character based on Jerome] came to Sirene”: Mackenzie, Vestal Fire, 94.

  “said to Jerome”: Quoted in John G. Pedley, The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 291.

  “He set to work”: Mackenzie, Vestal Fire, 93–94.

  “difficult to express”: Thomas Spencer Jerome, Roman Memories in the Landscape Seen from Capri (Rome: Mills & Boon, 1914), xxiii.

  “has a distinguished ancestry”: Michael Schmidt, The Novel: A Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), 656.

  “My generation was brought up”: Ibid.

  “comely outlines were barely”: Douglas, South Wind, chap. 1.

  “very beautiful but also”: Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (London: Duckworth, 1915), chap. 21.

  “with such precision”: Douglas, South Wind, chap. 21.

  “We of the South”: Ibid., chap. 39.

  Born in Thüringen: The best source for the life of Norman Douglas is Mark Holloway, Norman Douglas: A Biography (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1976).

  “could endure the society”: Paul Fussell, Abroad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 130.

  “Nietzschean brand of naughtiness”: Ibid., 120.

  “I want to lay a few simple flowers”: Wilde to Turner, Oct. 15, 1897, quoted in James Money, Capri: Island of Pleasure (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986), 55.

  “a great connoisseur”: Wilde to Robert Ross, Oct. 19, 1897, quoted in ibid.

  “a man, accompanied by a younger man”: Roger Peyrefitte, The Exile of Capri, trans. Edward Hyams (London: Panther, 1969), 15–16.

  “those beings who, incapable”: Ibid., 7.

  “Thirteen, blond, with precocious eyes”: Poem quoted in full in Will Ogrinc, Frère Jacques: A Shrine to Love and Sorrow (2006), semgai.free.fr/doc_et_pdf/Fersen-engels.pdf,
accessed June 24, 2018. Ogrinc’s little book is the best, authoritative source for information about Fersen’s early life and the Black Masses scandal.

  “Cycladian girls, pretty Greeks”: Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, Ébauches et débauches (Paris: Léon Vanier, 1901), 18. Most of Fersen’s books are available for download in good scans from the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

  “throbbed the naked”: Quoted in Robert Aldrich, The Seduction of the Mediterranean (London: Routledge, 1993), 123–24. Aldrich’s book is a fascinating, wide-ranging study of homosexual fantasy in the literature of the Mediterranean world.

  “It was a marvel”: Achille Essebac, Luc (Paris: Ambert, 1907), 76–77.

  Morand later confided to a friend: Jacques Chardonne, Morand’s close literary colleague and a fellow Nazi collaborator. Paul Morand and Jacques Chardonne, Correspondance I (Paris: Gallimard, 2013), 746–47.