It was Goethe who, speaking of Pompeii, said that of the many
catastrophes which have afflicted mankind few have given greater
pleasure to posterity. The same will never be said of Messina, whose
relics, for the most part, are squalid and mean. The German poet, by the
way, visited this town shortly after the disaster of 1783, and describes
its zackige Ruinenwueste - words whose very sound is suggestive of
shatterings and dislocations. Nevertheless, the place revived again.
But what was 1783?
A mere rehearsal, an amateur performance.
Wandering about in this world of ghosts, I passed the old restaurant
where the sword-fish had once tasted so good - an accumulation of stones
and mortar - and reached the cathedral. It is laid low, all save the
Gargantuan mosaic figures that stare down from behind the altar in
futile benediction of Chaos; inane, terrific. This, then, is the house
of that feudal lady of the fortiter in re, who sent an earthquake and
called it love. Womanlike, she doted on gold and precious stones, and
they recovered her fabulous hoard, together with a copy of a Latin
letter she sent to the Christians of Messina by the hand of Saint Paul.
And not long afterwards - how came it to pass? - my steps were guided amid
that wilderness towards a narrow street containing the ruins of a
palazzo that bore, on a tablet over the ample doorway, an inscription
which arrested my attention. It was an historical title familiar to me;
and forthwith a train of memories, slumbering in the caverns of my mind,
was ignited. Yes; there was no doubt about it: the old "proprietor" and
his nephews, he of the municipal gardens. . . .
I wondered how they had met their fate, on the chill wintry morning. For
assuredly, in that restricted space, not a soul can have escaped alive;
the wreckage, hitherto undisturbed, still covered their remains.
And, remembering the old man and his humane converse that evening under
the trees, the true meaning of the catastrophe began to disentangle
itself from accidental and superficial aspects. For I confess that the
massacre of a myriad Chinamen leaves me cool and self-possessed; between
such creatures and ourselves there is hardly more than the frail bond of
a common descent from the ape; they are altogether too remote for our
narrow world-sympathies. I would as soon shed tears over the lost
Pleiad. But these others are our spiritual cousins; we have deep roots
in this warm soil of Italy, which brought forth a goodly tithe of what
is best in our own lives, in our arts and aspirations.
And I thought of the two nephews, their decent limbs all distorted and
mangled under a heap of foul rubbish, waiting for a brutal disinterment
and a nameless grave. This is no legitimate death, this murderous
violation of life.
