Nobody Seems To Have
Thought It Worth While Preserving What Would Surely Be A Notable
Economic Document For Future Generations.
Out of sheer curiosity I also
tried to procure a plan of the old quarter, that labyrinth of
thick-clustering humanity, where the Streets are often so narrow that
two persons can barely squeeze past each other.
I was informed that no
such plan had ever been drawn up; it was agreed that a map of this kind
might be interesting, and suggested, furthermore, that I might undertake
the task myself; the authorities would doubtless appreciate my labours.
We foreigners, be it understood, have ample means and unlimited leisure,
and like nothing better than doing unprofitable jobs of this kind.
[Footnote: here is a map of old Taranto in Lasor a Varea (Savonarola)
Universus terrarum etc., Vol. II, p. 552, and another in J. Blaev's
Theatrum Civitatum (1663). He talks of the "rude houses" of this
town.]
One is glad to leave the scintillating desert of this arsenal quarter,
and enter the cool stone-paved streets of the other, which remind one
somewhat of Malta. In the days of Salis-Marschlins this city possessed
only 18,000 inhabitants, and "outdid even the customary Italian filth,
being hardly passable on account of the excessive nastiness and stink."
It is now scrupulously clean - so absurdly clean, that it has quite
ceased to be picturesque. Not that its buildings are particularly
attractive to me; none, that is, save the antique "Trinita" column of
Doric gravity - sole survivor of Hellenic Taras, which looks wondrously
out of place in its modern environment. One of the finest of these
earlier monuments, the Orsini tower depicted in old prints of the place,
has now been demolished.
Lovers of the baroque may visit the shrine of Saint Cataldo, a jovial
nightmare in stone. And they who desire a literary pendant to this
fantastic structure should read the life of the saint written by Morone
in 1642. Like the shrine, it is the quintessence of insipid exuberance;
there is something preposterous in its very title "Cataldiados," and
whoever reads through those six books of Latin hexameters will arise
from the perusal half-dazed. Somehow or other, it dislocates one's whole
sense of terrestrial values to see a frowsy old monk [Footnote: This
wandering Irish missionary is supposed to have died here in the seventh
century, and they who are not satisfied with his printed biographies
will find one in manuscript of 550 pages, compiled in 1766, in the Cuomo
Library at Naples.] treated in the heroic style and metre, as though he
were a new Achilles. As a jeu d'esprit the book might pass; but it is
deadly serious. Single men will always be found to perpetrate
monstrosities of literature; the marvel is that an entire generation of
writers should have worked themselves into a state of mind which
solemnly approved of such freaks.
Every one has heard of the strange position of this hoary island-citadel
(a metropolis, already, in neolithic days). It is of oval shape, the
broad sides washed by the Ionian Sea and an oyster-producing lagoon;
bridges connect it at one extremi-y with the arsenal or new town, and at
the other with the so-called commercial quarter.
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