FROM AN ITALIAN JOURNAL
June 13-In the great Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore, above the
altar in the choir, Christ hangs supine on his cross, but wearing a
golden crown that is much too large for his head. His knees are up–
raised, as
if
he had been struggling with death, and the paralysis had
struck
him
where he fought; but his whole body slopes downward
with a weariness in which I feel the weight of the ages. Every line of
him
is cast in pain, renunciation, and silence. Yet here he is Christ
the King, and so named not by his enemies in mockery, but his own
Church. At the foot of the altar, a young monk sweeping the red cloth
and smoothing out the breaks in the carpet. How strange it is to pass
behind the altar and, looking down the whole length of Christ's poor,
bent figure, twisted into the deepest suffering and hopelessness, so for–
lorn above the ornate altar-how strange to realize that the sculptor
perhaps overdid it-see that here he looks not a king but a scarecrow,
and that the crown which is so large for his head expresses not so
much amazement and homage before him who undertook so much,
as the condescension of authority to its own figurehead.
The faces of young monks, like the faces of young girls in the
climax of adolescence-both meeting in the same corridor, but the one
going back as the other goes forward.
June 15-Sunday-Nenni spoke this morning in the great "town
square,'' the Piazza della Signoria. By ten the Lungarno was jammed
with workers walking or riding along to the meeting in trucks-the old
men a little sedate, buttoned up into frayed jackets despite the blister–
ingly hot day; the youngsters cheering, singing, and gaily waving their
red flags. The girls looked wonderful. Everyone says that they have
been liberated since the war, and they certainly look it as they come
tearing along on their bicycles, flapping their sandals against the pedals,
with their long, black hair streaming behind. A band trotted along
blaring out the Garibaldi hymn and
Bandiera Rossa.
It was all like a
light-hearted Sunday excursion en masse-the sun sparkling on the
river and the long white sheets hung out of the windows; uncovering
depth on depth of green out of the trees. Staggered with sun, drunk
with light. I feel these days as
if
my body had grown taste buds all
around it, and every cell were eating at Italy without getting its fill.
At the meeting itself the beauty and unexpectedness of the scene
were so overwhelming that at first I could hardly give attention to
what was being said. In an angle of the enormous square two contrasting
structures-the Old Palace (really the City Hall) on one side; startlingly
unaged, its gay and arrogant tower suddenly rearing itself with a kind
of deceptive lightness up from behind the row of battlements. On the
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