518
PARTISAN REVIEW
Taranto? : As it turned out, nothing terrible happened-we landed
within twenty-five minutes. The strike had ended. They cheerful–
ly announced: Here every day someone goes on strike, even small
restaurants, trying to squeeze their revolution in between breakfast
and lunch.
The next day, at the crack of dawn, Italian television, which
h as decided to film outdoors, takes me onto the roof of the Castle
of the Sacred Angel, points out from that wonderful height St.
Peter's Church, which I had seen only in pictures until then, and
then asks what I think about all this, and wha t thoughts and
associations the view of St. Peter's Church brings forth. I begin to
babble something about architecture, art, the interaction and
correlation of the styles in the last centuries of the Renaissance
and the Baroque, and meanwhile, I notice that my conversa–
tion partners are not all that pleased. They ask me directly,
"Well what kind of political idea comes to mind when you look
at St. Peter's Church?" I, naturally, answer that I'm not quite
used to connecting art with politics in such a straightforward
fashion, and once again I see that the journalist speaking with me
is extremely displeased. And he asks me, "You mean you don't
feel the heavy weight that spreads from this cathedral, from this
spire, to all of Italy?" To which I said that I did not know Italian
customs and would not take it upon myself to solve Italian prob–
lems, but that from a purely visual standpoint I did not asso–
ciate the stones of St. Peter's with any weight; moreover, if such a
heavy weight did exist, we would not
be
talking about it together
so freely, much less on television. But I am not a Marxist and can
offer them no Marxist conception of architecture. Then the
journalists approached me from another angle, now as an ortho–
dox Russian who has read Dostoevsky, who, as is known, con–
demned Catholicism, so that at least in this respect I would say
something disrespectful about the Vatican. Naturally, when you
are pressured, resistance arises. I became furious, and when for
the tenth time they asked what kind of political idea came to my
mind when I looked at the Cathedral of St. Peter's Church, I an–
swered that only one political idea had come to me in the course
of our conversation. Namely, when the Soviet tanks come here
and, as a result, Communism wins out in Italy, I wonder whether
St. Peter's Church will
be
blown up or whether they'll turn it into
