WRITERS IN EXILE
523
Then there was a meeting and talk with the Dean of Padua
University. Our talk included the student riots. We saw for our–
selves in Milan how this takes place. In Milan, above the Aca–
demy of Arts fluttered a red banner, and there hung a large panel,
which covered the gates:
academia occupata.
The Academy of
Arts was then taken over by striking students who did not want to
study under their professors but only on equal basis with them.
We asked with the naivete of primitive people, "What if the pro–
fessors in response declare a strike on the students? What if those
not wishing to study were dismissed, as ordinarily happens, for
poor progress?" They waved their hands. "What do you mean?
One dismissal and they would blow the university into bits, burn
up the library." But in Padua, the dean of the University, an al–
ready aging electronics engineer, displayed the subtlety and
knowledge of a humanitarian in his evaluation of the historical
destinies of Italian and European civilization. He traced the history
of Padua University back to the Middle Ages. In harking back
further to Roman antiquity, he spoke in the manner of an opti–
mist who still was in firm touch with reality. He said that this
wasn't the first time Italian soil had undergone a crisis, witnessed
the invasion of barbarians, remembered an eclipse of the sun of
freedom, reason, and universality. "But you know," he con–
cluded, "after the shocks, Italy has a way of always reviving. In
the last resort our science and culture at some point will end up
in the catacombs."
This readiness for the catacombs was doubly striking: both in
the pointedness of the question on the conditions of Italian dis–
cord and in the strange proximity of this topic to our dissident ex–
perience. Suddenly I recognized the venerable Paduan dean as an
old camp mate, an iron-willed man from the Russian catacomb
church. Well then, if the culture of Europe is prepared for the cat–
acombs, things aren't so bad.
We went through Southern France, summer fields, running
along hills. Everything was soft and smooth for the eyes. Both the
moistness of outlines and the closeness of space gave rise to a rare,
self-satisfying consciousness of landscape. The horizon here in
comparison with the Russian plain is also quite wide, but more
formed, complete. Goggling like a barbarian, I gobbled up these
contours, packed, combed like the crown of a woman's head,
fields and vineyards. The body of farming, overcome by sleep be–
neath the sun, also made itself known. You feel the weight of
