Italian Sojourn
An unexpected change to his writing subsequently occurred after two trips to Italy late in his life. In 1987 he first visited Venice and then, 6 years later, he also travelled to Florence. This seemed to prompt a blaze of much more colourful verse, integrating the personal drama of his own life with the sweep of Italian faith, culture, landscape and history. In ‘Heretic in Florence’ he recounted the stench of the dry river Arno and its cure, portraying it as a metaphor for his own release from merely barren art.
Read more about this topic: Jack Clemo
Famous quotes containing the words italian and/or sojourn:
“If the study of his images
Is the study of man, this image of Saturday,
This Italian symbol, this Southern landscape, is like
A waking, as in images we awake,
Within the very object that we seek,
Participants of its being.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“There were some schools, so called [in my youth]; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond “readin, writin, and cipherin,” to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)