Walking in Minas Tirith

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November 23, 2004

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Chronicles

Written by John Howe

Or Hitchhiking to Byzantium

A few weeks ago, we (yes, we do manage to coerce our son into accompanying us – occasionally. Privately, I believe he only accepts when he’s sure we won’t bump into any of his classmates.) were strolling through the streets of Lucca, when our steps brought us to the Piazza San Michele at dusk. We looked up at the facade of the church, looked at each other and all three said simultaneously “It’s Minas Tirith.”

If it’s dragons in Copenhagen, in Lucca, it’s lions. The City of a Hundred Churches has lions everywhere, tussling with serpents or each other, scowling in white marble.
Lions in stone have marble snarls. Their breath smells of quarry dust. They shake their dirty manes free of pigeons, and look down only to remind us how fortunate we are that they are stone.

And if it were only lions. EVERY column on the facades of San Michele and San Martino is different from its neighbour. There are long friezes of Romanesque animals and tracery intertwined, some of it even nearly Celtic (though I suspect some of the more obvious bits rather more recent than the churches themselves), that are despairingly far aloft, at which it is only possible to squint from equally far below. How I regret being streetbound, how I wish I could drift upwards and touch the stones.
(John Ruskin speaks of Lucca in glowing terms – he spent a day replacing stonework facings detached by frost, and was unable to resist pocketing a few pieces in passing.)
Of course there are no longer a hundred churches, if there ever were, but there seem to be dozens, most mercifully overlooked by Baroque. (A Baroque church is rather like a page filled to the margins with convoluted tracery and chancery cursive. Romanesque and Gothic, especially in Italy, are a few exquiste strokes and lines on a clear parchment.)
Cities like Lucca make me frantic – how on earth can one SEE it all, even in a month, let alone a few afternoons? There is just so much. It is all amazing, from the massive diagonal paving stones to the extravagent grove atop the Torre Guinigi. Take Lucca, stack it up on seven levels, and you would have Minas Tirith.
Hopefully the dream editor who is going to finance my luxury tour of Europe for dragon-lovers will let me do a Tolkien tour guide of the REAL places that ended up in Middle-Earth. (Right, two chances… fat and slim…)

Upper left: Celtic knotwork, drainpipe and baling wire…
Upper right: In all fairness, there was a dragon or two, though they were sorely under-represented.
Lower left: Marble? More like a rough sea frozen in stone.
Lower right: Guinigi Tower, with its extravagant towertop grove.

It seems we are forever travelling to some Byzantium of the mind, the place from where all the images come. That each time we look carefully at something of beauty, it will allow us a step closer. Close our eyes, or not use them to see, and it draws away from us.
That’s how life feels for me. I’m the guy by the side of the road with the square of cardboard marked BYZANTIUM. I’ll take any lift that seems to be going the right way, that will get me a few steps or miles closer. Any road, any ride, will do. They’re all leading in the same direction anyway. Of course, you can never really arrive somewhere that does not exist, but the trip is certainly worth it. There’s a lot to see on the way.

Speaking of being worth the trip… these things work both ways: thus I dutifully did drawings for a drove of dedicated (and diligent) persons. The horrid hornèd warthog thing is a doodle done during a discussion (it takes ages to translate during Q & A sessions) while my mind wandered. I must buy it a leash. For my mind. Not the warthog.

Photos by Rita

MONTREUIL – SALON DU LIVRE DE JEUNESSE

I’ll be there (Casterman/stand H11) Saturday 27 November, from 4:30 à 6:30 p.m., and Sunday 28th, from 10:00 to 12:00 (with Claude Clement).
Here are a few pages from the book…