Disembarked in Art & History: Paris> Carthage> Rome> Athens> Troy
Life as a relentless art and history nerd gives you strange proclivities. You pour over the collected letters of obscure writers and artists; the lower echelons of your bookcases become heavy with thick volumes of memoirs from generals whose names most people have forgotten or never learned to begin with. You find yourself awake at 3AM scouring the internet for Blaise Cendrars’ Lice because you can’t remember if you’ve read it or not. You hang maps on the wall of the countries you have visited and countries you haven’t and stare up at these sometimes for no reason at all. And then you travel for months or even years on end through a dozen countries and dozens of cities and thousands of miles, following Intuition and the Thread, hoping to see and do what your heroes have seen and done.
Wandering the backstreets of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, encountering the homes and haunts of Miller and Nin, Hemingway and Joyce, and too many others to list. Reading alongside a lagoon that was once a grand Phoenician naval port from which Hannibal’s father launched war against the Romans. Drinking wine in the shadow of the Pantheon in Rome; stumbling upon the home of Dante in Florence. Soaring through the Acropolis on LSD, walking in the footsteps of Socrates and Athena and Dionysus. Gazing over the plains of Troy, where—if you believe the stories (and I believe all and none of them)—once fought the likes of Achilles and Hector, Odysseus and Agamemnon.
When I first read Flaubert, Petrarch, Dante, Plato, Homer, and their ilk, all or at least most of these experiences seemed rather far-fetched. But Art and History have mighty jaws—when they snatch hold you are at their mercy. They will drag you back to their den and feed you to their children.
Paris: the Hub of the Wheel
“I understood then why it is that Paris attracts the tortured, the hallucinated, the great maniacs of love. I understood why it is that here, at the very hub of the wheel, one can embrace the most fantastic, the most impossible theories, without finding them in the least strange; it is here that one reads again the books of his youth and the enigmas take on new meanings.” ~Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
The hub of the wheel indeed.
I first went to Paris in 2007, drawn to its center by a long list of great names—writers, poets, painters, musicians, filmmakers, soldiers, criminals—and there I first tasted the rich banquet of culture that had never been the fare in the cipher town where I’d spent my youth.
When I returned eleven years later, I did so with an intention that had harassed me ever since those first few months—to live as a writer in Montmartre. This was surprisingly easy to accomplish as I was now a working writer, and modern digital resources make it simple to find a comparatively affordable apartment. So I took a tiny place on Rue Yvonne le Tac, just below the cathedral of Sacre Coeur and above the smut of Pigalle.
For the artistically inclined, Paris has no bottom. Reach as deep into it as you want—you’ll always come up with more. Days are spent with Van Gogh and Rodin, Miller and Nin, Balzac and Zola; at Pere Lachaise and the cimetieres de Montmartre et Montparnasse; at d’Orsay and the Pompidou and the Louvre; in Jardin des Plantes and Jardin du Luxembourg. During the night you wander the quays and canals; you dine at great restaurants like Closerie des Lilas and la Rotonde; you stay out late and find all varieties of inspiration, all forms of temptation.
Paris is where James Joyce penned the great Ulysses, so we shall start there. On one end of the shelf is Ulysses, and the other bookend is a combined tome of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The rest of this article, itinerary, journey, ramble, or whatever you want to call it will be spent bridging the gap between the two. We are about to traverse some three-thousand years over the course of four months of traveling and a few thousand words of reading. Art, History & Travel, fast and relentless. Strap yourself in.
The thread runs something like this: Homer’s epics began a tale that was picked up by various Greek playwrights (that of the Trojan War and its consequences throughout the eastern Mediterranean), which was then effectively given a sequel by Virgil in the Aeneid (journey to found Rome by Trojan War survivor Aeneas). Dante Alighieri then took the wheel with his Divine Comedy in which he declares his place in this great conversation on no uncertain terms by drafting Virgil as his guide through the afterlife and plucking a slew of characters from the aforementioned epics. Around this same time Petrarch brought us to the other side of the Mediterranean with his book Africa, which he intended as a followup to the Aeneid and an homage to Divine Comedy. In it he describes the Second Punic War, during which Hannibal of the ancient city of Carthage made his famous elephant march against Rome, only to be beaten by the Roman general Scipio. Some four-hundred years later, Gustave Flaubert of France penned when could be considered an addendum to the whole great Trojan/Roman/Punic cycle of wars in Salammbo, which describes the Carthaginian mercenary revolt between the first and second Punic Wars in gruesome detail. Then in the early 19th Century—amidst the literary heyday that was Paris in the 20’s—Joyce capped the whole thing off by bringing us back to the origin with his modern retelling of Homer in Ulysses.
Anyways, I was living in Paris and ripe with literary pretension when a Tunisian friend of mine urges me to visit Tunisia. I didn’t think much about the idea at the time, but about a month later when I was researching an intended trip to Morocco, I slid over on the map and started poking around Tunis. At that time, quite by coincidence, I was immersed in a rereading of Flaubert’s Salammbo, when there it was—Carthage—at the edge of Tunis. My plans changed very suddenly.
Three weeks later I was living near the Salammbo light rail station in Carthage.
Carthage: Flaubert and Scipio, Hannibal and Hamiclar
“Everyone became brave from excess of terror.” ~Gustave Flaubert, Salammbo
The beachside suburb of Carthage is a short taxi ride outside the capital of Tunis. It’s a sleepy, tranquil town of whitewashed buildings, palm trees, dogs sleeping in the scorching sun, lush jasmine plants and richly-colored flowers of crimson, sapphire, and tangerine, and ruins dating as far back to the 13th century BC.
Carthage was the home of the great general Hamiclar, father of Hannibal who marched elephants over the Alps against Rome. Flaubert lived in Carthage while researching Salammbo—which details Hamiclar’s salvation of the city from an army of mercenaries shortly before the fall of the Carthaginian Empire—and for a literature and history nerd, it is an astounding place.
Every day I braved the forty-one degree heat (and I’m talking Celsius—that’s around one-hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit) to run along the ancient Phoenician naval port (once the scene of raging sea battles, now a peaceful fishing lagoon), then through the ruins of the old city of Carthage. The ruins are astoundingly well preserved, with towering pillars of marble, tunnels and passages, and complex works of art and engineering scattered about. You get a real Indiana Jones vibe while exploring its many nooks and crannies—a feeling that is accentuated by the fact that you almost never see anyone else there.
And the ruins of Carthage are plentiful. Just up the road stands an ancient Roman amphitheater that is completely unencumbered by fencing or even signage. To find it you just walk through a stretch of sparse woods until you more or less fall into it.
Then at the top of the hill you’ll find the ruins of the Punic town of Byrsa, alongside which stands Saint Louis Cathedral otherwise known as the Acropolium of Carthage.
I ended up in the cathedral rather by accident. Having spent an hour or so exploring Byrsa—not quite as grandiose as the ruins of the Carthaginian port, but impressive nonetheless—I was wiped out by the fierce heat and kind of over exploration for the day. But as I passed by the front of the cathedral—intending to go home, crank up the AC, and have a cold beer or several—there was a sudden cry from the collection of trinket shops across the parking lot, and a rush of vendors hawking their wares raced toward me. I had the feeling that I was the only potential buyer to come by in a long time.
To put it plainly, I wasn’t in the mood for that shit, and I think my sweaty, exhausted face betrayed my displeasure. A shout came from the front of the cathedral: “Hurry my friend! You can escape into the church—only six dinar!”
Six dinar is about two U.S. dollars, so that seemed like a fine price for reprieve. I paid the man and entered.
Which turned out to be the right decision. The Acropolium is nothing short of stunning. I have been in many cathedrals, but usually—save for their ornate stained glass—they are rather dark and colorless. Gloomy even. This cathedral, on the other hand, is an explosion of vibrant color and pattern. Better still, I had it all to myself. I spent a good amount of time taking photos and enjoying its cool interior before escaping out a back door onto a path that led down the rear of the hill.
There are a great many things to see and experience in the region surrounding Carthage—the bustling markets of Tunis, the raging bars and clubs of Gammarth and la Marsa, the beautiful white-and-blue hilltop town of Sidi Bou Said—but Carthage itself is most applicable to the historical narrative we’re following. So imposing was its presence on the Mediterranean, it was considered an existential threat to the entirety of the Roman Empire. They even had a saying that was common to the day: “Carthago delenda est” or “Carthage must be destroyed.”
And it was. Rome razed it to the ground then built their own city atop it for good measure. Later it and Tunisia as a whole were colonized by France, from whence I had just come.
Rome, Naples, and Florence: Dante and Virgil
“Remember tonight…for it is the beginning of always.” ~Dante Alighieri
I’m writing this from Mexico where I have an enormous goddamned cactus thorn wedged in my foot. It is bothering me terribly, and at some point I’m going to have to do something about it.
But I have another thorn needling me—Rome. I tell myself again and again that I’m going to stay in Mexico for a while. But then there’s Rome.
Rome is a place to which I must return and stay long enough to learn if not fully then at least as best I can. If Paris is the hub of the wheel, Rome is the axle. When you’re there you can feel its grand rotation, how it has rolled out and over the world. Then when you leave, you see the signs of its torque everywhere. I don’t know how many Roman amphitheaters I’ve seen all across Europe and North Africa. At least a dozen but probably more. There’s even one in the Latin Quarter of Paris.
My brief visit didn’t even begin to scratch the surface. I was in Italy to see and travel with some family who had never been to Europe before, so I was kind of on their ride. For us Rome was mostly a mad dash to eat and drink and eat and drink as much as possible. But regardless of my admittedly cursory experience there, the city sank its teeth into me. I will hopefully have more to report about it sooner rather than later.
From Rome we went to Naples, where again my experience was rather limited by familial considerations. These considerations mostly involved the tourist hotspots of Pompeii and Positano. It wasn’t until we were on our way to Florence that I discovered Naples is the home of Virgil’s tomb, to which I will have to return. I foresee Italy taking up a great deal of my time in the near future.
Then—Florence. If I have ever experienced a place that rivals Paris in terms of its literary and artistic majesty, it is Florence. The atmosphere practically screams—or perhaps croons—with it.
The statues of Michelangelo here; the stern visage of Dante there. Petrarch, Boccaccio, da Vinci, Botticelli, Giotto—Florence bears their mark.
But again—the whirlwind trip continued. When my family left I intended to rent a car and drive up to Dante’s tomb in Ravenna then through the northern parts of the country that were the setting for so much of Hemingway’s best work, but for a variety of reasons my course brought me to Athens instead.
Athens: Walking with the Gods
“I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.” ~Socrates
I had only ten days in Athens before I had to be in Istanbul, and it just happened to span some random Orthodox holiday that meant everyone had left town and everything was closed. It was also mid-August, so it was hot and humid and those who were still around elected to stay out of the sun and off the streets.
Which was fine with me. There were days when it seemed as if I had the entire city to myself. It was downright post-apocalyptic.
My short visit afforded an array of delights—getting to know the anarchist neighborhood of Exarchia, hiking Mount Lycabettus, sampling the many tasty foods and surprisingly good Greek craft beer—but few experiences in my life will be more memorable than exploring the Acropolis region while buoyed by the psychedelic water-wings of LSD.
This is a place of the Gods. Athena and Artemis, Zeus and Dionysus—there’s a vibrant power to it that is difficult to deny, even without the accentuated attunement of acid.
It was here that—quite by accident—I stumbled upon the prison where Socrates was held then executed. When I realized where I was, I had—as it is known in common parlance—a Moment.
You see, reading of Socrates as a youth had a foundational impact on the person I was to become. His life spent as a gadfly harassing the powers that be, his wit and wisdom, his fearlessness even in the face of death, and his ability to outdrink all rivals—suffice to say that these qualities informed a young me as to how one should comport themselves.
Anyways, I’ll be delving into this day of globoanimus exploration (and what, exactly,
“globoanimus exploration” is) in detail in an upcoming post. For now let’s go further back in time to a period portrayed by the greatest of Greek writers, Homer.
Let’s move on to the ancient city of Troy.
Troy: the Thread’s Beginning
“The journey is the thing.” ~Homer, the Odyssey
The Turkish seem to call it by any number of names—Troya or Truva or Troia—and I ended up there entirely by accident.
I flew from Athens to Istanbul to meet a friend, and after a week of exploring that gorgeous sprawl of a city we decided to make our way down the coast. Our first stop was in Çanakkale, which we soon learned was just down the highway from the ruins of Troy.
And Çanakkale doesn’t try to hide it. A charming little beach town, front and center on its marina boardwalk is a looming recreation of the legendary Trojan Horse.
It is perhaps important or at least pertinent to point out that “legendary” is an operative word. There is much debate as to whether the Trojan Horse was real or just an exaggeration of the Greek poets, or if Troya (present-day Hisarlik) is actually the site of the ancient city. Or if the Trojan War happened at all. Or even if Homer was a real person.
Fuck all that. Sometimes legend needs to creep in while reality is sleeping and smother it to death. As far as I’m concerned, Homer was arguably the greatest storyteller that history has coughed up, and he described one of history’s greatest struggles, and I stood atop what was once Troy and looked out over the plains where that struggle was decided.
There’s not much left of Troy these days—if indeed Troy is what that place is. To get there you take a dubious shuttle for about an hour south of Çanakkale. Once you leave the highway you bounce and bumble over one of the worst roads you’ll ever experience through a nowhere town, then you come to it—Troy or Troya or Truva.
The ruins themselves are pretty ruinous. There are some excavated walls and foundations, a few pillars here and there, but not all that much remains. It all looks very pretty in the diffused light of sunset.
For me, the importance of being there was less about the ruins themselves or even the veracity of their origin. It was about gazing out over the plains where the war was supposedly waged—plains that looked not unlike the fields from the town where I grew up—and comprehending the vantage from which Priam and Hector once surveyed their fates. This was the summit toward which the likes of Achilles and Odysseus aspired. This was the setting for my departed father’s favorite stories, for it was at his urging that I picked up Homer in the first place. And I had come to Troy by accident, because circumstances had carried me on an odyssey of my own from Ulysses to the Iliad.
After Turkey my travels brought me to Vietnam in an experience that was accentuated by the writing of Viet Thanh Nguyen. In the near future I plan on going to Kenya on an adventure that will undoubtedly be informed by the Kenyan Shakespeare, Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In two weeks I will be living in Mexico City where I will explore the architecture described by the drunken protagonist in Gonzalo Celorio’s And Let the Earth Tremble At Its Centers.
Drawn (or perhaps guided) ever onward by art, intuition, and exploration—that’s the stuff for me.
To paraphrase one translation of Homer:
“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
Of the wanderer…”