6-3-06

I went up to the Pincho to write in my personal journal today. I realized that I haven’t really had much time off for about a year. Last summer I worked 8-5 until I went to Scotland where I worked 24-7. Then I was late getting back to school, which threw me off in a lot of classes, and tried to figure out what I wanted to do after graduation, and finish my theatre thesis that ended up getting pushed back a semester. I spent my Christmas break trying to get most of the work down for my theatre thesis so that I could do my speech thesis, and then I spent my last semester trying to finish both theses and pass my classes, plan my summer, and figure out what to do after that. I literally finished my bibliography the night before graduation, and left right after the ceremony to drive the 12 hours to Atlanta so that I could catch my flight here. So it was nice to spend some time just thinking about everything that has been going on in the last year, and writing some reflections for myself and letters to my friends.

I haven’t been to the Coliseum yet, but I have been to St. Peters though I didn’t stay for very long and didn’t look around very carefully. That is not to say that I intend to skip these sights, I just haven’t gone there to spend lots of time yet. The reason I slip so disjointedly into this is to say that Mark Twain and Charles Dickens descriptions of these places make me want to return to St. Peters and look at it more closely. On the back of Tim Parks Italian Neighbors there is a quotation from the Washington Post Book World, which says, “Most foreigner’s books about Italy fall into one of two categories—chronicles of infatuation or diaries of disillusionment.” I think that both Twain’s and Dickens’s writings are diaries of disillusionment. It seems to me that they were both in Rome at the same time, that they both had the same high hopes, and that they were all dashed. Actually, it seems that James Henry wrote a very similar account of the festival as the one which Dickens wrote. Anyway, Dickens begins in an odd way, he gives his readers a passport into his travels, at the same time making it quite plain that we are seeing things through his eyes. After reading his account I defiantly want to attend Mass tomorrow, I know it will be different than the events of Holy Week, but I would still like to see it. I think I will carry Dickens stories with me up to the Pincho and read it again trying to look out and see some of the sights he is talking about from that vantage point.

Twain was also disillusioned. But I think that his disillusionment is more satirical than serious. I am more interested reading Twains accounts again in the Coliseum than in St. Peters.

It seems that the article “Negroes in Rome” is too dated for me to understand the full impact of what is being said. I mean, the information is almost 50 years old (46 to be exact). Is the point to understand a foreign students experience abroad? If so, I think that the sheer relative nature of the account undermines the purpose, it is written by someone who wasn’t a student, and is just giving the facts of these students lives abroad.