Mark Pechersky. Three cities

Three cities
Mark Pechersky

Publication date: December 20, 2000

Barcelona

According to local legend, the devil tempted Christ with earthly beauty on Mount Tibidabo . There is now a cable car running there, and anyone can see that a mortal cannot resist such a temptation.

According to the rules of American ethics, the author of these lines is obliged to warn the reader about his obvious bias. For me, no, there has never been and never will be a city more beautiful than Barcelona , ​​the wonderful capital of Catalonia . Every local will tell you that Barcelona's Spanish affiliation is the result of a terrible historical injustice and misunderstanding; language, music, food, lifestyle - everything else; calling a Catalan a “Spaniard” is about the same as calling a Jew a “Jew.” And yet, when I come to Barcelona, ​​I always feel it is part of Spain. Perhaps, if it were not for the centuries-old rivalry with Madrid , its anarchic temper and unique way of life, where without a calendar in your hands it is impossible to distinguish a weekday from a holiday, elegant, businesslike, bourgeois Barcelona would have turned into an ordinary large provincial “European city”, beautiful, rich and moderately boring. They, Madrid and Barcelona, ​​are completely different in everything! Madrid is an artificial capital created Philip II almost four hundred years ago in the geographical center of the Iberian Peninsula; Barcelona's history , on the other hand, dates back to antiquity, when it was an important port of the Roman Empire. Madrid was originally created as a state city, and this left its mark on its architectural style (one of the best, if not the best, “reserve” in Europe of the 16th century); life in Barcelona clings to the sea, the city center for centuries remained the medieval Barrio Gotico, the medieval quarters around the cathedral and the Generalitat (city hall). The state city of Madrid lived with the royal presence and taxes; Barcelona - with trade and freedom. In a word, opposites.

God bless us, we are a stone's throw from La Rambla, the main street of Barcelona! I don’t know how she will seem to you, my head is starting to spin just thinking about her! As soon as I step onto the boulevard, into the mediastinum of bird cages, book stalls, kissing couples, gossiping old men, flower stalls, into the soft bliss of the afternoon Mediterranean light, the whole story with culture instantly disappears from my head, and I want very little from life: to buy ice cream, sit on one of the benches and be inside it for the rest of my days. (I imagine paradise in the form of the Rambla; over the years I want to sit on the bench longer, because I have no doubt that for my sins I will not be able to register in “that Rambla.”

So, portion by portion, bench by bench, I will slowly move along the boulevard from Plaza Catalunya towards the port. When the figure of Columbus appears in sight , I know the time has come for a harsh choice: left or right, to Barceloneta or to the old city? I want to go both ways at once!

Memories pull you to Barceloneta , the port quarters, where in the evening more life begins! Once, it was in 1986, I took there on a “purchasing expedition” the violin group of the famous Soviet symphony orchestra, which was touring the city in those days. The son of a bitch conductor delayed people at the rehearsal, and, to the chagrin of the expedition members, we got to Barceloneta late. The doors of the shops closed, the doors of the taverns opened, the streets were already completely lined with tables laden with (cooked) seafood. The elderly, experienced “first violin” looked sadly at the tables, sighed and quietly, so that none of his comrades could hear, said: “Get us out of here as quickly as possible, before anyone notices, they are greeting a government delegation no other way...” I didn’t bother him convince me and tell me that I had dinner here yesterday. A few years earlier, not exactly straight from the ship of the “Soviet future”, having already seen something, but not yet fully recovering from my past life, when I saw the Barcelona tables for the first time, I thought... well, not exactly -exactly like him, but something very similar and hastened to retreat... Here, in Barceloneta, on the beach, I once watched a group of teenagers, about twenty of them, dance for several hours to a tape recorder. It was impossible to tear yourself away from the spectacle! It was the most beautiful flamenco performance I have ever seen!

And how not to visit once again the Church of the Virgin Mary - the patroness of sailors, an ancient, one-of-a-kind flat , spread-out Gothic cathedral with a beautiful stained glass rose glowing in the evening far, far away, like a lighthouse?

...Or to the right? There, in the alleys of the old city, you can scoop up a ladleful of color! On one of my visits, sitting at a table in a street cafe, I listened with great interest to the polysyllabic bargaining between the “priestess of love” and the crew of a Japanese merchant ship. The sailors insisted on certainty (even to the point of a written agreement!), the opposite side proposed a “brigade initiative”. The composition of the brigade was put together right there, through negotiations with colleagues who appeared in the window openings. The entire street took part in the lively conversation. And if I hadn’t happened to know what was common to both sides of English, I would have thought that I was attending a performance of a medieval play unknown to me! In these neighborhoods, the traditional topography of Spanish life is still alive, in which cafes serve as a kind of living rooms, where in the evening all members of a historically established family gather: neighbors, friends, relatives, sons with girls and daughters with gentlemen. People live publicly in old Barcelona; it exudes the courtyard spirit of my childhood, a large family, patriarchy and the unencumbered lightness of being. Even if it’s only for an hour or two a day, but it’s an awful lot, without her the next one will be harder, the next one even harder. In this way of life (it also exists in Italy) one can feel the experience of an ancient civilization that measured life in its various manifestations and knew its value. completeness _

How many were there? Around eight. No, I won't go to Rambla! It’s until the morning, first I’ll sit on the boulevard, then I’ll go to my favorite bar on Santa Ana... It’s getting dark, so I’ll go to Plaza de España. You probably don’t know, but Spain has the most beautiful city fountains, whimsical and colorful. No, no newts or neptunes, just water and color - but great! However, it's not about the fountain. With darkness, people gather in the square around the fountain, like children rejoicing at every change in the color of the water, the buzz will last until three in the morning, I will sit at the table like everyone else, drink (yes, gentlemen, for the night!) coffee, look around... In short, "Rambla Number Two".

In the morning - on a date with Don Antoni Gaudi . He built only six or seven buildings in the city (and one in a modern suburb), but it can definitely be said that Barcelona without Gaudí is as unimaginable as Rome without Bernini (St. Peter's Basilica and Piazza, Rotunda, etc.). ). The only difference is that if you are not a very great connoisseur of architecture, you may be mistaken, mistaking Bernini’s creation for someone else, but Gaudi cannot be confused with anyone else. And once you see any of its buildings, you will never forget them. It defies description. When I first entered the square and saw the Sagrada Familia, for the first ten minutes I literally could not move from my seat, like a paralytic! Strange porous towers soaring into the sky, the chaos of the stalactites of the portal, Gothic transformed into modern times - everything smacked of something unearthly. I don’t think there has ever been another temple on Earth that expressed the otherworldly nature of faith with such naturalness and power. Any. Gaudí created the Sagrada Familia for almost forty years and died (being hit by a tram) without completing it. I am deeply convinced that if he had lived a hundred years or God had given him immortality, he would still never have built it. The idea is too grandiose - I would like to say, blasphemously grandiose. They say Lorca , seeing the towers of the cathedral for the first time, half jokingly and half seriously asked Don Anthony: “Are you creating an organ for God?” The laconic architect looked carefully at the poet and nodded in agreement. I think the story is apocryphal, but what’s great about it is that it’s presented as a meeting between two poets. Lorca, however, was not mistaken; the idea was that the winds, penetrating the towers from all sides, would play the music of Creation in the temple.

Gaudi was a deeply religious man, a mystic. This is felt in his architecture without any verbal comments. When constructing a building, he treated it as a living being, designing every detail of the interior, including furniture, the color of the staircases, etc. - for him they were the internal organs of the nascent organism. Each of his creations in Barcelona - be it the Pedrera apartment building or the mansion of Count Guell, the park on the count's estate or a church - has a soul. Don Anthony did not recognize straight lines, monochrome, or rigid forms. Without a stretch, he can be called the “Spanish Pushkin”, because in his architecture, transformed, all layers of the complex Spanish past are united: ancient, Muslim, medieval Christian, unbridled Spanish Baroque, fanciful Art Deco.

But even one genius is not enough to turn a city into - remember?! - the most beautiful in the world. Barcelona is incredibly lucky! In the last decades of the past and the first of our century, Catalan culture experienced a “golden age”. A whole galaxy of original architects lived in the city. Whether you like music or not, go to the House of Catalan Music. For the sake of architecture. It was built by Julol, some of whose buildings stand along Calle Diagonal on the other side of Gaudí's Pedrera and not far from the university (buy an architectural map of Barcelona, ​​you won't regret it!).

Compared to Madrid, Barcelona's museum scene falls short, with only two relatively small art museums. But what kind! Picasso and Miro. Both are from Barcelona. (The third great Catalan artist, Dali, lived nearby, in Figueros, where now his main museum and the church he painted are there. Fantastic!) If time is pressing and the problem of choice arises, I recommend the Miró Museum. It is larger and more comprehensive than the Picasso Museum. Miro bequeathed to the city many of his last works from the period when he, already a very old man, suddenly radically changed his style. Pay special attention (I have never seen his paintings like this anywhere else) to the “burnt canvases” - experiments with fire. One of the works - "The Crucifixion" - is especially good!

What does a person do in Barcelona when he doesn’t get high on the Rambla, don’t go on dates with Gaudi, don’t drink five cups of the best coffee in Europe in a row in one of hundreds of cafes, and don’t look at paintings in museums? He eats. For example, the famous paella (pronounced "paeya"), a mixture of fried fish, shrimp, crab meat with saffron rice. According to legend, this dish was invented in Valencia, which local people are proud of. No offense will be said to them - and I ate in both places - the Barcelona one is better. Don’t even think about having a dry lunch, order a bottle of wine. We in America know only a few Spanish wines. In Spain, as throughout the Mediterranean, dinner without wine is like a Russian get-together without tea. Catalan wines have been known since Roman times, especially white Tarragona. Emperor Diocletian specially dispatched galleys to buy up the entire annual harvest for his cellars. Or order at any zucchini one of the cheapest and most common dishes - fried squid in dough; They will bring a large dish, don’t be alarmed, most likely you will order a second one, only people with remarkable willpower can tear themselves away from the plate (I’m not one of them). Or simply: a glass of aperitif, followed by a dozen tapas, small snacks strung on toothpicks.

Wise from experience, I always arrived in Barcelona at the end of my trip to Spain, with a few days to spare. You can do it at the beginning, no one tells you to, but leaving this city, oh, how difficult it is. One more day, well, one more... I don’t even want to cry! And all of Spain is ahead... No, it’s better at the end, to fly away. However, one day I capitulated in the end: I paid the due fine to the airline, changed the departure date and spent three more happiest days in my favorite city.

Genoa

There are phenomena in nature for which science has not yet found an explanation. For example, why in Italy does a tourist strive to go to Venice, where you can move from place to place with your legs tucked in the crowd - they will still bring you where you need to go, because everyone goes in the same direction, to one place - and misses, just half an hour away , treasures of Padua and Vicenza? Why is he ready to endure everyday inconveniences for the sake of Florentine cathedrals, about which he knows as little as about the churches of Pistoia - but bypasses comfortable Genoa?!

Meanwhile, Genoa is not just an interesting city rich in history. She is so extraordinary that I think it’s difficult to find a match for her! again Let's take Venice . A wonderful, beautiful city in the lagoon, whose canal streets excite the romantic imagination of several generations. But in the Belgian Bruges there is also a lagoon and canal streets, and in Amsterdam , and in Stockholm , and in St. Petersburg . But there is no place like Genoa anywhere!

Place a tea bowl in front of you and look at its geometry. Made? Before you is the complete topography of the ancient city, where the main means of transport is not a bus, tram and trolleybus, but... an elevator! In the 19th century, the function of elevators was performed by a network of funicular railways; Taking into account the steepness of the "piala", it is difficult to imagine how the inhabitants of Genoa got to the houses and churches on the upper edge before the advent of funiculars. If on horses, then there had to be animals of a special, Genoese , breed, because ordinary ones would have broken their legs after the first ascent/descent.

This amazing topography makes for a surreal visual experience! When before your eyes a car drives... onto the roof, a man gets out, takes out a key, opens the door almost in the chimney and disappears into it, you are left with the feeling that you have found yourself in Through the Looking Glass. Walking along a street, one side of which is the facades of houses, and the other the tops of trees, it is difficult to get rid of the dizziness caused not so much by the height as by the extreme strangeness of the landscape. Finally, having climbed to the top, you look down, where at the bottom of the “bowl” lies the old city, and it looks not like something real, but like a magic snuffbox, created by a brilliant miniaturist who carved streets, churches, mansions, and a port in rice grain .

Port! With the revolution in shipbuilding, the advent of giant bulk carriers and container ships, the old respected ports fell into decay, and with them the port cities. All of them shared the fate of San Francisco, once famous, one of two (the other is Valparaiso , in Chile) ports on the entire Pacific coast of the American continent. The colorful port areas went with the ports. But in Genoa the port shrank, and the port part remained the same as we all read about in old novels: narrow streets, bands of sailors, zucchini, girls , houses under red lanterns, the smell of fish, a market, noisy, colorful, in clouds of spicy smells, - not life, but pure decoration for The Count of Monte Cristo!

Take a leisurely walk in the city center - along one side, along the other - along the mansions along Garibaldi Street. It has a reputation as one of the most beautiful streets in Europe, and this is true. If in many Italian cities you note with disappointment that the closer you get from the 16th-17th centuries to our time, the houses and streets become uglier and more boring - in Genoa, on Via Garibaldi, the opposite is true. Most of the mansions are still inhabited by descendants of noble Genoese families, but some can be seen from the inside. The Palazzo Bianchi (White Palace), which belonged to the Grimaldi Dukes, is now a museum containing works by Van der Goes, Cranach, Gerard David and Murillo. Opposite it is the Palazzo Rosso (Red Palace) - fortunately also given by the Grimaldi family to the city; here you can see halls decorated with frescoes by Genoese artists, beautiful portraits by Titian, Dürer and Van Dyck. Palazzo Sturzi is now a city hall, but you can (and should!) enter one of the most wonderful Renaissance patio courtyards in Italy.

There are beautiful churches in Genoa (especially Gesu, Jesuit), and the noble “cross-strip” white and black Cathedral of San Lorenzo. Let's be fair, not the most beautiful, not the most noble - according to Italian criteria. In any other country they would be revered for the wonders of architecture and art, but Italy is a special place where the Cathedral of San Lorenzo will pass for a “strong average peasant”, no more. Genoa is famous not for its paintings and ancient architecture, but for its unique topography, city life, and history. If you give it one day, the bowl city will remain in your memory for the rest of your life.

Knowledge is power!

It’s impossible to believe that there were times when a tourist was revered in the fatherland as a ray of light, that is, knowledge, in a dark kingdom. In relation to the place and time: England, the second half of the 16th century, the Renaissance, the title that the influential philosopher of that time Francis Bacon awarded to those going to overseas countries - “merchants of light” , sounded as proud as hereditary! The merchant was revered as a bearer of progress; involvement in knowledge, or, as we would say today, “the dissemination of scientific information,” placed the tourist in the circle of the chosen ones of divine providence.

Once every two years, was a beacon to the light of which a motley mass of tourists from all over Europe gathered the Frankfurt Book Fair . Since the siege of Mainz (1462), when the local printers, led by Gutenberg, fled under the protection of the Frankfurt margrave, the city on the Main River has become the main center of book printing. Safer, compared to land, travel along the river; proximity to other great book cities - Paris, Berlin, Leipzig and Basel; lack of Catholic censorship; finally, the willingness to sell everything in the world that is in demand - turned the Frankfurt Book Fair into an event for which it is difficult to find an analogue in the modern world.

Like world fairs of the last century or modern computer exhibitions, Frankfurt attracted not only buyers/sellers, but also everyone with any interest in the latest word in this universal industry - from the simply curious to specialists. Immediately, on the spot, impromptu seminars and scientific debates were organized. The fair occupied no less a place in the activities of the then secret services of Europe than in the scientific community. Finally, thousands of onlooker moths flocked to the bright light - just to hang around among famous and at least somewhat famous people. Unlike today's fairs and exhibitions, in the 16th century, every two years the Frankfurt Book Fair brought together representatives of all fields of knowledge . Here astronomers from Padua met with historians from Cambridge, doctors from Krakow and Wittenberg theologians.

During these days, the city's population tripled! The street crowds created a traffic jam that was not only difficult to drive through, but also difficult to get through. And, reluctantly the German heart, the municipality took an extraordinary measure, freeing city residents from the daily obligation to remove garbage and sewage for the duration of the fair! There were obviously not enough places in inns and hotels, so prudent tourists stocked up on letters of recommendation to publishers. The old owners of Frankfurt hotels did not stoop to the vulgar statement “there is no room”: it could damage their reputation and deprive them of a unique opportunity to make money, very good money. Therefore, they rented every barn and stable from the city residents ahead of time, after which, by agreement, they simply... took down the signs! The people they hired walked the streets and, for a couple of gold coins, did a “favor” for visitors, certainly with “full board.” So the “continental breakfast” was not invented yesterday, only the Frankfurt one included not buns with coffee, but a slice of rye bread with a glass of aqua vitae, vodka. (How morals have degenerated over the last 400 years!)

The very first walk around the city left the tourist in a state of stupor! Parisian Henri Etienne (1574) wrote in his diary that there were as many goods in Frankfurt as there were stars in the sky. Oh yes, agreed the English tourist Coriat (1608), no one who has not seen this richest city in the Christian world with his own eyes can even imagine its unimaginable riches! Indeed, on the occasion of such an event, merchants from all German lands brought the best goods...

But not even the best, but simply good everyday utensils, furniture, household ceramics, metal and wood products of that time, as Mark Pechersky (1999) can confirm, still make a huge impression to this day. In the museums of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck you can see castles , window frames, book bindings, and craft tools that have few equals in the world. Anyone who remembers the products of Pskov craftsmen of that time in the Pogankin Chambers: cast bindings of bibles, silver of gift bowls beaten into the finest lace, masterly, original, unlike other instruments of that era preserved in Russian museums - can fully appreciate what a huge and fruitful phenomenon there was a guild of the great Hanseatic cities of the Baltic, where, competing with each other, different civilizations fertilized each other. The triumph of Moscow - the good fellows archers and guardsmen of Tsar-Father Ivan the Terrible uprooted this culture from Russian soil.

Well, I digress... In Frankfurt, the Englishman was threatened with dizziness and squint! He barely had time to turn around, noting either the unprecedented fatness of the cows or the miniature chariot carved from ivory that fit between the wings of a bee, and, automatically obeying his nose, he walked towards the smells of unusual (and unknown to him, a provincial) spices. Suddenly, hearing his native speech, he rushed towards the crowd surrounding the theater troupe. The English actors were honored! And although the majority of the spectators did not understand a word, they were preferred to the German ones precisely for what constitutes the basis of the craft: acting, the ability to convey to the viewer the essence of what is happening with gestures and facial expressions.

So, already quite tired, he reached Buchstrasse, along which the main book action of the fair unfolded. Walk, soul! Already in those days, cookbooks and adventure (mostly knightly) stories were in great demand. The most sold book was the Protestant Bible , but calendars, song books and, as we would say today, yellow sheets (gossip, rumors, historical tales) were also in great demand. A special (and not small!) category consisted of sellers and buyers of self- publishing and publishing there . The trade in illegal literature - Protestant in Catholic countries and Catholic in Protestant ones - promised good profits for brave smugglers. The risk was huge, but the turnover of goods was no less. Book smuggling mainly went through Switzerland; Its central position in Europe, the difficult mountain roads that made the borders with Catholic Italy, France, and the Protestant German states equally porous, turned Switzerland into the European capital of illegal printing! But our own printing facilities were not enough and the technology was significantly behind the German one, so the Frankfurt fair provided a unique opportunity for wholesale purchases and placing orders.

Here, on Buchstrasse and the surrounding streets around St. Leonard's Church, one could get acquainted with the latest innovations in printing technology and bookbinding. A separate and numerous guild consisted of translators who offered services for drawing up contracts and took orders for translations from different languages ​​into two international languages ​​- Latin and French. If we remember that museums as we know them today became widespread only in the middle of the 19th century, and photography became a mass phenomenon only two generations ago, we will not be surprised by the crowd and excitement at stalls with cheap engravings. For centuries, engraving served as the only form of reproduction, and everything that today constitutes a cheap and innocent pleasure for tourists: postcards, albums, museum trophies - was engraved.

But it was all fun. The main events, for which many came to Frankfurt, took place in the stores of famous booksellers, which during the fair turned into conference rooms where world-famous scientists debated among themselves. The young Cambridge student (and future English ambassador to Venice) Wotton (1609) describes a lecture by Giordano Bruno with sacred awe . Another tourist wrote in his diary that just seeing great scientists arguing with each other makes you feel like you are present in ancient Athens during the times of Socrates and Plato. A spirit of free polemic reigned here - often on topical theological and political topics, about which at home one had to either remain silent or talk only in a narrow circle of friends.

Despite the fact that the books brought were subject to duty as luxury goods, they bought a lot. Possession of a new book in the Renaissance created a person's reputation and acquaintances, which were difficult to buy even for a much larger sum, so parents willingly equipped their offspring to the Frankfurt Book Fair and did not scold them for expenses. He may read it or not, but he will be considered smart. And this is a big percentage on the capital spent! And then - even Queen Elizabeth listens to the advice of Francis Bacon, and he believes that knowledge is power.

Magazine "World of Travel", Roman Travel, San Francisco