Naples

"In such corners one can scarcely discern where building is still in progress and where dilapidation has already set in

. . . What distinguishes Naples from other large cities is something it has in common with the African Krall;

each private attitude or act is permeated by streams of communal life. So the house is far less the refuge

into which people retreat than the inexhaustible reservoir from which they flood out . . .

Just as the living room reappears on the street, with chairs, hearth, and altar, so, only much more loudly,

the street migrates into the living room. Even the poorest one is as full of wax candles, biscuit saints,

sheaves of photos on the wall, and iron bedsteads, as the street is of carts, people and lights."

Walter Benjamin (possibly with Asja Lacis) 'Naples' circa 1924.

Open air solarium from the Madre

Round the corner

Wrestlers, National Archaeological Museum, Lysippus' school, late 4^th C BC.

Christmas

Naples, 26 December 1916

Let me be

like

a thing

left

in a

corner

and

forgotten . . .

Giuseppe Ungaretti, from Shipwreck.Trans. Diego Bastianutti.