Amalfi

“ The next day we went in the morning from Salerno to Amalfi. It is an unspeakably grand drive round the mighty rocks with the sea below; and Amalfi itself surpasses all imagination of a romantic site for a city that once made itself famous in the world. We stupidly neglected seeing the cathedral, but we saw a macaroni-mill and a paper-mill from among the many that are turned by the rushing stream, which, with its precipitous course down the ravine, creates an immense water-power ”

“ When, on a May evening, the white moonlight falls in cascades of silver sheen over terraces and sea, with Amalfi all alabaster and pearl like a dream city in the ethereal air; when the stars hang low in the skies and the fairy lights of the fishermen’s boats twinkle far out at sea; when the summer silence is suddenly thrilled by the melody of Neapolitan songs on the air, as if it were a veritable chant d’amour of sirens,—then does one believe in the buried city. ”

“ A good-sized boat was in readiness, in which we embarked for Amalfi. Most delightful was the change from the uneasy motion of the donkeys, and the oppressive heat, to the repose of sitting in the boat, gliding along, refreshed by the cool evening breezes, and with every sense gratified! The moon rising over the wooded cliffs, fire flies flitting about everywhere, and the phosphoric lights shining on the water with a bright unearthly splendour. ”

“ In bygone ages they were used as prisons; and many doges of Amalfi languished their lives away upon those shadeless stones, watching the sea around them blaze like a burnished shield at noon, and the peaks of Capri deepen into purple when the west was glowing after sunset with the rose and daffodil of Southern twilight.
The end of the Sorrentine promontory, Point Campanella, is absolutely barren—grey limestone, with the scantiest over-growth of rosemary and myrtle. A more desolate spot can hardly be imagined. ”

“ Gone the dear walks through ruins and museums, the trips to Frascati, Naples, Amalfi! Gone the dear, fond life of poverty in the big studio, among the gleaming colours of the old brocades and chasubles, of the old bronzes and silver! Gone the gazing together at his water-colour of The Banners, she with her head on his shoulder, within his arm, living his art with him, enjoying his work with him! Gone the ecstasy of the night in the pergola, in the star-spangled night, with the sacred lake at their feet! Life was not to be repeated. ”

“ There is surely in the whole world scarce any other view at once so wide, so beautiful, and so steeped in the associations of romance. The sun climbs higher, the light increases, the coast towards Amalfi is as purple as a violet. The sea, unruffled by the lightest breeze, is of that nameless blue which seems to have been refined and purified from the colour of a turquoise. Far as one can see, from the headland which hides Cumæ to the farthest point of the Lucanian coast, scarcely one vessel is in sight. ”

“ But between this and the dreamlike beauty of Amalfi there lies far more than the distance of many hundreds of miles. There lie the yearning of the soul for the best of God's beautiful creation—for the warmth of the sun, that natural god of life and gladness—the thirst of the artist's eye for color, and the poet's love of the language of song; there lie the Catholic's hunger for the land of faith and the longing for the regions of old memories and heroic sanctities. ”

“ The sky—who has not heard of the Italian sky?—one intense diffusion, one serene omnipresence, for ever smiling above the boundless sea, and for ever bending in azure mirth over the flowing outlines of the distant mountains.
They first passed Castel-a-Mare, and then the abrupt promontories on which Sorrento and ancient Amalfi are situated. The sublimity and intense loveliness of the scene wrapt in delight each bosom. The hills, covered with ilex, dark laurel, and bright-leaved myrtle, were mirrored in the pellucid waves, which the lower branches caressed and kissed as the winds waved them. ”

“ Landslips and encroachments of the sea have dealt hardly with Amalfi. Perhaps it is scarcely strange that a people so buffeted by fate should lose their hope of greatness, and conceive no interest save the pillage of their guests. Returning to the centre of the town, I turn off from the marina by the first archway leading to the piazza, just where a tablet on the wall calls on Mary by the name of Stella Maris, 310 "Star of the Sea," to aid all sailors in peril of the deep; and ere quitting the shadow for the sunlight, I stand in wonder at the beauty of the prospect. ”

“ Nothing of the sort, with the exception of a single solitary tower upon the Monte Aureo, is visible. Nor will he fail to remember that Amalfi and 254 Atrani, which are now divided by a jutting mountain buttress, were once joined by a tract of sea-beach, where the galleys of the republic rested after sweeping the Levant, and where the fishermen drew up their boats upon the smooth grey sand. That also has disappeared. The violence of man was not enough to reduce Amalfi to its present state of insignificance. ”

“ And at last, in the soft evening light, we reached the culmination of all this wonderful beauty at Amalfi. When we stopped at the foot of the cliff on which the Cappuccini Hotel stands, overlooking the town and the sea, we found the uniformed portiere and other attendants in a little lodge or office at the bottom of a long, zigzag flight of stone steps, which leads up to the high perched hotel. ”

“ There is enough and to spare for all tastes at Amalfi. The student of architecture may spend hours in the Cathedral, pondering over its high-built western front, and wondering whether there is more of Moorish or of Gothic in its delicate arcades. The painter may transfer its campanile, glittering like dragon's scales, to his canvas. The lover of the picturesque will wander through its aisle at mass-time, watching the sunlight play upon those upturned Southern faces with their ardent eyes ”

“ But this happiness softened all that pride in their soaring souls, as if their happiness were strewing blossoms all around it. They lived in a dream, first among the marbles in the museum, then on the flower-strewn cliffs of Amalfi, on the beach of Capri or on the terrace of the hotel at Sorrento, with the sea roaring at their feet and, in a pearly haze, yonder, vaguely white, as though drawn in white chalk, Castellamare and Naples and the ghost of Vesuvius, with its hazy plume of smoke. ”

“ Among massed trees sleep-hung with jewelled fruit;
Antiquity against a shadowed sky,
And everywhere old gardens where men loved
So long ago, and the moon rose on vows
And thirsty human lips aching to meet;
And the moon set on darkling ivory-petalled rows
Of lilies and on hands dim with loneliness:—
Below, Amalfi’s campanile plays
Its even-song, full chant and antiphon,
A wish, a hope, a call from star to star. ”

“ As we approached Amalfi the green cultivated plots increased in importance, orange groves were intermingled with olive-woods; the character of the rocks changed, they assumed more beautiful proportions and architectural forms, especially so at Amalfi. Here we were obliged to be carried on shore by our sailors. We found good quarters at the Hotel Luna, formerly a Convent, on the outside of the town, near the shore. The people in the house struck us as being so peculiar that we suspected them of being a kind of men of the moon. ”

“ High over the babble of the degraded town it towers in its old majesty of form and colour; while higher still the mountain-slopes behind it rise in terrace beyond terrace into the silent regions of pure sunlight and fresh, untainted air.
It is the only spot in Amalfi where soul still triumphs over sense. The interior has been badly modernised, and is less striking. The sub-church, as happens so often in south Italy, is but little changed, and its five apses suggest tolerably clearly that the upper church must at one time have had double aisles. ”

“ They were walking together along the high road which leads from Amalfi towards Salerno. It is certainly one of the most beautiful roads in Europe, and in the whole world. The chain of rocky heights dashes with wild abruptness from its five thousand feet straight to the dark-blue sea, bristling with sharp needles and spikes of stone, rough with a chaos of brown boulders, cracked from peak to foot with deep torn gorges. In each gorge nestles a garden of orange and lemons and pomegranates, and out of the stones there blows a perfume of southern blossom through all the month of May. ”

“ There is no point in all this landscape which does not make a picture. Painters might even complain that the pictures are too easy and the poetry too facile, just as the musicians find the melodies of this fair land too simple. No effect, carefully sought and strenuously seized, could enhance the mere beauty of Amalfi bathed in sunlight. You have only on some average summer day to sit down and paint the scene. ”

“ The road thither leads along the beach, passing between the picturesque old convent that is now the Hotel Luna, beloved of artists, and the solitary watch tower on the precipice which stands sentinel above the waters on our right hand. At this point we turn the corner, and find ourselves in Atrani, lying in the deep gorge of the Dragone and joining its buildings to those of Amalfi on the road above the beach. ”

“ If the history of Amalfi's early splendour reads like a brilliant legend, the story of its premature extinction has the interest of a tragedy. The republic had grown and flourished on the decay of the Greek Empire. When the hard-handed race of Hauteville absorbed the heritage of Greeks and Lombards and Saracens in Southern Italy, these adventurers succeeded in annexing Amalfi. ”

“ Despite the glories of the Amalfi road our tourists decided it was more pleasant to loiter around Sorrento for a time than to undertake further excursions. The mornings and evenings were chill, but during the middle of the day the air was warm and delicious; so the girls carried their books and fancy-work into the beautiful gardens or wandered lazily through the high-walled lanes that shut in the villas and orange groves. ”

“ Soon Amalfi was overcome by the people of Pisa, 83 who were jealous of its power and trade. And two hundred years later a terrible storm and earthquake swept away nearly all of its fine beach and harbor, leaving only a small group of houses clinging to the steep mountain side.
So Amalfi changed from being one of the most important towns in the world to one of the least important, except for the beauty of its location.
Thousands of people from all parts of the world still go to Amalfi every year, but not to buy and sell. ”

“ Midway Point, Pebble Beach, Carmel, the matchless cliffs of Point Lobos—in all the world there is not so much sheer beauty in a like number of miles. The Amalfi Drive of Italy, touted the world over, is not comparable to it. The sea and the mountains, joining at a coast-line of endless and countless pictures of which not one resembles the other intimately, yet which are all alike, combine here to offer human beings the great and healing lesson of sheer beauty. ”

“ Beautiful as is Majori, it is no lovelier than many another spot upon this exquisite coast; it is but [pg 170] as one pearl in a well-matched necklace, for the country that lies between Amalfi and Salerno is fully as rich in historical interest and natural charm as is the western portion that we have just traversed. Behind Majori we behold Monte Falerio, with its rocky summit tipped with the glow of evening and its base in purple shadow, descending abruptly into the darkening waters of the Bay. ”

“ The Upper Corniche Road is perhaps the most charming driveway of the world—and I say this with due reverence to Amalfi. By a road as white as a fresh tablecloth and as smooth as a bowling alley one speeds to the purring of his motor along the way thrown up for the tramping feet of Bonaparte's battalions. From a commanding height the traveler looks down, as from the roof of the world, with close kinship of peaks and clouds, upon a panorama a-riot with breadth and depth and color. ”

“ Slanting down to the surf-fringed beach, the great mountain seem to bar our further progress, but with a guttural imprecation and a loud cracking of the whip, our coachman deftly guides his half-starved but cunning little horses round the sharp corner of the mountain spur known as the Capo del’ Orso, and in a trice Amalfi, whither we have been straining our eyes, is snatched from our vision ”

“ A warm, balmy breeze that had passed over the orange trees of Sorrento and Amalfi felt deliciously refreshing to the inhabitants of the capital, who had succumbed to torpor in the enervating softness of the day. The whole town was waking from a long siesta, breathing freely after a sleepy interval; the Molo was covered with a crowd of eager people dressed out in the brightest colours; the many cries of a festival, joyous songs, love ditties sounded from all quarters of the vast amphitheatre, which is one of the chief marvels of creation ”

“ Trailing over the rock, both seaward and landward, creepers of soft green and pink. And above all, high up on the skyline, the semi-transparent, smoke-coloured foliage of the olives that crowned the slopes.
Then the towns! Maggiore and Amalfi quaint close-drawn irregular relics of a more turbulent age, climbing up the chasms in the hillside. Narrow streets, so steep as to look impossible to traffic. Queer houses of all sorts of irregular design and variety of stone. ”