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A METAPHYSICAL PROMENADE IN TUSCANY…

"There are things that are there but can't be seen, and others that can be seen but aren't there." Such is Lucca, where from Porta S. Anna to the meeting point in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, the meeting point for the VI TUSCAN MEETING "PROMENADE DES ANGLAIS," you search in vain for the signs promised by the organizers: because it seems strange that you have to sneak behind the stands and pass through the tunnel of a sixteenth-century casemate in the walls. You stop, call on your cell phone, and they tell you to go up to the stands.

You have to pay attention to pedestrians and joggers, because the area is strictly reserved for them, and - increasingly strange - without any of them making a wrinkle, or even hinting at sending you off with a rude gesture... elsewhere, while you flank them with the utmost caution, you finally see at the end of the avenue the line-up of 46 MGs arranged in a radial pattern, very picturesque, next to a neoclassical building, Grand Palais style, which once served as a garden café, Parisian atmosphere. fin de siécle, with ladies in long skirts pleated and gentlemen in top hats getting out of carriages and landaus; a building now disused and poorly maintained. It was there, but it's no longer there. Burrini arranged for us, further down the stands, in a pub, for a breakfast—refreshments, given the warmth. Here, everyone says goodbye; Anna and Gigi Cavagnolo, like the others, are ready to embark on a free tour of the city, which is immediately there, attractive. "Let's go back to see Ilaria del Carretto," says Anna, rolling her Rs. "Who is she? One of those girls who have the candy stand next to San Michele?" asks one of the participants. "No!" Anna gets a little annoyed, "she's that young woman in the sacristy of the Cathedral." "So, I don't know her, I have so many sacristies." "But it's a sarcophagus sculpted by Jacopo Della Quercia!" says Anna, rolling her Rs more and more. "Sar'hofagi?! Miseri'hordia! It's something he doesn't make for us."

This is Lucca, a closed and compact city where it is impossible to get lost, because “in an instant you understand where the light comes from and you orient yourself” [Renzo Piano]: a city of evocations.

E-vocare, that is, to call from the depths. Coming from the streets and alleys, one flows into the large, regular spaces of the squares, whose focal points and identity are the church and the tower, endowed with a powerful vertical thrust. Multi-colored churches, crenellated towers, which are like compass needles for the residents of the district; above, the large windows of the bell towers seem to encompass the sky; what is more evocative than the treetop canopy atop the Guinigi tower, bathed in midday light, made even more intense by the reflection of the paving stones and ashlars: a stone called "serena"? Or the popular elliptical square, which in Roman times served as an amphitheater, filled with flowers and the yellow of the houses' walls?

In Tuscan cities, light is an essential phenomenon, a metaphysical definition, something that goes beyond the purely physical. When visiting a Tuscan city, images of paintings by Ottone Rosai or Carlo Carrà come to the surface. In the streets, the suspended atmosphere erases human presence and the materiality of things, recreating a metamorphic environment of ever-changing reflections, where transparency transfigures objects, as if suspended in mid-air. Lucca should be visited at dawn or dusk, when the crowds thin out and the light is soft, far from the partying hubbub brought on mega-weekends by the throngs of tourists, who crowd together and dull everything. Only then can one grasp the music of the soul, the same music emanating from the accordion of the gilded wooden carousel that spins in the square of the Palazzo Ducale, a reminder of Ardengo Soffici's song:

“Palazzeschi, there were three of us,

the two of us and our friend irony,

arm in arm down that street

so ours at eleven o'clock.”

That twenty-three meant as a burlesque pose, a hat worn a bit askew, a refined mockery... At that moment PPP and the inseparable Melandri are passing through the square and they—at that moment—seem to impersonate the two wandering poets. I found a little note by Freud, referring to his work "Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious" in which the Doctor claims that “foreplay obtained with the joke technique is used to release greater pleasure by eliminating internal inhibitions." A note that fits our two heroes very well.

Prolonged pleasure—from the visual to the oral—at lunchtime at Antica Trattoria Stefani in San Lorenzo a Vacoli. It's redundant to praise the meat dishes in Tuscan restaurants, but I found those crostini appetizers more delicious than ever.

Then we ascend the Serchio Valley, which from Lucca appears wide and sunny, but soon becomes more enclosed, between mountains that have the same vertical thrust as Lucca's Romanesque basilicas, with a unique touch of color: the intense May green of the acacia woods is toned down and made brighter by the reflections of the white of the clustered flowers, white that floods the valley like an off-season snowfall.

In Borgo a Mozzano, the DEVIL'S BRIDGE, known by this name to all outsiders, is called THE MAGDALENE on tourist signs. And this dual identity is a real surprise. Without bothering with THE DA VINCI CODE or Dan Brown, who would find ample material here for his angelic and demonic figures, presences hovering in the air over the Serchio River, more prosaically, one might think that the Roman pilgrims, after crossing the rugged mountain ranges before us and leaving behind the diabolical snares of the route and the cutpurses, here, within sight of Lucca, found some obliging Magdalene beside the bridge, willing to offer them some comfort, before crossing the threshold of St. Peter's to obtain plenary indulgence and the cleansing of all sins. After all, it is well known that money, one way or another, is destined to return to the devil, who is its origin and creator.

Quickly, because 46 parked MGs are blocking the road here. The traffic police have called, and they already have diabolical fines ready, while they're waiting for us in Barga.

Barga, perched atop a mountain, yet noble in its art and buildings. We park in the square below and are greeted by Antonio Nardini, our guide. Nardini tells us about Barga's monumental merits, its history and its people, its welcome to Garibaldi and the Garibaldian militancy in the valley, of Giovanni Pascoli and the Gothic Line, which stretched above these mountains and meant for Barga the heavy price paid in war, in terms of destruction: as for Castelnuovo, which we'll visit tomorrow. But he's inflamed with enthusiasm when we reach the Duomo, perched atop the mountain. A basilica-fortress, a rectangular parallelepiped, its massive walls are lined with narrow single-lancet windows from which darts could be launched at enemies without harm; Only blades of harsh light could penetrate the temple, cutting through the darkness of the great hall where the people all took refuge, ready to ask for graces, for daily life (the finely carved pulpit) as well as for the great threats, which were frequent here, given the transit route. And the darkness was tranquility and unity, the height and thickness of the walls and pillars, security; prayer, comfort; strength was the wooden statue of Saint Christopher dominating the apse wall, a mighty trunk roughly carved in the human form of the saint holding the Child Jesus. A totemic figure, to be carried in procession along the walls to strike terror into enemies. He, the sacred protector of travel and travelers, would surely have brought misfortune and disaster upon those wicked enemies who had dared to shoot arrows at the holy icon and attempted to harm the local inhabitants on their return home.

An evening at CIOCCO, for dinner and a night out. CIOCCO – LATO, as Melandri says, evoking the sweet side of breakfast. But any reference to the vastness of the hotel and real estate development is not purely coincidental.

From Ciocco to Castelnuovo, the capital of Garfagnana. "Better a greedy but distant master than the Florentines at your door," thought the inhabitants of Garfagnana in the early 16th century, and they surrendered to the Este family. Thus, first Ludovico Ariosto and later Fulvio Testi descended on Castelnuovo as governors.

The previous evening – travel times are tyrants – we had not been able to visit the Cardosi-Carrara country villa, located in Caproni di Castelvecchio, “a hovel with a little vegetable garden and forest around it”, as Pascoli defined it, where, in the chapel, rests the Little Child, who remained forever in the house overlooking the valley. In Castelvecchio the Poet spent the most peaceful years of his life, from 1895 to 1912. Some of his most beautiful collections of poetry were published here.

In the Castelnuovo square, where we parked our cars for a tour of the city, Franco Perazzini, in a joking mood, goes on to tell us a story that happened recently at the hospital in Rimini: a doctor, visiting an elderly patient, thought he was being brilliant by speaking—the chief physician—to the old man in Greek, the medical language, about prognosis, diagnosis, and etiology, describing the complete medical history of his condition... Then, staring blankly into the old man's eyes, he concluded with, "I don't know if I've been exhaustive." To which the little man replied (I write this in the Reggio Emilia dialect, which is from the same linguistic group as the Rimini dialect), "Well, sir, you've been exhaustive, but I don't understand a damn thing!"

(You, doctor, may have been exhaustive, but I didn't understand a thing!).

He says this—any reference is not purely coincidental—as we enter the cathedral, whose austere early-16th-century façade already entices a visit. We pause before the Altarpiece of San Giuseppe, from the Della Robbia school, and take in the entire church, clearly influenced by Brunelleschi. What is most striking—and I describe it to those present—is the leap in architectural rhythm, compared to the Romanesque style of Lucca, inherent in the new Renaissance geometric balance, created by the relationship between the square measurement of each section of the building and the semicircle of the round arches that surmount the squares. The result is a great composure and formal unity, accentuated by the soft, diffuse light that enters through large windows, hidden from view so as not to dazzle onlookers, and by the pale color (Old English White) of the plasterwork, combined with the gray of the relief materials and the columns. It invites spiritual harmony and inner contemplation. But as I turn around, only Patricia and Fabio are left listening: of the people of Rimini behind me, only the echo remains…

We set off again, following the Ariosto-esque echo of Astolfo and the hippogriff, who flew to the moon to recover Orlando's sanity. And it takes sanity to travel the winding road that winds through the narrow valley that leads to the marble quarries in the Apuan Alps. In front of me is Mr. Farina's 1954 MG TF, and frankly, it's challenging, with a 2004 TF, to keep up with him while maintaining a prudent driving style, given the acceleration, grip, and handling qualities. handle of the pilot. Not to mention the harmonics coming out of the exhausts, the classic bull roaring (bull's moo(as the English call it) of the Morris engines. Better than having two woofers in the passenger compartment. Following it is a bit intimidating, because the road is open to traffic. When we arrive at the quarry, I can only compliment Giacomino and the little English girl, wife permitting. He says, "Whoever sold it to me told me that the engine had been tuned. The MGA coupé we used at Winter, by comparison, seems stuck."

We're at the disused marble quarry of the French company HENRAUX; we're standing before a vast, light gray wall with a twenty-meter-high crack in the middle, through which we pass into an amphitheater with white, smooth walls. "Come take a group photo of the cars under the Arch of Titus?" I glance at the rusty writing emblazoned across the crack. Some bizarre demon must have had fun knocking out the middle R. Two syllables remain: HEN on the left, AUX on the right. It seems like an invitation to stir up the messages coming from the subconscious. The very shape of the crack recalls that thing whose name corresponds to the code for the Florence-Cagliari flight: that thing that all boys know is where girls keep it, but boys always have it in their heads. But then those two syllables, read in English, become IN – OUT, and in French EN – AU (inside – in the… in the primordial cave).

In this amphitheater that resembles a sketch of a Michelangelo temple, the myth of the Gorgon is evoked, as if by magic. Are you familiar with Cellini's masterpiece, located in Florence under the Loggia dei Lanzi? Perseus displays Medusa's head to passersby. The Florentines ignore it and pass by, but strangers who gaze upon it are transfixed. It's the Medusa effect, as Ovid describes it. Using Medusa's head, Perseus transforms the giant Atlas into a mountain, one of the most striking metamorphoses in the book; from the drops of Medusa's blood, which fell when Perseus beheaded her, the winged horse, Pegasus, is born, and with a stomp of his hooves, the fountain of the Muses gushes forth. From the Gorgon, after all, comes poetry. From Medusa's petrifying gaze, Ovid's writing is born. And through this primordial myth, which perhaps attempts to describe how everyday objects, as well as poetic objectification, arise from the unity of conception and manual skill, we find the common thread that leads us from the block of marble to Michelangelo's work. Medusa is the artist's eye, the creative imagination that we cannot see, but which makes the purest images real and solid.

We set off again under a light rain, while the sky threatens far more terrible cataracts, but the storm has already eased beyond the Cipollaio tunnel when we cross it to enter the province of Massa. The surrounding mountains look like petrified giants, inflicted with deep wounds that reveal their marble-like vein. The road that descends toward the sea twists like the folds of Moses' robe and beard, which, according to critics, represents a figure "animated by a powerful, incipient movement, who struggles to control his inner emotion: his broad forehead seems to be only a veil over the prophet's great mind." A masterpiece, the patriarch Moses—Pope Julius—that Freud felt the need to subject to analysis.

In Massa, we were greeted with great ceremony at the Provincial Palace, with a heartfelt exchange of courtesies. We left our mark on the MG family by donating the club's pennant, and in exchange, the President of the Province gave us a book published by Franco Angeli about the Fabbricotti family, a marble dynasty with a centuries-old tradition of building their coat of arms.

And finally, escorted by the provincial police, with uniforms that look like those of the Wehrmacht, we appear in procession at the marina. The long, promised journey begins, Promenade des Anglaises along the seafront from Marina di Massa to Lido di Camaiore, through the Forte and Marina di Pietrasanta; and given the inevitable prolongation of the previous rituals, more than the hour that turns to desire, this hour turns to the stomach. We disembark at the Grand Hotel LE DUNE and park our cars on a soft green lawn, which looks like a golf course, surrounded by the various buildings of the hotel: immersed in an atmosphere closer to Miami and Florida than Tuscan tradition. But even this novelty gives everyone a sense of euphoria. Compliments must be given to Gualtiero for the buffet dinner party at the LE DUNE restaurant. It often happens at these counter services that the last ones are less than happy because they can barely find the first ones... and the second ones. Here, everything was managed by a seasoned high-class restaurant sleuth with the manner of a French Marshal, assisted at the scalpel by a chef wearing a wide-brimmed hat like a captain of the Swiss Guard. The system was clever: the most appealing delicacies were found at the end of the line, once your plate was already full.

When it's time to say goodbye—congratulations again to Gualtiero and Luigi Buti for the Sixth, a masterpiece, like Beethoven's PASTORAL: who knows how the Ninth will turn out…—we cross the street and slip into the first bathroom, in front of the hotel. To gaze at the sea. With a final sensation that comes to mind every time I come to Versilia. In everyday language, when you leave the coast and head out to sea, you speak of the high seas: not the DEEP, the HIGH. And when I stand before the Tyrrhenian Sea, the sensation is that of being in the presence of a sea higher than our own, the Adriatic; of being dominated, dominated by its magical presence: Herr Doktor, I don't know if I've been exhaustive.