Dateline: Avignon
So much for rushing off to Spain. Italy was difficult to leave. Meaning, I got off at the wrong station in Génova, missed a connection to Nice. Went to Torino, thinking I could make a connection there, but Torino turned out to be one of those more-than-one-train-station towns where one has to walk or bus or taxi between stations… no easy connection there, either. So I stayed another night in Italy, in a nice hotel in Torino called Montevecchio, a block south of Corso Stati Uniti.
Next day (yesterday), I took the train back to Génova, got off at the right train station this time, connected to Ventimiglia (on the border with France), connected again to Nice, and finally connected again to Avignon. A study in contrasts… the first leg was a standard italian "intercity" (regional). The next was a commuter train, stopped everywhere, took forever at stations, along the gorgeous Italian riviera (Savona, Sanremo…) but with rare bits of snow on the hilltops overlooking the cold, blue sea of middle earth (think about it: medi-terranea).
The French train to from Vintimille to Nice was also a commuter train, but bearing the same relation to the italian commuter train as a New York commuter train resembles a Mexican commuter train. The French train was clean, fast, subway-like. The Monaco stop was even underground … the whole stretch from the italian border to Nice was as through a prosperous metropolis.
The connection in Nice put me on another regional train which in theory would have been a similar experience, but an accident of fate made me a member of the surplus of a very crowded train.
With no place for all the extra passengers, a conductor opened up a large baggage compartment, and I surveyed the sunset on the Cote d'Azur through the filthy window of a cigarette-smoke-filled baggage car, where I sat on my luggage on the floor. It reminded me of bus-travel in guatemala.
As the yacht-harbors fled past and disappeared in the mediterranean darkness, the train finally began to empty out and I found a seat in compartment to share with some gregarious, chain-smoking, cell-phone-chatting algerian youths. By the time we reached Marseilles, I was alone, and I plowed into my steady re-reading of Persiles once again.
Somewhere on this leg of the journey, I finally crossed paths with Persiles and his party of pilgrims. Which is to say, While I rode from Torino to Génova to Nice to Avignon, Persiles travelled from Barcelona to Montpellier to Aix-en-Provence to Milano. Persiles, still under the name of Periandro, with his alleged sister Auristela, the bárbaro Antonio (hijo) and his sister Constanza (recién condesa), and various others, are all on their way to Roma, to commit to to la santa fé católica, etc., etc.
We had nearly crossed paths earlier, in Poland, although it's never clear in the novel what part of greater Poland Persiles and company are in, or even if they are, in fact, in Poland or in some other part of "las regiones setentriontales" which Cervantes has in his imagination granted to the king of Poland (recall that in the 16th cent., Poland/Lithuania were a great power in the north, with domains stretching from Sweden to Estonia to Odessa on the black sea, and for many in Spain and the Mediterranean world of the epoch, "polonia" was synonymous with all of the far north of europe).
The first two books of the novel Persiles…, set in the far north of Europe, are much vaguer on geography and more detached from the social realities of the period, and, since Cervantes was working from his imagination and not actual experience, lack verisimilitude. Indeed, I, for one, suspect that the "northern" seas and islands in the novel are standing in for the "other" that – in Cervantes' golden age spain – was in fact the new world of the Americas. This is a sort of displacement that allows the author some space for invention on the one hand, but allows him to address the theme of "otherness" (a very voguish term, lit-crit-wise, I realize) with some degree of plausibility.
The fact that the pilgrims land at Lisbon, of all places, at the beginning of book three, could be used to support further the fact that although they're coming from the north per the terms of the narrative, in cultural terms they are arriving from the new world. And once on terra firma, Periandro et al., are in a world Cervantes is much more competent to describe and critique, on the one hand, and where the author knew he'd be held to a much higher standard of verisimilitude, on the other. Hence the radical change in tone of the third and fourth books. Critiques like to point out that the first two books were written years before the last two, but there are logical reasons within the text itself, if contextualized to its audience and cultural setting, to justify these changes in tone.
Ok… enough of that. My train got into Avignon two hours late – almost midnight. So I walked down the block to the Hotel Ibis (a french anologue for Motel 6 … hmm, actually, the same corporation – thus the logic of global capitalism, e?). Not exactly picturesque, but… hey, check it out, they've got a WiFi connection.
France is the country in europe that most resembles the united states. I feel more comfortable making that statement now, though I'd confidently have made this categorical statement even before this visit, too. Current trans-atlantic sqabbles aside, France and the US are fundamentally the same sort of civilization… more so than, say, Britain and the US, in my opinion. I think the british fail the "cultural naivete" test, that weird combination of idealism and arrogance that define both american and french societies. Perhaps under Victoria, at the height of empire, things were different for britain… but the british seem to accept, now, at an almost visceral level, that they've been "surpassed" by their offspring, i.e. the US. The fact that it's their offspring allows them to retain a sense of place and pride despite the eclipse of their empire. The french, however, refuse to accept any such "end of empire" – they've merely transmogrified themselves into a post-modern, neo-colonial power, a la USA: voici la francophonie.
Interesting to note, for example, that France is the first country in the EU that I've visited that doesn't consistently fly the EU flag, alongside their own, on public buildings. This despite the fact that they are enthusiastic and founding members of the union. A bit like texas, then – parellelly, texas is the only place I've been in the US where you will frequently see state flags unaccompanied by the US flag. Yet texans are those most american of americans – voici GW Bush qua texan.
In Avignon this morning, I walked past a bar with the name "Université du Temps Libre" – what a perfect name for a bar, e? Or for an entry in this journal d'ambivalence?