Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

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The book starts out with each chapter reading like a new day on the holiday we’re taking with Morris as our guide. Morris discreetly projects his own story in this city where the definition of self is a bit circumvented. So while this review may lack some depth of understanding, I hope my appreciation for the author and her work comes through.

Her reflections on Trieste, written as a much older Jan Morris, contemplate her own status as a person born between genders, and Trieste as a city between worlds, linked backed to Vienna and Austria as the Mediterranean sea port for the Habsburg Empire. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. We were doing a grand tour of Venice, Florence, San Marino and their favorite Italian city – Riccione.E por fim as maravilhosas descrições da montanha/planalto de Karst que me fizeram viajar para as aulas de geoformologia cársica que tanto me apaixonaram nos anos noventa. The false passion of the nation-state made my conceptual Europe no more than a chimera: and because of nationality the city around me that day, far from being a member of some mighty ideal whole, was debilitated in loneliness. Through her analysis of the city, she is also exploring her own melancholy in old age, wondering where she fits in the world. Reading Trieste proves a much more transporting experience than one might derive from any number of standard travelogues.

E mentre mette a fuoco ogni dettaglio, la memoria prende il sopravvento e rievoca navi a vapore, teatri, caffè viennesi, drappi della nobiltà e altre glorie passate; al racconto immersivo del presente risponde il controcanto nostalgico del mondo che fu. She also makes reference to both places having a “conscious sense of separateness”, due to their both being “innovative, technological place[s], not hampered by nostalgia”. Morris layers the history of Trieste with her own experiences and invites us to share her imaginings of what life there was like at its Habsburg peak. The canal is full of small boats, almost all needing a lick of paint; three or four of the most derelict, hauled out of the water at the entrance to the canal, have been so splashed with vivid paints and graffiti, and are disposed so gracefully there, that they look like works of contemporary art.Visitors tend to leave it puzzled, and when they get home remember it with a vague sense of mystery, something they can’t put a finger on. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. He and Perry talked about that point in life where it no longer matters what other people think and the liberation it brings. I don't think this description is quite right, though, and consequently it's not very helpful to potential readers. At the Second World War's ending, he came to Trieste for the first time as a man, a soldier of the British Empire.

The past is a foreign country, but so is old age, and as you enter it you feel you are treading unknown territory, leaving your own land behind.When Franz Ferdinand died in Sarajevo that morning in 1914, ringing the death knell of European civilisation, which ship brought him back to Trieste for the final overland journey to Vienna? The Trieste of her mind was always the waterfront, always as it had been when Morris was there as a soldier. Evoking the whole of its modern history, from its explosive growth to wealth and fame under the Habsburgs, through the years of Fascist rule to the miserable years of the Cold War, when rivalries among the great powers prevented its creation as a free city under United Nations auspices, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is neither a history nor a travel book; like the place, it is one of a kind. The books includes so nice passages, and one cannot avoid thinking about Maximilian and Carlota when reading about the Miramar Castle. My acquaintance with the city spans the whole of my adult life, but like my life it still gives me a waiting feeling, as if something big but unspecified is always about to happen.

Visitors tend to leave it puzzled, and when they get home, remember it with a vague sense of mystery, something they can’t put a finger on. You can change your nationality by the stroke of a notary's pen; you can enjoy two nationalities at the same time or find your nationality altered for you, overnight, by statesmen far away.

Desta feita, li o último dos livros deste tipo que a autora escreveu e publicou em 2001 dedicado à cidade italiana/austríaca de Trieste. Of the latter there are plenty: Maximilian I, Baron Pasquale Revoltella, Casanova, James Joyce, etc. Over the years I have learnt only occasionally to look back on it with shame (the fundamental principle of empire having soured on all of us), but more often with a mixture of pride, affection and pathos.