Capri
Perle de la Méditérannée, Capri est une ile paradisiaquenoyée au mois d' Aout dans un purgatoire de touristes qui sont plus intéressés à faire du shopping dans les boutiques chics de la petite ville qu'à en visiter les merveilles!! Les cons sont partout!!!!!
Pearl of the Mediterannean, Capri is an island paradise smothered in August by hordes of tacky tourists, more interested in shopping in the fancy boutiques in the little town's center, than in discovering the island's marvels!!! Assholes are everywhere, don't you know??!!!!
Nearly
two years ago, in Pompei, Dr. Zoë and I marvelled at the crass
and crude presence of a retinue of Joey Perullo tour boobs, swaggering
their provincial ignorance all about these marvels of antiquity.
(Here is
that story)
This time around I had a foretaste of things to come on the hydrofoil ferry jetting me over to verdurous Capri's soaring cliffs and pinnacled crags, ![]() Fat, dumpy and flat-assed, they snapped away with flashes in full sunlight so as to immortalize their sorry presence upon the Mediterranean and its waters of indigo. Here in Capri, it's tourist galore!! In philistine and tacky presence, they preen and parade in the town's small serpentine streets, traipsing in and out of jewelry stores, and Trussardi, Hermes, and Armani boutiques!! What the fuck??!!?? They come to Capri to SHOP!!??!! The mind reels! I quickly head out, anywhere, anyhow, but away from THEM!! Walking east, up and down narrow lanes between curtains of flowers and blooms, as variegated as they're fragrant, in battle with prickly cacti and languid palms for growing space in the dazzlement of noon, I find myself... quite alone, all of a sudden. Deb and Lenny, Klaus und Inge, Marcel et Martine, all easing their t-shirted blubber in climate-controlled shopping, seemed to have jettisoned all thoughts of trekking the acclivitous hillside up the Via Tiberio to the Villa Jovis, high on the island's easternmost point. "Good", I think, " Roman ancient glory all to myself. The amorous plaint of lyres, a goatherd, and the fugitive vision of satyrs chasing dryads.... If only..."! And the dozen-or-so people awaiting me there make no difference. They're young and pleasant-looking, and the women have abandonned nearly all cumbrous habiliments in an attempt to find comfort in the stifling heat. |
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La merveille
naturelle qu'est "Arco Naturale" domine de quelques deux cent mètres
une petite baie aux eaux d'émeraude,
ou étaient ancrés une douzaine de yachts sous un soleil éclatant!!!
The "Arco
Naturale" is an awe-inspiring natural wonder, towering hundreds of feet
above the emerald-blue waters of a small cove
where a dozen or so yachts laid anchored in the perfect sunlight!!!
English
writer Robert Graves, in his "autobiographical" journal of Emperor
Claudius, tells the tale of Tiberius who, wanting to punish the
world after his own death by unleashing upon it the destruction
and havoc he couldn't bestow upon it whilst he lived, made the
insane Caligula his heir. Watching
the unseemly tourist hordes wash upon Capri, in relentless waves
of crass, I find myself entertaining thoughts of mass-destruction,
thinking there is something to be said for extermination. All as
an aesthetic construct, you understand, since I am not likely to
become master of the world, with power of life and death, any time
soon. |
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L'humble maison et les jardins d'un autochtone heureux, sur la Via Tibero, à moins qu'il ne s'agisse de la Via Matermania, j'oublie! |
Somebody's
humble home and gardens, somewhere on the Via Tibero or the Via Matermania,
I forget which!
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Villa Jovis. Atop
Mt. Tiberio sit in antique splendor the remains of Tiberius' villa,
wherefrom he ruled the Empire, trying to beguile but a little the
gloom and weariness of his declining years, having grown hopeless
of all but oblivion, finding solace and a momentary swelling of
his flaccid pulses in the spectacle of little boys and girls, frolicking
nude in the gardens as if they were wood nymphs, thereby assuaging
his gymnosophic seclusion! |
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La Villa Jovis, construite par Octave puis adoptée et remaniée par Tibère, fut la résidence de ce dernier durant les dix dernières années de son rêgne (27-37 de notre ère). Le vieux tyran (né en 42 av. notre ère!!) préfèrait la douceur du climat de l'ile aux miasmes de Rome. Et oui, déja à l'époque!!! |
The Villa Jovis, built by Octavian, was adopted and enlarged by Tiberius who resided there during the last ten years (27-37 CE) of his reign . The old tyrant (born in 42 BCE!!) prefered the island's mild climate to Rome's miasmic heat. Yes, then too!!! |
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Looking
out towards Capri and Anacapri from Villa Jovis !! |
Some distance below the villa is a cliff-top garden of cacti and pines, languourous flowers swaying in the salted sea-balsam breeze, bruiting with the songs of cicadae, offering one a stunning gaze at becalmed coves where numerous yachts lay at anchor, the privileged voluptuaries on board surely lunching on rare viands and frosted drinks, between naked dips in halcyon waters as smooth and green as a silky curtain of jade |
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Pas loin d'Arco Naturale, cette autre baie et ses yachts, vus d'une élévation d'environ deux cent mètres sur un petit chemin entre Tragara et la Grotte Matermania! Near Arco Naturale is this other cove, the yachts looking small, but only looking it, from about two hundred meters up, from a small path between Tragara and the Grotto Matermania! |