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Summary: A twilight view of Trieste
Review: Morris' perspective on Trieste is unique on several counts: a seasoned and sensitive traveler, she has a deep affection for a city that doesn't rank high on most people's lists of favorite places; she's experienced the city as both a young man and a middle-aged woman; and she's well-read about the city's history and literary associations, but she uses her learning as the backdrop for direct experience of life in Trieste, rather than as an end in itself. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, both as an appreciative visitor's impressions of the city and as an account of Morris' elegiac musings late in an eventful life. On the other hand, having recently read Claudio Magris' "Microcosms," I was forcibly reminded that this book is Trieste from an outsider's perspective. It's a beautiful book and well worth reading, but, for the Triestine mind in action, read Magris.
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Summary: This describes the city I know..
Review: My family is from Trieste and the surrounding countryside and I spent much of my childhood trying to describe this city that was Italian but not, was Slovenian, but not, had pieces of Austrian culture, but not, and still was its own amalgam of all of those cultures and even more. Morris "gets" the in-between-ness of the city perfectly: the crossroads port of a landlocked empire that no longer exists. Trieste and the southern coast was also the honeymoon destination for landlocked Hungarians and Austrians as well -a glamourous seaside resort that maintained the Habsburg physical layout, architectural style, and business sense that provided comfort for the residents of Budapest and Vienna, and yet provided also the intrigue of a world shipping port and the meshing of various cultures. Morris provides a long term sensibility that ranges through Trieste's various adjustments to war and government and an obvious comfort with this city that is trying to find a new meaning for itself. The book becomes poignant as Morris describes those people who came of age -- also in worlds that no longer exist and she explores the various types of adaptations people make in that same circumstance. An interesting topic, and also an interesting allegory.
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Summary: Trieste Mia
Review: The only quibble I have with Jan Morris' lovely and lyrical homage to Trieste is that she has painted it in the colors of her own melancholy. I grew up in Trieste, and this is what I remember: the bluest sky one could imagine, the ever-changing colors of the Adriatic, the perfect crescent of the gulf. Certainly there was a beautiful melancholy in Trieste--in some ways it reminds me of Prague, or of Paris in late autumn--but there is also a joy I'd call particularly Triestine. I remember singing local ballads in the local trattorias, group hikes in the Carso, the summertime exodus to the city's wonderful beaches, the variegated populations of Eastern Europeans selling their wares in the Mercato Nuovo. I remember participating in avant-garde theatrical productions, hearing punk-rock bands before they became famous in the U.S., and attending Trieste's famous Science Fiction Film Festival...all these events drew laughing, happy, diverse, fashionable (oh, we Triestine women are chic...) crowds. And I beg to differ about the regional cuisine!! Anyone who has tasted my mother's jota (a dense, rich minestrone) or the city's wonderful "brodetto" (a light and spicy fish stew)or any of our Italo-Austro-Italian specialties could never assert a lack of culinary heritage for the city. Morris also claims that Triestini are not very sentimental about their own cultural heritage,and that (unlike our stereotypes of Italians)are not prone to lavish and very public displays of grief, joy, or anger. Perhaps she has not been around a group of Triestini singing or listening to our "Marinaresca", a local fisherman's ballad, or perhaps she has not been among our "esuli" ("displaced persons" in U.S. bureaucratic parlance) when they hear the "Va Pensiero" chorus from Verdi's "Nabucco". Certainly Triestini are much more courteous drivers than most of our countrymen, so if you want messy driving by all means avoid the city...I understand that so much of this book is tinged with Morris' own melancholy--after all this is a work of literature, not a travelogue. But please, before you view Trieste as a glum, grey, bora infested (hey, it only blows about 20 days a year, tops!!), empire-obsessed backwater, take the time to take a most unusual detour from your next trip to Venice. You won't be disappointed. And order the brodetto!
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Summary: Don't cry for me, Triestina
Review: This book bears startling similarities to Morris's book on Venice, written so many years and genders ago. Apparently random visual details and historical factoids are spun into a series of meditations on Trieste, like Venice an anomalous city whose days of greatness are past. References to advancing age and the intention to write no further books give this book an autumnal flavour, yet its nostalgic tone, half-melancholy, half-pleasurable, is typical of Morris's early travel writing and even of the Pax Britannica trilogy. One cannot, alas, be re-assigned to a different era. Fans of Morris's writing will find this a fine example and friends who used it as the basis of a trip to Trieste were enchanted with the city.
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Summary: Don't cry for me, Triestina
Review: This book bears startling similarities to Morris's book on Venice, written so many years and genders ago. Apparently random visual details and historical factoids are spun into a series of meditations on Trieste, like Venice an anomalous city whose days of greatness are past. References to advancing age and the intention to write no further books give this book an autumnal flavour, yet its nostalgic tone, half-melancholy, half-pleasurable, is typical of Morris's early travel writing and even of the Pax Britannica trilogy. One cannot, alas, be re-assigned to a different era. Fans of Morris's writing will find this a fine example and friends who used it as the basis of a trip to Trieste were enchanted with the city.
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Summary: The writer knows a bit, the editorial reviewers know less
Review: To add to my previous short review of this book, please go to the Society for Slovene Studies page. Just type into Google, for instance: Society for Slovene Studies. And when you get there, go to Book Reviews, where you will find, a review of this book by someone. me, who, by chance, knows something about Trieste. Jan Morris's book is extremely important as it is another current book, this one by a great prose stylist, which misunderstands Italy completely. After all, Italy is the only country in Europe which has not only neo-Fascists in its government, but old Fascists,too, who fought with Mussolini's Salo republic. And the capital of that neo-Fascist Italy is...come sempre...Trieste.
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Summary: Trieste Is Magnificent
Review: Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is quite simply one of the best books I have ever read. Reading books like this is what makes life worth living. Jan Morris is a wonderful prose stylist. Her every sentence is a delight. I learnt so much about Trieste, from reading this book. Before I picked up this book, I didn't know anything about Trieste at all. When it was finished, I had learnt a great deal about it... in the most delightful way.
If you want a delightful few hours, read this book. Indulge yourself in the quirky characters and the old world atmosphere Jan Morris brings so delightfully to life. Yes, Jan Morris work is elegiac, and for a Welsh nationalist and self described anarchist, she has a bit of a thing for empires. But that makes this a better, not a worse book. I very much enjoyed this book, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone.
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Summary: A Beautiful Ending...
Review: Trieste is a city I knew nothing about, but always had a vague impression of. That impression, of faded grandeur, old-Europe cosmopolitanism gone to seed, and melancholy, is largely confirmed in this, the first of Morris' books I've read. The fishing village at the top of the Adriatic was a sleepy burg until the Austro-Hungarian empire transformed it into it's only seaport and HQ for its imperial navy in the early 1700s. It rapidly became one of the leading seaports of the world, and an international center of commerce. Following the defeat and dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Trieste was handed over to Italy, which already had plenty of ports, and thus it quickly reverted to sleepy backwater. Over the last century it was occupied by the Nazis, Allied forces, was a UN free territory, and eventually reverted to Italian rule. Nowadays, as Morris writes, "It offers no unforgettable landmark, no universally familiar melody, no unmistakable cuisine, hardly a single native name that anyone knows." And while Morris ably rambles through the city's history (which she first visited in 1946), the book is a bit of a metaphor for human aging and memory. She has vowed this is her final book in a prolific career, and the melancholy tone echoes the melancholy of a city whose glory days lie a century in the past. She writes, "Trieste makes one ask sad questions of oneself. What am I here for? Where am I going?" That's not to say the book is depressing or sad, because her love for the city is evident throughout, as she grapples with its place in her own psyche. While she clearly enjoys recreating in her mind's eye the hustle and bustle of the imperial era, she also finds, "For me, Trieste is an allegory of limbo, in the secular sense of an indefinable hiatus." So while the narrative is studded snippets of history, amusing and telling anecdotes from her own visits, and evocations of past residents such as Richard Burton and James Joyce, it's also rich in introspection. Above all, Morris' meandering prose is beautiful and has inspired me to delve into her past work. I do wish the publishers had included a few historical maps, some photos, and a bibliography of other works on Trieste.
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Summary: Sweet melancholy
Review: We can only hope this is not Jan Morris's last book, as she has stated it will be; her intelligence and acumen make it too painful she has finished writing. Her study of Trieste--one of her most treasured--starts perhaps too slowly and cautiously: it gets a bit tedious hearing her repeat how seemingly unremarkable Trieste seems at first glance (it also might sway readers new to Trieste or to Morris's work away from them). but as she continues her evident love and fascination for this city on the Adriatic become more evident, and you begin to see why so many different writers besides Morris, including James Joyce, Italo Svevo, and John Berger, have found Trieste such a remarkable place. Morris recounts much of the city's intriuguing cultural history, and also gives a brief topographical sense of the place. You do miss accompanying photographs--greatly--but that's a small quibble.
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