Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere

Before this I had never read any of Jan Morris's works. I think I missed a lot because reading this one brought me enormous enjoyment. I had seen her on C-SPAN a few months ago and found her charming even though I didn't get around to reading her till now. Her personal charm comes through in her writing. She goes about her work with large quantities of gentle wit, impressive erudition and wisdom, taking neither herself nor her subject too seriously. I am old enough to remember the day Trieste became part of Italy after the Second War ... for a while it was a toss-up as to whether it would go to Italy or to Yugoslavia. Being part of Italy is probably a good thing even though the city and its environs have great numbers of assorted Slavs, Hungarians and Germanic types, probably a wonderful mixture. Let me start toward the end of the book, where Morris says "Here more than anywhere else I remember lost times." And what does that make us think of?? Right ... and like M Charlus declaiming and lamenting in the park she counts off people she has known in Trieste and announces each one's fate: in every case it is a rough equivalent of, "Dead and gone." Also in these last pages Morris underscores decency and kindness as the reigning virtues in Trieste. For me that would be quite enough to recommend any city ... or country. Other features of the Triestino character: "When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean." Like most parts of eastern and southern Europe unable to defend themselves Trieste became became part of the Habsburg Empire, which needed a seaport. Just down the coast lies Istria which brings to mind Modern Greece's first president John Capodistria, whose surname is a hellenized version of Capo d'Istria. The very short chapter titled "Love and Lust," suggestive in a highly civilized way and extremely cerebral (I suspect Morris gets most of her jollies above the eyebrows) seems to adhere to Jungian thought even though Freud is the psycho-anthropologist who gets mentioned here -- along with James Joyce, who lived in Trieste for some years and expressed a clear preference for certain of the city's cat-houses as against others. In a chapter called "The Nonsense of Nationality" the author shows that Trieste, containing so many ethnicities, can be taken as a case-study or laboratory to give the lie to all the insane claims of nationalism. This ethnic mix may help explain why the typical Triestino is so civlized. There is a meditative, lovingly written chapter on the histoy of the Jews in Trieste in which the author suggests that during all the domination by Austrians, Nazis and Italians, the Jews have provided the spiritual and social energy to fuel the city's intellectual and artistic life through most of its histo

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.

Morris describes Trieste as a city of melancholy, not so much that it is depressing, but that it allows one to be sad in a way that other more agressive towns might not. One ruminates on the meaning of nowhere there and a learns that nowhere is really a little bit of everywhere.Nor does it hurt to run into Sir Richard Burton's widow burning his pornographic translations from the Arabic, or James Joyce writing poems while visiting prostitutes. Also there are many well-fed cats, dining outside the mayor's favorite restaurant, or in the desert of the surrounding area, the rocky stony Karst, licking up scraps of fish heads and spaghetti brought to them by the local residents.It is no longer one of the world's greatest ports as it was under the Hapsburgs. It is only the fifth largest port in the Mediterranean.

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.

Largely bereft of landmarks that might attract a sightseer, and for much of the year buffeted by the icy bora sweeping down from the denuded limestone plateau of the Karst, Trieste is outwardly an unprepossessing place. But with deft strokes, septuagenarian Jan Morris, in Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, depicts an exiled city in whose distinctive soul she has long seen reflections of herself.Isolated from mainstream Europe, Trieste lies on the coast of the tiny sliver of north-east Italy hooked over the top of the Adriatic. Hemmed in by the Giulian Alps to the north and the Balkans to the east, the city is nonetheless steeped in a past which, until the Great War, saw this one-time medieval fishing village flourish as a cosmopolitan seaport serving imperial Vienna.Some readers may blanch at Morris's fond remembrance of empire. But the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, put an end to all that, and half a millennium of Austrian rule rapidly came to a close. Trieste was cast adrift, passing in turn through the hands of Il Duce, the Nazis and the squabbling Allied liberation armies (in which a young Morris arrived in Trieste as a British soldier). For a time it was even an independent free territory under the auspices of the United Nations. It returned to Italy in 1954, but a 1999 survey showed that the majority of Italians are unaware the city is one of their own. Trieste remains the capital of nowhere.In absorbing the influence of different races, nationalities and faiths, this place of transience has become a melting pot in which such distinctions are at best irrelevant, at worst a nonsense. And so the author celebrates the civility of the metropolis, its laughing, gracious nature, its readiness to shun pernicious conformity, and above all its kindness. These are qualities she believes are shared by a special minority in every community around the globe, a diaspora she calls nowhere.Like her enduring Venice, written more than forty years ago and one of the first of her many books and essays about cities, this is a masterful evocation of a city, rich in perspective, language and understanding, almost faultless in fact. But it is avowedly a more personal book, full of tenderness and nostalgia. Trieste engenders a tristesse in Morris which recalls the hiraeth she has felt for her native Wales during a lifetime of wandering the planet, an indistinct yearning, suffused with pathos and sensual desire, for family, for homecoming, for something beyond here and now. In pleading the case for this cherished city of limbo and longing, that its existential remit is simply to be itself, Morris seems to be asking, in this her final book, that we afford her the same privilege.