In-Depth Look at Viaggio in Ponente written by Domenico Laffi

“It’s not everyday we get company around here,” I reminded myself, “we haven’t shown our chateau in ages.” As we walked down the elegant staircase, each step creaked one by one. My hand-held lamp with the bright, burning fire was in clutch as we walked around the dusty furniture until we saw some of my men. They were silent, but you could see the fear in their eyes - almost like the fear in Rainsford’s. One had the guts to come up, and offer another light looking for a way to impress me with his concern, but I quickly declined.

“There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and he champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his motor-boats slid the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with

In William De Witt Snodgrass’ poem “Leaving the Motel”, readers encounter an infidelitous couple’s behaviors and rituals after an afternoon affair. During the rush and chaos of events, individual items packed in bags and tidied about the room connect to varying punishable degrees or specific sensual processes of an adulterous relationship. These symbols gather together, intensifying the text as a whole in opening the devilish nature of a human but additionally showing endangerment in the secretive moment of lust.

This text analyses the complexities in writing and interpreting history. Mark Damon claims that historians encompass at least three different ways of accessing the past; remembering, recovering, or inventing. The texts states that no history is the full unvarnished truth and that memory is usually what many must result to, making the facts potentially flawed. It also discusses how evidence and artifacts aren’t complete without context and some historians result to fabricating the story behind it. Throughout the text it glances at two very different historians, the Roman Tacitus and the Byzantine Procopius, and shows the range and difficulty inherent in the study of the past.

Nowadays the wide array of transportation means and infrastructures at our disposal has made it relatively easy for us to travel from one country to another; even when those countries are thousands of miles away from each other. However, during the 13th and 14th centuries, travelling was not that easy. Yet, two men, the Italian tradesman Marco Polo and the Moroccan Jurist Ibn Battuta became famous for having managed to perform extremely long distance journeys away from their home country. At the end of their long travels, both men shared their experiences with the world via the books, The Travels of Marco Polo and The Travels of Ibn Battuta. An analysis of those two texts reveals two things. On one hand, Marco Polo remained a cultural

Andrea de Pozzo, born in 1642 in Trento, Italy, was a famous Italian Jesuit painter, architect, stage designer, and art theoretician of the late seventeenth century. Pozzo specialized in ‘quadratura’and ‘di sotto in su’ techniques; a system of perspective where the focal lines start from the corner and meet each other at the center of the piece. At the age of 17, his father sent him for artistic training under Palma il Giovane. In 1662, he trained under an unrecognized painter from the workshop of Andrea Sacchi, who taught him the techniques of Roman Baroque art. As devoted Pozzo was to his art, he was just as devoted to the church. In 1675, he designed frescos for the church of San Francisco Saverio in Mondovi. Some of his contribution to the church also included ceiling paintings. Pozzo established a strong reputation ceiling he painted in the Church of St. Ignazio which was known as the Glorification of Saint Ignatius (or Nave Fresco).

History has been recorded throughout time in stories, books, poems and other literary works. These writings give historians and readers of the present day valuable insights into the lifestyles, beliefs, society, economics, politics and pagan religion of the time period they originate. Authors are greatly influenced by the beliefs and attitudes of their own society and time. The works they write provide a window to the past that allows us to peak through and see what life was like for the people of that particular history. Middle Age literary works show the reader of the present who the people were, what was important to them, and how they lived. In a culture

room with a fireplace, a table, three chairs and a big bed. With a family of six, it was a tight fit, but after nights on boats and trains, it was heaven. Then came the fleas, which fed upon their slender bodies night after night.

Stuffed and happy after the large meal, anyone who wanted to extend the day would meet for after-dinner drinks and relax on the drinking deck. The guys puffed on cigars, the resulting smoke necessary when nights brought sweat and no see ‘ums, gnats so small you only felt

The Gatsby's attractions are prime examples of this extravagance, “Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons...enough colored lights to make a christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden...buffet tables...spiced baked hams...pastry pigs and turkeys...gins and liquor...by seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived(39-40). On the other side of the ashes laid New York City, where Tom’s apartment on the night of their stay at the apartment “Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door”(29). So the obsessive drinking continues. At the same time as these elaborate and gluttonous parties were occurring, the shacks of the Valley of Ashes were able to see it happening out of their dirt covered windows. This area is “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and raising smoke and, finally with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powder air”(23).

Poe’s lavish descriptions depict a ostentatious palace with luxury and wealth pouring from each wall and chandelier. “This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste,” (Poe 82)

In the top story of one the buildings fortunate to still be standing, is a man who has hung himself from the rafters. Willaim Hogarth used all these startling scenes to grab the attention of the viewer and give them an insight on London at its lowest. Through “Gin Lane,” Hogarth expressed the ravenous effects gin had on the people of London and how it affected the living environment as well.

L’Arbe de la Croix is the mansion that Valerian builds for himself on Isle des Chevaliers. It is a luxurious space, “with windows and doorsills carved lovingly to perfection” (Tar Baby 10), “built in the days when plaster was taken for granted” (11), although sometimes at odds with “panes [that do] not fit their sashes” and “hand-kiln tiles from Mexico, though beautiful to behold, [that] loosened at a touch” (10-11). Visitors

Gioachino Rossini, like many great composers, was born in the right place at the right time. The musical firmament was still mourning the loss of Wolfgang Mozart in 1792 when Rossini was born. His parents were both gifted musicians, and young Gioachino was in a music conservatory by the age of 14. Rossini composed ten operas within the following seven years and had established himself as a gifted composer in the opera buffa style. This genre of comic opera was strikingly different from the rigorous opera seria, but it still managed to acquire some noticeable traits. Primarily, the arias in opera buffe shirk the da capo style of the seria mold. The subject matter deals frequently

The Italian Grand Tour was a time of high prominence in the 1700s for those of the elitist families in northern Europe. The opportunity for these young men to travel through Europe, with Italy as the main destination, was very crucial to an ideal education and a full image of a social elite. Grand tourists traveled to learn more about Classical history and art, but more importantly, the Italian Grand Tour was to complete one’s education before taking up the responsibilities of their own society; or a revolution to find one’s self-identity. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe was a special Grand tourist. He was much older than the traditional Grand tourist and had already taken up societal responsibilities, as he was a famous writer. He traveled incognito, signifying his lost identity, which he searches to find while on the Grand Tour. In his travelogue, Italian Journey, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe represents