Susan Sontag (born 16 January, 1933; died 28 December, 2004), in a 1962 photograph by Fred W. McDarrah.
From “Unguided Tour”:
‘I took a trip to see the beautiful things. Change of scenery. Change of heart. And do you know?
What?
They’re still there.
Ah, but they won’t be there for long.
I know. That’s why I went. To say goodbye. Whenever I travel, it’s always to say goodbye.
Tile roofs, timbered balconies, fish in the bay, the copper clock, shawls drying on the rocks, the delicate odor of olives, sunsets behind the bridge, ochre stone. “Gardens, parks, forests, woods, canals, private lakes, with huts, villas, gates, garden seats, gazebos, alcoves, grottoes, hermitages, triumphal arches, chapels, temples, mosques, banqueting houses, rotundas, observatories, aviaries, greenhouses, icehouses, fountains, bridges, boats, cascades, baths.” The Roman amphitheater, the Etruscan sarcophagus. The monument to the 1914-18 war dead in every village square. You don’t see the military base. It’s out of town, and not on the main road.
Omens. The cloister wall has sprung a long diagonal crack. The water level is rising. The marble saint’s nose is no longer aquiline.
This spot. Some piety always brings me back to this spot. I think of all the people who were here. Their names scratched into the bottom of the fresco.
Vandals!
Yes. Their way of being here.
The proudest of human-made things dragged down to the condition of natural things. Last Judgment.
You can’t lock up all the things in museums.
Aren’t there any beautiful things in your own country?
No. Yes. Fewer.
Did you have guidebooks, maps, timetables, stout shoes?
I read the guidebooks when I got home. I wanted to stay with my—-
Immediate impressions?
You could call them that.
But you did see the famous places. You didn’t perversely neglect them.
I did see them. As conscientiously as I could while protecting my ignorance. I don’t want to know more than I know, don’t want to get more attached to them than I already am.
How did you know where to go?
By playing my memory like a roulette wheel.
Do you remember what you saw?
Not much.
It’s too sad. I can’t love the past that’s trapped within my memory like a souvernir.
Object Lessons. Grecian urns. A pepper-mill Eiffel Tower. Bismarck beer mug. Bay-of Naples-with-Vesuvius scarf. David-by-Michelangelo cork tray.
No souvenirs, thanks. Let’s stay with the real thing.
The past. Well, there’s always something ineffable about the past, don’t you think?
In all its original glory. The indispensable heritage of a woman of culture…’
-from “Unguided Tour,” in I, Etcetera (1978)
