Il Viaggio Moderno Nel Passato E Nel Mediterraneo

Il viaggio moderno nel passato e nel Mediterraneo Spinti dalla curiosità i Grand Tourists, tra cui molti architetti, viaggiarono verso antiche città come Pompei e Paestum per conoscere di persona rovine di un lusso prima inimmaginabile. Eppure non si è ancora adeguatamente indagato su come proprio questo carattere dell’antichità abbia potuto influenzare il dibattito architettonico e urbanistico moderno: in effetti, viaggio e lusso sono indissolubilmente legati. Generalmente il Movimento Moderno è considerato disinteressato alla storia urbana; ma dopo la prima guerra mondiale, ad esempio, i futuristi e i loro seguaci milanesi si avventurarono nel Sud Italia con l’intenzione di ‘rimodellare’ l’antico paesaggio mediterraneo in conformità della loro visione modernista. Questo è stato il caso soprattutto di Napoli e dell’Isola di Capri: è noto come Filippo Tommaso Marinetti credesse nella modernizzazione attraverso un’enfatizzazione delle “aspre rocce montagnose del sud”, tipiche di Capri, circondate da cactus. Nel descrivere i loro viaggi a Napoli e a Capri, gli architetti moderni europei, in particolare Le Corbusier, Josef Hoffmann e Bernard Rudofsky, ‘viaggiarono’ nei loro scritti così come nei loro schizzi: a Napoli le antichità ispirarono le loro versioni del paesaggio moderno, come testimonia la Villa Oro di Luigi Cosenza e Bernard Rudofsky, edificata negli anni Trenta sulla collina di Posillipo. Sono di seguito raccolti scritti che si occupano di viaggi di architetti nel Mediterraneo, in particolare nel Golfo di Napoli e nelle sue isole, e il ruolo assunto dal paesaggio moderno come bene culturale ‘di consumo’. Uno dei temi principali è il fenomeno della diffusione dell’architettura di paesaggio, come quelle di Bernard Rudofsky, Le Corbusier, Gio Ponti, Maria Teresa Parpagliolo, Lina Bo Bardi, Louis Khan, Thomas Church o David Pacanowsky. Il paesaggio ‘moderno’ offrì l’opportunità di nuove conoscenze, le diverse realtà urbane rappresentarono importanti aree di indagine nei settori in espansione del consumo culturale, del tempo libero e del turismo. Annette Condello 345 Modern architectural encounters and Greek antiquity in the thirties Emilia Athanassiou Vasiliki Dima Konstantinia Karali National Technical University of Athens – Athens – Greece Keywords: Modernity, Interwar, Travel, Architects, Parthenon, Aegean, Mediterranean, CIAM, Greece, Athens. Qu’attendiez-vous de la Grèce? Je n’en attendais rien; j’en suis revenu autre. Raymond Queneau (1934)1 1. Modernity meets the Greek world This paper traces the trajectories across the Greek landscape of European intellectuals in the ’30s, with a view to unveil the mutual transfer that contributed to the emancipation of interwar modernity, both in Greece and in Europe. We argue that cultural transfer in Greece took a twofold manifestation; on the one hand, Greek antiquity and the Aegean culture provided constant inspiration that gave form to the literary, artistic or architectural work of European modernists, on the other hand, their voyage facilitated the paradigm shift to modernity in Greece. This osmosis, triggered by the mobility of the trans-national networks of European modernists, was reflected in their corpus of work either as assimilation of and reflective contemplation on the ancient Greek geographical, archaeological and intellectual topographies or as a counter-utopia of the nationalist narrative, in order to construct a new collective imaginary. Associating ancient Greek civilization with a kind of religious idealism as a motivation for travelling to Greece appears to be a norm from the XVIII century onwards and is preserved in various forms until the interwar period, when the motivation of romantic pilgrim-travellers did not relate solely to their need to contemplate on their classical studies2, but also to associate their journey to ancient Greek culture and the Greek landscape with an existential search of self-awareness. In most cases, the boundaries between the two were inconspicuous and the motivations were multiple; switching between enjoyment or recreation and self- knowledge or spiritual revelation3. The idealized visions of a mythical ancient past gave way to a pragmatic present by compromising the prevailing metaphors of an atopian/utopian modernity with the dystopian interwar here and now of Greece. As recorded in modernists’ travel journals and literary texts, the visit to the Greek land turned out to be both an apocalyptic confirmation of their expectations and a painful disappointment with the country's plight. After WWI and the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe, Greece underwent economic depression and political instability, along with a slow and uncertain modernization. Foreign modernists, representing the emerging rationalism of their times and the idealistic call for a better world, being admirers of the miracle of antiquity, mourn for the inadequacies of modern Greece, the decline of her ancient glory, the “death of her gods” and the decay of the culture that honoured them. 1 R. Queneau, Voyage en Grèce, Paris, Gallimard, 1973, p. 55. 2 V. Woolf, Jacob’s Room, [Chapter XII], London, The Hogarth Press, 1960, pp. 136-137. “First you read Xenophon; Then Euripides. One day –that was an occasion by God– what people have said appears to have sense in it; “the Greek spirit”; the Greek this, that, and the other; though it is absurd, by the way, to say that any Greek comes near Shakespeare. The point is, however that we have been brought up in an illusion. […] “But it’s the way we’re brought up”. 3 D. Willis, The Mirror of Antiquity, Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp. 36-51. 347 2. The Parthenon effect Virginia Woolf, in her first modernist novel Jacob’s Room, provides an eloquent description of the abovementioned disillusionment. Woolf’s second visit to Greece took place in April 19324. After a long journey by rail from London to Venice, she boarded the SS Tevere to Piraeus. Aboard was Greece’s PM Eleftherios Venizelos, returning from his trip to Geneva, where, in a historic speech, he practically declared the country bankrupt5. Jacob, Woolf’s main character, can be construed as a metaphor for Europe’s condition after WWI, Greece’s plight and the moral discouragement of the European youth. Woolf leads Jacob’s steps up to the Acropolis, where, pondering upon the desolate country, he realizes the great loss and acknowledges in the ancient marbles an inexhaustible source of spiritual life and hope for the future: «Greece was over; the Parthenon in ruins; yet there he was. […] the Parthenon is really astonishing in its silent composure; which so vigorous that, far from being decayed, the Parthenon appears, on the contrary, likely to outlast the entire world6.» In 1931, Erich Mendelsohn publishes a series of articles as correspondent in Athens for the Berliner Tageblatt. Most of them emphasize the merit of the Parthenon, the ancient landscape and its impact. There is one, though, on contemporary Athens, which is utterly critical and expresses his disappointment by the contrast between the old and the new elements of the Greek capital7. In the interbellum, the Parthenon was instrumented anew as a modern timeless symbol, since the eternal monument elicited varied responses, ranging from Marinetti’s provocative assault to Le Corbusier’s “machine à émouvoir”8. Parthenon had somehow condensed and transmuted the surplus value of antiquity, by inspiring reactions that expressed both the Apollonian and the Dionysian spirit of Greek culture. The normative model of interwar travellers was that of appreciation toward the Apollonian element, which was identified with the Greek light and the way it elicits new modes of viewing. The ideal depiction of Apollonian Greece lies in the work of two famous photographers, who stayed and worked in Greece in the ’30s, George Hoyningen-Huene and Herbert List. As Hoyningen said in an interview: «When I first saw the Parthenon I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t even dare to take a photograph; but I did return the next year, being haunted by the poetic beauty of Greece.» 9 4 V. Woolf, Ellada kai Mais mazi!, Athens, Ypsilon, 1996, pp. 9-13. In her first trip to Greece, in 1906 she came along with her sister Vanessa Bell, her brothers Thoby and Adrian Stephen and her girlfriend Violet Dickinson. In her second trip to Greece, in 1932, she came with her husband Leonard Woolf (1880-1969), and with Roger Fry (1866-1934) and his sister Margery (1874-1958). 5 In early 1932, Venizelos presented to his other European interlocutors Greece’s financial difficulties and asked for a 5-year suspension of the old loans’ repayments and a new loan. They suggested that the Financial Committee of the League of Nations should examine Greece’s request. The final negative decision was made by the Council of the LN in Geneva, in April. 6 V. Woolf, op. cit., 1960, pp. 148-149. 7 E. Mendelsohn, «Neu-Athen», Berliner Tageblatt, June 5th, 1931, p. 2, reproduced in Erich Mendelsohn 1887- 1953, Gedankenwelten, edited by I. Heinze-Greenberg, and R. Stephan, 2000, pp. 118-119. 8 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, transl. by F. Etchells, New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1931, pp. 140, 211. “Here is something to arouse emotion. We are in the inexorable realm of the mechanical.” 9 G. Hoyningen-Huene, «George Hoyningen-Huene: photographer». Manuscript. Interview taken by Elizabeth I. Dixon, which took place on April 1965, at the photographer’s place in Los Angeles, in the framework of Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles. ©The Regents of the University of California, 1967, p. 29-30. 348 Despite the idealization of the ancient ruins and the creation of a transcendental reality in their work, there also lies a threat that the tranquillity will not hold forever. At the same time, however, the Parthenon, as a material remnant of the past, came under fire from the futurists and other radicals, who wished to break with tradition, by accusing it for the horrors of the war and an uncertain future.

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