The allied invasion of Sicily in July and August 1943 led to fierce fighting around Catania. An indirect effect of the conflict was the following manoeuvre, in which the then Irishmans Diary writer, Quidnunc, found his knowledge of Sicilian architecture hopelessly outflanked by that of Myles. The real-life Brian ONolan had never been to Sicily, or anywhere near it. – FRANK McNALLY
EVERY NOW and again my friend Quidnunc down here on my left (your right) sees Fitt (best tailor in Dublin) to make mysteriously incomprehensible and far-from-called for observations. (I digress to remark that uncalled for drinks are rarely served in Irish dram-shops). A few weeks ago I caught him saying in that charming high-pitched voice (there is nothing better than one coat of pitch and tar applied evenly with a mop for preserving timbre) the following:
I hope that the church and monastery of San Niccola, the most interesting buildings in Catania, have survived the recent fighting.
To this I make one unanswerable query: Why?
If you are going to make observations like this on Sicily, why pick on the one thing we know to be a piece of unthinkable theatrical shoddy, so ruthlessly “rebuilt” in the last centuries as to be completely unrecognisable, even to those of us who measured it in the sixties. I have the drawings above in a drawer to this day together with a prayer book belonging to Francis Johnson and a silver calipers once the property of Cooley R.I.P.
Look at me. I hope that nothing happens to the temple of Zeus at Agrigento, to temples “C” and “D” at Selinus, to that long pseudoperipteral hexastyle agglomeration of architectures at Segesta, comprising the styles of ten centuries on one site and presenting, through century-slow fragmentation, the artistic erasures of Time, which is cunningly enough removing the more recent, leaving the oldest to the last. I know a fair amount about this subject but do not shout about it, unlike a certain other person.
Look at me again. I have a passion for the Moslem work that was there before the Normans came and which Roger and the bishops he brought with him from Provence were broad-minded enough to admire. (I knew the Guiscards well – all excepting the brother of Pope Urban). Yet do I talk of all this?
I hope to heavens nothing happens to the Church of the Martorana that the Admiral George of Antioch built in 1143 (not 1144 as Brehier so wrong headed suggests). And I have a great graw for the Capella Palatina: very special stuff, Latin plan, structure frightfully Greek and the nave plasthered with Byzantine mosaics. And then those incredible Moslem road-houses (you know – Favara, Menani (Roger II) La Ziza (William I) and La Cuba (Willian II))! What one finds in Sicily is....well....Europe....but is there ever a word out of me about that? Do you find me....parading my knowledge? I think not.
Cefalu, Vespri, Palermo, Monreale, that squat timber-roofed tub – if it weren’t for the plan you’d say pre-Norman. And those very quare looking gadrooned vouissoirs, which really must be Islamic in origin – after all, the earliest example of them is in Bab el Futtuh, Cairo 1087, as every one knows. And those interesting intersecting arcades that give the effect of fourteenth century English window tracery . . . they at least are Norman in origin, as in the chevron ornament that we find even in Ireland and sometimes on the sleeve of me son’s coat that’s in the Army.
I hope nothing happens to the Municipio and the Cathedral in Syracuse (some relatives of mine are buried within the walls) – as nice a pair of late Renaissance essays as you could hope to find. I make nothing of this, nor do I shout about my predilections in the newspapers, much as less talented persons might be gently suborned to my lordly standards of taste.
If there is one thing I would warn you against it is the baroque style. There you have something that lacks the sternness and strength of truly virtuous and admirable work. It is effeminate – I would sooner have Philipstown. (I hope nothing happens to Philipstown.)