DOI Kapitel:
Chapter X: Paestum
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59000#0393
Paestum
music and flaring torch-bearers must still be clear in the
memory of the elders who saw the splendid countenance
said to have borne such a striking resemblance to the
busts of Euripides in the Vatican.
A curious old photographer lives in Salerno. He
claims to have the secret of combining groups of the
same person upon a light instead of upon a dark back-
ground. His work has received notice in England.
His walls are covered with examples of stunted peasant
types hideously multiplied to three. All the newly
married and affianced couples visit him, the young girls
arriving in their simple kerchiefs, and submitting, awe-
struck and blushing with pride, while he winds yards of
pearl necklace about their necks, pearls as big and as
hollow as soap-bubbles.
He kindly helped me to develop some films in his
tiny dark room, but they were all fogged, for I discovered
that he had left the door ajar, allowing the light to
come through. I pointed this out to him, but his
answer quite disarmed me : “ I left it open, Signora,”
he said, “ per delicatezza.”
It would be difficult to forget the drive from
Salerno to Cava on a warm evening early in June, or
the fairy-like illumination of countless lucciole through
which the way lies. Thousands upon thousands of
white lights dance and throb around, till one is caught,
as it were, in a quivering and glittering veil floating
from the slopes above far down into the valley beneath.
Their fire is full of the blending of the Spring with
the Summer, the ripening of the barley and the corn.
24 185
music and flaring torch-bearers must still be clear in the
memory of the elders who saw the splendid countenance
said to have borne such a striking resemblance to the
busts of Euripides in the Vatican.
A curious old photographer lives in Salerno. He
claims to have the secret of combining groups of the
same person upon a light instead of upon a dark back-
ground. His work has received notice in England.
His walls are covered with examples of stunted peasant
types hideously multiplied to three. All the newly
married and affianced couples visit him, the young girls
arriving in their simple kerchiefs, and submitting, awe-
struck and blushing with pride, while he winds yards of
pearl necklace about their necks, pearls as big and as
hollow as soap-bubbles.
He kindly helped me to develop some films in his
tiny dark room, but they were all fogged, for I discovered
that he had left the door ajar, allowing the light to
come through. I pointed this out to him, but his
answer quite disarmed me : “ I left it open, Signora,”
he said, “ per delicatezza.”
It would be difficult to forget the drive from
Salerno to Cava on a warm evening early in June, or
the fairy-like illumination of countless lucciole through
which the way lies. Thousands upon thousands of
white lights dance and throb around, till one is caught,
as it were, in a quivering and glittering veil floating
from the slopes above far down into the valley beneath.
Their fire is full of the blending of the Spring with
the Summer, the ripening of the barley and the corn.
24 185