1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
In "By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy," George Gissing offers a vividly detailed and introspective travel narrative that captures the essence of Southern Italy's landscape, culture, and people at the turn of the 20th century. Gissing's prose is characterized by lyrical descriptions and a thoughtful observational style, making the reader feel intimately connected to the places he describes. The book stands as both a personal journey and a social commentary, reflecting Gissing's fascination with the contrasts between the idyllic beauty of the region and the poverty of its inhabitants. It navigates through historical allusions and cultural insights, situating itself within the broader context of travel literature and the burgeoning interest in Italy's classical heritage during this period. George Gissing, a notable English author of the late Victorian era, was deeply influenced by his struggles with class and society, factors that shaped his perceptive and empathetic view of social issues. His own experiences of travel and hardship lend credibility and depth to his observations in this work. Gissing's literary career, marked by a keen interest in realism and character studies, provides the backdrop for his reflections in this travelogue, further enriching the reader's understanding of Italy as a backdrop for his philosophical musings. I highly recommend "By the Ionian Sea" to readers who appreciate rich descriptions and keen social insights, as well as those interested in the historical evolution of travel literature. Gissing's ability to blend personal narrative with broader cultural observations makes this work a compelling read for anyone seeking to delve into the heart of Southern Italy, illuminating both the beauty and the struggles inherent in the region. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ähnliche
By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy
Table of Contents
Introduction
A solitary traveler searches the present for traces of antiquity and finds, instead, a dialogue between memory and place. George Gissing’s By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy is a work of literary travel writing by an English novelist best known for his urban fiction. Set along the southern shores that face the Ionian waters, it transforms a personal journey of the 1890s into meditative prose. First published at the turn of the twentieth century, the book combines observational detail with historical reflection, offering readers a considered encounter with landscape, customs, and the enduring afterimages of the classical world.
The premise is disarmingly simple: Gissing moves from town to town, observing what he sees and testing impressions against his reading and recollection. The subtitle’s “notes” signals an approach that privileges immediacy and candor over system or itinerary. Rather than providing a handbook for travelers, the narrative assembles scenes, moods, and insights into an unhurried mosaic. The voice is composed and exacting, shaped by a novelist’s discipline and a scholar’s restraint. Moments of quiet wonder sit beside sober appraisal, and the mood remains reflective throughout, allowing readers to experience the region not through spectacle but through thoughtful, attentive looking.
A central theme is the tension between ideals of the Mediterranean—sun, clarity, connection to antiquity—and the realities of daily life in the southern provinces. Gissing is pulled toward ruins, inscriptions, and stories that link the present to Greece and Rome, yet he also attends to contemporary labor, language, and custom. The book repeatedly asks how a place holds its past without being confined by it, and how an observer from elsewhere can write responsibly about what he encounters. In these pages, the Ionian coast becomes both a physical route and a map of cultural memory, layered and persistently alive.
Stylistically, the book balances sensuous description with measured judgment. Light, weather, distances, and silhouettes of ridge and shoreline are rendered with clarity that never lapses into ornament. Historical references emerge naturally, anchoring observations without turning the chapters into lectures. The prose favors precision over flourish, and the pacing invites readers to slow down, to notice the interval between observation and thought. This patience extends to people as well as places: Gissing’s encounters are handled with reserve, acknowledging the constraints of language and the limits of a traveler’s understanding. The overall effect is intimate without presumption, erudite without pedantry.
By the Ionian Sea belongs to a moment when British travel writing was reimagining its relation to continental Europe, and when southern Italy occupied a complex position within a recently unified nation. Gissing’s pages register a region in transition, where national institutions and older local rhythms meet. He is attentive to disparities within the peninsula while resisting easy generalization, preferring particularity to grand thesis. Publication at the turn of the twentieth century situates the book within fin-de-siècle debates about heritage, modernity, and the responsibilities of culture. The result is a travel narrative that also functions as an inquiry into historical consciousness.
For contemporary readers, the book’s relevance lies in its questions as much as in its scenes. How do we look at places we do not fully know? What do we owe to the histories that attract us, and to the people who live among them now? Gissing models a form of slow attention that resists the speed and certainty of checklist tourism. His careful prose encourages readers to consider the ethics of description, the seductions of nostalgia, and the fragile stewardship of cultural landscapes. In an era of rapid change, the book’s respectful curiosity and measured skepticism feel bracingly modern.
Approached today, By the Ionian Sea offers a quiet companionship: a learned, observant guide walking without haste, writing without display. One reads it for lucid sentences, for the play of thought across vistas, and for the way modest episodes gather cumulative force. It will appeal to lovers of literary travel, students of Mediterranean cultures, and anyone drawn to reflections on how the past saturates the present. Without insisting on conclusions, the narrative leaves readers with a sharpened sense of place and an appetite to look longer. Its enduring promise is simple: attentive travel can still deepen the mind and steady the heart.
Synopsis
By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy records George Gissing’s winter journey through Calabria and nearby coasts at the end of the nineteenth century. Written as a travel narrative, it follows a loosely planned itinerary shaped by weather, rail timetables, and modest local transport. Gissing’s stated purpose is to visit places associated with ancient Magna Graecia and later Latin Christian culture, observing how landscape and history meet in daily life. The book’s method is descriptive and episodic: short stays in towns, day trips to nearby sites, attention to lodging, roads, and officials, and frequent notes on climate and season.
Leaving Naples, the traveler proceeds south toward the Tyrrhenian side before crossing into the Calabrian interior. Cosenza becomes an early base, its hill setting and river valleys framed by persistent rain and cold. The narrative presents the city’s markets, streets, and public buildings, and introduces a recurring historical motif: the legend of Alaric’s burial by the Busento. Alongside antiquarian interest, the author records practical details of movement and accommodation. Comparisons between North and South emerge in neutral observations of poverty, taxation, and administration, while acknowledging the courtesy of local inhabitants and the constraints imposed by terrain and limited infrastructure.
Excursions from Cosenza lead into the Sila highlands, with their chestnut forests, upland pastures, and scattered hamlets. Accounts of shepherd life and winter isolation are balanced by notes on forestry, charcoal burning, and seasonal labor. Discussions of brigandage appear mainly as rumors and memories rather than present danger. Malaria in the lowlands and widespread emigration to the Americas are cited as shaping forces on households and villages. The text emphasizes distance and difficulty: sparse roads, infrequent coaches, and slow rail connections. These chapters establish the travel conditions and social backdrop before the route turns decisively toward the Ionian side.
The journey reaches Taranto, a central highlight. The old city on its island between the two seas is depicted through quays, bridges, fishermen, and a remarkably serene urban rhythm. References to the Greek colony of Taras and the figure of Archytas underscore the classical continuity that motivates the visit. The harbor, oyster beds, and quiet water provide contrasts to the harsher interior climate. The traveler notes local antiquities, libraries, and conversation with officials, presenting Taranto as both a living port and a repository of Hellenic memory. This interlude offers calm and organization before the route resumes along sparsely settled coasts.
Moving east and south along the Ionian littoral, the narrative crosses plains associated with Metapontum and Sybaris, characterized by broad fields, marshy tracts, and monumental solitude. Scattered remains, small stations, and wayside inns mark an austere historical landscape influenced by disease and neglect. Occasional visits to isolated temples and earthworks—often reached by hired carts or on foot—reinforce the contrast between former urban power and present emptiness. Travel timings, prices, and permissions are stated matter-of-factly, highlighting the logistical challenges of exploring Magna Graecia’s sites. This segment situates the classical past within a geographic continuum of wind, water, and long distances.
At Cotrone, modern Crotone, the traveler seeks traces of Pythagoras and the old Greek city. The account focuses on the cape of Hera Lacinia, where a solitary standing column confronts sea and sky. Rough weather, a difficult approach, and limited amenities frame the visit. Lodging proves sparse and uncomfortable, illustrating the book’s recurring theme of inadequate services in remote towns. Yet the austerity of the headland, the sweep of the Ionian, and fragmentary ruins achieve a memorable presence. The description remains factual about what can and cannot be seen, noting the paucity of excavated remains and the dependence on local guides.
Turning inland and upward again, the route reaches Catanzaro, a wind-swept town on a ridge between seas, before descending toward the Gulf of Squillace. Here, the narrative pursues the late antique figure of Cassiodorus and his monastic foundations near Squillace, traditionally located by the coast at Copanello. Conversations with clergy and townspeople, careful reading of terrain, and searches for inscriptions yield few tangible survivals, but reinforce the alignment of texts and landscape. The gulf’s changing weather, the steep approaches, and the arrangement of farms and watchtowers provide context. The section exemplifies the book’s patient method: small discoveries, precisely recorded.
Further stages carry the traveler along the Calabrian shore toward Reggio, with intermittent halts in villages and junction towns. The close view of Sicily and Etna across the strait forms one of the journey’s culminating vistas. Notes on post-unification administration, schools, garrisons, and municipal works appear alongside descriptions of ferries, customs officials, and coastal defenses. Earthquakes and past disasters are acknowledged through local testimony and visible repairs. As the season advances, the itinerary turns northward by rail and steamer, closing the circuit. The emphasis remains steady: distances, delays, courteous encounters, and the steady presence of classical names on modern signs.
The book concludes by juxtaposing durable memory and fragile circumstance. Its central message is descriptive rather than polemical: landscapes shaped by ancient Greek and Roman settlement now hold sparse populations, limited roads, and seasonal hardship, yet preserve names, ruins, and habits that connect past and present. Repeated attention to weather, transport, and accommodation underlines the practical realities of travel and livelihood. Without proposing programs, the narrative registers needs for education, health, and communication while recognizing local resilience. By the Ionian Sea thereby offers a calm, sequential record of places seen, texts recalled, and conditions encountered in Southern Italy at the time.
Historical Context
Set during Gissing’s winter ramble of 1897, the book unfolds along the Ionian littoral of southern Italy—chiefly Calabria and Apulia—between Reggio di Calabria, Catanzaro, Squillace, Crotone, and Taranto. The political backdrop is post‑Unification Italy, three and a half decades after 1861, when national consolidation had not erased stark north–south disparities. Transport and communications remained rudimentary: the Jonica railway, completed piecemeal in the 1870s, offered slow service, and roads into the Sila and Aspromonte mountains were rough. Endemic malaria haunted the plains, especially near the old site of Sybaris. Gissing’s observations, made from modest inns and local trains, measure contemporary life against the classical past visible in ruins and place‑names.
Before 1860 the region belonged to the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled from Naples by Ferdinand II (1830–1859) and his son Francis II (1859–1861). Calabria experienced both repression and neglect: the failed 1844 landing of the Venetian patriots Attilio and Emilio Bandiera near Cosenza, and broader 1848 revolts, were crushed by Bourbon forces. Feudal landholding patterns persisted as latifundia, with limited investment in roads, schools, or public health. These conditions engraved a social landscape of isolated villages and impoverished peasantry. In By the Ionian Sea, Gissing encounters towns whose built fabric and administrative routines still bear the imprint of Bourbon centralization and the long afterlife of pre‑unitary institutions.
Unification reached Calabria dramatically in 1860. Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand, which had landed at Marsala on 11 May, crossed the Strait in August. On 19 August 1860 Garibaldi came ashore at Melito di Porto Salvo; two days later, on 21 August, his volunteers defeated Bourbon troops at Reggio di Calabria, opening the road north. Naples fell on 7 September; plebiscites in October ratified annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia, and on 17 March 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed. Gissing travels through Reggio and along Garibaldi’s route, noting memorials and local lore, and weighing the promises of 1860 against the persistent hardship he witnesses.
The early 1860s saw a prolonged insurgency and counterinsurgency—brigantaggio—across the southern interior. Mixing Bourbon loyalists, disaffected peasants, and band leaders such as Carmine Crocco in nearby Lucania, the movement peaked between 1861 and 1865. The government declared states of siege, deployed Generals Enrico Cialdini and Alfonso La Marmora, and enacted the 1863 Pica Law permitting extraordinary tribunals and collective punishments. Thousands were killed or imprisoned, and entire communes were pacified by force. In Calabria the memory of ambushes and punitive columns lingered, especially in the Aspromonte and Sila zones. Gissing’s wary passages through remote districts echo this recent past, as do his conversations about security and police presence.
After unification, the “Southern Question” framed debate about structural underdevelopment. Pasquale Villari’s Lettere meridionali (1875–1878) exposed chronic illiteracy, predatory taxation, and landlordism; southern deputies like Giustino Fortunato pressed for infrastructure and land reform. Public works advanced unevenly under the 1879 Baccarini Law; reclamation and the 1888 Crispi‑Pagliani health law barely dented malaria in the Sibari and Metaponto plains. The 1887 tariff war with France crippled exports of oil, wine, and citrus, deepening rural crisis. Taranto’s naval arsenal, built 1883–1899, symbolized state priorities—strategic industry amid widespread agrarian stagnation. Calabria also suffered severe earthquakes in 1783 and again in 1894. Gissing records fever‑ridden lowlands, shaken towns, and Taranto’s uneasy modernity.
Mass emigration reshaped the Mezzogiorno in the decades around Gissing’s visit. Between 1876 and 1900 roughly five million Italians left, with the southern share surging in the late 1890s toward the United States, Argentina, and Brazil via Naples and Messina. Calabria and Apulia, burdened by small plots, debt, and seasonal joblessness, saw households sustained by remittances while villages emptied of young men. Municipal records, shipping agents, and posters advertised passages at ever lower fares. In By the Ionian Sea, remarks from innkeepers and carters about sons abroad, and the quiet of winter streets, register this demographic flight and the social hollowing it produced in coastal towns and upland communes.
The book constantly measures modern landscapes against Magna Graecia. Greek colonies—Sybaris (founded c. 720 BCE), Croton (c. 710–700 BCE), Locri Epizephyrii (c. 680 BCE), and Taras, the Spartan foundation of 706 BCE—once dominated the Ionian seaboard. Pythagoras taught at Croton around 530 BCE; Croton’s victory over Sybaris c. 510 BCE and Rome’s capture of Tarentum in 272 BCE altered regional hegemony. Hannibal maneuvered through Bruttium during the Second Punic War (216–203 BCE). Late antique Calabria produced Cassiodorus (c. 485–c. 585), who founded the Vivarium monastery near Scylletium (Squillace). Gissing seeks these sites and museums—such as Taranto’s national collection, established in 1887—using antiquity as a foil to contemporary decline.
By the Ionian Sea functions as a quiet social and political critique of fin‑de‑siècle Italy. Through concrete observations—ailing peasants, malaria‑ridden marshes, scant schools, erratic trains, and the overshadowing state arsenal at Taranto—the narrative exposes the unfinished nation: a centralizing government that extracted taxes and conscripts yet failed to deliver health, roads, and agrarian reform. The juxtaposition of classical grandeur with present squalor indicts both Bourbon backwardness and post‑1861 trasformismo, which recycled elites while ignoring the countryside. Gissing’s attention to local speech, municipal neglect, and petty officialdom illuminates class divides and the durable inequality separating the Mezzogiorno from the industrializing North.
