Here are excerpts from the novel "False Papers" d André Aciman (2002 pages 29 to 31), other editions:
"The journey by rail, however, included two moments of magic, I knew very well. One of them occurred at dawn, when through the steamy windows one could guess that the train was heading across the fields Silent Chambery, where the mist was rising among the trees covering the landscape like a white paint.
(...) The other time was more special. It occurred about two hours or more after from Rome, when the train began to rub off the coast of Tuscany and Liguria, past large homes and palaces, endless stretches of cypress trees, overlooking the coastline seemed more peaceful world. Every moment, however, this splendid view was interrupted by a tunnel, an old wall, with houses built too close to the road, frustrating my desire to savor these villas and landscapes long enough to imagine that I lived there. Yet this is how I learned to venerate the Tyrrhenian and the Ligurian Sea: increments brutally cut, thwarted in their splendor, as if all were unreal and intangible (...).
I never took the trouble to look long enough coastal station names, and the sea always came without warning. The magic was in part Do not know exactly when she would show up, or whether it would prove even, perhaps, being less beautiful than I thought, could she come and go without my knowing.
For years, this wonderful expanse of azure and eternal peace, where the hills and beaches seemed immutable made to exist only in memory, had no existence. I had never seen pictures, no one had ever spoken that she resided in a hinterland composed of little villages with strange names: Viareggio, Forte dei Marmi, La Spezia, Cinque Terre, Rapallo. I met some of these names by reading the biography of Byron, Shelley and Stendhal. But that was all.
Yet this panorama over twenty minutes, despite obstacles and disruptions, remained the most beautiful sight I had witnessed. What made him so fascinating, it might be due to leave Italy, which I hated then, for the joys of the trip to Paris, where everyone said that we would eventually move. Or maybe it was just plain fun, once familiar (now a luxury), enjoy the view, imperfect but extended to the sea For a native of Alexandria, used to have the beach within reach throughout the day, it was like finding a relative after an argument two years: a strange mixture of familiarity tense sudden intimacy with the bitter realization that, despite the hugs, nothing would ever be the same.
Not that I had never seen the beach in Italy before. But it was different. This show had a spiritual, timeless, majestic, unrelated to this large pool was just that the beaches of Rome. It was the perpetual beach: the beach as a lifestyle, the beach within reach, the range we have in the blood. Just like Alexandria. Pass before such a vast stretch of sea was like to go Alexandria, as one does in dreams, when you greet a house that is not ours, that belongs to others but that could come back from one moment to another, because the universe would then assume its meaning. It reminded me more strongly to the beach life, made me regret, made me understand exactly what I could almost touch the finger, which I missed, for which I could cry. After all, that's why this show was so beautiful, because it was familiar to me, because I had finally found, because I had become a stranger, because there were only to be lost. The loss of the sea was already included in each image of the sea We look at because it is not really there and because it could never be, because it is no longer yours and never will again.
What came to break the charm, or rather amplified, is that fifteen years later, during a brief trip I took with a friend, armed with Eurorail passes, after having passed quickly before the same place, having decided that it was perhaps the most perfect place in the world, we got off on a whim, a few stations later in Nervi. (...) We asked a taxi to take us to the best hotel, assuming we would find a spectacular view over the sea and all the while fearing that the rooms are already taken. (...) Ten minutes later we were sitting on a balcony overlooking the cliffs of Nervi and Bogliasco poorly lit, and we watched the angry waves crashed against the rocks in darkness, as in a poem romantic.
The next morning when we woke up and opened the doors, I discovered what I feared would never find in my lifetime. More exactly, I found what I feared would never expect to find, because I would not know what make, because the loss of the sea makes it easier to accept to live in New York because I wanted to dictate my terms to the sea and not let me dictate his own, because I wanted all or nothing, knowing well it is unacceptable to issue an ultimatum to someone, and more at sea
What I discovered this morning, it was an ideal time for swimming, a perfect blue sea , an ideal breakfast served in our small room ideal and consumed on a small table on a balcony ideal perfectly ideal. After bathing, back to the balcony. After lunch, return to the balcony. After a long siesta, return to the balcony. No time to visit the country. There was nothing to see in Nervi. I took my diary and, feeling very inspired, I could write these words, terribly humiliating:
di tutto questo E mare cosa Faccio?
This sentence is impossible to translate. First, because I'm not sure it means anything in good Italian. Let's try anyway: "And what will I do with all that sea?" It was the expression of my powerlessness in the face overwhelming generosity .(...)
Maybe my indifference, my disappointment they were apparent character too frontal, invasive, wonderful show. I would have liked more diluted, fragmented, oblique, upset, as when traveling by train so many years earlier, but it was precisely the fragmented side view I once found so annoying, so frustrating. Sitting on my balcony, I watched this wonderful expanse of azure, and the only thing I had in mind, besides my feeling of helplessness was: "That's it. I leave in three days!" I wanted to close his eyes. I found myself in the most beautiful place on earth. There 'was, I realize now, nothing to be desired. Nothing else say.
But that was the problem. There was nothing to write, nothing to plead, he was nothing happening. All I could do in this case proved useless. There was no story to tell.
Like all cultivated mind remembers when he faces the harsh realities of life, body and pleasure, thinking comes after, not before, and certainly not during. To the question: "What will I do with all that sea?", The answer should be: "Y swim"
Never in my life I never felt so hungry, too worried to a plate so stocked. As a wealthy emigre who returned to his native village, hoping to impress people, but discovers that they do not care that he does not recognize, I did feel that I did not know even what I felt, apart this mixture of torpor and joy. I finally decided to publish these words in a text: "All heaven, all that water, as is done with so much blue once you have seen?" This sentence was less a question than a cry of despair, defeat, deep irony. It was a simple question he does there was no answer.
What do you do with so much blue once you have seen?
"The journey by rail, however, included two moments of magic, I knew very well. One of them occurred at dawn, when through the steamy windows one could guess that the train was heading across the fields Silent Chambery, where the mist was rising among the trees covering the landscape like a white paint.
(...) The other time was more special. It occurred about two hours or more after from Rome, when the train began to rub off the coast of Tuscany and Liguria, past large homes and palaces, endless stretches of cypress trees, overlooking the coastline seemed more peaceful world. Every moment, however, this splendid view was interrupted by a tunnel, an old wall, with houses built too close to the road, frustrating my desire to savor these villas and landscapes long enough to imagine that I lived there. Yet this is how I learned to venerate the Tyrrhenian and the Ligurian Sea: increments brutally cut, thwarted in their splendor, as if all were unreal and intangible (...).
I never took the trouble to look long enough coastal station names, and the sea always came without warning. The magic was in part Do not know exactly when she would show up, or whether it would prove even, perhaps, being less beautiful than I thought, could she come and go without my knowing.
For years, this wonderful expanse of azure and eternal peace, where the hills and beaches seemed immutable made to exist only in memory, had no existence. I had never seen pictures, no one had ever spoken that she resided in a hinterland composed of little villages with strange names: Viareggio, Forte dei Marmi, La Spezia, Cinque Terre, Rapallo. I met some of these names by reading the biography of Byron, Shelley and Stendhal. But that was all.
Yet this panorama over twenty minutes, despite obstacles and disruptions, remained the most beautiful sight I had witnessed. What made him so fascinating, it might be due to leave Italy, which I hated then, for the joys of the trip to Paris, where everyone said that we would eventually move. Or maybe it was just plain fun, once familiar (now a luxury), enjoy the view, imperfect but extended to the sea For a native of Alexandria, used to have the beach within reach throughout the day, it was like finding a relative after an argument two years: a strange mixture of familiarity tense sudden intimacy with the bitter realization that, despite the hugs, nothing would ever be the same.
Not that I had never seen the beach in Italy before. But it was different. This show had a spiritual, timeless, majestic, unrelated to this large pool was just that the beaches of Rome. It was the perpetual beach: the beach as a lifestyle, the beach within reach, the range we have in the blood. Just like Alexandria. Pass before such a vast stretch of sea was like to go Alexandria, as one does in dreams, when you greet a house that is not ours, that belongs to others but that could come back from one moment to another, because the universe would then assume its meaning. It reminded me more strongly to the beach life, made me regret, made me understand exactly what I could almost touch the finger, which I missed, for which I could cry. After all, that's why this show was so beautiful, because it was familiar to me, because I had finally found, because I had become a stranger, because there were only to be lost. The loss of the sea was already included in each image of the sea We look at because it is not really there and because it could never be, because it is no longer yours and never will again.
What came to break the charm, or rather amplified, is that fifteen years later, during a brief trip I took with a friend, armed with Eurorail passes, after having passed quickly before the same place, having decided that it was perhaps the most perfect place in the world, we got off on a whim, a few stations later in Nervi. (...) We asked a taxi to take us to the best hotel, assuming we would find a spectacular view over the sea and all the while fearing that the rooms are already taken. (...) Ten minutes later we were sitting on a balcony overlooking the cliffs of Nervi and Bogliasco poorly lit, and we watched the angry waves crashed against the rocks in darkness, as in a poem romantic.
The next morning when we woke up and opened the doors, I discovered what I feared would never find in my lifetime. More exactly, I found what I feared would never expect to find, because I would not know what make, because the loss of the sea makes it easier to accept to live in New York because I wanted to dictate my terms to the sea and not let me dictate his own, because I wanted all or nothing, knowing well it is unacceptable to issue an ultimatum to someone, and more at sea
What I discovered this morning, it was an ideal time for swimming, a perfect blue sea , an ideal breakfast served in our small room ideal and consumed on a small table on a balcony ideal perfectly ideal. After bathing, back to the balcony. After lunch, return to the balcony. After a long siesta, return to the balcony. No time to visit the country. There was nothing to see in Nervi. I took my diary and, feeling very inspired, I could write these words, terribly humiliating:
di tutto questo E mare cosa Faccio?
This sentence is impossible to translate. First, because I'm not sure it means anything in good Italian. Let's try anyway: "And what will I do with all that sea?" It was the expression of my powerlessness in the face overwhelming generosity .(...)
Maybe my indifference, my disappointment they were apparent character too frontal, invasive, wonderful show. I would have liked more diluted, fragmented, oblique, upset, as when traveling by train so many years earlier, but it was precisely the fragmented side view I once found so annoying, so frustrating. Sitting on my balcony, I watched this wonderful expanse of azure, and the only thing I had in mind, besides my feeling of helplessness was: "That's it. I leave in three days!" I wanted to close his eyes. I found myself in the most beautiful place on earth. There 'was, I realize now, nothing to be desired. Nothing else say.
But that was the problem. There was nothing to write, nothing to plead, he was nothing happening. All I could do in this case proved useless. There was no story to tell.
Like all cultivated mind remembers when he faces the harsh realities of life, body and pleasure, thinking comes after, not before, and certainly not during. To the question: "What will I do with all that sea?", The answer should be: "Y swim"
Never in my life I never felt so hungry, too worried to a plate so stocked. As a wealthy emigre who returned to his native village, hoping to impress people, but discovers that they do not care that he does not recognize, I did feel that I did not know even what I felt, apart this mixture of torpor and joy. I finally decided to publish these words in a text: "All heaven, all that water, as is done with so much blue once you have seen?" This sentence was less a question than a cry of despair, defeat, deep irony. It was a simple question he does there was no answer.
What do you do with so much blue once you have seen?
