Monday 3 December 2018

Melancholy in Turin.

What better place for a spot of spring melancholy than a seat in the cold sunshine at a table outside Turin's Caffè Elena. It was Cesare Pavese's favourite bar, frequented also by Nietzsche and me, but not at the same time. Just to sit there looking out over the empty Piazza Vittorio with an espresso and a newspaper in the morning, wrapped up in a heavy coat and a scarf. The lonely figure of a priest walks across the emptiness of the piazza and scares off pigeons that swirl around his head as they lift off the dry, dusty cobbles ..... oh sweet melancholy. I imagine it was on a morning like this that Pavese decided that when he returned to his room in the Rocca and Cavour hotel he would feed himself on barbiturates and depart.


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Thingummy

Long way into town.

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