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Alexandria
Theoretically,
you can choose. Take a room at the Cecil and, from the balcony, in the
morning, legend and memory seem to rise out of the sea. Walk along the
port and suddenly the new glass and concrete Library will appear before
you, the pride of the city, the triumph of modernity. Take a tram along
the Iskandar el Akbar, the road of Alexander the Great and at number
9, the rest home Vittorio Emanuele III will present you with thirty-two
portraits in flesh and bones, more bones than flesh, more regrets than
remorse, of Italians between seventy and ninety, history that has come
to a halt, the nostalgia that is no longer that of years ago, because
no one remembers any more what things were really like then. Theoretically,
you can choose. But reality will amuse itself by shuffling the cards,
showing you ruins where you expected to find signs of the present, the
future nestled in the folds of the past. More than a city, Alexandria
is a creation of the mind.
At
the Kait Bey Fort, where in ancient times stood the Lighthouse, a wonder
of light, a child with a hare lip gazes enraptured at the naval artefacts
of the battle of Abukir, Nelson's triumph and the end of the eastern
dream of Napoleon, not yet emperor. The few remains of the defeated
flagship, bells, crockery, navigation equipment, weapons and ammunition,
recall the period when the French discovered Egypt and were enchanted
by its beauty, an attraction that went on throughout the nineteenth
century and still continues today.
This
was the period of the slow rebirth of Alexandria, after a sleep lasting
many centuries that had followed the city's foundation, the Ptolemaic
age and the dominion of Rome. Standing aside from the rest of the school
group, noisy and distracted, indifferent in its excitement, the child
with the hare lip stands alone, protecting himself and his diversity.
The red cut on his lip that looks like raw flesh sets him apart and
probably leaves him open to the ridicule and cruelty of his fellows
and will probably condemn him to an adult life where no one will ever
really look him in the face - the disgust of good manners. On such a
deformity, Lawrence Durrell created one of his most tragic characters
in the "Alexandria Quartet", that of the young and rich Narouz, who
is an extremist of the faith because he is an outcast in life. The "Quartet"
is full of physical faults and metaphysical drama.
And
out of this museum of horrors came the most incredible elegy written
around a place and its power of attraction: "The capital of memory.
To those who love it, it can give everything, except happiness".
That
little is left today of the Alexandria between the two wars is a fact
that gratifies all people without imagination and full of practicality.
But for those for whom the contingent is not enough and who know that
dreams are often more real than reality, the name of a street will suffice...
rue Abi Daniel, rue Horreya, rue 24 Juillet, the sight of a church or
a monument, Saint Catherine's, the Roman amphitheatre, the temple of
Ras El Soda....to restore the vanished image of a distant age.From the
ramparts of the Fort, the Library gleams on the sea as if it were a
giant silver coin. Made of Assuan granite, embraced by the sea and surrounded
by walls sculpted with graffiti that represent the past and present
alphabets of the world, a planetarium that links it to the sea and to
the Congress Centre by means of a suspension bridge, four floors below
ground and seven above, it will accommodate two thousand workers, 400
thousand books and 50 thousand maps
.The
wager of the future of a city with three million inhabitants that lacks
an industrial destiny, a maritime dimension or a commercial perspective.
If culture is a business, then Alexandria wants to embody it. After
this project, launched ten years ago, funded by the Unesco and which
has cost 300 billion lire, it will be the turn of the great Museum of
underwater antiquities. A cylindrical tunnel will take visitors from
dry land to the depths of the sea, where temples, buildings and monuments
of the classical age await them. It is very much as if Ungaretti's poetic
vision in "Il porto sepolto" had come to life.
A
team of Belgian archaeologists has meanwhile begun what will be the
next campaign of excavations that should confirm the place where Alexander
the Great was buried, while extension and reorganisation work continues
on the over 40 kilometres of "corniche". The official opening of the
Library is scheduled for the autumn, and donations and cataloguing proceed
at a fast pace. The last donation received came from France- the copies
of all the documents relating to the building of the Suez Canal - one
thousand five hundred metres of paper, studies, documents and correspondence.
And if the states are doing their part, private individuals are also
anxious to do theirs. Federico di Sangirard, count of Wardal, is one
of the illustrious names of a European community that practically no
longer exists, but whose ghost continues to hover about. At the reception
staged to mark his donation of 1500 volumes of Italianistics, rare editions,
masterpieces and jewels in the field of antique books, the whole of
the Alexandria that counts convened. The Count of Wardal is an Italian
and here Italy made its mark.
(traduzione
Interpres sas-Giussano)
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