Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

 Rome, 24 May 2012

CAPUT MUNDI

Federico Fellini’s 1972 film “Roma” is a fictionalised autobiography of the Rimini-born director and a kaleidoscopic tribute to the glory and chaos of the City (Urbs) that for four centuries was the Capital of the World (Caput Mundi).  Making a cameo appearance in the film, US author Gore Vidal tells the camera, in effect, that there is no better place on earth from which to observe the decay of civilisation than the place where it all began. Observing the dusty facades of Baroque palaces and churches, Bernini, Boromini and Giacomo della Porta, the mighty riposte of the Church of St Peter to the life-hating iconoclasm of Geneva, the marbled statues of emperors and long-dead statesmen, the peeling stucco a myriad hues of tawny ochre, the palm trees and the cypresses, all this under the soft caress of a warm Latin sun in the late spring of the twelfth year of yet another century, today – even as the financial architecture of Old Europe crashes down about our heads – the secular pilgrim can empathise instinctively with what that native of the new Rome might have meant.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

 1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Das Vierte Reich/The Fourth Reich (6 Feb 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

5. What would Gandhi have said? (30 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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