The Renaissance is closed: a tale of our times.

Note: This is by way of introducing Coronavirus Tales, a series devoted to recording our shared stories at the time of pandemic. 

I.               The Attendant

Reo: A ticket for Raphael, please.

Attendant: I’m sorry, but Raphael is closed until further notice.

Reo: Closed? How can that be?

Attendant: This is the decree of the Count.

Reo: Fine: I’ll take one for Raphael’s great rival, the marvelous Michelangelo.

Attendant: This is closed, too, sir.

Reo: Amazing. Botticelli, perhaps, who knew the dance of beauty?

Attendant: Closed as well.

Reo: Machiavelli, then, or at least his house, the den of foxes and lions.

Attendant: Also shut.

Reo: What of Christine de Pizan, who wrote of noble ladies?

Attendant: Used to be open, but now closed, too, since the staff is on strike.

Reo: Let me see the always-popular da Vinci.

Attendant: Popular yes, but now, nothing is to be seen, not even a crumb.

Reo: This is crazy. Then Toscanelli, who drew up Columbus’s math.

Attendant: Long shut, sir.

Reo: Galileo?

Attendant: Silence as well.

Reo: But the earth still moves. I’ll visit St. Peter’s – you can’t tell me that is shut.

Attendant: Largely so, though you can see His Holiness online.

Reo: How terrible!

Attendant: Terrible yes, though it was once more so. Please bear in mind that the forces of public order have decided that the Renaissance is closed until such time as it is safe again to view it.

Reo: Why did this happen?

Attendant: Everything is under quarantine.

Reo: Quarantine: what, is this some new Lenten rigor, so that we are forced to do penance for sins real and imagined?

Attendant: I don’t know, though it coincides with the Lenten season. But the Renaissance will be closed through Easter, too.

Reo: What a phantom spring! It is as if winter maintains its freeze, pushing everything down beneath the ground.

Attendant: That’s what’s going on.

Reo: I am new here. Tell me what has happened.

Attendant: Since the virus arrived, we have changed our way of life. We walk alone in the streets, enter alone into shops – those few that are still open – remain alone in our houses. Churches are empty, too, theater is cancelled, schools are silent, the public squares are deserted.

There is no morning café, with banter about politics and sports; the aperitivo, when we relaxed with friends before dinner, has vanished; the communal passeggiata, where we greeted our neighbors, seems a distant memory.

The invisible virus has made us invisible as well. Our cities are ghostly. Families remain separated across towns and countries, with sons and daughters uncertain of when they might see their parents again. The only crowded places are the hospitals.

Our certainty is uncertainty. We enter shops not knowing if we will find what was there before. We await news of greater infections and mortality. We are stunned that we and others, despite our power and technology, like helpless before an unforeseen pathogen. But why unforeseen? We like to talk constantly about the future, but discover we are greatly unprepared for it. Our gaze is fixed on the present, the day to day.

And you ask why the Renaissance is closed? It is closed to us, and we to it.

Reo: Are there no people who still live out the old ways, where I might discover the Renaissance?

Attendant: A few, though they have mostly fled out of town. The live apart, to escape the general contagion. I am told about ten of them have gathered in a villa in the hills nearby.

Reo: I must seek them out.

Attendant: If you take the bus 10 into the hills, perhaps a farmer can point out the way to you.

 

II.             The Vision

Reo took the bus out of the city. As he stepped off into the street, he gazed across the rolling landscape. Then the Director came and spoke to him: “Look across these hills – in this direction. Do you remember the first time you saw these pines? How straight and green, how relaxed they seem, rooted into the earth. You noticed how they separated the groves of silvery olive trees, and, further out, the rows of grapevines, preparing for the harvest. You were struck by the blue of a wheelbarrow. It seemed you had never seen such blue.” The Director’s words sparked memories and these came to Reo in layers, so that each remained distinct yet also inseparable from one another. He fished a book out of his pocket, one he almost always carried with him, and read a few lines of verse: “Chiare, fresche et dolci acque” / “Clear, fresh and sweet waters”; “Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte / mi guida Amor” / “From thought to thought, hilltop to hilltop Love guides me.” His spirits lifted as he made his way to the villa. The bus driver had told him that he had dropped off a group here several days ago.

 

III.           The Villa

Reo: Hello, I’m wondering if I might come in.

Ms. P.: Who are you? We were not expecting any guests.

Mr. D.: Come on, let him in. The more, the merrier.

Ms. E.: Provided he is merry.

Ms. F.: Hello, stranger. Are you merry? What’s your name?

Reo: Reo.

Ms. L.: Is that short for reor: “I suppose”?

Reo: I don’t suppose so.

Ms. F.: Or perhaps a fancy form of rieux, or “pint”?

Ms. N.: He’s bigger than a pint.

Mr. D.: Very funny! He makes me also “rieux” or merry. Let him in.

Ms. N.: What’s your story?

Reo: My story? I came here because I was told the Renaissance was closed, but that here there may still be a chance to see it.

Ms. E.: At least he tells a short story, unlike P.

Ms. P.: Nonsense, E. Someone needs to be charge and set the rules. Very good. You may come in, provided you understand why we are here.

Reo: I’d like to know.

Ms. P.: With the virus taking over the city, and the entire country and beyond, it began to take over people’s hearts and minds as well. In fact, it may have been there first, all along. Melancholy and depression increased in pace with fears and anxieties. Everyone began to focus on the present. What do I need today? Where can I find it? Almost all went into seclusion. Before, we had hope for the future, and a need, among some of us, to listen to the past. But depression and isolation collapsed us in upon ourselves. That’s why we took matters into our own hands, and came here as a group into the countryside.

Ms. F.: And so we are here, not so much to make merry, as D. suggested, as to tell one another stories about the past, in order to live a fuller life, one more whole.

Ms. L.: In three dimensions: past, present, and future.

Ms. E.: All at once: they are not separate from one another

Mr. P.:  We make sense of our time by listening to one another’s tales, some sad, some merry.

Mr. D.: So hope may be re-born, along with lust for life.

Ms. E.: Hope finds root in wholeness, from restoring the whole.

Ms. F.: Which summons harmony.

Ms. L.: And the fitting together, in fugue-like fashion, of what now lies apart.

Ms. N.: From past to present to future, all woven together, like a blanket.

Reo: Not just a Mystical Nativity, then, that ends history, but a re-birth of spirit from the past, one that lies open to all, in all dimensions.