In the Presence of Raphael: A Visit to “Sublime Poetry”

Processional Banner of the Confraternity of the Santissima Trinità, Città di Castello: The Holy Trinity with Saints Sebastian and Roch (obverse); The Creation of Eve (reverse), ca. 1497-99, oil on canvas (obverse and reverse now framed side by side), Raphael

See Part II, Part III

After attending the Traditional Latin Mass on Sunday, we made our way into Manhattan to finally see Raphael: Sublime Poetry, the exhibition currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through June 28th.

I have said it before, but it bears repeating: there is nothing like seeing great works in person. No reproduction—whether in print or digital—can fully capture their presence. I appreciated Raphael before, but I did not truly understand his genius, his divine gift, until I stood before these works myself.

The portraits alone are extraordinary: La Fornarina, Baldassarre Castiglione, and Bindo Altoviti reveal a depth and humanity that is difficult to describe. His Madonnas and Child, angels, and saints possess a serenity and grace that seem to transcend the material. The small Madonna of the Pinks, in particular, is utterly enchanting.

Beyond the paintings, the exhibition includes an astonishing range of works: drawings in charcoal and pen and ink, tapestries, ceramics, engravings, marble and terracotta reliefs, books, and bronze medallions. In total, over 170 masterpieces and rarely seen pieces—many from private collections and seldom displayed together—fill the galleries.

As the first comprehensive exhibition of Raphael’s work in the United States, it naturally draws large crowds—so be prepared. More than usual, it was encouraging to see so many families, especially those with young children, taking the time to introduce them to these works. I was especially struck by the strong presence of East Asian families, whose children seemed genuinely attentive and engaged.

It is difficult not to feel some sadness that many Westerners do not show the same level of reverence for their own artistic and cultural inheritance. Standing in those rooms, surrounded by such beauty, one is reminded of what has been achieved—and what is at risk of being forgotten.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, May 4th, Feasts of St. Monica and St. Florian

(L) Portrait of Bindo Altoviti, ca. 1515-16, oil on wood, Raphael.
(R) Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione, 1514-16, oil on canvas, Raphael

(L) Angel in Bust-Length (Fragment from the Baronci Altarpiece), ca. 1500-1501, oil with gold highlights on canvas, transferred from wood, Raphael. (R) Saint Sebastian in Half-Length, ca. 1502-3, oil and tempera grassa with gold highlights on wood, Raphael

(L) Copy after Leonardo's Standing Leda and the Swan, 1515-30, oil and tempera grassa on poplar wood, Sixteenth-century Lombard artists near Cesare da Sesto (1477-1523). (R) Portrait of the Nude Fornarina (La Fornarina), ca. 1518-20, oil on wood, Raphael and Giulio Romano (Giulio Pippi, 1499? -1546)

(L) The Virgin and Child in a Landscape (The Small Cowper Madonna), ca. 1505, oil on wood, Raphael. (R) The Virgin and Child (The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna; or, The Large Cowper Madonna), 1508, oil on wood (probably poplar), Raphael

(L) The Virgin and Child in an Interior (The Madonna of the Pinks), ca. 1506-7, oil on wood (yew), Raphael. (R) The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Saints Elizabeth and Joseph (The Madonna del Divino Amore), ca. 1516-18, oil on wood, Raphael and Giulio Romano (Giulio Pippi, 1499?-1546) [Everything is related to Naples: Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples]

(L) The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Esterhazy Madonna), ca. 1508, oil and tempera grassa on poplar wood, Raphael. (R) The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Alba Madonna), ca. 1509-11, oil on canvas, transferred from wood, Raphael

(L) The Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia with Saints Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine, and Mary Magdalen, ca. 1515-16, oil on canvas, transferred from wood, Raphael. (R) The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (The Madonna of the Rose, or Madonna della Rosa), ca. 1517-18, oil on canvas, Raphael

(L) Deësis (Christ in Glory with the Virgin Mary and Saints John the Baptist, Catherine, and Paul), ca. 1519-20, oil and tempera grassa on wood, Giulio Romano Giulio Pippi; 14992-1546. (R) The Vision of Ezekiel, ca. 1515-16, oil on wood, Raphael

A Quiet Rival to Grandeur

Portrait of a Young Woman in Three-Quarter
View, inspired by Leonardo's Mona Lisa, ca.
1504-5, two types of metalpoint on paper
prepared greenish gray, Raphael

Amid grander, more celebrated works at the Met’s Raphael: Sublime Poetry exhibition, I found myself drawn—almost unexpectedly—to this small drawing. I stood there longer than I meant to, captivated by the mysterious, haunting beauty of the woman.

The medium itself contributes to the effect. The lines are light, almost hesitant, as if the figure might dissolve if pressed too firmly. And yet, within that restraint, a sense of inner life emerges. Her expression resists certainty. The smile barely gathers at the lips, while the eyes seem to register your presence without fully meeting it. It is an attempt to render the subtle movement of feeling beneath stillness, an idea closely associated with Leonardo da Vinci. The pose recalls the quiet revolution set in motion by the Mona Lisa, yet Raphael’s treatment feels more intimate, less resolved, something closer to a thought still forming.

Surrounded by masterpieces that proclaim their greatness, this small work unsettles by suggestion. It does not overwhelm. It draws you in and stays with you.

More from the exhibition to come.

~ Giovanni di Napoli, May 3rd, Feast of the Madonna di Castello

Literary Caprices: Vignettes and Other Indulgences III

See Part I, Part II 

These small pieces are fragments—moments tied to place, memory, and chance encounters, often anchored by a meal, a drink, or a passing ritual. Some are drawn from childhood, others from later years, but all linger for the same reason: they capture something that resists explanation, yet remains unmistakably real.

Chinatown, Then and Now

Exploring Chinatown the other day—on what would have been my late father’s birthday—brought back a flood of memories.

For as long as I can remember, he took us there for the Lunar New Year. We would have lunch in one of the many small, unassuming eateries, and he would quietly pay the waiter for a window seat. From there, we had a perfect view of the dragon dance—colorful figures, pounding drums, and firecrackers echoing through the streets.

As we grew older, we ventured further, wandering through markets and narrow shops, especially the spice and apothecary stores he liked best. I was always drawn to the Tibetan and Nepalese antique shops, where I could lose myself among the trinkets and statuary. I still have some of the small keepsakes my parents bought me over the years.

One day in particular stays with me. After a heavy meal, we decided to walk it off by crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and back again—the only time I ever did that with him. I still regret that I can’t find the photos.

After he passed, I inherited a cast-iron teapot I had bought him in Chinatown. Every time I drink oolong, it brings back a small, funny moment: I had picked up some loose tea from a market, but the directions were in Chinese, and we didn’t know how to prepare it. So he ordered Chinese food, and when the delivery driver arrived, we invited him in and asked him to show us how to make it. He did, and we shared a proper cup of tea together before he returned to work.

Chinatown, like much of New York City, has changed. But not entirely. Some of the small shops and old trading companies remain—quiet reminders of what once was.

Summers at Coney Island

Growing up in Brooklyn, summer meant family trips to Coney Island. We would walk the boardwalk, enjoying the ocean breeze beneath the iconic Parachute Jump, play games, and ride the attractions—especially the world-famous Cyclone, built in 1927. Some days we went to the aquarium or the sideshow, but we always stopped at Nathan’s for hot dogs.

Every time it was our turn to order, my uncle would ask the guy at the counter if he had frog legs. When the answer was yes, he’d say, “Then hop over there and get me some hot dogs.” It made me laugh every time. Even now, I can’t walk past Nathan’s without thinking of my uncle and those family trips.

My First Beer at McSorley’s

When I turned twenty-one, my father took me to McSorley’s Old Ale House—the oldest Irish saloon in New York City—for my first legal beer.

We drove in from Brooklyn and found a spot right out front in under fifteen minutes—something unthinkable today with the traffic. There was no line, no crowd, nothing like the tourists I see today stretched down the block.

Inside, with sawdust on the floor, I took a seat at a communal table while my father ordered. He came back with four mugs of ale—two for each of us, the way they serve it—and a pair of liverwurst and onion sandwiches on rye with mustard.

We drank, ate, and talked. He told me stories—how women were once barred from entering, along with other bits of the place’s lore. After a while, we finished up and left.

We were home almost as quickly as we had arrived. I never went back, but I don’t need to. I was there once, with my dad.

Technique

I met Colette at Bleecker Bob’s while thumbing through the flip bins on the center island. Already holding a few albums, she asked—in a soft French accent—who I was looking for. I said, “The new New Order.” She smiled and glanced at the records in her hand. “This?”—holding up Technique. We started talking, and I asked if she wanted to grab a coffee around the corner at Caffè Reggio.

Seated at a small table near the antique espresso machine, we talked about music, movies, her impressions of America, and the usual things that pass for plans at that age. She was from Toulouse, studying film. After a while, she asked if I wanted to go back to her dorm to listen to the record, and I walked her to her residence hall.

Her room was tidy, aside from the bed. The walls were covered with movie posters—A Clockwork Orange, Suburbia, and L'Homme qui aimait les femmes. We listened to the record twice before her roommate came home. “Love Less” became ours. We kissed goodnight.

After that, we saw each other regularly—shows, movies, museums. For nearly two years, we were rarely apart. On Halloween, she humored me, dressing as Red Sonja one year and Vampirella the next. She wore both well.

When she graduated, she moved back home, and I never saw her again. She left me the album. I don’t have it anymore, but I still think of her whenever I hear it.

One Drop of Wine

A few years ago, I had dinner with some colleagues at a Lebanese restaurant—good food, wine, and belly dancing. We ordered a couple of bottles to go with the meal. A Turkish friend of a friend who joined us made a show of dipping his finger into his glass, flicking a drop aside, and saying, “That’s the one drop of wine I cannot have.”

It caught me off guard. In Islam, wine is considered strictly haram—unlawful—so the gesture seemed contradictory.

Later, I learned that the custom is sometimes associated with the Bektashi, a Sufi order known for its unorthodox practices. It is said to come from a story in which the leader of the sect, in the presence of the Ottoman Sultan, cited the injunction against consuming “one drop” of alcohol—then flicked a drop from his goblet before drinking.

Whether apocryphal or not, the gesture stayed with me—half ritual, half defiance, and entirely memorable.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, May 3rd, Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross by St. Helena

A Brief Detour at the New York Public Library

The Century Association clubhouse, located at 7 West 43rd Street in Midtown
Manhattan, was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White in
the Italian Renaissance Revival style and completed in 1891

Arriving early for a lunch meeting at the Century Association—even by my own hyper-punctual standards—I found myself with time to spare. Rather than linger idly, I walked over to the nearby Treasures exhibition at the New York Public Library.

An eclectic assemblage of objects of varying importance, the exhibition’s unevenness is part of its charm. Moving through it, one encounters not a single narrative but fragments of many—scientific, artistic, religious—each briefly illuminated before giving way to the next (see images below).

It is, in the end, less a cohesive exhibition than a cabinet of curiosities. But perhaps that is the point. To pass, in the span of an hour, from medieval chant to Renaissance printmaking to early modern astronomy is to be reminded how much of the past survives—not as a continuous story, but as scattered inheritances, waiting to be noticed.

When I stepped back out onto Fifth Avenue, I had just enough time to make my way to my meeting.

An Afternoon at the Century Association

Every day, I find myself asking a simple question: how does an old, grumpy street urchin from Brooklyn keep ending up in such rarefied places? In the past year alone, I have had an audience with the Pope, dined at the Palazzo Borghese, and met Prince Carlo di Borbone at the Grand Magistery in Rome. None of it quite fits the script I once imagined for myself.

Cufflink with the two-faced god Janus

Just the other day, that question returned as I sat down for lunch at the Century Association, a private social, arts, and dining club founded in 1847 in New York City. I arrived with modest expectations, pleased simply to have an excuse to wear my father’s old Janus cufflinks, unaware of the setting I was about to step into.

Inside, the club revealed itself gradually. On the second floor, an art exhibit by its members was underway, while the stairways were lined with pieces from the permanent collection, left behind by earlier generations. One room in particular stood out: a gallery devoted to the Hudson River School, where a large, luminous landscape by John Frederick Kensett drew the eye. The building itself, styled after an Italian palazzo, was furnished with marble and bronze sculptures, arranged without ostentation.

No photographs were permitted—a small frustration, perhaps—but also a fitting one. Some places are meant to be experienced rather than documented, and to leave with the memory intact, unmediated, is its own kind of privilege.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, May 1st, Feast of St. Joseph the Worker

De astronomia, attributed to Gaius Julius Hyginus (1st century),
illuminated manuscript, 1475-1480

 Harmonia Macrocosmica, Andreas Cellarius (ca. 1596-1665),
Amsterdam, Johannes Janssonius, 1661

Hunt-Lenox Globe, copper, ca. 1508

(L) "Four scenes from the Life of Daniel," in Part II, Volume 3 of Bible historiale (Historical Bible), illuminated manuscript, ca. 1480. Artist: Associate of Jean Bourdichon (1457-1521). Authors: Petrus Comestor (ca. 1100-1179), and Guyart des Moulins (ca. 1251-ca. 1297). (R) Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Francesco Colonna (ca. 1453-1517), Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1499

(L) Il Terzo Libro Di Sabastiano Serlio...(The Third Book of Sebastiano Serlio), Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), Venetia: Impresso per Francesco Marcolino da Forli, 1540. (R) Book of Medieval Chant Fragments, iron gall ink on paper, 11th-12th centuries

Symphony No. 32 in G Major, K. 318, 1779,
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Vida de San Felipe de Jesus Protomartir del Japon y Patron de su Patria México, hand-colored engravings, 1801, José María Montes de Oca (1772-ca. 1825)

Frontispiece to the Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome), etching ca. 1748,
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778)

Poster for the musical Jumbo at the New York Hippodrome,
color lithograph mounted on board, ca. 1935

A Quiet Rediscovery of Time: Ernst Jünger’s The Sandglass Book

Sandglasses in a friend's art studio

Time simply accumulates in depth.
~ Ernst Jünger

As a longtime admirer of Ernst Jünger, I was immediately intrigued by this recent translation of The Sandglass Book (released March 25, 2026). I purchased and downloaded a Kindle copy to my device without hesitation.

Having read only the introduction and first chapter thus far, I can already say it captures what has long drawn me to Jünger: a reflective engagement with time, memory, and the inner life as shaped by them. His reflections move from the concrete to the symbolic, touching on images such as Melencolia I and Saint Jerome in His Study, both by Albrecht Dürer, in which the sandglass becomes part of a deeper contemplative world.

The prose moves deliberately, inviting the reader to slow down and consider what modern life tends to rush past.

Rodica Buzescu’s translation is clear and attentive, preserving the contemplative tone while making the text accessible to an English-speaking audience. It unfolds naturally, allowing the reader to arrive at its insights on their own.

If the opening is any indication, this is a work to be read patiently and returned to often. I couldn’t wait to share it.

The Crowned Stillness and Hidden Fire of May

Salve, Regina

May arrives not with struggle, but with fullness. What March prepared and April awakened, now stands revealed. The earth is no longer tentative; it has committed itself to life. Growth is no longer a promise, but a fact.

Where earlier months demanded endurance, May requires attention. It is easy to mistake abundance for permanence. The Church, in her order, dedicates the month to the Blessed Virgin, placing all this fullness under her maternal and watchful presence.

At the beginning, the memory of St. Joseph the Worker remains close at hand. Labor, so often unseen and uncelebrated, is affirmed as a path of dignity. Creation itself continues through work—quiet, steady, and ordered.

Soon after, Our Lady of Fatima enters the month like a warning carried on light. Her message is not gentle sentiment, but a call to repentance and vigilance. Even in a season of flowering, there is no release from responsibility.

Midway through, Constantine the Great stands as a figure of transformation. With him, the faith steps from shadow into public life. Power and belief meet uneasily, reminding us that triumph in the world always carries risk alongside promise.

By the end of the month, the Queenship of Mary crowns what has been growing all along. Authority here is not seized, but bestowed. It is the fulfillment of obedience, the elevation of humility into sovereignty.

May does not struggle like February or reckon like March. It reveals, crowns, and brings all things, in their fullness, under Our Lady's mantle.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, April 30th, Feasts of Santa Caterina da Siena and Beato Benedetto da Urbino 

Rumors and Revivals

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” ~ C.S. Lewis

I recently learned that a remake of Barbarella (1968) is in the works, starring Sydney Sweeney as the eponymous space vixen. After being mocked by younger critics for “showing my age” in last year’s False Dichotomy article, I’ve at least caught up enough to know who she is.

As a childhood fan of the original starring Jane Fonda, I can’t help but worry that Hollywood will once again mishandle an iconic cult character. To be clear, the film was never meant for children, given its overt sexual themes. My parents didn’t realize this when they let me buy a copy on RCA's CED format; they assumed it was just another campy space romp in the vein of Flash Gordon (1980) or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979).

Based on clips of Ms. Sweeney circulating online, this new adaptation will likely follow the same adult tone, which is unsurprising given her willingness to appear in the buff.

Another project that may finally be coming to fruition is King Conan, the long-awaited sequel to Conan the Barbarian (1982), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s a film I’ve been waiting decades to see.

I say “sequel,” and not the third in a trilogy, because Conan the Destroyer (1984) felt more like a departure in spirit rather than a true continuation. That judgment is no doubt sharpened by the fact that I grew up reading Robert E. Howard, whose stories first shaped my sense of the character.

While I still feel that way, I recently rewatched Conan the Destroyer and found it less bad than I remembered, perhaps because the bar is now so low that it compares favorably to much of what is produced today.

Another rumor making the rounds suggests that a new installment in the Planet of the Apes series—said to be a direct sequel to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)—is already in production. If true, it would mark the fifth entry in the current cycle of films.

I admit a soft spot here. I’ve been a fan of these films (and television series) since childhood, even if they stray considerably from Pierre Boulle's 1962 novel. The original cycle still holds a particular place for me, especially Planet of the Apes (1968) starring Charlton Heston and its darker successor Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Few lines are as enduring as “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape,” and fewer endings are as memorable as that final, devastating reveal.

Of the modern films, I was especially taken with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)—still my favorite of the newer series—featuring James Franco. Whatever liberties these films take, they’ve managed, at their best, to capture something of the original’s spirit: a blend of spectacle, moral unease, and tragic inevitability.

Still, experience tempers enthusiasm. Hollywood’s track record with revivals—especially the misfires of Conan the Barbarian (2011), Red Sonja (2025), and Robin Hood (2025)—offers little reassurance.

Nor do the upcoming The Death of Robin Hood (2026) or The Odyssey (2026) inspire much confidence; from what has been shown so far, both appear poised to continue the same pattern of hollow spectacle and misplaced ambition—more revision than revival.

That said, not all is cause for pessimism. I find myself genuinely looking forward to the next season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2027), Godzilla Minus Zero (2026), and, to a lesser extent, Dune: Part Three (2026), even if I don’t hold this cycle in quite the same regard as Dune (1984). These, at least, reflect rare modern efforts to understand both source and audience. If any deserve a measure of anticipation, these do.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, April 23rd, Feast of San Giorgio Martire

The Girl in the Sun

Frontispiece from my copy of
Shakespeare on Love

This piece was originally part of Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life, but was later cut and reworked into a standalone story.

She loved me for the dangers
     I had passed,
And I loved her that she did
     pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I
     have used.

~ Othello

     Meeting Chiara altered the course of my life.

     I was sitting against a wall on the high school campus, arms folded over my knees, head lowered, trying to get some rest. A gentle tap on my shoulder startled me. I looked up into the sun, its glare turning her into a silhouette. 

     “Hello,” she said softly. 

     I raised a hand to shield my eyes as she repeated it, almost amused. Then I stood.

     She wore a long grey herringbone tweed balmacaan and black Dr. Martens. She smiled and asked my name.

     “What do you want?” I said.

     “I’m Chiara.”

     I waited, expecting more. When nothing came, I said, “I’m Giovanni—my friends call me Nibs.”

     As my eyes cleared, I saw she had long, curly brown hair, dark eyes, and a stack of schoolbooks pressed to her chest. She told me she was having a party and asked if I wanted to come. Without waiting for my answer, she wrote her address on a scrap of paper, handed it to me, and walked toward the entrance, breaking into laughter with a couple of friends who were waiting for her.

     That night I arrived late with a six-pack, unaware it was her birthday party—and that her entire family was there. She took me inside and introduced me to relatives gathered in the living room and around the dining table. Her mother and two older sisters were clearing plates to make room for coffee and cake. Her father watched me closely, a hint of suspicion in his eyes, as I shook his hand; he promptly confiscated the beer.

     Grinning from ear to ear as she took my bomber jacket, she said, “I can’t believe you came.”

     “I never would have if I knew it was a birthday party.”

     “I know,” she laughed. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

     After she blew out the candles, we sat around the table and had cake. Her parents asked me a lot of questions. They treated me with polite respect, but they were clearly more troubled by the fact that I was an artist than by my shabby clothes or the beer. It turned out Chiara’s maternal uncle had been an artist—and a deadbeat—and her parents seemed to associate the two.

     After coffee, she took me down to the basement. I was a little surprised her parents didn’t object. In my house, we were raised differently—young couples weren’t allowed to be alone, especially not behind closed doors, and I never would have been allowed to bring a girl into my room. It was one of the reasons I moved out and got my own place.

     Alone, she admitted she’d had a crush on me for some time, and that she only made her move after learning my girlfriend, Gaviota, had moved back to Spain. It was hard for me to be upset—especially about showing up with beer instead of a proper gift—when she leaned in, and what followed went well beyond a simple kiss.

     Despite her parents’ disapproval, they never treated me poorly and always welcomed me into their home. I often had dinner with them, and Chiara brought me to family gatherings. Only later did I learn that, behind closed doors, they urged her to break things off.

     One of the more memorable occasions came when I was invited upstate to meet her sister Cinzia’s fiancé, Stefano, and his parents—wealthy, affable Northern Italian Freemasons who, at one point, even tried to recruit me. As the son of a bartender and a would-be starving artist myself, this did little to improve my standing with Chiara’s parents.

     During that trip, Chiara and I took a long walk through the woods, the leaves turning around us. It was there that she first admitted that her parents were firmly against her seeing me. I had already sensed as much.

     Back at the house, Stefano’s parents kept an expansive library in their study. While browsing the shelves, I came across a hardcover copy of The Decline of the West, which introduced me to Oswald Spengler and sent me down a rabbit hole I wouldn’t soon leave. I made it a point to find a copy of both volumes for myself.

     Early in our relationship, she wanted me to meet her friends at the Atomic Club, a small, smoke-filled dive with little more than a bar, a DJ booth, and a dance floor. It would become our regular spot. The place was packed, and we pushed our way to the middle, where her friends Annalisa and Giancarlo were dancing. We joined them for a few songs before heading to the bar. There I met the rest of her circle—Luna and Aurora. After the introductions, Chiara and Giancarlo went back to the dance floor, leaving me with her three friends. I bought us a round, and the interrogation began.

     They weren’t too tough, and we quickly hit it off. They were especially amused that I called her “Chester” on account of her chest—she didn't exactly hide them. Once I was welcomed in, we all grew close. We spent most of our time together at each other’s houses, on stoops or in basements, dancing, traveling, going to shows, and museums. We were almost inseparable.

     Chiara was always trying to upgrade my wardrobe, though she liked wearing my old, ratty band T-shirts and polos. She said she could smell me on them. I didn’t always appreciate the fuss, but I humored her now and then, enough that my old friends started calling me a “preppy.” It didn’t help that she had me rent a tux and a limo for our school dance—a first for me.

     Being an ardent drama student, she was often on stage, and I would go to see her perform; she stood out as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Aside from a few old photo booth pictures, I still keep the inscribed hardback copy of Shakespeare on Love she gave me.

     Despite her parents’ objections, things were going well—or so I thought. It was only after she had a bad dream about me that problems began. She was deeply into oneiromancy and couldn’t shake it. Though I never learned the details of the dream, she eventually broke up with me over it. We remained friends and continued to see each other with the group, sometimes backsliding, when neither of us was involved with anyone else, and we’d been drinking. In time, we drifted apart. She grew serious with someone else and eventually married him.

     With her, I was exposed to a different way of life. I came from a loving home, but one that was poorer, stricter, and more disciplined. With her, I softened. There was an ease to her world, a lightness I hadn’t known. And yet, for all their comfort, her family left me wary of materialism.

     Looking back, I can still trace the line of my life to that moment against the wall and the girl in the sun.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, April 22nd, Feast of Saints Soter and Caius, Popes and Martyrs

Sonic Reduced

Friday night's here, what's to see?
Nothing to do, you know what I mean?
Nothing on the telly,
There is no late-night show,
No shows in town, there is no place to go.
Here we are, nowhere, nowhere left to go.
~ Stiff Little Fingers, “Here We Are Nowhere” (1979)

Recently, I went to a show with some friends to see three unknown bands. It was a small venue. I still go from time to time in a vain attempt to hear some good music and relive something of my youth.

The last of a long line of memorable shows was years ago—back-to-back nights in 2006 at Irving Plaza to see Stiff Little Fingers and Buzzcocks. I still keep the double-sided flyer.

While I can’t slam, pogo, or stage dive anymore, I couldn’t even if I wanted to—the crowds and energy are lifeless now, even when the bands cover punk classics.

That night at the show, the first band ripped into “Sonic Reducer” by the Dead Boys. The second did too. The third followed, as if they’d shared set lists in a group chat.

No risk. No rupture. No originality.

The room never felt alive. Each band arrived with its own small orbit of loyalists who clapped, filmed, and vanished into the night as soon as their guys left the stage. By the end, the place felt like a morgue.

At the empty bar, as we discussed what we had just witnessed, a friend showed me a clip of Billy Corgan lamenting the decline of rock and roll and suggesting that the CIA may be behind it. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past our government.

The change in the music scene didn’t feel organic. It felt like a switch flipped. A culture of rebelliousness, masculinity, and individuality was replaced by conformity—something safer, less dangerous, effete.

We once built our weekends around shows. One night it was punk, the next something else entirely. Now the young people I know have little interest in music at all.

With no one to fight over the jukebox, we chose what we wanted to listen to.

The bar was empty.

The songs weren’t.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, April 21st, Feast of Sant’Anselmo d’Aosta

A Small Object, A Lasting Impression

Amid the vastness of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where monumental works compete for attention, it is often the smaller, quieter objects that linger most in the mind. This hand mirror by François-Rupert Carabin, created in 1906–7, is one such piece.

At first glance, it might seem merely decorative—a finely worked object of bronze and glass. But a closer look reveals a world contained within it. On its reverse, figures of bathers emerge in gentle relief, their forms caught in a moment both intimate and timeless. The surface shimmers with a subdued life, as though the scene exists just beneath the threshold of reflection.

There is something quietly arresting in this transformation of the ordinary. A mirror, meant for fleeting glances, becomes an object of contemplation instead. Carabin elevates the utilitarian into the poetic, reminding us that beauty need not announce itself loudly to be felt deeply.

In a museum filled with grandeur, it is this modest, almost easily overlooked piece that endures—less as spectacle than as impression, carried with you long after you have moved on.

Photo of the Week: An Imperial Presence, Quietly Enduring

Amid the abundance of masterpieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this portrait of Empress Eugénie offers a quieter, more intimate kind of splendor. Painted by Marie-Pauline Laurent in 1855, after the style of Franz Xaver Winterhalter, it captures not merely the likeness but the atmosphere of the Second Empire at its height.

Eugénie herself—wife of Napoleon III, who seized power in 1851—is rendered with a softness that borders on the ethereal. The delicate textures, the luminous fabric, and the composed elegance all work together to elevate her beyond mere court portraiture. There is a serenity here, but also a subtle distance, as though she belongs as much to an ideal as to history.

Among so many grand and imposing works, this painting invites a slower gaze. It does not overwhelm; it draws you in. One admires it not only for its refinement, but for the quiet pleasure it offers—an image that lingers, less as spectacle than as presence.

The Berlin Underground

Straßenkampf, 1918, Eduard Baudrexel

This piece was originally part of Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life, but was later cut and reworked into a standalone essay.

Back in the early ’80s, when we were finally old enough—and brave enough—to wander beyond the empty lots and abandoned buildings of our working-class neighborhood, New York City felt truly cosmopolitan—restless, unpredictable, and far more interesting than it does now. Before long, those wanderings gave way to nights out. When we weren’t in nightclubs or dance halls, we drifted between bars, cafés, pool halls, and even the occasional illegal tattoo parlor.

One of our regular haunts was a seedy underground lounge in Ridgewood, called The Berlin, or maybe the Berlin Club; the name blurs now. It drew a strange, compelling crowd and played a hypnotic mix of 1920s cabaret, orchestral pieces, and contemporary German punk bands like Böhse Onkelz and OHL. Part of the appeal, it must be said, was the barmaids: striking girls in dirndls who looked as though they’d stepped straight off a St. Pauli Girl label.

Unable to find the final version,
here is an unfinished sketch of our
team's crest, with a faint pencil
rendering of a pickelhaube
ghosted over the original

The place was decorated in a style that felt half museum, half fever dream, with macabre paintings of WWI trench warfare, hints of the Munich Secession, heavy bier steins, and pickelhauben. Those spiked helmets later inspired the vulture logo I designed for our sporting club, the Brooklyn Buzzards. From time to time, the lounge doubled as a quiet meeting place for Soviet émigrés and German monarchisten, adding another layer of intrigue to the atmosphere.

We even sat in on the monthly talks. They ranged from anti-communism to more esoteric subjects—Agartha, the supposed otherworldly origins of the Aryans, Wotanism, and the philosophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner and Arthur Schopenhauer. Around then, I went through a serious Hermann Hesse phase to impress Tonja, a blonde dancer and poet who, as it turned out, wasn’t German at all, but Ukrainian.

The Berlin reminded me of the back rooms of many Italian cafés and social clubs scattered across the city, where menfolk played cards, drank espresso, and argued politics. Almost inconceivable today, the walls bore old Arditi posters and political montages depicting Gabriele D’Annunzio, Italo Balbo, Benito Mussolini, and the House of Savoy. That same atmosphere carried into other corners of the city.

It was in a used bookstore that I first heard of neo-Bourbonism. One night, during a heated debate, an older Sicilian man dismantled the more nationalistically minded with ease. I didn't realize it at the time, but that exchange set me on a course whose significance I did not fully grasp.

Long out of that world, the last place of its kind I remember visiting was in the early 2000s, when a Russian friend took me to a freezing basement in Sheepshead Bay, made to resemble a medieval hall. There was a long communal table of heavy wood, lined with benches, porcelain bowls of caviar, pelmeni, and endless vodka toasts to the Tsar. The strangest part wasn’t the temperature, but the scantily clad belly dancers, breath hanging in the air, performing as if unaware of the cold or in defiance of it.

Across the city, in other circles, the arguments took different forms—touching on the Greek Megali Idea (Great Idea), Irish republicanism, Spanish Falangismo, and even Tibetan Rangzen. It felt as though there was a soapbox on every corner. The city was alive.

Today, the discontent feels different. The disgruntled masses come off less like dissidents and more like petulant, unmoored malcontents—quick to complain and slow to understand. I’ve never seen a more uninformed group. Grievances circle back on themselves, shaped by the very ideas they claim to oppose. They repeat slogans, speak in abstractions, and rarely seem aware of their own contradictions. The most striking difference is that, in those days, the recusants operated underground, wary of state violence, whereas today’s so-called revolutionaries protest openly, often with little fear—and at times with the tacit sanction of the state.

Like everything else in the city today, it feels like a caricature of what it once was.

~ By Giovannni di Napoli, April 17th, Feast of St. Anicetus

Visions in Relief: Beethoven and Wagner at the Met

Set side by side at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, these two portraits do not merely depict great composers—they conjure them.

Franz von Stuck’s haunting image of Ludwig van Beethoven emerges from a blood-red ground with an almost supernatural force. Modeled after the composer’s death mask, the face presses forward as if breaking through the boundary between worlds. It is neither fully sculpture nor painting, but something in between—a vision, or perhaps an apparition. Stuck, ever drawn to myth and symbolism, renders Beethoven not as a man remembered, but as a presence still felt, the embodiment of creative power pushing against its limits.

Beside it, Jeanne Itasse’s glazed stoneware portrait of Richard Wagner offers a different kind of unease. Its unnatural coloration—suggestive of gaslit Paris—casts Wagner in a spectral light, at once vivid and unsettling. Produced with the collaboration of Émile Muller, the work reflects both the innovations of industrial ceramics and the charged cultural atmosphere in which Wagner’s legacy stirred admiration and contempt in equal measure.

Together, the two works form a quiet but striking dialogue. Beethoven appears as a force breaking through the veil; Wagner, as a figure suspended within it. One burns, the other glows. And between them, the viewer is left to consider not just the men themselves, but the strange afterlives of genius—how it is remembered, reshaped, and made to haunt the present.

The Riddle of the Sphinx on Elizabeth Street

Now that the pleasant weather has returned, I find myself once again drawn back to a favorite haunt—Elizabeth Street Garden. There is something about the place in springtime—the soft chorus of birds, the tentative blooming of flowers, the slow reawakening of the world. It invites not merely rest, but reflection.

I go there often with a coffee in hand, and almost without thinking, I make my way toward the two stone watchers near the entrance. Twin sphinxes—silent, brooding, yet never without presence. I have taken to greeting them as one might old acquaintances. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I like to speak to them quietly, turning over questions of life, fate, and purpose while they listen without reply.

Their silence, however, is not empty. It speaks in its own way. The sphinx has always been a creature of paradox: guardian and destroyer, keeper of sacred knowledge, poser of riddles whose answers are not given lightly. It symbolizes the dangerous unknown, intellect as a kind of threat, and the capriciousness of fate. It represents knowledge hidden from the many and revealed only to those prepared to receive it.

Sitting there, I am reminded of its ancient question: 

What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?

The answer, of course, is man—crawling as an infant, walking upright in his prime, and leaning on a cane in old age. Yet the longer one sits with it, the less simple it becomes. It is not merely a clever riddle, but a quiet summation of life itself: dependence, strength, and decline, all bound within a single arc.

And perhaps that is why I return.

There, between the flowers and the stone, with the city just beyond, I find myself in the presence of something older than memory itself—something that reminds me that life is not a straight path, but a passage through stages, each with its own dignity. The sphinx does not answer questions. It asks them. And in doing so, it reveals that whatever knowledge is worth having is not given freely, but earned—slowly, and often in silence.

So I sit, and I speak, and I listen.

And the sphinx, as ever, keeps its counsel.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, April 15th, Feast of San Cesare de Bus