A Time in Rome
by Elizabeth Bowen
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Elizabeth Bowen's account of a time spent in Rome between February and Easter is no ordinary guidebook but an evocation of a city - its hisotry, its architecture and, above all, its atmosphere. She describes the famous classical sites, conjuring from the ruins visions of former inhabitants and their often bloody activities. She speculates about the immense noise of ancient Rome, the problems caused by the Romans' dining posture, and the Roman temperament, which blended 'constructive will show more with supine fatalism'. She envies the Vestal Virgins and admires the Empress Livia, who survived a barren marriage. She evokes the city's moods - by day, when it is characterized by golden sunlight, and at night, when the blaze of the moon 'annihilates history, turning everything into a get together spectacle for Tonight. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
An old fashioned travel writer, with the emphsis on writer, explores Rome with the easy familiarity of a classical education. Delightful to read but some familiarity with Roman history helps. How well do you know your emperors and popes?
You might need a good tourist map or Michelin Guide on a side table as you read this. It recounts a visit to Rome in 1958. There's good commentary on impressions of the Forum, the planning of Papal Rome and the revolutionary uprising in 1849.
A favourite line from the book is" Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday."
A favourite line from the book is" Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday."
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74+ Works 9,059 Members
Elizabeth Bowen, distinguished Anglo-Irish novelist, was born in Dublin in 1899, traveled extensively, lived in London, and inherited the family estate-Bowen's Court, in County Cork. Her account of the house, Bowen's Court (1942), with a detailed fictionalized history of the family in Ireland through three centuries, has charm, warmth, and show more insight. Seven Winters is a fragment of autobiography published in England in 1942. The "Afterthoughts" of the original edition are critical essays in which she discusses and analyzes, among others, such literary figures as Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Katherine Mansfield, Anthony Trollope, and Eudora Welty. Bowen's stories, mostly about people of the British upper middle class, portray relationships that are never simple, except, perhaps, on the surface. Her concern with time and memory is a major theme. Beautifully and delicately written, her stories, with their oblique psychological revelations, are symbolic, subtle, and terrifying. A Time in Rome (1960) is her brilliant evocation of that city and its layered past. In 1948, Bowen was made a Commander of the British Empire. Bowen died in 1973. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1960; no DJ, Galignani Books, Paris sticker
- Important places
- Rome, Italy
- First words
- Too much time in too little space, I thought, sitting on the edge of my bed at the end of the train journey from Paris.
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- Members
- 179
- Popularity
- 183,411
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.63)
- Languages
- English, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 7
