Quamquam animus meminisse horret, incipiam. “Although my mind is horrified to remember, let me begin.” Aeneas speaks these words to Dido, at the beginning of Book II of the Aeneid, after she asks him to recount the story of the fall of Troy. Pliny the Younger quotes Vergil at the opening of his letter to Tacitus, when the historian requested an account of Pliny’s personal experience during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Epiphany
(Assisi, 1998)
BY Maryanne Hannan

I’ve taught this line to Latin students who are studying epic poetry and to those who are studying history by way of Pliny’s Letters, and I think of the endless cycles of victims of war and natural disaster who courageously record their personal experiences for others, in one medium or another. We live in a time now when a person like Pliny who had witnessed a cataclysmic event would find it quite natural to tell his or her story. We largely accept the principle that knowledge and a thorough understanding of events can be best obtained and transmitted by a wide range of sources from different points of view. The more vantage points, the greater the diversity of media for preservation, the better. Historiography was trending in that direction, and the Internet has provided a yet undigested quantum leap forward.

In January 1998, three months after a series of earthquakes and aftershocks had killed several people and seriously damaged the upper church of the Basilica of Saint Francis, my husband and I visited Assisi. Looking back, I wonder what made us follow through with our plans to visit a town, clearly in crisis. Maybe lethargy, reluctance to change our plans. More likely, a lack of good information. To all our questions about the safety, lodging, transportation, we had received positive answers. “Yes, it is fine to continue with your plans,” said travel personnel. “No problem.”

I was unprepared for the unearthly quiet of the town, as we walked to its medieval center. ‘Courage, courage, you have courage,’ were the first words we heard in Assisi…

What a shock when we did arrive. I was unprepared for the unearthly quiet of the town, as we walked to its medieval center. “Courage, courage, you have courage,” were the first words we heard in Assisi, spoken by a friar on the steps of the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, formerly a Roman temple to Minerva. He chopped the air with his hand to indicate how narrow was the space normally allotted to each visitor, concluding “Now, for three months, no one.”

I am many things, but decidedly not courageous. Nor am I one who wants to be in the center of a story, a firsthand witness. I had looked forward to this week for spiritual refreshment, artistic immersion, and fine food. It did turn out to be a rich week, but not in the ways I had envisioned. The Upper Basilica was closed; its ceiling and part of the walls had collapsed during the second terremoto. The priceless frescoes depicting the life of Francis, attributed to Giotto, lay in some 50,000 pieces on the floor waiting for restoration workers to reassemble.

St. Francis Basilica
(Assisi, 1998)
BY Maryanne Hannan

We couldn’t put the destruction out of our mind even for a moment in the midst of all the scaffolding, the enormous tarps covering gaping holes in the homes and buildings, blockaded entrances, piles of rubble and the restaurants we would soon share with restoration experts and relief workers. In a journal I kept during our visit, I wrote “It is as if the whole city were keening, rocking back and forth in anguish. ‘Why here? Why here, of all places?’ Our shining city seemed to sound in the very air.”

I can now watch the quake that destroyed part of the Basilica on YouTube. Fascinating, if unnerving. I never see it without experiencing the shock and grief that the eyewitnesses must have experienced in the moment. If that grief ever lessens, if it turns to the curiosity of an onlooker, I hope I would not watch it any longer. This is the underside of our intense exposure to tragedies of all manner. Do we risk habituation to suffering?

Still, as Pliny’s account of his experience so many centuries ago was immeasurably deepened by the archaeological discoveries at Pompeii in the 18th Century and Herculaneum in the 20th Century, so the new technologies and new openness for rendering personal experience continue to break down boundaries and change our capacity for mutual understanding. Investigative journalism, new journalism, participatory journalism, blogging, vlogs, microblogging, not to mention the biggest game-changer in the past century, television, all serve to blur the lines of public and private experience.

Who can see the plaster casts of a man trying to comfort and protect a woman, a family entwined together, without experiencing their grief?

In his fortunately preserved Letters, Pliny the Younger had initially only reported the activities of his politically prominent uncle, Pliny the Elder, during the quake. He was just a kid, a seventeen year old boy. What did his experience matter? It was only at the direct urging of the historian Tacitus, that he relented and shared his own story. For centuries, his literary account kept the disastrous events and human suffering of this eruption alive in our consciousness, paving the way for us to understand the archaeological record, the horrific images of men, women and children in their death throes of escape and the elegant homes they left behind.

During the excavation at Pompeii, archaeologists discovered that the holes in the volcanic deposits were formed by corpses of people and animals buried by the hot ash. The ash had hardened, and although the bodies decayed, they left behind an accurate mold of their fallen state. Filling these molds with plaster, archaeologists uncovered a grisly panoply of so many final moments. Who can see the plaster casts of a man trying to comfort and protect a woman, a family entwined together, without experiencing their grief?

These memories coalesce for me as I now watch the aftermath of the April 2009 earthquake in the medieval city of L’Aquila in central Italy. The relief workers. The heartbroken mourners, the absent victims. The piles of rubble. The damage to property and spirit. There are so many such disasters, throughout history in every time and place. Regardless of the sophisticated ways we have of recording them, there is no way we can understand them.

Epiphany
(Assisi, 1998)
BY Maryanne Hannan

After our return from Assisi in 1998, I reflected on the experience in my journal, “I would like to say that the trek up Mount Subasio was the high point of our trip there, but unless I specifically try and conjure it up, the memory of that day fades. So does my disappointment that we could not see the Giotto cycle. What remains in my mind is our last evening in Assisi, the feast of the Epiphany. It was a gray day, a somber evening. We were leaving the Lower Basilica in the Cathedral of Saint Francis, thankfully still open to the public, where liturgy had just been celebrated. The streets were crowded with more people than we had seen in our entire stay in Assisi. These people were not the few stalwart tourists or shopkeepers we had seen around town, but the religious living in the silent buildings of the town and local people living outside the city walls. Slowly, after Mass ended, women and men began climbing the triangular-shaped exterior staircase to a level area, where ceremoniously, they paused as if to pay their respects to the destroyed Upper Basilica, turned around and filed down the stairs. They wore dark wool coats, sturdy shoes. I felt transported in time, as if watching my own grandmother perform an important, but inscrutable ritual. Their deep sense of reverence and mourning dominated the chilly air, and I couldn’t help but see the loss, theirs and the world’s, through their silent eyes.”

It may horrify the mind to remember but all the more reason we should do so. Human dignity in the midst of suffering: It is a privilege to commemorate.