Tiber: The Heart ofthe Eternal City *
CHANTAL TROPEA
B. Languagesand Literature
University of Naples L’Orientale
Oriental Languages and Cultures
Email: chantix.ct@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This paper deals with thecultural context of river Tiber in the Roman “Eternal City “ in respect ofmythology, narrative, ethnology and literature. In the ancient world, sincethey demarcate and define, rivers often establishing boundaries bothsymbolically and in geographical terms. From the beginning, poetry has alwaysused images of the nature to contoh them according to its communicative andsymbolic needs, and perhaps no others elements are deformable and adaptable tothese aim as is water, intrinsically lacking of a definite form.
Water is chosen as a poet’sconfident, as it is able to keep the secrets of the events which it witnessesand The essential characteristics of a river, that is movement anddirectionality, link it to literary narrative and the construction of literarytexts.
Rome is called the EternalCity because the destinies of the world seemed to be related to the city’sdestiny. And the thesis was strengthened by the history and events. It is alsocalled Caput Mundi because it was forso long the capital of the “Mediterranean world”.
The eternal city is identifiedwith its river that gave it birth: the Tiber river, site of wars, engineeringachievements, major “highway” of the Mediterranean trade, but first of allsource of inspiration for the poetry: from mythology to the terbaru literaturepoets have used the strict linking between this two entities to tell us aboutmyths, poem, imaginative vision of the afterlife, expressing different feelingsand point of view, always showing the lasting connection between Roma Caput Mundi and the Tiber river.
Keywords: river, Tiber,Eternal city and Caput Mundi.
INTRODUCTION
“For life and deathare one, even as the river and the sea are one”
(Khalil Gibran)
f the river is the place whereeverything flows, altering and renewing itself into a ceaseless becoming, it iseasy understandable that in every epoch, the main poets have represented in itdynamic and contrastive values, always linked to the antithetical sense offugacity and regeneration that at each level (from historical to existential, from physical to philosophy) the changebecome source of inspiration.
A primordial sign of fertilityand pride but also a geological crack of crossing, demarcation and reunion ofnature and history, environment and civilization, living allegory of the cycleof life and death, a symbolic figure of the unconscious, but at the same time amythical image of entire cycles of historical domination in the world. So, theriver offers not just a vivid background or illustration, but acts as amediator between poetry and poet. It can link the past to the present, and theflow of the river can assist or become part of the narrative. Similarly, rivercatalogues and river journeys may form part of a narrative structure. Poetry,from the ancient to the terbaru one, owe a lot to the rivers, where their waterprefigures in the writing of air and earth.
Rivers have great symbolicvalue, with deep cultural roots based on the importance of water as a necessityof life (Prudence, J.2005).all civilizations depend on available water, and, ofcourse, rivers are a fine source of life. Rivers also provided ancientsocieties with access to trade not only of products, but ideas, includinglanguage, writing, and technology. River-based irrigation permitted communitiesto specialize and develop, even in areas lacking adequate rainfall. For thosecultures that depended on them, rivers were the lifeblood. In "The EarlyBronze Age in the Southern Levant," in Near Eastern Archaeology,Suzanne Richard (2003) calls ancient civilization based on rivers, primary or core,and non-riverine (e.G., Palestine), secondary. You'll see that the societiesconnected with famous rivers such asTigris, Euphrates, Nile, The Yellow River and Tiber are all qualify as coreancient civilizations (Richard, 2003:87).
Rivers have a mysticalimportance in that while constantly changing they seem to stay the same. Riversare also unpredictable, and hence there are many stories in mythology of riverschanging shape, and cases where water becomes an agent of transformation. Giventhat the Tiber is a special river keeping the truth and the mythology in thehistory of the city Rome, its semantic and representative richness raises to amultiple power. It is the birth point of the largest and most influentialempire of the antiquity, gradually overwhelmed by its own growth and expansion,beyond the classical turn of the century in which the alternate events ofdecadence and recovery, abandonment and rebirth projected on the journey of entire centuriesof conflict and uncertainty. The river is the faithful and sensitive mirror ofthe city it gave birth. Eternalizing the river in the forms of writing is notmerely a permanent testimony but takes directly the place of history, in factit itself makes the history.
DISCUSSION
The ideological view thatcomes to mind only to mention the name of the city of Rome appears and takes onmeaning if we pay attention to the waters of the river Tiber that run uneasyand perpetual under the ripe and bridges of the city. All the"monumental" that in history was the prerequisite of a triumphallocation of Rome, the aeterna city, well above the commune,find in its river, which it is its heart, the ordinary reason for itsexistence, a strongly secularized response, consistent with everyday life ofmore human activities: related to survival, use and maintenance.
The river is indissolublylinked to the use and the life of men, expressing better than anything else the“handing down” of things and values within a direct and interactiverelationship between human society and the environment of its life.
"Not withoutreason gods and men have chosen this place to found the city: extremelywell-kept huts, a convenient river through which to transport indoor productsand receive sea supplies, a place near the sea enough to take advantage of theopportunities but not exposed to the dangers of foreign fleets because of the excessiveproximity to the centre of Italy, very suitable for the increase of the city,the same size as the latter is the proof ”.
(Cicerone, 54 A.D.)
Cicerone, in his writing De Republica,[1]showed that the ancients were aware that the reasons for choosing the placeon which the city would arise were of a purely economic nature. The presence of the Tiber riverwas so important for the birth of the city that Servius (Roman commentatorlived between the 4th and 5th centuries AD) argued that the ancient name ofthe river Tiber, Rumon or Rumen (whose root derives from ruo, or "scroll "), gave itsname to the city, so that Rome would mean" City of the River" (Pallottino,1993: 61-68).
The river Tiber( in Italian FiumeTevere) is the historic river of Europe and the secondlongest Italian river after the Po,rising on the slope of Mount Fumaiolo, a major summit of the Appennino Tosco-Emiliano. With its 252 miles (405 km) long, twisting in agenerally southerly direction through a series of scenic gorges and broadvalleys, the Tiber flows through the city of Rome andenters the TyrrhenianSea of the Mediterranean near Ostia Antica.
Avivid and overwhelming vortex generated by the Tiber island invests thesurroundings territories, marking the founding start of the capital of theworld: Tiber is in the archaic Rome the border line between Etruscan and Latinpeople, and it was, the mythic nucleussince the earliest origins, as well as strategic crossing point.
According to the legend, thecity of Rome was founded in 753 BC on the banks of the Tiber about 25kilometres (16 mi) from the sea at Ostia. The Tiberina island in the centre ofRome, between Trastevere and the ancient centre, was the site of an importantancient ford and was later bridged.
In Roman mythology, Romulusand Remus are twin brothers, whose story tells the events that led to thefounding of the city of Rome and the Roman Kingdom by Romulus. The killing ofRemus by his brother, and other tales from their story, have inspired artiststhroughout the ages. Since ancient times, the image of the twins being suckledby a she-wolf, has been a symbol of the city of Rome and the Roman people.although the tale takes place before the founding of Rome around 750 BC, theearliest known written account of the myth is from the late 3rd century BC.possible historical basis for the story, as well as whether the twins' myth wasan original part of Roman myth or a later development is a subject of an ongoingdebate.
Romulus and Remus were born inAlba Longa, one of the ancient Latin cities near the future site of Rome. Theirmother, Rhea Silvia was a vestal virgin and the daughter of the former king,Numitor, who had been displaced by his brother Amulius. In some sources, RheaSilvia conceived them when their father, the god Mars visited her in a sacredgrove dedicated to him. Through their mother, the twins were descended fromGreek and Latin nobility.
Seeing them as a possiblethreat to his rule, King Amulius ordered them to be killed and they wereabandoned on the bank of the Tiber River to die. They were saved by the godTiberinus, Father of the River and survived with the care of others, at thesite of what would eventually become Rome.
According to other sources, Rome's founders, wereabandoned on the Tiber’s waters, where they were rescued by the she-wolf, Lupa (Richard, J. 2000:630).
The Tibet river representsVirgil's vision of his own storytelling. In Virgil’s epic Aeneid[2],one of the founding books of the western culture, the Tiber is revealed to havereclaimed its ancient, “true” name of “Albula”, though in a way thatforeshadows the continuing reality of war and internecine strife for Rome. There is one of the mainmention of the Tiber in the Georgics[3], asthe beekeeper Aristaeus enters the underwater realm of his mother Cyrene:
“…omnia sub magnalabentia flumina terra spectabat diversa locis, Phasimque Lycumque, et caputunde altus primum se erumpit Enipeus, unde pater Tiberinus et unde Anienafluenta…”
(G. IV, 366-369).
The few lines quoted here form part of alarger description of both significant rivers and storied nymphs. Tiberinus isidentified as pater because of hisconnection to Rome; the passage in a sense serves to balance the supplicatory reference to theriver from the first georgic. Thesetwo allusions to the Tiber and its god set the stage for the dramatic partplayed by the river in Virgil’s crowning poetic achievement, his epic of Rome’sorigins and identity.
The mention of the eponymousgod is echoed near the opening of the second half of the epic, as the Trojansfinally arrive near the mouth of the storied river, in a passage that owes muchto preceding
literary and historical traditionsabout the Trojan landfall in Hesperia[4]:
“…atque hic Aeneas ingentem ex aequore lucum
prospicit. Huncinter fluvio Tiberinus amoeno
verticibus rapidiset multa flavus harena
in mare prorumpit…”.(A. VII, 29-32).
There is a grove, and ariverbank that is a place of refuge and serenity; the river itself is possessedof a vigor and life that is most fitting for the very eternal capital of theworld, as it were ( Mynors,1969). It is important to remember that in thesepoems Virgil was partly trying evoke a pleasant pastoral scene and convey thecountryman's view of the role of therivers and springs in the cycle of bucolic activities.
In the Book VIII of Virgil'sepic Aeneid, there is a spatial,temporal and literary journey, where the river is a perfect emblem fordirectional progress. The Tiber is the point of embarkation for Aeneas' travelsin Italy and also provides a course for words and narrative. However, inrespect of the famous prophecy of Tiberinus about Aeneas' destined achievements,there is no 'disparity between the prophecy and its fulfillment'. Tiberinuspromises to guide the ship so that the rowers can overcome the current, butlater it is the river itself that checks its current. Tiberinus simply promisesthat the Trojans will be able row upstream (a feature of traffic on the Tiber)and in due course makes this easier by ensuring that the river is calm. Tiberinushelped Aeneas after his arrival in Italy from Troy, suggesting to him that heseek an alliance with Evander of Pallene in the war against Turnus and hisallies. The river’s deity appeared to Aeneas in a dream, telling him he hadarrived at his true home. Tiberinus also calmed the water so that Aeneas' boatwas able to reach the safely city (Moroford, Mark, Lenardon, Robert 1971:215).he was considered the one of the most important river-gods and people made sureto put offerings in the Tiber River every May. Tiberinus was honored withtwenty-seven straw dummies which were called Argei.
Rivers represents transitionfrom one phase of life to another, including rites of passage and indeed deathitself. Tiber river is quoted so many times by Dante Alighieri, in the famouslong narrative poem Divine Comedy, the preeminent work in Italian literatureand one of the greatest work of world literature.
The poem's imaginative visionof the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it haddeveloped in the Western Church by the 14th century. It is divided into threeparts: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise or Heaven. The Purgatory demonstrates themedieval knowledge of a spherical Earth, with Dante referencing the differentstars visible in the Southern Hemisphere, the altered position of the sun, andthe various timezones of the Earth (Richard H., 2000).
In a contrast to Charon'sferry across the Acheron in the Inferno,Christians’ souls are escorted by an Angel Boatman from their gathering placesomewhere near Ostia, the seaport of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber, throughthe Pillars of Hercules across the seas to the Mountain of Purgatory.
[…]“ For threemonths now he has been easily taking on board all who want the trip. Thereforeat se seashore where the Tiber becomes saltwater, I was gathered in. Right backto that river mouth he has set his wings again because those who do not sinkdown to the river Acheron are always assembled there” […]
The souls that were bound forPurgatory assembled in Rome at the mouth of the Tiber River and were ferried byan angel; those who were bound for Hell assembled by the River Acheron and wereferried by a demon. The angel used his wings and the heavenly boat flew; Charonused an oar to paddle and sometimes hit his passengers with it. The blessedsouls were singing in unison; the damned were wailing and cursing separately(Lindskoog,1997:10)
The poet imagines that thesouls destined for salvation adorn themselves at the mouth of the Tiber,waiting to be welcomed into the jar of the nigger angel and transport them to the island of Purgatory.
The allegorical significanceof the localization is evident: as opposed to Acheron, the river of the damned,Tiber, which clearly indicates connection with the eternal city Rome, as thecentre of Christianity, is the river at whose mouth (where it sins) collectssouls destined for the eternal deliverance.
Rivers help to define theidentity of peoples and places because they are an emblem of the landscape andtherefore advertise the association of certain people with a place. So riversdivide as well as connect. This is an important theme for writers and poets. TheTiber river tended to be important centres of communications, and above all hada role in the emotional and cultural life of Roman’s communities. Rome is thecity where everything is linked together. The screams of pedestrians blend withthe silence of the historic buildings; the Tiber slowly flows and divides, theancient resists and merges with the innovation where different cultures aredaily compared; a city that has become for centuries a symbol of humanconditions like an Homeric siren, his “voice” has always charmed writers andpoets from all over the world: authors like Pirandello, Gabriele D’Annunzio,Giuseppe Ungaretti, after have been seeing “the eternal city” and itsconnection with the Tiber and have been inspired from it, they have developed different feelings and got different shapesof it. Through the history of literature, from the mythology until the early 20thcentury, the city of Rome with its Tiber reveals new features.
Pirandello[5]through his poems expresses the late romantic concept of inner coldness. Thepoet is angry and disappointed with the new image of the eternal city, hasalready became a symbol of corruption and decadence, sweeping away its glory.he is no able to be consoled: Rome is no longer a classical beauty and itsruins instead of be protected by the romans, are destroyed by the “dwarftraitors of build corruption”. Pirandello would like to see shimmering thememories of ancient Rome, and to eradicate the wickedness, that is, the civiland social corruption that grips the city. In 1901 he wrote Tiber’sTears (“Pianto del Tevere”) whose inspiration was born from the Tiber’sflood on December dua, 1900, barely contained by the wall still underconstruction which collapsed for a long stretch between the Cestio and thePalatine bridge and its muddy waters came into the city through Pantheon’sSquare.
“You will no longersee him , passing through the city of Rome, as I did , one day;
the Tiber, passingbetween his natural shaky lids [...] like a mugging and full of robbery he comesdown, so that every wave is able to overcome the edges of oppressive margins;running through the underground streets, he is shown to the Pantheon: "Doyou see, sacred scraps of our Rome? I am still here: Rome needs a great wash”
The poet uses the pronoun “our” because he feels part of thecity and “him” referring to the Tiber, because he personifies the river withthe eternal city. For him the flood is a rebellion, and the protagonist of thispoem is the river’s lament who wants to overcome the banks to cover Rome andits wickedness, erasing a city that was just a scrap of what it was.
Different point of view isfounded in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s poetry[6]: Romeis not the city of antiquity, but it is the city that shines with its preciousornaments, and among its ornaments emerges the river Tiber. He does not careabout Rome’s corruption that made worried Pirandello, but he sees the samedecadence as a great beauty.
“Rome shone in themorning of May embraced by the sun,
on the bridgeappeared the shining stream of river Tiber, fleeing among the green houses,
after a while, onthe uphill the eternal city appeared,
clearly carved,like an acropolis, in the full blue’s sky.
D’Annunzio links the beauty ofthe river Tiber to the sudden appearance of the immensity of Rome.
For him, the majesty of thecity, with the epic eternal “flavour” is due to the Tiber’s beauty from whichthe city was born, capturing the attention of the poet, becoming active part of the shining city. Everycorner of the city is smiling at him, as if to give the last greeting that theprotagonist seems to implore with his eyes. The poet reads the city and Romeopens itself to the poet.
For the poet GiuseppeUngaretti,[7] riversare always been a central part in his poetry. To the four rivers of Ungaretti’slife, is added the fifth one: “the fatal Tiber” spectator of all the atrocitiesof the war but also of a new awareness of the poet. The Poem “My River even you” is the mostnotorious and most religious poem in which the personal pain of Ungarettiinstill the angst of the Roman people for the humiliating pain of deportations(Second World War), where his confession of faith becomes more dramatic andtense. “My River, evenyou, “fatal Tiber”
That man is pouringon the earth;
[…]Your heart isthe passionate home
My lonely crying isno longer just mine”
(Ungaretti, 1947)
In this poetry, the Tiberbecomes the symbol of the fatal pass of the night of “fear”. The CrucifiedChrist is the brother from whom the Poet finally embraces all of his humanity.in 1916, Ungaretti wrote a poem entitled “The Rivers” in which he couldunderstand himself through the rivers he met on his life’s pilgrimage: fromEgypt, France, to Italy. The Tiber becomes a symbol of the pain that advancesin the "night" and strikes the innocent, symbolized in the "lustof lambs [...] infinite sobs”.
The worse suffering is theexpectation of the unpredictable pain itself, where the anguish make everyrefuge insecure. In recognizing this situation as "his river",Ungaretti admits that pain is inseparable part of his person and of the human.it is not enough to psychologically regain the pain to give it a sense. It isnot enough to take note of the evidence that makes us impotent. It is notenough if the pain continues to generate only more pain.
CONCLUSION
As a forceful, changeable andconstantly moving part of the landscape, rivers interact with the dynamics ofpoetry. Apart from pleasant illustrations and metaphors a river could serve asa means of inspiration, which came though imbibing water from poeticallysignificant springs, be a character in a poetic story, or act as a kind ofnarrator, representing an independently existing narrative in which author andreader participate.
The theme of river deservesthe recognition of having gone through each era with different results fromdifferent poets, lending itself to the most disparate symbolism andinterpretation.
Every author has used theimage of the river in a different way, always linking the Tiber river with theEternal City, recognizing it as the heart of Rome. The Tiber was not only animportant highway for the trade in the Mediterranean area, but it was used inpoetry and narrative, always linked to the history of Rome, to determine bothwhat literature can tell us about Tiber and, conversely, how the river can helpus think about the development of literature.
Big powerful rivers like theTiber represented epic poetry, and of course oratory could be compared to theflow of a river. From the ancient mythology telling about the birth of theEternal city of Rome, with Romulus and Remus rescued by the Tiber’s deity, theriver guides us through the events of the Virgil’s epic Aenid where Tiberinus is considered the pater for its connection to the city of Rome, to the imaginativevision of the afterlife of Dante Alighieri, using the Tiber like a startingplace for the souls’ salvation.
The scenario changed with thearrival of the nearest terkini literature of the XX century, where the Tiber isused like a source of inspiration by modernpoets to express different feelingsconnected to the change of Rome. TheTiber ‘s flows in the author’s poetry bringing delusion, and rebellion causedby the city wickedness with Pirandello, prosperity, richness and worldlinesswith D’Annunzio and expression of sharing pain with Ungaretti.
Today the Tiber River is awonderful waterway that crosses the Eternal City, telling the history, themyths and poetry through its flow of the city that gave birth and of which itwill eternally be part.
“The charm of the Tiber is perhaps in his continuousflow, remaining unchanged, in his departure, being a sort of physicalrepresentation of the history of Rome, being, in an unchanged way, the heart ofthe eternal city. It's really true, rivers are history of life”.
(Tiziano Tiziani)
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[1]Writtenwork in the form of political dialogue that discussed the politicalorganization and institutions of the state and of the Roman’s State. [2]The Aeneid is a latinepic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendarystory of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestorof the Romans.
[3]The Georgics is apoem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BC, and considered Virgil’ssecond major work. [4]Name withwhich the Greeks originally designated the western lands [5]He was anItalian playwright, writer and poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in1934. For his production, the themes dealt with and the innovation oftheatrical tale are considered among the greatest playwrights of the twentiethcentury.
[6]He wasan Italian writer, poet, journalist, playwright and soldier during World War I.he occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910 and laterpolitical life from 1914 to 1924.
[7]Giuseppe Ungaretti was anItalian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic, academic, and recipientof the inaugural 1970 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. A leadingrepresentative of the experimental trend known as Ermetismo, he was one of themost prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature.
* Disampaikan pada Seminar Internasional Sastra Indonesia, 6 s.D. 9 Desember 2017 di Banjarmasin.
Terjemahan Bahasa Indonesia Makalah Sastra TIBER: JANTUNG KOTA ABADI OLEH CHANTAL TROPEA (University of Naples “ L’Orientale ”) Baca Selengkapnya di sini !!.
