"Egypt thus does not belong in my life. I do not know when the life of memory begins, but not much of it goes back to the age of two. I have never gone there since the steamer Helouan left Alexandria for Trieste, then just transferred from Austria to Italy. I do not remember anything about our arrival in Trieste, meeting-point of languages and races, a place of opulent cafes, sea captains and the headquarters of the giant insurance company, Assicurazioni Generali, whose business empire probably defines the concept of 'Mitteleuropa' better than any other. Eighty years later I had the occasion to discover it in the company of Triestine friends, and especially Claudio Magris, that marvellous memorializer of central Europe and the Adriatic corner where German, Italian, Slav and Hungarian cultures converge. My grandfather, who had come to meet us, accompanied us on the Southern Railway to Vienna. This is where my conscious life began."
(Eric Hobsbawm: Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life, pp3-4)
No comments:
Post a Comment