It was like an antechamber to the afterlife, as if directed by Fellini

[emad]

The Independent
It was like an antechamber to the afterlife, as if directed by Fellini
By Peter Popham in Rome
05 April 2005


The staircase of the Vatican's Apostolic Palace was beautiful and broad; the plaster of the walls was painted to resemble marble of a delicate amber hue, the ceiling was coffered, vaulted and illuminated. And the ghostly wisps of hymns, chants and prayers came drifting up or down the stairs - it was impossible to tell which.

"Dependants" of the Vatican - including this correspondent - were invited yesterday to pay their respects to the late Pope while he lay in state in the Apostolic Palace, before the corpse's transfer to the basilica of St Peter.

My companion in the sea of dark-suited dependants cramming up the stairs said the experience reminded her of the boy in Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining, trapped in the haunted house. My own thought was, there is not much you can teach these folks about theatre. We had filed into the Palace in a sort of galloping crocodile, entering through a tradesman's door at the back, at the end of a line that included priests and cardinals.

Up a marble staircase we crammed past a statue of St George killing the dragon and another of St Joan. The pace slowed and then stopped; we were a still sea of dark suits, filling the staircase. And wisps of music, of hymns and chanting and prayer, continued to float down - or up - starting abruptly and as abruptly breaking off, while the throng of dependants remained frozen to the spot.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=626508

[SoCalDem]

1. Peter was "reaching" for words.. fell short

"galloping crocodile".."cramming".."crammed"..

Must be a British thing :shrug:

[Solly Mack]

2. I only read this because it had Fellini in the title

somehow, Popham doesn't quite capture the "carnival" feel he was hoping to describe and bring to life...

the writing is more plodding than anything...grasping even.