On Sunday James began a discussion about ideal rooms, asking us to post a picture of what, to us, is a liveable room and then send him the link. I've thought a lot about this and have decided that any room I spend any time in has to have books and has to have clutter. By clutter I mean objects that mean something to me and rather a lot of them. No minimalist, me! In fact, when I was selling my house in Britain and an estate agent suggested I "declutter a bit" I cursed, stamped and screamed for days and refused to do it, for I do not understand why people want to go and see a virtually empty house. Can't they imagine their own things in a house as it is? Or is it that they don't collect or keep things? Anyway, my mother, who, along with Dad, abhorred clutter [I suppose they were rebelling against an earlier age] used to say I'd have made a "good Victorian". And, indeed, I love Victorian rooms and could quite happily have lived in the Dickens House in London, for instance, assuming I had been a rich Victorian! [I cannot find pictures of the interior.]
My heroine Simone de Beauvoir used to keep all her books on a shelf at picture rail level which went right round her tiny, neat Paris apartment. I have pictures in a book of the house of Marguerite Duras [again, I cannot find these pictures online]; it is not modern, but has cool, clean lines and white decor, and, as uncluttered living spaces go, I think I could cope with it, for there are books. In the same volume there are pictures of Marguerite Yourcenar's sitting room, which is booklined, has personal objects everywhere and has homely shawls gently draped over the armchairs. That would definitely be more "me."
Then I think of the writers' and artists' houses I have visited, particularly in Italy, among them the Bellini house in Catania, the house of Carducci [ a poet who caused me much misery at university] in Bologna, the poet Quasimodo's house right here in Modica, Pirandello's birthplace near Agrigento, the Leonardo Museum and nearby birthplace at Vinci, the Verdi birthplace at Roncole and his Villa Sant'Agata. All are fascinating and I could linger for days happily in any one of them. And I could certainly live in the rooms of the Castello Nelson near Bronte, about which I posted in January. But for one room my choice has to be D'Annunzio's magnificently cluttered study at the Vittoriale on Lake Garda. Imagine working and writing in this room! I'd be in heaven. Just one thing, though... Where on earth would I put the computer?
