Can Italy Be Saved?
Sir / Your Essay "Can Italy Be Saved from Itself?" [June 5] proves what my professor of medieval history has maintained all along: in 1500 Western Europe should have been roped off as a historic preservation area. Modern life could have grown up in the "suburbs," and we would be spared the spectacle of cars being elevated like the Host before the altars of Romanesque churches.
GAIL WHITE
New Orleans
Sir / Artisans of Florence and Rome, I beg you, do not restore the Pieta!
Since Michelangelo intended his work to invoke pity in the mind of the beholder, let his damaged Pieta convey in its brokenness an added dimension of pity.
Pity for the sickness in the mind of him who must destroy as a means of coping with a world he no longer understands; or pity for him who destroys because he feels the world has forsaken him.
DICKIE S. ALLEN
Pacific Palisades, Calif.
Sir / On a trip to Italy last summer, I was dismayed and sickened at the unkempt sight of Rome and its historical monuments. It seemed as though the Italians had very little pride in their priceless surroundings. Perhaps one of the things I will most remember about Rome is that while standing in the Colosseum in the midst of newspapers, magazines and watermelon rinds, I watched as a man fed perhaps 30 cats, which were apparently being kept in order to control the rat population.
CHERYL GOSSETTE
New Bremen, Ohio
Sir / I must commend Robert Hughes' Essay. I too have observed the slow cultural suicide of Italy. The destruction of Italian art is a disaster because it is one of the few human creations with universal appeal. Unlike the beer can-disposable, faddish art of today, a Bernini or Leonardo has a unique, timeless quality.
I propose that foreign governments and individuals withhold all further aid to Italy for conservation and restoration projects until there is a drastic and documented change in Italian laws and attitudes. As an alternative, I suggest that all major art works should be placed under the direct supervision of the United Nations.
FELIX WELNER
Rome
After the Summit
Sir / Why shouldn't President Nixon be well received in Peking and Moscow [June 5]? They never had it so good. Every day the Viet Nam War is prolonged, we exhaust more of pur resources; and every day it goes on with its murderous bombings, we add to the disdain in which we are held by practically all the nations of the world. No Machiavellian Communist could have designed a better trap to ruin us. And the dilemma will not end with the coming of peace, for we will be obliged to provide billions of dollars for the restoration of a war-torn land.
A.L. STRAND Corvallis, Ore.
Sir / The seeming unimportance of Viet Nam at the Moscow summit was regrettable. As long as potential confrontations exist, there can be no real detente. It appears that Mr. Nixon has his schedule confused; it is high time that we withdraw from a war that the vast majority of America does not want to be in. Perhaps then the friendship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union can be developed to its full extent.
ROBERT J.TOMA
Falls Church, Va.