El Trieste de Claudio Magris in Barcelona -

On the border with Slovenia, in the North of Italy, and on the banks of the Adriatic coast, is the beautiful and mysterious city of Trieste. An ancient, originally Illyrian town, it flourished during the Roman colonization, making it, after the fall of Empire in the West, a coveted object of desire for both the Byzantines and Francos, who tried unsuccessfully to seize it – before it finally fell in the 13th century into the hands of the Venetians. Then in 1382, it was subject to the Austrian Hungarian empire; under which it remained until the end of the First World War.

It was particularly from 1719 that its position was a matter of petty conflict, as Trieste became a Franco port. As the only exit to the Adriatic, it became a place of much commercial and industrial investment, which brought with it the birth of a multicultural, cosmopolitan society – one which went on to influence writers such as Stendhal, Rilke (who named his famous elegies after Trieste´s Duino castle) Italo Svevo, James Joyce (who lived there from 1905, and wrote much of Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the city) – and, Claudio Magris.

It might be said that the city´s climate is mild, and sunny – that is apart from the harsh wind which blows down from the Alps, which sometimes reaches 190km/h. When this happens, the citizens of Trieste have no choice but to cling to the streets and just pray they don´t get blown away.

Its perhaps the effect of the wind, and the rough seas which brings us to this wonderful, evocative new exhibition, commissioned by the Hungarian theatre director Giorgio Pressburger, and created by Milanese designer Paola Navone, El Trieste de Magris, on at the CCCB in Barcelona until the 17th of July. What distinguishes the show from the other works belonging to the Las ciudades y sus escritores series (which includes Borges and Buenos Aires, Kafka and Prague, Joyce and Dublin, Pessoa and Lisbon) is that the first of the writers is the only one still living.

In the presentation of the exhibition, Magris said that “we are all essentially like water; we fill up landscapes, and the landscape also forms part of history. Cities are more than just an urban landscape, or nature; they are the faces of the people, their histories, and their memories.” It is the ability of Trieste to reflect precisely this which makes it such a success in the show.

For more information, visit the website: http://www.cccb.org/es/exposicio-la_trieste_de_magris-35377