Geneva: December 10, 2013
I try to maintain a regular schedule of Wednesday
publication, but there are times, as for example when I find myself climbing
into an airplane in Geneva midmorning of a Wednesday, when sticking to schedule
would be more in the genre of electronic athleticism than of journalistic
virtue.
This
visit to Geneva was my first in more than fifty years. On my last stay there my mission was to seek out an
illuminated manuscript of the Roman de la
Rose for work on my doctoral dissertation in preparation. My companion then was my newly married
bride and life-partner. My
companion of the past few days was our younger son Luke, now himself a doctor
of philosophy and the father of a young son. Quite a lot can happen in half a century.
Like
his mother, Luke too is a splendid companion of the road. A few years ago we visited Lisbon
together. That was a memorable
trip, but I shall remember our three days together in the Alps as even more
rewarding.
If
you have arrived from Europe at JFK or Newark any time recently you might be
interested in how they do things in Geneva. In the immaculate luggage hall there is a machine that
dispenses tickets for free train rides to the center of the city, good also for
a transfer to any of the frequent buses or trams that radiate out from Cornavin
Station in all directions including almost necessarily the direction of your
hotel. Once at the hotel the clerk
hands you, along with your key, a pass good for free public transport for the
duration of your stay. I cannot
deny the truth of what many tourists also notice—the place is very
expensive--but you still have the feeling people actually want you to be
there. So, yes, you may have to
take out a bridge loan to cover lunch, but it’s a really nice lunch.
Geneva
is relatively small, with many beautiful features, and it is so eminently
walkable that we never even used our free bus passes. There is lots of clean, fresh water dramatically channeled
for visual effect, and a large artificial geyser springing from the lake,
beyond which rises Mont Blanc in all its majesty.
Walking
and water were perhaps the trip’s unifying themes. One of the most prized treasures of the Musée d’Art et
d’Histoire is a great altarpiece made for the city’s cathedral by Konrad Witz
in the 1440s. This magnificent
work of art was attacked by Protestant iconoclasts in the sixteenth century,
broken apart, and severely damaged.
But unlike their more enthusiastic brethren in the Low Countries, the Swiss
Calvinists did not utterly destroy the despised relics of Gothic piety. The broken bits were gathered together
and stored in a civic warehouse where, long forgotten or ignored, they survived
into our more happily ecumenical age.
Witz’s altarpiece has been almost miraculously restored through the
skill and technology of modern museum science.
Four
large panels have been preserved.
In my opinion the most striking is the “Miraculous Catch of Fish”. The story is told twice in the gospels—in
Luke (cap. 5) and John (cap. 21)—and in significantly different forms. In the latter it is presented as one of
Jesus’s post-Resurrection
appearances. The basic “plot” is
this. The disciples--many of whom
were actual fishers of fish before they became fishers of men—are plying their piscatorial
trade without luck until Jesus tells them where, precisely, to cast their nets. Then they catch a huge haul. There is a particularly striking fact
about John’s version—entirely aside from the failure of Jesus’s intimate disciples
at first to recognize him—and that is its curious numerical specificity. The fisherman’s net is so full that it
tests the tensile strength of the net’s webbing. But John doesn’t say anything so indeterminate as that they
caught a lot of fish or scores of fish, or whatever. He says they caught one
hundred and fifty-three fish.
It’s as though in the story of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” there
were an editorial note saying that the actual number was 4,996.
One
hundred and fifty-three is an odd number in more senses than one, and medieval
exegetes marshaled their remarkable powers of ingenuity in attempts to
explicate its hidden meaning. The
results of their efforts might one day provide the materials for another
essay. Konrad Witz’s remarkable
panel painting is satisfied with the more obvious and literal theme of divine
plenitude, the bounteously given fruits of soil and water. In that context, I realized as I walked
with a beloved son along the water’s edge, that the Lake of Geneva can be no
great spiritual distance from the Lake of Genneseret. How little could I know in 1962 of the fullness of
providential possibility. Another
watery scriptural text came to my mind—one that was a favorite of a
long-departed grandmother. Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou
shalt find it after many days.
