Europe
While having a smattering of Italian, Brasch was determined to become fluent in the language. On his first morning in Rome, he sat down with Professor Sacrafia, his teacher, and went through the first cantos of Dante's Divine Comedy. Later works would include Leopardi's Canti and this fine edition of Michelangelo's poems.
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In 1888 George Moore (1852-1933) had published his Confessions of a Young Man, a fictionalised autobiographical account of his days in Paris. It was a pioneering work in this genre and the blurb on the cover says it all. Brasch read this copy while in Rome in 1927.
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George Moore, Confessions of a young man. New York: Modern Library, 1920 |
'I was as ready for Italy as pictures and books and talk at 'Manono' could make me. My taste was unformed: I was open to all impressions…' So wrote Brasch of the Italy he came to love. He visited it first in the winter of 1927 with the de Beers; later visits included a long vacation in Florence to research the subject of the Italian Renaissance for his history degree. Although a keen traveller and enjoying other parts of Europe such as France and Germany, it was in Italy that he felt alive and could 'live more fully…'
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| W. B. Yeats, A vision. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1925 |
Brasch once wrote that 'English will recover from Yeats, but I doubt if it will get over Eliot.' Brasch not only admitted he was inhibited by Eliot's poetry but also that he could not understand it. He opted for Yeats, who became 'the one great living poet.' When Brasch left Naples for New Zealand in October 1930, he sailed on the Orient liner S. S. Oronsay. He carried with him Yeats's A Vision, itself a complex mystical work. A tipped-in list gives a good indication of what else Brasch wanted to read at the time.