Katja Petrovskaja travels to Pompeii together with her buddy O. | EUROtoday

I drove to Naples to fulfill my Kyjiwer girlfriend O., who within the south, the place spring started to develop, made every week on trip. In order to flee the winter and the battle, she traveled to a spot that was destroyed virtually 2000 years in the past and has been exhibiting a museum for years of years, frozen by the destruction as in a time capsule, as on a pictures. O. had her dream of going to Pompeii. She adopted her dream and I adopted her. Especially at the moment when no one is aware of the way it will exit, the Ukrainians don’t surrender their desires, even when they will solely seem briefly. As the daughter of a effectively -known Ukrainian archaeologist, O. has spent each summer season with excavations in Crimea and South Ukraine each summer season. I considered what it looks like for them, from the nation with the rising variety of ruins, the place the coincidence of civilians belongs to on a regular basis life, with all of the occasions and footage from dwelling that can not be “archived” into the lifeless metropolis?

I spent the primary few hours in Naples like in a magical loop: I walked alongside the Via tribunale and all of the sudden stood within the courtyard of the oldest hospital within the metropolis, which was overgrown with Glycinia, identical to the O. farm in Kyjiw. Just a few steps additional I got here throughout a church door the place a service was introduced in Ukrainian, and certainly: within the majestic semi-decayed church, a Greek-Catholic liturgy was celebrated in the midst of Naples. It was preached and sung in Ukrainian, the pastor spoke to the ladies, as a result of there have been solely girls there, his phrases of comfort and perseverance, in addition they reached me, the vacationer. Then, whereas purchasing, I discovered myself in a small store, his proprietor was Ukrainian, and I left the store with a bag of Ukrainian meals in my hand, like a parody of the Pompejan Freskos of Primavera, the spring goddess with the corn horn. I used to be in Italy however the Ukraine did not let go, identical to in my texts.

I’ve been to Pompeii, a few years in the past, on a big day. I admired the frescoes of their crimson and the uncommon blue, studied the mythological scenes and twitched collectively on the sight of the scary creeping physique, which had been encountered by the lava in the meanwhile of dying – when my companion obtained an emergency name: Fukushima has exploded, a tsunami flooded the coast. It felt like a brief circuit: a deadly message in a lifeless metropolis. In Pompeii it was swarming with Japanese vacationers who knew nothing but. We hesitated whether or not we should always inform you what occurred in your house nation. When we reached the Piazza Garibaldi in Naples, we noticed a wave on an enormous canvas, tall like a excessive -rise that devoured folks and destroyed the whole lot that was of their means.

With O. I went on excursions: to the Phlegraian fields, the title means “burnt earth”, the place the legend was the battle of the titans with the brand new gods, the Zeus received, the place a temple of the clairvoyant Sibylla is, the place you possibly can discover the doorway to the underworld. In the regional prepare, we learn one another’s vertical scales, as if we needed to replicate on the brand new world state of affairs along with his future prophecies.

We solely got here to Pompeii on the final day. At this place, the sudden destruction exposes probably the most intimate and on the identical time preserves it perpetually – a paradox that I couldn’t perceive till the top. When we left the terrain, I seemed again on the majestic Vesuvius, the pines that form this panorama and took a farewell picture. I photographed what I noticed: Pompeii by way of the sun shades. The vesuvian sits in a heat sepiaton and on the suitable, as painted, the amphitheater that’s harking back to the general public killings that had been held there to amuse the viewers.