18. September 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

We stayed in Tremezzo (tree-metzo) because it’s the location of the Villa Carlotta, an open-to-the-public villa with extensive gardens that Albert and Mileva visited on their ferry trip from Como to Colico.  It’s likely they stopped in other villages as well–so we visited Bellagio and Varenna, both charming and different–but the Villa Carlotta is the stop that Mileva mentioned in her glowing letter to her friend Helene Savic, then married and living in Belgrade.

Built in the 1600’s for a powerful Milanese family, the Villa was bought in 1801 by an art collector responsible for its extant collection of Canova, Thorvaldsen, and Heyez.

In 1843, it was bought for the Princess Carlotta by her mother, the Prussian Princess Marianna of Nassau on the occasion of Carlotta’s marriage to Georg II of Sax-Meiningen, (note names for the villa’s ultimate fate) who was a passionate botanist and responsible for the 70,000 square meters of gardens, including rhododendron and azaleas that must have been astonishing when Albert and Mileva visited in May, as well as a cactus garden and a rain forest.

In the center rotunda of the villa stands a large-as-life sculpture of Mars and Venus in polished white marble, the figure of Mars standing stalwart, nude except for his helmet, sandals and a strap holding the cape that has fallen from his muscled body.  He holds a drawn sword, notable for its being the only metal part of the piece.  Venus, also nude, but round and supple, is the supplicant in the piece, as if begging Mars to reconsider.

In the next room, Eros and Psyche are caught mid-embrace, two beautiful, polished marble faces about to kiss in the lee of Eros’ spread wings.

It would be hard to imagine a more perfect set-up for the night Mileva got pregnant.  Unless it was the next night, after their drive in a horse-drawn sledge over the snow-covered Splugen Pass.  (When we crossed the Alps into Switzerland, there was no snow on the alps, though it was much colder than in Lake Como.)

I wonder if Mileva would have been so entranced had she known that after the birth of many children, the Princess Carlotta died at age 23, and that fewer than twenty years later the villa itself, on the defeat of Germany in WWI, would be confiscated by the Italian government.  Sad fate.

Beware of your affections, Mileva!

Posted in Bellagio, Varenna, Villa Carlotta, Tremezzo, Lake Como, Mileva Maric, reading, Einstein | No Comments »

15. September 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

My husband and I arrived in Milan yesterday after the (for me) sleepless overnight flight that is penance for the luxury of European travel, meaning no taxi fare seemed too high if it meant we might settle in at our hotel sooner. And Tremezzo, the small village on the west shore of Lake Como, midlake, where I had booked our room, couldn’t have made it more worth it. What overwhelmed me more than the lake itself, is the geography of the basin it’s in. Carved out by a glacier, the foothills surround the lake are covered in lush foliage with darker vertical veins, which in the haze of humidity appear velvetine, like the iris petals in the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keefe.

On the lake shore, the Hotel Villa Marie, complete with its own cupola (on left, below), is the most picturesque in a row of tile-roofed and pastel-painted Italian villas.

This is not where Albert and Mileva stayed, though it’s one km from the Villa Carlotta where they disembarked from their ferry to tour the house and gardens. The ferry boats are still the most efficient means of transportation to various villages on the lake, so today Beloved and I boarded the “slow boat,” (Centro Lago in Italian), and took a gestalt tour of the mid-lake villages, including Bellagio, home to luxury shops, and Varenna, a charmingly-preserved fishing village with an 11^th century stone chapel and unrestored 14^th century frescoes. Tomorrow we will tour the Villa Carlotta. Today it was focused on what it feels like to be here. This morning, in addition to the lapping of water against the stone walls that separate the land from the lake, I heard the church bells ring two strokes with a non-melodious “clong.” I heard the rigging of the sailboats clinking against aluminun masts in the tiny harbor in front of the hotel, but masts were wood in 1901, so perhaps chattering would be a better word. Regrettably, the traffic noise is loud now on the road that wends around the lake. Albert, unlike Beloved, would not have needed to jerk Mileva from the path of drivers speeding around blind curves.

At our sidewalk cafe dinner last night we sat at a small table among many other couples at small tables, all speaking in whispers, until, as invariable happens with my friendly husband, we all began talking to one another. Beside us was a couple of honeymooners, obvious and perfect for imagining Albert and Mileva, though they were not yet married on their May, 1901 trip, but their heads likely inclined toward one another in the same way, though Albert didn’t drink so they wouldn’t have shared the same bottle of expensive wine, (red, of course.) Still, they might have lingered long, ordering each course and eating it before deciding on the next, sharing each as if unable yet to acknowledge different preferences, she serving out his helping first while he sat by helpless and helplessly in love.

Around these two sat three couples of oldlyweds, none of us jaded, I hope, but clearly in a different place as we lounged back in the wicker chairs, drinking from different liters of wine—his red, hers white, ordering not multiple courses—who can eat like that after 35?–but trying not to lick the plate of our measley one course apiece. One man called the rising, almost-full moon, the sun and told the groom to enjoy the next six months as if life would never be like that again. Perhaps not, but I didn’t sense regret from any table. The most senior were a couple from Wales and England, clearly enjoying their holiday together, though they were supposed to come six months earlier for a wedding and had to postpone for his illness. I was thinking how Mileva would have envied us all—the young lovers and the mature ones with our children grown and ably fending for themselves–she who was abandoned and left to care for a schizophrenic son.

Now my patient Beloved waits, out on the balcony of our room, overlooking the lake. The rocky tops of the Alps to the north—in fact in Switzerland—turn pink at sunset. His wife writes on, but it is dinner time and he is getting hungry. I suspect we will return to our same cafe, The Helvetia, because our Welsh and British friends—last night the end of their holiday here–confirm it has the freshest food in Tremezzo.  The veal in mushrooms and wine the newlyweds were eating looked stupendous.

Posted in Generating Fiction from History and/or Fact, historical fiction, Tremezzo, Bellagio, Varenna, Italy, Lake Como, Einstein, Mileva Maric, Research methods, reading, writing | 1 Comment »

31. January 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

In looking at the history of Mileva’s academic career and thinking about what motivated her after she became pregnant with Einstein’s child, I ask myself that question.

Prior to July 1900, she had never failed an exam.  That month was the first time she took the tests.  Her failure makes sense, given she had not only taken a semester off to go to study in Heidelberg, but also had taken up with Albert at the Cafe Metropole, discussing contemporary physicists rather than attending class.  Prior to this, according to her friends at Plattenstrasse 50, she had stayed up all night, reading and studying, followed by an hour of sleep before attending class.  That said, after July 1900’s failure, she spent a year mostly without Albert (who graduated in 1900) where she could go back to her former habits, where she had exclusive use of Marcel Grossmann’s meticulous notes from classes she missed, plus was working with Weber on her doctoral thesis and studying to retake the tests.  She wasn’t pregnant until May 5, 1901 when she went with Albert to Lake Como, so I’m to think she spent that entire school year doing nothing?  It hardly sounds like her.

I’m asking myself what she really wanted when she went to take those tests the second time.  Here’s my speculation:

She wanted Albert. She wanted them to be together, to work together, to raise their baby together. She needed to read what he was reading, which was not the same as taking a degree. She saw the cradle beside the table where her foot might rock it while they were working. She saw the coffee pot perking on a little stove, a pot of soup simmering, Albert’s pipe in a rack, the laundry drying beside the stove. Beyond this room was a little bed, made up in a patched quilt, where they would spend the nights keeping each other warm.

Was passing her exams the best way to get that?  Hmmm.

Posted in Lake Como, reading, Mileva Maric, Einstein, writing | 8 Comments »

10. January 2011 by Nancy Pinard.

I continue to discover that not having seen the landscapes or experienced the culture where important scenes took place is slowing my progress, as if setting were essential to the generation of words.  In service of moving the book ahead, I’m researching various settings.

Lake Como in Northern Italy, 40 km north of Milan, is one such important setting–where Albert and Mileva celebrated his potentially landing a job (after nine futile months of searching) in May of 1900 with a tryst.  I found Roland Merullo’s book The Italian Summer (result of a library catalog subject search for Lake Como) and also blog photos from people who have been there.   Such a beautiful, romantic place!  See for yourself by clicking on the pictures:

Posted in Italy, Lake Como, Mileva Maric, Einstein | 2 Comments »