Italian Tales

Henry James is the most European of the American writers.

His fascination with Italy stretched from his first visit aged 27 to his last nine years before his death.

He spent both short and prolonged stays in the country, with a particular penchant for Venice and Florence, and to a lesser extent Rome and Naples. "The Travelling Companions" was written on James' return to America in 1870, full of nostalgia for Italy.

A first-person account of the narrator's encounters with a young American girl travelling with her father, it is set in the places he visited.

The two young people bump into each other in each new town they visit, incarnating all the misunderstandings, suspicions and silences that accompany those precious "flutters of the heart".

In "The Diary of a Man of Fifty", written nine years later, a former soldier returns to Florence - once home to a powerful love affair.

He meets a young man in love with a countess, daughter of the very countess he used to love so desperately; the narrator sees in this young man a kind of double of the man he used to be.With its themes of repetition and ambiguity this story may well have been the blueprint for James' later mastery of the mystery genre.

The most haunting of the Italian cities, Venice, is the setting for "The Aspern Papers", first published with "The Turn of the Screw" in 1888.

The Bordereau ladies, Tina and her aunt Juliana, live like hermits in an ancient Venetian palace.

Juliana was once the poet Jeffrey Aspern's muse; she has in her possession some key papers - letters and signed documents - that she insists on keeping private.

The narrator, a devoted Aspern scholar, takes lodgings at the Bordereau palace in a bid to get hold of the precious papers.

This tale was told to James in almost identical form, save that it took place in Florence; the poet in question was none other than Byron.

In the preface to "The Aspern Papers", James writes of Italy "stretching beyond our ken and escaping our penetration"; such is the mystery of life and literature, and such is the delight of James, who improves on every re-reading.