This text I wrote recently on the train, in Russian. It is a chapter in my reflections on Manchester, which I provisionally call ‘The City of Optimists’. Some of them I published in Russian on my Russian blog, and, judging by the comments there, the impressions of my experiences in Manchester (and in England in general) are much appreciated.
A note on the text: I used three Italian words, partially because they belonged to my text; partially because I had an Italian colleague sitting next to me, which may have made me remember that trait of many Italian cities. They used to consist of città (city proper), contado (countryside) and distretto (suburbia).
It seems I manage to write about Manchester with love. This is fine: to live in one city for several years in a row, one needs to love it. And for that the city has to have something in common with your native or best-loved city, or, on the contrary, to be totally different. It is like in relationships with people: you fall in love when another person fits comfortably in your environment; or when your environment weighs you down, and this other person transforms it with their presence. It is a mistake to think that relationship should have no habitual quality about it. It should avoid usualness and conventions, which are similar to indifference. But a habit by itself is an organising element. Habit relates to habitat, which is nothing else but one’s space, one’s environment. Don’t say that you have got no habits or that you would not want to share them with someone.
And so I find Manchester at once unusual, and not. A year after my moving here, when a more or less objective reflection had become possible, I realised, for example, that I was living in a district very much like the one where I used to live in Moscow. This was usual. What was not usual, was the absence of the capital city’s dazzle, lustre, charm, spirit. And I feel the lack of these. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to overestimate Moscow’s spirit, especially as I am being related about its changing. In Moscow, I used to like speed, space, parks, boulevards, strange houses that hid cosily in some unknown streets. Moscow is a big city where you can have the luxury of not visiting the suburbs; in Manchester, the line between città, contado and distretto is painfully fine, and possibly this is what I have found the most striking.
But, all in all, I want to love this city exactly because it is so similar and dissimilar to my native one. My love is rather rational; there is no passion with which I relate to even those cities where I have never been. But it is love; not respect, nor compassion. I want to love this city because it is easy and convenient to love flawlessly beautiful people, beautiful places, beautiful memories. Yet how sincere is such love, and is it love, after all? Or perhaps, it is a manifestation of a conventional, habitual, usual belief that only flawless beauty is worthy of affection?
And so I find Manchester at once unusual, and not. A year after my moving here, when a more or less objective reflection had become possible, I realised, for example, that I was living in a district very much like the one where I used to live in Moscow. This was usual. What was not usual, was the absence of the capital city’s dazzle, lustre, charm, spirit. And I feel the lack of these. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to overestimate Moscow’s spirit, especially as I am being related about its changing. In Moscow, I used to like speed, space, parks, boulevards, strange houses that hid cosily in some unknown streets. Moscow is a big city where you can have the luxury of not visiting the suburbs; in Manchester, the line between città, contado and distretto is painfully fine, and possibly this is what I have found the most striking.
But, all in all, I want to love this city exactly because it is so similar and dissimilar to my native one. My love is rather rational; there is no passion with which I relate to even those cities where I have never been. But it is love; not respect, nor compassion. I want to love this city because it is easy and convenient to love flawlessly beautiful people, beautiful places, beautiful memories. Yet how sincere is such love, and is it love, after all? Or perhaps, it is a manifestation of a conventional, habitual, usual belief that only flawless beauty is worthy of affection?