Sympathetic Swede (The Story of San Michele - Axel Munthe)

Member Name: MALU

Product:	The Story of San Michele - Axel Munthe
Date:	29/05/05 (1660 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fascinating, touching, well written

Disadvantages: none

The book The Story Of San Michele has stayed with me for about 45 years, I think I was 16 when I read the German translation. When I visited Capri for the first time at the age of 21, I had already forgotten most of its content, I only remembered the part dealing with the villa San Michele the author built in Anacapri, the upper village of the island, that gave the book its title, two further visits many years late emphasized this part of the book.

Last year when I was in Naples I browsed through the English corner of a bookshop and found the English version (which is the original one, the Swede Axel Munthe wrote the book in English), my first thought was, ´Gosh, is it still around?´ It was published in 1929 you know! Who reads it nowadays? I guess the bookshop in Naples has stocked it for the English speaking tourists doing Capri when in the area.

When my next amazon voucher came I ordered it to brush up my memory of Capri and the wonderful villa there (it´s a museum now and open for the public, it´s a Swedish cultural institution and a guest house for Swedish citizens engaged in cultural work or research). I´m glad I did, my memory had played me a bad trick by allowing the other parts of the book to slip away so completely.

Three forewords by the author precede the book proper in which he writes about its creation (Henry James advised him to write it to fight his insomnia, [it helped, btw, he could sleep better during he time of writing]), the reception (to the surprise of the author the book was an instant success and translated into 45 languages) and the complaints readers uttered concerning the title, many thought Memoirs Of A Doctor would have been more appropriate, at least An Autobiography should have been used as a subtitle.

Munthe didn´t use the terms memoirs or autobiography because what he wrote down was a mixture of fact and fiction, in my opinion he was too scrupulous, isn´t every autobiography just this? It has to be to be readable, nobody could endure a day-by-day true account.

The first chapter is set in Capri which young Axel visited at the age of 18, we´re in the year 1876 (Munthe was born in 1857 and died in 1949), why he went there on his own we don´t learn. He climbed up the 777 (!) steps hewn by the Phoenicians into the rock from Capri to Anacapri, no road then to connect the two villages. He found a deserted chapel called San Michele on top of the mountain which belonged to nobody according to an old villager who also told him that his son was urging him to sell his house and his vineyard and move to the mainland. Munthe knew at once that he had to have this place and built his own villa there, he knew nothing whatsoever about architecture – he was to study medicine – but he was convinced he could do it.

The area was full of remains of one of the villas of Emperor Tiberius (42 BC – AD 37) who spent his last years on the island, the peasants used what they could, for example, they built steps out of marble columns and threw the rest onto the rubbish heap; according to pedantic researchers, however, ´it's possible that the discovery of some antiques happened just near the house, but about the most part of them, Munthe's tale is surely false, because these antiques date back to an age which is subsequent to the period during which Tiberius had been living on the island.´ Well, I wouldn´t know.

Although I know that Capri can enchant visitors I was taken aback by the ornamental, ´floral´ style of the first chapter, too many adjectives, too many similes and metaphors (´Her black lustrous eyes sparkled with fiery youth, her lips were red like the string of corals round her neck, her strong white teeth glistened like a row of pearls in her merry laughter´), I was sure I couldn´t read the whole book and regretted buying it, but fortunately the rest is different, obviously Munthe wanted to emphasize his youth and enthusiasm in this way.

Only on page 230 do we return to Capri, before we learn about the realisation of his dream Munthe takes us with him on the journey of his life – and what a life it is!

He studied medicine in France, why he didn´t return to Sweden after getting his degree we don´t learn, at the age of 26 he was the youngest M.D. ever created in France. His specialty being nervous disorders he soon became the darling of the French high society, royalty, famous artists and rich neurotic women from France and abroad came to him in droves. I like Munthe´s way of describing his clientele with subtle irony, we get to know some truly ridiculous characters.

From the beginning of his career as a physician he also cared for the poor in the slums. Of course, he didn´t/couldn´t take money for his visits, in fact he never wrote bills at all, a habit he was often scolded for by his colleagues and patients, but he stuck to the conviction that what he did was not expressible in monetary terms. Once when a lady urged him to tell her what he wanted – she´d give him anything! – he said he wanted her silk frock, she was insulted but sent it to him later, he gave it to a poor woman of whom he knew that she had been invited to a festivity and had nothing appropriate to wear. Normally the patients paid what they could and thought fit which meant that Munthe sometimes was stinking rich and sometimes just getting along.

He soon found out that he had the special gift to get to people, when he merely touched them, they responded positively, often more so than when his colleagues gave them medicine. He didn´t become conceited, though, he knew he was lucky, that Fortuna was with him.

Animal lovers, this book is for you, too! Munthe also loved and understood animals and they loved and understood him; he visited the zoo in Paris regularly although the conditions most animals had to live in broke his heart. Once when anaesthetics failed and a lioness couldn´t be operated on, he took its paw and pulled the splinter out that had caused it trouble, when an ape became fatally ill, he sat at its side holding its hand until it died; Munthe´s life long affection for dogs will touch you, believe me.

After some hectic years in Paris he went to Lapland for a while to recharge his batteries, wonderful descriptions here of nature and the habits of the reindeer breeders. By chance he saw a newspaper on his way back with the information the cholera had broken out in Naples, so off to Naples he went to help as best he could, unbelievable scenes of squalor and misery follow, it´s a miracle he survived himself.

Munthe did not only describe what he experienced, from his early days on as a young doctor in a Parisian hospital for the insane he was fascinated by Death and Life, in this order, as he encountered Death more often than (new) Life, throughout the book we find philosophical reflections on the powers that rule us.

Munthe was in Messina in Sicily after the earthquake in 1908, again heart-wrenching accounts here, he also worked as a physician during the First World War, but mentioned that only in passing without elaborating on it.

During all these eventful years he bought land on Capri and finally set to work to built his dream villa together with the peasants there including all the antique finds of the area, in summer it was work on the villa, in winter work as a fashionable (again! He couldn´t help it) doctor in Rome (but again he also worked in the slums). Languages didn´t seem to be a problem for Axel Munthe, his mother tongue was Swedish, he wrote books in English, he was fluent in Italian and the dialect of Capri, he could get by in German, a true cosmopolitan.

Anybody who was anybody in Europe in his days knew Axel Munthe and visited him in Capri – with the exception of a shorter period he lived there for more than 56 years - his interest for the island in the Bay of Naples coincided with the growing popularity of Capri as an attractive place of residence for famous personages from all over the world. From his writings we get the impression that he loved the illiterate peasants on Capri even more than his famous acquaintances and friends, obviously he loved people only in the plural, we know that he was attracted by female beauty, but we never learn about a woman in the singular sharing his life, if there was none or he didn´t want to write about his woman I don´t know.

In parts the book is dated, of course, doctors don´t drive around in horse-drawn carriages any more, but when it comes to human and animal nature it is as up to date as can be. Some of Munthe´s thoughts are not PC nowadays, I found myself arguing with him, pity that he can´t answer any more!


Axel Munthe
The Story Of San Michele
paperback
flamingo
351 pages
cover price 7.99 GBP

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