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Trieste, April 5, 1876
Dear Berganza,
Today is a day for writing letters; all parties will have to be satisfied today, for yesterday is gone and the day before yesterday I left my writing things at the Station, and what tomorrow will bring, I cannot tell. The theater, no doubt, since there are posters on all the street corners of this great seaport announcing that on Giovedi, 6 Aprile, Francesca da Rimini1 will be given in this theater, Otello in that, each play being staged by popular demand and with the famous tragedian whose name we Philistines will probably be hearing for the first time tomorrow, for a prophet is without honor—even outside his own country. What is left to him then, I wonder? We shan't talk about that, however, rather about Trieste and its fauna. I shan't write separately to you about how I eat, drink, and spend my day; ask my family to show you my letter when next you go to see them. I would much rather report to you on what I have been able to see of bella Italia, and how I serve the beast-killing (ζωoκτoνoϱ)2 science. When, at 6:30 in the evening, hands stained with the white and red blood of marine animals, cell detritus swimming before my eyes, which disturbs me even in my dreams, in my thoughts nothing but the great problems connected with the words ducts, testicles, and ovaries, world-renowned words—when, that is, I go for an evening stroll after my work, I see precious little of the physiology of the natives of Trieste. Most of what I know I gathered on my first day, when everything was new to me and I found it worthwhile to pay heed to it. I am a person with the unfortunate tendency of finding everything ordinary and becoming used to everything quickly; when I, a landlubber for eighteen years, am transplanted suddenly to the shores of one of the most beautiful seas, I feel as nonchalant by the second day as if I had been born on a fishing smack. And the Adriatic is beautiful indeed. Trieste, as you know, lies within a small bay3 [fig. 1] o