Vedere Roma. Gli sguardi di Heinrich Böll sulla città eterna

The aim of this paper is to investigate the “countless gazes” Heinrich
Böll devoted to the city of Rome in 1961, during his residential
fellowship at the German Academy ‘Villa Massimo’. Böll’s views of
the “eternal city” – which reveal unexpected contacts with Bachmann’s
perspective – do not involve the canonized and iconic beauties of
Rome, but rather the contrasts between richness and poverty. The
German author points out – through an optical device focused on the
marginal aspects – the movements, the chromatic range, and also the
“aesthetics of human being”, which characterize Rome.