Isabelle Ståhl: Longing for Summer Nights and the Search for 'The Great Beauty'

The author finds a red dress, tucked away in a closet, triggering a vivid recollection of summer nights in Berlin in 2017. Those nights, spent wandering between sun-warmed stone buildings that radiated heat long after midnight, felt imbued with a sense of endless possibility. It was a time when the author felt that the "real life" lay just beyond reach, perhaps behind the ornate golden doors of perception.

This sentiment echoes a recurring motif, perhaps best exemplified by Paolo Sorrentino's 2013 film 'The Great Beauty.' The film opens with tourists captivated by Rome's splendor, only for one to collapse, seemingly overwhelmed by its intensity, a moment akin to Stendhal syndrome. The narrative then abruptly shifts to a vibrant rooftop party, a scene pulsating with music and life, where conversations fade as the perfect song plays.

Sorrentino's film captures a specific Italian summer atmosphere, where the verb 'fare' (to do) encompasses everything from making coffee to making love, suggesting an active engagement with life. The protagonist, Jep Gambardella, dances above Rome, his face a mask of detached joy, seemingly experiencing the present moment as a future memory. He is not merely a hedonist but someone separated from his experiences by his own consciousness, haunted by a singular summer that represents an idealized past against which all subsequent existence is measured.

The author contrasts this with the Nordic summer, referencing Hjalmar Söderberg's 'Doctor Glas,' where a "thick fog of dust" hangs over the streets and a "suffocating, confined heat" makes people move with heightened pulses. This comparison highlights a fundamental difference in how intense beauty and lived experience are perceived, one vibrant and active, the other subdued and perhaps more introspective, questioning whether the memory of an ideal moment eclipses the reality of ongoing life.

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