THE AIR SHOW AT BRESCIA, 1909

Working like a master cabinetmaker, Demetz (Prague in Black and Gold, 1997, etc.) shapes all the parts of the 1909 air show in northern Italy into a striking, proportioned whole.

“I am intrigued by the Brescia air show as a unique encounter of resourceful engineers, daring pilots, visionaries from the provinces, and eminent artists and writers,” says Demetz. And he does make a productive chaos of the details in his relaxed storytelling voice that ambles along, curious, graceful, and esoteric. A scant six years after the Wright brothers lifted off at Kitty Hawk, airplanes still had an Icaran fabulousness about them, of transgression and audacity, but other themes were at play in Brescia as well: nationalist aspirations, money, prestige, the potential for tragedy. Giamcomo Puccini was drawn to the event and so were poet Gabriele d’Annunzio, the King of Italy and Princess Letizia, as well as Franz Kafka and Max Brod, there to report on the story. Despite bad weather, balking planes (Kafka wrote of them “irresolutely moving on the runway like a clumsy fellow on the dance floor”), and motors that failed, the show provided sufficient drama as the fragile cloth and wood planes soared and crashed. Demetz gathers the impressions of Puccini and d’Annunzio, then writes that “Both Kafka and Brod had keen eyes for the shapes and secrets of ladies’ dresses” (as well as for the fliers themselves) and that Brod “cannot hide his aesthetic interest in atmosphere and color.” The show was “an almost Arcadian affair [as] . . . aviators walked away from their damaged planes,” and yet, as Kafka felt, it had dim forebodings, and one can almost see WWI on the horizon.

To the casual observer, the Brescia air show may seem to have held little historical meaning, but some things are destined to have a particular symbolism, and Demetz has artfully sensed that this was one of them. (18 b&w illustrations, color frontispiece)