Robert Lowell in Venice

I think he was probably the most entirely cerebral person I
have ever known. His creativity was not diffuse as it so often
is with great artists. there were no signs that his talent spilled
over into other fields. He didn’t sing, didn’t play an instrument,
didn’t draw. He wasn’t a linguist. he couldn’t dance, nor did
he have, in spite of his unusual physical strength, any athletic
skill other than a puffy game of tennis. In other words all his
genius was concentrated entirely in his mind – a mind so original,
so perceptive, so finely wrought, that it seemed able to intuit
sensory experience without reacting directly to it. He could
discourse on music as brilliantly as any trained musician but he
could not hear whether a note was higher or lower when played
for him on a piano. He had only the meanest most rudimentary
grasp of foreign languages and yet he translated foreign poetry
brilliantly. He had an extraordinary sense of metre but no
physical sense of rhythm. He visited churches and museums,
avidly seeking out works of art by the great masters. Yet if over
there in some small chapel within a great church you found a
madonna and her infant sitting tranquilly as she had these last
three hundred years or more under a perfectly carved cupola,
touched by a beam of unexpected sunlight, and he found you
there almost hypnotized, moved nearly to tears, he would pause
to ask “Who is it by?” and if it was not by some famous master or
was simply ignoto, he would pass it by as though blind.
Once in Venice when I had become impatient with being asked
to locate yet another masterpiece – this time it was a particular
painting by Titian in the Basilica of the Frari – I said “Why don’t
you find it just by looking”. He didn’t like this at all and began to
cajole me into finding it for him, telling me I was being childish,
that Titian was more important than guessing games, etc. But
when he understood that I was not going to locate it for him he
intercepted a monk hurrying to his prayers and asked him “Dov’è
Tiziano?” and the monk pointing to heaven replied “In Paradiso,
speriamo bene”, crossed himself and hurried on. I was trying to
stifle my laughter when Cal asked “Is he a friend of yours?” Then
he appealed to me again. I was tired. We had been sightseeing all
day. I bolted from the church and made for the nearest bar. Still
trying to persuade me, he came puffing along behind me, calling
out “Wait! Stop this! This is a bad joke!” As we entered the bar he
suddenly gave up (for the moment) and ordered ‘caffè in bicchiere”.
That was one of his oddities. In Italy he always ordered ‘caffè in
bicchiere”. I never heard him do it anywhere else. Anyway, that
much Italian he had mastered. He had his coffee in bicchiere, and
I had mine in a cup. Afterwards, feeling somewhat revived, I agreed
to lead him back to the Frari. Once there, standing before Titian’s
great work, Cal without any embarrassment whatsoever, began a
discourse on its merit as a painting, on Titian and his times, on
beautiful women, on Titian and beautiful women, on old men, on
the works of old men. And as always he was riveting, funny, odd,
and completely, interestingly original and serious.

Esther Brooks – Remembering Cal in ‘Robert Lowell: A Tribute’
ed. R. Anzilotti (1979)