"Between blue and white, on the background of the opaque green hills, Genoa is mysterious in the manner of London, the other European city made up of watertight compartments. The imagination, Stevenson says, is stimulated in London, because London is an interlocking of secret circles to each other. The soul can thus play with mystery, delight in acrobatics that today would be called metaphysical, imagining here a, here a cheat, an old duchess, a rubber merchant, a dynamiter, juxtaposing them, mixing them, placing them in occult relationships. Such mysteries are never encountered in simple Italian cities, but Genoa is perhaps the only one that arouses the imagination of clandestine backstories. A mystery book that takes place in Rome, Venice or Florence has something incredible, but if it takes place in Genoa you can believe it (or almost). And, just like London, Genoa has the special theatricality of beings and events on which one feels something occult hanging. (p. 220)"
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