The Weakening Voice

In the outskirts near the city wall (on its external side), there is a marble column, almost 1/2 of which is underground such that its upper surface isi visible. On this surface in bas-relief is carved an open book, on which is carved also in bas-relief, a text in italian:

Ho sostenuto il tempio con la mia altezza
Il tempo è stato crudele e non resta di me che metà
Gli anni fuggiranno via e sarò totalmente coperta dalla terra
E tu, camminandomi sopra, non ti accorgerai neanche di me.

The special quality of this sculpture is that it belongs to two diverse epochs equally distant from us, and both have vanished into history such that for today’s consciousness they have merged together into the ‘ancient past’. But for the specialist these different epochs are sufficiently distinct. The column itself is a Roman rarity, it represents a traditional detail of Roman ruins. The relief of the book and the text on it perhaps belong to the period of Romanticism and are carved on the upper surface of the column in the capacity of a late epitaph. All of this genuineness is, of course, fictitious, and is intended to invoke nostalgia for the past - for this, in addition to the appearance of a column vanishing into the ground, its voice it is used and it is assumed that we will hear it.
In this sense, the place where the installation is erected is also very important: the edge of the city, a place forgotten by both residents and tourists, where the distant vistas of the Tuscany landscape open up before us,and where, on the other side of the ravine can be seen a highway with speeding cars - a necessary contrastive complement to the image of the "vanishing marvelous past".
Moreover, the solitariness of the column is entirely relative. From the tourist trail leading to the column is a narrow path made of stones, and a stone tower, the history of which is familiar from Dante’s terza, is erected directly above it on the hill.