I understand Stendhal's fainting fit after a week in Florence. I've been wandering without the map - there are parts of the city which are still a maze to me, because I've been stumbling on them completely by accident, while other parts of the city have become very familiar to me, especially the small via Faenza near Stazione Santa Maria Novella and the markets nearby. I walk through the markets most days, to see all the scarves and the leather bound notebooks and the cheap prints of works of art, and a thousand other things. My wishlist keeps growing, though I can't really afford to buy much. But it's nice to pick things up up and pretend I can afford them, imagine them back home in the lounge room.

Today I went to the Uffizi for the first time, an overwhelming experience, though not always the experience I was expecting. Where I was expecting to love the Caravaggio's, they weren't the ones I would have most liked to see. On the other hand, among the Caravaggisti works in the same room, there was one of my favourite Artemesia Gentileschi works - her second "Judith and Holofernes" - a particularly brutal portrayal of the beheading of Holofernes, much more convincing than other versions I've seen reproductions of (such as Caravaggio's) where Judith looks so young and delicate, and the way she holds the knife looks so uncertain, that you really wonder how she's going to get all the way through her bloody task. Artemesia's work, by contrast, is so visceral: you see the spurting of blood from the neck, and the bloody speckled on Judith's dress, and you see her working with her maid in great complicity: the maid holding Holofernes in place, while Judith grimly saws her way through. Seeing it in person, especially unexpectedly turning around, and finding it in front of me, was strange, and I ended up feeling a little light-headed. It was one of the paintings I've most wanted to see, but I think I forgot the Uffizi had it: because the first version she did of it (which, in reproduction, I have always liked better, though it's not quite as gory...) is in Naples, I think. So I didn't think to expect it. I looked and looked for a postcard of it afterwards, but there wasn't one, which was very frustrating. Maybe I'll find one some day, or maybe they'll produce one someday, but in the mean time I have no picture of it to stick to the wall and gaze at. (Admittedly it's not very calming subject matter - I just love how gutsy it is!)

Another painting which was an unexpected favourite was a Bronzino portrait - a portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, but I just can't think of it like that. It's the painting that is used on the cover of my copy of The Wings of the Dove, and so to me it will always be a portrait of Milly. I found a cheap print of it on the market as I was wandering back, and bought it, to remember the adventure of reading so much Henry James.

I've been spending a lot of time in the Duomo, in front of the painting of Dante, or standing under Bruneschelli's dome - mainly because it's free, and when the heat is stifling outside, it's lovely and cool inside. I haven't climbed the stairs up to the dome yet (this does cost money), and I haven't been down underneath it either. At the moment it's enough to wander round it and wonder at the intricacy of its exterior, and then to go inside and wonder at the immensity of its interior. I wandered into the bookshop attached to the Duomo's museum (which I also haven't been to yet) and bought a large, leather bound notebook, which I've begun to use as my "Florence diary".

I feel like I've learned a huge amount in a week - I can understand a lot more Italian than I can speak at this stage, but I've learned to say a lot of things within the last week. I bought a children's book (by Margaret Atwood, translated into Italian!) and I've been slowly reading it and translating it back, and learning. The main flaw in this is that, as any good "once upon a time" type story, it's written in the past tense, and we haven't learned that yet! Oh well, I'm getting a head start! I bought a little dictionary last week, but think I'm going to upgrade to a larger Oxford English-Italian dictionary, which will serve me well when I get home as well, and want to keep on learning.

I've begun to read William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury the last few days, a somewhat overwhelming experience. I always feel strange approaching a new author: to know that I've never yet read any of their work, and that I'm going to be plunged into a new vision of the world - it takes me a little time to prepare. I finished the first section of it this morning, and have been enjoying the slow, lyrical rhythm of it and its speech. I feel like I'm going to spend most of the rest of my trip flitting between Henry James (I've wholly converted!), Dostoevsky and Faulkner... I'm also planning to read Hemingway for the first time. To finally read Hemingway - there are a number of authors it always feels like the worst kind of oversight never to have read, and I always feel guilty over Hemingway. Perhaps it's because I've read Joan Didion's gorgeous essay on the first hundred words of one of his novels. I remember a few years ago I was reading some Foucault, and when I told my friend Elizabeth I was reading it, she said with distaste "Foucault... oh, he's just so... seminal." That's a little how I feel about everything I've been reading! However, I do subtract the distaste from that. I'm also reading other bits and pieces - some poetry - a little collection of Keats, some which I've read before and some which I haven't - and also a book by Peter Singer - and introduction to Marx, from Oxford University Press. I've found a few more of these introductions I want to read, to get my head a little straighter about certain things: all my dates and chronologies tend to be all over the place, because I pick things up in such a strange way!

I've also been reading the International Herald Tribune every few days - this is somehow thrilling in a daggy way, because of Godard's Breathless, and the opening scenes with the heroine out on the street selling copies. Nice to be catching up a little with whats happening elsewhere while I feel like I'm in some place in another time, wandering around among the old churches and sculptures.

Florence