The most renowned literary product of this new circle was the Zohar ("The Book of Splendour"), a vast mystical commentary on the Pentateuch by Moses de León (c. 1250 1305); with later additions it became the Bible of Jewish mystics everywhere.
De Quincey beheld, in the "theatre" of his mind, along with "more than earthly splendours," horrors beyond belief: "vast processions" of "mournful pomp," and "friezes of never-ending stories" as terrifying as Greek tragedies.
In one, meat dangles on hooks like a scene from Saw, vast sides of fassone ageing into purple splendour; in the other, a vast, silvery tuna is gradually butchered.
While he was vegetating on a small family property in Cornwall, which he called a "cursed hiding-place" in one of his many letters to his adored sister and confidante, clever Nan (Ann) Pitt, help came from a politically powerful millionaire nobleman, Lord Cobham, who lived in splendour in a palatial mansion and vast park at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, to which William and his friends paid visits.
Most strikingly, he has masterminded a series of grand projects, especially the vast Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, a monument to tsarist splendour whose predecessor was blown up by Stalin in 1931.
At the end, where the valley widens again at the confluence with the Zanskar, we beached the boat, changed into dry clothes and sat in splendour on a picnic rug, blessed with a view of vast and empty mountains, consuming naan and delicious vegetarian curries.
The weekend Oltrarno's two biggest draws are vast legacies left by the Medici family: the galleries and royal apartments in the Palazzo Pitti and the splendour of the neighbouring Boboli Gardens (00 39 055 294 884; polomuseale.firenze.it; prices vary; closed Monday).
You are playing Splendour this year.
But splendour did not mean empty extravagance.
