‘A woman called Lola, whom I met at the dinner-party given by Signora Gentile, arrived at HQ with some denunciation which went into the waste-paper basket as soon as her back was turned. She then asked if I could help her. It turned out she had taken a lover who is a captain in the RASC, but as he speaks no single word of Italian, communication can only be carried on by signs, and this gives rise to misunderstanding. Would I agree to interpret for them and settle certain basic matters?’
History
Vandalism As Literature
Emily Gowers is captivated by Kristina Milnor’s Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii:
Milnor reads the graffiti as carefully as any literary text, picking out clever manipulations of lines from Ovid and Virgil and the rhymes hidden in abbreviations that speak of subtle play on the aural and read experience of words. She also takes account of the original location of graffiti, which was often placed so as to initiate a dialogue with adjacent visual images. Along with crudity, she finds delicate sequences of erotic poems and even – wishful thinking, perhaps – Rome’s only personal declaration of lesbian desire. Her project fits well with other recent explorations of the fuzzy areas at the margins of canonical Latin literature: paratexts, pseudepigrapha (fakes ascribed to famous authors) and centos. In her view, one reason graffiti should intrigue us is because it shows how permeable the borders were between elite…
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‘On his last sight of Fiammetta’ – A Naples Love Story
By legend it was in the ‘huge, utterly gothic space’ of the Church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, situated in the very centre of the Centro Storico of Naples, that the 14th Century poet and writer Giovanni Boccaccio first glimpsed his muse, Fiammetta or ‘Little Flame’. He was 21 years old at the time and had arrived in Italy’s biggest and richest city with his banker father from Florence a few years before.
Many thought, and think, that Fiammetta was Maria d’Aquino, a daughter of Robert, King of Naples. Boccaccio venerated her beauty and mind, even if her body remained out of reach as she retreated back into the court and away from Naples city life. Instead of a companion, she would become a constant feature of his later works, many of which recreate Naples in all its earthy reality.
Neapolitan Beauties (1885)
Bonhams says:
Neapolitan Beauties is ‘a striking depiction of two elegantly dressed ladies posed with their dog on the promenade; the flawlessly painted surface, devoid of any evidence of the artist’s brush, perfectly displays the subject’s porcelain skin and beauty. All attention is focused on the elegant subjects and the omission of a narrative focuses the viewers attention on the beauties within a frieze-like arrangement leading the viewer’s eye from one to the other’.
The painting is by Vittorio Matteo Corcos (Italian, 1859-1933), known for ‘winsome and finely dressed young men and women, in moments of repose and recreation’.
Grotta del Tuono, Posillipo, Naples
The Grotto of Thunder, looking out over Nisida island.
Here the slayer of Julius Caesar, Marcus Brutus, plotted with Cassius and, after the assassination, walked with Cicero who ‘apud illum multas horas in Néside’ – spent many hours in Nisida – to discuss the future of Rome.
Photo via Napoli Underground, a website dedicated to exploration of subterranean Naples.
The Last Days of Pompeii?
I was at Pompeii again with friends yesterday, for perhaps the 5th time over the last two years. In the late autumn sunshine, the ruins were as wonderful and evocative as ever. The administration of the site remains dysfunctional.
To be confronted, at 10 o’clock in the morning at the main entrance to a UNESCO world heritage site visited by 2.5 million people per year, with scribbled signs proclaiming ‘No maps’ was shocking, even by Italian standards.
Caravaggio – Turbulent Genius
Michelangelo Merisi called Caravaggio arrived in Naples in 1606 on the run having killed a young man in a brawl in Rome. His fame and radicalism as an artist preceded him and he was quickly commissioned by a group of young, charity-minded noblemen for work at the Pio Monte della Misericordia church in the Centro Storico. The local worthies originally wanted a depiction of the Seven Works of Mercy — seven different acts of kindness from the Gospel of Matthew — on seven separate panels around the church. What they got was a single composition unlike any other painted before: a deeply religious painting embedded in a grim Naples alley scene, the combined figures emerging from the darkness.
I hate the Indifferent!
Antonio Gramsci was a diminutive Italian Marxist theorist and founder of the Italian Communist Party who was imprisoned for 11 years by Mussolini. Gramsci is famously associated with the phrase, ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’. In February 1917, at the age of 26, he was the editor of ‘La Citta Futura‘ a recruiting newspaper for the Socialist party and he wrote this impassioned piece ‘I hate the indifferent‘ in an attempt to shake readers from the torpor that he thought infected the Italian spirit.
In the Footsteps of Spartacus
Capua Amphiteatre
Arena
Arcade
Glimpse into the arena
Spartacus’ Arena
Roman Grave
Some 15 miles north of Italy is the town of Capua, situated in a bend of the slow flowing River Volturno. The star attraction is the local Roman amphitheatre. Now in a poor state of repair, at its height it was the second largest amphitheater in Italy after the Colosseum. 60,000 people could watch the games here in four massive 40m-high stories. The amphitheatre itself is cheap to get into and well worth a wander around.
You can also access the tunnels below the main arena for an atmospheric glimpse into the inner workings of the games. Capua, known for its wealth and luxury, was also a hub of a number of gladiator schools, including one where the famous Thracian Spartacus trained. And you can see the remains of the older, smaller amphitheatre where he fought and there is a small gladiator museum nearby.
Why do Italians say ‘Calcio’ not ‘Soccer’?
In today’s Italian lesson, we tackled the Subjunctive. As in English, it is used to express ‘various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred‘. Unlike modern English, in which the subjunctive is hard to make out, in Italian it is a minefield for foreigners and, according to my teacher, when used properly is the mark of an educated native speaker.
This lead to a long conversation about the differences between English and Italian. My teacher said that Italians pick up the lax English grammar rules (what there are) quickly; what they struggle with is pronunciation, the sheer magnitude of English vocabulary and the way English speakers use word order and qualifiers to provide nuance and meaning. Conversely, the English pick up basic Italian vocabulary quickly (aka restaurant Italian) but can have problems with rigid grammar rules, pronouns, reflexives and cases such as the pluperfect and of course the subjunctive.
Broken Columns 