La Passeggiata

Even on a normal Sunday or at the end of a weekday afternoon the passeggiata is a solemn rite, the moment when business is transacted, social ties renewd, news spread, and public opinion formed, not to mention an important occasion for asserting one's economic statut and ability to dress. Back and forth, arm in arm the current of people flows along the Corso, diverted into small eddies as it passes the bars, swelling in front of the churches as new strollers come out from mass, impervious to the few foolhardy drivers who attempt to fend the flood. (From "On Persephone's Island", by Mary Taylor Simeti)

Felicità raggiunta, si cammina

Felicità raggiunta, si cammina
per te sul fil di lama.
Agli occhi sei barlume che vacilla,
al piede, teso ghiaccio che s'incrina;
e dunque non ti tocchi chi più t'ama.

Se giungi sulle anime invase
di tristezza e le schiari,il tuo mattino
e' dolce e turbatore come i nidi delle cimase.
Ma nulla paga il pianto del bambino
a cui fugge il pallone tra le case.

(Da Ossa di seppia di Eugenio Montale)

Festival Verdi: Parma 1-28 ottobre 2007

Le mille lire

Marco Polo

Spelling your name around Italy

When you first move to Italy, you find yourself gaining acquaintance with all sorts of towns and cities that you’ve never actually visited. Take Empoli, for instance. It’s a perfectly pleasant but unprepossessing town in Tuscany, for most people no more than a railway junction when heading from Siena to Pisa.
I’d lived in Italy for close on twenty years before I ever alighted in Empoli. Yet the place felt strangely familiar, a bit like someone or something known in childhood. And the reason is this. Italians use place names to spell out words.
My surname is SINGLETON, which presents plenty of orthographic pitfalls to the Italian ear. So I soon learnt to rattle out: Savona, Imola, Napoli, Genova, Livorno, Empoli, Torino, Otranto, Napoli. Not only was everything clear, but I was acquiring the rudiments of Italian topography. Thirty-five years later, I still haven’t been to Otranto, but it beckons like an old friend. (Next)

Antonio Stradivari il "Cremonese"