On to Florence

Renaissance man Lorenzo The Magnificent

The Slow Train to Florence

Sunflowers and hill towns of Umbria

The copy of Michaelangelo's David in Palazzo Vecchio

The end of the Golden Age of the Renaissance was marshaled by Franciscan monk Girolamo Savonarola infamous for ritual burnings of books and art.  His own death was by fire after the citizens of Florence had enough of his apocolyptic visions.  The burning at the stake of Savonarola was coined the "Bonfire of the Vanities"

The Slow Train to Florence

The light over our head was flickering on and off and the door separating the cars was swinging freely slamming with startling regularity. Stuffing was coming out of the stained seat next to me and graffiti covered the walls. Worst was the locked up and out of order WC that periodically titillated the atmosphere.

How long you say it take you to get to Firenze asked Sal’s cousin, Johnny.

Let’s see, it leaves at 11 and arrives at 330, that’s 4-1/2 hours.

A wry smile spread out across Johnny’s face. Oh that’s, uh…how you say… the scenic train. The fast train takes only an hour and a half. You take the slow train to Firenze.

I had done a lot to organize this trip and the thought that I had made such a fundamental mistake annoyed me. I sat stewing as the train stopped once again. Everyone else slept after a night of food and wine at Johnny and Anna Maria’s in their home in Santa Maria delle Mole outside Rome. The tickets were non-refundable, non transferrable and sold by a French travel agent that I bought on line through “EuropeRail”. The Italian capotreno (conductor) had looked skeptically at the ticket and sneered “This is no good”

I opened my Kindle, Amazon’s electronic book, a handy way of taking your library with you on travels but had a hard time concentrating. Hunger made my stomach rumble, harmonizing with the groan of the brakes at yet another station. It was now two hours into the trip and the memory of grilled swordfish, pesto pasta, garden tomatoes, fresh ricotta and cold white wine amid the smell of vineyards and night jasmine still lingered from Johnny and Anna Maria’s.

The train picked up speed and I stood up, put my Kindle down and pushed open the window as we passed through the lush green countryside of Umbria. The hill towns’ ancient towers and walls of stone rose up above the fields of sunflowers and corn. These villages and fortresses belonged there as if outcrops of the mountains that surrounded them. With the wind blowing in my face and curtains flying, a little old lady I had not noticed before stood up behind me and slammed the window closed. She said something in Italian and I sat down hard in my seat.

I shrugged my shoulders in a half hearted apology to the woman and picked up my Kindle again. I was reading “1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus” by Charles Mann. The demise of Indian civilizations in the Americas while touring the cradle of Western Culture was a bit weird but the subject fascinated me and so I dove in.

In 1491 the corn and sunflower I viewed from the train were not here, neither were tomatoes, tobacco, peppers, cocoa, strawberries or peanuts; all from the Americas. In turn the Europeans brought horses, coffee, cane sugar and wheat to the Americas. They also brought smallpox, influenza, typhoid fever, cholera, scarlet fever, yellow fever, malaria, measles, tuberculosis and the bubonic plague. The favor was returned with the introduction of syphilis from America to Europe. At the time the largest populated nation in the world was the Inca in South America but not for long. Within 100 years 90% of the Americans had died of diseases introduced by the Europeans. By comparison The Black Death of the 14th century killed about 40% of the European population.

With my head filled with the Pre- Columbian Americas we pulled into the train station in Florence. All was well when we checked our bags at the station and had a great meal at a restaurant nearby. We even found a cab that could take all of us and luggage to our apartment at Fattoria di Maiano, a 15th century villa in the foothills surrounding Florence. We had arrived at the heart and soul of the Renaissance and I was in some sort of strange cosmic reorganization transported from the Americas into the Old World and the land of Michelangelo, Botticelli, Donatello, and Da Vinci. Curiously 1492 marked the end of the Golden Age of the Renaissance when it’s great patron Lorenzo (The Magnificent) de’ Medici died. Two years later his son Piero the Unfortunate lost it all when King Charles VII of France invaded Italy and took Florence by force. With the fall of the Medici dynasty came the rise of the Franciscan monk Giolamo Savonarola predicting the Last Days. He used the failings of the house of Medici to fuel his rhetoric and cited the sudden and deadly outbreak of syphilis as a sure sign the end was near. He was right the end was near for those that lived on the other side of the world.

Trilussa The Poet

 Born Carlo Alberto Camillo Salustri in 1871

Giovanni Carpanetto's Portrait of Trilussa, 1915

Trastevere images 2

Domo on the first day

Sal's cousin Ana Maria and her son Fabio

As Sal likes to say brothers seperated at birth

Piazza Trastevere in the AM

Nick, Domo and JJ on the town in Trastevere

Don't Believe Everything You See

Not yet adjusted to the time change Rebecca woke me up the next morning at 5 AM and we went for a walk up to Piazza Trilussa at the edge of Trastevere across the Tiber River to the Jewish Synagogue (now a museum) and then back across the Tiber at the island Isola Tiberina into Trastevere again. It started to cloud up and rain came in a light drizzle, a welcome change to the overwhelming heat. The locals were out,  perhaps all night and not yet seeking refuge from the morning onslaught of garbage collectors. A film crew was setting up along the river and I fanatsized that Federico Fellini would emerge at any moment from one of the trailers. His cast of clowns and crazy people were all around. One poor guy was out cold from a hard night of drinking just as we crossed the footbridge at Trilussa lucky to not have fallen off the edge. The ground everywhere was strewn with empty bottles and the walls blemished at the hands of nightly raids by street artists.

An old woman draped completely in black and stooped over so you could not see her face, had her hand out as we passed along the bridge. I gave her a Euro. It was instinctive. There was something unreal about her. I recalled the night before of doing a double take on a human sculpture. After close observation it moved ever so slightly. Like the stone man the old lady's outstretched hand never fell to her side.

Other locals I had begun to recognize were a guy with long black hair a broken leg and no teeth, a woman with a Sophia Loren body and well worn face who talked very loudly and promptly undid her pants, squatted and peed on the monument for the Roman poet for which the Piazza Trilussa is named. Sal had done a yeoman’s job to translate the Trilussa poem All’ombra inscribed on the monument the day before, on the spot, but I am lately moved to look for an English translation on a Google search.

ALL’OMBRA

Mentre me leggo er solito giornale
spaparacchiato all’ombra d’un pajaro,
vedo un porco e je dico. Addio, majale!
vedo un ciuccio e je dico. Addio, somaro!
Forse ste bestie nun me caperanno,
ma provo armeno la soddisfazzione
de potè di’ le cose come stanno
senza paura de fini in priggione.

IN THE SHADOW

While I’m reading the usual newspaper,
relaxed in the shadow of a straw patio,
I see a swine and I say aloud: “Farewell, pig!”
I see a mule and I say aloud: “Farewell, donkey!”
Maybe these beasts won’t understand me
but, at least, I feel so happy
to be free to tell things straight,
fearing not to finish up in prison.


The poem is written in the Romanesco dialect and the above translation is more of a literal Italian version. Below is a recent translation by Professor John DuVal, director of the literary translation program in the English department of the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.


IN THE SHADE OF THE HAY RICK

I read my paper, back propped against the hay.
Here comes a hog, so I look up and say,
"Goodbye, pig!" And then across the grass
here comes a donkey; I say, "Goodbye, ass!"
No way of telling if they've understood.
Whether they have or not, it does me good
to call things what they are without the dread
of having to go to jail for what I've said.

The political context of Trilussa’s poetry is early 20th century fascism and he was known for his satires of the time. Refusing to be labeled or associated with any literary circle or political persuasion he described himself simply as “not a fascist” and lived, wrote about and worked among the locals of Trastevere. “All’ombra” is clearly not about them. It was written in 1932 at the height of fascism in Italy. The words “Goodbye, pig!” and “Goodbye, ass!” would have significantly different meaning if written in the late 40’s at fascism’s decline.

The Du Val translation provides a personal expression and insight into the poem that the first translation does not begin to evoke. The literal translation of the title word all’ombra means “shade” not “shadow” which changes the meaning of the entire poem from a condition of foreboding to one of self determination. Taking shade rather than being under the shadow, Trilussa has chosen to be there. The “usual” newspaper is the more personal “my” newspaper. “Propped against the hay” suggests that Trilussa is not in the leisure of a “straw patio” but sitting in The Hay Rick, the animal house itself. The “shadowed” threat is actually real danger. More important in the second stanza the Du Val words are chosen with care to state Trilussa ‘s feeling that whether the political pigs or asses understand him or not, the act of calling things as they are is good for him but better under the circumstances of not going to jail for it. He is not a passive observer at all but is making a clear statement for freedom of speech.

Sophia Loren hitches up her pants speaking loudly without a break in her actions. The guy with a broken leg hobbles away and the drunken fellow awakens and stumbles off in search of his friends. The other Romanesco poet of Trastevere and Trilussa’s mentor, Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli stands a few blocks away looking down on Viale di Trastevere at his own Piazza. These are the people of Trilussa and Belli.

Fellini’s a no show but I can’t help wondering if it was really an old woman I gave the Euro to or an actor pretending to be one. The words of All’ombra resonate with me. Under the worst of times take action, make a statement and call it like it is.

Everybody's here

The limo driver pulled up to the address where I was waiting out front of the Trastevere apartment. There was barely enough room between the cafes and parked cars for Rebecca and JJ to open the car door but out they popped anyway. I was anxious to see them. It had been four weeks since we left and my youngest son seemed to be a head taller. Hi dad he said as the words cracked between alto and baritone. His voice had changed when we were gone. Before emerging from the limo Rebecca had looked at me from behind the car window. After the long day of travel I could see she was tired but happy to see me and to have finally arrived.


The flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam had not been a pleasant one. A boy had gotten sick every half hour the entire trip. Neither Rebecca nor JJ got any sleep. It was about 6 PM on a Thursday in Rome and the neighborhood was beginning to come alive again after the mid-day shutdown. There’s a lot of graffiti here Rebecca said as we entered the ground level hallway and headed up the two flights to the apartment. The door shut behind us and the world outside disappeared in favor of the building’s interior and Nick, Domo and Sal waiting at the top of the stairs.

This is nice she said as she toured the place. It was a long narrow flat with two large bedrooms side by side at the front of the building, a large living/dining room in the middle with kitchen and two bathrooms at the other end. The larger of the two bathrooms had French doors that led to a small balcony where a washing machine was tucked into a corner and a clothes line extended out over a sea of other clothes lines and adjoining balconies. No architect, not even M.C. Escher could conceive of the number of angles where everything met. Hey there’s a foot washer in this bathroom said JJ. Funny that’s what Nick said when he saw his first bidet a month ago.

Earlier that day I had gone to the market to stock up a bit on food. The supermarket was a couple of blocks away and I passed it a few times not really understanding where the front door was. I finally found it and went inside which was even more illogical with a series of dead end chambers connected through skinny blind aisles and random stacks of food and supplies. Having spent the past two weeks eating healthy in Greece I proceeded to load up with a variety of fruit and vegetables. When I got to the checkout stand I received an Italian tongue lashing from the clerk who promptly sent me back to weigh each piece, bag it in plastic and put a printed sticker on the bag which identified the type of fruit or vegetable it was and the price. I checked and rechecked the Italian names of what I was buying. Since there were three different kinds of lemons and six kinds of tomatoes I continually ran back and forth to the weigh station monopolizing the area to other patron’s consternation until I miraculously got it all done. I went back to the checkout and gave the clerk a big smile and handed her my neatly bundled and labeled treasures. She laughed and said something in Italian I did not understand.

I got a watermelon and served up slices to everyone. A quick shower and change of clothes and all were refreshed and ready to strike out on the town. The three boys went their way and we adults went ours. They say all roads lead to Rome and it’s kind of like that in Trastevere. At first Rebecca was wondering how we would get in touch with the boys but after about a half an hour of running into them several times she got the picture. As night began to fall and the crowds got bigger we made our way to one of Alessio’s favorite restaurants, Augusto’s. Sal explained that you had to order each course separately and only after you had finished one course could you order the next. After a month of not speaking the language it was a relief to not have to worry about it. Sal did all the ordering in Italian and I just ate and drank and enjoyed the company of my newly reunited family.