Lombardia
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Alessandro Manzoni’s Farewell to Como
It’s no accident that Italy used to be many countries, as we discovered on a recent road trip around northern Italy. Even that subset of Italian landscapes is full of stunning contrasts. Mountains and sea and thousands of years of diverse horticulture create different environments wherever you go. The climate on the east of the Italian peninsula is drier and different to that on the west. The north is more influenced by the climate of the continent and the Alps. The south is bathed in Mediterranean waves and the Sirocco wind from the Sahara. Of course much is shared, and the swallows are certainly unfazed by such changes. For them…
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Matteo Bandello’s Forgotten Tale of the Tragic Lovers Romeo and Juliet
Sometimes, you just can’t believe what you turn up in history. If I told you a rather odd (and almost forgotten) bishop was the one who started the story of Romeo and Juliet ‘going global’, you would raise your eyebrows. But that’s what happened. His name was Matteo Bandello, and he wrote Romeo and Juliet before Shakespeare. In fact, he wrote hundreds of stories. And translated into French, English and Spanish, his stories made their way around Europe in his own lifetime. In England and Spain, his stories were adapted for the stage. Shakespeare loved Matteo Bandello’s stories so much, that he made four of them into plays. How did…
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It’s funny, but Shakespeare is teaching me Italian stories
It’s curious to find the heart of Italy in the soul of England, but so it is. For Shakespeare put it there. For years now, I’ve been hunting down Italian stories, and the last thing I expected was that Shakespeare would give me the breakthrough I was looking for. The most desperate loves, the vilest deceptions, the most delightful cross-dressing dalliances and the bitterest revenge. Shakespeare found them in Italian novellas and adapted them to the London stage. I have to admit, although the journey has been fun, it’s not so easy to plunge into the ocean of Italian literature, not knowing where it might take you or in which…
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Alessandro Manzoni and the Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi)
Alessandro Manzoni is a talented story teller and a perceptive observer of character. His novel, the Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) has been celebrated as a gem of Italian literature ever since its publication. It is readily available as a physical, ebook or audiobook (see below) and several movie and serial versions have been made. The novel’s main characters, Renzo and Lucia are in love and they are to be married. Yet achieving this happy and unexceptional outcome turns out to be far from easy in Lombardy of the 1600s in which the historical novel is set. Manzoni wrote his book in the early 1800s, two hundred years later, so we see a more…
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Who Am I to Speak to You of Italy?
Who am I to speak to you of Italy? Who, for more than 50 years have lived in silence, far beyond her shores. Yet, such words do not belong to me alone. “Italian Americans are invisible people.” Fred Gardaphé writes, “Not because people refuse to see them, but because, for the most part, they refuse to be seen.” Even here, across an ocean, truth resonates in his words. And as he knows, being forgotten has a price. A price paid with the coins of self-forgetting. “I am Italian.” “I am Australian,”, here statements irredeemably, eternally both true and false. Words which mock reason and defy solution. Yet in their mischievous…
