The Smiling Eggplant

100 best (?) Italian records

2012-01-31T17:12:00.002-05:00

OK, so for its 100th issue celebration, the Italian version of Rolling Stone decided to publish a list of the 100 top Italian pop/rock records (albums, not songs). I must admit that I was living in the most shameful ignorance of the existence of Italian Rolling Stone. I haven't paid that much attention to the American version, either, for ages.

Nobody really believes in these classifications but everyone loves to take a peek, maybe just to express their righteous indignation at the outrageous unfairness and lack of taste. Well the number one choice here is a 1983 album by ever-popular Vasco Rossi, featuring the highly popular song above, called Bollicine (tiny bubbles). The song is ostensibly in praise of Coca-Cola, but everyone has always known that it was about the other coke. In other words, a song about the joys of taking drugs, and in fact Vasco sounds like a stoner while he's singing it. Catchy, but no masterpiece. I would have put Lucio Battisti first (up from third place).

No, I don't think this is the best Italian album, and most Italians won't either. For the complete list, see the original article here. A good way to familiarize yourself with Italian popular music if you don't know where to start.

Comparative meatloafology

2012-01-29T09:54:00.009-05:00

Yesterday I made meatloaf, something I don't do that often, not being a big meat eater. I ended up with a dish that was part American, part Italian, just like me.

First of all, in Italian meatloaf is amusingly called polpettone; literally, big meatball, which, if you think about it, is what it is. Italians do not eat meatloaf as much as Americans, but it is standard fare and part of their cuisine, being included in Artusi's famous 19th century compendium, where he encourages the humble meatloaf to enter his book and take its rightful place. I guess if you were called "big meatball" you'd have some self-esteem issues, too.

Differences in the Italian meatloaf (although there are all sorts of variations, of course). Italians tend not to bake it in an oven dish, but just give it a cylinder shape and put it on a flat cooking surface. Surprisingly (as with the original Artusi recipe), some people make it on the stovetop instead of the oven. Others fry it on the stovetop and then put it in the oven; most nowadays go the oven-only route. Very commonly parsley and especially grated Parmesan are added (I added Parmesan yesterday, would recommend). One or more eggs are always included. Italians tend to put bread soaked in liquid (milk or water, I used milk) instead of breadcrumbs. Needless to say, they don't top it off with ketchup, in fact they usually leave it bare. I don't like this, so I made a glaze of tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce and honey.

They rarely if ever use beef only, but a mixture of beef, pork and maybe veal (I used all three). They don't use onions and/or garlic as much you'd think, although the Artusi recipe calls for both. Some use lemon zest or juice in the mixture, some white wine (or they baste with wine). Some use nutmeg (I did). Finally, they will often make polpettone ripieno or farcito, or stuffed meatloaf. I've never had this, and I'm not sure I'd like to make it. They stuff with ham, cheese, spinach and other such stuff. In the photo, you see the making of a stuffed meatloaf with ham, cheese and artichokes.

For an easy English-language version for Italian stovetop meatloaf, see this recipe from the site Cooking with Patty. And here is another English-language recipe for real Italian meatloaf, with rosemary (yum), from the Italian Food About site.

Word of the week- vigliacco

2012-01-25T21:07:00.002-05:00

Our word of the week is vigliacco, "coward." The common adjective is vile ("cowardly," not "vile"- it's a false friend)(although cowards are vile). The abstract noun is vilta' ("cowardice") and a single act of cowardice is a vigliaccata.

A synonym, somewhat less common, is codardo. The abstract noun is codardia.

If you want to insult someone, vigliacco is better, as it has that nice, hard -acc sound that sounds like a reproof in itself.

Vada a bordo, cazzo!

2012-01-20T13:08:00.004-05:00

Let's close out this week dominated by the sordid story of the sinking of the Concordia, off the coast of Tuscany, by examining what has become the meme of the moment.

When Captain Schettino, now highly unpopular world-wide, was communicating with coast guard Capt. De Falco on the mainland, he whined from his lifeboat (into which he says he fell by accident) that he couldn't go back to the ship because it was dark. He continued to make excuses in a pitiful tone until De Falco gave voice to the following immortal phrase: "Vada a bordo, cazzo!" Get on board, goddamn it!

This has evidently struck a nerve at the international level with everyone who has lost patience and is exasperated (most of us.) Something like "I'm sick and tired and I'm not going to take it anymore" from the movie Network, back in the day.

But let us examine the phrase linguistically. It starts with the command vada, the third person singular imperative of andare: "Go!". However, he uses the formal lei, which shows that the use of this pronoun is not just a sign of respect or courtesy, but can also be used for social distancing. Now for the interesting part, cazzo. This actually refers colloquially to the male organ (equivalent to "cock," "prick," "dick"), but is used all over the place in informal Italian to express your displeasure. For an exhaustive treatment of this very useful word, let me refer you to a post I wrote a few years back, which you can find here.

Shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany (with updates)

2012-01-16T09:16:00.008-05:00

By now most of you have heard of the cruise ship that sunk near the island of Giglio (means "lily") off the coast of southern Tuscany. Three are reported dead with at least fifteen still missing. The wreck was caused by foundering on rocks which created a large gash in the hull.

The latest from Italian reports is that the Captain, one Schettino, jumped ship before all passengers were accounted for. He is now in custody. The company maintains that the route of the cruise ship was already electronically set, but that Schettino decided to deviate from it, getting as near as 150 meters to the shore. The reason for this is apparently that he wished to render a "salute" (inchino, or bow) to the island in honor of people associated with the ship who are from the island. This occurs when a ship approaches very near to a locale as an acknowledgement or sign of respect to a native. Named were a former captain, who maintains that he was on the mainland at the time and knew nothing about it, and (more likely) the maitre d' of the ship, Antonello Tievoli, who was in fact on board. His sister on the island, Patrizia, notified people via Facebook that soon the Concordia (ship's name) would be coming "very close" (vicina vicina) to Giglio and sent a "big hi" to her brother. This would seem to imply that the deviation was premeditated and that Antonello Tievoli or others in the crew knew about it and informed the sister beforehand.

It is often said that the sea is dangerous and unfathomable. But it's nothing compared to human nature.

Update, January 17th- here is a reconstruction of what happened the night of the shipwreck, according to Italian sources. The mayday message was not given even after the ship hit the rock, the passengers were told that it was a technical problem and not an emergency. The situation was revealed when a woman on board from Prato, near Florence, called her mother in a panic. The mother called the Carabinieri, who contacted the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard ascertained the position of the ship by satellite and got in touch with the captain, Schettino, who admitted that he had abandoned the ship. The coast guard officer assumes command and orders Schettino back to the ship, telling him that there are already cadaveri. Schettino hesitates and the officer in Livorno yells at him to go back immediately.

Update, January 18- As of yesterday, Captain Schettino is no longer in jail but under house arrest at his home near Sorrento. The prosecutor, who has called Schettino a scellerato (basically, a son of a bitch or bastard, to speak colloquially), is now feuding with the judge who allowed the house arrest. Ah, Italy. How I don't miss you in moments like this.

Renzo Piano and the Gardner Museum

2012-01-14T12:21:00.008-05:00

Italians don't always do it better.

Renzo Piano is a world-famous and hyper-successful architect from Genoa. He is perhaps best known (along with Richard Rogers) for the Beaubourg building in Paris. When I was there in 1990, I asked a Frenchman where it was. With a twinkle in his eye, he pointed and answered: "C'est cette grande usine la'." It's that big factory there. 'nuff said.

Fast forward three and a half decades from the construction of the factory in Paris in 1977.

Renzo Piano completes the addition to Boston's distinguished Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, to the tune of 118 million smackeroonies. This project was approved under director Anne Hawley, under whose watch (so to speak) a Vermeer, a Rembrandt and other irreplaceable stuff disappeared from the Gardner. If you only realized how much I love Dutch art and Vermeer in particular, you would understand that I already resent this Hawley person. It wasn't the best Vermeer, but still.

So they approved Renzo's project, which will basically house functions and objects not originally part of Isabella's home museum. It is indeed a home museum, like Milan's Poldi Pezzoli (which partly inspired Gardner). What we have now in the new wing is a glass box that could be anywhere (just like a mall or a chain store). In the process, they tore down Gardner's original carriage house and greenhouse.

The Italian daily La Repubblica rather triumphantly reported this in a fatuous article/interview called "I'm bringing Italy to Boston." Give me a break. The Italian presence has already been strong in Boston for a century, and American Isabella Stewart Gardner did infinitely more to enhance this presence than Renzo Piano ever could.

The glass box opens to the public on January 19th.

(In the photo- a new university library in the Midwest? A neuroscience research center in Holland? An office building in Abu Dhabi? No, it's Italy in Boston.)

What is pasticcio?

2012-01-12T09:22:00.007-05:00

If you live in the US, this is probably not what you think. The Greeks have a well-loved dish called pasticcio/pastitsio (baked pasta with meat and sauce), but this derives from the Italian pasticcio, which literally means "mess," due to the fact that the ingredients are not separate as they usually are on your plate e.g., meat and sides, but are all mixed together.

In Italy, there is some regional confusion between terms. Lasagna is the word from around the Bologna area, and is the lasagna we know and love. But for some in Italy (for example, in the South), lasagna is any pasta al forno, baked pasta, not necessarily with the broad lasagna sheets. In the Veneto, lasagna is usually called pasticcio, and does not normally include tomato sauce or beef. It does have a topping of besciamella (bechamel sauce), like the Greek pastitsio. The Veneto pasticcio is often made with seasonal ingredients such as mushrooms, asparagus or radicchio. In all probability, the Greek dish derived from the Veneto dish, as the old Republic of Venice was present in Greek territories. Ironically though, the Italian word "lasagna" derives from a Greek word (via Latin).

Below we see a cook with the unlikely name of Mimmo Corcione (sounds very Neapolitan) making a typical Veneto pasticcio with sausage and radicchio. If you're already proficient at classic lasagna, you probably won't have too much trouble reproducing this, even if you don't know Italian. For those of you who do know Italian, he speaks fairly slowly and clearly. You will note that although he uses lasagna sheets that don't require pre-cooking, he does boil them beforehand. The bechamel is a requirement, and should be made with nutmeg as he does in the video. He also uses radicchio tardivo di Treviso, which I have (unfortunately) never seen in America. You can substitute the more common round radicchio you see in the markets.

Here is a list of the ingredients he uses: butter, milk, nutmeg, flour, salt (for bechamel); extra-virgin olive oil, additional butter, dry white wine, sausage, radicchio, onion, parmigiano, lasagna sheets, white pepper, breadcrumbs.

Alessandro Marcello, Oboe concerto in D minor

2012-01-10T12:50:00.010-05:00

Let me start off by saying that I am no expert in classical music, but when something strikes my fancy, I have a proper appreciation for it. The oboe concerto in D minor by Alessandro Marcello is such a case. Let us take a look, or rather a hear, at this sublime work by a musical dilettante from Venice.

Not being knowledgeable about classical music, I first discovered this in a film from 1970, called Anonimo veneziano. The excellent screenplay was in turn based on a novel by the interesting author Giuseppe Berto.

In the movie, American actor Tony Musante plays a dying musician in Venice who is momentarily reunited with his estranged wife, played by the lovely Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan. The final scene has said musician recording the concerto in what seems to be a deconsecrated church. It is the last time they will ever see each other.

The name of the movie is Anonimo veneziano, due to the fact that works of art that are difficult to attribute are often given a generic name such as this. Of course the name also applies poignantly to the musician in the movie who has not lived up to to his potential. Which is a condition true of most of us.

Alessandro Marcello was indeed a gifted amateur and polymath, a Venetian aristocrat whose brother Benedetto was also a composer. His talent was confirmed by the transcription of the concerto for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Both the concerto and the film are highly recommended, but the film will be hard to come by.

Save on travel

2012-01-04T20:34:00.004-05:00

Hoping to go to Italy this year?

The New York Times published a list of 19 websites today to help you plan your travel and save while you're at it. Check it out here.

Buon Anno!

2011-12-31T08:07:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year to all!

For the sake of auld lang syne, I'm reprinting a rather popular post from the Eggplant's first year, 2007, on what Italians do for the holiday. When I first wrote the post I said that the lentils should preferably represent euros, due to their relative strength four years ago ... now we're not even sure the euro will survive.

New Year's in Italian is Capodanno, and one wishes a Happy New Year by saying Felice Capodanno (especially if it follows Buon Natale), or Buon Anno (more common if alone, that is, after Christmas). December 31st, New Year's Eve, is referred to as San Silvestro. Of course, there are the usual fireworks, and some regional habits, such as throwing everything old out the window. The Neapolitans are especially fond of this, and specialize in getting rid of objects that make a lot of noise when they land, such as plates and glasses. Games may be played, such as tombola (TOME-boh-la) i.e. bingo.

But as you might imagine, food and drink are the main attraction. Sparkling wine is drunk, either (ahem) Champagne, Asti or Prosecco. They may have a cenone, literally, a big dinner, or just appetizers with drinks.

The most entrenched tradition calls for eating lentils with one of two porky products known as cotechino and zampone. The latter are the product of a desperate siege of Mirandola near Modena in the Renaissance, and if you ask me, it shows. Why else would anyone eat dubious porcine matter in pigskin (cotica) or even worse, the skin from the pig's trotter (zampa, so that zampone is literally big paw)? One way of looking at it is if you start the New Year by eating a big pig paw it can only get better thereafter. The traditional accompaniment, aside from the lentils (which symbolize coins, preferably Euros, and thus prosperity), is mashed potatoes. The sliced piggy parts are often placed on a platter and arranged artistically with the potatoes surrounding it.

Frammartino, Le quattro volte

2011-12-26T14:20:00.004-05:00

I first noticed this was available a few weeks ago on Netflix streaming, but it did not immediately appeal to me. But yesterday it was named by both Boston Globe movie critics as one of the 10 best movies of the year, so I decided to watch. And in fact I watched it twice.

Director Frammartino is based in Milan but is originally from Calabria (the "toe" of Italy). And the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras also lived in Calabria, where he started a religious sect that believed in reincarnation, among other things. And this seems to have been the inspiration for the director (who also wrote the "script"- the movie has no dialogue, or soundtrack).

What happens in this unique film is that we start with an old goatherd who dies and comes back as a kid (in the photo), who then also dies under an evergreen tree; the tree is then chopped down and eventually the wood is turned into coal. The goatherd, the kid, the tree and the coal are the four times (le quattro volte). Further, the movie started with the superstitious old man mixing the sweepings from the church (presumably from burning coal from heating) into a drink for his ailing health, and the movie ends with the coal being sold for fuel in the goatherd's small town, with a final view of the smoke escaping the chimneys.

An extra is the location in Calabria, an area little-known by tourists. The stark and rather forbidding scenery emphasizes the timelessness of the story and the difficulty of the generations who survived such conditions. Religion, from Pythagoras's beliefs to Christianity, with a good amount of paganism thrown in, is central to the work. Of particular symbolic importance are wood and wood crosses or cross-like structures.

The movie has received well-deserved praise, from The New York Times to The Guardian, and elsewhere. While not a masterpiece in my opinion, it bodes very well for the future of director Frammartino, who is only on his second film. Highly recommended.

Giorgio Bocca has died

2011-12-25T16:09:00.005-05:00

I'm coming out of my holiday hibernation for a good reason. Right after finishing the movie Le quattro volte (which I'll be reviewing shortly) on Netflix, I sauntered over to the site of La Repubblica to see what, if anything, was going on in the world this boring Christmas day (Christmas on a Sunday, the double whammy). To my surprise I found the large headlines announcing the death of writer and journalist Giorgio Bocca.

It shouldn't have been a surprise as Bocca was 91. But he was one of those people who you don't think of as dying, due to their enduring vitality, lucidity and youthfulness. I've read a lot of his work, and it has influenced me greatly in my perception of contemporary Italy.

Bocca was from a small town in Northern Italy and identified strongly with his origins all his life, being among other things critical (in a politically incorrect way) of Southern Italy and of all the stereotypical faults of Italians, to the point of calling himself "l'anti-italiano." He had a special distaste for all Mafias, and for fascism. In his long and prolific career, he addressed practically everything you can imagine about politics, trends and events in post-war Italy (he was in the Resistance during WWII).

Little is available in English from his vast production, but if you read Italian you will find that he has a direct and engaging style, and is not difficult. You can begin by looking up his byline online, and choose from one of the many topics he pursued. Here is a good selection to start you off. From there, you can perhaps explore one or more of his books. Not to be missed if you have an interest in the real and not just the tourist Italy.

Buon Natale e Felice Capodanno a tutti!

2011-12-20T08:50:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

See you in 2012!

Best pandoro

2011-12-14T12:27:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I presented the results of best panettone from two Italian publications, and found that the Tre Marie cake was the winner.

But as I also stated at the end, I actually prefer pandoro, a similar baked product, but with a softer, more compact interior, and no dried fruit and stuff. The pandoro may have a filling.

Results as given in today's La Repubblica (taken from the consumer publication Il Salvagente) inform us that Tre Marie was also the best pandoro. The complete results are in this table. Again, I've never tried the Tre Marie brand, but I have had Bauli more than once, and thought it was good. Bauli (BOW-lee) will be a lot easier for you to find than Tre Marie.

Due to the relative plainness of pandoro, it is sometimes served with a light sauce, based on cream, zabaione or mascarpone.

So Tre Marie takes the cake. Actually, it takes two cakes, panettone and pandoro.

Other Italian baked products associated with the season are panforte and panpepato, vaguely similar to fruitcake. Many are not enthusiastic about these, but I rather like them. Not for the uninitiated, more of an acquired taste.

Best panettone

2011-12-13T18:35:00.004-05:00

I went looking online and found two Italian consumer publications from recent years that review panettone. Both came up with the Tre Marie brand as their number one choice.

The first source, Altroconsumo, stated in 2010 that only Tre Marie (as an industrial and not artisanal product), measured up to their exacting criteria, all the others failed. In 2009, another publication, Il Salvagente, also gave Tre Marie a number one ranking, but also gave high marks to Motta, the most famous brand.

I can't personally substantiate these results, as I've never had the brand. Actually I prefer pandoro.

Jus soli, jus sanguinis

2011-12-08T09:14:00.008-05:00

What are these Latin words doing on my Italian blog? OK, the Italians are the descendants of the ancient Romans, but they're not really ancient Romans (no matter what some of them may think). But like us, they evidently got much of their judicial infrastructure from the Romans.

These ancient words are actually quite topical, both in Italy and the US. What they refer to is no less than the basis of someone's national identity. Jus soli is literally the law of the soil: the basis of citizenship is the land, that is, where one was born, for whatever reason. With jus sanguinis (literally, law of blood), citizenship is determined by "blood," that is, ethnicity or kinship.

For obvious reasons, the US, which started as a new country with a heterogeneous population, adopted the law of the soil, so that you are an American if you were born here, even if your mom got here the day before. Italy, which is an old country with a homogeneous population, uses the law of blood, so that you are Italian if you are ethnically Italian. I, for example, although born in the US from an American father, am eligible for Italian citizenship because I have two Italian grandparents and my Italian-citizen mother was a citizen when I was born. Italians do in fact consider me Italian, and merely specify that I was born in America, as if it were some sort of accident (or misadventure).

These are over-simplifications, of course. But it should come as no surprise that our rapidly (too rapidly) globalizing world is making these categories hard to sustain. At this time in history, many Americans are questioning the law of the soil because of abuses by immigrants (often illegal) who seek a foothold here by having children. Some are seeking repeal of the birthright clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ironically, some Italians are now questioning the law of blood, due to the high numbers of assimilated immigrants (many of them of color and many of them born in Italy). Widely-respected President Giorgio Napolitano has recently called for a repeal of the law of blood.

These seem to be theoretical, legalistic matters, but they are of practical importance to millions throughout the world, and may well define the nature of our world in the decades to come. A human face can be put on the question by the story of superstar soccer player Mario Balotelli, a (very) black young man born in Italy to Ghanaian parents, and later taken into foster care by Italians. He is now a citizen. The 21-year-old has confronted considerable anguish in his short career by Italians harassing him at the stadium and online with racists taunts and asserting that you can't be black and Italian. He now plays in England.

Above you see a video put out by ARCI, a left-leaning organization that supports Napolitano's position on birthright citizenship in Italy. It provides a timeline of the life of young Davide, born in Italy and doing all the Italian stuff, liking riding a Vespa as a teen. It then shows that when he comes of age he is brutally informed that he is not Italian and he has 12 months to show that he is.

Accuracy and fluency in language learning

2011-12-07T13:59:00.003-05:00

Listen up, students of Italian, this is important.

You often hear that so-and-so is "fluent" in one or more foreign languages, as if this were the hallmark of language acquisition. Well... it isn't, necessarily. Fluency involves fairly rapid and unbroken delivery of speech. This doesn't always imply that the language delivered is grammatical, with a well-developed vocabulary, or even comprehensible in terms of pronunciation.

Accuracy and fluency tend to have an inverse relation in language delivery (when one goes up, the other goes down). It is not hard to see why: if you are not self-monitoring and hesitating to find the right word or correct syntax, you can speak much more quickly. The ideal of course is to have both accuracy and fluency, but this is achieved (when it is achieved) at a late stage.

In my experience, there are various factors that determine whether accuracy or fluency will prevail at a given time with a given speaker. One of these is personality (those who are shy will be more accurate), another is gender (men often are fluent to the detriment of accuracy), and also life experience (those who must speak for practical purposes are more fluent and less accurate, those whose knowledge was acquired academically are more accurate).

Language learners should strive for both, although accuracy should prevail in the early stages- if one gets used to mistakes in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, they will be harder to eliminate later. Once a solid basis has been attained (intermediate, upper-intermediate level), one should focus on fluency.

Hitler tries to become Italian

2011-12-05T11:06:00.003-05:00

Not many know this, but at a certain point, under the influence of his BFF Benito Mussolini, Hitler wanted to become Italian. He considered the various typical occupations for an Italian: pizzamaker, mafioso, Renaissance man, fashion designer, saint... He finally settled on opera singer.

Alas, as you can tell from the video, his artistic endeavors in music met with the same degree of success as his attempts as a painter.

It's official: Italy is corrupt

2011-12-01T07:58:00.002-05:00

Transparency International has been compiling statistics on countries' corruption for years now, and for years Italy has made a figuraccia (a terrible showing). 2011 is no exception.

Although one may be skeptical of these organizations, their agenda, and the resulting data, Italy's abysmal rating is fully consistent with what I observed first-hand in twenty years in Italy. Which is why I no longer live there, nor would I return.

The countries that do best, as usual, are the Scandinavian countries. My own country, the United States, does much better than Italy, but not as well as one might expect, and this is also in line with my experience.

See the classification for yourself here.

Italian malls- centri commerciali

2011-11-29T13:25:00.004-05:00

Quick- where is the above located? Amsterdam, Singapore, Omaha? No, Italy.

Why weren't you able to tell where it is? Easy, it's a mall. And they're all alike. And that ain't good.

Yes, the so-called holiday season is upon us. We've just been through Black Friday (for non-Americans, the day after Thanksgiving) and Cyber Monday, both dedicated to the noble art of shopping and over-consumption. As if we didn't over-eat and over-buy all year long, we have to top it off toward the end of the year.

I was still living in Italy when they started to have malls, called centri commerciali, twenty years ago. They used to be a rarity, but now they're all over the place. In examining this phenomenon in Italy, I turned to the Internet and forums where Italians speak their mind. More than one person expressed the sentiment (?) that the mall was a good place to go on Sunday when you didn't know what else to do.

Can you imagine living in Italy and not knowing what to do on your day off? You must be an idiot.

Well, that's enough for my holiday rant. Italian malls- what an idea.

Mina, Se telefonando

2011-11-27T17:33:00.007-05:00

Don't know Mina? You're in for a treat. Reportedly, Louis Armstrong said she was the greatest white female singer, and I don't want to argue with Louis, where music is concerned. And she was certainly easy on the eyes. Mina is surely the most popular woman singer in Italy of the last half century, and she continues to be active. The music is by none other than the renowned Ennio Morricone.

For those of you who are studying Italian, this will also be a work-out. You have the gerund (or -ing form) and hypothetical ("if" sentences) of the second type.

Italian expression of the week- mare e monti

2011-11-19T13:12:00.003-05:00

The recent appointment of Mario Monti as Italian prime minister has already given rise to a slew of puns and other word-play on his name (which means "mountains," and in fact he is from Varese near the Alps.) An obvious one I've already seen a few times is "the Full Monti." I'm sure there will be others.

But let's look at the expression mare e monti: sea and mountains. It's easy to see why such an expression would be common in Italy, whose geography is dominated by highlands and the sea, sometimes in close proximity (as in the coast of Tuscany). Historically, Italians have taken their vacations at the seaside (most of them) or the mountains/hills, to get away from the heat. They still tend to do this, even with the advent of air-conditioning, of which they are rather afraid. Yes, Italians still mistrust air-conditioning, fans (especially at night, blowing on you when you sleep), open windows and drafts (even in August), and ice in their drinks.

Last but certainly not least is the gastronomic term mare e monti to indicate a dish which includes ingredients from the sea and from mountains or hills. These are sometimes dishes that feature meat and fish (like our "surf and turf" in the US), or they include seafood and say, mushrooms or even truffles (yum). I personally am partial to the shrimp and mushroom combination, as seen in the photo.

Mario Monti is in

2011-11-13T15:10:00.004-05:00

Mario Monti has been appointed as the new Italian prime minister. I have great respect for Professor Monti and think that if he is allowed to do his job without the usual political encumbrances, we can expect important improvements from his leadership. But we can't expect him to muovere mare e monti (to move the earth and sky- literally, to move the sea and mountains). Maybe just the monti.

Berlusconi has resigned!

2011-11-12T15:51:00.001-05:00

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Word of the week- lo spread

2011-11-09T21:00:00.003-05:00

Some of you may have been following the (not very good news) in the Italian media. Of course we know they like to use English words. So what is this spread they're talking about with alarming frequency?

I'm glad you asked. The financial term "yield spread" refers to the difference in rates of return between investments. In this case, it is the difference between the yield of Italian government bonds (buoni del Tesoro or BTP) and the corresponding German bonds as measured in points. This is an indication of the relative strengths of the respective economies. Today the spread was at 553 according to Repubblica and 575 according to Corriere, both record highs.

As of this writing, Berlusconi is on his way out and well-respected economist Mario Monti may be in. You will be pleased to know that Monti is about as far from Berlusconi as one human being can possibly be from another. There is a considerable spread, not to say abyss, between the two men.

Saint Martin's summer

2011-11-08T15:13:00.004-05:00

Who is this Saint Martin and what does he have to do with summer in autumn?

Well. I'll tell ya. For some Europeans, including Italians, November 11th, which is upcoming, is also supposed to be in the midst of a period of time characterized by mild, beautiful weather. A sort of reprieve from the awful meteorolological events just around the corner.

In the Unites States we call this "Indian summer." Some furriners (for example, the English) have adopted this term despite the absence of Indians (American Indians, not Indians from India) on their territory.

So why Saint Martin? November 11th is the name day of Martin (in Italian, onomastico).

Whatever you call it, here or in Europe, I am thoroughly enjoying this wonderful respite from the usual New England weather.

Word(s) of the week- il pesce, la pesca

2011-11-02T13:12:00.004-04:00

Confusing words, both food-related.

La pesca (see left), is a peach, that is the fruit. Il pesce (masculine noun) is fish. To further confuse matters, the noun la pesca can also refer to fishing. And il pesco is the peach tree. Got that?

Let's see some examples.

Mi piacciono le pesche.

I like peaches.

Mi piace la pesca.

I like fishing.

Che bella pesca!

What a beautiful peach!

Andiamo a mangiare il pesce.

We're going to eat/let's go eat some fish.

Adoro il pesce.

I love fish.

Adoro le pesche.

I love peaches.

Che belli i peschi in fiore!

Blossoming peach trees are so beautiful!

Scary Italians for Halloween

2011-10-31T16:07:00.003-04:00

I know, lots of Italians are scary- but this time I mean those who are intentionally scary. Namely, the masters of Italian horror films. Italians have a thing for horror- for example, like the French, they are great admirers of Edgar Allan Poe.

Celebrate Halloween (which has been "observed" in Italy for about ten years now) by checking out these cult favorites. Here are the names of the most famous directors of Italian horror movies: Dario Argento, Riccardo Freda (who once visited my home in Padova with his large dog), Mario Bava, Lamberto Bava (his son), Lucio Fulci, and others. Find out more here.

Many of these can be found on Netflix streaming, if you look carefully enough.

(in the photo, scary-looking Dario Argento)

Flooding in Cinque Terre

2011-10-28T12:58:00.003-04:00

The Cinque Terre is an area of Italy in Liguria (in the North West), along the sea. It literally means "five lands" and is comprised of the lovely villages of Vernazza (in the photo), Monterosso, Manarola, Corniglia and Riomaggiore.

This week's flooding in Italy has hit the area particularly hard. For more info, see this article in The Guardian.

Word of the week- miliardo

2011-10-28T12:20:00.004-04:00

They (it's always "they") inform us that by the end of the month the earth's population will reach seven billion. If you want to bandy about this alarming fact in Italian, you will use the word miliardo.

"Billion" means a thousand million. Incredibly, it wasn't too long ago that the British used "thousand million" for "billion," and used "billion" for our "trillion." They eventually awoke to the folly of their ways, and adopted what is called the short scale. People don't even understand these quantities when they are consistent, and having two confusing systems for them might possibly lead to millions, or billions, or even trillions of mental breakdowns worldwide.

Until the recent adoption of the euro in Italy, the word "millionaire" was translated by the word miliardario, due to the strong inflation of the lira. It is now back to milionario, as it was in Italy many decades ago.

Leone, Once upon a time in the West

2011-10-25T21:00:00.005-04:00

This was a great disappointment. Considered by some to be one of the best movies of all time and the best Western, I consider it neither. Mind you, it has very high ratings on all sorts of sites, a cult following and it has influenced a number of filmmakers.

Looking for a clip to feature on this post, I became bored all over again when I started to watch the above, a part of the opening sequence. I loved Leone's Dollars trilogy, especially The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and I love Westerns, but I didn't like this at all.

Too long. Over two and a half hours. Too slow. Too confused. Did not care about characters. Plot not compelling. Excessive and gratuitous violence.

Strange that a movie with so much talent (and so much money from Paramount), with the direction of Sergio Leone, story by Leone, Bertolucci and Dario Argento, cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli, and major actors such as Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson and Claudia Cardinale, did nothing for me. I didn't even particularly like the score by Morricone. Anyone who has seen High Noon or Shane and then says this is the best Western ever makes no sense at all.

But check it out for yourself; it is now available on streaming through Netflix.

Nannini, Bello e impossibile

2011-10-21T09:18:00.003-04:00

To celebrate the untimely (in the sense that it was long overdue) departure of Qaddafi, here is a 1986 song from Gianna Nannini, apparently inspired by none other than the late colonel.

It's been a long time since Qaddafi was bello (handsome) and as of yesterday, he will no longer be impossible, either.

The irrepressible Gianna, who is a lesbian, recently gave birth to her first child, Penelope, at the tender age of 54. She is part of the Nannini family of Siena, famous for their wonderful pastries. Gianna started working as a teen in dad's business, but lost two fingers while operating a machine. This certainly put her off from continuing in the family line, and she made an abrupt career change.

Andrea Zanzotto has died

2011-10-18T09:21:00.004-04:00

Andrea Zanzotto, widely considered one of the major contemporary poets, has died shortly after his ninetieth birthday. He was a Veneto boy from Treviso, not far from Venice.

Here is a selection of his poetry (in Italian and dialect).

"Nero is here, Rome is burning"

2011-10-16T13:18:00.002-04:00

"Nero is here, Rome is burning." This is one of the graffiti on the walls of Rome after yesterday's demonstrations/riots. Unlike other October 15 Occupy Wall Street events, Rome's turned very ugly, as can be seen in the video from La Repubblica. There was apparently an infiltration by the radical and violent "black bloc," who quickly attacked storefronts (mostly of banks) and set fire to cars and even one Carabinieri van (with a Carabiniere inside, who managed to get out.)

There is an awful lot of discontent in Italy, much of it justified. It remains to be seen where this new movement will go, or if it will just be the latest in a series to show that in Italy (in the words of Tomasi di Lampedusa) "everything must change so that everything stays the same."

Urbani white truffle and porcini sauce

2011-10-15T14:30:00.004-04:00

Who can resist truffles and/or porcini mushrooms? Not me.

So today, being in the mood for self-indulgence, I acquired this small (6.1 ounces) can of white truffle and porcini cream sauce. It didn't come cheap, of course; it set me back thirteen dollars.

But it was delicious right out of the can onto the pasta (Delverde tagliatelle), with a bit of extra salt and freshly-ground black pepper. The can is enough for two medium-small portions of pasta. It can also be used on bread, crostini and according to the producer itself, with meat or fish. But I would limit myself to the first two options.

Urbani is a well-established company based in Umbria, but has had a presence in New York for over a year now. Their site is here.

Word of the week- kebabbaro

2011-10-10T12:59:00.003-04:00

Italians undeniably have one of the best cuisines of the world, so it took them a long time to warm up to non-Italian foods. Among the very first instances of a foreign culinary presence were Chinese restaurants, and I can remember back in the day (the 80's) when even Chinese food was hard to come by in Italy. Back in the day, it was hard even to get a decent hamburger.

No more. Along with the teeming hordes of immigrants, Italy now has a variety of ethnic offerings. Not so much as in the US or some European countries, but an interesting diversity. So much so that kebabbaro has entered into common parlance, for a place/person selling kebabs and other Middle Eastern goodies.

From time to time, some Italian local government forbids ethnic eateries within the city limits, as Forte dei Marmi in Tuscany did recently, with the justification that these businesses have nothing to do with the local culture. Hmmm- what if the whole world outside Italy forbade pizza and spaghetti? Quandaries of the multicultural society.

(in the photo, the Ali Baba' kebab shop in Rome)

Yelp now has an Italian version

2011-10-05T07:11:00.005-04:00

In case you haven't been paying attention, Yelp is an online service which publishes ratings and reviews about businesses, and sometimes other entities, produced by real people who have used or experienced what they're writing about. It is having great success and I often consult it.

So now, following the lead of other foreign countries such as Germany and Britain, Italy has just brought out its own version, Yelp.it. For now it only features reviews in Rome and Milan, but the listings are already there for other cities (without reviews as yet).

It's in Italian only. As it's written by Italians or at least people who have visited and know Italian, it potentially represents an interesting and valuable resource for travelers. Check it out.

Sylvester and Tweety go to Venice

2011-10-04T07:18:00.002-04:00

And now for something frivolous.

Everyone aspires to go to Venice at least once, and that includes birds and cats. Here we have world-famous Tweety bird and his enemy, Sylvester the cat, in that beautiful city.

Of course the Italians know all about our popular American culture, and that includes adorable Tweety and his wannabe nemesis. They call them Titti (don't snicker) and Silvestro.

Here we have the immortal pair in Venice. Tweety is his American self (with Granny, of course), but Sylvester is Italian. In the upper video, the original, you see Tweety singing Santa Lucia in a competent way (birds will sing). Italian Sylvester plots against him, as usual, and loses, as usual.

In the lower video, the Italian version, you see that instead of strictly translating they have re-interpreted. Italian Silvestro thinks that Tweety must be American since he is singing a Neapolitan song in Venice. He also thinks the little bird will go well with polenta, according to the local (now illegal) dish poenta e osei. Later Silvestro reluctantly admits that Venice is Italian after all, and as an Italian cat he should of course be eating spaghetti. He tries to lasso Tweety with a string of spaghetti- but of course Granny comes to the rescue.

Sooooo cute.

The imperfect in Italian

2011-10-03T07:39:00.002-04:00

It has come to my attention that many of you out there have not mastered the imperfect tense in Italian. Even some who have been studying Italian for years. Obviously I cannot allow this situation to continue.

Why all the problems? Perhaps English speakers are put off right away by the very term "imperfect." They might be distrustful: why would anyone want to mess with something that openly admits to not being perfect?

But the word "perfect" in grammar does not mean the same as in common speech ("flawless"). "Perfect" in grammar means that an action has been completed within a certain time frame. And here we have a good clue as to what the function of the imperfect is. The imperfect describes an action in the past where the action was continued or habitual, and where the emphasis is not on the specific time frame but on the fact that the action continued or was habitual. This is why phrases with "used to" or "would" to describe this sort of thing take the imperfect in Italian. Unfortunately, many sentences where you would use the simple past in English will use the imperfect in Italian.

Let's take a look at some sentences, comparing the use of the imperfect and other past tenses.

Dov'eri ieri? Ti ho chiamato tutto il giorno.

Where were you yesterday? I called you all day long.

I know, I know. Why isn't the second part in the imperfect? Because the calling all day is within the specific time frame of yesterday, whereas the person's being somewhere was indefinite. Were they gone all day? In the morning only? For six hours? Not important.

Stavamo mangiando fettuccine ai funghi quando la polizia ha fatto irruzione.

We were eating fettuccini with mushrooms when the police raided us.

Here is a common use of the imperfect: two actions happening at about the same time, with one happening for an indefinite amount of time (imperfect) when another action, at a definite time (passato prossimo here) occurs. Mentre (while) is often used in the clause with the imperfect.

Here's another example of this:

Mentre leggevo The Smiling Eggplant mi e' esploso il computer.

While I was reading The Smiling Eggplant my computer blew up.

Another case:

Aveva dodici anni quando divenne apprendista di Bellini.

He was twelve when he became Bellini's apprentice.

Here the first phrase uses the imperfect because it speaks of any time during the year the person was twelve. When it was isn't important, the fact that he was a twelve-year-old is important. The other verb is a passato remoto.

Stavo male domenica.

I didn't feel good Sunday.

Yes, this is a specific time frame, but the emphasis is on the continuing state of feeling bad and not so much on the Sunday part.

A very common usage:

Quando vivevo a New York uscivo spesso.

When I lived in New York I went out a lot.

Notice that "used to" is implicit here ("when I used to live in New York I used to go out a lot".)

When "used to" and "would" are used in English to express habits or repeated actions, use the imperfect in Italian.

Cercava sempre di imbrogliarci.

He was always trying to/he would always try to cheat us.

Da ragazza andavo sempre a ballare.

As a girl I used to go dancing all the time.

This usage won't come easily to you right away, but notice from now on when you see or hear the imperfect how and why it is used.

Trader Joe's artichoke ravioli- review

2011-10-02T16:22:00.004-04:00

These are large, flat rectangles, closer to ravioloni (big ravioli) than regular ravioli (by the way, never say "raviolis," the word is already plural.) They're filled with an artichoke/cheese/olive mixture.

Let's cut to the chase. They were good, but not great. Not a big fat artichoke taste, which is something of a disappointment, as artichokes are my favorite veggie. The price was good, as is so often the case at Trader Joe's. I don't know where the receipt is so I can't tell you exactly how much. I think you would need a package per person if serving as a main course.

I prepared mine with butter and real parmigiano. I would avoid a richer sauce or a tomato sauce as they would overpower the flavor of the stuffing.

The package also gives intructions to stir often. Better to cover instead after they have reached a gentle boil so as not to risk breaking the shell. Drain well.

Worth a try.

Garibaldi and the American Civil War

2011-09-27T10:57:00.007-04:00

I remembered hearing somewhere that Lincoln had wanted Giuseppe Garibaldi to be a Union general, but I was rather skeptical of this whole thing and then forgot about it.

But as part of its Civil War series this year, the New York Times has an article that in fact confirms that Garibaldi was approached on the island of Caprera in the summer of 1861, after the rout of the North at the First Battle of Bull Run. He was tempted, but apparently wanted reassurance that the war was fought to liberate slaves, and that it was not "merely" a war to maintain national unification. Although he evidently thought that unification was reason enough to fight for Italy, which reached that goal precisely in 1861. Maintaining the Union was something that at best foreigners were indifferent to, and at worst hostile to, because of the implications for the balance of power worldwide- an enormous, rich, and strong country was not what they wanted (but it is what we, and they, got in the end). Lincoln may have wanted Garibaldi's participation as much as a public relations feat as a real military boost to his Army, due to the great popularity of Garibaldi.

Obviously Garibaldi did not join the Union ranks, but his vacillation points out the ambiguity in our own motivations. Was the war a war fought for power and supremacy? Did Lincoln finally sign the Emancipation Proclamation mostly as a strategic move to destabilize the South (and to get some black troops)? I tend to think that the dichotomy of "preserving the Union" and "liberating the slaves" is a false one. The country envisioned by our Founding Fathers was not one that could countenance an entire "civilization" within its borders based on grievous social injustice, backwardness, and feudal privilege. Garibaldi should have joined.

(in the photo, Garibaldi, not with a blue jacket)

Is Kobe going to Italy?

2011-09-25T10:22:00.004-04:00

Virtus Bologna has offered NBA player Kobe Bryant 6.7 million dollars to play in Italy, with the option to get out if the lockout is discontinued. Whatever a lockout is, I'm pretty sure it means they're not playing, maybe it's some sort of strike. Don't people usually strike for better conditions? What, are the NBA players playing too many minutes for too few millions?

Will he or won't he? Kobe grew up partly in Italy and is fluent in the lingo (see video), although a bit rusty. Read more about it at this Huff Post article.

Merkel gets back at Berlusconi

2011-09-25T08:55:00.007-04:00

The (unfortunately) irrepressible Silvio Berlusconi recently made a disparaging remark about the feminine charms of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. To be precise, he called her a culona inchiavabile, an unfuckable fat ass. This of course is in line with his usual refinement and tact.

In the video, we see comedian Maurizio Crozza impersonating Merkel and answering her distinguished Italian colleague. At the end of the video, she asks if they have put asterisks in the obscene words. Then she specifies that culona inchiavabile is not the obscene part (nein, nein, nein, nein, nein!), but "Berlusconi" is. Danke schoen!

Italian euro coin

2011-09-23T07:28:00.003-04:00

I must not have been paying attention, but I just found out that while the euro bills are the same throughout the Eurozone the euro coins have one side that is the same and the other side that is individualized by country.

The Italians have the coolest national figure. They chose Leonardo's Vitruvian man, as you can see on the left. To find out more about this, read this bilingual article here.

To see pictures of the various national euro coins, go to this site.

Italian proverbs- chi e' surdu orbu e taci...

2011-09-19T17:00:00.003-04:00

Here's our proverb of the week- chi e' surdu orbu e taci campa cent'anni impaci (chi e' sordo, orbo e tace campa cent'anni in pace). He who is deaf, blind and mute lives in peace to be a hundred. The Southern Italian proverb expresses the quintessence of omerta', or organized crime's code of silence. As such I think it is contemptible; far from expressing any notion of loyalty or even prudence, it is a justification of cowardice.

Spend a day in Boston and Pompeii

2011-09-15T20:49:00.008-04:00

Live in Boston or visiting?

Take in the Museum of Science's exhibit on the fabled lost city of Pompeii, featuring hundreds of artifacts, including the ever-popular body casts.

The exhibit, held in conjunction with Italian authorities, will begin on October 2 and run until February 12, 2012. Tickets on sale here.

Paoli, La Gatta

2011-09-15T10:46:00.003-04:00

Here is a whimsical 1960 tune from legendary singer-songwriter Gino Paoli (lyrics written by Mogol, who would later work with Lucio Battisti). It apparently alludes to Paoli's starving-artist-in-garret period, populated by a music-loving (female) cat and a visiting star (of the astronomical sort). Lyrics and translation follow. Students of Italian will note the use of the imperfect for habitual situations in the past that no longer exist.

C'era una volta una gatta
che aveva una macchia nera sul muso e una vecchia
soffitta vicino al mare con una finestra
a un passo dal cielo blu.
Se la chitarra suonavo
la gatta faceva le fusa ed una stellina
scendeva vicina vicina
poi mi sorrideva e se ne tornava su.

Ora non abito più là tutto è cambiato,
non abito più là ho una casa bellissima
bellissima come vuoi tu.
Ma io ripenso a una gatta
che aveva una macchia nera sul muso a una vecchia
soffitta vicino al mare con una stellina
che ora non vedo più.

Once upon a time there was a cat

with a black spot on her muzzle and an old

attic by the sea with a window

steps away from the blue sky.
If I would play my guitar

the cat would purr and a little star

would come down really close

then it would smile and go back up again.

Now I don't live there anymore everything has changed,

I don't live there anymore, I have a beautiful house,

beautiful, as you want.

But I think back to a cat with a black spot on her muzzle, to an old

attic by the sea with a little star

That I don't see anymore.

Tex- the original spaghetti Western

2011-09-09T15:15:00.000-04:00

Long before the famous Italian ("spaghetti") Western movies of the 60's and 70's, including those by the great Sergio Leone, there was Tex.

Tex was a cartoon character cooked up in 1948 by the very un-Western-named Gian Luigi Bonelli and Aurelio Galleppini. Since then the cartoon, aimed mostly at adolescents and grown-ups, has been steadily successful, to the point of being translated in other languages. I was reminded of its existence because currently the newspaper La Repubblica is featuring a special collection on sale with the paper itself.

Interesting that even twenty years of Fascism were not able to stop the fascination Italians have for the West, as the series started only a few years after the end of Mussolini and his hatred of all things English and American. Although I have never read these comics (fumetti) many perfectly intelligent and well-educated Italians do. From what I've heard, it's a compelling mix of the fictional and mythological adventures of the made-up Tex Willer, along with historical scenery, characters and events, including of course the Civil War. I bet you anything Leone and the other spaghetti Western masters were brought up on Tex.

Word of the week- ormai

2011-09-06T21:37:00.002-04:00

This is a tough one. I can assure you that you will not master the usage of the word ormai just by reading the dictionary, which will unhelpfully give you "equivalents" such as "now" or "by now" ("by then" if speaking of the past) and even "almost."

The word ormai expresses a view or a mood associated with an occurrence or action with reference to time- more specifically, the end or near-end of a lapse of time. There is usually the idea that the passage of time has not been correctly perceived; thus, the mood is often, but not always, one of resignation or a sobering acknowledgement of relative lateness. Let's take a look at some examples:

Ormai i bambini sono grandi.
The children are grown now. (They're not kids anymore, soon they'll be leaving home, we can't tell them what to do, etc.)

Ormai ho capito che tipo e'.
I've finally understood what kind of man he is. (Not a very good kind, I should have caught on sooner)

Sono le undici ormai.
It's eleven o'clock (now). (It's getting late, hadn't really noticed, time to go home/turn in/wind down)

Quell'attrice ha ormai cinquant'anni.
That actress is (now) fifty. (She's getting up there, not as good-looking, harder to find good roles, she'd better face up to it)

You'll be pleased to know ormai is not always so wistful or mildly depressing.

Siamo arrivati ormai.
We're practically there. (Said for example to whining children on a trip)

Ormai e' fatta.
It's done now. (It's finally finished; may also suggest irreversibility, which again is mildly depressing)

Ormai sara' arrivato a casa.
He should be home by now.

In its resignation mood it can even be used alone.

-Perche' non ci provi un'altra volta?
-Ormai...
-Why don't you try again?
-No/It's useless/It's too late

Cardillo-Cordiferro, Core 'ngrato

2011-08-31T14:43:00.006-04:00

One of the most famous and glorious Neapolitan songs was actually written in America. Core 'ngrato (Ungrateful heart), also known as Catari' (after the name of the cruel lady) was written in the States one hundred years ago by Italian immigrants Salvatore Cardillo (music) and Riccardo Cordiferro (pseudonym of Alessandro Sisca, lyrics).

First we'll look at the lyrics in the original Neapolitan, then I'll translate into standard Italian and then English. Finally, we'll examine a mini-mystery about Caruso's version of the words, which differs from others'.

Catarí', Catarí'...
pecché mm''e ddice sti pparole amare?!
Pecché mme parle e 'o core mme turmiente Catarí'?!
Nun te scurdá ca t'aggio dato 'o core, Catarí'...
Nun te scurdá...
Catarí'...
Catarí', che vène a dicere
stu pparlá ca mme dá spáseme?
Tu nun ce pienze a stu dulore mio?!
Tu nun ce pienze, tu nun te ne cure...

Core, core 'ngrato...
T'hê pigliato 'a vita mia!
Tutto è passato...
e nun ce pienze cchiù.

Catarí', Catarí'...
tu nun 'o ssaje ca fino e 'int'a na chiesa
io só' trasuto e aggiu pregato a Dio, Catarí'...
E ll'aggio ditto pure a 'o cunfessore: "Io stó' a murí
pe' chella llá...
Stó' a suffrí,
stó' a suffrí nun se pò credere...
stó' a suffrí tutte li strazie..."
E 'o cunfessore, ch'è perzona santa,
mm'ha ditto: "Figliu mio lássala stá, lássala stá!..."

Core, core 'ngrato...
T'hê pigliato 'a vita mia!
Tutto è passato...
e nun ce pienze cchiù.

Caterina, Caterina...

Perche' mi dici queste parole amare?

Perche' mi parli e il cuore mi tormenti, Caterina?

Non ti scordar che ti ho dato il cuore Caterina

Non ti scordar.

Caterina

Caterina che vieni a dirmi

Questo parlare che mi da' spasimi?

Tu non ci pensi a questo dolore mio?

Tu non ci pensi, non te ne curi.

Cuore, cuore ingrato

Ti sei presa la vita mia

Tutto e' passato...

E non ci pensi piu'.

Caterina, Caterina

Tu non lo sai che sono andato persino in chiesa

Sono entrato e ho pregato a Dio, Caterina

E l'ho detto pure al confessore, Caterina: "Sto per morire

Per quella la'

Sto soffrendo,

Sto soffrendo che non si puo' credere

Sto soffrendo ogni strazio".

E il confessore che e' una persona santa

m'ha detto, "Figlio mio, lasciala stare, lasciala stare".

Cuore, cuore ingrato

Ti sei presa la vita mia

Tutto e' passato...

E non ci pensi piu'.

Cathy, Cathy,

why are you saying these bitter words to me?

Why are you speaking to me and tormenting my heart, Cathy?

Don't forget that I gave you my heart

Don't forget.

Cathy

Cathy what are you saying?

This talk is torture to me.

Don't you think of my pain?

You don't think about it

You don't care.

Heart, ungrateful heart

You've taken my life

Everything has passed

And you no longer think of it.

Cathy, Cathy,

You don't know that I even went to church

I entered and prayed to God, Cathy

And I even told the priest, Cathy: "I'm about to die

for her,

I'm suffering

Suffering that is not to be believed

I'm suffering every kind of hell

And the priest, who is a holy man said: "Son, leave her alone, leave her alone."

Heart, ungrateful heart

You've taken my life

Everything has passed

And you no longer think of it.

Above you have two versions of this sublime song. The first is by the famed tenor Enrico Caruso, the second by the late great Neapolitan singer Roberto Murolo.

Caruso's version, which is perhaps the original, changes the second part when he is in church and doesn't mention the priest (but he does mention praying to God). No other version I have heard, including Murolo's, is like this. Further, I can't quite make out what Caruso is saying instead of the part about the priest. After some digging, I found that the lyricist Sisca was a radical socialist and deeply anti-clerical, so it is possible that this was his original version. I personally think that the version with the priest is superior- regardless of what one may think of the Catholic Church and its clergy.

Oddly, Cardillo, who wrote the music, was surprised by its enormous success and called it a porcheria (junk). How little he knew. It is now in the standard repertoire of every self-respecting tenor. None of whom, to my knowledge, sing Caruso's version.

Pesto with cashews

2011-08-30T14:22:00.006-04:00

Due to the difficulty and expense of finding good pine nuts, the idea occurred to me to use cashews instead. This was also suggested by the abundance of fresh basil in my container garden. Cashews are not common in Italian cooking at all; in fact, the only time I saw them there was in Chinese restaurants.

So how did it turn out? Fine. I made it with my mezzaluna, and not a food processor. I minced the basil, added the cashews, then the fresh garlic, then the freshly-grated parmigiano-reggiano. I added extra-virgin olive oil as I went, tasting for texture and liquidity. Be careful if the cashews are already salted to take that into account. Let me just say that making pesto with a mezzaluna is good (grainy), but labor-intensive.

After I made it, I remembered that the ready-made brand I usually bought in a small jar when I was living in Italy (Tigullio brand) did indeed use cashews (anacardi). And that was also good, and extremely labor-unintensive.

You should not cook or heat your pesto. What Italians will often do is to add some acqua di cottura (the boiling water from the pasta) to dilute the pesto. They will also add a noce di burro (about a teaspoon of butter) to each plate of pasta and pesto to enhance the taste and make it less tangled.

Butter in Italian cooking

2011-08-20T14:02:00.007-04:00

It is a gross over-simplification to say that Italians only use olive oil as their cooking fat. They use other oils and fats, and of course they also use butter (burro, not to be confused with the Spanish donkey). The butter they use is unsalted.

As a rule of thumb, butter is used more in Northern Italian cooking. A good compromise, for health reasons, might be to use half olive oil and half butter. This way you also get the benefit of a relatively high burning point. Butter alone will easily reach the burning point, which is pesky.

For an optimal risotto, I would suggest butter only. This will improve your chances of getting the highly sought-after risotto all'onda, where the mound of risotto on the plate will slide when the plate is tilted.

I would not buy imported Italian butter,there is nothing special about it. Even when I was living in Italy, I actually looked for imported German butter; lacking that, I would try for the butter from the German-speaking region of Alto-Adige.

If you're unused to unsalted butter, give it a try for a few weeks. American-made Land o' Lakes is fine, as is the more expensive Danish Lurpak.

Whatever you do, avoid margarine and butter substitutes. Use less fat overall, but make it real.

Spaghetti with onion and anchovy sauce

2011-08-16T13:31:00.010-04:00

Here's another one of my what-I-had-for-lunch posts. Don't be put off if you don't like anchovies; the finished dish does not necessarily taste that fishy.

The original name of this recipe is called bigoli (or bigoi) in salsa. Bigoli are like chubby fresh spaghetti. This dish is from the Jewish Venetian tradition. Originally made with buckwheat, they are now usually made with whole wheat. However, I don't care for whole wheat pasta, so I used my regular De Cecco spaghetti, which is good because the rough surface allows the sauce to cling to it.

OK. I put plenty of water on to boil for the pasta. I did not salt the water because of the saltiness of the anchovies. For one person (actually, one eggplant), I minced a medium-sized yellow onion with my mezzaluna. I put four-five tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil in a frying pan and added the onion, frying over a medium-high heat. Onions should not brown at any time, so add water or turn down heat to avoid this. After a few minutes I added the anchovies (2 ounces), which I had rinsed. I continued to cook the onion-anchovy mixture for about ten more minutes, making sure the anchovies were completely blended and the onions were soft. Toward the end, I mashed the onions with the back of my wooden spoon to make the sauce more paste-like.

I drained the cooked spaghetti and turned them out into the pan with the sauce. I quickly and thoroughly stirred, then added about three tablespoons of fresh minced flat-leaf parsley. I also added some freshly-ground black pepper, but that's optional. It was good, and I'll probably make it again, but it wasn't exceptional. For less of an anchovy taste, I would soak the anchovies for ten minutes. I would also remove the anchovy bones beforehand if you don't like them, because they don't disappear into the sauce as I expected. Don't add cheese.

The dish is inexpensive and convenient, because you can always have onions and canned anchovies on hand. I'm not sure I'd make it for company, because it turns out to have a homely grayish-light brown color.

By the way, if you like anchovies you're sure to like pane cunzato, an excellent summertime pizza alternative. See my recipe here.

Attack of the giant zucchini

2011-08-10T15:31:00.002-04:00

I was going to post something serious about the Gini coefficient but then I said, the hell with that. It's August. Let me post something seasonal and appropriate to people's lazy, frivolous mood. For example, something about a 3-kilo zucchini.

And in fact the newspaper of Padova, where I used to live, ran a story of this 80-year-old retiree who cultivates his own little orto (vegetable garden) and came up with this monster zucchini, weighing about three kilos or over six and a half pounds. Unfortunately, the best zucchini are the smaller ones, but maybe the old geezer doesn't know this and let his zucchini get out of hand.

Italians usually call zucchini zucchine (feminine), which is a sort of diminutive of zucca (pumpkin), and in fact zucchini are part of the squash family, so that the Italians see zucchini as a sort of small pumpkin (except in a case like this, where it is close in size to a pumpkin). Isn't that interesting? But as I said, small zucchini are best, avoid the big ones.

All sorts of recipes with zucchini can be found on this blog by using the search function in the upper left corner.

Word of the week- pino marittimo

2011-08-08T12:04:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite things about Italy (although they are not of course limited only to Italy) are the umbrella or stone pines, pini marittimi (Pinus pinea). Italian pine nuts or pinoli come from this beautiful tree, while Chinese pine nuts (which the Italians frown upon) come from other species. I have also heard that the Chinese pine nuts cause an after-taste for some. A cluster of pines is called a pineta.

The booful umbrella pines shown above are from Bibbona on the Tuscan seaside. Wish I were there right now.

Il campanile sommerso

2011-08-05T09:12:00.005-04:00

In questi giorni mi prende un po' di nostalgia e la mente torna a Nord-Est, non degli Stati Uniti, dove vivo ora, ma dell'Italia. In particolare, a una delle mie regioni preferite, di cui ho parlato varie volte su codesto modesto (c'e' la rima) blog- l'Alto-Adige, e per non far incazzare (ulteriormente) la popolazione di lingua tedesca, chiamiamola pure il Suedtirol.

Essendo amante di laghi e laghetti, non poteva non colpirmi il Lago di Resia (achtung! Reschensee), famoso per il suggestivo campanile sommerso. Suggestivo secondo me perche' almeno inconsciamente fa pensare a una specie di civilta' sommersa, a uno scomparire col tempo delle tracce umane. Invece non e' cosi'- il lago e' artificiale, o comunque e' stato creato da due precedenti laghi naturali e la costruzione di una diga, per ragioni di energia idroelettrica. Il piano era del 1939 ma il fattaccio non si verifico' fino al 1950. Vennero sommersi i relativi paesini nonostante l'opposizione degli abitanti, e gli edifici furono rasi al suolo, tranne il campanile della chiesa (del '300) che fu tutelato per ragioni artistiche. Gli abitanti, cattolicissimi, si rivolsero anche al Papa per fermare il progetto. Inutilmente.

Consiglio a tutti un soggiorno nella bella (c'e' ancora la rima!) Val Venosta (achtung! Vinschgau). Partendo da Merano, si va verso ovest, fino alla frontiera con la Svizzera. Da non perdere la piccola cittadina di Glorenza (Glurns), proprio prima del confine.

Word of the week- scomparso

2011-08-03T14:26:00.004-04:00

Our word of the week is the past participle of the verb scomparire (to disappear). So obviously it means "disappeared," but a secondary use is as a euphemism for "died." So you will find newspaper headlines with wording such as "e' scomparso all'eta' di 92 anni lo scrittore..."- "the writer such and such has disappeared at the age of 92." Another common euphemism is "e' mancato," literally, "is missing."

These tend to be used in writing, whereas Italians will usually use the rather blunt "e' morto" in speech, as opposed to such English phrases as "passed away."

Much ado about David Cameron

2011-08-01T18:36:00.003-04:00

British Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife, like many of their countrymen, are on vacation in Tuscany right now, lucky dogs. They're on a swank estate near Arezzo, an area I dearly love, called Villa Petrolo (in the photo).

The poor man got much attention from the press for not having tipped at a local cafe', after the young woman at the counter, who had too many customers, told him to take his own cappuccino to his table. This was perfectly justified. I never tipped in Italy in restaurants and bars; service is included. Sometimes one might round off the amount due, if paying in cash, but mostly as a matter of convenience. Also, customers normally are charged more if they sit down as opposed to eating and drinking at the counter- so a tip is superfluous.

Many foreigners, especially Americans who are used to tipping, don't know this or are insecure. Don't expect the Italians to be forthcoming with this information; it's obviously not in their interest to do so. The prices for eating and drinking are already high enough in Italy, don't inflate them any further.

Pooh, Noi due nel mondo e nell'anima

2011-07-30T16:31:00.005-04:00

The Seventies. Four attractive young men from Northern Italy. Unforgettable love song, massive hit. Lyrics and my translation follow. Those of you who are studying Italian will notice the conditionals and the hypotheticals.

E io dovrei comprendere
se tu da un po' non mi vuoi
non avrei mai capito te
ma da capire cosa c'è.
Dovrei tornare a casa e poi
se il fiato ce la fa
parlarti del mio mondo
fuori dei miei pensieri
poi scoprire che vuoi dormire
che non mi senti più.
E io dovrei ma spiegami
contro di me che cos'hai
come se io non fossi io
mi dici che te ne vai.
Son quello che respira piano
per non svegliare te
che nel silenzio
fu felice di aspettare
che il tuo gioco diventasse amore
che una donna diventassi tu.
Noi due nel mondo e nell'anima
la veritá siamo noi
basta cosi' e guardami
chi sono io tu lo sai.
Noi due nel mondo e nell'anima
e io dovrei comprendere
la verità siamo noi...
Noi due nel mondo e nell'anima
e io dovrei comprendere
la veritá siamo noi...
Noi due nel mondo e nell'anima
la veritá siamo noi...

And I should understand

if you haven't wanted me for a while now

You say I never understood you

But what is there to understand.

I should come back home and then

If there's enough breath in me

Talk to you of my world

outside, my thoughts

And then find out that you want to sleep

That you don't hear me anymore.

And I should ... but explain to me

What you have against me

As if I weren't me

You're telling me that you're leaving.

I'm the one who breathes softly

so as not to wake you

who quietly

was happy to wait for

your game to turn into love

and for you to turn into a woman.

The two of us in the world and in our soul

The truth is us

Stop this and look at me

You know who I am.

The two of us in the world and in our soul

And I should understand

The truth is us...

Bread with tomatoes

2011-07-27T14:10:00.000-04:00

Summer is re-run time. Here's a recipe first published in this blog in 2007 that is ideal for this time of year, a sort of untoasted bruschetta. Highly recommended.

I first had this at the Marmore waterfall in southern Umbria. It is neither bruschetta (which as we know is pronounced broo-SKET-ta), because it is not toasted, nor is it panzanella. It's just very good, easy and healthy.

Take crusty bread, even day-old. Slice lengthwise. Cut clove of garlic in half, rub exposed side over upper surface of bread. Salt. Slice flavorful ripe tomatoes rather thinly. Cover bread with tomato slices, with some overlap. Salt again, drizzle generously with extra-virgin olive oil. Shred tender basil leaves into small pieces, place on bread and tomatoes.

Now comes the (only) hard part. You must allow this to stand (or sit, if it gets tired- you will hear it say: "sono stanco!") for at least half an hour. An hour is better. A good summer dish to prepare ahead.

Parks, Teach us to sit still

2011-07-22T06:33:00.006-04:00

Fee fi fo fum, I smell the pee of an Englishman.

Except he's not really English anymore, as he startlingly admits in the book itself. He's Italian, justifying his presence on this blog. But the pee part is right.

Tim Parks is much taken with recognition, success and especially prizes, it seems. Indeed if there were some sort of prize for a book with the most occurrences of the word "pee" and its variants, he would be a shoo-in. But the Nobel, that he mentions in the book as an aspiration? I don't think so. If Philip Roth hasn't got it yet, I don't think Tim Parks will. Ever.

I had resisted reading this book because I suspected it would reek of narcissism, and what the world needs now is not more narcissism. I was right.

The work is the tale of how Parks was suffering from very bad and ignominious afflictions relating to his pee-pee and his wee-wee, as those of us in the scientific community like to call them. He goes to conventional mainstream docs, and they fail him. Nothing new there. He describes in completely unnecessary detail all his symptoms and all the procedures inflicted on him. Then he becomes interested in a novel approach by two Californians, which provides some relief. Finally he goes to a retreat in Tuscany to learn Vipassana meditation (this is where the title, taken from T.S. Eliot, comes from- poor Tom, if he only knew...) and has further improvement. At the end he is feeling much better.

That he wrote 300+ pages about this shit, sorry, piss, and that I and many others read it, and that critics reviewed it positively in important publications, is a sad statement on the condition of our society. As if we needed that statement. But it is further confirmation.

He tries to ennoble his writing here by interspersing it with all sorts of cultural and historical references, to Leopardi, to Beckett, to Mussolini, to poor Velasquez. Not one of which I found compelling as an illustration of what he was trying to say. Parks is trying here to do philosophy and to address the mind-body problem, which has been addressed by much better folks than him. He should have left it alone. It's out of his league.

What I got from this excessively self-revealing book is that I don't like Parks very much as a person. He mentions en passant that his elderly widowed mother in her very modest home in London has breast cancer and that she, and most people in the world, are worse off than he is. This truthful and may I say healthy insight represents one or two short sentences in a sea of words about himself, as if it were an afterthought. In examining the reasons Arundhati Roy (of whom I am not a fan) won the Booker prize for which he was competing, he mentions that she was beautiful and spoke of suffering little Indian children. The cynicism and sheer unfairness in this is repellent.

Tim, I have news for you. Humanity, with its negligible old ladies with breast cancer and its teeming Indian children in dire straits, is more important than you. And more interesting. You don't need a clinic in California or a retreat in Tuscany. You need to get over yourself.

Moby Dick in (six words of) Italian

2011-07-21T06:38:00.003-04:00

Moby Dick is my favorite novel, so this little bit of summer silliness caught my eye. The Corriere della Sera is featuring a game where readers submit a six-word summary of a book.

My favorite is balena bianca mangia uomo senza gamba, white whale eats man missing leg. It's wonderful in that it shows that a book is not its plot, reducing the sublime and complex (and long) masterpiece to a banal and comic headline.

Here are some others:

Nessuno uccidera' mai la balena bianca.

Oltre il limite delle proprie possibilita'.

Essere eroe vuol dire essere solo. (Like that)

L'uomo combatte Dio e perde! (Think he/she misinterprets the book)

Non combattere la tua ossessione, perderai. (Not bad)

Rancoroso disabile soccombe a cetaceo albino. (Giggle)

Moby Dick 1, Capitano Achab 0. (Soccer-obsessed country; they call Ahab "Achab")

Folle e' sfidare i propri demoni.

Achab ossessionato dalla balena bianca muore. (In block letters)

A caccia grossa in acque mosse. (More Hemingway than Melville)

Ismaele; cannibale; storpio ossessionato. Laggiu' soffia! (The latter is the Italian for "Thar she blows!")

Un uomo sfida il suo incubo.

Pazzo invalido insegue Leviatano e perde.

La vita e' una balena bianca. (I hope not)

Luce bianca un mare rosso sangue. (Good)

L'uomo guarda nell'abisso:trova se stesso. (Also good, but must disqualify for eight words)

Ossessione bianca risolta senza lo psicologo. (Cruel)

Achab: te stesso riflesso nel mare. (True)

Ennesimo leader esaltato rovina propri sottoposti. (Political)

Se ti prendo ti ... glu glu (Famous last words)

(in the photo- Nantucket, where they should have stayed- six words)

Tu and lei in Italian

2011-07-20T11:31:00.002-04:00

This topic, the use of the formal and informal personal pronouns in Italian and their corresponding verb endings, occupies a disproportionate amount of time and energy for language learners. In other words, I think that people are worrying way too much about this. At any rate, if you'd like a refresher on the matter, my original post was here.

Why do I think people are overly preoccupied with this? Contemporary Italian, whether we like it or not, is rapidly moving toward use of the tu as a default, whereas historically the formal was the default. This was pointed out in a recent letter to Beppe Severgnini's blog in the Corriere della Sera, wherein a reader noted that the tu was busting out all over, and Beppe (a self-styled expert in the Italian language, and a number of other things as well) agreed.

Why shouldn't you fret about this? If you're fretting, it means you're a foreigner who knows Italian imperfectly. The Italians will know this, and will no more expect you to have mastered the subtleties of the hierarchical relations implicit in this usage than a Japanese will expect you to seamlessly perform their bowing protocols. Personally, having more than a little of the anarchist about me, I wish all these things would just go away.

And don't think for a minute that amongst the Italians all is well in the world of tu and lei. As the usage is indeed voluntary and subjective, Italians are perceived all the time as using the wrong form by other Italians. Usually this is done by some impertinent person who has failed to realize the social superiority or at least distance of the person addressed. Leading not rarely to the snippy: "mi dia del lei!" (use the lei form with me).

Feeling better now? (ti senti meglio adesso?) If you are still anxious, take my little test on approprate usage, here.

Leonardo's Last Supper

2011-07-13T13:16:00.011-04:00

Believe it or not, I've never seen the Last Supper (Italian: Il Cenacolo or L'Ultima Cena), despite having lived so long in Northern Italy and despite the fact that my mother was from Milan. The difficulty of access and the well-known fact of its deterioration and subsequent restorations kept me away. This does not mean I'll never see it or that I do not have the highest consideration for Leonardo.

Today's New York Times features some personal considerations along the same lines. Is it worth it? The end of the little article where the author drifts off to see another fresco and glances at his watch, despite the fifteen-minute limit, would cast doubts in this regard.

The irrepressible Mark Twain expressed similar feelings in his post-Civil War travel book, Innocents Abroad (which I can highly recommend and which is available online for free.) Here he is:

Here in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church, is the mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the world--"The Last Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci. We are not infallible judges of pictures, but of course we went there to see this wonderful painting, once so beautiful, always so worshipped by masters in art, and forever to be famous in song and story. And the first thing that occurred was the infliction on us of a placard fairly reeking with wretched English. Take a morsel of it: "Bartholomew (that is the first figure on the left hand side at the spectator,) uncertain and doubtful about what he thinks to have heard, and upon which he wants to be assured by himself at Christ and by no others."

Good, isn't it? And then Peter is described as "argumenting in a threatening and angrily condition at Judas Iscariot."

This paragraph recalls the picture. "The Last Supper" is painted on the dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main church in ancient times, I suppose. It is battered and scarred in every direction, and stained and discolored by time, and Napoleon's horses kicked the legs off most the disciples when they (the horses, not the disciples,) were stabled there more than half a century ago.

I recognized the old picture in a moment--the Saviour with bowed head seated at the centre of a long, rough table with scattering fruits and dishes upon it, and six disciples on either side in their long robes, talking to each other--the picture from which all engravings and all copies have been made for three centuries. Perhaps no living man has ever known an attempt to paint the Lord's Supper differently. The world seems to have become settled in the belief, long ago, that it is not possible for human genius to outdo this creation of da Vinci's. I suppose painters will go on copying it as long as any of the original is left visible to the eye. There were a dozen easels in the room, and as many artists transferring the great picture to their canvases. Fifty proofs of steel engravings and lithographs were scattered around, too. And as usual, I could not help noticing how superior the copies were to the original, that is, to my inexperienced eye. Wherever you find a Raphael, a Rubens, a Michelangelo, a Carracci, or a da Vinci (and we see them every day,) you find artists copying them, and the copies are always the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, but they are not now.

This picture is about thirty feet long, and ten or twelve high, I should think, and the figures are at least life size. It is one of the largest paintings in Europe.

The colors are dimmed with age; the countenances are scaled and marred, and nearly all expression is gone from them; the hair is a dead blur upon the wall, and there is no life in the eyes. Only the attitudes are certain.

People come here from all parts of the world, and glorify this masterpiece. They stand entranced before it with bated breath and parted lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of rapture:

"Oh, wonderful!"

"Such expression!"

"Such grace of attitude!"

"Such dignity!"

"Such faultless drawing!"

"Such matchless coloring!"

"Such feeling!"

"What delicacy of touch!"

"What sublimity of conception!"

"A vision! A vision!"

I only envy these people; I envy them their honest admiration, if it be honest--their delight, if they feel delight. I harbor no animosity toward any of them. But at the same time the thought will intrude itself upon me, How can they see what is not visible? What would you think of a man who looked at some decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra, and said: "What matchless beauty! What soul! What expression!" What would you think of a man who gazed upon a dingy, foggy sunset, and said: "What sublimity! What feeling! What richness of coloring!" What would you think of a man who stared in ecstasy upon a desert of stumps and said: "Oh, my soul, my beating heart, what a noble forest is here!"

You would think that those men had an astonishing talent for seeing things that had already passed away. It was what I thought when I stood before "The Last Supper" and heard men apostrophizing wonders, and beauties and perfections which had faded out of the picture and gone, a hundred years before they were born. We can imagine the beauty that was once in an aged face; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps; but we can not absolutely see these things when they are not there. I am willing to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon the Last Supper and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left, supply a tint that has faded away, restore an expression that is gone; patch, and color, and add, to the dull canvas until at last its figures shall stand before him aglow with the life, the feeling, the freshness, yea, with all the noble beauty that was theirs when first they came from the hand of the master. But I can not work this miracle. Can those other uninspired visitors do it, or do they only happily imagine they do?

After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last Supper was a very miracle of art once. But it was three hundred years ago.

Fa caldo

2011-07-12T13:33:00.004-04:00

It's hot. It's hot here in Boston and it's about the same in Italy. Temps hovering around 90 degrees Fahrenheit with high humidity. The combination of high temperature and high humidity is known as afa in Italian (the adjective is afoso). You will probably feel it more in Italy because of their persisting mistrust of air conditioning, fans, and even open windows. The enemy for many is the nefarious, possibly fatal, corrente. No, nothing to do with electrical shocks or high voltage: it simply means a current of air, a draft. I have seen a number of Italians close the windows on trains and buses on sweltering summer days because of this insidious enemy.

How to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius and vice versa? There are formulas but
nobody, including myself, uses these. It's too hot to do any work, mental or otherwise. What I do is enter words to the effect of "40 degrees Celsius to Fahrenheit" and so on in Google. Its Calculator feature will automatically tell you the result. 104 degrees.

Word of the week- furbo

2011-07-08T18:24:00.007-04:00

Here is one of the most important words in Italian- furbo (adjective and noun; the abstract quality is furbizia). The dictionaries will tell you that it corresponds to the English words "cunning," "shrewd," "clever" or American English "smart."

In my mind, the word stands for "successfully dishonest." To be a furbo is to pursue your self-interest (and only your self-interest) to the detriment of another, others, society, the world, possibly the cosmos (beating out karma). Violence is not entailed, but instead there is an instrumental use of thinking, solely for selfish ends. What is interesting is the connotation Italians give to the word, which wavers between the positive and the negative; whereas "cunning" is always negative in English. I strongly suspect that the wavering comes from the fact that Italians consider furbizia positive in themselves (all the while not recognizing it as such) and negative in others. Since furbizia is indeed parasitical, it cannot be generalized, as can be seen in areas such as Naples and its surroundings.

Variants include the diminutive furbetto (for someone who tries to be furbo in a minor way, such as getting ahead of you in line while you're distracted), the pejorative furbastro (an unlikable furbo who is prone to screwing up), and furbacchione (a likable rascal who doesn't do major damage).

(In the photo, veteran politician Giulio Andreotti, whom no one would describe as furbetto)

Morandi, C'era un ragazzo...

2011-07-04T12:40:00.005-04:00

Here is a well-known and very powerful song from the Sixties by Italian singer Gianni Morandi. The song is a protest song against the Vietnam War. Is it anti-American? No, I don't think so. The lyrics show a sensitive take on the story of a young American known to the singer who was then drafted and died in Vietnam; the emphasis is certainly on what young people at the time (including me) had in common- a love of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The song was later covered by Joan Baez.

Here are the words in the original Italian:

C'era un ragazzo
che come me amava i Beatles
e i Rolling Stones
girava il mondo, veniva da
gli Stati Uniti d'America.
Non era bello
ma accanto a sé aveva mille donne se
cantava «Help» e «Ticket to ride»
o «Lady Jane» o «Yesterday».
Cantava «Viva la libertà» ma
ricevette una lettera,
la sua chitarra mi regalò
fu richiamato in America.
Stop! coi Rolling Stones!
Stop! coi Beatles. Stop!
Gli han detto vai nel Vietnam
e spara ai Vietcong...
Ta ta ta ta ta...
C'era un ragazzo
che come me amava i Beatles
e i Rolling Stones
girava il mondo, ma poi finì
a far la guerra nel Vietnam.
Capelli lunghi non porta più,
non suona la chitarra ma
uno strumento che sempre dà
la stessa nota ratatata.
Non ha più amici, non ha più fans,
vede la gente cadere giù:
nel suo paese non tornerà
adesso è morto nel Vietnam.
Stop! coi Rolling Stones!
Stop! coi Beatles. Stop!
Nel petto un cuore più non ha
ma due medaglie o tre...
Ta ta ta ta ta...

Today I am 4

2011-07-01T06:20:00.004-04:00

Today I am four. Yes, it is the fourth anniversary since the Smiling Eggplant began on July 1 2007.

Every year I spotlight a little human of my age. Last year it was Spanky McFarland of Our Gang/Little Rascals. This year it is four-year-old Richard Nichols from the movie All this and heaven, too, which I saw last night. He is shown in the video with the great Bette Davis. Like Spanky before him, Richard can't hide an incongruous Southern accent which jars with the setting. But both are adorable.

Fennel and carrot salad

2011-06-29T16:35:00.003-04:00

Now I know that many of you out there have never eaten fennel. I just know. That's a shame and now we can remedy the situation. Fennel is popular in Italy, and it should be better known elsewhere.

Buy your very fresh carrots and fennel. Remove the stick-like ends of the fennel and the outermost layer. Cut the fennel in half. Now ideally you should julienne both carrots and fennel, for elegance. But barring this, you can very thinly slice both.

Mix 'em up and there you have it. Dress with excellent olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon or a bit of balsamic vinegar.

Raw carrots and fennel are also commonly found in pinzimonio, the Italian version of crudites.

La maturita'

2011-06-28T10:46:00.004-04:00

Besides meaning maturity, this word also denotes the final exams that Italians take upon leaving secondary school, which they do at about age 18-19, unless they're laggards. The maturita' exams are taking place right now, to the dismay of all concerned. They are not standardized tests, but are written and oral exams administered by educators from external schools. The Italians still place great emphasis on them, and themes that may come up are heatedly discussed, even in the media. Such themes may range from Cicero or Thucydides to things that are a bit more modern.

Italian secondary school is quite different from American high school. Upon leaving middle school, the young student in Italy will enroll in a liceo (more academically oriented), which may have an orientation that is classical (lots of Greek and Latin), linguistic (modern languages), scientific (science and technology), or even artistic. Those who intend to go to a university will usually opt for a liceo. The istituto tecnico is a sort of vocational school that aims at making students readily employable. An interesting option for the many who are interested in a career in the hospitality industry is the scuola alberghiera, where teenagers are taught to cook or work in a hotel.

(In the photo, a liceo classico in Milan)

Coming up- I make gnocchi

2011-06-23T10:36:00.004-04:00

Don't let anyone tell you that making gnocchi is easy. Delicious and irresistible as it is, and made from cheap, readily available ingredients, you'd find it all over the place if it was easy to make. But you don't. Dammit.

I never learned to make gnocchi because I lived so long in the Veneto, where they came from. So I could get a ready supply without making them myself. But this is no longer the case. Dammit.

Stay tuned while I finally perfect my skill and tell you how I did it.

Pizza around the world

2011-06-21T08:44:00.006-04:00

(Almost) everybody likes pizza. Because of its enormous popularity it has undergone all sorts of transformations since it left its home in Naples (see above). The examples are not necessarily typical, but can be found in the country named; they're not even particularly weird. Let's look at some.

In Sweden- curry, banana, pineapple

In Korea- with an outer ring of sweet potato

In Japan- shredded pork, shimeji mushrooms, bamboo shoots, seaweed, shiso (perilla) leaves

In England- balti chicken (whatever that is), green chile, red onion, fresh coriander (cilantro), garlic sauce

In South Africa- chicken, mushroom, mayonnaise, cheddar cheese, spring onion

In India- paneer, onion, peppers, paprika and tomato

In Turkey- anchovy, calamari, shrimp, tuna, tomato

In Holland- mozzarella, smoked wild salmon, capers, red onion, fresh tomato

In Russia- strips of pork, salami, turkey breast, bbq chicken, zucchini, tomatoes

In Hong Kong- seafood, abalone sauce, crayfish, crab roe dressing, chicken, enoki mushrooms

In the Philippines- tuna, white sauce, mushrooms, onions, mozzarella served in a cone

In the United States- grilled chicken, Italian cheeses, Alfredo sauce, scallions

Pasta salad tips

2011-06-19T15:28:00.005-04:00

Here are some tips to make pasta salad (in Italian, pasta fredda):

1. Cook pasta al dente, drain and rinse with cold water (do not rinse pasta when making hot dishes).

2. Avoid mayonnaise and salad dressings. Use the best quality olive oil you can to coat. Yogurt, especially Greek yogurt, is a possibility.

3. Add ingredients, mix, add salt and pepper and fresh herbs to taste. Seasonal, fresh ingredients are best. A minced combination of flat-leaf parsley and basil will go well with most things; chives are a good substitute for raw onion, which I dislike. Mint is also good.

4. Do not overload with ingredients or add ingredients at random.

5. I always allow pasta salad to sit at least an hour for flavors to blend; longer is even better. This is a good dish to make ahead. If it is hot, you can cook in the morning when it's cooler, and serve for lunch and/or dinner.

Authentic pasta salad recipes can be found on the sites of Italian pasta makers such as Barilla and De Cecco.

Here are a few of my own recipes to get you started:

Pasta salad with cherry tomatoes, tuna and olives

Pasta with zucchini, fresh tomato and fresh mint

Pasta salad with peppers, zucchini and eggplant

Word of the week- cocopro

2011-06-17T09:29:00.004-04:00

In reading Italian newspapers, you might come upon this neologism, which is actually an acronym. Cocopro stands for contratto di collaborazione per programma, replacing the even more demented term cococo, or contratto di collaborazione coordinata e continuativa. They are basically forms of contract work where the worker is not an employee.

Whatever you call them, they're the result of years of steady erosion of workers' compensation, benefits and above all security. The Italians did and still do have something of a fetish for being hired, which is called assumere in Italian. The participle assunto/assunta (especially in its feminine form) brings to (my) mind the Assumption of the Virgin Mary to heaven, and I think many Italians see it in the same beatific light. The country has gone from an extreme of lifelong guaranteed employment and unsustainable pensions to a nightmare where more and more people are underemployed precari (temp/part-time workers). Many college graduates work in call centers as customer service representatives, others go from job to job doing work that is completely unrelated to their education or aspirations. If they still have aspirations.

So much for la dolce vita.

(In the picture, Titian's Assunta in the Frari Church, Venice)

Joyce and Svevo

2011-06-16T23:12:00.006-04:00

I almost forgot it was Bloomsday, that is, the day the action (so to speak) of James Joyce's Ulysses takes place.

Joyce as you may know lived in Trieste a long time and spoke excellent Italian, including dialect. He had already begun to study the language in Dublin as a youth, and was a proficient linguist. Reportedly the Joyces spoke Italian at home, and his two children had Italian names (Giorgio and Lucia). In Trieste, he made friends with writer Italo Svevo (real name, Ettore Schmitz). Svevo (shown in the photo) was a Jew who converted to Catholicism and is taken to be the model of Leopold Bloom, the Irish Jew who is the protagonist of Ulysses. Although to tell you the truth, I've never seen the similarity.

If you read Italian, you can find Svevo's works free on the Liber Liber site, here. The books include his most famous novel, La Coscienza di Zeno, which I recommend.

De Sica, Sciuscia'- review

2011-06-16T12:20:00.004-04:00

Let me say right off that this doesn't measure up to other De Sica classics like The Bicycle Thief or Umberto D. But how many movies can measure up to those? Practically none.

Having gotten that out of the way, I watched this last night, courtesy of my Netflix subscription. It is the story of two young boys in Rome in early adolescence who are sciuscia', or shoeshine kids, in this case for the Allied forces who were still in Rome shortly after the war. They're great pals, the small one and the bigger one. Their dream, which they come very close to achieving, is to buy a horse with the profits from their subservient labor. But they also, through no fault of their own, get caught up in the thriving black market, and are taken to juvenile detention. What follows is a Dickensian tale of child abuse and a denouncement of adults' callousness and unfairness toward youth, and the vulnerable in general.

You will recognize in this De Sica's angry and disconsolate world view. I find that it is an antidote to what many Italians like to believe when they say si stava meglio quando si stava peggio, that is, we were better off when we were worse off. I personally see no redeeming social value in poverty, as the great Dickens realized. The world was just as rotten then, with all sorts of physical privations and hardships to boot.

A note: Franco Interlenghi, the bigger boy, who has an unusually pleasant face, went on to have an important career in movies, including with Fellini in I Vitelloni. The other young actor did not.

Tuna-stuffed eggs

2011-06-15T18:36:00.004-04:00

Italians don't make stuffed eggs as often as we do, what with the ever-popular deviled eggs we have. But here's a recipe I like, which is fairly easy, cheap and nutritious. And it doesn't have a particularly fishy taste. If you dress it up, it can be an appetizer. Or it can be a light, cool summer meal, made ahead.

Boil your eggs and cool them. Carefully peel the eggs, keeping the surface of the egg smooth and not dented. Cut in half with a sharp knife, then remove the yolks. Some of them will pop right out, but others will have to be scooped out. Be sure not to break the white while doing this. Gather the yolks and add a nearly equal volume of canned tuna. This time I also added capers (small, nonpareil ones), but that's optional. At this point you can mince with a mezzaluna or even work the mixture with a fork. Some use a food processor. Then add mayonnaise a bit at a time until you get the desired consistency. It should be fairly smooth and moist. Add salt (and pepper, if desired). Be careful if you've added the capers to take that into account.

That's it. Good with a fresh salad with carrots and fennel, crusty bread and white wine. If used as an appetizer, you may try putting little toppings on the eggs, such as a half green olive, a cocktail shrimp, a bit of crunchy cornichon, a thin slice of roasted red pepper, a tiny sprig of dill.

Italy says Yes to No Nukes

2011-06-13T19:58:00.005-04:00

It was with a big fat sigh of relief that I welcomed the news that Italians had voted against the building of new nuclear power plants. They had discontinued their nuclear plants years ago and Sunday and today, Monday, voted on whether to bring them back, by a confusing Yes vote in a referendum. The actual title of the issue (one of four, but I don't feel like covering the other three) was: Abrogazione delle nuove norme che consentono la produzione nel territorio nazionale di energia elettrica nucleare, or, Repeal of the new legislation allowing the production of electrical nuclear energy on the national territory. Over 90% voted Yes (that is, for repeal of laws re-introducing nuclear energy). But the cliffhanger (this is the land of opera, always a bit of drama) was that a quorum of 50% plus one had to be reached for the results to be valid. And indeed it was. Copious celebrations followed.

The results of the vote were also seen as showing discontent with Prime Minister Berlusconi, who backed the No votes. This also pleases me greatly. The Internet and new social media contributed to this. Good.

In the photo, we see that even the Colosseum objected to the possibility of being irradiated. Having survived so long, it is looking forward to a few more millennia in a non-radioactive state.

City names in Italian

2011-06-13T09:13:00.009-04:00

Brace yourself, here comes something boring. Boring but useful, as is so often the case.

Yes, because as if it wasn't bad enough that you have to learn oodles and oodles of words in a foreign language, in this case Italian, you also have to learn the different words for the proper nouns i.e. those that begin with a capital letter. How pesky is that?

A case in point- city words. Yes, because the Italians will insist on giving their own names to various cities all over the globe. Especially big or famous cities.

OK, here is a non-exhaustive list as it comes to me:

London Londra

Paris Parigi

Philadelphia Filadelfia

Baltimore Baltimora

Dublin Dublino

Edinburgh Edinburgo

Stockholm Stoccolma

The Hague L'Aia (LIE-ah)

Antwerp Anversa

Leuven Lovanio

Hamburg Amburgo

Berlin Berlino

Munich Monaco ("di Baviera" is used if needed to differentiate from Monaco)

Augsburg Augusta

Stuttgart Stoccarda

Cologne Colonia

Aachen Aquisgrana

Trier Treviri

Lubeck Lubecca

Dresden Dresda

Frankfurt Francoforte

Gottingen Gottinga

Leipzig Lipsia

Tubingen Tubinga

Mainz Magonza

Konstanz Costanza

Nuremberg Norimberga

Regensburg Ratisbona (boy, they don't like German names)

Luxembourg Lussemburgo

Basel Basilea

Toulon Tolona

Zurich Zurigo

Bern Berna

Geneva Ginevra

Marseilles Marsiglia

Dijon Digione

Lyon Lione

Lille Lilla

Seville Siviglia

Strasbourg Strasburgo

Salzburg Salisburgo

Danzig Danzica

Dubrovnik Ragusa (also Dubrovnik)

Split Spalato

Warsaw Varsavia

Prague Praga

Cracow Cracovia

Saint Petersburg San Pietroburgo

Athens Atene

Moscow Mosca

Cairo Il Cairo

Beijing Pechino

Guangzhou Canton

Mexico City Citta' del Messico

Sao Paulo San Paolo

Seoul Seul

Jakarta Giacarta

Alexandria Alessandria

Damascus Damasco

Jerusalem Gerusalemme

Cape Town Citta' del Capo

God, that was so boring. And it's not even complete.

New York times article on Bologna

2011-06-12T10:14:00.011-04:00

Italians refer to this Northern city variously as La Grassa ("the fat one," for its culinary delights featuring lots of meat and cheese), La Dotta ("the learned one," for its ancient university, the oldest in Europe) and sometimes La Rossa ("the red one," for its leftist politics). So if you're a left-leaning, cultivated foodie, this is the place for you. It is also very accessible from Milan, Venice and Florence.

As part of its 36 hour series for brief visits to a city, today's New York Times has an article on Bologna. What caught my eye is the reference to the Giorgio Morandi museum. Morandi is a major twentieth century artist who specialized in still lifes (one is shown in the picture) and was from the region. He deserves to be better known, and I would carve out some time from my consumption of tortellini, Lambrusco, lasagne, prosciutto, mortadella ("bologna" or "baloney" comes from its name), parmigiano, ragu' and other specialties of the area to dedicate to the austere artist. Man does not live by pasta alone.

Google Books and Google Libri

2011-06-12T07:39:00.007-04:00

Here's a gold mine of quality information that not many use or even know about. Most people use Google as a search engine only, and only for its first part, the Web. And even then they often don't use advanced search to refine their queries. For shame!

But if you look at the classic Google page you will see various headings after "Web." One of these is Books (you'll have to look under the "more" link). This, as opposed to the Web search, will lead you exclusively to the texts of books and magazines, all of them scanned and digitalized by Google. So that what you have is a way to access published material, much of it recent and copyrighted, and bypass purely Web-generated content. Even now, the average quality of published material is superior to the average quality of Web material, so this is a significant advantage.

When you go to Google Books, you will see that some books (older books not under copyright) are available in their entirety. This is an excellent source for classics. You will find, for example, Machiavelli's Prince in English and Italian, and also Leopardi's poems. But of many other books, even very recent, there is a Preview available, often running even to a hundred or more pages. Using your search keywords, you will be able to find all sorts of info from books and magazines.

Some of the things you can find in Google Books: published recipes of all sorts, some of them by famous chefs and cookbook authors; reliable published travel information, often from magazines and well-known guidebooks; plenty of stuff on the Italian language from regular textbooks and grammars, including exercises; ample extracts from books or authors you're interested in- the equivalent of browsing in a bookstore.

To get to all this, what I usually do is a cross-sectional search. That is, I don't start from the book title or author, I start with relevant keywords e.g. "scampi alla busara recipe" or "Italian imperfect tense" or "Borromean islands." If you know Italian, you will of course input your keywords in Italian, or go to Italian Google (www.google.it) and find the link Libri. But even Google Libri has ample material in English, so that to restrict your results you should still use Italian keywords.

There are other useful features, such as sorting by date (most recent publications first) and a personalized library shelf where you can store your findings. Recently and inevitably, Google has monetized Books, so that you will also be able to buy e-books directly from the site.

Hemingway, drunk as a skunk

2011-06-10T07:56:00.000-04:00

I just came upon this bizarre audio of Ernest Hemingway in today's Corriere. In it, Hemingway declaims a fanciful presentation of his upcoming book, Across the River and into the Trees, making role reversals and adding funny details such as the 18-year-old Colonel swimming off into the sunset from Venice to Chioggia. Hemingway shows himself to be a true americano, exhibiting the almost congenital inability of Americans to pronounce the Italian ch- as a k. Despite the noted example of "Chianti," with which I'm sure the author was (very) familiar.

The actual book has been trounced repeatedly by both critics and public over the years, but I think it's underrated. It is semi-autobiographical and based on the married Hemingway's love? infatuation? for the 18-year-old Venetian Adriana Ivancich. The story tells of a dying 50-year-old American colonel's last days in Venice and the lagoon. The colonel, like the author himself, had been in the region during the First World War, and notices the changes both in the world and in himself, none of them good.

While imperfect, I consider this essential for anyone who is really interested in "Ernesto," who called himself an "old Veneto boy." Those who know and love Venice will appreciate his true affection for the city, and the little scenes such as when the crusty, hardened officer goes to the Rialto market and carefully picks out what he wants, shucking an oyster along the way (if memory serves me). His pride in his knowledge of Venice is shown in the clip with the ironic statement that he will describe the city as soon as he consults his guidebook, the Baedeker.

Want to read about Berlusconi?

2011-06-10T07:39:00.002-04:00

Want to read about Berlusconi? I don't. I can't even remember when I reached the saturation point with this fellow. Must have been at least ten years ago.

But in case you do, the British weekly The Economist has an article out about him with the elegant title "The man who screwed an entire country." We Americans have a lot to learn from the Brits where tastefulness is concerned. Of course maybe they mean it quite literally, in reference to his romantic pursuits. He even kissed the hand of Colonel Gheddafi, who isn't even Italian. But I think that little tryst has come to an end.

Word of the week- anatroccolo

2011-06-09T13:19:00.004-04:00

I'll fess up. Sometimes I retrofit my posts because I see something irresistible and I find a way to relate it to Italy or the Italian language. It's surprisingly easy.

This is such a case. Our sports-crazy town, Boston, has seen fit to clothe the mama duck and her baby ducklings that reside permanently in the Public Garden downtown. They've put little Bruins (hockey) capes on them, the poor things. Not the best timing, as today will be 97 degrees with about 70 percent humidity. If they were real, they'd rip off their fancy duds and throw themselves into the little lake nearby, the one with the swan boats.

"Duck" is anatra and "duckling" is anatroccolo. Hans Christian Andersen's famous story is known as Il brutto anatroccolo in Italian. Don't go thinking that this represents a pattern, and you can just append -occolo to animals' names and get the name of their young. No, it's more complicated than that. You need to study the words case by case. For example, cucciolo, which can mean puppy, can also apply to other species e.g. bear cubs, but not all species. Learn them one by one. But be assured they're all adorable.

Italian proverbs- tradurre e' tradire

2011-06-09T09:24:00.003-04:00

Tradurre e' tradire- translation is betrayal.This is one of the best-known Italian proverbs, to the extent that people think at all about translation and translating. That is, not to a very great extent. It is also a thorn in the side of translators everywhere.

But at its most basic level, it is of course true; a truism, even. It is always a compromise to have to translate or interpret, a compromise dictated by the fact that people need and want to communicate across linguistic lines, but are necessarily limited in their language skills. I myself always try to avoid reading a book in translation if I know the language, even if the book would be more accessible here in the States in English.

It is also true on a deeper level. Translation is not some sort of cryptography whereby you transpose one code into another, and this is why automatic translation doesn't really work and probably never will. Translation is a work of inter-cultural interpretation, and as such necessarily fails to render its target perfectly because two different cultures are different and not equivalent. In the pages of this blog I've often brought out the semantic gaps between English and Italian. For instance, solitudine in Italian means both "loneliness" and "solitude." There is no separate word in Italian for loneliness. To my mind, this reflects a cultural difference- the normally gregarious Italians conflate the two ideas, supposing perhaps that to be alone is to be lonely, a distinction that an English-speaker can readily make because it's built into the language.

But what bothers translators (justifiably) about the saying is that it belittles their role and their work. From my not insignificant experience as a translator I can tell you that it is not easy, and it is especially not easy to do well in a timely manner, which is the expectation. The devaluation of this work is reflected in poor compensation and working conditions. In a vicious cycle, the idea that "anybody can do it" leads to the fact that translations are often done by just anybody who has studied the language, and often translating out of their language e.g. an Italian translating into English. The latter is almost always a very bad idea. The results, often laughable (and sometimes hilarious) further detract from the status and credibility of translators- except that these people are not translators. Unfortunately, a really good translation is inconspicuous by its presence; you won't even think of the translation, its quality, or the person doing it if the translation is so good that you feel that you are losing yourself in the original.

Overall, a semi-thankless task, so think twice before repeating the proverb.

New York Times article on Naples

2011-06-08T07:05:00.003-04:00

There is an article about Naples by the so-called Frugal Traveler, or something like that, in today's New York Times. One Seth Kugel admits to being a novice to Italy and a first-timer to Naples, but he's writing anyway in the Times about it. Boh.

I admit to a dislike of Naples. I lived there four years as a little girl and went to Italian schools there. Naples and I just don't mix.

This is not to say that there isn't plenty to see in the city and its surroundings. The Archeological Museum alone (in the picture, a statue from the museum) would warrant a trip. But if you're a first-timer to Italy, like Seth, and especially if you think you're only likely to make it to Italy once, I would not give it priority. However, if you will be visiting Rome (another city I'm not too fond of), be aware that Naples is rather close (about two hours by car) and that if you have the time and a special interest, a day or two in Naples may be a good idea.

Italian sayings- pensa alla salute

2011-06-03T07:01:00.006-04:00

This is a popular saying in Italian, often rendered in Neapolitan as pensa a' salute, literally, think of your health. This is something Italians will say to you when you are whining about relatively inconsequential things and they wish to bring you back to the reality of what is really important in life. I can't argue with that.

In the video, we see the great comedic actors Toto' and Peppino De Filippo (appropriately, both are from Naples). They're zippin' along a country road and Toto' literally lashes out at poor Peppino. He then adds insult to injury by telling the mildly complaining Peppino: pensa alla salute.

Bilingualism is good for you

2011-05-31T19:55:00.003-04:00

According to an interview with distinguished cognitive neuroscientist Ellen Bialystok, bilingualism has various benefits for the mind, including delayed onset of Alzheimer symptoms. Bialystok, who has been studying bilingualism for nearly forty years and now uses neuroimaging in her research, maintains that being bilingual "rewires" the mind and makes it more supple and efficient, at least in some ways. However, she means "bilingual" in the real sense of the word- using two languages with near-equal facility on a regular basis. She does not include people who just know a second language.

My own experience with bilingualism has been positive and enriching. I learned Italian at the age of seven, after no previous exposure to it, when my parents moved to Italy and placed me in a local Catholic school. There were no special classes for me, but I'm sure the nuns must have given me special attention in the first months. My little friend Anna Maria, who lived next door, also served as a patient unpaid tutor.

I don't know if there is a direct causal relation, but I have since taken a shine to all things linguistic and literary, reaching the unusual position for an American of knowing five languages. I am intrepid in both English spelling and ancient Greek grammar. I am perhaps the only foreigner in the world whose French has not been scorned by the French. And I am showing no signs of Alzheimer's. On this basis, I can heartily enjoin you to take up or keep up with a foreign language (hint: try Italian) and encourage your young 'uns to perfect another language from an early age.

The video shows a slightly less scholarly (but more entertaining) take on language and bilingualism by comedian Eddie Izzard.

Cesare Pavese and Constance Dowling

2011-05-28T07:09:00.005-04:00

Last night I was watching a 40's film noir when I remembered that one of the actresses was involved in an unhappy way with writer Cesare Pavese, who later committed suicide, ostensibly because of her rejection. The movie was Black angel, and Constance Dowling plays a minor role as a serial blackmailer in LA who not too surprisingly gets bumped off.

Dowling later moved to Italy and got involved with Pavese. He wrote a very good poem with the chilling title Verra' la morte e avra' i tuoi occhi (death will come and it will have your eyes), which foreshadowed his suicide. You can find the original here and the translation by Geoffrey Brock here.

Pavese was a highly talented man who wrote memorable fiction, poetry, translated (including Moby Dick, and I've wanted to see this translation forever, but can't get my hands on it), and was instrumental in introducing American literature to Italy. His fiction, influenced by American writers, should not be difficult for advanced students of Italian. I personally found his diary, called Il mestiere di vivere, one of the most memorable books I've ever read.

Giordano, The Solitude of prime numbers- review

2011-05-26T09:03:00.006-04:00

Many people were probably first attracted to this novel by its intriguing title. And for once an unusual title isn't a gimmick to gain attention, but a meaningful albeit abstruse metaphor that holds up throughout the work. Actually it's what is known in literature as a "conceit," that is, an extended metaphor.

Our mathematically-inclined young author, who knows English well, may have been struck by the fact that in English "odd" can refer both to numbers not divisible by 2 and to things and especially people who are strange, who don't fit in. From there he may have elaborated the metaphor of prime numbers (divisible only by themselves and 1) as mathematical misfits, all prime numbers being odd numbers except for 2 (I looked it up). He further develops the idea by refining it to include twin primes, prime numbers that are separated by only one even number e.g. 17 and 19, but become increasingly rare as one counts upwards.

Are you getting the uncomfortable feeling that you're back in high school? Well, you won't if you read this novel. He carries all this off splendidly. Alice and Mattia are followed over the course of years from childhood to adulthood, and they are our twin primes. Both are scarred, literally and emotionally, by early events. Brilliant Mattia actually had a twin, who unlike him was mentally backward. His strong urge to belong, to not be odd, leads him to abandon her one day in the park so that he can go to a party as a "normal" person. The sister disappears forever without a trace, paradoxically leaving Mattia more odd and isolated than ever, as he isn't even paired with his biological twin anymore.

Can Mattia and Alice become two, which is a prime number but not odd? At the height of their relationship, budding photographer Alice has them dress as a married couple and takes a snapshot. But tragically, Giordano implies (correctly I think) that people who come together because of deficiencies or wounds are not coming together on a solid, healthy basis. The metaphor of the twin primes also cues us to the fact that they are necessarily apart. The subtle ending of the book does offer some glimmer, not of optimism, but of the idea that even deeply damaged people can go on, and like the crippled Alice, get up by herself, or like Mattia, see the dawn in a new country.

(In the photo, writer and physicist Paolo Giordano, looking very cute)

Coming up- a review of The solitude of prime numbers

2011-05-25T10:41:00.002-04:00

Busy this week, but I have finally received my specially-ordered copy in Italian of Paolo Giordano's The Solitude of prime numbers, a big hit in Italy, and successful elsewhere, too. They've also made a movie from it that I haven't seen. I got the book through The Newton library, and if you live in the Boston area within the Minutemen Library network, you can read it free, too. As soon as I return it. I've gotten through almost half, and so far, so good.

I'll be reviewing it in a couple of days. Until then, here's a video of the author, who as you can see is cute and has slightly crazy hair as befits a boy genius.

Another New York Times article on Milan

2011-05-22T10:46:00.001-04:00

Although the New York Times just had an article about Milan a few weeks ago, here's another one today.

It's part of their 36 hours series, for brief stays in a locale. Check it out.

Word of the week- ingiuria

2011-05-20T07:22:00.004-04:00

Our word of the week is a false friend, that is a word that seems to mean the same thing as a similar word in another language, but is different. An ingiuria is not an injury but a strong insult. Not only that, but in Italian law it can be a criminal act for which you may be prosecuted. This is a crime that is different from defamation, and may simply mean calling people bad names. A possible example: you're in Italy and have a heated argument with someone in public, lose your temper and shout "you son-of-a-bitch!" or the Italian equivalent. You may be looking at charges and court time for something like this. Insults are aggravated legally when they are directed to a pubblico ufficiale, who is not necessarily a cop or even someone in uniform, but any government employee in the performance of his or her duties (such as they are).

So keep your cool (not always easy in Italy) and remember that every legal system is different, both in its theory and practice. Behave yourself and err on the side of caution. If necessary, wait till you land in your own country and call them from the airport, giving them a piece of your mind and informing them of a few home truths. Maybe while you're waiting for your baggage.

Cideb- excellent foreign language materials

2011-05-18T08:27:00.003-04:00

If I were a student of foreign languages, I would certainly make a small investment in the materials put out by this small, specialized Italian publisher, Cideb.

Of special interest are their series of graded readers (see one in the inset). Graded readers are very useful tools for those who are trying to master a language. They are specially composed in what is known as controlled language, which is appropriate to a certain skill level in terms of vocabulary and grammar. You start at your own level, then read as many little books as you like, then proceed to the next level, and so on. The aim is to get you to the top level, after which, like a little bird kicked out of the nest to fend for itself, you can attempt to read the natural language.

Cideb readers are very well-made, including their physical and graphic aspect. They come with an audio CD of the text, spoken by native speakers, including sound effects. There is a complete range of interesting exercises and activities to accompany the story. The prices are reasonable.

Materials are available in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Disclosure- I have no relation with the purveyors of any product or service reviewed on this blog, including the above products.

Valeria Parrella- For Grace Received

2011-05-16T08:33:00.007-04:00

So I've finally gotten around to reading Valeria Parrella, whom I'd been meaning to check out for at least a year now. The difficulty always comes in obtaining materials in Italian. This time I went ahead and read the translation (which I hate to do), but fortunately it was a good translation (by Antony Shugaar, an author himself). The book is published in the States by Europa, which puts out a number of foreign authors in English.

Parrella is a Neapolitan woman (born in Torre del Greco, actually) who has become an established author and actress. The book For Grace Received grabbed me immediately, which is generally not the case with contemporary literature. It is a slim collection of four short stories, but it speaks the proverbial volumes about Naples today. Which is pretty much like Naples yesterday; possibly worse. For example, the old cigarette contraband has given way to drug dealing.

Her work is engaging both because it exudes realness and because she is a skilled storyteller. The overall semi-hideous portrayal of Naples is lightened by black humor, as when illegal printers refer to the overflowing number of books they have around the shop as "Anne Franks," or when a man tells his refined, bourgeois married lover that her four-year-old daughter is probably already a drug runner for the Camorra, and wishes that she was still in diapers, because diapers come in handy for drug dealing.

Not all of the situations are specific to Naples, or the South. The story that gives the collection its title refers to the fact that the protagonist's mother lights a candle in church to thank the saints or whoever that her daughter (a summa cum laude grad) got a job in a shop, a job with benefits. Unemployment, underemployment and exploitation of the young is rampant in Italy. To top it off, our highly educated sales clerk is visited one day by her professor and thesis adviser, who had ripped off the second part of her thesis and published it under her own (the professor's) name. This, too, happens in Italy.

To sum up, Parrella seems to share the bitter opinion of her fellow Neapolitan, the great actor and playwright Edoardo De Filippo. In reference to the native city he knew so well and described in his works, he had one word to say: fujitevenne. Meaning "get the hell out." As he said this decades ago, Parrella's update on the situation of that beautiful city bears him out.

Recommended.

Lampedusa- the Italian Key West?

2011-05-14T11:30:00.010-04:00

While reading the New York Times this morning, I came upon an article called "Libyan immigrants become Italian immigrants." It describes the current crisis on the island of Lampedusa, which I spoke of some time ago. But the current unrest (understatement) in North Africa has exacerbated the already very difficult situation.

What struck me for the first time while reading the article was Foreign Minister Frattini's outright statement that Gheddafi (or however the hell his name is spelled, there are like seven different versions) is using and has been using immigration as an act of hostility against Europe- unleashing a flood of desperate people, many directed toward the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. Lampedusa is actually closer to Africa (Tunisia) than Italy (Sicily). Being the daughter of a native Key Wester the analogy with Castro came to mind. And the Cuban dictator did indeed get rid of many of his "undesirables" by letting them float (literally) toward Southern Florida. Key West and the Keys do not of course have the horrible emergency that is occurring in Lampedusa. But the extreme south of Europe is becoming as problematic as our southern borders with regard to the immigration problem.

This is having repercussions elsewhere in Europe, with the Italians fighting with the French over outbound immigrants, and now the Danish modifying Schengen to reinstate border controls with Germany and Sweden. All of this confirming the idea I've had for some time that Europe is not in a good way.

Nanni Moretti Habemus papam

2011-05-13T14:02:00.006-04:00

Nanni Moretti's new movie, Habemus papam, came out recently in Italy and was shown today at the Cannes Film Festival. It received a positive response, unlike, say Antonioni's L'Avventura, which was booed and hissed at Cannes when it came out fifty years ago. So one may be just a bit skeptical of film festivals.

But here I strongly suspect they're right. I know the French like Nanni Moretti, and so do I. In fact he's my favorite living Italian director, not that he has a lot of competition. I haven't seen the movie, alas, but any movie directed by Moretti and starring Moretti and veteran French actor Michel Piccoli is one I'm going to see.

Habemus papam is Latin for "we have a Pope," and is the traditional announcement once the Conclave of cardinals has arrived at a decision on the next pope. In the movie, the newbie pontiff (Piccoli) gets cold feet and actually runs away. Enter Moretti as a psychologist to the rescue. Will he be able to save the papacy, and if so, how? Watch it and see.

(Holy cow- I just realized it's Friday the 13th. Sfiga in vista!)

De Cecco spinach linguine- review

2011-05-11T12:44:00.004-04:00

Although I rarely if ever buy flavored pasta, yesterday for some reason I got some spinach linguine from De Cecco. Probably because they were out of the regular spaghetti, a staple for me, and also because I remembered I had some leftover ricotta I could use with it.

While tasting for doneness, I noticed that it had practically no spinach flavor. In the meantime I prepared a simple sauce of melted butter, the ricotta, snipped fresh chives, freshly ground nutmeg and salt. I finished the cooking as directed and drained the linguine. In the colander they did smell of spinach. I then emptied the pasta briefly into the pan with the warm sauce, and mixed.

Alas, the spinach taste had disappeared again. Even worse, despite having been properly prepared, the pasta was not al dente, it was downright gummy. It's possible that adding additional ingredients to pasta interferes with the final texture.

This will probably be the last time I buy flavored pasta.

La piccola volpe

2011-05-10T21:15:00.013-04:00

Vanno abbastanza di moda le amicizie inter-specie, cioe' fra esseri che non appartengono alla stessa specie, tipo la nota amicizia fra il compianto orso polare Knut di Berlino e il suo addestratore tedesco. Ma poi se ne trovano a bizzeffe che sono un po' piu' banali ma non meno tenere e solide, come i rapporti fra umani e i loro mici, cani, cavalli o canarini.

Ma io li batto tutti. Si', perche' io sono come gia' sapete una melanzana, e ho stretto un'amicizia duratura con una volpe. Si'- un'amicizia melanzana-volpe. Oserei dire che sia un primato. Per giunta con una volpe giapponese. Dunque la melanzana americana e la volpe giapponese vanno d'amore e d'accordo.

Vi spiego, cosi' eventualmente potete anche voi fare qualcosa del genere. Anni fa quando ho cominciato a scrivere questo blog ho dovuto per necessita' passare piu' tempo al computer, e dunque ho pensato di allietare le mie giornate con uno sfondo (theme) di Google. Ho scelto fra tutti la piccola volpe. In seguito l'ho scelta anche per lo sfondo del G-mail.

Questa volpe e' infatti giapponese, una kitsune, e vive una vita tranquilla dalle parti del Monte Fuji. Non ci sono altre volpi, ma lei comunque gode della compagnia di uccelli, scimmie, oche e cosi' via. Nonostante sia giapponese e volpe, mi ricorda molto Thoreau, che non era ne' giapponese ne' volpe.

Le attivita' della kitsune cambiano secondo l'ora dell'utente. Dunque quando ti svegli vedi che fa colazione, dopo lava i panni, la sera canta una serenata, piu' tardi guarda le stelle attraverso un cannocchiale. Su G-mail ha una vita ancora piu' ricca- fa tai chi con dei conigli la mattina, coglie fiori, pranza con una scimmia, si cimenta con la calligrafia, pulisce la casetta, coltiva il suo bonsai.

Una vita invidiabile. Insomma, ho una leggera infatuazione per la mia amica e mi affascinano tutti i dettagli della sua vita e del suo ambiente. Che fiori sono quelli? Quei frutti sull'albero sono pesche o cachi? Che caratteri calligrafici fa? Chi sono gli spiritelli notturni che giocano a go, una specie di dama giapponese? Voglio anche sapere tutto quello che le succede di notte quando dorme. Cose molto interessanti, vi assicuro. Ho anche imparato qualcosa sulla cultura e le usanze giapponesi.

Se ormai siete rimasti affascinati anche voi, potrete vedere la sequenza di attivita' della piccola volpe di G-mail qui e la sequenza della volpe di Google qui.

Livorno: another side of Tuscany

2011-05-10T06:40:00.002-04:00

Livorno is the youngest city in Tuscany, gaining in importance only after the progressive silting of the ancient port of nearby Pisa. And it is certainly less known to foreigners. Or even to other Italians, for that matter. But in a way it is one of the most authentic expressions of the Tuscan character; the character, that is, of the irreverent and suffering-no-fools-gladly toscanaccio.

Around the year 1600 ruler Ferdinand I declared the city a free port and passed laws encouraging the permanent immigration of just about everybody, including people who had been very naughty indeed in their own country. This gave rise to what we now call "diversity" and a long tradition of tolerance and open-mindedness, making it among other things the most left-leaning town of left-leaning Tuscany, and the site of the establishment in 1921 of the Italian Communist party. Despite this, and proving that they do in fact tolerate everyone, it has been home for decades now to an Army post of American forces, and as such was my first home in Italy (no, I was not a soldier, I was seven years old). Well, they tolerate almost everyone, except for their arch-enemies, the Pisans.

One of its most famous sons is Amedeo Modigliani, born into the important Jewish community of the city, a cosmopolitan and innovative artist (see one of his works, below) with - how shall I put this?- an unconventional lifestyle. He exhibited the spirit of freedom and even iconoclasm of Livorno, taken in his case to self-destructive extremes. Its most famous dish would certainly be the cacciucco, a rich fish stew- a sea-based mixture of all sorts, just like the livornesi.

Livorno was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in World War II; despite this, it retains many historic sights. These include the politically incorrect (you can't expect political correctness from livornesi) statue of the Four Moors, where our friend Ferdinand lords it over four groveling dark-skinned men in chains- a representation of Livorno's triumph over pirates, who were too naughty even for them. The town even has its well-preserved Little Venice area, as seen in the photo above, left. Luchino Visconti's movie Le notti bianche is set in this part of the town. Incidentally, at one point in history Visconti's aristocratic forebears owned Livorno.

The town is surrounded by areas along the sea, inland, and out to sea (Elba and other islands) that are of major interest to tourists. Cuisine is both land- and sea-based, because of the near proximity of hills to the water. Some very fine wines can be had, such as Sassicaia. To the south you have the beginning of the Maremma, a great favorite of mine. Its history goes back millennia to the Etruscans; in fact the coast south of Livorno is known as the Etruscan Riviera. The water quality is also among the best in Italy. Hiking, cycling and horseback riding are also popular.

Can you tell I have a soft spot in my heart for this underdog among Italian cities? Find out more about the town at the site Livorno Now.