America's Cup redux (3)

Well, it didn't happen. In late November, all of Naples was glued to the tube for the announcement--THE announcement--live, direct from Switzerland. The Swiss were about to make their decision as to the site of their 2007 defense of the America's Cup, a major regatta (also--for you landlubbers-- known as a boat race).

The mayor of Naples was shown on the screen, her eyes closed, holding up double-barrelled crossed fingers just for luck. Here it came!---"Valencia!" Boo-hiss. Disappointed mayor. Charges of favoritism. We wuz robbed. Crossed fingers swiftly converted to another hand gesture that I would not think of describing to your genteel sensitivities.

The regatta, had it happened, would have meant the construction of a new, world-class boat harbor in Bagnoli. The entire area was--and remains--scheduled for rejuvenation anyway, and work has already started on that ambitious project. The ugly steel mill--an incredible piece of industrial blight--is being torn down. A new fair grounds, Science City, is already open. The regatta and boat harbor would have been a major shot in the arm, true, but work shall continue--without or without the boat race.

I have a rather eclectic collection of books about Naples: archaeolgy, history, music— whatever strikes my fancy, really. It's not a huge collection, but it is stuffed with many of those tiny and ephemeral pamphlets that come out all the time about the "Caves of  Naples," "The Customs of Naples," "The This & That of Naples." Maybe a few hard ones, such as The Major-Minor Shift  in the Neapolitan Song as a Manifestation of the Existentialist Dichotomy in the Popular Psyche, (OK, I made that one up.) I have a few standard works such as Acton's The Last Bourbons of Naples,  and I am an absolute sucker for passages about Naples in 19th century works such as Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad.

Occasionally, I get on the internet just to see what is out there in used book shops, not because I am necessarily going to buy, but I might. I have found a couple of good volumes that way about, for example, the American reaction to Garibaldi's invasion of the Kingdom of Naples, and Antonio Pace's great book,  Benjamin Franklin and Italy.

So, just for fun, I looked a bit today. There is nothing like a used–book store, even if it's only in cyberspace. Right off the bat, I see something I want:

H.M.S. " Hannibal " at Palermo & Naples, During the Italian Revolution, 1859–1861. With Notices of Garibaldi, Francis II., & Victor Emanuel, by Admiral Rodney Mundy. London : "John Murray. 1st edition, 1863. 8vo.365pp. Frontispiece engraving & map. Some pencil annotation throughout. Inner hinges very slightly strained. Top & bottom of spine, edges & corners rubbed, original cloth lightly marked, else very good copy." Unfortunately, the price is US$233.35. I don't want it that bad. Sometimes the National Library in Naples has these things in the original English as well as an Italian translation. I'll check that one.

Maybe I am setting my sights too high. Ah, $1.39! That's more like it. Let's see: Devil's Daughter, by Catherine Coulter. "New York, NY, U.S.A. 1985. Mass Market Paperback. Good. Spine lines/edge rubs/clean Tight Pgs. Book Description: Golden-haired hellion Arabella goes adventuring to Naples, Italy to solve the mystery of her father's missing ships and cargoes. But soon she discovers that the man behind the thievery is an enemy from her father's past. A man she shouldn't love, but can't resist..".  Well, I'm sure it's a fine book, but I had to go to the OED just to find out what a "hellion" is—a troublesome or mischievous person. No.

And here is John Horne Burn's classic, The Gallery, about the seamy kaleidescope of Neapolitan life at the end of WWII played out in the famous Galleria Umberto. (I understand that the book is about to be republished.) I read it once upon a time but don't own it. For $1.95, this is a definite maybe.

As a sheer curiosity piquer, here's one by the great Polish science-fiction wroter, Stanislaw Lem: The Chain of Chance. London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1990. Softcover. Very Good. 5" x 7 3/4". Remainder stripe on bottom of book. "...In Italy, a number of people have died mysteriously. They tend to be foreign, male, middle-aged and to have some connection with Naples. But there the resemblances end and even Interpol have bemusedly closed their files. However, a former astronaut turned private detective agrees to duplicate the exact itinerary of one of the victims in an attempt to decipher the links in an increasingly mystifying chain of coincidence.." 179pp." Three dollars. Mark that one. That's a keeper, especially since "... foreign, male, middle-aged..." reminds me of someone I know.

I don't know about the next one. The Very Daring Duchess by Miranda Jarrett. "... formulaic romance between a conservative Naval officer and an exotic arts dealer. After winning a victory against the French army, Captain Edward Ramsden, the unwanted fourth son of the Duke of Harborough, and a fellow officer decide to explore Naples and enjoy its diversions. Their first stop is the illustrious Signora Francesca Robin's studio d'artista, an eclectic museum containing a number of bogus art pieces as well as a large display of lewd paintings... The story escalates with the promise of intrigue and sexual tension but, unfortunately, Jarrett packs her tale with maudlin dialogue and clichè commentary. Although Jarrett's sex scenes are steamy and descriptive, her characters are little more than cardboard..." Three dollars and forty–two cents. Too steep—sexual tension and steam notwithstanding.

Here's one that is actually intriguing: A woman, a man, and two kingdoms: the story of Madame d'Epinay and the Abbot Galiani, by Francis Steegmuller. Madame d'Epinay was Rousseau's patron. She set him up in a gloriously free and bucolic country estate where he could feel like a noble savage. ("Garçon, a bit more curare on my spear-point, please.") Ferdinando Galiani  (1728-1787) was one of the great minds of the Neapolitan Enlightenment and the author of some important works in economics. He was also the ambassador of the Kingdom of Naples in France in the 1760s. It is entirely possible that he and madame d'Epinay had something going, but I don't know. I don't even know if I want to know.

Oh, no. Here's a mistake. Even worse--it's bald-faced baloney (that's disgusting!): Marriage Italian Style, by Arnold Hano. "...Basis for spicy 1964 Sophia Loren film... whore's efforts to get longtime lover and womanizer to marry her and stay true..." That, of course, is totally wrong. The "basis for Sophia Loren's spicy 1964...etc." was the stage-play Filomena Marturano by Eduardo de Filippo.

How about The Bay of Noon, by Shirley Hazard. "... NY: Picador, 2003. Trade Paperback. Near Fine/No Jacket. Reprint. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 181 pp. A young Englishwoman working in Naples, Jenny comes to Italy fleeing a history that threatened to undo her. Binding tight, text clean...". I think I know that woman. Tight binding, clean text. That's her.

Here it is! This is the one I want. One of the classics in its genre: Illustrated Excursions in Italy, by Edward Lear: "London: S. & I. Bentley, Wilson & Fley for Thomas M'Lean, 1846. 2 volumes, folio. (14 1/2 x 10 5/8 inches). Half-titles, 2pp. publisher's advertisments at back of vol.II. Titles with wood-engraved vignettes, 55 fine tinted lithographic views by Lear, printed by Hullmandel & Walton, 2 lithographic maps, hand-coloured in outline, 2 leaves engraved sheet music at back of vol.I, 53 wood-engraved vignettes after Lear and R. Branston. (Some spotting). Original green cloth, blocked in gilt and blind. Modern green cloth box, green morocco lettering piece. A fine complete set of Lear's magisterial record of his travels through Italy. The first volume covers Lear's tours through the Abruzzi region, 'or three Northern provinces of the kingdom of Naples' (p.1). He made three excursions between July 1843 and October 1844, recording in both words and pictures the most memorable and pictureque of the scenes he encountered. In the preface he notes that object of the work was 'the illustration of a part of Italy which.. has hitherto attracted but little attention. With the exception of [two other works].. I am not aware of any published account of the Abruzzi provinces in English; and the drawings with which the following pages are illustrated are, I believe, the first hitherto given of a part of Central Italy as romantic as it is unfrequented' (preface). The second volume, with much briefer text than the first, includes views 'of places in the States of the Church - most of them within easy reach of visitors to Rome; yet, with the exception of Isola Farnese, Castel Fusano, and Caprarola, ..seldom seen by Tourists' (Preface). Lear notes in both volumes that the drawings 'are Lithographed by my own hand from my sketches'.

And it is only $ 9,500. Here—to make that redundantly transparent—nine–thousand five–hundred dollars. 

I think I'll go back and check on Jenny of the tight binding and clean text.

Bovio, Libero (1883-1942)—

Together with Ferdinando Russo and Salvatore Di Giacomo, Libero Bovio was at the heart of the great rebirth of Neapolitan dialect poetry and theater at the beginning of the 20^th century. His unusual first name—"Libero" (Free)—apparently is traceable to the anti-monarchist sentiments of his father, a philosophy teacher. Father also envisioned a medical career for his son, and though Libero, indeed, entered medical school, he is said to have fainted at the sight of all those cadavers and body parts during his first anatomy lesson. So much for the future Dr. Bovio.

To pursue his passion for dialect poetry and theater, he took odd jobs at newspapers and then went to work in the export office of the National Museum. He then became director of "Canzonetta," a small publishing concern dedicated to the music of Naples.

  Oh, Don Libero—it's you! You know I have to write you up for that."

I have no profound sociological insight to offer on the persistence of organized crime, the camorra (the Neapolitan Mafia) in Naples, but I offer this from The Galaxy, an Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, a journal published in New York from 1866 to 1878 by Sheldon and Company. Among contributors to the very first issue were heavyweights such as William Dean Howells, Henry James, Bayard Taylor and Anthony Trollope. 

In May of 1868, the journal ran an article by G.W. Appleton entitled "The Camorra of Naples." The first paragraph was:

There follow long descriptions of the origin of the camorra, descriptions of involvement in smuggling and general leech-like attachment to all affairs public and private—what amounts to a shadow state, really.

The article is glowingly in the past tense: "…The existence until within a few years…This society was known as the camorra…should so long have been permitted to exist…etc." Written as it was, not long after the unification of Italy in 1860, the article is glowingly optimistic. It closes with this:

That, from the Ministry of "Hope springs eternal…". 

I can't help wondering if this "G.W. Appleton" is, indeed, George Webb Appleton (1845-1909), the British fiction writer. He would have been 23-years old when he wrote the article. A good age for optimism.

Cervantes in Naples
The street named via Cervantes is near the port, probably an exciting place to be back in the early 1570s when Cervantes was in the Spanish vice-realm of Naples in his rough–and–tumble days as soldier and struggling author.  Inscribed on a plaque at the beginning of that street is a passage from his poem, Journey to Parnassus. It speaks of "...Naples the illustrious...the glory of Italy, famed in the world...the mother of nobility and the land of plenty..."

Miguel de Cervantes Saarvedra (1547-1614) fled Spain in 1568 to avoid the ghastly punishment of having his hand amputated for wounding someone in a fight. He fled to Rome and a job as a domestic servant, a post he left in 1570 for the life of a common soldier. In 1571 he went aboard the Marquesa, a ship in the Holy Roman fleet and sailed from Messina to engage the Turks at the great Battle of Lepanto, one of the most important naval engagements in the history of Europe. By all accounts, Cervantes fought well; he spent the next few years in the Neapolitan vice–realm in the garrisons in Palermo and Naples. He sailed from Naples in 1575 to return to Spain and was captured by Berber pirates and held for ransom. He lived through years of hell in prison in Algiers, failing in four attempts to escape, finally being ransomed and freed in 1580.

Picasso's Don Quixote
As a writer, Cervantes struggled unsuccessfully through much of the rest of his life. He applied for various jobs, even in Spanish possessions in the Americas but was turned down for one reason or another. The bulk of his work was published in the last ten years of his life. Indeed, he started to write Don Quixote while in debtors' prison in 1600. The first part was published in 1605. 

With the publication of Don Quixote, Cervantes achieved the success that had eluded him for so long. In terms of posterity, thus, he had made it, but his contemporaries were not so sure. In 1608 he was passed over for inclusion in a group of Spanish poets invited to go to Naples with the new viceroy, the Conde de Lemos. Journey to Parnassus (cited above) was the result of that snub. Cervantes had been denied the pleasure of returning to Italy, to Naples, the  land of his exuberant youth, so he invited himself. That is, the long poem is written under a pseudonym, and it invites "Miguel de Cervantes" to Parnassus (Naples), the mythological home of poets and musicians. It is a somewhat tedious critique of other poets, and it is not widely read.

The place of Cervantes is now secure in the history of our literature. He is a byword, whereas those who got that invitation are forgotten. Cervantes is even secure against the jibe of his great contemporary, Lope de Vega (1562-1625), who was apparently stupid enough to say that "no one would so stupid as to praise Don Quixote."

The Bourbons, thus, denied all requests from the Anglican community in Naples for permission to build a church, both before those conflicts, as well as afterwards, when the monarchy was restored by the Conference of Vienna in 1815. For many years, the British community held church services on the premises of the British legation, housed in Palazzo Calabritto at the beginning of the Riviera di Chiaia.

That all changed in 1860 when Giuseppe Garibladi, after the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples by forces under his command, granted the request and gave them the land, near Piazza San Pasquale, one block from the Riviera di Chiaia and the Villa Comunale, the large public gardens. The gift was--in the words of Garibaldi inscribed on a plaque [the one in the photo, below, is not the original] on the premises of Christ Church in Naples:

Thus, the gift of land was for services rendered by those English who had raised money for the cause of Italian unity and those who had actually fought with Garibaldi's troops. It may also, according to some, have been one more way for Garibaldi, anti-clerical and particularly anti-Papal, to needle the Pope a bit.

After some bureaucratic quibbling over the fact that there was already a cavalry barracks on the land, the deed was finally ratified by the Italian government on August 10, 1861. The church was to be all English: the architectural firm was Thos. Smith of Hertford and London; the stone was from Malta; and all the furniture came from England. The mosaic behind the altar, however, was by Saviati of Venice. The foundation stone was laid on December 15, 1862 and the completed church was consercrated on March 11, 1865 by the Right Reverend Dr. Sanford, first Bishop of Gibraltar.

Christ Church has continued ever since--except for a break of three years during WWII--to serve the needs of the considerable English community in Naples as well as the less permanent, but sizeable, contingent of British forces from the NATO community in Naples. It also serves the American Episcopalian community.

As an interesting sidelight, Garibaldi had earlier visited Britain to raise money for his campaign to invade the Kingdom of Naples. In Coventry, he is said to have planted and dedicated three oak trees with the words, "May they be struck down by lightning if ever my country declares war on this country." The story says that when Mussolini declared war on Britain some 80 years later, one of the oaks was struck.

[I have drawn some of this information  from an article by Pamela Payne that appeared in The Lion Magazine in September, 1992. She, in turn, credited a booklet by Miss Winifred F. Allen.]

I harbor no illusion that I will ever discover— much less write about—all of the little churches in Naples that are abandoned and falling apart. But sometimes I see one set incongruously in the middle of the modern city, and it stirs my urge to know more.

Via Depretis is the avenue between Piazza Municipio (the site of the city hall) and Piazza della Borsa (the stock exchange). Like all such straight, broad thoroughfares in that section of Naples, it is the product of the massive reconstruction called the risanamento, a 30-year project of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. A smaller, yet important, wave of construction took place in Naples during the 1920s and 30s and produced those mastodons of Fascist Art Deco such as the main post office, the passenger terminal at the port of Naples, and all of the municipal and provincial government buildings on or near Piazza Matteotti.

Another such monolith is the telephone exchange about halfway along via Depretis. It gleams and towers over the rest of the neigborhood; indeed, it and the large risanamanto building a few yards away could do an excellent car-crusher number on  the tiny edifice caught in the middle, the church of San Giacomo degli Italiani (photo). The small church is closed, dilapidated and non-descript—yet, for what it's worth—it managed to survive two great waves of purposeful demolition and construction in the last century and even various random waves of destruction in the form of the aerial bombardments of the Second World War.

The church was a remake in the 1570s of a nearby church of the same name that disappeared as part of Spanish construction in the 16^th century. The original church was from 1328 and was the seat of the Order of the Knights of St. James. The appellation "degli Italiani" (of the Italians) may have been to distinguish it from another church—more familiar to Neapolitans and, indeed, still a functioning church—San Giacomo degli Spagnoli. Or, says another theory, it was to honor sailors from Pisa ("Italians" as opposed to "Neapolitans") whose fleet rested in the port of Naples for a while on the way home from a victory over the Saracens further south in 1327. The façade of the present church incorporates the portal from the 1500s as well as a crest comprised of a shell, sword, and cross, the symbol of the Order of St. James. The church was left standing intentionally during the risanamento and was reconsecrated in 1901. I have been unable to find out if it served as a church after the giant building was put up next door. I suspect that it was closed during that period and simply never reopened.

Composers, other

Elsewhere in these entries I have dealt with some prominent names in the world of Naples and music, primarily composers from the 18th and 19th centuries (see entries for Bellini, Cimarosa, Donizetti, Paisiello, Pergolesi, Rossini, and A. Scarlatti. Also see the entry, Comic opera and Mozart). For the sake of completeness, I should add a few more names of those who formed what is generally called the "Neapolitan School" in the 1700s. Some of them (in chronological order of date of birth) are:

Francesco Durante  1684–1755
Leonardo Vinci  1690–1730
Leonardo Leo  1694–1744
Niccolò Piccinni  1728–1800

Francesco Durante's father was employed by the S. Onofrio conservatory, so Francesco came to his musical training at the same institution quite naturally. He then studied in Rome but returned to Naples to lead the S. Onofrio conservatory. By 1728 he was the head of another conservatory in Naples, the Neapolitan Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo. He served there for 10 years, resigned and then headed the Neapolitan Conservatorio di S. Maria di Loreto. (All of these various conservatories were fused into a single institution by the French when Murat ruled Naples in the early 1800s.) Durante was primarily known as a composer of sacred music and was at mid-century the most respected teacher of music in Naples. Pergolesi and Paiseiello were among his illustrious students. 

Anyone named Leonardo Vinci must have needed a real sense of humor. Presumably, this brought young Leo into the then new discipline of the Neapolitan Comic Opera after an education at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo. His first work was a comic opera called Lo cecato fauzo (fauzo is Neapolitan for "false"—here it is good to remember that most of these delightful works were, in fact, written in Neapolitan and not in Italian). The Blind Faker might be an appropriate translation, but I have never seen an English translation. (I have never seen the original opera, either.) It opened at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples in 1719. 

Although his name has been historically overshadowed in the comic opera by Pergolesi and, later, Cimarosa and Paisiello, at the time—the 1720s—Vinci ruled the world of comic opera in Naples. Interestingly, his Li zite’ngalera [Old Maids in Prison] (!), from 1722, is the earliest surviving score of a Neapolitan comic opera, composed and performed well before Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona, the work that is now viewed historically as having started the great popularity of the Neapolitan musical commedia throughout Italy and elsewhere. Vinci also composed serious opera for theaters elsewhere in Italy and, indeed, was one of the musicians (besides Sarro, A. Scarlatti, and, later, Piccinni–see, below) to have a hand at writing music for Metastasio's Didone abbandonata, the work that brought literary merit back into Italian opera after decades of doggerel. Vinci died relatively young and, according to some sources, may have been poisoned as the result of an illicit love affair. [Note to myself: try to find the raw, unexpurgated version of Old Maids in Prison !]

Leonardo Leo was a student at the one Neapolitan conservatory not yet mentioned in this entry, the Conservatorio S. Maria della Pietà dei Turchini and the only one that still survives as a functioning church. (See  music conservatory for details of the religious origins of the Naples conservatories.) He was a successful composer and church organist by his early 20s and then turned to writing comic opera, as well. When A. Scarlatti died in 1725, Leo replaced him as the first organist of the viceregal chapel. He composed serious works for theaters in Italy as well as for the court of Spain. In Naples, in 1739, he became the head of the conservatory where he, himself, had studied. He is remembered as a teacher and an innovator, concerning himself with reforming church music as well as the orchestra of the royal opera.

Somewhere, Mozart is supposed to have remarked that he wanted to compose comic opera as good as that of Niccolò Piccinni "even though I am only a German." Indeed, between 1760—the year of Piccini's first great success, the comic opera La Cecchina ossia La buona figliola (Cecchina or the Good Daughter)—and the coming of the generation of composers such as Cimarosa in the 1780s, no Italian composer was held in higher esteem throughout Europe than Piccinni. La Cecchina was the most popular work of its kind for years in Italy. The libretto is by Goldoni and is an adaptation of  Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson. Verdi, himself, said that La Cecchina was "the first true comic opera". The work belongs to the larmoyant school—"tear-jerker"—popular in the mid-1700s (and ever since?)—a young, delicate, orphaned heroine against the fates. Musically, Verdi held it in such high esteem because it was more than just a rollicking thigh-slapper; it showed Piccinni's flair for the minor, plaintif song set, uncharacteristically, in a comic piece, not unlike, say, Donizetti's later "Una furtiva lacrima" in L'elisir d'amore. There is even a virtuoso bit of angry soprano, a stylistic precursor, some say, to Mozart's "Queen of the Night" in The Magic Flute.

Piccinni was a  prolific composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera (some estimates claim he wrote as many as 300 operas). His prolificness extended to biology, as well; he had seven children and was so concerned for their wellfare and security that he accepted a well–paying appointment at the court of France in 1776.  He represented one–half of the debate raging in Paris between the Italian style of music and the influential school of Gluck. Thus, it was the "Piccinnists" versus the "Gluckists," although Piccinni and Gluck, themselves, apparently never encouraged feuding between their respective claques. Piccinni returned to Naples in 1791 when the drivers of the French Revolution cut off his stipend. In Naples, he was thought to harbor revolutionary badthink and was placed under house arrest for four years. At the end of his life, he returned to France, where he died in 1800. The music conservatory in Bari, Italy—his birthplace—is named for him.

Piccinni's reputation was eclipsed—as was the entire genre of the Neapolitan comic opera—by the subsequent shift in cultural tastes in Europe—the outbreak of Romanticism—so perhaps this is a good place to stop. I could have mentioned Francesco Provenzale (1624-1704), the first Neapolitan composer of opera, very few of whose works survive, but a great influence on the next generation; or Niccolò Porpora (1687–1768), primarily known as a teacher—indeed, one of Haydn's teachers and the voice teacher of Farinelli, the great castrato. Or Niccolò Jommelli, (1714-74), the greatest symphonic innovator of his day, whose ability to use and even invent orchestral resources to carry text was praised by Metastasio. Or the strange case of  Johann Adolf  Hasse (1699–1783), the Austrian who came to Naples to study with A. Scarlatti and became, I think, the only foreigner in the "Neapolitan School" and one of Metastasio's important collaborators. The fact that I have crammed all of these fine musicians into a single entry as "Other Composers," is, I am aware, an injustice. It was a convenience for me to do so and certainly reflects only upon my own limited tastes. So, I invite you to go find a CD of Piccinni's La Cecchina, which I have just done, and have a listen—which I have also just done. It's fine. (I couldn't find Old Maids in Prison.)

Cypress Grove

Like most, you have probably said, "if you've seen one coniferous gymnosperm, you've seem them all." (Alas, how many moments have we wasted over that single phrase!) Yet, on the premises of the little church of the Madonna of the Cypresses just above the town of Fontegreca not too far from Caserta in the mountains of the Matese area of Italy, there is a grove of such trees that you must see.
 
The Matese is one of the areas in Italy where you go to get away from it all. "It" has been in and out of the area many times over the millennia: there are Roman and Samnite ruins, medieval castles (such as the nearby Castello di Prato Sannita), and much more recently, the armies of WWII swept past to converge ferociously on nearby Monte Cassino. Yet the area has always managed to restore itself, to live up to the inscription, from the book of Isaiah, on the wall inside the tiny church:

And that shows you just how much you know about Lebanon. Forget the cedars. Come see the cypresses. I know that Isaiah says that they will come to you, but you have to meet them halfway. That point is in the 200–acre cipresseta (cypress grove, pictured above) that climbs both slopes above a cascading stream on the grounds running up from and beyond the church. The origins of the religious sanctuary are in the eighth century, and the cyprus grove has been the object of traveller curiosity and then botanical interest since the 1600s. The stream is fed by the Sava river higher up in the valleys of the Apennines.

Apparently, the particular species of cyprus on the premises of this now protected park is unique in Europe. Girolamo, the gentle and jovial caretaker of the grounds—the gentleman who keeps the water-mill running!—says that no one knows how the trees got there and that they are not members of the species Cypressus Sempervirens, common elsewhere in Italy and apparently brought originally by the Etruscans, whom even Girolamo does not remember. Sempervirens, or one of its cousins, even provided the wood for the gates of Constantinople, which lasted 1,100 years. Here endeth the lesson in historical dendrology for today.

I enjoy browsing in old journals. I mean old journals—the kind that let you read about persons before they grow up to be "history." Here is something I found in an issue of The North American Review from January 1816, only the second year of existence of that distinguished publication. It is a kind of character sketch of Ferdinand IV of Naples (who would shortly become Ferdinand I of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies) right after he had been restored to his throne after Napoleon's defeat and the subsequent Restoration mandated by the Congress of Vienna. The item appears to be a reprint from The Journal, although I haven't yet managed to figure out which journal—probably a British publication of the day. The writer pretty much confirms other contemporary and subsequent descriptions of the king as being affable and stupid. A lunkhead. That view is much kinder than some, such as this sentence from a much later (1911) description of Ferdinand in the Encyclopedia Brittanica: "...Ferdinand died on the 4th of January 1825. Few sovereigns have left behind so odious a memory. His whole career is one long record of perjury, vengeance and meanness, unredeemed by a single generous act..."

There is other material on Ferdinand in the log entries in vol. 1 for The Bourbons (1) and Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel.

 Only the ambidextrous, such as myself, can parry the charge of being so unabashedly gauche ("left," as the French say) as to sit in the fine restaurant of a 4-star hotel overlooking the sea on the Isle of Capri while reading Mark Twain's Roughing It.

Guilty as charged. It's not that you can't find roughness on Capri. On the contrary, you can indeed take rough hikes and get tired and lost, or take rough swims and get tired and dead. One of the roughest, cruelest stories I know about Capri goes back only a few years: a leaky tub captained by one of those human vermin who traffic in desperate refugees from Asia and Africa sailed up along the imposing cliffs on the southern flank of Capri. Captain Scum then got his huddled masses up out of the hold where they had been stowed. "Look," he told them. "There they are—the White Cliffs of Dover. England! I have kept my promise. All you have to do is swim ashore from here and you're home free." They weren't, of course, as they found out after straggling up onto the beach and starting to enquire of local fishermen about train connections to London.

All that, of course, is of little concern to the average Capri-goer in this age of mass tourism, addicted as we are to the galaxy of starred hotels (both four and ill) that now abound on the island. However, tourism in a more gracious age—say, the early 1900s—gave those graced with enough money the liberty of indulging other addictions and lifestyles: cocaine, bizarre Romanesque orgies, and 15-year-old boys, all of which held in thrall the life of Jacque d'Adelsward Fersen (1880-1923) the gentleman for whom the strangest house on the island is named, the Villa Fersen.

Fersen, according to some sources, was the great–grandson of one Hans Halex de Fersen, a Swedish officer who was Marie Antoinette's lover. In any event, Jacque was born in Paris and by the time he was 22 had inherited great wealth, served in the French army and published poetry. He travelled widely in Europe, including a number of trips to Capri. In 1903, on the eve of his engagement in France to a young woman named Blanche, he was arrested for "corrupting the morals of minors." The charge was based on an accusation by a servant whom Fersen had discharged and who testified that Fersen had presided, in the company of the underaged, over orgies and black masses. Fersen was sentenced to six months in jail.

The scandal destroyed Fersen's engagement and the diplomatic career that had awaited him. He left France for good and moved to Capri, where he decided to build his retreat, a pseudo-Classical pleasure palace on a speck of land just below the eastern height and the sprawling ruins of the villa Tiberius, a pleasure palace in its own right, two thousand years earlier.

Approaching Capri from the port of Naples, the Villa Fersen is a white speck clinging implausibly, magically to the side of the cliff hundreds of feet above the sea at the far eastern end of the island. It is set—certainly because Fersen was looking for seclusion—at one of the remotest spots on the island. The villa was finished in July of 1905 and officially named "Villa Lysis" for a disciple of Socrates mentioned in one of Plato's dialogues. Fersen had many of the extravagant furnishings brought from Paris, had the phrase Amori et dolorum sacrum ("Sacred to love and pain") inscribed over the entrance, and in general cleared the decks for full-scale debauchery quite in keeping with the climate of the times on Capri (see the log entry on Krupp and Capri). Most bizarrely, Fersen ordered that the construction materials for his new house be carried into place only by women. (He'd show old Blanche What's-Her-Name!) In spite of the official name, everyone knows the building as "Villa Fersen" and even sign posts use that name as they point you along your way.

Fersen continued to write poetry and novels and to keep younger male companions. In 1910, the police broke in on some particularly weird goings-on at Villa Fersen and Jacque had to leave the island for a while. He spent much of the Great War in a hospital in Naples trying to recover from cocaine and opium addiction. He returned to his villa after the war and a few years later intentionally administered himself a lethal overdose of cocaine. His intelligence, wealth, poetic gifts, life-style, vices and ultimate tragedy invite comparison, in the minds of some, to the life of his English contemporary, Oscar Wilde.

The villa went to Fersen's sister, Germaine. Later, in the 1940s, it was acquired by a distant cousin of Fersen and became somewhat of a cultural "salon" and watering hole for Italian intellectuals such as Alberto Moravia and Else Morante. In the 1950s it was again sold, this time to the owner of the famous Hotel Quisisana; plans to develop the villa as an exclusive hotel came to naught. Eventually, in the 1980s, a "Lysis Association" was founded to protect the villa, and the Ministry of Culture then acquired the property and set about restoring the premises as an historical monument. The villa was, however, sold once again to a wealthy and elderly Italian-American, Armando Campione who died almost immediately thereafter. In 2001, Villa Fersen was acquired by the City Council of Capri and restoration as a cultural center is still going on.

At present (2004) the premises are open, and the villa has been structurally restored and is sound. As yet, there are no furnishings, but the interior is painted, cleaned, and is primed to receive whatever the city council decides. It is a spacious two-story mansion with panoramic terrace balconies at both levels; there are at least a dozen large rooms, including those in the large basement. It is all set in abundant greenery and overlooks the bay of Naples as if sharing watch over the eastern approaches to the bay with the old tower on Punto Campanella at the tip of the Sorrentine peninsula just across the narrow straits. A plaque put in place near the entrance to the villa pays homage to French writer Roger Peyrefitte (1907–2000), author of The Exile of Capri, a biography of Fersen.

 
This magnificent fountain is also known as the "Immacolatella". Both names derive from two of the locations that have been home to the fountain during its many travels. (Being moved is a risk you take if you are a fountain in Naples. Click here for another example.) The fountain was sculpted in the early 1600s and is the work of Michelangelo Naccherino (1559-1622) and Pietro Bernini (1562-1629). It was first located near the Royal Palace near a statue of "The Giant," recovered from the ruins of Cuma. In 1815 the fountain was moved to the port of Naples to be in front of the Immacolatella, the old quarantine station. It was then moved near the Carmine church at Piazza Mercato; then to the gardens on the square of San Pasquale a Chiaia; then finally, in 1905, when the new seaside road was finished during the "risanamento" of Naples the fountain was moved to its present location (see photo) at the pituresque curve beween via Partenope and via Nazario Sauro not far from the Castel dell'Ovo.

Amid the three rounded arches and above and on the sides of the fountain, besides the main basin adorned with marine life, the work is decorated with caryatids holding a cornucopia, as well as with the coats of arms of the city and of the Spanish vice-realm.

The Bernini involved with this fountain  is, by the way, not the Bernini of the great colonnade of St. Peter's in Rome. That would be Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). This Bernini--Pietro--was his father.

The entry on Nisida and Carlo Poerio makes reference to William Gladstone's Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen on the State Prosecutions of the Neapolitan Government, the publication of which in pamphlet form in 1851 exposed the horrendous conditions in Neapolitan prisons of the day. The letters, too, were a general condemnation of the absolutist Bourbon monarchy.

I came across a review of Gladstone's pamphlet in an 1851 issue of Littell’s Living Age, a New York journal that specialized in reprinting material from foreign journals. The reprint, in this case, is from The Spectator, a prominent journal of British liberalism.

The review is in the "Through the eyes of..." section of  Around Naples in English. Click here to read that review.

Every few years, another locally published, small-press book comes out about Neapolitan hand gestures. These gestures are a bit of local culture that charms the rest of the world; after all, everyone knows that "Italians talk with their hands." (That, of course, is wrong; southern Italians talk with their hands. Northern Italians, by comparison, lumber about as if they're auditioning for Invasion of the Crippled Skiers). Indeed, there are entire dictionaries hidden and not so hidden in every Neapolitan hand wave, knuckle turn, lip smack, and finger waggle.

One such volume, for example, is Comme te l'aggia dicere? (Neapolitan dialect for "How can I explain this to you?"). The secondary title is in Italian: Ovvero l'arte gestuale a Napoli (Or the Art of the Gesture in Naples). It is by Bruno Paura and Marina Sorge (1999. ed. Intra Moenia, Naples). It has 138 pages, with emotion and message listed alphabetically—"scorn," "approval," "you must be crazy!" etc.—all accompanied by photographs or drawings. Comme te l'aggia dicere? has replaced older volumes, now out of print, and will itself be replaced in a few years when someone else comes out with a new one. Even foreign language guide-books to Naples now generally contain a few pages of pictures and explanations of gestures. (Even if your reading extends, alas, only to t-shirts, you can get those, too: silk-screened front and back with Neapolitan hand gestures plus explanatory captions.)

All this is helpful. Suppose, for example, you loosen your enraged grip on the steering wheel just enough to raise the index and little finger to that driver of the car that has just cut you off. Yes, you may think you are simply expressing your solidarity with the "Longhorn" football team from the University of Texas, but that benighted soul in the other car (who is totally ignorant of college sports in the US) will understand your gesture as a suggestion that his wife, the lovely woman next to him in the front seat and the mother of his children, is betraying him, and he will be honor-bound to run you off the road and have his own good-old college try at taking your life.

If the authors of these books have bibiliographies, they never plug the competition, that is, other recent books similar to their own. They all, however, do cite the graddaddy of all such books about Neapolitan gestures, a volume you will not find in your run-of-the-mill bookshop: La mimica degli antichi investigate nel gestire napoletano, by Andrea de Jorio (“The Mimicry of Ancient Peoples Investigated through Neapolitan Gestures”). It was published in 1832 and drifted into obscurity for many years. In his book The Italians (1964), Luigi Barzi mentions it and laments the fact that so little has been written about the language of gestures. Since 1964, of course, formal studies of sign languages and general body language have become part and parcel of the disciplines of linguistics, communications, and anthropology. Entire curricula are devoted to the semiotics of gestures, so it is natural that de Jorio's book should have made a comeback, which, indeed, it has. The book has been republished in Italian three times in recent years,1964, 1979, and 2002. All of the reprints are photographic copes of the original edition plus explanatory notes.

The volume also appeared recently (2000) in a scholarly and annotated English translation by Adam Kendon as Gesture in Naples and Gesture in Classical Antiquity (Indiana University Press). There are at least two fine reviews of the English translation that I know of, both of which praise the original as well as the erudite translation, which includes an 80-page essay/introduction. The first review is "The Neapolitan Finger" by Joan Acocella; it appeared in the The New York Review of Books in the year 2000 and then in 2002 in Sign Language Studies, a journal published by Gallaudet University. The other review is by Giovanna Ceserani of Princeton University; it appeared the Bryn Mawr Classical Review in 2003.

De Jorio (1769-1851) was born on the tiny island of Procida, a brief sail from the mainland, ancient Cumae and that treasure trove of Greco-Roman mythology known as the Phelgrean Fields. It was also a time when the archaeological sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum were opening up. De Jorio became a canon at the Naples cathedral but was born to be a classical scholar and archaeologist. He wound up as curator of the Royal Bourbon Museum, now the National Archaeological museum. His purpose in writing about gestures, he said, was to show the continuity between the classical world and the modern one. Look at the hand gestures on these old vases, he said. They are the same ones we use today.

Unlike today, such body language was not particularly interesting to scholars of the early 19^th century. It might even have been amusing to the Grand Tourists of the day and even have fit into the broad stereotyping of Neapolitans that travellers from Goethe to Mark Twain indulged in (after perhaps one whole carriage trip down the Riviera di Chiaia): the confusion, noise, clatter, color, and the bizarre juxtaposition of pompous one-horse dukes and abject beggars. Maybe the frantically gesticulating locals fit their preconceptions—frantic hand-gibberish or something like that (which the gestures, of course, are not).

De Jorio was no doubt proud to present his compendium as part of classical studies, direct from Naples, one of the hubs of Magna Grecia, the site of important archaeology in the study of ancient Rome, and one of the centers of classical scholarship in Europe. Yes, German scholars of the same period had swarmed through the southern Italian peninsula, but if you thought northern Italians couldn't move, wait till you see German professors not move. What would they know about hand gestures?

This year's ritual installation of art in Piazza Plebiscito features a work entitled "Naples," by the master of massive minimalism, San Francisco artist Richard Serra (1939-). It is a large spiral (already called "Contraception of the Gods" by those who view with some disdain the city's unabashed dedication to this kind of display). Entering into the giant orange scuplture of curved and bending steel plates, you spiral in, leaning in and out with the curves of the walls, to the center, where you can look up and see the clock tower on the facade of the royal palace (see photo and insert). The individual's perception as he navigates the deceptive geometry of this small, tilted space set in the larger space of the square, itself, is what gives validity to the work, says the artist. Clearly, to be a private experience--to be at all touched by the suggested metaphor of yourself in a similarly skewed private life-space set in the space of the world at large--the wandering in and out is best done slowly and alone and not as part of a curious herd elbowing their way in and out--unless, of course, you spend much of your time elbowing your way through life wondering what it's all about. That, too, is possible.

The work bears an amazing resemblance to Serra's earlier "Torqued Ellipses," done in 1996, separate curved plates of towering steel, which, to the untrained maximalist eye--with a bit of imagination--might be fit together into a spiral. 

As the narrow-gauge Circumvesuviana railway wends its way east along the coast from the city of Naples in the direction of the Sorrentine peninsula, it passes through a number of small stations on the slopes of Vesuvius.  Two of the stations have to do with the life of this, Italy's greatest Romantic poet. One station is named, simply, "Leopardi" and the other "Ginestre" (the Italian name for the broom plant, the yellow-flowered shrub that grows abundantly on the slopes, and, as well, the title of a remarkable poem by Leopardi). If this so-called "poet of melancholy" ever found any relief at all in his terribly unhappy life, perhaps it was here, in and near Naples.

There are few child prodigies in literature. Presumably, meaningful reflections on the human condition come from having a few years under your belt--time to love, struggle, wander and let those experiences set for a while, a process less necessary to early greatness in music and mathematics. Thus, we are amazed at Rimbaud and Mary Shelley writing fine literature at the age even of 19 or 20.

Leopardi is in that unusual group. By the age of 16, he was a Latin and Greek scholar; and by 18 he had written lasting poetry. His natural precociousness was no doubt helped along by being a recluse for the first 20 years of his life, holing up in his father's vast library, teaching himself the classics as well as modern European languages. He suffered both from poor eye-sight (that got worse as he grew older) and by a deformity of the spine, a lifelong source of pain, physical as well as social.

He spent time in his home town of Recanati in central Italy as well as in Rome and Florence. Then, in 1833, he moved to Naples to keep the company of Antonio and Paolina Ranieri, brother and sister, whom he had met in Rome. He then moved a number of times in Naples. The cholera epidemic of 1835 caused him to move farther out of the city, winding up at Villa Ferrigni, now called the Villa delle Ginestre (photo); it is near the small knoll upon which perches the monastery of Sant' Alfonso. Vesuvius looms directly above, and Leopardi's final home is, indeed, near both of the modern train stations mentioned above, named in his honor. It is here that he wrote that 1,800 years had passed "...since the peopled places disappeared, crushed by fiery might, and the peasant busy at his vine...still lifts his eyes suspiciously to the fatal peak..." (in the prose translation of George Kay from the Penguin Book of Italian Verse, published in 1958).

If by melancholy we mean something like wistfulness,  a longing for a happier past or even an unachievable ideal state, then much of Leopard's poetry is not even that. It is simply bleak. He writes of his own loneliness and of nature as a "betrayer" and  "a brutal force." He writes of the "infinite vanity of everything." So if his friendship with the Ranieris made him as happy as he could ever be, maybe all we are saying is that he liked the Neapolitan sherbet and sweets, or that he got a kick out of trying to guess lottery numbers, or went to San Carlo (to fill in his total lack of musical culture), or "worshipped from afar" Paolina Ranieri. (She apparently--as a term of endearment, one hopes--referred to him as "il mio gobbetto"--my little hunchback.)  Not much, but at least it is something.

Leopardi died in 1837. At the time, it was rumored that he had in fact died from cholera, but that seems not to have been the case. His remains were entombed in the small church of San Vitale and then moved to a small space (photo) near the Mergellina entrance to the ancient Roman tunnel that connected Naples with the western part of the bay. A monument marks his tomb; it is near the purported last resting place of fellow poet, Virgil.

Because of the quality--or even lack--of translations, Leopardi is not as well known in the English-speaking as he should be. Translators of poetry, of course, run the risk, as they say, of  "losing poetry in the translation" and, at the other extreme, of "gaining poetry"--of writing a beautiful poem that is too original to really be called a translation. I know that Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell, and Robert Bly have translated some of Leopardi into English. My favorite English translation is of a poem written at the graveside of a woman. Her image has been cut into the tombstone. Leopardi says to the image:

"Tal fosti: or qui sotterra 
Polve e scheletro sei. Su l'ossa e il fango 
Immobilmente collocato invano, 
Muto, mirando dell' etadi il volo
Sta, di memoria solo 
E di dolor custode, il simulacro 
Della scorsa beltà. 

Ezra Pound's translation of these first few lines is:

"Such wast thou, 
Who art now 
But buried dust and rusted skeleton. Above the bones and mire,
Motionless, placed in vain, 
Mute mirror of the flight of speeding years, Sole guard of grief 
Sole guard of memory 
Standeth this image of the beauty sped. "

That strikes me as perfect.

 
I live near a street in Naples that will never change its name. This is remarkable, since the roller–coaster of historical and social change plays games with Neapolitan urban nomenclature like you wouldn't believe. Via Roma used to be Via Toledo (or maybe it's the other way round); Via Gramsci used to be Via Helena; even the street I live on—named for Victor Emanuel II, the first king of united Italy—was originally named for Queen Maria Theresa of Naples in 1850 when the street was built. 

The lucky, namechangeless thoroughfare I speak of is Via Maria Cristina di Savoia. She was born in 1812 and died in 1836, a tragically brief life. She was from the royal house of Savoy, the dynasty that eventually came to rule united Italy later in the century. Maria Christina was exceptionally devout and would have entered a convent but for family pressure to marry her off in one of those arranged cross–dynastic affairs that European royal houses used to think were so advantageous. In 1832 she was forced into a marriage with King Ferdinand II of Naples, obviously as a means to cement relationships between the northerners (Savoy) and southerners (Bourbon). Her husband was King "Bomba," (bomb), so–called for his suppression of revolutionaries in Sicily in 1848. He was the next–to–last king of Naples. Their son, Francis, would be the last king. She died two weeks after giving birth to him. Her husband's second wife was Maria Theresa, the original eponym of my street. 

In her brief life in Naples, Maria Christina was totally devoted to benevolent works, actively promoting expansion of crafts, small industry, and institutions to provide for the poor. She was also responsible for mitigating her husband's tendency to hand out death sentences. She quickly became the focus of admiration—even adulation—of the people. She was easily the most beloved queen in the long history of the Kingdom of Naples. In short, she was a saint. Not metaphorically, either. At her death, a cult sprang up around her and her episodes of intercession (to use the Roman Catholic terminology). The process to canonize Maria Christina began in 1859 and she was beatified in 1872. I think she is the only queen (or king) of Naples to be so honored. She rests in the Church of Santa Chiara.

The "What-If" school of history is as futile as it is fun, so it's hard to say what might have happened to Italian opera if young Pietro Trapassi had not moved to Naples to study law. Trapassi is better known as "Metastasio." He was born in Rome in 1698 and died in Vienna in 1782. He is primarily remembered for his libretti, text of such quality that it revitalized Italian opera.

When the first operas started to play on Italian stages in the early 1600s, they were monuments to the admonition of Vincenzo Galilei (1520-1591--he is the father of the astronomer, Galileo)  to other Florentine poets and musicians of the day not to let music get in the way of the story. "Singing should be just barely distinguishable from speaking," he said.  However, such was the melodic and harmonic eloquence of such giants as Monteverdi and then the Neapolitan, Alessandro Scarlatti, that a century later the pendulum had swung completely to the other extreme. By 1700, Italian opera was about to expire from overwrought melody with banal and  plotless doggerel hanging off the music almost as an afterthought.

As a child, Metastasio was "discovered" by two literary patrons. The boy, from a modest family, was taken with wandering the streets of Rome  and improvising poetry for passers-by, a feat so impressive that the patrons convinced Trapassi's father to give them custody of the child so that he might have an education worthy of his talent. Renamed "Metastasio" (a Greek form of his real name), the boy stayed in Rome for a few years, studying the classics--and producing at the age of 12 (!) a translation of the Iliad into Italian octave stanzas  He continued his poetry improvisations so intensively that his health suffered. His guardians took him to Naples in 1718, where it was understood he would study law and put poetry aside, at least for a while.

Metastasio's name with those of Goldoni and Alfieri on the facade of San Carlo
That did not last long. Once in Naples, he began to wrote poetry again. In 1722, he wrote, upon commission, a work for the Empress Elizabeth of Austria (Naples was then in the middle of its brief existence as an Austrian vicerealm). The work was entitled Gli orti esperidi (The Gardens of Hesperides). It was set to music by Nicola Porpora (1688-1768) one of the noted Neapolitan composers of the day. It was an immediate success. Then, in 1724 Metastasio wrote Didone abbandonata (Dido Abandoned), a work that Benedetto Croce called "the beginning of the great change in the literary merit of Italian libretti." It was set to music by Domenico Sarro and premiered at the San Bartolomeo theater in Naples in 1724. Sources claim that this first major libretto by Metastasio was more noteworthy than the music; thus, it was set to music once again, this time by another Neapolitan--and the most important Italian composer of his generation--Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) for subsequent performances in Venice and elsewhere. It met with great success, and established text once again as important in musical drama.

Metastasio took the time to study music in Naples, and was genuinely concerned about the compatibility of music and text.  He left Naples in 1728 and eventually wound up in Vienna, but from his early works in Naples, his destiny was sealed, and the legal profession lost, no doubt, a learned professor of law or whatever else might have been down that road for Metastasio. By the end of his life, not only had his texts been set to music by some 400 different European composers, but they were widely read for their literary value.