Becoming Italian Word by Word

Celebrating Mamma in the Italian Language

La festa della mamma 

 Mother's Day 

Every year as the dark, cold winter gave way to the bright rebirth of Spring, the ancient Romans paid tribute to their gods of fertility. One holiday, Matronalia, was dedicated to Juno, the queen of the gods, and children gave gifts to their mothers on this day.  

Traditionally la festa della mamma in Italy fell on May 8. The current practice of celebrating Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May (la seconda domenica di maggio) started in 1957.  

La mamma italiana is part of her family’s life every day of the year--as was mine (above), even though she was 100 percent Polish. Men may hold the highest political offices, but the person at the helm of the family—the strongest Italian institution—is Mamma. Grown men called mammoni (big mama’s boys) remain at home well into their thirties (and sometimes beyond). Mammismo (“momism”), some contend, stems from a son’s belief that nothing could ever compare with amore materno (motherly love). 

Mothers inspired the most common—and versatile --expression in Italian: Mamma mia! You can translate it as “My God!”, “How great!”, “Oh no!”, “Incredible!” and hundreds of other ways—depending on context and inflection. A wide range of human emotions--from surprise to shock, delight to disbelief, joy to horror--can be conveyed in these two words. 

To help children of all ages express their love for Mamma, Italian websites post “auguri” (best wishes) for la festa della mamma. Here are some exampes: 

*”Le rose sono rosse, le viole sono blu, e tu sei la mamma migliore di quaggiù.” (Roses are red, violets are blue, and the best mamma down here is you.) 

*”Mamma, sei la mia vita, sei come un raggio di sole che al mattino mi sveglia con felicità e come la dolce luce di una stella, che la sera accompagna il mio sonno.” (Mamma, you are my life. You are like a ray of sun that awakens me with happiness in the morning and like the sweet light of a star that accompanies my sleep in the evening.) 

*”Mamma, sei la cosa più bella e dolce che la vita mi potesse donare. Ti voglio bene!” (Mamma, you are the most beautiful and sweetest thing that life could give me. I love you!) 

Words and Expressions 

“come mamma l’ha fatto” -- literally as his mother made him: completely naked, in his birthday suit 

casa madre -- mother or head office 

scena madre -- main scene, the most dramatic and revealing scene in a movie or play 

cocco di mamma --mama’s boy, mammone

madre in affitto -- surrogate mother  

le gioie della maternità -- the joys of motherhood 

Dianne Hales  is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH ITALIAN,THE WORLD'S MOST ENCHANTING LANGUAGE. Click here for information on her "Writers' Studio" in Capri this fall.  

Here is a classic tribute to an Italian mamma: 

Celebrating Rome's Birth and Birthday in the Italian Language

Buon compleanno a Roma!

The eternal city is celebrating its 2,766th birthday on April 21.  If you’re in the city this weekend, you can enjoy the festivities -- special events at the Circus Maximus (once site of chariot races), concerts, gladiator displays, a parade, and  fireworks over the Tiber.

If I could be there, I’d head for the oldest part of Rome: the Palatine hill, named for the goddess Pales, patroness of shepherds—and the oldest part of Rome. In the eighth century B.C., the leader of a tribal settlement in central Italy ordered that the newborn sons of a disgraced Vestal Virgin be tossed into the Tiber. Their cradle, drifting downstream, washed ashore at the base of the Palatine hill.

According to legend, a lupa (she-wolf) suckled the twins Romulus and Remus. However, their nursemaid may well have been human. Lupa was slang for prostitute, and brothels were known as lupinaria. During ongoing excavations on the Palatine hill, archaeologists recently discovered what could be the original lupercale, the cave that sheltered the twins and that later served as a shrine for their worship.

In 753 B.C., after the boys had grown to maturity, they decided to build a new town on the banks of the Tiber. A violent argument erupted between them, and Romulus killed his brother Remus. Taking command, Romulus gave his name to the settlement that would grow into a great empire.

Over the centuries the Palatine hill, with its tranquil setting and splendid views, attracted rich and powerful residents. Octavius, later adopted by Julius Caesar, was born on this sacred site in 63 B.C. When the Senate proclaimed him Augustus, Rome's first emperor, he moved to a house near the small structure known as Romulus's hut. His successors, the emperors Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius, built much grander homes atop the Palatine. Visitors to these mansions called them palazzi—the root of the word for "palatial" residences in French (palais), Spanish (palla) and English (palace).

On ancient maps, three words indicated what lay beyond Rome’s hills: “Hic sunt Leones.” (Here are wild beasts.)   Rome changed everything, bringing civilization—laws, roads, urban planning, public works, even indoor plumbing--to an untamed world. But the glory of ancient Rome faded. What endures to this day is the Rome of the popolino (the little people).

Descendants of the empire’s tough-fighting, rough-talking legions, romani de Roma (those who lived in the city for seven generations) invented their own dialect anthem: “Lassatece passà, semo romani!” (Let us pass; we are Romans!) The imperious words were so often followed with a punch or a dagger thrust that a Roman wasn’t considered a Roman until he had “crossed the step”--the one at the door of the city’s oldest prison, Regina Coeli.

The imprint of the Roman empire remains on everything from coins to monuments, tombs, and temples. The manhole covers of Rome are still emblazoned with S.P.Q.R., the Latin abbreviaton for the Senatus Populusque Romanus, the senate and people of Rome. Italians joke that it really stands for "Sono pazzi questi romani." (These Romans are crazy.)

Words and Expressions

Roma non é stata fatta in un giorno –- Rome wasn’t built in a day

alla romana — to go Dutch or split the bill

romanico –- romance language

Paese che vai, usanza che trovi –- When in Rome, do as the Romans do. (Literally, the country that you go to, the customs that you find.)

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.

Who can resist this classic ode to Rome?

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Happy Birthday Rome 2013

Celebrating a Year of Italian Language and Culture: Verdi

 
Giuseppe Verdi

(1813-1901)
 

As part of the Year of Italian Culture (l'anno della cultura italiana), Italy is celebrating the 200th birthday of Giuseppe Verdi--fondly nicknamed “Peppino”--the Michelangelo of Italian opera.  In more than thirty operas, this maestro of maestri gave “Italians” a unifying language and helped meld the patchwork of independent states and occupied territories into a unified nation.

The son of a poor tavern-owner in  Emilia-Romagna, this musical prodigy  became the village organist at age 12 .  As a young man, he fell in love with the daughter of his first patron, married,  had two children, and wrote two operas (one cheered and one booed at Milan's prestigious Teatro alla Scala. Then, in the span of three tragic years, Verdi’s children and cherished wife died.   He swore never to compose  again.

One night an impresario in Milan shoved a rejected libretto into Verdi’s hands. Alone in his room, he threw the manuscript onto a table. “Without my knowing why,” he later recalled,  “I found myself staring at the paper in front of me and saw these verses: “Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate.” (Go, thought, on golden wings.)  He was so intrigued by the phrase from the biblical story of Egypt’s Hebrew slaves that he couldn’t sleep.

The libretto became the opera Nabucco, which premiered in 1842. Its poignant chorus, “Va, pensiero,”  the lament of the enslaved captives longing for their homeland, became an unofficial anthem for Il Risorgimento, the resurgence, a nationalistic movement that was sweeping the fragmented peninsula.

“The tune made him, then and for all time, the singer of his people’s liberty,” wrote an early biographer. The  day after Nabucco opened, people were singing the song in the streets. As nationalism grew, its advocates shouted,  “Viva V.E.R.D.I.!”—not only in homage to the composer, but as an abbreviation for “Victor Emmanuel Re D’Italia,” the Piedmont king who promised to liberate Italy from its foreign occupiers.

Attila, one of Verdi’s lesser works, included a line that stirred millions of patriotic souls: “You may have the universe, if I may have Italy.”  An Italian friend puts her own spin on this phrase: “You may have the universe, if I may have Verdi.”   I understand why.

Verdi insisted on strong situations, strong emotions, strong contrasts, and the strong language he called parole sceniche, dramatic words “that carve out a situation or a character.” What were le parole sceniche  of  his life?  Croce (torment), for sure, caused by crushing losses.  Delizia (delight) in a  half-century-long relationship with the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi that scandalized his hometown.  Vendetta? Verdi’s operas vibrate with hate-fueled vengeance, and he held fierce grudges for decades.

Verdi’s genius glowed long and bright. He composed Otello at 74 and Falstaff at 80. On January 21, 1901,  at age 88, Verdi,  whose music seemed  as vital as air to generations of Italians, died.  At the cemetery, Toscanini led a chorus of more than 900 singers in “Va, Pensiero.”   Without prompting, the entire crowd joined in the chorus  that had helped forge a nation. To listen to this stirring tune, click below.

 Words and Expressions from Verdi operas

croce e delizia  --  cross (torment) and delight, from La Traviata

sempre libera – always free, from La Traviata

Libiamo né lieti calici  che la bellezza infiora – Let’s drink to the happy goblets which beauty  embellishes, from La Traviata

la bella mano candida –  a beautiful white hand, from Rigoletto

 

Dianne Hales is the author of La Bella Lingua, My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.

 

 

Celebrating Women in the Italian Language

la donna

woman

Italy celebrates la giornata della donna (woman’s day) on March 8, when husbands, boyfriends, and bosses present the women in their lives with bouquets of yellow mimosa. This international celebration is a relatively recent invention, created in 1911, but la donna has always played a complex, critical role in Italian life -- and language.

No one may have understood this better than Nicolò Tommaseo, a nineteenth-century essayist and iconoclast  whose passions included women and words. He demonstrated his devotion to the latter by compiling the Dizionario dei sinonimi, an encyclopedic narrative dictionary of Italian synonyms, published in 1864, and unmatched in any other language and literature. 

Italian alone, he contended—and in particular the Tuscan dialect that shaped the language—captures sfumature (nuances), the same word Italian uses for the subtle brush strokes of artists like Leonardo da Vinci.

 In Italian, for instance, a donna can also be a:

    *donna allegra or donna di facili costumi -- a woman of easy virtue 
    *donna di casa -- housewife (also called a casalinga)
    *donna di mondo -- worldly, sophisticated woman
    *donna di servizio –-housemaid, domestic help
    *prima donna -- leading lady
    *donnina -- clever or sensible girl
    *donnino -- womanly or mature girl who takes on adult responsibilities despite her young age
    *donnetta -- common or ordinary woman, also an old maid or a woman of no value
    *donnaccia -- bad-tempered woman, tart, prostitute
    *donnone -- tall, imposing or large woman
    *donnicciola -- simple or stupid woman.  gossip, or if used for a man, sissy or coward 

    A donnaiolo, however, is no lady, but a ladies’ man or womanizer.

Tommaseo further distinguished between una donna cattiva and una cattiva donna (English speakers would translate both as a bad woman).  However, the phrases do not have the same meaning in Italian. Una cattiva donna dresses badly and presents herself poorly, while una donna cattiva is spiteful and full of malice. Either could be una cattiva moglie (bad wife), who isn’t good at running a household and caring for a family, or una moglie cattiva, with a mean or wicked spirit.

Words and Expressions:

fare la primadonna -- to act like a primadonna

"Chi dice donna dice danno" -- Who says woman says damage (women are synonymous with harm)

"Quel che donna vuole Dio lo vuole" -- What woman wants, God wants.

"Né donna, né tela a lume di candela" -- Choose neither a woman nor linen by candlelight (to avoid  a nasty surprise the next morning)

Dianne Hales is author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.

One thing is certain: La donna, by any and all names, has always enraptured the Italian uomo (man). Here is the legendary Pavorotti singing Puccini's lyrical tribute from Manon Lescaut:

The Year of Italian Language and Culture: An Ancient "Sin City"

 

Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei

The Last Days of Pompeii

The exhibit with this name at the Cleveland Museum of Art, part of the year of Italian culture (l’anno della cultura italiana), is subtitled: “Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection” (Decadenza, Apocalisse, Resurrezione). Pompeii, a  World Heritage Site (patrimonio mondiale dell'umanità), is famous for all three.

The thriving Roman city of about 12,000 citizens was buried (sepolta) by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Excavations, which began after the discovery of the lost city (la città perduta) in the eighteenth century, have yielded a fascinating glimpse of life in what seems to have been the Las Vegas of its day.

In this thoroughly pagan place (luogo completamente pagano), pleasures (piaceri)—of the bedroom, the table, the theater and the sports arena—were the true religion (la vera religione). Yet we owe a debt to Pompeii's freewheeling citizens: They had an incorrigible urge (irrefrenabile impulso) to write on walls. The sheer zest of the words in the 15,000 graffiti and inscriptions (iscrizioni) they left behind testifies to the potency of the Roman vernacular, or volgare.

"Vulgar" also applies to the graffiti on the walls of Pompeii's infamous brothels, where satisfied customers (clienti soddisfatti) scrawled crude testimonials to the skills of particular prostitutes. But not all of Pompeii's writings are so explicit (così espliciti).

In a simple red or black script with letters about six inches high, signs along the town's narrow streets (strade strette) endorsed political candidates, denounced deadbeats and issued no-nonsense directives, such as "If you must lean against a wall, lean against someone else's." Scrawled on the floor of a trading house were the words, "Welcome, money!" (Benvenuto, denaro!)

Inscriptions decorated the walls of many private residences in Pompeii. "Whoever loves, let him flourish” (Chi ama, lasciarlo fiorire), read one sign. "Let him perish who knows not love.” (Lascia che muoia chi non conosce amore.) And he who forbids love? Let him perish twice. (Lascia che muoia due volte.)

A notice in the dining room of a fashionable home asked visitors to refrain from casting lascivious looks at the serving women or making passes at the wives of other guests and, above all, to keep the conversation clean. "If you can't," the blunt last line exhorted, "please go home." (Se non vi è possibile, siete pregati di andarvene.)

Words and Expressions

un’eruzione –- an eruption

vulcanico –- volcanic

gli scavi –- the excavations

rosso pompeiano –- Pompeian red

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.

“The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection” runs from February 24 to July 7, 2013 at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The Pope Makes History in the Italian Language

Il Papa si dimette

The Pope Resigns

“Nevica spesso a Roma?” I asked as flurries fell on a February day. (Does it often snow in Rome?)

“A ogni morte di papa,” my friend replied. (At every death of a pope.) Which, I figured out, meant hardly ever—or, as we would say in English, “once in a blue moon.” A pope’s stepping down is even rarer: a once-every-six-centuries (una volta ogni sei secoli) phenomenon.

The resignation of Pope Benedetto XVI, more often referred to by his family name of Papa (pronounced with the accent on the first syllable to distinguish it from “papà” for “Dad”) Ratzinger in Italy, hit like “un fulmine a ciel sereno” (a lightning bolt in a clear sky). And indeed lightning did strike St. Peter’s just hours after the announcement.

Such an estremamente raro (extremely rare) event last occurred circa 600 anni fa (about 600 years ago). The più recente (most recent) resignation was that of Pope Gregory XII -– on July 4, 1415. In the Divine Comedy, Dante damned Pope Celestine V, who resigned in 1294, for his gran rifiuto (great refusal) and placed him among the slothful in hell.

Precedenti tanto antichi (such ancient precedents), the press reported, aumentano lo stupore (add to the shock) of Pope Benedict’s announcement. Only six other popes hanno abbandonato il pontificato (have abandoned the pontificate).

"Lascio per il bene della Chiesa.” (I leave for the well-being of the Church.) Pope Benedict announced. “Vivrò una vita di preghiera." (I will live a life of prayer.)

Newspapers quoted the Pope’s “ultimo tweet”(last tweet): “Dobbiamo avere fiducia nella potenza della misericordia di Dio. Noi siamo tutti peccatori, ma la Sua grazia ci trasforma e ci rende nuovi.” (We must have faith in the power of God’s mercy. We are all sinners, but his grace transforms us and makes us new.)

In the coming weeks the collegio cardinalizio (college of cardinals) must select a new pontiff from several leading candidates or “papabili” (those eligible or likely to be pope). They include an American, a Brazilian, a Canadian, several Africans and a few Italians.

"Morto un papa se ne fa un altro,” Italians say with a shrug. When a pope dies—or, in this case, si dimette (resigns)--another is made. In other words, no one is irreplaceable.

Popes creep into other common expressions in Italian. English speakers, for instance, may aspire to live like a king; Italians, “stare come un papa” (to be like a pope). But even a king might miss the main point of an experience. In such situations, one might as well andare a Roma e non vedere il papa (go to Rome and not see the pope).

Words and Expressions

cardinalesco, cardinalizio –- pertaining to a cardinal

il trono di San Pietro –- St. Peter’s throne

elezione pontificia –- papal election

fumata bianca –- -white smoke, which signals that the conclave has elected the new pope

fumata nera --  black smoke), which signals that the conclave hasn’t yet made a choice

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchantin g Language.

A Year of Italian Language and Culture: San Valentino

La festa degli innamorati 

The Feast of the Enamored  

On every February 15, the ancient Romans would celebrate a fertility festival called the Lupercalia with the sacrifice of a goat in the sacred cave dedicated to Romulus and Remus, the city’s legendary founders. Priests sliced the goat’s hide into strips and dipped them in the sacrificial blood. Boys would run through the streets, gently slapping women with the goatskin strips to enhance their fertility in the coming year.

Later in the day, all the young unmarried women in the city would place their names in a large urn. Rome’s bachelors each selected a name and became that woman’s sexual partner for the year in a sort of trial union that often led to marriage. 

As it grew in power in the centuries following the birth of Christ, the Catholic Church abolished this pagan practice. In its stead it created the most romantic of saints’ days on February 14 to honor a martyred Roman priest named Valentino. 

Although historical accounts differ, Valentino seems to have served in Rome in the third century A.D., when the Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for young men because he believed that bachelors made better soldiers. Valentino, sympathetic to young lovers, defied the decree and continued to perform weddings. 

Arrested and tortured, the tender-hearted priest developed a friendship with a young girl — perhaps his jailor’s daughter—who came to visit him. Some say they fell in love; others claim that he cured her blindness. Before being beheaded, the priest sent her a note that he signed, “il tuo Valentino.” 

Lovers around the world have been using the same phrase ever since on the holiday Italians call la festa degli innamorati. The town of Vico del Gargano in Puglia celebrates Valentino, its patron saint, by inviting people in love to drink the juice of the local oranges, considered an elixir for love and happiness. Young couples make their way through the famous “Vicolo del bacio,” (the alleyway of the kiss), a tiny pathway only nineteen inches wide, where they exchange kisses and sweet nothings. 

Throughout Italy, which has not commercialized Valentine’s Day as much as in the United States, couples celebrate with una cenetta intima (a romantic or intimate dinner), flowers, or the famous Baci Perugina, small, chocolate-covered hazelnut “kisses” wrapped with a poetic quote in four languages. Some examples:  

    Un cuore che ama è sempre giovane -- A heart that loves is always young.

    L’amore è come la luna: se non cresce, cala -- Love is like the moon. If it doesn’t get bigger, it wanes. 

    Siamo angeli con un'ala sola, solo restando abbracciati possiamo volare -- We are angels with only one wing; only embracing each other are we able to fly.

    Click here to send a "bacio" to someone you love. 

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. 

Click below to hear a popular contemporary love song: "Ho voglio di te" (I want you):

A Year of Italian Language and Culture: Carnevale

Carnevale
Carnival

For centuries the pre-Lent festivities of carnevale sumptuously celebrated “carne,” a word that translates as both "meat' and "flesh," in every sense. However, the name comes specifically from the Latin for meat (carnem) and “take away or remove” (levare).  A church decree dating back to 653 declared that anyone who ate meat during the forty days of Lent (Quaresima in Italian) could not receive communion on Easter. Charlemagne reportedly sentenced Lenten meat-eaters  to death. 

The prospect of  long months without meat or merriment inspired Italians to gorge themselves  throughout -- and often long before -- la settimana grassa (the fat week) before Ash Wednesday. It also inspired a luscious vocabulary for the culinary treats of this festive time, such as the delicate fried pastries we might call fritters. 

In Piedmont and Liguria, they’re bugie (little lies); in Tuscany, cenci (rags); in Emilia-Romagna, lattughe (lettuce leaves); in Milan, chiacchiere, the same word Italians use for gossip or chatting.  Cooks elsewhere may call them nastri delle suore (nuns’ ribbons), galani or sfrappe and add ingredients such as raisins and anise.  

The sin-drenched Venetian Republic was famous for indulgences of carne in its more sensual sense. During Carnevale, which lasted for months, party-goers of all classes hid their identities behind elaborate maschere (masks).

Artisans known as mascherari gained fame for their exquisite creations, which came in three varieties.  The bauta covered the entire face but had no mouth opening and a lot of gilding.  The oval-shaped moretta was worn by women, often along with a veil. The full-face white larva (from the Latin for mask or ghost) was made of fine wax cloth.   

Carnevale also inspired some pithy Italian axioms. "A Carnevale ogni scherzo vale," revelers often say. "Anything goes at Carnival time." But don't get carried away with the romance of the moment. "L’amore di Carnevale muore in Quaresima,"  wise souls caution,  "A love that starts during Carnival dies in Lent."

The allure of Venice, however, outlasts the days of Carnevale. You can stroll its calle (streets), linger in its splendid piazze, savor its specialties, drink its wine, ride in a gondola (or even learn to row one), watch the glass-blowers on Murano island—and immerse yourself in the languages, both Italian and the Venetian dialect, of its residents.

This April my friend Melissa Muldoon, creator of the exuberant Diario di una Studentessa Matta (Diary of a Crazy Student), and Diego Cattaneo, director of the Venice Italian School, are offering all these experiences and more during a magical ten-day immersion in language and culture. Click here for details.

Words and Expressions:

fare le frittelle –- literally, to make the fritters; to celebrate Carnival  

carnevalone –- the four extra days of Carnevale celebrated in places like Milan

carnevalata –- carnival revelry

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. 

 

 

A Year of Italian Language and Culture: Renaissance Networking

 

La Nascita del "Social Networking"

The Birth of Social Networking

Italians invented the Renaissance (from “rinascita” for rebirth), which as Mary McCarthy observed in The Stones of Florence, “is the same as saying that they invented the modern world.” They also pioneered the phenomenon we know as social networking (more commonly used in Italy than "rete sociale").

As far back as the sixteenth century, young men (women weren’t allowed in universities or professions) would create nicknames (pseudomini , soprannomi, nomi di battaglia, nomi di comodo, nomignoli) for themselves, develop emblems (stemmi) and mottos (motti), and form groups or “academies” (accademie) for lively exchanges of ideas, information, and clever, often ribald battute (spirited remarks).

In a four-year million-dollar-plus research project, British scholars are documenting 500 such groups—the first intellectual networks of early modern Europe. “Just as we create user names for our profiles on Facebook and Twitter and create circles of friends on Google plus,” one investigator explains, Renaissance Italians “shared—and commented on—topical ideas, the news of the day, and exchanged poems, plays and music.” And they did so with wit and style.

Consider L’Accademia della Crusca (Academy of the Bran), devoted to separating the literary fior di farina (flower of the wheat) from the crusca (chaff or bran). The self-styled Crusconi (Crusty Ones) playfully gave themselves names related to farming, cooking, baking, and bread, such as Lievito (yeast or leaven) and Macinato (milled into flour).

La Crusca’s members set themselves the goal of creating the first great dictionary of officially recognized words in any European tongue. This was no dry scholastic venture. The academy’s voluminous archives teem with menus, skits, plays, puns, jokes, and rhapsodic odes. Among its traditions was an annual stravizzo, a term members defined with understatement as “eating that happens together with pleasant conversation.” 

The jocular gourmands took their mission seriously. Over decades of discussion and debate, they created the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, published on January 20, 1612. Its 960 oversized pages contain the genome of la bella lingua italiana.

Crusconi also created less august works, such as “Il Bacco in Toscana” (“Bacchus in Tuscany,” a poetic ode of praise for Tuscan wines by Francesco Redi (1626-98). Its verses deride “he who drinks water” (chi l’acqua beve) and conclude with a rousing: “Wine, wine is your only drink!” (il vino, il vino e’ l’unica bevanda).

Undoubtedly Redi’s peers found their own ways to “like” (mi piace) his poem with the equivalents of a thumbs-up, a tweet (literally cinguettio but Italians say un tweet) or an Instagram image (un’immagine su Instagram) But how did they handle the timelessly tricky task of “defriending” (rimuovere l’amicizia) someone?  I hope with a pen rather than a sword.

Words and Expressions 

An Italian teacher shared this ode to the vocabulary of virtual communication:

Io posto (I post)

Tu commenti (you comment)

Lui tagga (he tags)

Noi condividiamo (we share)

Voi pubblicate (you all publish)

Loro ridono (they smile) -- 

Nessuno studia  (no one studies)

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language.

 

 

A Year of Italian Language and Culture: Michelangelo in D.C.

Il Divino

The Divine One

The first Italian “guest” to the United States in “l’anno della cultura italiana” (The Year of Italian Culture) is a statue: the David-Apollo (above), loaned by the Bargello Museum in Florence to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. No other artist has left a richer and more enduring legacy than its creator, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564).

Born into a poor Florentine family, Michelangelo liked to say that he had imbibed an affinity for stone in the breast milk of his wet nurse, a mason’s wife. His father tried to beat artistic inclinations out of the boy, but his obvious talent won him an invitation to live and study in the home of Lorenzo Il Magnifico, his first and most beloved patron.

Michelangelo’s genius exploded in youth and blazed into robust old age. Through almost a century of tumults, he battled with popes, broke with the Medici, and after the fall of the Florentine Republic (for which he oversaw fortifications) railed against his fellow citizens. Yet he worked ceaselessly, producing unequalled masterpieces in painting, sculpture, and architecture and earning the accolade of Il Divino, the divine one.

The word most associated with the brusque artist is “La Terribilità.” Michelangelo’s temper was indeed so fierce that the Medici Pope Leo X, who knew the artist since boyhood, called him “troppo terribile,” too fearsome to deal with. But in the artistic language of the Renaissance, “terribilità” conveyed awesomeness, virtuosity, force, vehemence.

The terribilità of Michelangelo’s figura serpentinata, such as the anguished, writhing, tormented souls in his “The Last Judgment” over the altar of the Sistine Chapel, represented art at its most sublime. (Italians derided the artists who later added “corrections” to clothe these naked figures with the mocking word braghettoni, “big underpants makers.”)

To the historian and poet Benedetto Varchi, Michelangelo’s works were “so new, so unusual, so unheard of (inaudite) in all cultures in all countries...that I for myself...not just admire, not just am stupified (sono stupefatto), not just am astonished and amazed, and almost reborn; but my pulse trembles, all my blood turns to ice; all my spirits are shocked, my scalp tingles with a most sacred and never before felt horror to think of him.”

Michelangelo’s most famous statue, his colossal David (sculpted from 1501 to 1504), embodied the defiant independence of the Florentine Republic. He was commissioned to carve another heroic figure in 1530, after the Republic’s fall. Giorgio Vasari, the father of art history, described the statue as “an Apollo who draws an arrow from his quiver,” while an inventory of the Medici calls it “an incomplete David.”

Is the unfinished David-Apollo a beautiful Greek god or a young biblical tyrant-slayer, hero of the lost Florentine Republic? If you’re in Washington D.C., before March 3, don’t miss the chance to stop by the National Gallery and see for yourself. Click below for a video from the opening of the exhibit.

Words and Expressions

Il Rinascimento –- The Renaissance

belle arti –- fine arts

scultore, scultrice –- sculptor, sculptress

la statua –- statue

marmo –- marble

DIanne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.