Becoming Italian Word by Word

An Italian Passion for Joy

 

Two years ago a woman I didn’t know contacted me about an abandoned chapel dedicated to a saint I had never heard of in a Tuscan town I had never visited. Now her story is in LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World, and she and I are going on a “Passion for Joy” book tour.

The woman is Rita Morgan Richardson, a French teacher in Nashville. The saint is Philip Neri, patron saint of joy, whose followers built places for the faithful to worship and sing together. The chapel in Castiglion Fiorentino, a hilltop village of about 13,000 people near Cortona, had been falling into ruin for decades.

Then Rita Richardson came to town. Her ties to Italy run deep. While serving in the military in Italy, her American father met and married a lovely local woman and brought her to the United States. Although Rita grew up in Georgia, her staunchly Italian mother imparted a strong sense of her Italian heritage.

In 2010, during a visit to their son while he was studying in Cortona, Rita and her husband Tim ventured to nearby Castiglion Fiorentino. Taken by its picturesque charm, they bought a small home and returned several times a year.

Every day they would walk by a boarded-up church on their pedestrian-only lane. Curious, they discovered that it once housed a group of friars belonging to the Congregation of the Oratory, a religious order founded by Saint Philip Neri.

“I’m Catholic, but I had never heard of him,” says Rita. Neither have many others. Born in Florence in 1515, Philip began studying and then preaching in Rome. His friendly nature and ebullient sense of humor won so many converts that he became known as Rome’s “third Apostle,” after Saints Peter and Paul. According to legend, his heart grew so big with God’s love that people could see it pounding in his chest.

To attract more converts, Philip devised a form of religious theater, with performers reproducing biblical scenes set to music. Soon people were flocking to the entertaining shows that took the name of the hospital prayer hall used for the first performances—oratorio.

The oratorio built by his followers in Castiglion Fiorentino became a bustling community center, “a place where ordinary people experienced extraordinary things,” says Rita. “Tim and I wondered why someone wasn’t doing something to save a building so rich in history. When we asked, we always heard the same thing: ‘Crisi. Niente soldi.’ Economic crisis. No money.”

Then an unexpected passion seized Rita. “One day I just knew that the ‘someone’ to save San Filippino was me—even though I had never attempted anything like this.” With the permission of the local archbishop, she and Tim got their first glimpse of the chapel’s interior. Inside they found beautifully sculpted cherubs, a hand-painted balcony for the choir, and a wooden coffered ceiling of cobalt blue and gold.

“We were blown away,” Rita recalls. Launching a one-woman campaign, she formed the Friends of San Filippino, an official American nonprofit, and reached out to Italian American organizations and Italophiles. Their generosity, along with Rita’s passion and perseverance, so impressed the townspeople that they have wholeheartedly embraced the project.

“Sometimes we need foreigners to wake us from our torpor and make us look at things with the eyes of another,” says a local teacher. Community members have donated their artworks and auctioned off dinners and stays at local bed-and-breakfasts to raise funds. School children, like Nicole Chirila of Dante Alighieri Middle School in Castiglion Fiorentino (above), are creating and selling art works inspired by the chapel. The ongoing campaign has rekindled a pride in the past and a passion to keep the spirit of San Filippino alive.

“You can feel the love of San Filippino in Castiglion Fiorentino,” says Rita. “The world may be full of special places that deserve to be saved, but it’s also full of people with an inexplicable passion to do good works that they never knew they had.”

Rita and I are carrying this joyful message to Houston, New Orleans and Atlanta in our Spring ‘Passion of Joy” book tour.  If you can come to any of these events, we’d love to meet you!

Tuesday, May 7, 7:00 p.m.
Italian Cultural & Community Center
1101 Milford Street
Houston, TX

Wednesday, May 8, 6:00 p.m.
American Italian Cultural Center
537 S Peters Street
New Orleans, LA

Thursday, May 9, 7:00 p.m.
Eagle Eye Book Shop
2076 N Decatur Rd
Atlanta, GA

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered, and  LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tour, visit her website: diannehales.com.

Happy 10th Birthday to LA BELLA LINGUA!

Whether you're a parent or an author, your first born always remains close to your heart.

This month marks a landmark birthday for my first book on Italy and its culture: LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language. My publisher is celebrating with a not-to-be-missed offer: a digital copy for just $1.99 — less than the price of, well, almost everything —downloadable here or at other online book retailers until May 5.

A book that keeps selling long after publication is said to “have legs." I like to think that LA BELLA LINGUA sprouted wings that continue to carry it to new readers and to bring wonderful new people into my life. In its eventful first decade, LA BELLA LINGUA became a best-seller in the United States, Canada and Australia, the subject of an acrostic (as well as a best-seller) in the New York Times, and the topic of several dissertations by Italian graduate students. In 2011 the President of Italy awarded me the highest recognition the government can bestow on a foreigner: a knighthood, with the title of Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity) for the contributions LA BELLA LINGUA has made in promoting the Italian language. It is currently being translated into Italian—and Chinese!

Most gratifying to me has been the response of readers--from Vancouver to Paris to Sydney to Singapore. An artist who lives on a remote ranch in South Africa wrote that LA BELLA LINGUA  inspired her  lush paintings of Italian fountains and gardens.  A humanities professor in New York confessed that for two months he kept LA BELLA LINGUA in his  car, “bringing it out when I stopped at a wine bar for a drink or a bite to eat. And now that I have finished--what am I to do?”

A college student recalled choosing LA BELLA LINGUA from all the titles in a bookstore as a middle-schooler, reading it every year since, and learning Italian—first on her own, then in class. She based her college admissions essay on LA BELLA LINGUA’s being her favorite book and won a full scholarship to Northwestern. Still “wildly in love with languages," she wrote to say, “You changed my life irrevocably," and signed her note, "A grateful student."

LA BELLA LINGUA changed my life too. Through Italians I met while researching it, I discovered the largely unknown story of the real woman in Leonardo’s famous painting and wrote MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. This immersion in Renaissance Florence led to my most recent adventure: a quest for the secrets and sources of the fierce creative Italian  drive that has produced so many master works of art, music, crafts, food, wine, literature, cinema, fashion, and design. Just released, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World  has been hailed as an " effervescent love letter to all things Italian” and a “delightful excursion into the heart of Italian culture.”

Whether you are Italian by birth or affinity, have visited or plan to visit Italy, are an armchair adventurer, or simply love pizza, pasta, or Prosecco, I invite you to get to know my literary “children.” But be forewarned: Like me and many of my readers, you might be swept away by la passione Italiana!

 

Why Travelers Fall in Love with Italy

This article originally appeared in forbes.com. Click here to read the complete post.

by Irene Levine

Most travelers who visit Italy return changed in some way, either subtly embracing one or more aspects of Italian culture (perhaps, food or style) or more fundamentally, by re-thinking their approach to life.

Dianne Hales’ just-released book, La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World (Crown Archetype, 2019), masterfully examines the multitude of reasons why so many people fall in love with Italy and the Italian lifestyle. In this book, she weaves a rich tapestry of legends and historical references coupled with interviews and first-person experiences to explain this phenomenon. She focuses on some of the most seductive aspects of Italian culture: its history, food and wine, art, music, cinema, cars and fashion and style.

Dianne previously authored two other seminal books about Italian life: La Bella Lingua, a New York Times bestseller and Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered, which was named an Amazon best book of the year and translated into six languages. Prior to this Italian trilogy, she authored more than forty trade and textbooks on a variety of topics.

Forbes.com spoke to Dianne about her latest book and solicited her advice for travelers bound for Italy:

Can you briefly explain what you mean by La Passione?

Dianne Hales: English speakers think of passion as an intense feeling. La passione italiana is much, much more. Almost 2000 years ago, the early Christians in Rome fashioned the word “passio”
from the Latin for “suffer” to describe the torture and crucifixion of Jesus. Over the centuries Italian wordsmiths expanded its meaning to irresistible romantic love or any single-minded pursuit that combines challenge and rebirth. La passione italiana can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, the banal into the beautiful, food into feasts, sounds into songs, moments into movies.

Thanks to this fierce drive to discover and create, a scrawny peninsula smaller than California has touched every aspect of Western culture, blazing to life in the Sistine Chapel, surging through a Verdi chorus, preening in Valentino red, deepening a vintage Brunello, spicing a tangy penne all’arrabbiata. The world would be a far paler place without it.

When did you realize that you had been seduced by Italian culture? How did it happen?
DH: Italians talk about being struck by un colpo di fulmine (a lightning bolt) when they fall head over heels in love. That happened on my first trip to Italy—an unplanned detour after I gave a talk in Switzerland. I never expected to swoon for a country where I knew no one and could not speak the language, but I did.

Italy seduced me, as it has millions of visitors. Michelangelo’s David set the synapses in my brain on fire. Puccini’s arias stirred my soul. With a bite into homemade pasta in a silky sauce, taste buds I never knew existed sprang to life. My ears overflowed with sounds—choirs, Vespas, street musicians, children laughing.

I knew I was a goner the moment I left—and immediately started thinking about when I could return.

How did your two prior books lead to this one?
DH: I so wanted to communicate with the Italians I had met that I immersed myself in Italian and became enraptured by the music in its words. When my agent suggested I write a book on Italian “because you light up when you talk about it,” I discovered its wonderful backstory—full of poets, princes and a rowdy group of young Florentines who compiled the first dictionary, made up of what they considered “the most beautiful flowers” in the “vulgar” or common language.

While in Florence, I became friends with an art historian who lived in the palazzo where Mona Lisa’s mother grew up. I was so taken by the notion of Leonardo’s muse as an actual Renaissance woman that I set out to reconstruct her story in Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered. At a reading for that book, a man asked, “So are you done with Italy?”  The question struck me as absurd. Italy wasn’t done with me.

In a sense, La Passione is also a tour guide to Italy. Can you offer any suggestions on how first-timers should approach travel to Italy if they only have a week or two abroad?

DH: Pick a passion and a place. Since Italy offers everything, focus on what attracts you and make that your starting point: Florence for Renaissance art, Piedmont for wine, Sicily for ancient ruins (and Inspector Montalbano), Rome for, well, Rome. Because of Italy’s rich history, every town offers a range of other treasures for you to explore.

If you can visit only a major city or two, I recommend hiring a local, English-speaking guide (check the Internet) who can provide an overview and background. Then download or carry a map, and explore an intriguing neighborhood on foot—ideally early in the day or later in the evening when you can feel yourself walking back in time.

For those who have already been to Italy’s iconic cities one or more times, what do you suggest next?
DH: Choose a region that appeals to you—mountains or seaside, city or hill town—and make yourself at home. Rentals are available in every price range (always read reviews and fine print carefully). Go to markets, restaurants, parks, and festivals. You’ll soon start living by a new rhythm, savoring your interactions with locals and enjoying Italy’s greatest gift: its way of life.

How should travelers prepare for a trip to Italy? Is it necessary? How much knowledge of the Italian language is essential for most leisure travelers?
DH: Open your senses. Open your mind. Above all, open your heart.

Learn enough Italian to be polite (please, thank you, etc.) and handle necessities (e.g. where is…my hotel, a bathroom, etc.). Listen to online conversation lessons (my personal favorite: ItalyMadeEasy.com). Stream Italian videos (available online with English subtitles) to accustom your ear to Italian sounds. Download a translation app, and don’t hesitate to use it.

I’d also recommend my books. La Bella Lingua doesn’t teach grammar or vocabulary but you’ll learn (painlessly, I promise) why Italians cherish their language. La Passione taps into something deeper—the zest for living that makes every trip to Italy memorable.

Is there one city (or region) in Italy to which you always yearn to return? If so, why?
DH: In 1990 my husband and I arrived at Il Pellicano, then a rustic inn by the sea in Porto Ercole. “I want to come back here every year for the rest of my life,” I declared. And we have—staying at least a few nights at what is now a world-class luxury resort and then renting places nearby. I’ve written drafts of my three Italian books in hillside houses overlooking the Tuscan coast. We also share food and laughter with friends, go swimming and boating, and delight in dolce far niente— the sweetness of doing nothing.

Is your relationship with Italy monogamous? Where else do you travel for pleasure?
DH: I’ve been married 40 years so I may be monogamous by nature. However, my husband and have had flings with other European countries, New Zealand, Australia, the South Pacific. Most recently we’ve loved exploring the San Juan Islands in the Northwest. And since we live in Bodega Bay, we have the magnificent California coast in our front yard and the Wine Country in our backyard for quick getaways.

How do you cope with re-entry after leaving the place you love so much? How do you manage to bring a little bit of Italy back home with you?
DH: That’s the true gift of la passione italiana: it becomes part of you. In many ways, we live an Italian lifestyle in the U.S. We eat Italian dishes, drink espresso and Prosecco, and listen to Italian opera. But more importantly, we’ve absorbed its deeper lessons: Appreciate your senses. Cultivate compassion. Hold family and friends close. Choose the bello over the brutto. Love without limits. Let the human spirit soar.

What could be more seductive than that?

7 Reasons to Discover La Passione!

I am thrilled to announce the publication of my new book: LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World.

Like any author, I’m eager for people to read my book. But with more than 8 million titles on Amazon alone, why choose mine? Let me offer seven reasons, based on my discoveries as I traveled through Italy in search of la passione italiana.

1.The places you’ll go:
The Aeolian islands, where I learned the danger of angering ancient gods. The food markets of Bologna in the “fat belly” of Italy. The rolling hills of Piedmont, home to Barolo and Barbaresco, the king and queen of Italian wines. The atelier of the Italian sisters who dressed the movies’ great beauties when Rome was “Hollywood on the Tiber.”

2. The people you’ll meet:
Venice’s premiere “erotic glass artist,” who breathes passion into molten glass. An archaeologist who has excavated through almost three millennia of ruins to the first settlement in Rome. The “flying baroness” who roared to international celebrity as Italy’s first female race car driver. The poor boy from Southern Italy whose passion for feet inspired him to become “shoemaker to the stars.”

3. The stories you'll hear:
The lace-makers of Burano who saved their island from starvation, stitch by stitch. The ghost of the young Florentine who escaped from her tomb to “live twice” with her true love. The history of Neapolitan pizza. The singers, castrated as boys to preserve their high voices, who sublimated passion into song.

4. The tastes you’ll enjoy (vicariously):
Wine from a vineyard on an Umbrian hillside cultivated since centuries before Christ’s birth. Hand-made chocolate confections invented in Perugia by clandestine lovers. Balsamic vinegar aged in Modena for more than sixty years and drizzled over gelato. Passatelli, a pasta of cheese and breadcrumbs that I learned to make in a Bologna kitchen.

5. The experiences you’ll share:
A pre-Carnevale parade on the oldest canal in Venice. A 24-hour Good Friday processions of mammoth altars crafted centuries ago and carried through the streets of a Sicilian town. Lunch of traditional bagna cauda with young wine-makers in the Langhe. A stroll through Cinecittà, the fabled “Factory of Dreams” that still inspires all who  “have cinema in their blood.”

6.The joy you’ll find:
An Italian-American woman’s inspiring campaign to save an abandoned chapel in the Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino. Sleek road rockets and the roar of their engines at the Ferrari museum in Modena. Heart-shaped balloons on Valentine’s Day in Verona, home to Shakespeare’s Juliet and her Romeo.  Moonlight in Venice and fireworks over the Bay of Naples.

7. For the lessons you may learn:
La passione italiana imparts simple but profound life lessons: Hold family close. Appreciate your senses. Cultivate compassion.  Share food and laughter with friends. Honor the sacred. Choose the bello over the brutto. Love without limits. Let the human spirit soar.

Whether or not you are Italian by blood or aspiration, have visited or dream of visiting Italy, love pasta and pizza (and who doesn’t?), let yourself by seduced by a passion that resonates in all our souls.

I look forward to sharing my Passione with you!

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered  and  LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com. 

As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE, and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

 

What Makes Italian Passion Unique

Passion can bloom anywhere. Think of France, with its culinary cathedrals; Spain, with its torrid bullfights; Argentina, with its sultry tango. How is la passione italiana different?

“First of all, Italian passion is always personal,” says Marco Spagnoli, a prizewinning film director and critic as well as an astute cultural observer. The goal can be grand or modest—a multimedia spectacular or a family video, a new restaurant or a perfect re-creation of a great-grandmother’s lasagne. Its significance stems from a deep commitment that rises from within—and from an ancient culture that Italians feel in their blood. “We grow up seeing something very old and very beautiful—a church, a statue, a bridge—every day,” Spagnoli explains, “so we feel a duty, a compulsion to continue the tradition.”

Once unleashed, la passione italiana takes on a life of its own. “It becomes almost an obsession. It doesn’t matter how hard we have to work, how many hours it takes. We cannot stop. The old cliché of lazy Italians doesn’t apply—to modern Italy or to people who do things. Fortunately, we like to get our hands dirty.”

Although his hands are immaculate, I appreciate what Spagnoli means. Italian passions may begin with a thought or a desire but rarely remain purely cerebral. A molecular urge compels Italians to translate their visions into tangible forms: verses, images, food, wine, cars, jewelry, films, designs. And into everything they create, Italians instill a bit of their own personalities, memories, and dreams.

Competition stokes passion’s fire. The great rivalries of the Renaissance spurred its maestri to paint, design, and sculpt as no one ever had before. Opera singers strove to hold notes higher and longer that their peers. Race car drivers rocketed to death-defying speeds to outrun all challengers. “If there is no rival, we find one, even if it’s just the bureaucracy,” Spagnoli notes. “Ultimately we are competing with ourselves, pushing beyond old limits, daring to do more.”

Challenges, setbacks, or downright defeats can’t extinguish Italian passion. Through centuries of earthquakes, wars, invasions, and upheavals, la passione italiana has repeatedly surged back to life. “When things are at their worst,” says Spagnoli, “we rise to our best.”

Alone among nations, Italy has conquered the world—not once, not twice, but three times. The Roman Empire extended its might over territories spanning a quarter of the globe. Christianity, with Rome as its capital and Italy its cradle, planted the seeds of a religion that now counts 2.3 billion members—about one of every three people on the planet. The Italian Renaissance transformed art, architecture, and philosophy in an explosion of creativity that ushered in the modern age.

Is it possible for anyone to acquire la passione italiana?  I believe so. As the Italian writer Luigi Barzini contended, “in the heart of every man, wherever he is born, whatever his education and tastes, there is one small corner which is Italian.” This is the place, often untidy or even unruly, that feeds the desire to live and love fully, to pursue beauty, to cherish family and enjoy the company of kindred spirits, to speak and act with flair, to recognize but not entirely care about the things that matter little, and to care fiercely about those that matter most. And this is wherela passione italiana takes root.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.

As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

 

How Italy Seduced the World

Italy has been seducing foreigners since its history began. Century after century, in peace and war, over perilous passes, stormy seas, and rutted roads, they have come—explorers, adventurers, traders, sailors, soldiers, writers, musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, penitents, pilgrims of every sort—to the promised land of their imagination.

For a veritable Who’s Who of Western civilization, Italy served as the essential finishing school, a required destination for any person of refinement. Yet even cultural acolytes who came to learn from dead Italians found themselves enchanted by living ones—and infected with la passione italiana. “At last—for the first time—I live!” Henry James wrote in his diary when he arrived in Italy in 1869. “Who has been in Italy can forget all other regions,” the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol gushed. “Who has been in Heaven does not desire the Earth.” The bequally besotted Robert Browning declared, “Open my heart and you will see / Graved inside of it, ‘Italy.'”

Even if you have never set foot on its soil, Italy has so profoundly permeated our collective unconscious that you’ve touched and been touched by its heritage. Musicians everywhere play the do-re-mi notes invented by an Italian monk. Italian paintings, sculptures, and buildings adorn cities on every continent. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa outranks all other masterpieces as the world’s most famous painting. Ferrari’s Cavallino Rampante (Prancing Horse) outshines other brands as the most recognized logo. Italian itself has become trendy, ranking as the world’s fourth-most-studied languag

From Boston to Berlin, Sydney to Singapore, people nibble on biscotti, sip capuccino, drive Fiats, stream Italian films, and zip up Diesel jeans. The Mediterranean diet—practically a synonym for the cooking of southern Italy—has won over legions of fans and foodies. Even mainstream supermarket chains stock Italian pasta, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and peeled tomatoes. Italian fashions have become just as ubiquitous. The upscale salons of big-name designers line the chicest shopping streets of major cities on every continent. The “Made in Italy” label lures millions of customers with a sophistication that blends elegance with exuberance.

Yet “Italy fever” reflects more than the popularity of Italian products. “People around the world are attracted to what’s inside these objects– to the universe of values that they sense,” observes the distinguished author Federico Rampini, US bureau chief for La Repubblica. “Wherever I’ve traveled, I’ve met people who aspire to live like Italians. What seduces them is the culture of knowing how to live that Italy has raised to a level of perfection.”

At the heart of this culture pulses la passione italiana –- especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Imbued with its fire, we might all become as brave as Italy’s gladiators, as eloquent as its poets, as alluring as its beauties, as beguiling as its suitors. At the very least we can savor more fully the greatest of Italian passions—for life itself.

What could be more seductive? Read more in my new book: LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World,available to preorder here or on sale everywhere April 16.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.

As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

 

Easter in Sicily: The Passion of Christ

The Original Passione

Passion Sunday, the fifth Sunday of Lent, marks the beginning of a two-week period sometimes called Passiontide.  The early Christians fashioned the word passio from passus, the past participle of the Latin for "suffer."  I never fully comprehended this meaning until I went to Sicily for Holy Week.

Every  year the ancient port of Trapani brings the Passion of Christ to life in La Festa dei Misteri (the Feast of the Mysteries). Over the course of twenty-four hours, a parade of massive altars, each depicting a scene of Christ’s final days, winds through the town’s narrow streets. The altars, fashioned in elaborate detail in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have survived floods, fires, and Allied bombings in World War II.

Squads of muscular men grasp one another’s shoulders, pressing close into a crosshatch of intertwined arms as they hoist each tableau aloft. Sweating and grimacing, they weave in a wavelike rhythm called the annacata, stepping forward and back and side to side. Two white-haired widows standing next to me provide a running commentary. The men move like the sea, surging in and out with the tides, one explains. The other insists that the rhythmic dance started because the porters drank so much along the route that they staggered, dropping an altar on more than one occasion.

As day darkens into dusk, I find myself swept into the procession. When I try to break away, I hear voices calling “Guarda! Guarda! Guarda!” (Look! Look! Look!). Just turning a corner, a little girl, caped in black, leads dozens of mournful women carrying candles and rosaries. Inching its way behind them is yet another altar with a single regal statue: La Madonna Addolorata, the sorrowful mother of Christ, draped in velvet robes. A silver heart gleams in her chest. Above it—suddenly lit by a ray of the setting sun—flashes a sword. This is a Sicilian mother, stabbed by grief for her beloved child yet standing strong and resolute.

Finally, on Holy Saturday, the altars make  their way back inside their home church.  The parish priest gives thanks to the people of Trapani—for their labor, their time, and, above all, their inspiring passion.

On Easter, I once again hear a marching band and rush outdoors. At the end of a sun-dappled street, I behold an altar with the risen Christ, tall and triumphant, surrounded by lilies, carried by a fresh crew of burly porters. The crowd cheers. Steeple bells ring. I breathe in the scent of spring flowers and candle smoke. The faces around me glow with jubilation. When I join the parishioners admiring the altars on display, a young priest  asks what I thought of the procession.

“Bellissimo,” I say, adding that I am touched to see such beauty inspired by such pain and sorrow. “No, signora,” he says gently. “You are mistaken. It is not suffering that we celebrate in the Passion of Christ. It is love.”

Indeed it is: the great love that conquered the empire that had conquered the world and gave rise to the largest religion in history. And it is love that we find at heart of every Italian passion.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered, and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tour, visit her website: diannehales.com.

A Passion for Italy

A New Blog for a New Book

I didn’t have a clue. I had never set up a website, written a blog, created a Facebook group, or composed a single tweet. All that changed ten years ago when I prepared to launch my first Italy-themed book.

La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language attracted readers around the world, earned for me the great honor of being knighted by the President of Italy, and garnered a spot on the New York Times best-seller list and as the subject of a Times acrostic. The companion blog that I created — "Becoming Italian Word by Word" — also took on a life of its own, attracting almost two million visitors and winning a “blogger of the year” award for “Best Arts and Cultural Blog” from Italy magazine.

Over the last decade readers have come from just about every country -- Italy, England, Ireland, Poland, China, India, Japan, Australia, Samoa, Russia, Morocco, Germany, Brazil, Chile. A woman on a ranch in South Africa wrote to say my blog had inspired a series of paintings of Italian gardens. A group of nuns doing missionary work followed it regularly. Many teachers used the blog to spark conversation in class. One woman translated and read  each post to her blind elderly brother, who had been born in Naples.

To all my readers and followers, grazie di cuore. I thank you from my heart. But after a decade of focusing on words and expressions in la bella lingua, I am changing gears. As of the end of April, I will not be posting at “Becoming Italian Word by Word.” Instead, I am debuting a new blog, "A Passion for Italy," which will be available on my website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts. To subscribe, click HERE and  go to the top of the sidebar. If you are already subscribed via e-mail to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog. However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again, using the same link as above.

My new blog will go beyond the pages of LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World  to present more interviews with passionate Italians and more descriptions as well as photographs of the people I met and the places I visited.  I am excited about sharing the backstories of my research with you, and I hope you enjoy discovering more about  the Italian passions that seduced the world.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered, and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.