Becoming Italian Word by Word

A World Without Italy

Imagine a world without Italy: Painting without Leonardo. Sculpture without Michelangelo. Literature without Dante. No Verdi choruses or Puccini arias. No Fellini films or Ferrari roar. Heavens uncharted, vines unplanted, tables bereft of pasta, pizza, and a Sicilian cake so divine that its bakers swore it could make the dead breathe again.

Western civilization would surely have sprouted elsewhere, but the planet would have been a paler place, a rainbow stripped of its most vibrant hues: Raphael’s luminous blue, Valentino’s luscious red, espresso’s inky black. More than a country, Italy embodies a culture that has transformed art and architecture, language and music, food and fashion.

Its borders contain more of UNESCO’s designated cultural treasures than any other nation. Its inhabitants created the first universities, banks, public libraries, and law and medical schools; mapped the moon (in 1651); split the atom; produced the first modern histories, satires, sonnets, and travelogues; invented the first working compass, battery, barometer, microscope, radio, and thermometer; garnered twenty Nobel Prizes; and bestowed upon the world the eternal gift of music.

Humanity, Mussolini bragged, is indebted to Italians “for the majority of its accomplishments.” For once, he wasn’t exaggerating.

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.

Italy has so profoundly permeated our collective unconscious that even if you have never set foot on its soil, 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. Italy’s food, arguably everybody’s favorite, nourishes souls as well as bodies. Its wines soothe and stimulate. Its films, cars, and fashions transport us above the mundane and the mediocre. Leonardo’s Mona Lisaoutranks all other masterpieces as the world’s most famous painting. Ferrari’s Cavallino Rampante (Prancing Horse) outshines other brands as the most recognized logo.

But why Italy? How did a scrawny peninsula smaller than California, home to less than 1 percent of the world’s population, leave such an outsize imprint on Western culture?  What sparked endless innovations and inspired a multitude of masterpieces? Was it a miracle? Serendipity? Luck? Destiny?

After decades of up-close but admittedly unscientific observation, I credit la passione italiana. This fierce drive, three millennia in the making, stems from an insatiable hunger to explore, discover, create, pursue beauty, feel deeply, love and live with every fiber of one’s being. It blazes to life in the Sistine Chapel, surges through a Rossini aria, preens in Bulgari jewels[ Jon: or “on a Milan catwalk”], deepens a vintage Brunello, spices a tangy penne all’arrabbiata(pasta with an “angry” sauce seasoned with chile peppers).

Discover more Italian passions in LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World.  Dianne Hales is also the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language and MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. For more information, visit diannehales.com.

 

 

 

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.

 

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.

What is "la passione"?

“Of course, you are Italian,” a Roman friend insisted years ago, “You have something more important than blood: la passione.”

I accepted the compliment without fully comprehending its significance. Passion, after all, can bloom anywhere. Think of France, with its culinary cathedrals; Spain, with its bullfights; Argentina, with its tango—not to mention the millions of soulmate seekers pursuing passion online. Yet these pursuits now strike me as mere imitations. How could it be otherwise? The original, including the word itself, was made in Italy.

In the first century AD, newly minted Christians, constructing a vocabulary for their fledgling religion, chose the term passio for the agony that Jesus endured to redeem a world of sinners. Etymologists trace its roots to the Latin passus, past participle of pati (to suffer), inspired by the “sacrificio di Cristo e a quells dei prima martiri” (the sacrifice of Christ and that of the first martyrs).

Healers appropriated the word for maladies such as “passion of the liver”—a diagnosis that conjures an organ engorged with rage. Medieval writers—Dante foremost among them— recognized romantic love as una passione so compelling that it could not be resisted. The Renaissance extended the definition of la passione to any all-consuming quest, most often for beauty in its infinite variety. Romantics idealized the irresistible intensity of such ardor, even when it exploded into “crimes of passion.”

Although modern English-language dictionaries acknowledge the religious roots of “passion,” they define it as a state or an outburst of strong emotion, intense sexual love, or deep desire or enthusiasm. La passione is all these—and much more.

The Dizionario Affettivo della Lingua Italians (Emotional Dictionary of the Italian Language) describes la passione as a flammable material—volatile and dangerous. When it possesses you, it causes infinitesimal, voracious particles to pulsate in the blood. You risk burning like a torch, flaming bright, and then disintegrating into embers. When you are inside la passione, nothing else can enter your mind. When it flees, you search desperately for more.

Passion—and passion alone—lifts us above the ordinary. Without passion, there would be no literature, no art, no music, no romance, perhaps none of the wonders Italians have wrought. Beyond sentiment or emotion, la passione qualifies as a primal force of nature that cannot be ignored or denied.

You will find more--much more--about this fierce drive to explore, discover, create, pursue beauty, and love and live with every fiber of one’s being in my new book, La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World. You can preorder it here or find it wherever books are sold on 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.

Cari amici, I will be moving my blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts.  Click HERE  to subscribe (top of sidebar).  Note that 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).  Thank you!

 

 

March News from Dianne

“Imagine a world without Italy: Painting without Leonardo. Sculpture without Michelangelo. Literature without Dante. No Verdi choruses or Puccini arias. No Fellini films or Ferrari roar. Heavens uncharted, vines unplanted, tables bereft of pasta, pizza, and a Sicilian cake so divine that its bakers swore it could make the dead breathe again.”,

This is how LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World begins.

Western culture is indeed unimaginable without Italy. Its borders contain more  of UNESCO’s designated cultural treasures than any other nation. Its inhabitants created the first universities, banks, public libraries, and law and medical schools; mapped the moon (in 1651); split the atom; produced the first modern histories, satires, sonnets, and travelogues; invented the first working compass, battery, barometer, microscope, radio, and thermometer; garnered twenty Nobel Prizes; and bestowed upon the world the eternal gift of music.

But why Italy? How did a scrawny peninsula smaller than California  leave such an outsize imprint on Western culture?

After  decades of searching for answers,  I credit la passione italiana. My new book, available now for pre-order and on sale wherever books are sold on April 16, explores this primal force and its impact on food, wine,  romance, literature, art, music, religion, film, fashion--and very fast cars.

I’m excited about sharing the story of how la passione italiana seduced the world—in print and in person. Here is the initial list of places where I’ll be speaking this spring.  You can find details on the Events page of my website, which will be updated as we firm up additional dates for the summer and fall.

San Francisco:

Italian Cultural Institute, 6:30 p.m., April 17 (with Frances Mayes)

Libreria Pino, 6:30 p.m., April 24 (with Lisa Engelken)

Il Cenacolo (members and guests), noon, May 16

Marin County

Book Passage, Corte Madera, 4:00 p.m., April 28

East Bay

Stanford Women’s Book Club (private), morning, May 2

Orinda Books, 2:00 p.m., May 2

Houston

Italian Cultural & Community Center, 7:00 p.m., May 7 (with Rita Richardson of Friends of San Filippino)

New Orleans

American Italian Cultural Center, 6:00 p.m., May 8 (with Rita Richardson)

Atlanta

Ciancia Conversation Club, 7:00 p.m., May 9 (with Rita Richardson)

If you’re in Italy this June, I’ll be presenting my book at an event sponsored by the Friends of San Filippino  on Sunday, June 9, in the lovely Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino and in a lecture at the British Institute in Florence on Wednesday, June 12.

I look forward to meeting many of you in my travels. Come and discover la passione italiana!

                                                                                                                                                A presto,

                                                                                                                                                Dianne

Please note: I will be moving my blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts.  Click here  to subscribe (top of 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).  Thank you!

Italian Christmas Carols

 

Il canto di Natale 

 The Christmas Carol 

You expect Christmas to look different in Italy, but it’s surprising to discover that it sounds different too. Rather than jingling sleigh bells, the traditional sound of Christmas in Rome and southern Italy is the music of bagpipes and flutes played by shepherds from the Abruzzi. 

According to legend, shepherds entertained the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem with their simple instruments. Zampognari (bagpipe players), wearing shaggy sheepskin vests, felt hats and crisscrossed leather leggings, used to come to Rome weeks before Christmas to play in churches. These days the shepherds arrive later and play their ancient instruments in front of elegant stores along the Via Condotti and other shopping streets near the Spanish Steps. 

Like so many other Christmas traditions, il canto di Natale (the Christmas song or carol) has Italian origins. In the thirteenth century, San Francesco (St. Francis) of Assisi and his followers, the first Franciscan friars, created a large number of Christmas hymns to give praise and thanks for the birth of il Bambino Gesù (Baby Jesus).

Italians, like people in other countries, sing hymns such as Adeste Fidelis (“O Come All Ye Faithful") in the original Latin. However, the lyrics of other classic carols are quite different in Italian. Stille Nacht, for instance, originally written in German by an Ausrian composer, translates, not as “Silent Night,” but as Astro del ciel (Star of Heaven). Click here to listen. Below is the  literal translation of the first verse into English: 

Astro del ciel/ Pargol divin /mite Agnello Redentor! 
 Tu che i Vati da lungi sognar/ tu che angeliche voci nunziar, luce dona alle genti 
pace infondi nei cuor! 


Star of Heaven/ Holy child/ meek lamb, you are our savior!/ You are the one that far away prophets dream about/ You are the one that angelic voices announce/ Enlighten us all 

Among the many beautiful Italian canti di Natale, the most beloved (and my personal favorite) is Tu Scendi dalle Stelle, written by Alphonsus Liquori in the 18th century. Click here to listen. The lyrics in Italian and an English translation of the first verse: 

Tu scendi dalle stelle 

 O Re del cielo 

 E vieni in una grotta 

 Al freddo al gelo 

 O Bambino mio Divino Io 

 Ti vedo qui tremar! 

English translation 

 From starry skies Thou comest 

 The King of Heav'n foretold, 

 Appearing in a manger, 

 Near frozen from the cold. 

 Jesus, dearest little Baby, 

 How I long to make Thee warm! 

Italians have adopted some American carols, even though phrases like “jingle bells” don’t translate. Here is the Italian version: Suona jingle bells / tintinnando nei cammin 
le campanelle d'or/ Jingle bells, jingle bells/ suona jingle bells/ E suonando porterà 
la gioia in ogni cuor.

English translation: Ring little bells! Golden bells are jingling inside the chimneys. Jingle bells, jingle bells/ ring little bells!

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. Click here to preorder. For more information, visit her new website: www.diannehales.com.

Santa Lucia, Saint of Light and Sight

 

La Festa di Santa Lucia (December 13) 

In the dark of December parts of Italy light up to celebrate a saint whose name derives from the Latin lux or lucis for light (luce in Italian). 

Lucia was a young girl who lived in Siracusa on the island of Sicily in the third century. According to various legends, this saintly virgin would wear a wreath of candles as she carried food to Christians hiding in underground tunnels. When a suitor claimed to be captivated by her eyes, Lucia plucked them out and had them sent to him on a platter.  In another version, she was blinded and miraculously cured.  

Denounced as a Christian, Lucia was ordered to work in a brothel by Roman authorities. She refused to go, and nothing—not even a fire set under her feet—could get her to budge. One of her persecutors ultimately killed her by stabbing her in the throat. 

The patron saint of sight, Lucia is often portrayed holding a plate with a pair of eyes on it. As a way of tasting the enlightenment she brings, Italians eat “gli occhi (the eyes) di Santa Lucia” usually made from bread or biscotti.   

Santa Lucia gained greater fame in 1582, when famine struck Siracusa. On December 13 a boat filled with grain appeared in the harbor. Rather than processing the grain into flour, the starving people simply boiled and ate it. 

Sicilians honor the memory of Santa Lucia by lighting bonfires and abstaining from anything made of wheat flour on December 13. They traditionally prepare cuccìa (which rhymes with Lucia), a dessert made of whole wheat berries, cooked in water and mixed with sweetened ricotta flavored with candied orange bits and shaved chocolate. 

Missionaries and mariners carried the legend ot Santa Lucia to Sweden, where she is credited with saving a town from famine by sending a boat filled with food. At its helm was a woman dressed in white with a glow above her head. 

According to tradition, in some parts of northeastern Italy, including the cities of Bergamo, Cremona and Verona, Santa Lucia rides a flying donkey (asino volante) to bring gifts (regali) to good children and coal (carbone) to bad ones. To make sure she stops, youngsters leave out a snack for Lucia and carrots and hay for her donkey. However, they are warned never to try to catch a glimpse of her. If they do, she may throw ashes (cenere) in their eyes and temporarily blind them.

The phrase “Santa Lucia” is famous for a different reason in Italy —as a traditional Neapolitan song written in praise of the picturesque waterfront district, Borgo Santa Lucia, on the bay of Naples. In 1849 Santa Lucia became the first Neapolitan song to be given Italian lyrics and sung as a barcarola (gondolier's song) in the early stages of the Risorgimento, the fight for the unification of Italy. 

Enrico Caruso, the great Neapolitan opera singer, recorded the most famous 20th-century version, but everyone from Elvis Presley  to Luciano Pavarotti has covered this iconic tune.  Click here for Andrea Bocelli's rendition.

Here are the lyrics to the opening verses in Italian and English: 

Italian 

Sul mare luccica 

L'astro d'argento

Placida è l'onda 

Prospero è il vento 

Venite all'agile 

Barchetta mia 

Santa Lucia 

Santa Lucia... 

English 

Over the sea 

shines a silver star. 

Placid is the wave. 

Fair is the wind. 

Come to 

my swift little boat, 

Santa Lucia, 

Santa Lucia. 

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. Click here to preorder. For more information, visit her new website: www.diannehales.com.

 

 

Questions Every Traveler Needs to Know: When and How Much?

Quando? Quanto? 

When? How much? 

These are two of the first words tourists learn in Italy—for good reason. Once you know when a shop opens or a train leaves and how much a cappuccino or a ticket costs, you are set to go (siete a posto).

Sometimes quando is all you need to ask. If you want to find out “until when,” ask “Fino a quando?” If you’re curious about since when, ask “Da quando?"  My favorite Italian response is an authoritative, “Il quando te lo dirò.” (I’ll tell you exactly when.)

The whole world began asking "when" in 1962 when the Italian pop song “Quando, Quando, Quando” became an international hit, with a catchy tune and lyrics like these:

Dimmi quando tu verrai, 

dimmi quando... quando... quando... 

l'anno, il giorno e l'ora 

in cui forse tu mi bacerai... 

Tell me when you will come

Tell me when…when…when

The year, the day, and the hour in which

Perhaps you will kiss me.

Pat Boone, Engelbert Humperdinck and Michael Bublé popularized English versions with only one irreplaceable Italian word: quando.

Quanto is used mostly for counting--but not just money. At one of my favorite trattoriain Florence, the jovial owner greets each group of customers with a hearty “Quanti siamo stasera?’ (How many are we this evening?)

Quanto can be used more abstractly for things that you can't quantificare (quantify). “Quanto ha sofferto!” *How much he suffered!” Italians say of a hapless soul who may have lost “tutti quanti, tutto quanto” (everybody, everything).

“Quanto rumore!“(What a racket!) I’ve complained in noisy restaurants. "Quanto mi manchi!" (How much I miss you) I say to a faraway friend. And of course, I've sighed, "Quanto ti voglio bene!" (How much I care about you!) to those I hold dear.   

Quanto, combined with mai (never) and an adjective, comes in handy for all sorts of  exclamations: How important is something? Extremely, very much, utmost? Then you would say, “Quanto mai importante!” How much salt or sugar should you add to a recipe?  "Quanto basta” (Just enough, as needed).    

If you're admiring a muscular athlete, you might comment on quanto sia forte (how strong he is). Although you probably wouldn't talk in such a flowery way, you could write poetic words such as, “bella quant’altra mai,” to a woman you consider lovelier than any other.

When politicians or academics launch into speeches, they unfurl quanto in rhetorical flourishes such as “per quanto mi riguarda” (as far as I’m concerned,” “in quanto che” (inasmuch as) or “quanto a me” (as for me). But with too many of these, “quanto” (how much) quickly becomes troppo (too much).

Words and Expressions

Quand’ecco –- Lo and behold!   Just then, that’s when…, when suddenly…

Quand’anche –- even if

Ma quando mai! -- No way! Are you kidding? Not at all! 

Di quando in quando-- now and again, every so often or from time to time

Per quanto strano sembri-- strange as it may seem

E quant’altro–- and what not, and what have you  

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language and MONA LISA: A Life Discovered.

 

 

Welcoming Spring in the Italian Language

La primavera

Spring

In English the most eagerly awaited of seasons “springs” to life with blunt urgency. In Italian la primavera blossoms into four elegant syllables.

My etymological dictionary traces primavera back to radici indoeuropee (Indo-European roots): prima for “before” and vas for ardente, splendente (burning, shining), which evolved into a word for “summer.” And so Spring is simply the season “before summer.” But what a season it is!

An Italian word-lovers’ website waxes poetic on its glories, hailing la primavera as “l’inizio di splendore, per tutto, per tutti” (the beginning of splendor, for everything, for everyone). I cieli freddi spazzati dal vento (the cold, windblown skies) make room for un caldo sole (a hot sun). La terra (the land) awakens from its letargo (hibernation) and prepares to sollevare un manto smeraldino (push up a green mantle). People eagerly shed their heavy clothes to feel the sun on their skin -- an epidermico piacere (epidermal pleasure).

The artist Sandro Botticelli captured the glories of the season in the painting known as La Primavera, one of the grandi capolavori del Rinascimento (great masterpieces of the Renaissance), displayed at the Uffizi in Florence. Completed around 1482, it depicts a group of mythological figures in un ombroso boschetto (a shady glen), under una sorta di semi-cupola di aranci (a sort of half-dome of orange trees) against un cielo azzurrino (a light blue sky). At the center stands Venere (Venus), simbolo neoplatonico dell'amore più elevato (neoplatonic symbol of the most elevated love). 

Another Italian captured the essence of Spring in music. Antonio Vivaldi dedicated the first movement of his famed violin concerti Le quattro stagioni (The Four Seasons) to La Primavera and wrote poems to express the sounds of each season. The sonnet on Spring begins: "Giunt' è la Primavera e festosetti / La Salutan gl' Augei con lieto canto” (Springtime is upon us. The birds celebrate her return with festive song). Click below to listen.

Writers, inventors and many others have adopted primavera as the name for poems, songs, software programs, political parties, soccer competitions and political upheavals, such as La Primavera di Praga (the Prague Spring). In honor of the season’s inspiring spirit, I pass along some advice from Italian wordsmiths:

As la nuova energia di nascita e creazione (the new energy of birth and creation) flows within and around you, non farsela sfuggire (don’t let it slip away)! It will take a year for this momento più sacro e tenero dell'immortale ciclo delle stagioni (most sacred and tender moment of the eternal cycle of the seasons) to return with its l'occasione del riscatto e della palingenesi (with its chance for redemption and regeneration).

Buona primavera!

Words and Expressions

L’aprile degli anni -- heyday of youth

Pasta primavera -– pasta made with fresh vegetables

Primaverile –- of Spring, vernal  

Terzo aprilante quaranta di durante -- as is the third of April so will be the next 40 days (a weather prediction)

Godere di un’eterna primavera –- to enjoy mild, spring-like weather all year round

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian the World's Most Enchanting Language and MONA LISA: A Life Discovered.