Becoming Italian Word by Word

The Geology of Italian Passion

La passione italiana dates back to a time before time when a geologic frenzy carved a boot in the middle of the Mediterranean. Convulsing and colliding, tectonic plates thrust an ancient seabed so high that tiny crustaceans were trapped and fossilized in the Italian Alps. Lava seething within the earth boiled and bubbled to form a chain of volcanic cones stretching from central Italy to what would become the island of Sicily.

Even today the Italian earth trembles. The Apennines, running like a spine through the peninsula, still undulate, sometimes with devastating consequences. Europe’s only active volcanoes—Vesuvius, Stromboli, and Etna—rumble and spew.

Eons of natural sculpting formed a countryside Renaissance artists considered the most magnificent of masterpieces, a mosaic of wind-blasted rocks, hills pleated with valleys, and mountains cresting into boundless blue. In the splendid Val d’Orcia, a plaque pays tribute to Italy’s first artists: the contadini (farmworkers) who tilled fields, terraced hills, and left behind rows of slender green cypresses climbing to crenellated towers silhouetted like paper cutouts pasted on an azure sky.

The symbiosis between the land and its people forms a bond as strong as blood—and older than Italy itself. At Selinunte, an ancient Greek settlement on Sicily’s western coast, my guide—a tiny, pony-tailed dynamo named Pina—presses my palm against the sun-warmed column of a temple built five hundred years before the birth of Christ.

“You can feel the passion of the people who built this place,” she says. “It’s in the stones!” In Florence, a street artist tells me to breathe deeply and inhale the heady oxygen that stimulated the genius of Renaissance masters. A Venetian glassblower talks of the water flowing like blood through the veins of an improbable city that seems spun out of fantasy. An olive grower in Campania gently sifts a fistful of soil through his fingers as he describes the land that nurtured the souls of his forefathers.

On a shuttle in Chianti, our driver suddenly pulls to the side of the road. I step out to view a titanic sunset not so much painted as carved, great cloud masses of deep rose, purple, and mauve, coupling and uncoupling as golden rays silhouette their shoulders.

“Sentite!” he commands, exhorting us not just to look but to take in this heavenly spectacle with every sense. And I do, lingering before this twilight tango until the darkness deepens into night.

“What mysterious emptiness in their souls is filled by merely standing on Italian soil?” the Italian writer Luigi Barzini mused in his classic The Italians. Perhaps the answer lies, at least in part, in the skies above and the earth below.

Excerpted from 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.  

 

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.

 

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.