At the Table, Italian Style

While eating lunch today in Madurai, India, at my host, Pradeep’s home, I was reminded of an experience in Italy that I treasure with fondness. While living in the small hilltop Tuscan town of Castiglione Fiorentino, we befriended Marco, who owned La Bottega del Vino, a truly first-rate restaurant with Marco’s unsurpassable personal attention to hospitality and friendly evening banter, though often to the chagrin of his friend and partner who was stuck in the kitchen sweating over the hot stove the entire time and their wives who were busy serving people.

Marco was gregarious nearly to a fault, but genuinely loved to see people enjoy the food he offered at his trattoria. He was a craftsman of the old school and adherent to the slow-food movement in Italy, which involves sitting down and enjoying your food over time, quite in opposition to the rise of the American import of fast food into Europe.

When Marco found out that we would be in the town alone for Easter, which happened also to be on my birthday that year, he was sad and invited us to his home for an Easter dinner. Now, I may not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree always, but I’m no fool if the owner of my favorite small-town Tuscan restaurant invites me over for a home-cooked meal, I am not going to turn him down.

It was quite the event. I counted at least four generations there, though there was one older woman who might have been the fifth, but I am not certain. There were kids running around and several other of Marco’s family members, who were also no fools to turn down one of Marco’s banquets.

The thing that I remember most, more because it was an interesting custom more than anything else, was that we started with an enormous bowl of hard-boiled eggs. I mean several dozen at least. That was traditional for Easter and I am sure that we all had about four or five of them to inaugurate the meal.

After that, it was just one dish after another coming from Marco’s rather modest kitchen, but you would have never known it. Marco’s mother owned a grocery store on the edge of the town, just outside the city walls, and she always had good cheeses, wines, and produce, all of which was used in abundance to throw together this unforgettable meal.

So, after about five hours of eating and conviviality, Marco even brought out a birthday desert for me that he had made and I celebrated it with all of his family. It was a very special birthday event and a true testament to the hospitality that one can find in Italy.

My advice, if an Italian offers to bring you home for dinner with the family, it is most likely an offer that one should not refuse...and speaking of that, time to go down to dinner for one of Jacinthe’s home-cooked meals, Indian style. 

Statuesque Intrigue

Got statues and sculptures on the brain today, thinking about my upcoming trip to India and the first port of call, the Caves of Elephanta to see the large, rock-cut Hindu sculptures there.

We love statues as symbols, they give us something to hold onto, if only metaphorically. Hegel said that the statue of an altar was the metaphysical crux of a church as it was the presence of the deity, surrounded by the sacred space of the cathedral, surrounded by the congregation of paintings and stained-glass windows which view the statue.

I like statues out in the open air, al fresco, if you will, and Italy is full of them. However, upon reflecting about Italy today, three of them stick out in my mind that I would advise you to see, should you happen to be traveling to Italy any time soon. For me, these three statues capture the essence of what is appealing to me about Italy as a whole.

The first one is on the Campo di Fiori (the Field of Flowers) in Rome. This is a great piazza to people watch on, and for buying flowers, of course. However, the figure who presides over the Campo di Fiori is a bit ominous as it is none other than Giordano Bruno, who was burned in 1600 for heretical beliefs about the nature of Good and Evil. Bruno, as Stephen Dedalus says, "was badly burned" for his beliefs, something that seems so foreign to us now, but is actually quite recent in our history. Many a good man and woman have perished at the stake for their beliefs. What is interesting to me about Bruno is his idea of coincidentia oppositorum, or the concept that opposites attract. For Bruno, however, this is merely an illusion that there is actually something that can be opposite to another. Instead, there are merely two ends of a the same spectrum and ultimately like a wormhole in space and time, when the spectrum is bent, the opposite ends are actually the same. 


Something similar is described in the Phaedo of Plato when the friends of Socrates feel both pleasure and pain at the knowledge that Socrates is to die that day. Plato introduces the myth of Aesop that   pleasure and pain are like a saftey pin and are joined by a single joint and indeed are merely two ends of a single entity, beyond pleasure and pain. Well, when Bruno takes his idea to the logical conclusion, the granddaddy of opposites, Good and Evil, you can see where he got in a bit of tiff with the local Church, that being the Roman Catholic one... When people ask me about Italy, it is this strange attraction of opposites that comes to mind. Italy is one, gigantic living contradiction, but it works. I have a feeling that my trip to India will show me this contradiction exponentially.


So, Bruno's statue stands there mutely amongst the throngs of lascivious Roman men hunting unsuspecting American tourists for wallets and "romance" and reminds us of the odd chemistry that binds Italy together.


The second statue is Dante's but not in Florence,  rather in Verona. Verona's main attraction is the famous balcony from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, so it is almost ironic to find Dante's statue there. Go see the balcony for sure, it is worth the spectacle with graffiti messages all over it and the statue of poor Giulietta's breast rubbed endlessly for good luck and "romance". But, Dante serves as a reminder of the fact that Italy is the source of so much inspiration, such as the backdrop for the Elizabethean play. Italy has been part of the Grand Tour for artists, writers, and lovers long before the Grand Tour was even a concept, and much, much longer before Italy was even a country instead a bunch of territorial city-states at constant war with each other, centuries and milennia before Victor Emmanuel ever conceived of "Italia" as a country. So, visiting Verona, give ol' Dante a nod after you payed tribute to the "second-best" surrogate bard of Italy.


Finally, what would Italy be without Savonarola? "Who's that?" you ask. Well, he's the guy whose memorial that millions of tourists to Florence walk over every year without ever noticing. Next time you are in Florence, and you happen to be on the Piazza della Signoria, mistakenly looking at the fake David colossus (the real one's not there, but at the Academia), look down. In front of the ducal palace and next to the Uffizi is a commemorative disk that tells of the fate of the Monk on the Edge of Nervous Breakdown. Savonarola had his moment before he hit the flames. He preached a life of piety mixed with poverty, which worked for the über-rich Florentines, for a while, that is.


Savonarola got everyone worked up into a frenzy in Florence and had them stripping themselves of their Venus in Furs, paintings, rich linens, and most notably, their leather-bound books. Savonarola was the MC for many a public book-burning festivity to purge the city of its secular leanings. As I say, this worked for a while. Until the Florentines started missing their luxury goods. Then, as the fickle crowd often turns, they looked for something else to burn instead of the expensive wares and words. They found a crazy, gesticulating Monk from Ferrara that would do just fine, Savonarola himself. In the blink of an eye, the wealthy Florentines got religion in their material goods and decided to make a mark on the Piazza with Savonarola's ashes. Apparently, the crowd, which only a few months before had cheered on the Monk, was now charing him. The public burning was reportedly stopped several times so that the executioner could mix up Savonarola's charred remains, and then relighting the pyre to ensure that not a single earthly, material remain remained. If nothing else, those wascily Tuscans were thorough.


The statue of Savonarola, however, is in his birthplace, Ferrara. It is an eerie, eerie statue. With arms outstretched and a wild look of possession, you can almost hear the enchanted Monk delivering one of his (in)famous sermons that would wind up a crowd as frenzied as if they were listening to Paganini himself on the violin. I remember seeing this statue on a very foggy, autumn afternoon while visiting Ferrara from nearby Bologna, where I was living at the time. Ferrara is rumored to be a place of secret, dark magic, and seeing Savonarola's wild gaze stare out into the misty distance, I am willing to believe.

I'm Not Really From Texas

Part of my teaching position at L'Università di Bologna was a large (125 students) lecture course on British and American Literature. The set-up for the classroom was nothing like I had ever known, nor care to repeat. The students were on a lower level as there is a real "upstairs/downstairs" attitude in Italian universities and the students are much more obsequious to the professors than in America or Belgium. (OK, maybe that part of the class I enjoyed.) My students at The University of Texas at Austin had called me Dr. Rob, or sometimes even Rob. I don't even go by "Rob," so you can see the difference pretty clearly.

As a result of them being physically on a different level, I had to sit up on a podium accessed by stairs and had a railing around this small loft, with a table and a microphone on it that is like the ones that used to be in the airport to announce flights. If you have seen the famous "outing" episode with Ellen DeGeneres, you know what I mean.

So, there I would reign supreme above my minions, or so I thought. They apparently didn't understand a word I said for three weeks. And I had thought all of the giggles were coy little, flirtatious signals from the female students. Not quite.

About three weeks into the course, Nicole R., one of my favorite students approached me on my throne after class with a covey of giggling girls behind her, again, me thinking they were flirtatious Italians... She said, "Umm. Professore Fulton (respect at last!), some of the students asked me to speak with you about your class." I thought to myself, "Teaching awards? Already? Best class they had ever had? Americans really are smart!"

As I was rehearsing my acceptance speech in my mind, some of the other giggling girls goaded Nicole on in Italian. At that point, I had not learned enough Italian, so in my head I heard, "Go on Nicole, tell him how brilliant his lectures are, that he should replace Eco himself..." and so on.

So, Nicole approaches me further with her polished British accent that she was quite proud of as the other students had much more pronounced Italian accents.

"Umm. Professore Fulton (never gets old), there seems to be a problem with your class lectures."

Problem? What, they're not long enough? Was it my hair? (still had some then, and a sporty "European Professor" goatee). Were they swooning too much to listen.

"Oh, okay, what seems to be the problem?"

"Well, Sir (chaa-ching), it's your accent..."

My accent? Too suave? Too debonaire? Too, too?

"What do you mean, Nicole? Is there a problem with my accent."

"Ummm...yes Sir, nobody can understand your heavy Texas accent."

Thump. That was my Ego that fell.

Well, if you have ever heard me speak, you will know that I have absolutely NO ACCENT, in fact, most people don't know where I am from when I speak.

So, I replied, "Ahh....I see, my Texas accent. Okay, thanks, Nicole, I will be sure to address that."

Nicole turned, related the dialog to the others in Italian, and there was much laughter, mirth, pointing and giggling, more laughter, tears, lots more laughter. Finally, I just left the room because it became unbearable.

The next class I ascended my royal loft and thumped on the microphone and addressed the collective bated breath of the class.

"Apparently, there seems to be something wrong with my Texas accent and you are having trouble understanding me," I said quite slowly and deliberately, sans any trace of an accent.

Lots of hugging and patting on the back, hail Mary's and processions took place. Nicole was hoisted on the shoulders of her peers and general merriment ruled for the next twenty minutes or so. When the ruckus had subsided, I said,

"Eff ayya spoak in a reyaal texssassh accsent, y'all wudn't unnerstan a gaosh dern thang ayya was a'sayin."

Dead silence, or at least as silent as Italian students could be. You could have heard a penne drop. (in my mind, that joke will never get old).

I resumed my lectures in my "Canadian Newscaster" normal speaking voice and there were no more discussions about Texas accents in the class.

That was the end of the lesson on assumptions for the day.