italy Archives -

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS by Giorgio Bassani

Here is a story about a young man’s first crush. It’s pretty brutal, because they spend an awful lot of time together as ‘friends,’ and then she tells him she’s not interested. Ouch. It’s very much a story of the lost days of our youth, made particularly sadder by the fact that it all takes place in a Jewish community in Italy in 1938. I don’t know how autobiographical this particular story is, but as the author also lived in that community, I can only imagine what it must feel like for him, memorializing that lost group of people and way of life.

I feel bad to say it, given the context, but I did not particularly like the book. The introduction informs us that Bassani has a ‘visual imagination,’ which I guess means he likes to list things, because believe me there a lot of lists. Don’t wonder what the crush’s bedroom looks like, because you are going to be informed in a LOT of detail. The author and the editor also assume a lot of knowledge of Italian politics of the interwar years. I particularly enjoyed one foot note that said: “This was a term for fascists from before the March 22 declaration.” So different from those other fascists!

THE MERCHANT OF PRATO by Iris Origo

Here is a book to make you feel like indeed all your problems are insignificant and death its on its way. It’s non-fiction, based on the 140,000 letters, 500 ledgers, 300 deeds of partnership, and various other paperwork left behind by a 14^th century Italian merchant named Francesco Di Marco Datini. This is apparently one of the largest records left behind by any medieval person, and it is truly astounding. His business ventures, his house, his food, his clothes, his private conversations with his wife, his worries, his medical problems, his religious crises. It’s all in there. I don’t know what I thought medieval people were doing with their time, maybe like religious mania and starvation, but apparently they were living full and rich lives that are now completely lost.

Let me give you a flavour. He is a super anxious guy, and here he is to his wife:

Remember to go to bed betimes and rise early and let not the door be opened until you have got up. And look well to everything; let them not go a-gadding. You know what Bartolomea is; she will say she goes one place, and then goes elsewhere. Ghirigora, too, has little sense . .

And here is someone else writing to him when he is getting really carried away with renovating his house, something that even today in Tuscany is called ‘rubble disease”:

Other wise and virtuous citizens do some building, but all except you in moderation! One man has a bailiff, another a friend or a paid overseer. But you are so greedy, you will allow no single groat to be misused, nor a single brick to laid lengthways, when it would look better upright – as if your little house where to be the dwelling place of your immortal soul!

I acquired some interesting historical info too. I was surprised to find that Italians had slaves at this time, actively acquired to replace people who died in the Black Death. Then at another point some town is ‘sacked by a company of free lances,’ from which I guess we get the word freelance? Also, how amazing is that it was standard to write on the first page of all your business ledgers: “In the name of god and of profit”

But I think this history stuff I will quickly forget. What I will remember is the density of his life, the huge anxieties and sufferings and drama, him and I suppose millions of other medieval people, and millions since, all forgotten.

THE LYING LIFE OF ADULTS by Elena Ferrente

Gianni is a girl in her early teens who suddenly begins to feel bad about her appearance, her friends, her parents, and her school. In short, she is becoming a teenager. She says:

I felt like a failure, like a cake made with the wrong ingredients

I think I’ve largely forgotten how excruciating it was to be an adolescent, but this book made me remember.

Guiliana turned and whispered: Gianni, what are you doing, come on, you’ll get lost. Oh, if I really could get lost, I thought at one point, leave myself somewhere, like an umbrella, and never have anything more to do with me.

Oh god! Poor girl. She is having a particularly rough go of it. Her parents are getting a divorce, and not in a kind of lets-all-go-to-therapy kind of way, more in a lets-scream-a-lot kind of way. She responds by wearing black clothing, giving blowjobs to unsuitable much older men, etc. She also relentlessly pursues her cousin’s fiance, with no guilt at all, as only the profoundly insecure can do.

Finally she runs away on a train with her best friend’s annoying younger sister. This last line killed me: