Friday is fascinating in Italy

 Edited BY

G P Kennedy

Ellie - Milan Italy

One of the most affected businesses and institutions during the lockdown in Italy were bookstores and libraries. They were the first to close and the last to reopen, being considered non-essential services. What an irony. In fact, libraries are still not fully operational: books have to be requested and an appointment needs to be made by phone or by the app. When the time comes, one has to ring the librarian from downstairs and she has to come down, lead the visitor up, check out the book, and then come back down for every appointment. Maybe it's good exercise, but it means books are only nominally physical. We can't wander around, explore the stacks, and see what serendipity is showing us during the visit.

 

Our tiny town library is located on a nice hill in downtown. The stairs that lead to it were built in the 1970s, which I regard as the best years in Italy. The sign that was embedded in the cobblestones in the staircase says "Salve", that is, "Hello", but with classical undertones. It's both more contemporary than "Ciao" which is the best-known greeting, but also has a direct Latin corresponding and means "Be well". Well, that was a welcome wish during the lockdown, to be sure, and even though the library was closed, it was a favorite destination at the time, just so I could read it. 

 

During the early weeks of the pandemic, all the classes I was teaching went online. Well, it took a couple of weeks for a solution to be found. And when I was back in touch with my students, all they wanted to talk about was the impending doom of humanity. Very depressing, even though I understood where they were coming from. So I decided to choose a book for us all to read that explains and incorporates the lockdown - and the related disruption - with this wonderful book about failure. It works magic every time in showing how important failure is for success. In fact, the stories it tells are about how failure leads down a path of success.

 

As I work on my dissertation, I have been living within this book for quite some time, exploring its corners and lines of desire. It is about the consciousness of the gaze and is written by one of the preeminent Italian scholars of visual culture. The book proposes different "exercises", that is, considerations, of how making our gaze more conscious is related to cultural heritage. One of the most important entities of cultural heritage is landscape, which in turn is not the lay of the land, not how physical features of the human community are distributed on the land, but our ability to view them and exercise a point of view. Not translated into English, which reminds me: if you want to read it, please let me know! I'd be happy to translate it as I explore its publication@

 

And finally, to all of you, I would like to recommend this author. Dino Buzzati is one of the most tender and profound Italian writers. His writing is not bright and sunny at all; in fact, death, doom, and tragic disappearance are at the center of almost all of his short stories. In the darkest moments, though, serenity and calm appear in the plot that almost assures you that everything is there for a reason, that everything makes sense. Without being religious, Buzzati's universe gives a world that consoles as it reveals. As an antidote to insomnia, I kept this book of intensely loved short stories on my nightstand so that I can read a story a night when it was necessary. Now I am passing this love on to you. My favorite story is The Colombre. Read and be well.