Elizabeth is truly getting into my psyche.....maybe there was a reason one of my ladies gave me this book to read.......pg.47 and already she is giving me fantasies of running off to Italy.
Here's the thing, considering my children are half Italian and are just today finishing Italian Summer school for the second year in a row, finishing off the sessions speaking a 2nd language in a production that could be taken on the road....I might add, (it's amazing what children are able to pick up in 2 hours a day for a month with recess and a snack snuck in), leaves me ashamed to say the only words I know in this beautiful language are well.......you know.....I'm sure someone could appreciate them....when taken into consideration that they would be said with great passion......that is the Italian way.....No? On that note I would like to share (thanks to Elizabeth's study and passion for the language), a little bit about the language of love and how it came to be as I learned through her words;
Here is why Italian is the most seductive language in the world:
While France, Portugal and Spain took their languages from their most prominent cities, Italy was different.....Italy did not become unified until 1861 and was still susceptible to being overpowered by local princes and other European powers. Parts of Italy were owned by France, parts by Spain, parts by the Church and some parts where even up for grabs to whomever could nab a fortress or palace. Elizabeth writes that "The Italian people, although mildly humiliated chose to be more cavalier to this domination," (kinda like a woman......, sorry)
The italian motto of the day was "Franzo o Spagna, purche se magna," translated
"France or Spain, as long as we eat."
Elizabeth continues to elegantly inform us that for centuries Italians spoke their own local dialect (as I am aware, a lot still do today). So here's what happened........ some Italian intellectuals decided that they must come up with a pure Italian language, especially in the written form that everyone could agree upon. Unprecendentedly they proceeded to do something that had never before been done in the history of Europe; they chose what they determined to be the most beautiful of all the local dialects and dubbed it Italian.......going back over 200 years to 14th century Florence to what has been dubbed the most beautiful dialect ever spoken in Italian, Dantean.....a language created by the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who published a work callled Divine Comedy in 1321 which detailed the visionary progression through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven shocking the literate world when he did not write the work in Latin. Elizabeth continues to elegantly inform us that Dante felt that writing the work in Latin would have made the work corrupt by leaving it unaccesable to anyone other than the elite. So instead, Dante turned to the street (a man ahead of his time?), Dante picked up the real Florentine language as spoken by the residents. Residents such as Boccaccio the italian poet who's works included "On Famous Women" a collection of one hundred and six biographies(which I noted) was one of the first examples of literature devoted solely to women as well as Petrach an Italian scholar and poet who on April 6, 1327 (Good Friday) gave up his vocation as a priest after taking sight of a woman named Laura in the Church of Sainte-Claire d'avignon awakening in him a lasting passion for the already betrothed woman (we all know how that story goes......or do we?) Dante used this language to complete his work.
Now I know I can make a connnection; DIVINE comedies, works devoted solely to women and priests who turn from their vocation for a women named Laura, I mean come on........is Elizabeth or someone else......trying to teach me something........?
Getting back to it....Elizabeth teaches me more by informing me that Dante wrote his work in what he termed "il dolce stil nuovo", the "sweet new style", his writing was personally affected just like Shakespeare affected Elizabethan English. It is phenomenal to think that a small group of Italian intellectuals was able at that point in history to decide that Dante's Italian would be it's official language, as Elizabeth likens it, it was very much like a group of Oxford dons deciding everybody in England would take on the language of Shakespeare and speak pure Shakespearian from that day forward, somehow they actually did it!!! and hence, this is why the Italian, even of today is essentially Dantean.
Elizabeth continues to point out that no other European language was born from such artistic pedigree and no other language more perfectly expresses human emotions than Dantean's 14th century Florentine Italian (Oh, the things we learn....).
It was also interesting to realize that Dante's Divine Comedy was written in terza rima
(triple rhyme), a chain of rhymes which repeat themself three times every five lines
(I will need to look into the significance of the five line meaning, but I am fully aware of the
Divine number 3), giving the language what was termed "a cascading rhythm", which is still heard in Italy to this day.
In the last line of Dante's Divine comedy, in which he is faced with the vision of God, Dante writes that God is merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that HE is, most of all,
l'amor che move il sole e l'atre stelle........."The love that moves the sun and the other stars." and so I have just figured out why Dante, his work and his lovely language have stirred such emotion and intrigue in me.....must find myself a copy of Dante's work and delve deep within.......
I am ending this rather long writing with thanks to Elizabeth and with the dream that one day
"il mio amore ed io" (my love and I) see.....already learning.......one day will wine and dine and take in the bountiful atmosphere of a country so willing to be cavalier enough to allow everyone to love and share in it's beauty, while asking so little in return except that we savour and enjoy in all life's pleasures....Here's to looking forward to dolce vita (the sweet life).....and I'm thinking since Elizabeth's passion for the language brought so much inspiration, maybe I should start taking Italian lessons and maybe that penchant I have for those words (Italian or otherwise) will be tamed by the sweet, flowing language of love......
Footnote: all this writing took place prior to the freezie incident which got those oh not so pretty words flowing from my lips, No...... these words did not come out in Italian but they were said with a mixture of passion and fury......just as the Europeans would have it......ahh........the fine balance of the moment........dolce vita to la vida loca (the crazy life).
To those of you whom I love and share my passion, in you God showed me
"l'amor che move il sole e l'atre stelle"
Namaste
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