WINTER’S AN OFF TIME FOR FARMERS: THEN THEY MOSTLY ENJOY
THEIR GAINS, HOLD JOLLY SUPPERS AMONGST THEMSELVES.
GENIAL WINTER INVITES THEM AND THEY FORGET THEIR WORRIES;
JUST AS, WHEN SHIPS IN CARGO HAVE COME TO PORT AT LAST,
GLAD TO BE HOME THE SAILORS ADORN THEM WITH GARLANDS.
*
“Gio-Angelo Papio, the most famous of the Bolognese professors.” Dusky Bologna approach by train, past dungeon-like grating, trackside clutter, red-lit crossway arms. “Was a friend of Bernardo Tasso.” In the road beside the track a street-sweeper’s yellow light swirls atop its cab. “At his instigation.” Casting its green headlamp glow onto a long-haired sweeper-person. “Perhaps not unaccompanied by a suggestion of university subsidies.” As he brooms debris into its path. “Torquato moved to Bologna, November 1562.” At trackside a man in a black jacket scowls at the passing train. “The fame of his Rinaldo.” We pause at a suburban station. “And an introduction from his father.” In yellow parka a cyclist overtaking us glances back to frown. “Threw open the hospitable doors of Monsignore Cesi.” We arrive in a cold and darkened city. “Whose house was a center for philosophical and literary discussion.” In the distance a gray tower peeks its dim head into an overcast sky, as we head by city bus for “Centro Storico.”
“YET EVEN NOW THERE’S EMPLOYMENT IN SEASON.” Descending at Palazzo del Podestà, we are eyed suspiciously by a carabiniere, seated in his “Stazione Mobile,” a tall white-roofed black van parked at curbside. From the street we step up onto the gray and pink pavement. “Banca di Bologna,” glows a red neon sign in the Palazzo dei Banchi. “ACORNS TO GATHER AND BERRIES OF THE BAY TREE.” The grim incompleteness. “AND OLIVES.” Of the Basilica di San Petronio, its lower marble facing shrouded in plastic. “AND BLOOD-RED MYRTLE.” Having turned about in the Via Rizzoli, a mechanical street-sweeper enters the Piazza; raising its broom menacingly, it grumbles through the solemn space, as a black-jacketed cyclist pauses to tuck in his white shirttails. “NOW YOU CAN LAY YOUR TRAPS FOR THE CRANE.” In amongst a huddled flock of pigeons a single white dove shudders from the chill. “YOUR NETS FOR THE STAG.” We turn about to study the Palazzo Comunale; its clock, ominously large, reads “8:26.” Trailing a broom deformed by use. “GO COURSING LONG-EARED HARES.” A sweeper-person. “OR WHIRL YOUR HEMPEN SLING.” In day-glow green crosses the square. “TO BRING THE FALLOW DEER DOWN.” Stooping to pick up a single gum wrapper. A black-clad teenager in shorts and knee socks crosses the piazza with his girlfriend, she in black jacket and short black skirt. “NOW WHEN SNOW LIES DEEP.” Lettered in gold, “Guardia di Finanza,” a black police car slowly circles the square; in its front seat, two uniformed policemen, behind them, two plainclothesmen. An orange bus stops to open its doors. In the window of United Colors of Benetton is displayed a blue rectangle lettered in white: “Metà Prezzo.” “AND STREAMS JOSTLE THEIR PACK-ICE.” The “Stazione Mobile” starts up and heads on out of the plaza, scattering the flock of pigeons.
We have entered the dank, cavernous Basilica, which is lit by single light bulbs suspended from high above. “This is why Zeus.” Grimy red sandstone pillars support its ceiling. “Although the oldest of the gods and their sovereign.” Its floor composed of white mosaics outlined in red. “Advances first toward that vision.” An emotionless Mass is under way. “Followed by gods and demigods and such souls as are of strength to see.” Exiting the Basilica we head back across the Piazza toward the Palazzo di Re Enzo. “Appearing before them from some unseen place.” Two youths eating ice cream cones shiver against the cold. “That Being rises loftily above them.” One in a black red-sleeved parka, the other in a blue parka with red arm patches. “Pouring its light upon all things.” In gold-trimmed black cap, brown pumps, a middle-aged Asian pushes his red motorbike across the square. “So that all gleams with His radiance.” A red lightning streak along its side, another black police car enters the piazza. “Some of the beings it upholds, and they see.”
Exiting into the Via Rizzoli, we skirt the palazzo and reenter a small square. “But the lower orders.” At its center stands the Fontana di Nettuno. “They are dazzled and turn away.” Nakedly muscular, his right hand grasping a tall trident, his left extended in display of his might. “Unfit to gaze upon that sun.” The haughty God of Land and Sea looks down, or almost down, upon us. “The trouble falling more heavily to those remote.” As a pea-jacketed, limping laborer, his face wrenched with anxiety, scurries by.
Morning outing up Via Pescherie Vecchie. “Il Gusto Italiano del Successo,” reads sign on butcher’s shop, within which a mirror reflects an opulent display of smoked and sliced hams; large sausages, boiled eggs imbedded within them; varieties of cheese unseen in Rome; prepared dishes: stracchino gorgonzola e mascarpone modini latte; an open can of sardines, another of tuna; various large bowls of olives, some intermixed with fresh-cut mushrooms; listarella di salmone; gamberetti in salsa rosa; a bowl of creamed shrimp, huge wooden tweezers inserted into it.
Of those looking upon that Being and its content.” Off this narrow alleyway. “And able to see.” An entire market devoted to fruit. “All take something.” Piled in pyramids. “But not all the same vision always.” We stroll past shops for dried foods, many imported; past a little bar, glasses of wine set out on its early counter. “SO FAR I HAVE SUNG THE TILLAGE OF THE EARTH, THE LORE OF HEAVEN; / NOW IT’S THE TURN OF WINE, AND WITH IT THE TREES THAT CROWD / IN WOODY COPSE, AND THE PRODUCE OF THE GRADUAL-GROWING OLIVE. / COME, LORD OF THE WINE-PRESS, EVERYTHING HERE IS LAVISH / BY YOUR LARGESSE.” “Gazing intently, one sees the fount and principle of Justice.” A cheese merchant, heavily bearded, yawning in his pin striped jacket. “Another is filled with the sight of Moral Wisdom, the original of that quality as found, sometimes at least, among men.” “COME THEN, LORD OF THE WINE-PRESS, PULL OFF YOUR BOOTS AND PADDLE WITH ME / BARE-LEGGED AND DYE YOUR SHINS PURPLE IN THE GRAPE JUICE.”
We pause at a vegetable shop with displays of artichokes, plump small tomatoes, large white onions already cut. “Copied by them in their degree from the divine virtue.” “CICORIA FRESCHISSIMA,” its blue letters with difficulty squeezed onto a narrow plastic plaque, along with half a dozen varieties of yellow, green and purple lettuce. “Covering all the expanse, so to speak, of the Intellectual Realm.” Green peppers, yellow peppers, three different hues of red. “Thus is it beheld, the final attainment of all.” All sorted and piled to perfection. “By those who have beheld already many splendid visions.”
“The gods see, each singly and all as one.” We pause at the fish market. “So, too, the souls.” A yellow-jacketed, red-sweatered, red-haired matron, her nose red from the morning chill; her son, in blue smock, his hair slicked back, though not so stylishly as in Rome. “They see that all There is right of being sprung of that universe.” At work dispensing their cool goods: “And therefore including all from beginning to end.” Spatola, suri, razza, moletti, squid and crab. “And having their existence There.” Cefalo, a long, silvery fish; passera, flat and white, with pink fins. Across another resplendent alleyway, another fish shop, its tiles, in blue and white, simulating the sea. “If only by that phase which belongs to the Divine.” Ranged atop its counters: merluzzo triglia, berricchimo; shellfish in various shapes and sizes. “They too are often There entire.” Two of the shop’s three male attendants have finished their morning’s work, the third still arranging placards with the names of fish. Now he reaches for the telephone, unbuttoning his jacket as he does so. “Those of them that have not incurred separation.” Through a small archway at the rear of the shop, beneath a numberless clock, a fourth attendant hoses off the porch.
We are passing beneath Bologna’s two most famous towers, the Garisenda and the Asinelli, the one short and slanted, the other tall, to exit down the Via Zamboni toward the University. “To those that do not see entire.” “Fotti il Systema,” reads a graffito, as we skirt a carabinieri van, a computer and a fax machine visible through its rear window. “Mistika Zero,” “Dumbo,” read two more graffiti, scrawled on a double door. “The immediate impression is alone taken into account.” Having traversed Piazza Giuseppe Verdi, we pause before “Dipartimento d’Italianistica.” “For those drunken with this wine.” Where two Africans, in bright baseball caps, are laughing. “Filled with the nectar.” In the Largo Alfredo Trompeti bicycles crowd the arcade. Outside “Dipartimento di Filosofia” two male students listen, as a third, a gorgeous girl, gesticulates. “All their soul penetrated by this beauty.” At “Dipartimento di Storia Antica” we linger a moment. “They cannot remain mere gazers, for no longer does the spectator gaze upon an outer spectacle.” Above “Biblioteca Universitaria” sits a five-pointed star, within it a five-cogged wheel. “Instead, clear-eyed, he holds that vision within himself.” Entering a triangular square, a yellow scooter, its two headlights shining, seeks a parking place. “Though, for the most part, he knows not that it is within.”
As we turn northward the neighborhood grows more residential. “Looking to it instead as to something beyond himself.” Stucco houses appear, in cream, beige and rose. On a red stop sign, in white, a graffito reads “milk.” “Seeing it as an object of vision taught to him by the Will.” As we re-approach the central city, its arcades recommence. “INDIA ALONE / GIVES EBONY, ARABIA, THE TREE OF FRANKINCENSE. / NEED I TELL YOU ABOUT THE BALSAM DISTILLED / FROM FRAGRANT WOOD, OR THE GLOBES OF EVERGREEN GUM-ARABIC? / COTTON THAT GLIMMERS IN PLANTATIONS OF ETHIOPIA? / OR THE WAY THE CHINESE COMB THE DELICATE SILK FROM THEIR LEAVES?” Under “Centro Studi Italiani” two posters, one atop the other: “Tai-Chi,” reads the first, “Shahaja Yoga,” the second, beneath it. “All that one sees as spectacle is still external.”“BUT NEITHER THE MEDIAN FORESTS, THAT RICH LAND, NOR FAIR GANGES, / NOR HERMUS ROLLING IN GOLD / COMPARES WITH ITALY.” “One must bring the vision within.” “NO, NOT BACTRA NOR THE INDIES.” “And see no longer in that mode of separation.” “NOR ALL ARABIA’S ACRES OF SPICE-ENRICHENED SOIL.” “But rather as we know ourselves.” “Illuminazione,” announces a flyer, beneath the word a photo of a gat-toothed Indian woman, radiant, an enormous red spot between her eyes.
At the Porto San Donato a large information board in white on brown lists the city’s museological attractions: Museo Archeologico; Museo Morandi; Museo Medioevale. “Thus a man filled with a god.” Museo del Risorgimento, Museo Biblioteca Musicale. “Possessed by Apollo or by one of the Muses.” Sixteen names in all, with addresses. “Need no longer look outside for his vision of the Divine.” In another small square a sign reads “Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra.” “For divinity is within.”
As we return from the University. “And the women!” –Hippolyte Taine, Voyage en Italie. By way of the Via Imerio. “Bold and dark of eye, their deep black hair audaciously knotted or massed in lustrous plaits.” Gradually students give way to bureaucrats. “Cheek and chin vigorous, the brow so often square, a large visage well-set beneath it.” Who scurry into and out of Parisian-gray. “The skull of a solid boniness forestalling any appearance of delicacy or gentleness.” Official buildings. “And, generally, of purity or nobleness.” The Casa Editrice Zanichelli looms above. “They seem equipped for conquest, for one could not imagine a more triumphant physiognomy, nor an air more like that of a prima donna destined for the clouds.” Bus number 89C rumbles by. “To make amends: the structure and expression of their features denote energy, brilliancy, self-confidence; a positive and clear intellect; and the talent and will to turn life to its best account.” Within a block or two the structures grow more grandiose, their arcades widening. “On looking into the windows of a bookstore at political caricatures we recognize this very aspect.” We pass a bar called “Lady Violet.” “Though goddesses and allegorical goddesses.” A shop called “Pume.” “Their heads are short and round.” A store selling washing machines. “Grossly gay and sensual.” Called “Lava Lava.” “Nothing can be found more significant than these popular personages, these recognized types.” As we perilously jaywalk across the street, an express truck reluctantly pauses. “By way of contrast consider the mild English female of ‘Punch,’ with her long curls and frocks, or the Frenchwoman of Marcelin, so coquettish and extravagant.” “Ave Maria” / “Gratia Plena,” read two inscriptions on a church’s tall brick tower. “Or the candid, primitive, German woman, somewhat stupid, of the ‘Kladdradatsch’ and the minor journals of Berlin.” We peer into a flower shop at blooms colorful if not luxurious. “I have just strolled through the streets of Bologna at nine in the morning.” We enter a Blockbuster Video. “Three out of every four women are frizzled and stylishly dressed.” On its walls, ads for Angelica Dutti, El Dia de la Bestia, Poeti dall’Inferno. “Their keen eye boldly fixes on the passerby.” Suspended from the ceiling, four terminals all display the same American movie.
In the Piazza VIII Agosto three workmen are repairing a traffic light, two having climbed ladders leaned against the pole, the third loafing beneath in an orange, silver-striped vest. In a black jacket the most active of the two debates with the man on the ground, wagging his index finger. Now the man on the ground, waving a pair of pliers, offers his rebuttal. In maroon sweater and paint-speckled pants, the mustachioed crew chief looks down disapprovingly at author’s activity. The other two men resume their work, the man in orange stuffing blue-and-yellow-coded wires back into the ground, the man in black yanking them up through a silver pipe, behind which stands a circular sign, within it a red arrow pointing upward.
In search of a Chinese restaurant we have entered a little square fronted by the lifeless Ministero dei Lavori Pubblici. “The vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring.” High-rise buildings humorlessly face one another across the open space, in which a parking lot has been cordoned off with red-and-white-striped plastic tape. “God engendering a universe within himself in painless labor.” The restaurant not yet open at 11:30, we continue on across the square down the Via San Guiseppe to Libreria Docet, a rare book store. “Rejoices in what he has brought into being, proud of his children, keeping all closely by Him.” In its window: Scenografia Italiana, Les Spectacles à travers les âges, Tutti i Trionfi, a collection of songs sung for Lorenzo de’ Medici. With no intention of purchase author sheepishly enters to peruse the offerings: a large, leather-bound Cellini Lexicon, a fifteen-volume Assemblés de Risorgimento, an edition of Enciclopedia Italiana. Qian-hui occupies herself with a two-foot tall harlequin, attached to one of the shelves. “For He takes pleasure in His radiance and in theirs.”
Returning by way of the Via dell’Indipendenza. “Of this offspring.” We pass undistinguished shops, the undistinguished eighteenth-century Cattedrale di San Pietro, the undistinguished Credito Emiliagno. “All beautiful, but most beautiful those that have remained within.” Within the arcades a graffito asks, “Where is Walter?” “Only one is manifest without.” The same hand replies: “From him, the youngest born.” “Straight on.” “(Zeus, sovereign over the visible universe).” “Chiuso li Lunedì,” reads a sign in the door of L’Ensemble, whose collection we pause to examine. “We may gather, as from some image, the greatness of the Father.” Sighting up an alleyway the Zhong Hua Fan Dian, we pursue the scent. “And of those Brothers that remain within the Father’s house.” But it too is not yet open for business.
“STILL THE FARMER FURROWS THE LAND WITH HIS CURVING PLOUGH.” “Still the manifested God cannot think that he has come forth in vain from the Father.” Prepared to depart for Ferrara, across from the train station we fail to get off the bus and so are treated to a tour of Bologna’s suburbs. “THE LAND IS HIS ANNUAL LABOR.” At 7:35 am the sky is sullen. “IT KEEPS HIS NATIVE COUNTRY.” Heading over a bridge, we cross the railway yards below and proceed past shopping center, drab housing block, trailer park, traversing the ring road surrounding the city. “For through Him another universe has arisen.” At last we reach the final stop. “HIS LITTLE GRANDSONS AND HERDS OF CATTLE AND TRUSTY BULLOCKS.” Farm house, barn, vegetable plot. “Attenti al Cane,” reads a small sign posted at the entrance to a dirt road. Three chickens and a rooster peck in the frosted grass. “UNRESTING, THE YEAR TEEMS WITH ORCHARD FRUIT, OR YOUNG / OF CATTLE, OR SHEAVES OF CORN.” Before long, having finished his cigarette, the driver starts up again to retrace his route. Steering a course between industrial park and vineyard, we return past junk yard and used car lot, factory, church and marketplace. “Beautiful as the image of beauty.” As we re-approach the urban agglomeration, we stop to pick up two immigrant women, their faces veiled. “It could not be lawful that Beauty and Being should fail of a beautiful image.” Once more we pass a restaurant called “Grande Cina,” a flower shop with a red valentine on its inner wall, a bar with a picture of Snoopy in its window, a pizzeria with a Pharaoh on its sign. “BRIMMING THE FURROWS WITH PLENTY, OVERFLOWING THE BARNS.” The road that we have taken is the ancient Via Ferrara.
*
WINTER COMES, WHEN OLIVES ARE CRUSHED IN THE PRESS, AND PIGS
RETURN ELATE WITH ACORNS, AND WOODS GIVE ARBUTUS BERRIES.
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