A couple of days ago I was just in time to hear ‘il sommo poeta’ (AKA Dante) read his unpublished canto about the Italian female mouse on our ponte Della Maddalena. Rightly making sure that there were no children about either on the bridge or below it the poet declaimed the verse with the help of a megaphone.  (PS If you didn’t know, the word for an Italian female mouse means rather more than it seems, especially in Livornese dialect! No wonder the canto was censored!)

If you still can’t figure that word out then refer to the dictionary here: https://www.garzantilinguistica.it/ricerca/?q=topa

Dante is not directly associated with Borgo a Mozzano’s Ponte Della Maddalena (named after an old oratory dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalen and also known as Ponte Del Diavolo because of the legend that the devil built it in a night provided that the first living being crossing it gave his soul to the devil – the cunning villagers got a dog to cross it first!)

But there is indeed another Ponte della Maddalena in Italy which, in this case, is directly connected to the poet. This bridge, with six arches dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century and connects Chiavari with Lavagna. As with Borgo’s original Ponte Della Maddalena a hospice was built in the area to welcome travellers and also a church dedicated to Santa Maria Maddalena, from which that bridge too takes its present name. The area thus becomes a regular stop for those travelling along the coast or inland, and this fact is recalled by the line Dante Alighieri wrote in Canto XIX of ‘The Purgatory’:

“Infra Siestri e Chiaveri s’adima una fiumana bella,”.

(Between Sestri and Chiavari a beautiful stream rises)

Incidentally, I crossed this bridge regularly when on an exchange European Union funded teacher exchange in Lavagna which is next to Chiavari. Happy days indeed when the United Kingdom was still part of that union…and I was younger too…

The construction of a new primary school has to be a good sign in our area when too many rural communities in Italy are being rapidly depopulated in the rush to urban centres. It means that young families have chosen to find work within easy reach of their home or, as in the case of teleworking, now increasingly expanding in these pandemic times, in the home itself.

Returning home today via the longer scenic route which takes me to the start  of the Controneria road at Astracaccio I was pleased to find that the old school at Scesta is being rebuilt. There had been serious structural problems with that old school and there was even an idea that it should be demolished and the children attending from the local villages bussed instead to schools in larger centres, like Bagni di Lucca.

The parents’ opposition to this plan was very strong and there was a widespread and heart-felt plea to save their local school.

Finally, and in the middle of not the most propitious of times, the foundation of the school has now been completed and the main part of the building should be soon started. What with the new health centre being constructed at Fornoli this shows that there is an added confidence in a brighter future for our area.

Clearly our population is planned to increase and, more importantly, increase among the younger age-groups. I am so pleased to see an indicator of this in Scesta’s new school being erected to the latest ecological standards and rising amid the charming landscape of our Lima valley. How lucky the children will be to go to their first school in this unpolluted environment instead of having to be bussed to an often polluted and crowded location. I am quite sure it will be a very happy and successful school!

Which is the most litigious nation on this planet? I really don’t know the correct answer to this question except to suggest that the least litigious one may be somewhere on an island near the South Pole (not counting the quarrels between the penguins. But then there has to be some fight between the inhabitants and their naturally hostile environment.)

In a previous post I mentioned the three stages which may be gone through in Italy. These I defined as ‘Dream’, ‘Scream’ and ‘Cream’. In other, more direct words, they may be classified as love followed by hate and concluding with acceptance.

In the ‘scream’ bit litigation plays a very large part indeed. This quarrel may be mainly between a couple but in Italy things invariably spread to a wider field, literally. Eric Newby’s delightful book about his experiences with his holiday home in Tuscany’s Lunigiana is largely optimistic in tone but in the last chapter Newby admits that all has not been rosy during his stay. In particular, with his neighbour Eric had to fight a long battle over rights of way to his property. Despite strategically placing benches and flowerpots to delimit his territory Newby found that even these domestic items were constantly moved, removed and even damaged. Eventually a long and costly lawsuit ensued, the results of which were never fully clarified.

Lucky is the person in Italy who has purchased a property without territorial complications. Regrettably, I find few who are that fortunate. Mentioning no names for the obvious sake of privacy I find examples of persons who have had a property litigation suit virtually from day one. And if it wasn’t from day one it has been, in at least one case, from year five. Others have tried to make more logical sense of the land they have bought, often fragmented through generations of family members, into a more sensible whole, again without success. Others, even unluckier, have had access to their dream property cut off from the outside world and approachable only if they are paragliding experts. And so this litany of often absurd adversities continues. In my case I can only think of a mediaeval tithe of fifty ducats I’ve had to pay to the bishop of Lucca. I’m still waiting for him to turn up and claim his due and have even offered him a cup of tea but to-date have received no answer…  

However, I have heard of a story from another village in our otherwise idyllic Val di Lima that is so weird, so fraught with almost incredulous tortuousness, so unbelievable, so unutterably crazy that I thought it might be turned into a folktale for those who believe that even the slightest problems cannot be righted by a simple face-to-face encounter with the adversary over a glass of Aperol accompanied by nibbles..

This story of a horrendous Poesque nature, involving an international mafia, encompassing spiteful spirits, encapsulating more than one country and extending into the dark depth of the forces of order may make attention-grabbing reading for some of my readers during these oppressive days of Apuan misty gloom of an almost Thames-estuary-like-nature we are passing.

Hold your breath. The ghastly tale won’t start until my next post.

Following certain controversies in the municipality of Bagni di Lucca regarding the use of other languages ​​in official procedural documents I wish to contribute to this discussion.

Enough of these Anglicisms that are always entering the beautiful Italian language like an invasion of rats in the city!

In just one sentence, delivered during the RAI news this morning, I noticed five of these deadly sins against the Italian language. Here they are:

• ‘Benchmark’ – literally ‘sign on the bench’ but used in surveying. Today more than ever it signifies the measure of quality. So why not say ‘prestazione’?

• The ‘under sessanta’. There is, however, an Italian word to say ‘under’. Use it! The ‘sotto sessanta’. Like the ‘over sixties’. Why not say ‘sopra sessanta’ instead?
• Then there is ‘welfare’. The English word ‘welfare’ means ‘well-being’ and ‘public welfare’ means ‘public health’. Thus the use of the English term in the Italian language is incorrect. The phrase ‘benessere sociale’ should be used instead. Then in English there are no genders of nouns such as masculine and feminine in Italian. So why should ‘welfare’ be a masculine noun in Italian? Could it not be equally feminine?

• The most terrible of all these sordid Anglicisms is the infamous ‘recovery plan’ nazionale. Now ‘recovery’ in English means restitution to health’. Pronounced by an Italian, you seem to hear the word ‘ricovero’ or ‘hospitalization’ which means something entirely different: a person that has been admitted to a hospital for treatment. Say ‘Piano di Recupero’, please!

• The other day a friend was talking to me about ‘smartworking’. Sorry but there is the word ‘telelavoro’ to describe this mode of operation which is being used more than ever during the pandemic.

• If I hear another Italian who, meeting today, uses a ghastly Anglicism, I will correct him/her immediately and if the person ofUfers an apology that Italian is now spoken like this, I will reply that when Dante wrote the ‘Divine Comedy’, the English language was not yet in currency, in the British Isles which, instead, used Celtic (still spoken in Ireland, Scotland and, especially, Wales) or Middle English. In addition I would say that it was the English who have been thieves of Italian vocabulary, especially in terms of music. For example, ‘Allegro’, ‘andante’, ‘lento’ describe the tempi (or tempos?) in English musical scores instead of ‘happy’, ‘at a walking pace’, ‘slow’ (pace Percy Grainger). Not to mention artistic terms such as ‘chiaroscuro’, etc.

Why not be ashamed of abusing the Italian language in this philistine way?