Thanks for the tour of Sicily, Joe, this post and prior ones. A nice evocative sense of place and mood. Much for the palate to imagine.
Particularly enjoyable was your mental travel in trying to imagine what went on in people's minds when they were building these cities. Part of the charm is seeing it without the modern concerns for safety and accessibility (some sites are blighted by the attempt, I'd wager). It's a fascinating, but larger, question about what environmental, social, and cultural influences lead to what you now see.
Sapienza's posthumous recognition falls into that category of writers who are only later acknowledged. Relative unknowns in their lifetimes. We're amazed when it happens this way. What we don't know is how often the passionate "agent" (whether mother, husband, or actual agent) fails, and the writer remains unknown. What seems clear is that committed persistence is necessary.
Persistence, yes, and I think a large part of being able to do that is not worrying about the reward.
As for imagining the minds of people who lived in other times and places, I find it fascinating to try to access cultural values that are so different from ours today. If there's a way to tie this into a discussion of literature, I think the exercise helps us see how silly, perhaps futile, the practice of revisionist fiction is. That kind of writing is deeply flawed, not because it assumes people in other times and places could have known what we value today, but because it assumes they should have known.
Sapienza's story reminds me of John Kennedy Toole here in the US. Roundly rejected in life but then awarded a Pulitzer a decade after his death. So much comes down to who's reading your work and whether they connect with your voice.
I thought about John Kennedy Toole as well when I learned Sapienza's story. In his case it was his mother who championed his work until an editor at a publishing house agreed to read it. Much has changed since those days. Agents were once authors' champions, but publishing has become so much of a business they now give up trying to sell a book more often than they stay with one.
I love the Mediterranean laissez-aller mood of a midday nap. I was also interested in the Second Punic war in the Messina Strait between Scipio Africanus and Hannibal Barca, 205 BC, and I love the arid wheat plains and the grasshopper whizzing at the start of the day when the temperature is too dry to cool by the sea breeze. The old stone walls and half ruins abandoned houses and the good pasta Pavarotti loved to eat and when Maradona played for Napoli.
One has to have a long view in such places to appreciate what it means. The Roman Empire is the foundation of the western civilization, there’s no two ways about it, as the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome, the roads around the Mediterranean coast. Some critics say that Julius Caesar’s model was Alexander the Great, who cried when he was told him there was no more earth to conquer. The history of the human race transitioned from the ancient Mesopotamia and Babylon to the modern period, with the absorption of the new Christian faith, to today, that lasted a millennia, if we consider the Constantinople period, now Istanbul, that lasted 1093 years in the same place, the eastern capital of the Roman Empire, until the rise of The ottoman in 1453.
I was being just curious..and like to know the origin of things..there’s an audiobook of the letters of Pliny the Younger and his description of his villa near the sea that is breathtaking, written two thousand years ago … as if he wrote it last week..
Cicero’s and the letters of Pliny the Younger also, escaped my mind yesterday, to add to the list of my appreciation of old Rome and present day Italy, that I suppose some parts of the country still retains in the faded paintings and mosaic floors and baths.
Makes me wonder what kind of appreciation the average Sicilian has for the history and art that are everywhere in this place. The people one interacts with as a tourist rarely allude to such things. They seem more interested in just getting by day today. The exceptions are the docents at the cathedrals and museums.
My paternal grandfather, born and bred in Stromboli, attended classes in their one-room schoolhouse for a few years only. But he taught himself to read, write, and carve beautiful things from wood. He made splendid wine from grapes he grew himself. And I learned so much about Italian Grand Opera as a tot from my Eolian grandparents. "Poverty" - - in my eyes - - defines people who grew up with a TV instead of with a keen appreciation of real culture.
Thanks for the tour of Sicily, Joe, this post and prior ones. A nice evocative sense of place and mood. Much for the palate to imagine.
Particularly enjoyable was your mental travel in trying to imagine what went on in people's minds when they were building these cities. Part of the charm is seeing it without the modern concerns for safety and accessibility (some sites are blighted by the attempt, I'd wager). It's a fascinating, but larger, question about what environmental, social, and cultural influences lead to what you now see.
Sapienza's posthumous recognition falls into that category of writers who are only later acknowledged. Relative unknowns in their lifetimes. We're amazed when it happens this way. What we don't know is how often the passionate "agent" (whether mother, husband, or actual agent) fails, and the writer remains unknown. What seems clear is that committed persistence is necessary.
Persistence, yes, and I think a large part of being able to do that is not worrying about the reward.
As for imagining the minds of people who lived in other times and places, I find it fascinating to try to access cultural values that are so different from ours today. If there's a way to tie this into a discussion of literature, I think the exercise helps us see how silly, perhaps futile, the practice of revisionist fiction is. That kind of writing is deeply flawed, not because it assumes people in other times and places could have known what we value today, but because it assumes they should have known.
Sapienza's story reminds me of John Kennedy Toole here in the US. Roundly rejected in life but then awarded a Pulitzer a decade after his death. So much comes down to who's reading your work and whether they connect with your voice.
I thought about John Kennedy Toole as well when I learned Sapienza's story. In his case it was his mother who championed his work until an editor at a publishing house agreed to read it. Much has changed since those days. Agents were once authors' champions, but publishing has become so much of a business they now give up trying to sell a book more often than they stay with one.
I love the Mediterranean laissez-aller mood of a midday nap. I was also interested in the Second Punic war in the Messina Strait between Scipio Africanus and Hannibal Barca, 205 BC, and I love the arid wheat plains and the grasshopper whizzing at the start of the day when the temperature is too dry to cool by the sea breeze. The old stone walls and half ruins abandoned houses and the good pasta Pavarotti loved to eat and when Maradona played for Napoli.
One has to have a long view in such places to appreciate what it means. The Roman Empire is the foundation of the western civilization, there’s no two ways about it, as the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome, the roads around the Mediterranean coast. Some critics say that Julius Caesar’s model was Alexander the Great, who cried when he was told him there was no more earth to conquer. The history of the human race transitioned from the ancient Mesopotamia and Babylon to the modern period, with the absorption of the new Christian faith, to today, that lasted a millennia, if we consider the Constantinople period, now Istanbul, that lasted 1093 years in the same place, the eastern capital of the Roman Empire, until the rise of The ottoman in 1453.
I was being just curious..and like to know the origin of things..there’s an audiobook of the letters of Pliny the Younger and his description of his villa near the sea that is breathtaking, written two thousand years ago … as if he wrote it last week..
Cicero’s and the letters of Pliny the Younger also, escaped my mind yesterday, to add to the list of my appreciation of old Rome and present day Italy, that I suppose some parts of the country still retains in the faded paintings and mosaic floors and baths.
Makes me wonder what kind of appreciation the average Sicilian has for the history and art that are everywhere in this place. The people one interacts with as a tourist rarely allude to such things. They seem more interested in just getting by day today. The exceptions are the docents at the cathedrals and museums.
https://youtu.be/5k9-jA2Bf3w?is=jlKGskaIXX4-1nEH
The narrow sidewalks, wine, cheese, conversation, community. Thank you for this lovely piece. Italy has always had a special place in my heart.
That’s fascinating about the author; I’ve never heard of her.
My paternal grandfather, born and bred in Stromboli, attended classes in their one-room schoolhouse for a few years only. But he taught himself to read, write, and carve beautiful things from wood. He made splendid wine from grapes he grew himself. And I learned so much about Italian Grand Opera as a tot from my Eolian grandparents. "Poverty" - - in my eyes - - defines people who grew up with a TV instead of with a keen appreciation of real culture.
A good definition. It's unfortunately one that describes me, and I've been trying to rectify that for a long time.