"Naples '44"

[fiefoe]

Lewis's love for this region is evident and elegantly conveyed. It occurred to me that the heroine of "The Bridges of Madison County" purportedly came from Naples.

• This is set in a delicate fusion of landscapes: apple orchards full of glowing fruit, vineyards, and olive groves haunted by multitudes of brilliant blue grasshoppers.
• (<street as living room:) Chairs were placed round it at an exact distance apart and on it were stood several framed photographs, a vase of artificial flowers, a small cage containing a goldfinch, and several ornate little glasses, which were polished from time to time as the day passed by to remove the dust. . There were a number of other such tables along the street, and constant social migrations took place as neighbours paid each other visits... A beggar with tiny, twisted legs was carried out by his friends and propped up in a comfortable position against the wall, where he started to strum a mandolin.
• ...these famished professionals being the end-product of the determination of every middle-class Neapolitan family to have a uselessly qualified son.
• The uncle from Rome is a popular character in this little farce. .. to temper with his restrained and dignified condolences the theatrical display of Neapolitan grief.
• (view at the Vomero:) All Naples lay spread out beneath us like an antique map, on which the artist had drawn with almost exaggerated care the many gardens, the castles, the towers and the cupolas. For the first time, awaiting the cataclysm, I appreciated the magnificence of this city, seen at a distance which cleansed it of its wartime tegument of grime, and for the first time I realised how un-European, how oriental it was. Nothing moved but a distant floating confetti of doves.
• Storytellers have been drawn out by the sun to take up their positions. Circles of small boys gather while their canvas backgrounds depicting the barbarities of the wars between the Christians and Infidels are set up. In front of these the Cantastorie stand and begin their chanted recitations of the deeds of Charlemagne and the Paladins. .. Charlemagne and Roland live on - miraculously in spite of the cinema - which will nevertheless defeat them in the end.
• Today on the Via San Pasquale I saw my first pazzariello, the `joker' of antiquity, who is on the scene again because at last new businesses are being opened, and although explained away as a form of advertisement for the benefit of the illiterate, his real function is that of an exorcist.
• Today the arrival of summer was announced by the cry of the seller of venetian blinds - sad to the point of anguish in our narrow street - s'e 'nfucato 'sole (the sun's turned fiery).
• There is an inherent Mediterranean austerity much in evidence in the Naples area, in Sorrento and Capri, which seems to come from the sea... This expresses itself in a taste for unadorned spaces, and is the visual equivalent of intervals of silence.

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