Posts Tagged “B&W”

Undulating sea
meets the sky at right angles.
Is that a lighthouse?

Here it is, the 2008 new year card.  I hope you got one in the mail.  If you didn’t, I apologize for the oversight.  Be sure to send your postal address, there are a couple of blanks still left from the edition.

Colophonically, I should state that the fountain is in the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, and the water is the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, churned up by the ferryboat.  See other Alhambra-related posts.

This dramatic statue in Ferrara depicts Girolamo Savonarola, a fiery reformist Dominican priest of the 15th century. Still somewhat controversial today, Savonarola organized the “Bonfires of the Vanities” in which Florentines burned their books, fancy clothes and other too-materialistic possessions. This crowd might or might not have included Michelangelo and Botticelli tossing their own work on the pyres.

After some disagreement with the Medici pope Alexander VI, Savonarola was excommunicated and subsequently arrested, tortured and executed in Florence. To deprive his followers of any relics, the authorities threw his ashes into the Arno. Despite that, there are statues today, and some even call Savonarola a saint.

In the short time that I loitered in this piazza, several people had their photos taken in front of the statue, but despite my urging, none struck Savonarola’s pose. I wonder how many knew even as much about him as I’ve gleaned.

The Italian word of the moment is campanilismo.

Translated by BabelFish as “parochialism,” campanilismo refers to local pride or patriotism, sometimes very local. If you ask somebody where she’s from and she says “Boston” or “New York” that’s not campanilismo. If she says, “Southie” or “Washington Heights” you’ve got a campanilista on your hands.

Campanilismo is derived from campanile, which is a church’s bell tower like the 14th Century one pictured below in Florence, the work of Giotto.

Britannica suggests that the name sticks because it’s from local boosters bragging that their bell tower is taller than the one in the next town over, but this piece from L’Italo Americano indicates that the campanile is a symbol of a locality, like a church is the symbol of its parish.

I was talking to a colleague about Italy and he described a sense of unreality visiting there, how every street looks like a movie set and every vista like a postcard, and how it takes a honking car or beeping cell phone to break the spell and re-locate your head in the present time. I don’t know if I feel this way all the time, but here’s a view in Florence, looking South across the Arno at dusk, more or less the same time and place as these pictures.