"Let us amuse ourselves today, You will never guess my name and I won't ask you to try. I am a mad spirit or goblin. I come from the other world and one of those spirits Actius or Plautus orders me to tell you that a comedy will be played this evening."
And this brilliant essay on Beolco's use of "rustic" but also much obscene language in his plays. "Translating Ruzante's Obscenties" by Nancy Dersofi.
When I was in Italy, I happen to read a murder mystery set in the 16th century -- the same time period I was using to set The Innamorati. I read the first 100 pages which took place over a two day period in the story and not once had the characters eaten anything. I mentioned this to my Italian friend and she answered with shocked horror, "Not even pasta??" It was unthinkable. A reviewer once complained that my novel would have been better if I hadn't bothered writing so much about the food -- or sex -- which I think missed the point of the novel.
Sophia Loren (from Life Magazine) "Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti."
This is a reposting of an earlier post on the folk tales and others from Laura Gonzenbach's collections and seemed a good one to follow on the heels of earlier notes. I also want to reference another post on the banished bride I wrote about earlier this year -- a variant of the women below.
Lately, I have been reading a lot of Italian fairy tales as a kind of inspiration and preparation for the new novel I am working on, a companion to The Innamorati. As the plot is a renaissance road trip with a young woman in search of herself and her trickster companion (to create a little drama along the way), I have been imagining who she might encounter as she trudges southward from Tuscany in the north towards Calabria at the heel of Italy's boot.
Among the fairy tales I have been reading there appears a creature who is rarely ever seen for she is merely a place holder in the climatic tension of the story's finale: she is the bride the Prince almost marries, because he is too foolish, too enchanted, or too impatient (not waiting those seven years) and impulsively plans a wedding with the wrong woman. Of course, the heroine bride arrives in the nick of time, challenging the Prince to recall his vows of love. The Prince is chastened and then furious, turning to the almost bride (and sometimes just married bride) and denouncing her -- as if it were her fault he screwed up. And she is summarily packed off to her home without fanfare. In one of my favorite ballads, Lord Bateman, the bride's mother complains mightily at the affront to her daughter (of whom we never hear a peep). But Lord Bateman now emboldened by the arrival of his true love, "pounded his fist on the table and he broke it in pieces one, two three, saying I'll forsake all for the Turkish lady, she has crossed the whole wide world for me." To be fair, Lord Bateman does financially compensate the banished bride -- but still, it has to sting.
So what happens to those banished brides -- not the deceitful and disguised brides, they always meet with bad ends -- but those brides like poor Anne of Cleves determined too ugly (and "too swarthy") by Henry the Eighth and sent home as unsuitable. Since we never get their side of the story, or the what-ever-happened-to-that-young-woman?, the writer in me couldn't resist wondering what those women might do to reclaim themselves if given a chance in a novel. A young writer I know suggested they went home with a huge sigh of relief -- imagining that such weddings to total strangers would have been scary enough to contemplate.
But from a narrative point of view, that's no fun -- especially after reading the Lost Sicilian Folk and Fairy Tales of Laura Gonzenbach, I know that the Italians -- or at least the Sicilians-- are firm believers in spectacular revenge. So I couldn't help but think of a sisterhood of Banished Brides coming together and taking their fury on the road to extract some form of punishing compensation. A band of marauding almost-brides offering to my young heroine roadside companionship and rancorous cautionary tales about men in general. (Although I suspect the trickster traveling with her would not be able to resist the temptation of meddling with those dangerous women.) Well...there's a few chapters to meditate on and then to write.
Art in order from top to bottom: John Bauer, Edward Burnes Jones, Sandro Botticelli, and Artemisia Gentileschi
I am rather in love with this painting of the Women's Regatta in Venice by Gabriele Bella, 1730-1799 (click on for a larger view). I had no idea that women were accomplished rowers, though it does on reflection make a certain amount of sense. If one lives on the waters and the canals, or course every woman would have to know how to manage her own small boat if she wanted to get any where important. (This is the problem of being a tourist in Venice -- one always assumes someone else will row one around).
Here's a bit more information from a nice post in Seductive Venice (indeed it is).
"Women had raced in regattas (boat races) since 1493. An island community like Venice, where every nonna knew how to row a boat, allowed its women to enter the races and processionals (or at least the women from the working class). The priests even blessed them. Regattas were usually held when a visiting dignitary came to town, and rowers showed off their skills or challenged others in order to keep fit for their jobs, such as did the gondoliers or workers at the Arsenale where they made boats."
The post also includes a lovely painted portrait of an especially skilled woman, five-time regatta winner Maria Boscola: "Maria had first raced in 1740, winning the red pennant for first place, with her partner and friend Emma, nicknamed La Garbina. But 24 years passed before women participated in the races again. These may have been the years that Maria bore and raised her children. She also grew enough vegetables that she could bring in to the Rialto market to sell, keeping her rowing arms strong for the 25 kilometer trip each market day."
So, she took a little time off to keep up with her produce business and raise children -- but she kept herself in shape and ready for the day she could return to race. Pretty remarkable and determined!
I do recommend having a read through the Seductive Venice blog -- it has lots of historical gems about women lives and activities in Venice and it is a delight to read.
I wrote earlier about keeping images of Three Sisters as inspiration for one novel, but I also keep images for the heroine Zizola (whose name means in Italian "a trifle" or a "bagatelle") for a second novel I am also researching and writing. In many ways finding Zizola has been harder.
Zizola is a 16th century Italian street child, grown into a young woman trickster with fantastic gifts of her own. She is prickly, can be sharp-tongued, no stranger to creative vulgarity, and yet hungers for what she imagines might be a "normal" life, one that can connect her to people other than her constant servant-companion Giano, a savvy Arlecchino whose appetite for food and sex constantly undermines his usefulness as a servant.
Zizola is more of a cipher as I first encountered her as grimy adolescent with a violet past in The Innamorati, but must now deal with her five or six years older., her circumstances much changed. So art comes to me as suggestion of what is under her surface. Lines, hasty sketches, someone in the process of change, contemplating her future perhaps.
But for all her sharp edges, she is also a potentially beautiful woman -- not because of perfect features, but because of the slow ripening of sensuality, of a bit more maturity that tempers her outbursts, and of her curiosity coupled with intelligence. Spared from a wretched life in the streets, she is the fantastic heart of a fabulous maze. She has for the first time in her life, power and the ability to greatly alter her life if she chooses.
She's not a beastly bride, but she shares with them an independent spirit and the power to manage her own affairs. She could be a fantastic bride, eventually offering all her gifts in the service of a creative union in marriage. The fact that she is not sure what she is and that I won't know either until she is done telling her story means that I expect the art will change considerably as she and I go forward. But here she is for now -- someone I can sense in small details, waiting for the full picture to emerge.
Art: My Agnes, Albrecht Dürer 1494, Sketch of Girl, Raffaello Sanzio 1483-1520, Detail of Lace (Artist unknown), Ana Teresa Barboza, John Singleton Copley: Mrs. Daniel Sargent (Detail)
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