CESARE PAVESE: A POEM FROM LAVORARE STANCA English translation by Stefi.

A poem by Cesare Pavese (from Lavorare Stanca)

Lavorare Stanca (Hard Labour)

Crossing the street to run away from home

is something only a boy does, but this man who roams

the streets all day long is no longer a boy

and is not running away from home.

Some days in the summer

even the squares are empty, lying

quiet at sunset, and this man, coming

from a street of useless trees, stops.

Is it worth being alone, only to be even more alone?

The squares and the streets are empty

when you just roam around. You have to stop a woman

and talk to her and persuade her to live together.

Otherwise, you'll just talk to yourself. That's why sometimes,

at night, you meet a drunk who starts talking to you

and goes on about the plans of his entire life.

It is not by waiting in an empty square

that you meet someone, but those who roam the streets

stop sometimes. If there were two of them,

even roaming the streets, then there would be a home

where that woman is and it would be worth it.

At night the square is empty again

and this man, who goes by, does not look ahead anymore:

all he feels is the road that other men made

with their rough hands, like his own.

It's not right to stand in an empty square.

Surely somewhere there is a woman

who, after being implored, would take him home.

- The end -

CESARE PAVESE: A POEM FROM POESIE DEL DISAMORE English translation by Stefi.

A poem by Cesare Pavese (from Poesie del Disamore)

Sad Wine (Vino triste)

The hard thing is to sit without being noticed,
everything else then comes naturally. Three sips
and the desire to think alone is back.
A distant buzz in the background opens wide
and everything vanishes. It becomes a miracle
to be born and to look at the glass. Work
(the lonely man can't not think of work)
is again the old fate that it's good to suffer
to be able to think. Then the eyes, aching,
stare blankly at nothing, as if blind.

If this man gets up and goes home to sleep,
he'll be like a blind man who has lost his way. Anybody
could come out of nowhere and brutally beat him.
A woman, beautiful and young, could appear
and lie in the street under another man, moaning
like a woman had moaned with him before.
But this man doesn't see. He goes home to sleep
and life is nothing but a buzzing silence.


You'd find a wasted body undressing this man,
and patches of rough hair, here and there. Who'd say
that life once burned in this man's
lukewarm veins? Nobody would believe
that a woman once caressed
this body, kissed this body, that shakes,
and wet it with tears, now that the man,
who came home to sleep, can't sleep, only moan.

- The end -

 

CESARE PAVESE: A POEM FROM LAVORARE STANCA English translation by Stefi.

A poem by Cesare Pavese (from Lavorare Stanca)

South Seas (I Mari del Sud)

                                      (to Monti)

One evening we're walking up the hill,

silently. In the shade of the late dusk

my cousin is a giant dressed in white

who moves calmly, his face tanned,

taciturn. Keeping quiet is our virtue.

Some of our ancestors must have been so alone

- great men among idiots or poor fools -

to teach their people so much silence.

My cousin spoke tonight. He asked me

to go up the hill with him: from the top, on a clear night,

you can see the reflection of the distant lights

of Torino. “You live in Torino...”

he said “.. you are right. Life must be lived

away from the village: you profit, you enjoy

and then, when you return, like me, at forty,

you find everything anew. The Langhe are never lost.”

He said all this to me, and he said it not in Italian

but slowly in dialect; a dialect that, like the rocks

of this very same hill, is so tough that

twenty years of different languages and oceans

were not able to affect. He went up the hill

with the same absorbed look I saw, as a child,

on the farmers' faces when feeling a little fatigued.

For twenty years he travelled the world.

When he left I was still a child carried by women

and they thought him dead. I then heard the women

talk about him now and again, as in fairy tales;

but the men, more austere, forgot about him.

One winter my father, already dead, received a card

with a large greenish stamp showing ships in a port

and good wishes for the harvest. It was a great surprise,

but the grown-up boy explained avidly

that the card came from an island called Tasmania

surrounded by a light blue ocean, ferocious with sharks,

in the Pacific, south of Australia. And he added that surely

the cousin hunted for pearls. He took the stamp off.

Everyone had different opinions, but they all concluded

he would die, if he were not dead yet.

Then everyone forgot, and the time passed.

Oh how much time has passed since I played

Malay pirates. And since the last time

I swam in dangerous waters

and chased a playmate on a tree,

breaking its nice branches, and gave

him a black eye and got hit,

how much life has passed. Other days, other games,

other violent shocks in front of more elusive

opponents: thoughts and dreams.

The city taught me endless fears:

a crowd, a street made me tremble,

a thought, at times, spied on a face.

The mocking lights of the street lamps

are still before my eyes, thousands of them, on the shuffling noise.

My cousin returned, the war was over,

a giant among few. And he had money.

His family said: “In a year or less,

he will be broke and he'll leave again.

That's how the desperate die.”

My cousin has a resolute face. He bought an apartment

in town and turned it into a shop made of cement

and put a brand new gas station in it

and on the bridge by the curve a large advertising sign.

Then he hired a mechanic to run it

and roamed the Langhe, smoking.

Meanwhile he married, in town. He took

a thin blonde girl like the foreign women

he surely had met one day somewhere in the world.

But he still went out alone. Dressed in white,

his hands behind his back and a tanned face,

in the morning he hit the fairs and with a cunning air

haggled over horses. Later, when his plan failed,

he explained to me that he wanted to

get rid of all the animals in the valley

and force people to buy motors.

“But I am the real beast” he said “I who thought

something like that. I should have known

that here cows and people are all the same”.

We've been walking more than a half hour. We are close to the hilltop,

the whistle and murmur of the wind gets stronger and stronger.

My cousin stops suddenly and turns: “This year

I'll make billboards saying: - Santo Stefano

has always been the first to celebrate the festivals

of the Belbo Valley – whatever the people of Canelli

say.” Then back to climbing the steep slope.

A fragrance of earth and wind envelopes us in the dark,

some distant lights: farms, cars

you can barely hear. And I think of the power

that brought this man back to me, driving him away from the sea,

from the distant lands, from the silence that lasts.

My cousin doesn't talk about his travelling.

He says briefly he has been to this and that place

and thinks about his motors.

                      There is only one dream

left in his heart: as fireman

on a Dutch fishing boat he once saw the Cetacean,

and he saw the harpoons fly heavy in the sun,

the whales being chased and escape amidst a foam of blood

and lift their tails and fight against the spears.

He mentions it sometimes.

                    But when I tell him

how lucky he is to have seen the break

of dawn over the most beautiful islands on earth,

he smiles at the memory, and says that when

the sun rose, the day was no longer young for them.

- The end -

CESARE PAVESE: TWO POEMS FROM LAVORARE STANCA English translation by Stefi.

Two poems by Cesare Pavese (from Lavorare Stanca)

Morning Star (Lo Steddazzu)

The lonely man gets up when the sea is still dark

and the stars tremble. A warm breeze

rises from the shore, where the seabed is,

and soothes the breath. This is the time in which

nothing can happen. Even the pipe in his mouth

dangles unlit. Nocturnal is the quiet swash.

The lonely man has already lit a bonfire of branches

and he watches as it reddens the soil.

The ocean too

will soon surge like the fire.

Nothing is more bitter than the dawn of a day

in which nothing will happen. Nothing is more bitter

than uselessness. A greenish star

hangs tired in the sky, surprised by the sunrise.

It sees the ocean still dark and a patch of fire

where the man, to kill time, keeps warm;

it sees and falls asleep amidst the gloomy mountains

in a bed of snow. The slowness of time

is atrocious for those who have nothing to wait for, any longer.

Is it worth it for the sun to rise from the sea

and for the long day to begin? Tomorrow

the warm dawn will return with its diaphanous light

and it will be like yesterday and nothing will ever happen.

The lonely man wishes only to sleep.

When the last star in the sky vanishes,

the man slowly prepares his pipe and lights it.

Instinct (L'istinto)

From his doorstep in the warm sun,

the old man, disillusioned with everything,

watches the dog and the bitch unleash their instinct.

Flies crawl around his toothless mouth,

his wife died long ago.

She too, like all bitches, did not want to hear of it,

but the instinct was there.

The old man, not yet toothless,

could smell it; the night would come,

they would go to bed. The instinct was good.

What he likes about dogs is the immense freedom.

Prowling the streets from morning to night;
eating a little, sleeping a little, mounting bitches a little:

without even waiting for the night. They reason

the way they sniff, and whatever they smell is theirs.

The old man remembers how once in the daytime

he did it like the dog in a field of wheat.

He no longer knows who the bitch was, but he remembers the hot sun

and the sweat and his desire never to stop.

It was like being in bed. If he were young again

he would always do it in a field of wheat.

A woman walks down the street and stops to watch;

the priest goes by and turns around. Everything is allowed

in the public square.

Even the woman, who restrains herself from turning around

for a man, stops.

Only a boy can't tolerate the game

and begins to pelt stones. The old man resents it.

- The end - 

FIRST REPORT ON THE EARTH BY "SPECIAL REPORTER" FROM THE MOON: A NOVELLA BY ALBERTO MORAVIA English translation by Stefi.

First report on the Earth by “Special Reporter” from the Moon: a novella by Alberto Moravia (Racconti Surrealistici e Satirici)

Primo rapporto sulla Terra dell' “Inviato Speciale” della Luna

Strange country. It is inhabited by two distinct races, both morally and, to some extent, physically: the race of the so-called poor and that of the so-called rich. These two words, rich and poor, are obscure to us, and due to our inadequate knowledge of the language of this country, we were not able to verify their meaning. However, our information mostly comes from the rich, far more approachable, talkative and hospitable than the poor.

The rich say that the poor have come from nobody knows where, have settled in this country from time immemorial and, since then, have done nothing but reproduce, always maintaining unchanged their unpleasant character. Nobody, after having familiarized with their character, could not deplore it and disagree with the rich. First of all, the poor don't like cleanliness and beauty. Their clothes are filthy and ragged, their houses squalid, their furniture worn-out and ugly. But due to their strange and perverse tastes, they seem to prefer rags to new clothes, poor houses to villas and palaces, inexpensive furnishings to designer items.

Who in fact, the rich ask, has ever seen a poor person dressed nicely and living in a beautiful house with luxury decorations?

What is more, the poor don't like culture. You hardly ever see a poor person reading a book and going to a museum or a concert. The poor know nothing of the arts and they easily take an imitative painting for a masterpiece, a statuette from Lucca for one of Praxiteles' works, a vulgar popular song for a prelude of Bach. If it were for them, the Muses, who offer some sort of consolation to men, would have long abandoned the world.

As far as entertainment is concerned, the rich explain that the poor engage in the most unsophisticated activities one could imagine: drinks, popular dances, bocce or ball games, boxing matches and other similar pastimes. As a matter of fact, the rich affirm, the poor prefer ignorance to culture.

Furthermore, the poor hate nature. During the warm season, the rich travel, go to the beach, the countryside, the mountains. They find it rejuvenating for the body and the mind. They enjoy the nice blue water, the pure air and the mountain tranquillity. The poor, on the other hand, utterly refuse to leave their squalid neighbourhoods. They don't care about seasonal changes, nor do they feel the need to mitigate the cold weather with the warm, and the warm with the cold. They prefer the municipal pools to the sea, the dirty suburban fields to the countryside, and their own balconies to the mountains. Now, the rich wonder, how can you not love nature?

At least, while remaining in town, the poor could lead a social life. Not at all. The only gathering place that they seem to know are the so-called factories. And these factories are the gloomiest place imaginable: sinister vessels made of cement and glass, populated by deafening machines, smoky and dirty, ice-cold in the winter and burning hot in the summer.

There are even some poor people who don't live in the city but in the loneliness of the countryside. Their only occupation, as well as pastime apparently, is to turn over soil by means of primitive and heavy iron tools, from dawn to dusk, during all seasons, rain or shine. And to think, the rich say, that there would be plenty of other things to do in this world, much more intelligent and pleasant.

There are likewise even more extravagant poor people who prefer darkness to sunlight, and the bowels of the earth to the sky. They sink into very deep tunnels, and down there, in the darkness, they derive pleasure from extracting rocks. These underground places are called mines. The thought of going down into a mine would never even enter the mind of a rich person.

All this is described by the poor as “work”, another term whose meaning is obscure and incomprehensible to us. The poor are so fond of this work that, for some reason that we were not able to verify, when the factories are closed and the mines inactive, they protest, scream and threaten to start riots and violent actions. As the rich say, how can anyone understand such behaviour? And wouldn't it be easier, more desirable and comfortable to participate in some social gathering or respectable circle?

Furthermore, as far as food is concerned, the poor don't know about delicious dishes, aged wines and delicate desserts. They prefer by far plain food, such as beans, onions, turnips, potatoes, garlic and stale bread. When they occasionally adapt to eat meat and fish, you can guarantee it will be the most unpalatable fish and the toughest meat. As for wine, they only like it sour and watered-down. They don't like early produce, and they wait to have green peas when they are powdery, artichokes stringy and asparagus fibrous. In other words, it is impossible for the poor to appreciate the joys of good food.

With respect to tobacco, these poor fools disdain both the fine products of the Orient and the more savoury ones from America, and they smoke this black, bitter and completely unpleasant garbage that makes you cough. They dislike a nice Cuban cigar or a delicate Turkish cigarette.

Another peculiar fact about the poor: they don't care about their health. One couldn't think otherwise considering the carelessness with which they expose themselves to adverse weather and their negligence in taking care of themselves when they are ill. They don't buy medicines, don't go to the hospital and even refuse to stay in bed when necessary.

The rich explain that the poor neglect their own health due to the fact that they wouldn't want to miss a single day in the factories, the mines and the fields, for which they have an absurd passion. Bizarre as it may seem, this is the reason.

One could go on and on talking about the poor and their attachment to such rough, harmful and extravagant habits. Hence, we shall now examine something more interesting, namely the reasons behind such a preposterous behaviour.

The rich inform us that in-depth studies on the poor have always been conducted, during all times. There are primarily two groups of scholars: those who attribute the character of the poor to some sort of deliberate perversity, and who think they could be corrected and changed; and those who think that no remedy is possible, being the character of the poor innate. The former suggest an active predication and persuasion; the latter, more skeptical, only police action, and they seem to be right, since all that preaching on the advantages of cleanliness, beauty, luxury, culture and leisure has produced no results so far. Quite the opposite in fact: despite the care and concerns shown by the rich, the poor, extremely ungrateful, don't like the rich. It must be acknowledged, however, that the rich are not always able to hide their disgust for the lifestyle of the poor.

As we customarily do during our voyages, we wanted to hear the other side of the story as well. We therefore asked the poor. It was not easy, as they ignore any language different from that of their country. However, we were finally able to obtain this extraordinary answer: the difference between them and the rich is that the rich have something called money, which the poor almost always lack.

We wanted to find out more about this money, able to produce such enormous differences. We discovered that it mostly consists of little pieces of coloured paper or round pieces of metal.

Considering the well-known inclination of the poor to hide the truth, we doubt that this so-called money could be the main source of such peculiar effects.

A strange country indeed, we must conclude.

- The End -

MRS. FASANO'S THOUGHT: A NOVELLA BY ALBERTO MORAVIA English translation by Stefi.

Mrs. Fasano's thought: a novella by Alberto Moravia (Racconti Surrealistici e Satirici)

Il Pensiero della Signora Fasano: una novella di Alberto Moravia

One is never too cautious when hiring a new housemaid, Mrs. Fasano thought.

Eventually, however, Mrs. Fasano found, or so she thought, someone who, although not perfect, seemed to be right for the job. A twenty-five-year-old girl from Abruzzo, simple and candid. Her rosy cheeks and robust build were a sign of tenacity and good attitude towards work; the expression of her blue eyes and smile indicated reliability, innocence and perhaps the absence of a “fiancé”.

After having briefly talked about board and lodging, laundry and Sunday “freedom”, Mrs. Fasano inquired about her past experience. Rosa, this was the girl's name, said that she had worked for the countess Folaga-Picchio for five years.

What a coincidence – the countess Folaga-Picchio was a socially prominent woman and Mrs. Fasano aspired to be invited to her house. Asking her for information could be an excuse to establish a contact, not a great excuse, it's true, but in any case...

In the morning, Mrs. Fasano called the countess stating immediately and in a very courteous manner that the maid was the reason for her call: “I know you are very busy and I know I am disturbing you... but as you know... nowadays... you never know who you come across... I am sure you understand.” The countess rejected that veiled invitation to use a friendly tone and said sharply that Rosa was absolutely commendable. “The only inconvenience,” she added after hesitating for a little while, “is that she is an angel.”

“Really?” exclaimed Mrs. Fasano, “an angel... and you call that an inconvenience?”

The countess, who was getting a little impatient, explained that she didn't mean an angel in the sense of “good as an angel”; Rosa was a real angel, with wings and a halo over her head.

“Now you understand,” concluded the countess, “that an angel is always an angel.. out of the house maybe.. but in the house... we took her in for five years, also considering she is an orphan... but eventually we had to let her go... you can try though... it may work out for you.” The countess briefly added a couple of more things, and then cutting the conversation short, said bye and hung up.

Once having obtained the information desired, Mrs. Fasano reflected on the advantages and disadvantages of the situation. Rosa was an angel and this was a great inconvenience according to the countess, and although she wasn't very familiar with angels, she certainly didn't have any good reason to question the words of the countess.

She was good at her job, however, as the countess had confirmed.

Just to be certain, Mrs. Fasano decided to talk about it with her husband, who was brief and rather brutal: “Whether or not she is an angel is none of my business... as long as she irons my pants, polishes my shoes and answers the door.”

After a long hesitation, Mrs. Fasano decided to offer the girl a probationary period. But she wanted to make sure to take advantage, here and there, of this unusual situation. “I will take you in,” she said to Rosa, “but the countess Folaga-Picchio told me you are an angel...” she paused for a moment hoping that Rosa would deny it; but Rosa just blushed and lowered her gaze, “and so you understand that I can't offer you as much as I offered the others... you must be content with a thousand lira less.”

“As you wish, Madam,” said the angel gently.

After a few days, Mrs. Fasano realized that she didn't like angels at all, in fact she felt a strong aversion towards them. Mrs. Fasano vented her feelings of aversion by deliberately giving Rosa the hardest time possible. For instance, after Rosa had swept the floor in the living room, Mrs. Fasano pretended to notice a speck of dust somewhere and made her clean again, this time on her knees and with her hands, while she stood nearby pointing out the dirty spots; the brass utensils were never shiny enough for her and the windows had to be cleaned by stepping on the window sill.

“You are filthy,” Mrs. Fasano went on repeating all day, “you are so filthy.” Not to mention when Mrs. Fasano got dressed: she had cruel demands, and just to choose and put on her socks she had poor Rosa get down on her knees with her bare foot on her lap for a good half hour.

But, as everyone knows, angels are patient; and Rosa truly excelled at this virtue. Mrs. Fasano, after waiting in vain for Rosa to make a mistake when performing her tasks, and after finding her truly perfect, came to the conclusion that the only, yet great inconvenience, was precisely that the girl was an angel. But how did this inconvenience show? And how could she use it to her advantage?

One Sunday morning when Rosa was out, Mrs. Fasano went to her room and searched meticulously the three dresser's drawers and the small fabric suitcase, only to find one dress, her only change of clothes, some shabby linens and a few other rags.

Those ragged clothes did not seem fitting for an angel, nor did the wooden brush and the half broken comb, which composed all of Rosa's toiletries. Her room, furthermore, did not smell like angel, but rather of inexpensive violet soap.

Therefore, Mrs. Fasano decided to spy on Rosa. She vaguely told herself that if the angel spread her wings when she was alone, by pulling them out of her shoulders as you pull your legs out of the gaming tables, that would be enough to fire her: you don't belong in a respectable house if you have wings, despite the fact that they may be hidden.

Mrs. Fasano hid behind Rosa's window, in the garden: she saw her getting undressed, brushing her hair and arranging it in a braid, putting on a long nightgown, sneaking in bed and turning off the light, but no wings. Even the halo, typical of angels, would be a good pretext to send Rosa away: “You can't serve meals with a halo, it simply can't be done... you have your lace bonnet and you must be content with that...”. But however hard Mrs. Fasano looked, she couldn't see any halo.

Nonetheless, Mrs. Fasano was certain: Rosa was definitely an angel. She didn't know why, as she sometimes said to her husband, but there was something about that girl, a number of things... a certain air... One day Mrs. Fasano finally told her husband: “I decided to fire Rosa... she may be good, she may be perfect... but I don't want angels in my house.”

And so Rosa was sent away. Mrs. Fasano said a few words to comfort Rosa when she saw tears in her eyes. Also, she wanted to make sure not to be misunderstood: “My dear,” she added, “you are not stupid and I am sure you understand... you have many good qualities, you are serious, hard working, honest... but you are an angel... this will always keep you from working in respectable households for long periods of time.” Having said that, Mrs. Fasano agreed to writing a good reference letter for Rosa, without mention of the angel matter.

A few days later, Mrs. Avocetta phoned to find out more about Rosa. “She is good,” answered Mrs. Fasano, “very good...but I must warn you... she is an angel.”

- The end -   

EVIL from Friedrich Nietzsche “The Gay Science” [section 19]

Evil. Examine the lives of the best and more fruitful men and peoples, and ask yourselves whether a tree, if it is to grow proudly into the sky, can do without bad weather and storms: whether unkindness and opposition from without, whether some sort of hatred, envy, obstinacy, mistrust, severity, greed and violence do not belong to the favouring circumstances without which a great increase even in virtue is hardly possible. The poison which destroys the weaker nature strengthens the stronger – and he does not call it poison, either.

(English translation by R.J. Hollingdale)

Il Male. Esaminate le vite degli uomini e dei popoli migliori e maggiormente produttivi, e domandatevi se un albero che debba con orgoglio innalzarsi maestoso al cielo possa rinunciare ad avversità e tempeste: se scorrettezza e opposizione dall'esterno, se una qualche forma di odio, invidia, ostinatezza, diffidenza, severità, avidità e violenza non facciano parte delle circostanze favorevoli senza le quali un notevole accrescimento persino in virtù sarebbe quasi impossibile. Il veleno che distrugge l'animo debole rafforza quello forte – ed egli non lo chiama neppure veleno.

(Italian translation by Stefi)

THE SILENCE OF TIBERIUS: A NOVELLA BY ALBERTO MORAVIA English translation by Stefi - Thank you to those who took the time to review my drafts and share their valuable comments.

The Silence of Tiberius: a novella by Alberto Moravia (Racconti Surrealistici e Satirici)

Il Silenzio di Tiberio: una novella di Alberto Moravia

Tiberius's silence lived on prophecies rather than memories. By then, there was no time for memories, death was not far; and after all, what could he remember, a man like him who lived without sadness or joy, but not without a scornful annoyance, and in the continuous sullen fulfillment of his own duties? The time of Silla, Lucullo and Caesar was over: a time when wars were gloriously personal and commanders, after laying down their swords, were concerned with creating an eternally victorious image for themselves with commentaries as well as with battles. Now wars were fought in the name of the empire and not for oneself, to keep a peace that everyone wished would be eternal, rather than to conquer; and they were harsh, unpoetic, almost bureaucratic. And Tiberius, who had won nearly as many battles as Caesar, knew it well. It was therefore better to turn away from the past and look at his future as an old man; a short future if he thought of his imminent death, yet vast and eternal if he listened to some of his own intimate suggestions. In the hottest summer days when under the immobile scorching sun the soil crumbled like clay uncovering the rocky coast, and the lizards wriggled furtively along the ardent cracks, and the sullen plants no longer gave shade, and the cicadas themselves stopped singing, and the borders of the sea and sky were wrapped in a white vapour similar to that rising from a boiler full of boiling water, Tiberius with his dark and dry limbs wrapped in a snow-white toga, was sitting in the terrace of his villa in the shade of a pergola looking at the sea. Not the finished and familiar sea of the Gulf of Naples with its two vague blue promontories, the small chalky agglomeration of houses gathered at the foot of the mountain and the white mirror of the water ruffled here and there by some fishing boats passing by. One could not expect anything good from that sea: flattering and blabbing courtiers, ambitious and obtuse generals, busy ministers: such were in fact for the most part the people without mysteries who, anxiously and with their head full of Roman rumours, too often crossed the gulf, climbing, among spots of lentisks and cypresses, the uncomfortable little steps up to the villa and prostrated themselves before him, panting with their whole tongues hanging out of their mouths. It was not that sea that Tiberius, scornful of worldly issues, spied in his moments of solitude, but rather the open sea facing Sardinia, Spain and the Pillars of Hercules. On this side, the high indented bastions of the island seemed like artistically cut quartz; the calm and shining sea on which they rested seemed like solid coloured crystal and the sky a burning, echoing sphere. A perfect world absorbed in its own harmony giving the idea of an anxious portent about to happen: young Icarus falling swiftly from the sky and into the sea, or Venus calmly emerging from the waves, standing naked on her shell and twisting her soaked blonde hair with her rosy fingers. Now Tiberius, perhaps because he knew about human matters too well, or perhaps because of the suggestion of a mature time, was avid of portents, true portents, men turned into beasts, beasts into men, talking trees and rocks, supernatural beings able to rise up in the air and cleave spaces, walk on water, die and resuscitate themselves. Tiberius himself did not know where his thirst for portents came from: maybe from his experience of men, depressing and truly imperial, maybe from the obscure feeling that there was no use in generously giving laws, provisions and help to people lost in their passions and as far from the primitive religion of Rome as from the stoic virtue of the old republican aristocracy, to the point where, in front of so much unhappiness and evil, even the Emperor was almost, if not completely, powerless; or from the fact that human nature being corrupt and rotten to the bone, re-enacting not only the civil rules but men themselves was urgently required. Such were Tiberius's thoughts along with the idea of a portent that, through the more penetrating paths, imperceptibly insinuated itself into his mind without ever leaving him, especially since his retreat to Capri. And indeed, what better place than Capri could suggest the presentiment of a portent? After all, Tiberius thought logically, gods as much as men like wonderful and extraordinary places, where nature seemingly wants to compete with men in creating unprecedented inventions and marvels. A god, Tiberius went on thinking, does not deign to appear in an abandoned and dismal desert, or in the meagre land tilled by poor people, humility and bareness are not fitting for a god, rather majesty and mystery. Now, deep and dark caves where the glowing waves, crushing again and again against the corroded walls and inside the open cavities on the surface of the water, can render, in the silence, the noise of a kiss and gurgling throat combined; castles of red cliffs suspended lonely above the low undergrowth entangled all the way to the sea; lofty peaks enveloped in clouds, surrounded by ravines, higher than the seabirds' slow concentric flight; such and other similar arcane places, propitious to supernatural apparitions, were plentiful in Capri, so much so that one would think of it as the abandoned dwelling of some oceanic divinity rather than an island. But was it abandoned or still inhabited? This was the question. Judging from the triple and quadruple echoes answering in falsetto from afar in the rocks of the amphitheatres, one could think that this divinity was still there and that it was still possible, through propitiatory rites, to force it to manifest itself and appear before him, much like any general or high officer of the imperial administration. Ultimately Tiberius, despite his prophecy, still thought that men were at least as strong as gods, if not stronger, and that there would surely be a way to make use of the latter and bend them to quite worldly, not to say administrative, services. After all, whom better the Roman Emperor, supreme authority on earth, would the divinity reveal itself to? But however much the Chaldean astrologers worked, sent for by Tiberius from the Orient for a considerable sum, the divinity did not reveal itself, the caves were still silent and empty and no god rose from the undergrowth, nor from the ocean. Not that there was a shortage of new religions; on the contrary, they multiplied, especially in Rome amongst the cosmopolitan dregs of society – some adored Bacchus, others Isis or Astarte, and others, like the Judaeans, unbelievable but true, adored a one and only, faceless, bodiless, invisible divinity. But all these divinities seemed too servile to Tiberius; besides, nature, that mysterious nature sung by desperate and furious Lucretius was either completely absent in or openly opposed by those religions. Where to look for the supernatural if not in nature? Tiberius was sufficiently acquainted with human vices and virtues to be convinced that nothing could be expected from men; nothing in terms of divine matters. But the roar of the northern forests devastated by the wind, the glacial and foggy nights above the stormy hyperborean seas, the explosion of spring through the melted snowfields in the wild lands of Germany, such and other natural phenomena were still before Tiberius's eyes since the distant time of his battles against the barbarians on the border; and now, because of the demonic nature of the island, these memories would frequently come back to his mind as different aspects of a one and only incomprehensible reality. The ocean crushing ceaselessly against the rocks spoke the same language as the wind he had heard many years before, inside his military tent, blowing through the Batavian forests from the endless spaces on the foaming ocean. A language once understood by the people of small Lazio, yet forever lost today in such a powerful Empire. But the time was ready for the coming of a god, Tiberius was certain. And for this, every clear night, together with his Chaldean mathematicians, he spied from the terrace of his villa the movement, the configuration and the splendour of the stars.

- The end -

FRIENDSHIP from Friedrich Nietzsche “The Gay Science” [section 279]

My dear friend,

Whether or not we cross paths again, thank you.

We were friends and we have grown distant from one another. But it is right that should be so; let us not dissemble and obscure it, as if it were something to be ashamed of. We are two ships, each of which has its destination and its course; our paths can cross and we can celebrate a feast together, as we did – and then the brave ships lay so peacefully in one harbour and under one sun that it might seem they had already reached their destination and both had one destination. But then the almighty power of our task again drove us apart, to different seas and different climes, and perhaps we shall never see one another again – or perhaps if we do we shall not recognize one another: different seas and different sun have changed us! That we had to grow distant from one another is the law over us [...] There is probably a tremendous invisible curve and star orbit within which our so different paths and destinations may be included as tiny stretches of the way – let us raise ourselves to this thought! But our life is too short and our power of vision too weak for us to be more than friends in the sense of that exalted possibility. - And so let us believe in our friendship in the stars, even if we did have to be enemies on earth.

(English translation by R.J. Hollingdale)

Eravamo amici e ci siamo allontanati. Ma è giusto che sia così; a che serve adombrarlo o celarlo, come fosse qualcosa di cui avere vergogna. Siamo due vascelli, ognuno dei quali ha la propria meta e il proprio corso; le nostre strade si possono incontrare e insieme possiamo festeggiare, come già abbiamo fatto – poi i bravi vascelli giacciono così serenamente nello stesso porto e sotto lo stesso sole che pare quasi abbiano raggiunto la loro meta, una meta comune ad entrambi. Ma poi il potere assoluto del nostro compito ci separò nuovamente, conducendoci in mari e luoghi diversi, e forse non ci incontreremo mai più – o forse ci incontreremo senza più riconoscerci: mari diversi e diversi soli ci hanno cambiati! Che dovevamo allontanarci è la legge sopra di noi [...] C'è probabilmente una curva e un' orbita stellare immensa e invisibile entro la quale le nostre strade e le nostre mete così diverse potrebbero essere incluse come minuscoli tratti del percorso – innalziamoci a tale pensiero! Ma la nostra vita è troppo breve, la nostra vista troppo debole perché noi possiamo essere più che amici nel senso di quella sublime possibilità. - E dunque crediamo nella nostra amicizia nelle stelle, sebbene ci toccò essere nemici sulla terra.

(Italian translation by Stefi)

LA PIOGGIA NEL PINETO: UNA POESIA DI GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO English translation by Stefi

Rain in the pinewoods: a poem by Gabriele D'Annunzio

La pioggia nel pineto: una poesia di Gabriele D'Annunzio

Be silent. At the edge

of the woods I do not hear

the human words you say;

I hear new words

spoken by droplets and leaves

far away.

Listen. It rains

from the scattered clouds.

It rains on the briny, burned

tamarisk,

it rains on the pine trees

scaly and rough,

it rains on the divine

myrtle,

on the bright ginestra flowers

gathered together,

on the junipers full of

fragrant berries,

it rains on our sylvan

faces,

it rains on our

bare hands

on our light

clothes,

on the fresh thoughts

that our soul, renewed,

liberates,

on the beautiful fable

that beguiled you

yesterday, that beguiles me today,

oh Hermione.

Can you hear? The rain falls

on the solitary

vegetation

with a crackling noise that lasts

and varies in the air

according to the thicker,

less thick foliage.

Listen. With their singing, the cicadas

are answering this weeping,

this southern wind weeping

that does not frighten them,

and nor does the grey sky.

And the pine tree

has a sound, the myrtle

another one, the juniper

yet another, different

instruments

under countless fingers.

And we are immersed

in the sylvan spirit,

living the same

sylvan life;

and your inebriated face

is soft from the rain,

like a leaf,

and your hair is

is fragrant like the light

ginestra flowers,

oh terrestrial creature

called Hermione.

Listen, listen. The song

of the flying cicadas

becomes fainter

and fainter

as the weeping

grows stronger;

but a rougher song

rises from afar,

and flows in

from the humid remote shadow.

Softer and softer

gets weaker, fades away.

One lonely note

still trembles, fades away.

No one can hear the voice of the sea.

Now you can hear the silver rain

pouring in

on the foliage,

rain that purifies,

its roar that varies

according to the thicker,

less thick foliage.

Listen.

The child of the air

is silent; but the child

of the miry swamp, the frog,

far away,

sings in the deepest of shadows

who knows where, who knows where!

And it rains on your lashes,

Hermione.

It rains on your black lashes

as if you were weeping,

weeping from joy; not white

but almost green,

you seem to come out of the bark.

And life is in us fresh

and fragrant,

the heart in our chests is like a peach

untouched

under the eyelids our eyes

are like springs in the grass

and the teeth in our mouths

green almonds.

And we go from thicket to thicket,

at a time together, at a time apart

(the vegetation, thick and vigorous,

entwines our ankles

entangles our knees)

who knows where, who knows where!

And it rains on our sylvan

faces,

it rains on our

bare hands

on our light

clothes,

on the fresh thoughts

that our soul, renewed,

liberates,

on the beautiful fable

that beguiled me

yesterday, that beguiles you today,

oh Hermione.

LA TRAPPOLA: UNA NOVELLA DI LUIGI PIRANDELLO English translation by Stefi - Thank you to those who took the time to review my drafts and share their valuable comments.

The trap: a novella by Luigi Pirandello

La trappola: una novella di Luigi Pirandello

Novella pubblicata sul Corriere della Sera il 23 maggio 1912

No, no, how can I resign myself to it? And why? If I had obligations towards someone else maybe I would. But I don't! So why?

Listen to me. You cannot say I am wrong. No one, reasoning abstractly, can say I am wrong. You too feel what I feel, and so does everyone else.

Why are you so scared of waking up in the night? Because for you, the strength of the reasons of life comes from the light of the day. From the illusions of the light.

Darkness and silence terrify you. And so you light a candle. But it's sad, isn't it? That candle light is sad. Because that is not the light you need. The sun! The sun! With anguish, you ask for the sun! Because illusions don't arise more spontaneously with an artificial light that you yourselves supplied with trembling hands.

Like your hands, your entire reality trembles. It reveals itself fictitious and insubstantial. As artificial as the light of that candle. And all your senses are spasmodically alert, in the fear that under this reality, of which you discovered the vain inconsistency, another reality, dark and horrible, will be revealed to you: the real one.

A breath... what is it? What is that squeaking noise?

And you are suspended in the horror of that waiting, shivering and sweating; in that light, you see the illusions of the daytime before your eyes, moving and looking like ghosts in that room. Look at them closely: they have your very same swollen and watery eye bags, and the yellowness of your insomnia, and also your arthritis pain. Yes, that constant dull pain in the nodes of your finger joints.

And the way the objects around you appear! They are also suspended in an astonished immobility that you find disturbing.

You were sleeping with them all around you.

But they don't sleep. They sit there, day and night.

Your hand is opening and closing them now. Tomorrow another hand will open and close them. Who knows whose hand.. But for them it makes no difference. They contain, for now, your clothes, empty garments hanging and having taken the creases and wrinkles of your tired knees and pointed elbows. Tomorrow they will contain someone else's wrinkly garments. That wardrobe mirror now reflects your image, without retaining any trace of it; nor will it retain the trace of another one tomorrow.

The mirror does not see. The mirror is like truth.

You think I'm talking nonsense? Do you think I'm delirious? Come on, I know you understand me; and you understand even more than I'm saying, since it is very difficult to express this obscure feeling that dominates me and shocks me.

You know how I have lived so far. You know that I have always felt disgust and horror at the thought of fossilizing, of having a form, of fixating myself, even momentarily, in it.

My friends have always been amused by the many.. what do you call them? Alterations, yes, alterations of my features. But you can laugh about it because you never reflected on my desperate need to appear different to myself when looking in the mirror, to delude myself of not being always the same, to see myself as someone else!

Yes! And what could I change? I even shaved my head to see myself bald already; and then I shaved my moustache, but kept my beard; or the other way around; then I shaved both my moustache and beard; or I let my beard grow and styled it in different ways...

I played with my hair.

My eyes, nose, mouth, ears, chest, legs, arms, hands, I couldn't change those, could I? I was sometimes tempted to wear make-up like an actor in theatre. But then I thought that under the mask, my body remained the same... and got old!

I tried to compensate for all that with my spirit. Ah, it was easier to play with the spirit!

You value and never get tired of praising the steadiness of feelings and the constancy of character. And why? Always for the same reason! Because you are cowards, you are afraid of yourselves, that is to lose – by changing – the reality that you created, you are afraid therefore to recognize that it was nothing but your own illusion, and that the only reality that exists is the one we create for ourselves.

I would then ask, what does creating your own reality mean? It means fixing ourselves in a feeling, fossilizing, hardening, stiffening, encrusting in it. And this will stop the perpetual vital movement within ourselves, it will turn us into small and miserable ponds waiting to rot, while life is a continuous flow, passionate and indistinct.

You see, this is the thought that shocks me and makes me furious!

Life is wind, life is ocean, life is fire; not the earth that encrusts and takes shape.

Each form is death.

Everything that leaves the state of fusion of this continuous, passionate and indistinct flow, in order to fossilize, is death.

We are all beings caught in a trap, detached from the flow that never stops, and fixed for death.

The movement of that flow within us lasts for a brief moment, a little while longer, in our separate, detached and rigid form; but then it gradually slows down; the fire gets cooler and cooler; the form dries up, until the movement stops completely in a rigid form.

We died. And this is what we called life!

I feel caught in this deadly trap that separated me from the flow of life in which I flew with no form, and fixed me in time, in this time!

Why in this time?

I could at least flow some more and be fixed a little later, in another form, later... It would have been the same, you think. Yes, sooner or later... But I would have been someone else, who knows who and how; trapped in some other fate; I would have seen other things, or maybe the same ones, but with different eyes and differently organized.

You cannot imagine how much I hate the things I see, caught with me in the trap of this time; all the things that end up dying with me, little by little! Hate and pity! But more hate, maybe, than pity.

It's true, if I were caught in another trap, I would hate that other form as much as I hate this one now; I would hate that other time, just as I hate this one, and all the illusions of life that we, dead beings of all times, create for ourselves with whatever little movement and warmth is left inside us of the continuous flow which is true life and never stops.

A multitude of dead beings, busy with the illusion of creating our own life.

We get together, a dead man and a dead woman, and think we are giving life, but we are giving death... Another being in the trap!

- Here, darling, here; start dying, dear, start dying... You are crying, eh? Crying and squirming... You wanted to flow some more? Calm down, dear! What can you do? Caught, co-a-gu-la-ted, fixed.. It will last for a while! Calm down...

Ah, as long as we are children, as long as our bodies are tender, light and growing, we don't realize we are trapped! But then our bodies get bigger and heavier, and we start to feel that we cannot move like we used to.

I see with disgust my spirit fighting against this trap, in order not to get caught in a body that is already heavy and damaged from the years. I immediately dismiss any idea that tends to linger in my mind; I stop any action that tends to become a habit at once; I don't want duties or affections, I don't want my spirit to become rigid in a crust of concepts. But I feel that my body struggles, day after day, to follow my troubled spirit; it keeps falling, my knees are tired and my hands heavy... my body wants rest! I will give it rest.

No, no, I don't know, I don't want to resign myself to be like all other old people and their miserable lives, dying slowly. No. But before, I don't know, I would like to do something grand, unheard of, in order to vent these frustrations that are consuming me.

I would like, at least... - you see this finger nails? I would like to dig them into the faces of every beautiful woman who, walking down the street, provokes men.

What stupid, despicable and irresponsible creatures all women are! They dress up and adorn themselves, looking here and there with their smiling eyes, and showing their provocative curves as much as possible; and they don't think about the fact that they are also trapped, fixed for death too, and that they contain that trap within themselves, for those who are yet to be born!

For us men they are the trap, women. For a moment they bring us back to that ardent state, just to get from us another being doomed to die. They do and say so much that eventually we fall for it, blind, excited and violent, there, in their traps.

Me too! Me too! I fell for it too! Recently. That's why I am so furious. An infamous trap! If only you could see her.. a Madonna, shy and humble. As soon as she saw me, she glanced down and blushed. She knew I wouldn't fall for her otherwise.

She came here to practice one of the seven acts of mercy: visiting the sick.

For my father she came, not for me; she came to help the old governess take care and wash my poor father, in the other room...

She lived here, in the adjacent apartment, and she made friends with my governess, with whom she complained about her imbecile husband, who would always blame her for not being able to give him a child.

Do you see how it is? When one starts to become rigid and is no longer able to move like before, one wants to see other little dead beings around, so sweet, they can still move like he did when he was a child; other little dead beings that look like him and can still do what he can no longer do.

It is so much fun to wash the faces of little dead beings, who are still unaware of the trap they are in, and comb their hair and take them for a stroll.

So, she came here.

- I can only imagine, - she said, looking down and blushing, - I can only imagine what torture it must be for you, Fabrizio, to see your father in this condition for so many years!

- Yes Madame, - I said rudely, turned my back and left.

I am sure now that, as soon as I left, she laughed to herself, biting her lips to stop herself from bursting into laughter.

I left because, unfortunately, I knew I admired that woman, not for her beauty (she was very beautiful, and even more attractive as she didn't seem to care at all about her beauty); I admired her because she didn't give her husband the satisfaction of putting another unhappy being in the trap.

I thought she was unable to; but no, it wasn't her; it was that imbecile of her husband. And she knew, or at least she suspected it. That's why she laughed; about me, she laughed about me, because I admired her due to her supposed inability. She laughed quietly, in her evil heart, and waited. Until one night...

She came here, in this room.

It was dark. You know that I like to see the day die by the window and then let the darkness slowly envelop me and think: - I no longer exist! - and think – if someone were here now, he would get up and light a candle. I don't need to light a candle because I am no longer here. I'm like the chairs in this room, like the table, the curtains, the wardrobe, the couch, that don't need any light, don't know and don't see that I'm here. I want to be like them, I don't want to see myself and I want to forget I am here.-

So, it was dark. She came in tiptoeing, from there, from my father's room where she had left the night light on, whose suffused glimmer barely affected the darkness through the slightly open door.

I didn't see her; I didn't see that she was falling on me. Maybe she didn't see me either. When she hit something, she screamed and pretended to faint in my arms, on my chest. I bent my head; my cheek brushed hers; I felt the passion of her lustful mouth, and ...

I was shaken, at the end, by her laughter. A wicked laughter. I can still hear it! She laughed and laughed, running away, that wicked woman! She laughed about the trap that she had set for me with her modesty; she laughed about winning over me; and about other things I discovered later.

Three months ago she left with her husband when he was promoted to high school professor in Sardinia.

It takes a while for certain promotions to come.

I will never see my remorse. I will never see it. But I'm sometimes tempted to run to that wicked woman and strangle her before she can put that unhappy being in the trap, the one she pulled out of me through deception.

My friend, I am happy I never met my mother. Maybe if I had met her, I wouldn't have developed these ferocious feelings. But since I have, I am happy I have never met her.

Come over here, come; come in this other room with me. Look!

This is my father.

He has been sitting there for seven years. He is nothing anymore. Two eyes that cry and a mouth that eats. He doesn't speak, doesn't hear, doesn't move anymore. He eats and cries. He is spoon fed; he cries alone for no reason; or maybe because there is still something left in him, something that, despite having started to die seventy-six years ago, still doesn't want to let go.

Don't you think it's atrocious to be that way, even for just a second, still caught in the trap, without being able to free oneself?

He cannot think about his own father, who gave him this death seventy-six years before, a death that is terribly late to come. But I can think about him: and I think that I am a germ of this man who cannot move anymore; that I am trapped in this time and not in another time, because of him!

He is crying, you see? He always cries like that... and he makes me cry too! Maybe he wants to be freed. One night I will set him free, together with me. It's starting to get cold; one of these nights we will light a fire.. If you want to take advantage of it ...

No? You are thanking me? Yes, sure, let's get out of here, let's get out of here, my friend. I see that you need to go outside, you need to see the sun again.

- The end -