La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

by Dianne Hales

  But just like English words in Italian conversations, the building faded into the background, our eyes dazzled by visions of dresses, displayed as we’d never seen them before: on sleek, long-necked, faceless mannequins with their arms upraised, arranged into pyramids of red, mountains of white, and long chic rows of black. A bridal train cascaded down a sky-high pedestal like a waterfall. A jewel-toned harlequin design, surrounded by mirrors, shimmered like a kaleidoscope. The showstopping dresses worn by Oscar winners such as Julia Roberts and Sophia Loren appeared next to videos of their red carpet moments. In the middle of this finery stood the ancient altar, destroyed in the Dark Ages, partially excavated in the Renaissance, and painstakingly reconstructed over more than half a century. Its walls contain the most exquisite relief carvings in the world, portraying ancient Romans so vividly that you can’t help but smile at a child tugging at his father’s toga for attention.

  Dazed by the double delights of ancient glory and modern style, Bob and I were strolling along the Tiber when a car pulled up and an Italian man asked directions. (This alone should have made us suspicious, since we don’t look like natives.) I could tell from his accent that he wasn’t a Romano. (Alarm bells should have been going off, because friends are always warning us that street-smart con men would snatch a bite from your pizza when you’re not looking.) He proceeded to tell us an entertaining, somewhat plausible tale of being in town for a trade show but having to get on the road to Padua for a family wedding.

  “Take these as a gift,” he said, proffering samples of his firm’s jackets. Then it came: the ever-so-embarrassed confession that he’d run out of cash and needed money for gas. “Look!” he entreated. We could see for ourselves that his tank was empty. Bob and I glanced at each other. The chances were that we were being played. We knew it. He knew we knew it. But we took the jackets, which we gave to children in our apartment building, and gave him some gas money. Our friends were horrified that we had let ourselves fare fessi, or play the fools. Well, yes. But we’d appreciated his outrageous furbizia (trickery)—and, I admit, I’m a sucker for anything anyone tells me in Italian.

  I’m not alone. Has any other language ever inspired a love song? In “La nostra lingua italiana” (Our Italian Language), written in 1993 and featured on YouTube, the songwriter Riccardo Cocciante celebrates Italian as serene, sweet, welcoming, universal, generous, and sensual, the language of the ancient marble of cathedrals, of boats and serenades at sea, of looks and smiles from afar, of palaces and fountains, of opera and the grand Italian cinema, the language always looking for un po’ d’amore (a little love).

  L’amore, according to a recent Società Dante Alighieri poll, is the favorite word of Italians living in other countries; mamma comes in second. With so many beguiling possibilities to choose from, I could never select just one. But I do have a favorite phrase: Mi sento a mio agio. Although it doesn’t quite translate into English, it more or less means “I feel at home,” or “I’m at ease,” and it resonates at a deep level with Italians. The first time I said this to our hosts at Monte Vibiano Vecchio, we all got a little teary.

  Over the last quarter-century, I’ve come to feel at home in Italy and in Italian. Yet, even after spending three months in Italy last year, I returned to San Francisco feeling I was still missing out on something, still not quite comprehending le cose italiane (Italian things). Italian may be the mother of all tongues, but at times I still feel like a stepchild.

  “Certo,” Alessandra said when I described this sense of an Italy and an Italian I had not yet explored. “That’s the difference between learning Italian and living Italian.”

  “Does that mean it can’t be learned?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” she said, “but you have to learn differently.”

  The next week she showed up with a deck of playing cards for a game called scopa, a CD of Milanese cabaret songs, a comic book about a Batman-like figure called Diabolik, an exvoto (a small heart-shaped painting of the Madonna bought to express gratitude to God for a favor granted), and La smorfia, a book for interpreting dreams by associating them with numbers and then betting the numbers in the Italian lottery.

  “Cominciamo!” Alessandra said with a smile. “Let’s get started.”

  Bibliography

  GENERAL REFERENCES

  Barzini, Luigi. The Italians. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964.

  Brand, Peter, and Lino Pertile, editors. The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

  della Valle, Valeria, and Giuseppe Patota. L’italiano: Biografia di una lingua. Milan: Sperling & Kupfer Editori, 2006.

  D’Epiro, Peter, and Mary Desmond Pinkowish. Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World. New York: Anchor Books, 2001.

  italian.about.com.

  Kay, George R., editor. The Penguin Book of Italian Verse. New York: Penguin Books, 1958.

  Migliorini, Bruno. The Italian Language. Abridged and recast by T. Gwynfor Griffith. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.

  Nelsen, Elisabetta Properzi, and Christopher Concolino. Literary Florence. Siena: Nuova Immagine, 2006.

  INTRODUCTION: MY ITALIAN BRAIN AND HOW IT GREW

  Lesser, Wendy, editor. The Genius of Language. New York: Pantheon Books, 2004.

  Nadeau, Jean-Benoit, and Julie Barrow. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong. New York: Sourcebooks, 2003.

  CONFESSIONS OF AN INNAMORATA

  Brockmann, Stephen. “A Defense of European Languages.” In Inside Higher Education. insidehighered.com., May 15, 2008.

  Calabresi, Mario. “Usa, la rivincita dell’italiano: è boom di corsi all’università.” La Repubblica, April 23, 2007: 17.

  Duggan, Christopher. A Concise History of Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

  Esposito, Russell R. The Golden Milestone. New York: The New York Learning Library, 2003.

  Falcone, Linda. Italian Voices. Illustrations by Leo Cardini. Florence: Florentine Press, 2007.

  Hofmann, Paul. That Fine Italian Hand. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990.

  Lepschy, Anna Laura, and Giulio Lepschy. The Italian Language Today. New York: Hutchinson, 1977.

  Lepschy, Giulio. Mother Tongues and Other Reflections on the Italian Language. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.

  Mondadori, Oscar. Motti e proverbi dialettali delle regioni italiane. Milan: A. Mondadori, 1977.

  Tommaseo, Niccolò. Dizionario dei sinonimi. Milan: Vallardi, 1905.

  THE UNLIKELY RISE OF A VULGAR TONGUE

  Cattani, Alessandra. L’italiano e i dialetti. San Francisco: Centro Studi Italiani, 1993.

  Consoli, Joseph. The Novellino or One Hundred Ancient Tales: An Edition and Translation based on the 1525 Gualteruzzi editio princeps. Routledge; 1 edition. 1997.

  Lewis, R. W. B. The City of Florence. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995.

  Maiden, Martin. A Linguistic History of Italian. London: Longman, 1995.

  Menen, Aubrey. Speaking the Language Like a Native. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1962.

  Migliorini, Bruno. Storia della lingua italiana, vols. 1 and 2. Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1988.

  Montanelli, Indro. Romans Without Laurels. New York: Pantheon, 1959.

  Pulgram, Ernst. The Tongues of Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958.

  Roberts, Mark. Street-Names of Florence. Florence: Coppini Tipografi Editori, 2001.

  Spadolini, Giovanni. A Short History of Florence. Florence: Le Monnier, 1977.

  Tartamella, Vito. Parolacce. Milan: BUR, 2006.

  Usher, Jonathan. “Origins and Duecento.” In The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Peter Brand and Lino Pertile, editors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

  TO HELL AND BACK WITH DANTE ALIGHIERI

  Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Translated by John Ciardi. New York: New American Library, 1954.

  ———. Inferno. Translated by Robin Kirkpatrick. New York: Penguin C
lassics, 2006.

  ———. Purgatorio. Translated by Allen Mandelbaum. Drawings by Barry Moser. New York: Bantam, 1984.

  Fei, Silvano. Casa di Dante. Florence: Museo Casa di Dante, 2007.

  Gallagher, Joseph. A Modern Reader’s Guide to Dante’s “The Divine Comedy.” Liguori, MO: Liguori/Triumph, 1999.

  Lewis, R. W. B. Dante. New York: Viking Penguin, 2001.

  Montanelli, Indro. Dante e il suo secolo. Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1974.

  Web edition, Dante’s Divine Comedy, http://www.italianstudies.org/comedy/index.htm. Center for Italian Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook.

  ITALIAN’S LITERARY LIONS

  Bargellini, Piero. “The Ladies in the Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici.” In The Medici Women. Florence: Arnaud, 2003.

  Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Edited and translated by G. H. McWilliam. New York: Penguin, 1972.

  Brinton, Selwyn. The Golden Age of the Medici. London: Methuen & Company, 1925.

  Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. New York: Modern Library, 2002.

  Cesati, Franco. The Medici. Florence: Mandragora, 1999.

  “Chi vuol esser lieto, sia.” Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 2006.

  Grafton, Anthony Leon Battista Alberti. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000.

  Hibbert, Christopher. The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici. New York: Penguin, 1974.

  Montanelli, Indro, and Roberto Gervaso. Italy in the Golden Centuries. Translated by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1967.

  Patota, Giuseppe. Lingua e linguistica in Leon Battista Alberti. Rome: Bulzoni, 1999.

  Plumb, J. H. The Italian Renaissance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

  Severgnini, Beppe. L’italiano: Lezioni semiserie. Milan: Rizzoli, 2007.

  Winspeare, Massimo. The Medici: The Golden Age of Collecting. Florence: Sillabe, 2000.

  THE BAKING OF A MASTERPIECE

  Accademia della Crusca, www.accademiadellacrusca.it.

  Aretino, Pietro. Aretino’s Dialogues. Edited by Margaret Rosenthal. Translated by Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Marsilio, 1994.

  Bondanella, Julia Conaway, and Mark Musa, editors. The Italian Renaissance Reader. New York: Penguin, 1987.

  Harris, Joel, and Andrew Lang. The ’World’s Wit and Humor, vol. 13, Italian-Spanish. New York: Review of Reviews Company, 1912.

  Manacorda, Giuliano. Storia della letteratura italiana. Rome: Newton & Compton, 2004.

  Norwich, John Julius. The Italians: History, Art, and the Genius of a People. New York: Portland House, 1983.

  HOW ITALIAN CIVILIZED THE WEST

  Bondanella, Peter, and Mark Musa, editors and translators. The Portable Machiavelli. New York: Viking Penguin, 1979.

  Carollo, Sabrina. Galateo per tutte le occasioni. Florence: Giunti Demetra, 2006.

  Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Edited by Daniel Javitch. Translated by Charles S. Singleton. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.

  della Casa, Giovanni. Galateo. Translated by Konrad Eisenbichler and Kenneth Bartlett. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986.

  McCarthy, Mary. The Stones of Florence. San Diego: Harcourt, 1963.

  Roeder, Ralph. The Man of the Renaissance. New York: Viking Press, 1933.

  Severgnini, Beppe. L’italiano: Lezioni semiserie. Milan: Rizzoli, 2007.

  LA STORIA DELL’ARTE

  Besdine, Matthew. The Unknown Michelangelo. Garden City, NY: Adelphi University Press, 1964.

  Boase, T. S. R. Giorgio Vasari: The Man and the Book. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.

  Bronowski, J. “Leonardo da Vinci.” In The Italian Renaissance, edited by J. H. Plumb. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

  Bull, George. Michelangelo: A Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.

  Buonarroti, Michelangelo. Poems and Letters. Translated by Anthony Mortimer. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.

  Clark, Kenneth. “The Young Michelangelo.” In The Italian Renaissance, edited by J. H. Plumb. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

  Cole, Michael. Sixteenth-Century Italian Art. Malden, MA.: Blackwell, 2006.

  Condivi, Ascanio. The Life of Michelangelo. Edited by Hellmut Wohl. Translated by Alice Sedgwick Wohl. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976.

  de Tolnay, Charles. “Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna.” In Sixteenth-Century Italian Art, edited by Michael Cole. Malden, MA.: Black-well, 2006.

  Hale, J. R., editor. The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of the Italian Renaissance. London: Thames & Hudson, 2006.

  Hartt, Frederick, and David Wilkins. History of Italian Renaissance Art, 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall and Harry N. Abrams, 1994.

  King, Ross. Brunelleschi’s Dome. New York: Penguin, 2000.

  Langdon, Helen. Caravaggio: A Life. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998.

  Nicholl, Charles. Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of Mind. New York: Penguin, 2004.

  Nuland, Sherwin. Leonardo da Vinci. New York: Lipper/Penguin, 2000.

  Puglisi, Catherine. Caravaggio. London: Phaidon Press, 1998.

  Roscoe, Mrs. Henry. Victoria Colonna: Her Life and Poems. London: MacMillan & Company, 1868.

  Sebregondi, Ludovica. Giotto a Santa Croce. Florence: Opera di Santa Croce, 2006.

  Summers, David. Michelangelo and the Language of Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.

  van Loon, Hendrik Willem. The Arts. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937.

  Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of the Artists. Translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella. London: Oxford University Press, 1991.

  ON GOLDEN WINGS

  Berger, William. Puccini Without Excuses. New York: Vintage, 2005.

  ———. Verdi with a Vengeance. New York: Vintage, 2000.

  Bleiler, Ellen, editor and translator. Famous Italian Opera Arias. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996.

  Bolt, Rodney. The Librettist of Venice. New York: Bloomsbury, 2006.

  Carresi, Serena, et al. L’italiano all’opera. Rome: Bonacci, 1998.

  Conrad, Peter. A Song of Love and Death. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1987.

  Dallapiccola, Luigi. Dallapiccola on Opera. Translated and edited by Rudy Shackelford. Milan: Toccata Press, 1987.

  Da Ponte, Lorenzo. Memoirs. Translated by Elisabeth Abbott. New York: New York Review Books, 2000.

  Duchartre, Pierre Louis. The Italian Comedy. New York: Dover Publications, 1966.

  Gossett, Philip. Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

  Kimbell, David. Italian Opera. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

  Noè, Daniela, and Frances A. Boyd. L’italiano con l’opera. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.

  Plotkin, Fred. Opera 101. New York: Hyperion, 1994.

  Rosselli, John. The Life of Verdi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

  ———. Singers of Italian Opera. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

  Smith, Patrick. The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study of the Opera Libretto. New York: Schirmer, 1970.

  Verdi, Giuseppe. Verdi: The Man in His Letters. Edited by Franz Werfel and Paul Stefan. Translated by Edward O. D. Downes. New York: Vienna House, 1970.

  EATING ITALIAN

  Artusi, Pellegrino. Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. Translated by Murtha Baca and Stephen Sartarelli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

  Capatti, Alberto, and Massimo Montanari. Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History. Translated by Aine O’Healy New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

  de’ Medici, Lorenza. Italy the Beautiful Cookbook Los Angeles: Knapp Press, 1988.

  Dickie, John. Delizia! The Epic History of Italians and Their Food. New York: Free Press, 2008.

  Ehlert, Trude. Cucina medioevale. Milan: Guido Tommasi Editore, 1995.

  Field, Carol. Celebrating Italy. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007.

  ——
—. In Nonna’s Kitchen. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

  Martino, Maestro. The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book. Edited by Luigi Ballerini. Translated by Jeremy Parzen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

  ———. Libro de art coquinaria. Milan: Guido Tommasi Editore, 2001.

  Nestor, Brook. The Kitchenary: Dictionary and Philosophy of Italian Cooking. New York: iUniverse, 2003.

  Peschke, Hans-Peter von, and Werner Feldmann. La cucina dell’antica Roma. Milan: Guido Tommasi Editore, 1997.

  ———. La cucina del rinascimento. Milan: Guido Tommasi Editore, 1997.

  Piras, Claudia, and Eugenio Medagliani, editors. Culinaria Italy. Cologne: Konemann, 2000.

  Plotkin, Fred. The Authentic Pasta Book. New York: Fireside, 1985.

  SO MANY WAYS TO SAY “I LOVE YOU”

  Amore e amicizia. Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2003.

  Barzini, Luigi. From Caesar to the Mafia. New York: Library Press, 1971.

  Casanova, Giacomo. The Many Loves of Casanova. Los Angeles: Holloway House, 2006.

  Ginzburg, Natalia. The Manzoni Family. Translated by Marie Evans. London: Paladin Grafton Books, 1989.

  Manzoni, Alessandro. The Betrothed. Translated by Bruce Penman. New York: Penguin, 1972.

  Tommaseo, Niccolò. Dizionario dei sinonimi. Milan: Vallardi, 1905.

  ———. D’amor parlando. Palermo: Sellerio, 1992.

  MARCELLO AND ME

  Aprà, Adriano, and Patrizia Pistagnesi, editors. The Fabulous Thirties: Italian Cinema 1929–1944. Rome: Electa International Publishing Group, 1979.

  Biagi, Enzo. La bella vita: Marcello Mastroianni racconta. Rome: Rizzoli, 1996.

  Bondanella, Peter. The Cinema of Federico Fellini. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

  ———. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. New York: Continuum, 2004.