On Persephone's Island

by Mary Taylor Simeti

  Corseted by thick stone walls, the house is impervious to heat, and as I pause inside the door to let my eyes accustom themselves to its shadows, the cool air, smelling slightly of damp and of lavender, raises gooseflesh on my bare limbs. Stretched out in the slats of light that filter through the bedroom shutters, I twitch my toe lazily to chase away a fly and reread the same sentence three times. The book propped up on my chest nods in the drowsy air, and outside a cicada drills insistently through the heat.

  When the cardoon flowers, and the loud cicada sings perched on a tree, pouring from under his wings a flood of shrillest music time and again: when summer is ripe, and the heat a burden of pain; then are the she-goats fattest, and wine is best, and women most fain; but men are languidest, for Sirius parches the heads and knees of men and burns their bodies with drowth.

  Hesiod, “Works and Days,” in

  Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation

  If Sicilian men dry up in the summer heat they manage to hide it very well; I do not remember noticing in more youthful days any seasonal letup in the stream of steady and audible admiration that my five feet and ten inches provoked in this short-statured race. At times this was unpleasant—I dreaded meeting the walleyed delivery man from the Partinico slaughterhouse who would pause on the sidewalk in front of a butcher’s shop, as the blood from the enormous side of beef balanced on his shoulder dripped down onto already much-spattered overalls. Leering askew at me, he would growl as I passed: “What thighs! You make my blood boil!”

  But on the whole the Sicilians are more dignified than, let’s say, the Romans: they stare and follow and comment, but rarely pinch. It is the persistence that is tiresome, and was even more so twenty years ago, when young and foreign females alone were still a great rarity. Connie Cronin, a very blond American anthropologist who was also working at the Dolci Center, got so fed up with being followed about Palermo on her day off that she finally turned to Vittorio, a young coworker of local origin, for advice on how to discourage her admirers. Vittorio thought about it for a moment, then answered briskly: “It’s easy. Just limp.”

  Vittorio was very resourceful in carrying out his self-appointed role as defender of the honor of his foreign coworkers. He spread the word around the bars and caffè of Partinico that I held a black belt in judo, probably a superfluous precaution in what was really a very tranquil village, but he enjoyed telling me about it. That, plus Tonino’s early appearance on my horizon, should have more than sufficed, but one day I was stopped just outside my front door in the Via di Benedetto by a well-dressed middle-aged man. I expected an inquiry about an English course I had been asked to give for prospective emigrants, but as soon as he started talking about the very first moment he had seen me, I realized I was in for something else. And in fact he began to follow me about town, to loiter outside my house in the evening, and, if we met by accident in the Corso, to doff his hat in a bow worthy of d’Artagnan, which I was unable to counter with anything more snappy than an embarrassed cringe.

  This went on for several weeks until I came home late one evening from a party to find him still standing outside my door, and embarrassment gave way to alarm. Shortly after that I arrived at the office one morning to see him standing in the doorway talking to Vittorio, so later I sought Vittorio out in the room where he worked the mimeograph, to ask him if he could do anything to free me from these unwelcome attentions.

  “Porca miseria! PORCA MISERIA! Ci penso io!—I’ll take care of it!” And he stormed out of the office.

  A tiny and very dapper young man with carefully waved hair and a pencil-line moustache, Vittorio was an anthropologist’s gold mine, as he had a great capacity for detached analysis of the Sicilian way of life and thought, but at the same time he very much fancied himself to be the epitome of the fiery Latin and was extremely proud of the uncle who had been part of Salvatore Giùliano’s band. It was therefore with some misgivings that I awaited his return.

  After our lunch break, he came into the room where I was working.

  “Mary, it’s okay. I’ve taken care of it.”

  “That’s wonderful, Vittorio, but what did you do?”

  “Oh, it was easy. I went to him and said, ‘Hey, you want to do me a favor? You know the Via di Benedetto?’ He pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about. ‘You know the one I mean,’ I said. ‘Just forget it. Forget you’ve ever been there.’ ”

  I never saw the man again.

  If it wasn’t for the siren call of the siesta, I would be engrossed by the book that is threatening to slide off my stomach and tumble to the floor. I found it quite by chance, attracted by its title, The Gardens of Adonis, and have been fascinated to follow the author, a French classical anthropologist named Marcel Detienne, in his

  progressive deciphering of a botanical code whose components range from the myrrh from which Adonis was born to the lettuce which became his death-bed. The structure of this code appears to be strictly based upon a vertical axis passing from the “solar” plants which are hot, dry—even scorched—incorruptible and perfumed to the plants from below which are cold, wet and raw and are closely connected with death and foul smells. In between these two extremes, occupying an intermediate position at what one might call the “right” distance, are those plants which in the Greek view correspond to the normal life of civilized men, in other words the cereals, cultivated plants in which the dry and the wet are balanced and which constitute a specifically human type of food.

  From J.-P. Vernant’s Introduction to Marcel Detienne,

  The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology

  If I am immediately inspired to see in this botanical code the remote origins of my mother-in-law’s ideas about cucuzza being cold and cabbage hot, Detienne uses the code to refute The Golden Bough’s interpretation of the Adonis myth and ritual, in which according to Frazer the lavureddi, the little gardens of Adonis that are offered in the churches during Holy Week, are “charms to promote the growth or revival of vegetation.” On the contrary, Detienne sees them as part of a very different ritual, one that (I giggle to myself as I read along) would certainly startle the somber, black-shawled Sicilian matrons who carefully tend their lavureddi each spring. He claims that the little vases seeded with fennel (aromatic), barley (median), and lettuce (cold and moist) that sprouted and withered rapidly under the fierce heat of Sirius, the Dog Star, were prepared for the Adonie, the festival in which at the end of July the courtesans and concubines of Athens honored, with much wine and licentious behavior, their favorite, Adonis, the lover of Aphrodite. Adonis, like the seedlings, dies young and without progeny, an image of illicit, ephemeral, and sterile love, beyond the bounds of civil society that, protected by Demeter, rests on the twin pillars of monogamous marriage and diligent agriculture.

  Despite a wistful corner of my fancy that would have me otherwise, I know by now that I am prosaically but unshakably a devotee of Demeter, and when the end of the afternoon comes and a breeze lifts off the sea and wafts new energy through the shutters, it is no bawdy revelry for which I gird myself. A far more chaste festival calls me, the Festino of Saint Rosalia, virgin saint and protectress of Palermo. While the countryside dozed in a sunbaked stupor, Palermo has been preparing for the contemporary version of what was once one of the most famous celebrations in all Europe.

  Rosalia, legend has it, was the daughter of Sinibaldo, lord of Quisquina and Rose, and cousin to King Roger II. Repelled by the licentiousness and luxury of the Norman court in which she was brought up, at fifteen she withdrew from the world and went to live in a cave on Monte Pellegrino, the sudden, barren mass of rock that raises at the western tip of the Bay of Palermo. She is said to have disappeared in 1159 without leaving a trace, but in 1624, while Palermo was languishing in the grip of the Black Death, she appeared in a dream to a hunter who was napping on the mountainside and revealed to him the whereabouts of the cavern where her bones lay.

  The archbishop of Palermo and all the senators pro
ceeded in great pomp to the cave and did indeed find the bones. After six months of careful study (careful, some say, in that care was taken to wait until the plague was waning of its own accord), the bones were proclaimed genuine and brought down in triumph to the city, where they are conserved in a silver urn in the cathedral. The plague abated and by popular acclaim Rosalia became the patroness and protectress of Palermo.

  Coins and other relics from the prehistoric, the Punic, and the Greek eras show that Rosalia’s grotto, watered by an underground spring, was sacred to the chthonic deities long before it received its definitive consecration as the sanctuary of the virgin hermit. The grotto now forms the nave of a chapel, its roof crisscrossed by rudimentary tin gutters that catch the water dripping from the rocks and dispense it to the faithful. The entrance is hung with ex-votos that testify to the miraculous powers of the saint and her waters, and under the altar is her statue, a young girl reclining in a posture of ecstatic rapture. Her head and hands are carved from white marble, a wreath of golden roses circles her brow, and her body is wrapped in a robe of gold cloth, a gift from the Bourbon King Charles III.

  Despite all the gold the shrine is simple, sweet and yet impressive, and it is easy to understand why it captivated Goethe, who visited it in 1787 and in his journal remarked:

  The shrine itself is more appropriate to the humility of the saint who took refuge there than the pomp of the festival which is celebrated in honour of her renunciation of the world.

  Goethe, Italian Journey

  Goethe was not in Palermo for the Festino, but like many cultivated Europeans he had read the descriptions of Patrick Brydone, the first Englishman to include Sicily in his grand tour. Brydone’s letters home, published in 1773, caused something of a sensation in England and on the continent as well, for they revealed an island about which most Europeans knew absolutely nothing. They also revealed an intelligent, educated, and amenable sightseer, whose good-humored enthusiasm and open-mindedness must have endeared him to his Sicilian hosts as well as to his northern readers.

  Brydone’s account of the Festino of 1770 is well worth reading for its description of the extraordinary ceremony and the magnificence with which Palermo celebrated its hermit patroness.

  Palermo, July 12

  About five in the afternoon, the festival began by the triumph of St. Rosalia, who was drawn with great pomp through the centre of the city, from the Marino to the Porto Nuovo. The triumphal car was preceded by a troop of horses, with trumpets and kettledrums, and all the city officers in their gala uniforms. It is indeed a most enormous machine; it measures seventy feet long, thirty wide, and upwards of eighty high, and, as it passed along, overtopped the loftiest houses of Palermo. The form of its underpart is like that of the Roman galleys, but it swells as it advances in height, and the front assumes an oval shape like an amphitheatre, with seats placed in the theatrical manner. This is the great orchestra, which was filled with a numerous band of musicians placed in rows, one above the other: over this orchestra, and a little behind it, there is a large dome supported by six Corinthian columns, and adorned with a number of figures of saints and angels; and on the summit of the dome there is a gigantic silver statue of St. Rosalia. The whole machine is dressed out with orange-trees, flower-pots, and trees of artificial coral. The car stopped every fifty or sixty yards, when the orchestra performed a piece of music, with songs in honor of the saint. It appeared a moving castle, and completely filled the great street from side to side.… This vast fabric was drawn by fifty-six huge mules, in two rows, curiously caparisoned, and mounted by twenty-eight postillions, dressed in gold and silver stuffs, with great plumes of ostrich feathers in their hats. Every window and balcony, on both sides of the street, were full of well-dressed people, and the car was followed by many thousands of the lower sort. The triumph was finished in about three hours, and was succeeded by the beautiful illumination of the Marina.

  I believe that I have already mentioned that there is a range of arches and pyramids extending from end to end of this noble walk; these are painted, are adorned with artificial flowers, and are entirely covered with lamps, placed so very thick that, at a little distance, the whole appears so many arches and pyramids of flame.… There was no break nor imperfection anywhere, the night being so still that not a single lamp was extinguished.

  Opposite to the centre of this great line of light, there was a magnificent pavilion erected for the viceroy and his company, which consisted of the whole nobility of Palermo; and in the front of this, at some little distance in the sea, stood the great fire-works, representing the front of a palace, adorned with columns, arches, trophies and every ornament of architecture.… In an instant, the whole of the palace was beautifully illuminated … and appeared indeed like a piece of enchantment, as it was done altogether instantaneously, and without the appearance of any agent. At the same time the fountains that were represented in the court before the palace began to spout up fire, and made a representation of some of the great jets d’eau of Versailles and Marly. As soon as these were extinguished, the court assumed the form of a great parterre, adorned with a variety of palm-trees of fire, interspersed with orange-trees, flower-pots, vases, and other ornaments. On the extinguishing of these, the illumination of the palace was likewise extinguished, and the front of it broke out into the appearance of suns, stars, and wheels of fire, which in a short time reduced it to a perfect ruin. And when all appeared finished, there burst from the centre of the pile a vast explosion of two thousand rockets, bombs, serpents, squibs and devils, which seemed to fill the whole atmosphere: the fall of these made terrible havoc amongst the clothes of the poor people who were not under cover, but afforded admirable entertainment to the nobility who were.

  Brydone goes on to describe the illuminations of the Corso, where after the fireworks were over the nobility paraded in their carriages, the ladies dressed in sumptuous gowns and dazzling jewels and “pleasure that sparkled from every eye,” and concludes:

  … I will own to you that I have never beheld a more delightful sight; and if superstition often produces such effects, I sincerely wish we had a little more of it amongst us. I could have thrown myself down before St. Rosalia, and blessed her for making so many people happy.

  The next two days were occupied with horse races, corse dei barbari, similar to Alcamo’s past pleasure and carried out with equal or even greater confusion and peril to the spectators. A proper Englishman, Brydone took a dim view of these barbarian contests, dismissing them as “by no means to be compared with those in England.” But this is the only part of the Festino that he regarded unfavorably, as can be seen from his ecstatic description of the Vesper service in the cathedral:

  At once entering the great gate, we beheld the most splendid scene in the world. The whole church appeared a flame of light, which, reflected from ten thousand bright and shining surfaces, of different colors, and at different angles, produced an effect which, I think, exceeds all the descriptions of enchantment I have ever read.… The whole church—walls, roof, pillars, and plaster—were entirely covered over with mirrors, interspersed with gold and silver paper, artificial flowers, &c.… and illuminated with twenty thousand wax tapers.…

  The Festino ended with a procession in which floats prepared by the various confraternities and religious orders were decorated with statues of saints and angels. Brydone concludes his account by describing these statues as he saw them the next day,

  returning home in coaches to their respective nunneries. At first we took them for ladies in their gala dress, going out to visit the churches, which we were told was the custom, and began to pull off our hats as they went past. Indeed, we were led into this blunder by some of our friends, who carried us out on purpose; and as they saw the coaches approach, told us that this is the princess of such a thing—there is the duchess of such another thing; and, in short, we had made a half-dozen of our best bows (to the no small entertainment of these wags) before we discovered the trick. They now ins
ist upon it that we are good Catholics, for all this morning we have been bowing to saints and angels.

  Patrick Brydone, A Tour Through Sicily and Malta

  At the height of the baroque era, the splendor of the Festino was an assertion of Palermo’s ascendancy over her rivals, the cities of Catania and Messina, and the visual confirmation of the power and munificence of the Senate, an assembly of nobles that traced its authority (mostly illusory) back to the Norman reign and squandered its energy in squabbling over sumptuary laws and questions of precedence. Saint Rosalia went into a decline during the nineteenth century, and even the triumphal cart was abandoned, due in part to the anticlericalism of postunification Italy, and in part to the new paving of the Corso, which couldn’t withstand such a massive weight. By popular request it was revived toward the end of the century, but even so, little remained, according to Pitré, to distinguish Saint Rosalia’s Festino from that of any village saint. Unburdened of the need to advertise an aristocratic power and wealth that was fast waning, the Festino became a popular event that drew enormous crowds from all over the island. It was a common provision in marriage contracts that the husband was to bring his bride to Palermo for the Festino during their first year of marriage, and the provincial yokel who tastes his first ice cream at the Festino and wraps some up in his handkerchief to take it home with him was a standard figure of fun. The ice cream vendors did a booming business, as did the semenza sellers, who had special carts, used only for the Festino, that were shaped like sailing ships and decorated with tricolor paper flags. Rosalia’s triumphant passage smacked more of confusion than of majesty, as buckets of water were thrown on the massive wooden wheels to keep them from overheating and catching fire, so great was the friction produced by the cart’s monumental weight, and