Mezzogiorno: Life. Death. Southern Italy.
David Kerekes
Language: English
Pages: 188
ISBN: 1900486717
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A work of fact, fiction, fable and folklore spanning three generations of southern Italian family life. "Europe ends at Naples and ends badly. Calabria, Sicily and all the rest belong to Africa." - Creuzé de Lesser, 1806 No geographical map distinguishes Montefalcione as being different from any number of isolated mountain villages in southern Italy. It has ancient customs and its own saints and feast days, like other villages. Yet Montefalcione in Campania is the setting for a unique meditation on family and the Italian Diaspora, reconstructing three generations of village life through myth, superstition, and the anecdotal history of the author's own family. The drama unfolds amidst a landscape of peasant riots, vicious landlords, religious festival, feuds, the collapse of the Fascist party, and the tarantella - a world lost to the changing face of the twenty-first century.
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he says, dusting off his hands, then describing to the room a farmer, not unlike Carmine, who is an “enabler.” Benito coughs and snorts and gestures with a hand for the benefit of Carmine that all is well and not to worry. The socialist principles of this farmer, continues the grey officer, have gone out the window with the sniff of opportunity. He has become an enabler, one who enables other men to lose faith when — not to put too fine a point on it — they see their friend is ripping off tobacco
about — on the sides of the mountain and to the northeast — was known as Montefalsone oppidum, and later Montefaucione, which in turn became Montefalcione, after the vernacular of the many foreigner invaders. Sabino stands with his hands on his hips, while the snake weakly flicks about on his shoulders like a ribbon lost on the wind. It never used to be like this, he sneers. He kicks at the earth, at a broken pot and at bits of bones, which he mistakenly interprets as evidence that Montefalcione
here is very old, too. They stop momentarily at the monastery San Maria di Loreto, next to the town hall, beloved of Cardinal Dell’Olio, who himself was beloved of the people and in whose name the monastery is dedicated. Opposite is the church belonging to the order of the Good Death, formerly the Mountain of the Dead, one of several fraternities of the village. These fraternities helped galvanise the village in times of plague, epidemic, famine and extreme poverty. Built in 1695 and recognised
which is generally the prelude to one of his long speeches. “A teacher who isn’t from here,” he begins. Cataldi is still calling for calm so the mayor begins again: “A teacher has told me she will introduce every child in Italy to school and university in September.” Scorolli, expecting the worse, barks in a flat rage. “This is what she said and I believe her!” Tignanelli retorts, which leaves an incensed Scorolli no choice but to bounce off down the street and out of sight. “The village may
the well; the Martignetti family. A tragic family, as we shall see. It was those people, and they give us excess for drinking water. But because they were really rich and had a lot of nice things, flowers and fruit, and whatever, and my parents made sure that every time we go for water — which was every day really — we’re not to touch anything. Just look, but not to touch. We daren’t touch. Otherwise we lose the right to access the water. The Martignetti son was called Pasquale. Our mother
