[lit-ideas] Re: how to tell she wrote it
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 08:27:53 EDT
In a message dated 4/8/2009 6:26:15 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
teme17@xxxxxxxxx writes:
JL, five minutes watching Italian TV is all the reason one needs to _not_
want to be famous in Italy.
----
Well, perhaps if I _hear_ the lady, I'd change the position. But the wiki
entry and the interview referred to there makes for a 'bruta figura'.
---- She is Maryland teacher -- Southerner -- no idea where she is born.
Possibly some Southern state?
--- She looks formal. But Leon is married name? It looks like a sort of
Hispanic surname to me. It would be Leone in Italian. Donna of course cannot be
Italian since it means plain Domina, i.e. lady.
--- She says, "I don't teach any more -- I do other stuff like baroque
music". Obviously the money she gets with the thrillers. But people shouldn't
be
OPEN about "I don't teach anymore". It makes all her past as a teacher otiose
or silly.
--- Now the Italian thing. Obviously Italians don't need a translation,
although I would not be able to read the lady's thrillers in the original. I
wonder how she deals in dialogue if all her characters are Italian. Would she
use
direct speech and bring the thing in an artificial "English".
--- I would argue that VENICE is not Italy. I always think of it as some
sort of distant Roman Colony on the wrong side of the boot -- Adriatic. Too
close to those countries that were once part of Italia (Croatia) but are now
not.
More importantly, anyone familiar with mainstream, Italian culture, will see
that what happens in that Isle (for I cannot see Venice as anything but a
little muddy island) stays in that isle.
--- Venice is more of an 'international' colony. She says, "If I become
famous, the tenor of being the lady who lives with Costantini and Andreozzi
will
change". Depends on where you live in Venice I suppose. I wouldn't think
neighbours would care.
---- Consider Anita Ekberg. She _Was_ Famous. It's nothing to do with the
"Lingo".
---- Italian versions would open her output to the _masses_. She is possibly
a 'character' already, but by 'forbidding' by request that the oeuvre gets
translated in Italian, I don't know, it was a first for me. And I guess that
my Italian friends or English friends would not like that. Perhaps a good
argument could be made:
--- Had she said,
"My oeuvre has been conceived in English, and the least I requre is the
effort on the part of the reader to learn the lingo."
That would do -- and I suppose that an Italian could do the effort to read
the thing in English. But it just strikes me as unfair. I cannot see how she
can forbid that. Wouldn't her things be in 'the public domain'. And what kind
of justification must she provide for it to become _legal_.
In any other circumstances it would be laughable. (W. S. Gilbert saying that
no German for his operettas). The argument, 'no fame' cannot be taken
seriously, I expect. Agatha Christie was famous wherever she went just because
her
_originals_ were original, not because when in Casablanca locals enjoy the
Tunisian vernacular translations.
Seeing that she is white, I cannot think she could ever HOPE to guess what a
black man (or black men, for worse) are _THINKING_ ('missing their wives').
But Teemu is a bit sceptical. I know a few Italians who _have_ missed their
wives. For better or worse. Or 'innamorata' would be a better word. At least in
letters.
And where _were_ their wives? Picking cotton? I mean, what kind of exile was
that that they were unable to see them?
If she can be so wrong in assessing the African-American (or does she mean
mere Ethiopian?) how good can she be in deciphering the mentality of a totally
furrin folk as the Venicians are for her?
Are her character low class, high class or middle class? I find the high
class of Italy totally inescrutable. Middle class can vary in degree of
"Americanisation" and thus more or less digestible. Low class is a phenomenon
in
itself. I'm considering "Venice" as part of Italy as most Italians _don't_; and
belonging to the "North" (industrial North). But surely you cannot compare some
muddy terrain with Milano, Turino, or _real_ good northern bastions in
Italy. You cannot compare Roman good healthy culture to the decadence of the
Lido
and the Bridge of Sighs! ---. And the moorish population, and also Semitic.
Recall Otello was Venetian, of sorts.
--- Mind. I love Italian Venetian music and I'm glad she's studying Baroque
now. Indeed the Fenice started a trend in opera customs. For the worse. It
started the commercialism of it all. When patrons would not just entertain
their
guests, as they did in the courts of Firenze and Mantova (Peri and
Monteverdi respectively) but open their owned theatres to the masses for cheap
entertainment!
The Italians are very particular when it comes to Operatic Traditions.
Venice is Venice (The east is the east) and the paths shall not mix. The true
Italian tradition is Milano. Even San Carlo does not count -- too primitive.
Within the North, we could make room for places other than Milano. And I for
one LOVE Roma regardless so would include Costanzi and other landmarks in
Rome operatic history as 'mainstream'. Note that Mussolini did change the axis
of cultural influence from Milano (provincial) to Roma (capital).
But how deep the lady gets into cultural internal affairs of the Italians
one wonders. She never even taught "Italian Studies" so beloved of the
Americans.
I love Anglos settling in "la bella Italia" as Joyce Grenfell has it in a
recent monologue I just discovered (repr. in "First nights at the opera") --
but
there are limits! And maybe I come to love this lady but she should have to
provide sort of better reasons, and less typical American-psyche
('superiority complex') ones.
Cheers.
JL
Villa Speranza
Bordighera
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