The Volcanic Eucharist.

[MANICHAEAN]

The Volcanic Eucharist.

Part 1:

The sight of Vesuvius towering over the waters of the Mediterranean, with the Sorrentine Peninsula to the south and Naples to the north, has always held visitors spellbound. Likewise, the Bay of Naples is unique, with its wealth of ancient Roman sites and lovely 18th-century villas, set against the backdrop of this same quiescent volcano. At ground level though, the contrasts are stark, for Naples has always seemed synonymous with poverty and harsh existence. Yet it is this polarization between man’s blight and nature’s beauty that somehow heightens the dramatic effect; the urban context of the “comuni vesuviani” and the sumptuous Roman villas in quiet, elevated countryside that overlook it.

It was in one such villa that Leopardi sat that afternoon, the balcony windows wide open showing the bay in a hard light, a light breeze gently endeavouring to ripple the sea below. Inside in the cool of the shade, he sat and was unexpectedly at peace, for he had been, both by nature and childhood upbringing, of a pessimistic disposition.

On the small table to his right, a cool glass of his favorite Chianti whose characteristic ruby red colour had already attained the pigmentation of garnet from aging. Its dry and aromatic taste, both soft and velvety lay upon his tongue. He had also recently dined on “parmigiana di melanzane,” a dish popular among the native indigenes, and the aroma of it still lingered from the adjoining dining room.

That morning, on impulse and early, he had walked the slopes of Vesuvius, which was as now, best in early summer when the upper slopes are awash with the colour of red valerian flower and the nightingales, whitethroats and blue rock thrushes are marking out their territory with prolific song. It had struck him that on what had been barren lava; colonization had still been achieved thanks to the prevalent greyish-silver lichen which had prepared the ground for settlement by other pioneering species.

When he had returned to the villa, he felt the need to write, for the feeling was akin to addressing what the Greeks term Paralipòmeni; "things left undone or unsaid".

He read slowly over part of what had subsequently been writ:

And you too, pliant broom,
Adorning this abandoned countryside,
With fragrant bushes.
You will soon succumb,
To the cruel power of subterranean fire,
Which, returning to the place it knew before,
Will spread its greedy tongue,
Over your soft thickets.

He was more than pleased, for in his own mind, he had touched upon the fragile coexistence of mankind and nature. He had deliberately opened the poem by naming the terrifying mountain, “Vesuvius the Destroyer”, then modulated his tone into woodwind tenderness as he addressed the flower with the familiar and even familial “tu.” He knew he had achieved the fundamental opposition of the poem, between nature’s barbaric destructiveness and the potential intimacy of human feeling. After an excoriating segment on the volcano’s destruction of Pompeii and the probable repetition of eruption in the future he had ended in returning to the humble presence of the transient broom, “E tu, lenta ginestra.” In reality and in spirit he had captured; first the wilderness of lava fields through which he had walked, then the innocent beauty of those same fields before the catastrophe, and finally the exterminating eruption itself.

These fields,
Strewn with sterile ashes, blanketed,
By hardened lava,
That echoes to a wanderer’s steps.
Where the snake nests and coils under the sun,
And the hare goes home,
To his familiar cave-like den.
These were happy, prospering farms.
They were blond with wheat,
And echoed with lowing cattle;
Here were gardens, villas, welcome,
Respite for the powerful,
And famous cities, which, with rivers,
Pouring from its fiery mouth,
The implacable mountain crushed,
Along with their inhabitants.

He sat and he rejoiced in having rediscovered in himself the capacity to be moved and, after a long period of impassibility and boredom to experience pain again. For he belonged to that tribe that Yeats named “the sad, the lonely, the insatiable,” to know that death is the only destiny, and that individual life is misery. It was to live in a dry acknowledgment of the incompatibility between reality and desire, and yet to admit that no one is immune to the fantasies of desire. He had found the amazed lilt of renewed love.

NOTE: It was in 1836, while staying near Torre del Greco in a villa on the hillside of Vesuvius, that Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi wrote his moral testament as a poet, La Ginestra ("The Broom"), also known as Il Fiore del Deserto ("The flower of the desert"). I have taken extracts from this poem.

[Steven Hunley]

I can't say enough about this piece. The thoughtfulness of it, the art begetting art, and the gentle reflections, all add up to what I call. "A satisfying literary experience."

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Part I is as smooth as the Chianti I'm drinking as I type.
Just got back from the grocer and this piece led me to grab a bottle of Ruffino.
Well done and looking forward to future Parts (?)

I was compelled to scan an old photo I shot that I felt was fitting...

Vesuvius as seen through a Pompeii gate.
http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae114/tabuka1/Europe%201988%20through%20a%20Pentax%20ME%20Super/th_VesuviusThroughPompeiiGate_zps59fff682.jpg (http://s963.beta.photobucket.com/user/tabuka1/media/Europe%201988%20through%20a%20Pentax%20ME%20Super/VesuviusThroughPompeiiGate_zps59fff682.jpg.html)

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear Steve, thanks as always for your continuing encouragement. This is the first piece that I have been able to write this year. I just dried up! Then purely as an offshoot from a Thomas Hardy novel, I stumbled upon this subject which got my interest. For several generations now, Italian poetry has existed for readers and writers of English more as a rumor than an inspiration. Let’s hope we can change that a bit.

Dear Gilliatt, great shot. It’s good to know that I got the taste buds going in Texas. In fact the Chianti referred to was named “La Ginestra.”

[MANICHAEAN]

The Volcanic Eucharist Part 2:

It was late evening and Leopardi’s sister Paolona entered to wish him goodnight before retiring. He did not rise, but raised his face and she kissed him lightly on the cheek. It was the kiss of family and blood, but made him sad. All of his life he had yearned for the kiss of a woman; a manifestation of an unrestrained and wild emotion that would move his soul.

But, that had not been the case. He thought back to his early adolescence, of throwing jesting remarks from the upper window of his father’s home, to passing girls from the town. Then his first experience of love, albeit one sided, when his cousin Geltrude Cassi came to stay for a few days. She was married, a Countess, 27-years old, and she stayed in Recanati for only a few days. They played chess together.

He remembered lines from 'Il primo amore' that he had written after her departure;

How brightly from the depths of darkness then,
The lovely image rose,
And my closed eyes,
Beneath their lids, their gaze upon it fed!
No sooner had I felt within,
The heat of love's first flame, than with it flew away,
The gentle breeze, that fanned it into life.
Nor had I, Love, thy cruel power known,
A boy of eighteen summers flown,
Until that day, when I thy bitter lesson learned.

He knew instinctively, being an Italian that love is art waiting to be expressed. Compliments open doors and Italians, regardless of gender, like to be admired; going out of their way to make a good impression on whoever they think is worth it. But he had also become aware that Italian women are very picky when it came to serious relationships. Riven in his case by personal sorrow arising from scoliosis and rickets, a body that had grown deformed and asthmatic, a hunchback jeered at by people in the street; he despaired of ever being loved by a woman.

As for Italian men being likewise picky, the success or otherwise of this venture, invariably revolved around the selected girl being approved by the suitor’s mother. He laughed inwardly, as this being so far from his case, and in having a mother who, when his health broke down early in his life gave thanks to God – believing that suffering was the one road to salvation!

Things had not improved when he had eventually broken loose from the family home and gone to Rome. He had hated that city, despised the Roman women, and had written to Carlo his brother comparing them to common servant girls; stupid, ugly, clumsy, with no charms in their eyes and all this on top of being like whores, or at least flirts. Increasingly, as a result of not receiving affection from women he desired, he felt great irritation and jealousy when faced with others public displays of affection. He disliked society and its small talk, and was happy solely with fellow intellectuals, particularly those who could see beyond his invalid and disfigured body to his spirit.

A stillness hung over the room and the man. To his mind it was so unfair that contemporary representatives of romanticism: Byron, Shelley, Lermontov and so forth – were like him, members of aristocratic families and manifested aristocratic views. But while Byron had an active public role, he lived an interior life. Moreover, Byron was adored by women but his own romantic dreams had never achieved fulfillment. He was convinced by now that ladies laughed at him. Byron, he felt, created from his feelings of homelessness and loneliness a romantic hero, a mysterious man with a secret in his past. He, Leopardi could never escape the curse of his own ill health and with it any last, residual traces of illusions and hopes. Virtue, Love, Justice and Heroism appeared to be nothing but empty words to the poet.

Now you’ll rest forever,
Worn-out heart. The ultimate illusion,
That I thought was eternal died. It died.
I know not just the hope but the desire,
For loved illusions is done for us.
Be still forever.
You have beaten enough.

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

This time with Leffe Blonde.

[Steven Hunley]

Once again, a touching piece. You write with a sure and steady hand. Whatever subject you decide to delineate with your pen, the reader is enlightened.

[MANICHAEAN]

Apologies for duplicate posting Part 3

[MANICHAEAN]

The Volcanic Eucharist Part 3:

There is nothing in the world so beautiful as the smile of Italy to the awakening Spring, and when Leopardi the next day rose mid-morning and looked out into the garden he felt that every bud was bursting, everything looked green and fresh and young. Beyond the garden wall, before the town itself, the long slopes of cyprus and olive trees were laid out, and from the villa’s position on the crest of the hill, you had the loveliest view of the sea and of the crescent beach, mightily jeweled at its further horn with the black Castel dell' Ovo. Fishermen's children were already playing all along the sea’s foamy border, and boats were darting out into the surf. The linen which the laundresses hung to dry upon lines along the beach took the sun like a dazzling flight of white birds, and gave a breezy life to a scene which it absorbed with grace.

He decided to go into the town accompanied by his friend Antonio Ranieri, a decade younger than Leopardi, who had taken care of him in Rome and Naples for the last seven years of his life. He enjoyed his company as he had a gay, impossible manner about him, saying the most risqué things in a perfectly natural way, so that you could hardly realize the enormities you were listening to. In any event it did not sound so bad in Italian, as the language seemed to veil and poetizes everything.

As on previous excursions, Leopardi sat well back, concealed in the carriage that took them; for he was as ever, the watcher and not the participator. Apart from his deformities he had remained by birth, part of exclusive, isolated, landed, nobility, whose social life largely excluded non-nobles. It was said of his father Count Monaldo Leopardi, the last aristocrat in Italy to wear a sword that he had once remarked: "I would always choose a hut, a book, and an onion at the top of a mountain, rather than hold a subordinate position in Rome."

The Neapolitan traffic as they entered the town was as furious as ever. Selling in the narrow streets was boisterously undertaken, especially for the fruit of the cactus, which is about as large as an egg and which they peel to a very bloody pulp and lay out, a sanguinary presence on boards for purchase.

Elsewhere the uncultivated stranger may stop and drink with relish, the orangeade and lemonade mixed with snow and sold at the little booths on the street-corners. These stands looked much like the shrines of the Madonna in other Italian cities. They were, indeed, the shrines of a god much worshiped during the long Neapolitan summers; and it was the profound theory of the Bourbon kings of Naples, that, if they kept their subjects well supplied with snow to cool their drink, there was no fear of revolution.

The carriage made its way slowly and as they traversed the city, they viewed ladies doing most of their shopping seated in open carriages by the shop-doors, ministered to by the neat-handed shop men. They were invariably very languid creatures, reclining upon their carriage cushions; black-eyed, and of an olive pallor, with gloomy rings about their fine eyes. In attendance, dark-faced dandies dressed beyond their means bowed to them. This female Neapolitan look is very curious and not seen elsewhere in Italy; it is a look of peculiar pensiveness, and comes, no doubt, from the peculiarly heavy growth of lashes which fringes the lower eyelid. Then there is the weariness in it of all peoples whose summers are fierce and long.

They passed just off the Via San Pasquale in Chiaia, where the market was held. The crowd wandered in and out among the stalls. It was all so familiar—little green cucumbers, almonds, and strings of fried fish, with a good healthy smell of "frittura." Elsewhere beggars, soldiers, monks and peasants lay kicking their heels along intermittent loafing-places. The sunshine glared on ancient walls, lighting up in featureless despair, expressions of a conscious, irremediable incomplete past. In other sectors, church crosses on cupolas and high sculptured porches portrayed clear-cut dark outlines against the blue sky. It seemed to have about it, an even more than ancient Roman desolation, and it confusedly suggested Spain and Africa—lands with no latent risorgimenti, and with absolutely nothing but a fatal past.

There happened to be a new cafè opened on the Toledo, and they had the pleasure of seeing all ranks of people affected by its magnificence. Artless throngs seemed to block the sidewalk before its windows, gazing upon its mirrors, fountains, and frescos, and regarding the persons over their coffee within, as beings lifted by sudden magic out of the common orbit of life and set dazzling in a higher sphere. All the waiters were uniformed and brass-buttoned to blinding effect, and the head waiter was a majestic creature in a long blue coat reaching to his feet, and armed with a mighty silver-headed staff. This gorgeous apparition did nothing but walk up and down, and occasionally advanced toward the door, as if to disperse the crowds. At such times however, before executing his purpose, he would glance round on the splendors they were admiring, and, as if smitten with a sense of the enormous cruelty he had meditated in thinking to deprive them of the sight, would falter and turn away, leaving his intent unfulfilled.

For the Italians are simple and natural folks, pleased through all their show of conventionality with little things, and as easy and unconscious as children in their ways. This was even more so with Neapolitans, good people, (buona gente,) that only needed justice to make them obedient to the laws.

Leopardi and Antonio eventually left at around five o'clock in the afternoon, coming down the Toledo with the streams of carriages that were destined for the long ritual drive around the bay. The evening was the time for socializing. This was when the children were able to play with their friends, adults could relax and talk with neighbours, or young couples could take a walk.

As they neared the villa after a one hour drive, a feeling of apprehension crept up on Leopardi. It was as if the day had been a last, unasked for gift. He remembered the saying, “Il tempo delle novelle passa presto” ("Time passes quickly in stories").

[MANICHAEAN]

For some reason my posts keep getting duplicated!

[MANICHAEAN]

The Volcanic Eucharist Part 4.

It was 6 o'clock when they drew up at Casa Guadagni. The night was splendid with the warm southern moon just rising over the black trees, throwing out every line sharply. One went in by a small door and straight up a fine broad staircase to a good palier with large high rooms opening out on it. All the bed-rooms and small salon opened onto a loggia overlooking the garden—a real old Italian garden. The garden and the air seemed delicious; dark and cool; you saw no one, and as if the modern busy world did not exist, heard nothing but the noise of nocturnal insects.

Down in the Bay of Naples, boatmen rowed ashore passengers from a steamer. It was so quiet and peaceful as they dipped softly in the glare of the ships lamps, harmonizing perfectly with that tranquil scene of drowsy-twinkling city lights, slumberous mountains, and calm sea.

"And round about the keel with faces pale,
Dark faces pale against the rosy flame,
The mild-eyed melancholy lotus-eaters came."

Back at the villa, the terrace was quite dark—the house brilliantly lighted standing out well; and every now and then the Italian servants would appear at the door with their smiling faces—black eyes and white teeth. They were an easy-going, light-hearted race and one could hardly believe that they were the descendants of their fierce old forefathers who sat up so proud and cold on their marble tombs.

Leopardi went out alone into the garden, and although he was so fond of the grey green of the olives that had looked so soft and delicate in the sunset light, he was troubled in spirit. In years alone he was still a young man; in body he felt old and wasted. To him, old age was the supreme evil; for it deprived man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brought with it every possible sorrow. Yet he knew perversely that men fear death and desire old age.

He remembered the time when his parents had decided that since he was immersed in the books of his father’s library, and clearly would not marry or have children because of his physical condition, he should become a priest: what else was there for him to do? He had written to a friend, with fine irony, “God preserve me from the clerical habit with which they would muzzle me.” In the end he had repudiated their solicitations, and later rejected a clerical sinecure that they have procured. His brother had taken it. But by thirty-two, supported in part by admirers of his work, and in part by a stingy stipend wrested from the family, he had at last been able to leave his father’s house. It was then, nine years after his first infatuation with his married cousin “Countess Geltrude Cassi,” that he fell in love with yet another married countess, this time “Teresa Carniani Malvezzi.”

He had written to his brother Carlos at the time, describing an exciting new friendship.

“In the first few days I knew her I lived in a kind of delirium and fever. We’ve never spoken of love except in jest, but we live together in a sensitive friendship, with an interest in one another, and a lack of constraint, which is like love without restlessness. She has a very high regard for me; if I read her something of mine, she often weeps unaffectedly from the heart; other people’s praise has no substance for me, hers all turns to blood and all remains in my soul.”

It had turned sour though. She had remained solely interested in cultivating him as a poet and then tired of him and his conversation. This struck home more deeply than when her husband had put an end to this one sided affair. Later he had written bitterly about his love gone sour to a Venetian intellectual acquaintance, Antonio Papadapoli, “How can it enter your head I’m still calling on that Malvezzi *****?”

And yet, years on in Pisa when he had heard of her death from consumption it had inspired his poem 'A Silvia'. The death had coincided with his disillusionment as a poet.

What gentle thoughts, what hopes divine,
What loving hearts, O Sylvia mine!
In what bright colors then portrayed were human life and fate!
Oh, when I think of such fond hopes betrayed,
A feeling seizes me of bitterness and misery,
And tenfold is my grief renewed!
O Nature, why this treachery?
Why thus, with broken promises,
Thy children's hearts delude?

This poem had to him confirmed the end of an illusion, particularly the illusion of love. It had finely distinguished between his genuine youthful hope for love, and his subsequent and shaming desire to be again deceived (but this time recognizing hope as deception).

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

Part 4 - read
You paint vivid scenes of Italy, especially enjoyed passing through Naples and poetry to boot!

[MANICHAEAN]

The Volcanic Eucharist Part 5.

When dinner had ended Leopardi suggested to Antonio that they go into the garden for a while, although the latter was tired from the long day and the wine they had just shared. The garden itself was a special place for Leopardi and had been so ever since they had taken up residence in the villa. It was fairly large, well established and enclosed by a wall guarded by a gate and sloped gently down in the direction of Naples itself. It was a kind of refuge, a place where he could find a comforting solitude, so essential to his nature. On the more practical side, and relating to where the mature olive trees stood; their fruit was harvested twice a year and the olives placed in a press where the precious olive oil was extracted under heavy pressure.

That night, an oppressive, debilitating foreboding lay heavy upon him. How does man look upon the close, lurking vicinity face of Death, when the senses truly recognize it, cloaked in its stark, suffocating finality? It was akin the olives; an emotional press whence the sweet oil of grace and submission to his mortal existence would be extracted from his life.

“Was it possible,” he asked himself, “for a person to die of anguish alone?”

As his illness had worsened—as his lungs had become more and more compressed by spinal torsion, as he had underwent pneumonia, increased asthma, and dropsy; it was as if the illness itself had pressed him into an accelerated maturity.

“Did the death of the body, ensure a speedier immortality of the soul?”

During his youth, he had dreamt in vain of encountering a woman who embodied a feminine ideal: a platonic idea, perfect, untouchable, pure, incorporeal, evanescent, and illusory. But by now the discovery that he had unexpectedly made was that, what he had been seeking in the lady he loved was "something" beyond her that was made visible in her that communicated itself through her, but was essentially beyond her.

"Se dell'eterne idee
L'una sei tu, cui di sensibil forma
Sdegni l'eterno senno esser vestita,
E fra caduche spoglie
Provar gli affanni di funerea vita;
O s'altra terra ne' supremi giri
Fra' mondi innumerabili t'accoglie,
E più vaga del Sol prossima stella
T'irraggia, e più benigno etere spiri;
Di qua dove son gli anni infausti e brevi,
Questo d'ignoto amante inno ricevi."

"If you are one of those
eternal Ideas, that the eternal mind
scorns to clothe in solid form,
to endure the pain of our deathly life
among fallen bodies,
or if you are received in another earth,
in the highest circling, among
the innumerable worlds, and a star
closer and brighter than the sun
illuminates you, who breathe a purer air:
accept your unknown lover, in this hymn
from this world of unhappy and brief days."



He turned and looked at Antonio in the gloom.

“Stay with me my dear friend a while and keep watch, while I wander in the garden.”

“Watch for what? We are in no danger, or do you feel unwell?” was the reply.

If Antonio at that moment had seen the expression in his companion’s eyes, it would have required no explanation; but after a pause one was forthcoming. Gently Leopardi almost whispered, as if to a child, “It would be a comfort to me if you stayed, though I can see your eyes are heavy. There are times, like at this moment, when I feel that I am being put into situations where I can see, hear and experience things others can’t imagine. It frightens me and is almost as if I am being used.”

“I will sit here on the bench and wait then,” said Antonio, and Leopardi wandered off further into the garden.

Elsewhere that night; in the farms and small holdings thereabouts, examples of Italy’s majority existed; the laborers and farmers, the contadini and the peasants. They were poor and, chances were, they would remain poor. Families lived in small stone, or brick, homes; children, parents, and grandparents, all living together. Outside at the village wells or fountains, it was quiet. Tomorrow, when it came, they would be the meeting places to exchange news or gossip. Breakfast would be a chunk of bread or maybe a bowl of cornmeal mush and even though most farms had chickens, the eggs would never be eaten as they were much too valuable and could be sold for money. Men would, on that next dawn, work as day laborers; hauling stones, picking grapes, or clearing land and they would never know if they would be working from one day to the next.

Yet there was within their kind, a comfort in that all events would invariably be attributed to the will of God or to a patron saint and praying was a way of possibly swaying events.

On the slopes of the Vesuvius garden that night, there was no such palliative. The idea of death, though feared, was perversely also the only hope; since for Leopardi the world offered two beautiful things: love and death and it seemed worth the price of tolerating life’s suffering to experience the joy of such beauty.

[Steven Hunley]

In the first line you may want to try....'...just rising over the black trees,. defining even small branches sharply." or something like that. And later..." hers all turns to blood and each (every?) drop stains (remains held) in my soul.

The dramatic situation is clear to me now, how can a sensitive man, twisted by nature beyond recognition ever hope to attract a woman long enough for her to see in his inner soul, and find love?

You deal with the deep stuff my friend. It's like Lady Brett Ashley and Jake.

[MANICHAEAN]

The Volcanic Eucharist Part 6.

At the very base of both the garden and his soul; for the first time since a child,he prayed, and as he did so, the capillaries in his forehead began to burst. Sweat and blood mingled together and dropped to the ground, for there are those that are possessive of that which they regard as theirs.

Leopardi cried out, "Abba. In santa pace pia, Dite la vostra, ch'io detto la mia,"

“Father. In holy pious peace tell yours, for I have told mine.”

At the other end of the garden he sensed correctly that his friend slept. A failure to stand with him; to watch in this hardest hour added to his pain, and sense of isolation.

Thus three times he prayed, prostrate upon the earth, grasping the very roots of the trees, and three times it took the Prince to exhaust himself in overloading this sensitive man with distress and emotional suffering in an already depleted body.

“****u 'un porta tempu /The story takes no note of time,"

Three times he returned to the sleeping Antonio.

“Sleepest thou? Couldest not thou watch one hour?”

Then finally a peace came over him; a finality of acceptance that if a person has sufficient faith in an unknown being, that they will only ever pray for what is willed rather than what they want. He realized now that in meditating on love and death that night, that they are in fact, twins: the one that generates all things of beauty and the other that puts an end to all ills. Love made strong, cancels the fear of death and when it dominates the soul, it makes it desire death. Happiness he now knew consisted in dying in the drunkenness of passion.

Exhausted he looking down at his friend for the final time, saying;

“Take your rest now Antonio: it is enough, the hour is come.”

Antonio awoke and perceived the distress of Leopardi. Crying for help from the house, which eventually came, the latter was carried to his room where he lay.

Outside, among the trees, a form, that had been sent to strengthen him faced outwards; hardly perceptible among the olives; it stood silently and watched.

[MANICHAEAN]

The Volcanic Eucharist Part 6.

Duplicated and removed again due to Papua New Guinea gremlins!!!!

[Gilliatt Gurgle]

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" Mt 26:41
You draw a very strong parallel to Gethsemane.
Like Peter, Antonio finds it difficult to remain alert and pray, but it seems that his presence was support enough.
The last line gives us some solace for Leopardi, with the appearance of the form among the olives whether it be an angel or perhaps Christ.




Andrea Montegna
"The Agony in the Garden"


http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/ae114/tabuka1/Paintings%20Drawings%20and%20Sculpture/AndreaMontegna_AgonyintheGarden_zps70618251.jpg

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear Gilliatt
You are right. As the story evolved and the part of the Easter Passion of Christ approached, I unashameably drew on the Garden of Gethsemane story, even though Leopardi was an atheist. I have always believed that Jesus was under satanic attack that night and they tried to break him in his mortal form to avoid the crucifixion and all that it later implied. An angel was sent to sustain him.
Thank you for the Montegna, one of my favourites.
Best regards
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

The Volcanic Eucharist Part 7.

The physician had been, and within the room whispers were discerned; hushed and cloaked in the solemnity that accompanies the death of one dear. Leopardi’s sister and Antonio had taken it in turns to stay with him; but now as before, Antonio slumped in the bedside chair, had slipped into the comforting nadir of deep slumber.

A moon generated glow from the partially drawn curtains applied itself upon the flat ceiling; a translucent overlay to what was to be Leopardi’s last mortal view. If only, he could have seen once more, the Bay of Naples below or the volcano of Vesuvius so near. To leave this life, just looking at a ceiling seemed to him ridiculous.

Closing his eyes, he still strove for that which had eluded him all of his short life; a love that exalts as a living or vitalizing force, even if unrequited. This had been the case in so many instances.

He remembered the last; that of his love for Fanny Targioni Tozzetti, the wife of his Florentine doctor; another illusion of an idealized, eternal woman, “sua donna,” who placates suffering, disillusion and bitterness. She had been the able manipulator whose perfect body had hidden a corrupt and prosaic soul. She, out of them all had been the demonstration that beauty is dishonest.

“Arrayed in robe of violet hue, thy form Angelic I beheld, as it reclined On dainty cushions languidly, and by An atmosphere voluptuous surrounded; When thou, a skillful Syren, didst imprint Upon thy children's round and rosy lips Resounding, fervent kisses, stretching forth Thy neck of snow, and with thy lovely hand, The little, unsuspecting innocents Didst to thy hidden, tempting bosom press. The earth, the heavens transfigured seemed to me, a ray divine to penetrate my soul. Then in my side, not unprotected quite, deep driven by thy hand, the shaft I bore, Lamenting sore; and not to be removed, till twice the sun his annual round had made.
A ray divine, O lady! to my thought Thy beauty seemed. A like effect is oft by beauty caused, and harmony, that seem the mystery of Elysium to reveal. The stricken mortal fondly worships, then, His own ideal, creature of his mind, which of his heaven the greater part contains. Alike in looks, in manners, and in speech, the real and ideal seem to him, in his confused and passion-guided soul. But not the woman, but the dream it is, that in his fond caresses, he adores. At last his error finding, and the sad exchange, He is enraged, and most unjustly, oft, the woman chides. For rarely does the mind of woman to that high ideal rise; and that which her own beauty oft inspires in generous lovers, she imagines not, nor could she comprehend. Those narrow brows, Cannot such great conceptions hold. The man, Deceived, builds false hopes on those lustrous eyes, And feelings deep, ineffable, nay, more Than manly, vainly seeks in her, who is By nature so inferior to man. For as her limbs more soft and slender are, so is her mind less capable and strong.
Dead is that Aspasia, that I so loved, aye, dead Forever, who was once sole object of My life; save as a phantom, ever dear, That comes from time to time, and disappears. Thou livest still, not only beautiful, But in thy beauty still surpassing all; But oh, the flame thou didst enkindle once, Long since has been extinguished; thee, indeed, I never loved, but that Divinity, Once living, buried now within my heart. Her, long time, I adored; and was so pleased with her celestial beauty, that, although I from the first thy nature knew full well, and all thy artful and coquettish ways, yet her fair eyes beholding still in thine, I followed thee, delighted, while she lived; Deceived? Ah, no! But by the pleasure led, of that sweet likeness, that allured me so, a long and heavy servitude to bear.
'Tis true my days are laden with Ennui; yet after such long servitude, And such infatuation, I am glad my judgment, freedom to resume. For though A life bereft of love's illusions sweet, Is like a starless night, in winter's midst, Yet some revenge, some comfort can I find For my hard fate, that here upon the grass, Outstretched in indolence I lie, and gaze Upon the earth and sea and sky, and smile.

Postscript:
Leopardi died of edema on the 14th June 1837, in Naples, at the age of thirty-nine. Ranieri said of his friend: "His whole life was not a career like that of most men; it was truly a precipitate course towards death." According to Ranieri, Leopardi never had physical sexual experiences with women. Is that important in the scheme of things? As the story teller, I’m perhaps not the one to judge; for perhaps in the end, that physical expression of the most sensitive of emotions would in this gifted, sensitive individual’s case have been but remnant ashes on a soul destined to strive and give expression to such.

[Hawkman]

Well I'm not quite convinced of the relevance in the title. Other than a passing reference to Vesuvius, there is little evidence of vulcanism in this potted, and in places fictionalised biography. Neither is there much suppering, although there does seem to be an abundance of soulful suffering. There is some beautifully descriptive writing though, with the exception of one truly execrable paragraph and the occasional confusion of simple past and past participle. The depiction of the bay of naples has a veritas which leads me to speculate about the author's familiarity with the area. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that you'd spent some time there in the course of your globe-trotting.

I can't claim any particular familiarity with Leopardi's history or work, but I was prompted to do a little digging on the internet where I discovered that he died of cholera* (a somewhat less romantic end than you seem to have given him) and that he was an atheist, which makes your Gethsemane scene a little ironic.

That you appear to find his writing deeply affecting is evidenced by your overall treatment of the subject and by the inclusion of some quotes, which also serve to pad the piece out a bit. However, as a biography it doesn't really satisfy, as the snippets are delivered episodically. As a story (especially a short one) there is just too little action and no real plot. He's born, reads a lot, gets sick, writes some poems, doesn't have a love life, writes some more poems and then dies. Not a lot of room for your trademark humour in there.

The piece's strength definitely lies in your use of descriptive language and your original prose is enjoyable to read. I'm afraid I don't read or speak Italian and have an innate suspicion of translation, being reliant on more learned scholarship to assess how true it is to the original, but I welcomed the introduction to Leopardi's work as a broadening of my education.

An ambitious offering and something different from your usual fare, but I'll still look forward to a few good belly laughs should you be inclined to offer them.

Live and be well - H

*PS. Leopadi died during the cholera epidemic of 1837, but his body was not burned as the stringent health regulations of the time required. My stating that he died from cholera was an assumption but may well be wrong.

LLAP - H

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear Hawk
At last some constructive criticism. I do not intend to refute a single thing you have said. Guilty as charged M’Lud !!
I’ve had the occasional mauling from Auntie, (who hasn’t?), but really do appreciate honest opinions made in a constructive manner. Sometimes we are too close to what we write and need that objectivity from someone outside with an appreciation of the craft.
Best wishes.
M.