Signor Dido
Page 13
But Signora Dido did not want to get into the bus.
“No, I’ll stay. If need be, I’ll take another bus. Anyway, there’s a hotel up here. If I want, I can even spend the night.”
The bus started down. Signora Dido, left alone, began to climb.
The road was black; black was the land all around. Even the air was beginning to turn black.
“Dido! . . . Didooo! . . .”
Night fell, and Signora Dido went on climbing.
“Didooo! . . .”
And she thought: “He’s always like that. He says it and means it . . . I know him . . . And the others think he’s joking . . .
“Didooo! . . .”
Notes
Signor Dido’s Afternoon
1. professore: The honorific titles professore and dottore are commonly used in Italy as a show of respect (or ironic respect), even for people who are not professors, doctors, or university graduates. Both Savinio and Signor Dido comment on that habit in several of the stories that follow.
2. Tòmbolo: A town between Pisa and Livorno where American troops were stationed after the liberation of Italy in May 1945.
3. Alfieri-style: Count Vittorio Alfieri (1749–1803), poet and playwright, was the author of numerous tragedies, satires, comedies, and a book of memoirs. At the age of forty-eight, despite an aversion for grammar, he taught himself ancient Greek
A Visit from K . . .
1. birotae . . . dixit: Latin, meaning “A two-wheeler sped by burning liquid (the Pontiff has spoken).”
2. D’Annunzio: The poet Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) began as a symbolist and “decadent” but after the First World War became a political figure of strong nationalist tendencies, who had considerable influence on Italian fascism. He was in every way the opposite of Savinio, who often refers to him with playful sarcasm.
3. Vienna . . . The Sacher restaurant: The Prater (“the Meadow”) is a large public park in Vienna; Franz Joseph I (1830–1916) was the Austrian emperor; the Sacher is the most famous restaurant in Vienna, located in the Hotel Sacher.
4. d’antan: French for “yesteryear,” with the overtones of François Villon’s refrain Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? (“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”).
5. Vincenzo Gemito: Gemito (1852–1929) was a sculptor, painter, draftsman, and goldsmith, born in poverty in Naples and largely self-taught. Savinio considered him a major artist.
Muse
1. Fragson . . . the Alhambra: The Alhambra was the most famous music hall in Paris, showcasing in its long history virtually all the stars of popular music and jazz from both sides of the Atlantic. Contrary to Savinio’s belief, it continued to exist until 1967. Harry Fragson (1869–1913—Savinio mistakenly says 1914), a British-born Parisian music-hall singer, was perhaps the most popular performer at the Alhambra before his untimely death; it was estimated that his funeral, which Savinio goes on to describe, was attended by some 50,000 people.
2. Menin . . . ardori: The first two phrases are the opening invocations of the Iliad (“Sing, Goddess, the anger . . .”) and the Odyssey (“Sing in me, Muse, of that man . . .); the third line is from the invocation to the muse at the start of Jerusalem Delivered, an epic poem by Torquato Tasso (1544–1595): “You breathe heavenly ardors into my breast.”
3. Stendhal . . . Pages d’Italie: Stendhal was the pen name of the French novelist and essayist Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842), who wrote his “pages about Italy” in 1818. In an article from 1950, Savinio referred to Stendhal as mio autore preferito, “my favorite writer.”
Family
1. Heureusement . . . femmes: “It is fortunate that, in so profoundly antifeminist a country, there are still a few of us who uphold the rights of women.”
2. Alcestis . . . Samuel: This speech comes from Savinio’s play Alcesti di Samuele (“The Alcestis of Samuel”), in which the story of Alcestis is transposed to the conditions of Nazi Germany and the role of Hercules is given to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The play was produced in the 1949–1950 season at the Piccolo Teatro da Milano, directed by the young Giorgio Strehler.
A Head Goes Flying
1. Alcinean: From Alcinous of Drepane, who hospitably received Jason and Medea when they fled from Colchis.
2. tailleurs: French for “pants suits.”
Orpheus the Dentist
1. Agenzia Fix: Savinio’s radio opera, Agenzia Fix, was first broadcast by Radio Audizioni Italiane in 1950, directed by Carlo Maria Giulini.
2. Marius de Zayas . . . Apollinaire . . . Tiresias: The Mexican artist, writer, and gallery owner Marius de Zayas (1880–1961) moved to New York as a young man and collaborated with the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, owner of the gallery 291. Scouting for new work in Paris in 1914, de Zayas met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) and the young Savinio. Apollinaire’s two-act comedy, The Breasts of Tiresias, written in 1903, was first performed in 1917; Francis Poulenc’s operatic version premiered in Paris in 1947.
3. Casimir Delavigne: In the wake of Napoleon’s debacle, the French poet and playwright Casimir Delavigne (1793–1843) wrote patriotic political verses and plays which brought him considerable fame in his lifetime. His play Louis XI was written in 1832.
The Bearded Gentleman
1. Little Shrimp: Little Shrimp (Minuzzolo in Italian) is the eight-year-old hero of a book of the same title by Carlo Collodi (1826–1890), a precursor of the author’s more famous Adventures of Pinocchio.
The Small Plate
1. univira: Latin for a “one-man woman,” i.e., a woman married only once.
2. Phryne: The reference is to artistic portrayals of the trial of the Athenian courtesan Phryne. She was about to be condemned for a capital offense when her lawyer removed her robe as she stood before the jurors. They were so struck by her beauty that, in fear of Aphrodite, they acquitted her.
A Strange Family
1. “Dottore”: See note 1 to “Signor Dido’s Afternoon.”
2. Topo: A shortened form of Topolino (“Little Mouse”), nickname of the smallest model of Fiat.
The Feeling of Ravenna
1. Nastagio degli Onesti . . . dinner: Nastagio degli Onesti is the hero of a tale from the Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), which includes a vision, witnessed by Nastagio’s dinner guests, of a naked damsel being pursued through the forest of Chiassi by hounds and an angry horseman.
2. Honorius: Born in 384 ad, Honorius became emperor of Rome at the age of eleven, under the protection of the general Stilicho, and ruled until his death in 423. It was he who, in the face of repeated barbarian invasions, moved the imperial capital to Ravenna. In 410, Alaric, king of the Visigoths, sacked Rome.
Five Trees
1. Vera Cacciatore Signorelli: Vera Cacciatore, née Signorelli (1911–2004), was the curator of the Keats-Shelley House museum in Rome from 1933 to 1979. She was married to the poet Edoardo Cacciatore.
2. Oh, sie, Spassmacher!: “Oh, you joker!”
3. Los . . . her!: “Come on, boys! Bring Signor Dido’s painting here!”
A Villa in Rapallo
1. une seconde jeunesse: “a second childhood.”
2. rentiers: French term for people who live on private income, dividends, and so on.
3. Mister Liberty: In English in the original.
The Health Spa
1. Luca Signorelli . . . Orvieto: The frescoes of the Last Judgment in the cathedral of Orvieto are the most important works of the painter Luca Signorelli (1445–1523), a disciple of Piero della Francesca.
2. He will . . . form: Inferno VI: 98: Ripigliera sua carne et sua figura.
3. “Drop it”: Lassa perda in the original, the Roman dialect form of the standard Italian Lascia perdere.
4. metaphysical painting: In their youth (1909–1920), Savinio was the main theorist and his brother, Giorgio de Chirico, the main practitioner of what they called la pittura metafisica. The shortlived movement also included Mario Sironi, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio Morand
i, and others.
The Kiss
1. Roberto Bracco: Roberto Bracco (1861–1943), a Neapolitan journalist, was also a major dramatist, deeply influenced by the realism of Ibsen. Largely forgotten now, he was considered several times for the Nobel Prize. His outspoken opposition to fascism made it impossible for his work to be staged or published after 1929.
2. These organs . . . below: Laurence Binyon’s translation of Paradiso 2: 121–123: Questi organi del mondo così vanno, / Come tu vedi omai, di grado in grado, / Che di su prendono, e di sotto fanno.
3. So . . . two does: Binyon’s translation of Paradiso 4: 6: Sì si stareb-be un cane intra due dame.
4. chien . . . quilles: “a dog in a game of skittles.”
The Pizza
1. Elle a les foies blancs: “She is lily-livered.”
Charon’s Train
1. Mourir . . . beaucoup: In his Rondel de l’adieu (“Rondeau of Farewell”), the poet Edmond Haraucourt (1856–1941) wrote the sentimental line Partir, c’est mourir un peu (“To leave is to die a little”), to which the humorist Alphonse Allais (1854–1905) appended the line Savinio quotes: “To die is to leave a lot.”
2. Peter Schlemihl: “The Miraculous Story of Peter Schlemihl” (1814), by Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838), tells of how Peter Schlemihl sold his shadow to the devil in exchange for an inexhaustible sack of gold.
3. Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard: A novel by the French poet and novelist Anatole France (1844–1924).
4. Menippus: The passage that follows comes from the dialogue Menippus, by the satirist and itinerant teacher Lucian of Samosata (ca. 120–180 AD).
5. Elisir d’amore: An opera by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848), one of the leading composers of bel canto.
6. En voyage . . . musique: “Traveling without books, going to war without music . . .” (source not found).
The Night Watchman
1. Three English people: The description that follows is suggestive of the poets Edith and Osbert Sitwell and Osbert’s lover David Horner, who stayed in Taormina in 1952.
2. Guglielmone: i.e., “Big William.” The reference is to the title of a famous caricature of Kaiser Wilhelm II by the Italian socialist writer and artist Gabriele Galantara (1867–1937).
No Brakes
1. Primo Carnera: Primo Carnera (1906–1967) was a world heavyweight boxing champion famous for his massive size.
A Mental Journey
1. Armida: In Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (see note 2 to “Muse”), Armida is a Saracen witch who tries to prevent the crusaders from taking Jerusalem; she plans to murder the brave Christian soldier Rinaldo but instead falls in love with him, unhappily as it turns out. (In one of his variations on the names of Signor Dido’s children, Savinio calls them Armida and Rinaldo. Elsewhere he calls them Agnese and Rodolfino. The real names of Savinio’s own children are Angelica and Ruggero, after characters in another Italian epic, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.)
2. Hic . . . est: Latin, meaning “Here you were born, here you lie.”
The Disappearance of Signor Dido
1. the poetry prize: That is, the prestigious Etna-Taormina International Poetry Prize, awarded in the decades following the Second World War.
2. Mongibello: An alternative name for Mount Etna, an active volcano located near the east coast of Sicily, between Taormina and Catania.
3. Enceladus . . . dreams: Enceladus belonged to the race of giants produced by the earth goddess Gaia, fertilized by drops of blood from the castrated Uranus. In the fight between the giants and the Olympian gods, Enceladus was wounded by a huge missile hurled by Athena, which turned him into the island of Sicily. The volcano’s fires are said to be his sighs and the tremors his rolling in pain from his wound.
4. Empedocles: The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (ca. 490–430 BC) was a native of Agrigento, then a Greek settlement in Sicily. He is thought to have been the last Greek philosopher to write his works in verse.
5. Heraclides . . . Hippobotus: The philosopher Heraclides Ponticus (ca. 390–310 BC), who studied under Plato in Athens, wrote on a wide variety of subjects. Hippobotus (ca. 200 BC) was a historian of philosophy and philosophers; his works, including the account of Empedocles’ death, are frequently quoted by Diogenes Laertius (third century AD) in his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers.
6. Compar Alfio: A rich merchant and betrayed husband, who sings a famous aria in the opera Cavalleria Rusticana, by Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945).