Italian Grace Notes

— By familiarity, we lose the figures of speech and poetic thought imbedded in our mother tongue, and perceive them only in languages which have not yet become trite to us ; so I suppose the Tuscan peasantry are unconscious of the glamour which their soft idiom casts over homely people and things.

I remember being told by a woman near Lucca that her brother was so invaghita of my cook Graziosa that it was impossible to draw him away from her, though she was not suited to him at all, and was “ much too fat to work in the fields.” The word told its tale of the realm of fancy in which the youth dwelt, deeming his love vaga; that is, lovely with a nameless grace, beautiful in a subtle, indescribable way. To the world outside she was a stout, slatternly young woman ; within that fairy ring she was gracious and beguiling, like her name.

In talking with a deft, little Lucchese maid about getting a place, she said to me, “ Ah, I should like to go into a family where they would keep me all the year round, for I am ambiziosa di far carriera ” (ambitious to make a career). Do you wonder that a damsel who so dignified sweeping and dusting was always in demand ?

Returning once, with a party, from Ninfa, the vine-entangled Pompeii of the Middle Ages, our donkey man remarked, waving his hand towards a fleet-footed English girl who was well on in front, “ How swift she is ! She flies like the thought of man.”

As I finish a piece of work, my loyal Phyllis exclaims, “ Ah, God bless you ! You have hands of gold ! ” And when I inquire if the shops are open on a certain feast day, she replies, smiling, “ Eh no ! Even the birds do not turn over their eggs on Ascension Day.”

I asked my washerwoman whether she was a Roman, and she answered, with a deprecatory shrug, “ A Sabine, but it is just the same ; the Romans stole our women.” (As if it were a little matter of yesterday !)

An Italian never says to the obtuse foreigner, “ You do not understand,” but prefers the softer phrase, “ I have not made myself clear,” or, “ I expressed myself ill.”

The little words Prego and Anzi (like the German Bitte), as a response to thanks, seem to lift and disperse the weight of obligation in a gentle way which is lacking in English. It would take too long to try to enumerate the graceful, courteous little formulas of Italy.

A shabby coat is described as one that “ wept upon the wearer,” and in some parts of Tuscany the beggars appeal to the passer with the touching expression, “ Little brother [or, little sister], do charity.”

Most grace notes lose their delicate music in being translated, but many possess the charm of a veiled thought, and there are few more delightful books to the student than Abbate Giuliani’s Moralità e Poesia del Vivente Linguaggio della Toscana. He lingered long on the “olive-sandaled Apennine,” garnering the honey of unlettered but graphic speech from the lips of the peasants. Mentioning their common use of the word abbandonarsi, he says : “ It is beautiful to observe how this people turn it into metaphor, convincing one more and more that figurative speech is really the natural and common speech. Cicero wondered that rustics should say gemmare vites luxuriem esse in herbis lœtas segetes, but really it is they who produce similar figures to form their habitual language.”

Hear a ploughman describing the beechtree : “ Under the cold, the beech abandons itself, becomes mortified, can stand out no longer, and grows black ; it seems as though the cold broke its heart.” See this in a reference to a careless farmer : “ He who abandons the vineyard is abandoned by it.” The use of the word ammutolire (to grow dumb) is also interesting : wheat ammutolisce, ceases to flourish. Sap and fire grow dumb when they cease to flow and to burn. Stagnant water is spoken of as “sleeping,” and the culture of land as “taming the earth.” Here are a few expressions gathered at random through the book : partings are a file to the heart ; I counted the days with drops of blood ; in leaving he wept like a severed vine ; how did that caprice graft itself in you ? when there is peace in the home, one embraces more willingly the cross which God sends ; where there is a cross God is near ; children are like flowers, — they wilt quickly, and quickly revive ; the bread of the poor costs sorrow and sweat; my heart is knotted up when I think of it. Blindness is thus described : “ It is growing dark, and the world flies before its time.” A thief is referred to as “one who dries the pockets of others, and would steal the very cloak of St. Peter.”

The charm of many of the peasant expressions lies in their rhythmic beauty of sound, as for instance : “ Vecchio, avea nel euore Pardenza della gioventu.” (Old, he had in his heart the ardor of youth.) “ At home,” says another Pistoian, “ is my grandfather, and I love him with my whole soul ; I have always found shelter under his shadow.” Again : “ If one reflects, it is true that life is a continued chain of love ; we come out from one love and enter into a greater when we marry.” A mountain maiden, speaking of her love and jealousy for her sweetheart, says, “ It makes my heart ache that even the air should look upon him ; ” and a young rustic of Val di Greve expresses himself, “ In my work I think of my dama, I do not feel fatigue, everything pleases me ; there is great delight when love illumines the day.” There is a whiff of old Arcadia in the pretty Tuscan words damo and dama to denominate the country youth and his fair.

It is, I fear, a graceless task to tear out these petals of speech, but perhaps from the mutilated little specimens some may reconstruct the plant, and set it in imagination against its own background of sunny skies and vine-clad hills.