Goliarda Sapienza - The Art of Joy

No, it’s impossible to describe to anyone this joy, full of vital excitement, at defying time as a couple, being partners in stretching it out, living it as intensely as possible before the hour of the last adventure strikes. And when this old youngster of mine lies on top of me with his beautiful body, heavy yet light, and takes me as he’s doing now, or kisses me between my legs just like Tuzzu did back then, I find myself thinking oddly that death might simply be an orgasm as satisfying as this one.

‘Are you sleeping, Modesta?’

‘No.’

‘Are you thinking?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me, Modesta, tell me.’

Rome, 1967–76

The daughter of Giuseppe Sapienza and Maria Giudice, Goliarda Sapienza was raised in an atmosphere of absolute freedom from social constraints, in accordance with her parents wishes. Her father did not even allow her to attend school, lest she be exposed to Fascist forces and influences. Goliarda’s protagonist, Modesta, creates a similar world around her, resisting society’s rules, rejecting conventional norms and opposing Fascist restrictions. Sapienza’s book was written over a nine-year span, from 1967 to 1976, and published by Stampa Alternativa in 1998, and Einaudi in 2008.

1. A chiana is a plain or flat expanse: in Italian it is a pianura , from the Calabro-siculan chianura or chianu .

2. A coppola is a traditional flat cap worn by men in Sicily.

3. Ceusa is the fruit of the ceuso , or mulberry tree.

4. Voscenza is a dialect term that is used to express one’s respect toward the person being addressed. A shortened form of Vostra Eccellenza , Your Excellency, it is sometimes accompanied by hand-kissing and can mean anything from Your Grace, Your Lordship, Your Highness … or simply a deferential Sir or Madam. Serafina, a character in Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo , says: ‘They said to his uncle “Voscenza!” and they kissed their hands to him!’ (Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo: Play in 3 Acts , Dramatists Play Service, Inc.: 1951, Act I, p. 16).

5. Sister Teresa’s words paraphrase the Bible: ‘A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil.’ (Luke 6:45, King James Bible, Cambridge Ed.)

6. When Sister Teresa refers to a novice from the continent, she means the mainland. As can be seen elsewhere in the book, it was customary for Sicilians to refer to the Italian peninsula as the continent, as distinct from the island of Sicily.

7. The fagoniu that makes the reeds toss and stir is the west wind, the zephyr; from the Latin favoniu(m), faògna in Siculan, also known as foschia sul mare , mist over the sea.

8. The first of many references to La Certa , Death, which are found throughout the novel, may be an allusion to the Latin proverb Nihil morte certius , nothing is more certain than death, or mors certa hora incerta : death is certain, the time uncertain.

9. The verse ‘ E caddi come corpo morto cade ’ is from Dante’s Inferno V:142, and its translation, ‘And fell, even as a dead body falls’, is by Longfellow. (The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, tr., at www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1004/pg1004.txt)

10. The orphanage in Pietraperzia, where they want to send Modesta, is in the province of Enna, in the centre of Sicily.

11. The expression ‘Happier than God Himself in His paradise’ echoes Théophile Gautier’s words in his short story ‘ La Morte amoureuse ’ (1836): ‘If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God Himself in His paradise’ ( The Mummy’s Foot and Other Stories , Aegypan, 2008, Lafcadio Hearn, tr.); Gautier was a sceptic of Christianity.

12. The real tears Modesta weeps are a reference to Dante’s words in the Vita Nuova , XXIII:6: ‘ Allora cominciai a piangere molto pietosamente; e non solamente piangea ne la imaginazione, ma piangea con li occhi, bagnandoli di vere lagrime .’ ‘At that I began to weep most piteously, and I wept not only in my dream, I wept with my eyes, wet with real tears.’ ( Dante’s Vita Nuova , Mark L. Musa, ed. and tr., Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1973) Cf. also the prologue to Leoncavallo’s opera, I pagliacci ‘ ed ei con vere lacrime scrisse ’, ‘and with real tears he wrote’ (from the English translation of the original Italian text, EMI, 1954).

13. The Sicilian proverb ‘ Chi lassa la strata vecchia pi la nova, sapi chiddu ca lassa, ma non sapi chiddu ca trova ’ is roughly equivalent to the English ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know’, and literally means that a person who abandons a familiar path knows what he’s left behind, but not what he will find.

14. The mention of Doré’s Beatrice (here and again in chapter 26) refers to one of Gustave Doré’s series of illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy which shows Beatrice pointing, arm raised. See www.worldofdante.org/gallery_dore.html.

15. Modesta croons a lullaby to Beatrice in Sicilian dialect: ‘ fa la ‘O’ ’ (or ‘ fa la vò ’) is baby talk for ‘go to sleep’; the coppa is a ladle, used here to spank the child who won’t go beddy-bye.

16. The saying ‘ catanisi soldu fausu ’ means that people from Catania are false or insincere: a soldu fausu is literally a false coin, or counterfeit money.

17. The gabellotto was a figure somewhere between an administrator and an overseer, a man of considerable authority and power, quite different from a gardener or an armed guard ( il campiere ) of an estate. The gabellotto always carried his shotgun ( lo schioppo ) with him, a symbol not only of authority, but also of distinction. The campieri constituted a kind of private police force for the feudal estate and reported directly to the gabellotto and indirectly to the latifondista , or feudal landowner. These armed field guards and the sovrastanti or soprastanti , the gabellotto ’s trusted men, are mentioned throughout the book. According to information provided in ‘Storie di Sicilia di Fara Misuraca: I Fasci Siciliani’, the figure of the gabellotto dates back to the nineteenth century, when the Sicilian aristocracy began moving away from the interior to the city of Palermo, leaving their lands in the care of tenants, who paid a tax, a gabella , and were therefore called gabellotti . The gabella trade in west-central Sicily was largely controlled and run by mafia organizations, and many gabellotti were affiliated with these organizations, as were the aforementioned soprastanti and campieri . The gabellotti , in turn, would sublet the lands to the contadini , peasants, for a fee much higher than the gabella which they were required to pay to the landowners. During periods of work, braccianti , farm hands or labourers, offered themselves each morning in the piazzas of their villages, hoping to be hired by the feuds’ campieri or soprastanti (www.ilportaledelsud.org/fasci_siciliani.htm).

18. The words ‘ fui amata amando ’ recall Violetta’s aria ‘ Ah, fors’è lui ’ in Act One of Verdi’s La traviata : ‘ O gioia / Ch’io non conobbi, essere amata amando! ’, ‘Oh, joy … I never knew … To love and be loved!’ (From the libretto by Francesco Maria Piave after Alexandre Dumas, Jr.; online at www.dennisalbert.com/Opera/latraviata.htm).