That picture I showed of the people outside the church for the funeral of Renzo Rossi and Natalino Gavagnin yesterday? I unwittingly took it too late. The florist’s tags on the flowers said the funeral was at 11:30, so I went home for a few minutes. When I returned, the ceremony had already started and I thought everyone standing around was waiting for it to begin. I definitely did not grasp the scope of the event.
Turns out there were SIX HUNDRED MOURNERS inside the church. There evidently wasn’t even enough space for air, which is why these folks are outside. Breathing.
Today the sun rose on a sunny, breezy, pleasant morning. Somebody in the canal just outside had tied up his motorboat while loading things for a happy day out with the family.
The man’s friend was passing on the fondamenta. “Hey!” the man called out. “Did you make your will?”
6 Comments
good. they deserved an honourable send-off. Too bad it had to happen now.
Glad to know they were given a good send off. Any idea what will happen to the people who caused the tragedy?
It’s way, way, way too soon to have any idea about what will happen to the boat’s owner/driver, who probably is the only person who will be accused. These cases can go on for years.
You’d think justice could be fairly swift in this case, in that two people died… but then again…
By the way is there any way I can “register” so I don’t have to type in my name and email every time I comment? Can I sign in with WordPress or something similar?
Dear Erla,
The poem by Leopardi is the free translation (hence the title “Imitation” of a poem “La feuille” by the French poet Antoine Vincent Arnault (1766-1834). The poem was for some reason very popular in the French anthologies for Italian schools, and I know it by heart from those times. For a strange coincidence, I recited it not more than a month ago to a friend poet (Franck Venaille, prix Goncourt pour la poésie, who often comes to Venice). He was amused because he had never heard of that poem or author, who in France has been forgotten. Something similar, in smaller scale, happened with Edgar Lee Masters, whose Spoon River Anthology is well known by every Italian my age but very little known in the USA.
Thanks for adding this (and I’m so glad you still remember it too. You guys went to Real School). I knew about the provenance but didn’t think it was important to the point of the post to throw it in as well. So I certainly appreciate your contribution here. One commentator I read opined that Leopardi’s version was better than the French; could be true, though it would be the first time ever that a translation improved on the original. Undoubtedly the French carried nuances that the Italian doesn’t, and vice versa. I don’t think it comes across well in English at all, but it would need a better brain than mine to understand why.