A case in point. “Ole” in Venetian are (or were) terracotta containers for cooking food. I think “terracotta containers for cooking food” would sound just as awkward in Italian as it does in English. And “tajine,” “chatti,” “shaguo,” “donabe,” “palayok,” or “Romertopf” wouldn’t be much of a step in the right direction, either. This would definitely be one nizioleto to leave alone.
The bedsheets, as you recall, are known as nizioleti here, and are the characteristic street signs with their often-exotic names in the Venetian language.
But hidden within them was a problem which nobody had ever noticed — nobody except Tiziana Agostini, the Assessore (person officially responsible) for Place Names.
The nizioleti are in Venetian, but she thought they should be in Italian. Time to move on, leave that quaint little old past behind, step up the game. Was she ever surprised last December when she discovered that the Venetians were massively opposed to this cultural non-improvement. A citizens’ group quickly formed to stop the madness and promote the repairing and repainting of the good old names that were already in place and doing just fine as they were, thanks so much.
Citizens’ groups here can’t count on accomplishing much beyond letting their dudgeon be known, but in this case the response came from everywhere, it seemed, and it was unanimous: We want the old names back. Don’t fix the names. Leave the names the hell alone.
And the outcry seems to have worked.
Ms. Agostini came out from under her desk when the bombardment stopped, and has been meeting with the core citizens’ group with the intention of reviewing and correcting the situation. Fancy way of saying “Put the words back where they belong.”
Meanwhile, the Gazzettino has undertaken a poll of its readers. Every day for about a week (the last day will be March 16), the same list of names is published in the paper, and the reader can indicate his/her preference by ticking the appropriate box. Then one merely has to cut out the little survey form, and take it to one of the drop-off stations. Happily, one of them is right here in via Garibaldi, though I would have gone all the way to the train station if that were my only option.
Naturally I’ve been ticking all the boxes on the right every day, and will keep on doing so till the end.
Then we’ll see if it ever made any difference.
This is the survey form, correctly filled out. The left column lists the words in Italian — on the right, their Venetian equivalents. I’m not, in fact, in favor of their adopting “San Zanipolo,” as everyone knows, but I voted for it on principle.Brief, to the point, and in perfect Venetian. Note the lack of double consonants, which is your first clue. You could make “salizada” (paved) more Italianesque by writing “salizzata,” I suppose, but the correct Italian term would have to be “selciato,” which isn’t progress. “Streta” means “narrow” (in Italian, stretta). Anyway, it’s fine like it is already.The Street of the Little Fig Tree. In Italian, it would be “del piccolo fico.” Fine, but this is so much more appealing. The tree itself seems somehow smaller in Venetian.
Every so often, someone will say/ask/opine: “You live in Venice? I really envy you! It must be so wonderful! What’s it like?”
Because dreams are fragile and precious, and we all need more of them, not fewer, I usually answer in a generic way, while still lingering somewhere in the vicinity of the truth. Yes, it’s beautiful; yes, it’s amazing; yes, it’s unique, etc. etc. But I usually limit myself to one word: “Arduous.” Not all day, not every day, and the rewards outweigh the drawbacks. Also, “arduous” is simpler than “obstacle course.”
No cars — how great! No elevators — how somewhat less great! And so on. With all due respect to every person who has ever lived, in every military in every country, here is a glimpse of what a particularly demanding day here feels like.
There are at least two ways to say “obstacle course” in Italian.
The simpler and less emotionally-loaded term is “corso ad ostacoli.” You can figure that out even if you don’t speak the language.
The other, which reflects more clearly the reality as she is lived, is “percorso di guerra.” If you know that “guerra” means “war,” you don’t need to examine the subtleties of “percorso.” However, my dictionary renders this as “assault course.”
You can already see how “arduous” is better. I’ll give you a little example of what that can mean in ErlaWorld.
A few weeks ago I got a new desk. I ordered it online, and it was delivered to our door in a box (assembly required). Just like in the real world.
But then I needed a new bookcase to accompany it. Space here being measured in micrometers, I had to be cunning and clever regarding materials and dimensions and cost. So I spent days researching “bookcases.”
Nothing on Amazon, nothing from IKEA. Nothing from my other two or three dependable vendors, such as Staples. This was annoying.
Hacking my way through the online underbrush, I managed after several hours to locate a company — Leroy Merlin, for the record — which sells the steel-chrome wire elements I wanted, in dimensions that would work. But this company did not enable online orders. I had to go to the store. The store is in Marghera.
We do not have a car, so the bus is our only option, short of asking for a ride from somebody, which is always more trouble than it’s worth. So the bus, in itself, is no novelty to me, and on the whole it’s not a hugely inconvenient way to get from here to there. But this expedition was going to be into uncharted territory.
I checked maps, I checked the ACTV website. Then I called the store to ask which bus would bring me from Venice to them. “Take any bus going along the Brenta, or to Padova,” I was told. And get off where? “The stop called ‘Industria.'”
The ACTV website listed one bus that made sense, but did not identify a stop called “Industria.” (Much later, which is typical in these sagas, I found a stop called “Incro. via Colombara,” or intersection with via Colombara, which would have solved my dilemma. But I was still working on the assumption that the man knew what he was talking about.)
At this point I began to notice the familiar sensation of moving forward, but on terrain which felt progressively less stable, so to speak. It’s the point at which a project goes from “time-consuming but logical” to “perplexing,” and onward to “You’ll just have to figure it out for yourself.”
The Industrial Zone of Marghera, which doesn’t look especially good even when seen 7 km (4 miles) across the lagoon from the Lido. The town behind it looks pretty much as you would expect a town would look that was built in the Thirties to house thousands of workers.
Lino and I left the house at 1:30. We got to Piazzale Roma in time to miss the bus that left at 2:10, so we took the one that left at 2:25.
We asked the driver to let us off at “Industria.” He looked blank. “Do you know where the “Industria” stop is?” He shrugged.
A look at this map will give a general overview of the terrain to be explored. Our destination was just above the traffic circle in the center, where “SS 11” can be seen. https://maps.google.it/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&t=h&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=101654411990271013228.000479bf30e5e06038cf8
I had consulted several maps, so I had a general idea of the territory, but not the bus stops. So we got off two stops early, as we quickly discovered. We walked back to a bar where we could get some details. Retraced steps and proceeded on foot, as per plan, to the store. It only took about 15 minutes, but as usual in unfamiliar situations, it felt like more. So we were at the store by 3:00.
The map on the ACTV website is only relatively clear (blue line). We should have descended at stop #13, but instead got off at #11. Bonus: Each bus stop has a sign with a number, but the number does not correspond to the numbers on the ACTV map. So far, so normal.
If you ever need to know, there are six stops on via Fratelli Bandiera, listed as “1/6,” “2/6” and so forth. Then the road changes its name to SS 11 (State Road 11), or “via Padana,” which is also not marked on the map. And the numbering begins again: “1/6,” “2/6,” etc. As for “Intersection with via Colombara,” the street name is not written on any surface within a radius of 40,000 miles. It might be written on the side of a yurt on the Golodnaya Steppe.
This is what I was looking for, more or less. I wanted something taller and broader, but still, it didn’t seem that I was asking for the Holy Grail. Which was not on their website anyway.
Finally inside the store, we went through the identifying-the-components phase and were well underway with the salesperson till I asked about getting a “controventatura.” He looked blank. (Maybe I should have asked him where the “Industria” stop was. Oh wait — he already knew. He walks to work from the bus every day.) This wasn’t encouraging — not only is it his language, it’s his job.
I had to explain that it’s a brace.
He said they didn’t have them.
I mentioned that they were listed for sale on their website. But this meant nothing because the website evidently is created in France, the company’s home base, and the goods are distributed according to some system. The “bookcases in Italy don’t need braces” system.
Complete order: Four metal stanchions 180 cm (70 inches) high. Four metal shelves 121 cm (47 inches) long and 20 cm (8 inches) deep.
A package of four small round wheels.
Total cost 141 euros, which is not important. What is important is what we were told when we asked the charge for having it delivered to our little hovel in the historic center of the most beautiful city in the world.
“120 euros,” was the reply.
Rico, give me options!
The store could deliver our modest amount of merchandise to Tronchetto, and we could pick it up there; cost, a paltry 60 euros.
We could have rented a car for about half that, to drive to the store and bring our stuff to Tronchetto. But that would have added way too many more moving parts to the already self-complicating project.
So we paid the 60 euros, and were told it would be delivered to Tronchetto next Tuesday (a week to wait for this minuscule amount of merchandise? They must have been waiting for somebody to order a new set of doors and windows, or 90 bidets, or something else that would make the trip worthwhile.)
We walked back to the bus stop, where the bus was just pulling away. We waited for about half an hour, standing on the shoulder of the road in one of the more dreary parts of the Venetian hinterland as traffic hurried past us. A scattering of small, monotonous houses ahead of us, interspersed with abandoned land. Behind us, the deteriorating grey hulks of cast-off factories, part of the now mostly derelict Industrial Zone which once provided work to thousands. Up the road, more houses, some bar/cafes, intermittent small hotels, and the church of Gesu‘ Lavoratore, or Jesus the Worker.
As the sun dropped, the girls began to appear, strolling along the roadsides to lure commuters, truckers, taxi-drivers, or anyone else who had the time and the space to pull over. Now I understand the hotels.
The view from the bus stop looking up via Fratelli Bandiera. I was impressed that there could be a trash can here, out in the middle of I’ll-never-see-home-again-Land, while there is only one in the middle of via Garibaldi. As for the view, of course there is a difference between “ugly” and “inconvenient.” This part of the municipality of Venice manages to be both.
Finally the bus came. In 20 minutes or so we were at Piazzale Roma. We walked to the vaporetto stop. We waited with about 180 other people to get on the next vaporetto. We managed it. It took 25 minutes to reach the Giardini stop. Then we walked to our house.
We walked in at about 5:30. We’d been on our feet for almost the entire four hours of this little Venetian pilgrimage. Part of that time was spent discussing what sort of boat we were going to be able to wrangle in order to get to Tronchetto and pick up our stuff and get it home.
If you don’t own a motorboat, which we don’t, the options are to borrow one, with or without driver (raising the question of remuneration), or… row. I think we’re probably going to row all the way over and back.
Yes? A question in the back? Why didn’t we carry our purchase back to Venice on the bus and vaporetto? Because of the 180-cm stanchions. Lino was convinced that they would be a big problem on the vaporetto, not to mention the bus.
However, we saw someone on the bus hauling a pair of skis and a big IKEA bag with two pairs of ski boots; I pointed him out to Lino saying, “Well, nobody minds him carrying his skis on the bus, and they’re no longer than the stanchions.”
Lino retorted that the bus wasn’t crowded, which wasn’t going to be true of the vaporetto; in any case, logic is a frail reed — you can’t lean heavy arguments against it. Besides, we both know that it’s the marinaio (the person who ties up the boat at each stop) who gets to decide what to allow on board.
A plumber once told us that he was about to get on the vaporetto one morning with his cart loaded with his tools, and the marinaio told him he couldn’t get on.
“The vaporetto was half-empty,” the plumber said. “So I asked him why?’
“He told me, ‘Because I said so.'”
I didn’t especially want to have to wait on the dock with my stanchions, which in fact are no higher than plenty of people, till a marinaio arrived who wouldn’t consider my cargo excessive. I would have risked it, but Lino drew the line.
Now I have to start thinking about how I can construct a brace, seeing that there are none to be had, not even for ready money.
Then again, it’s not hard to find reminders of why it’s worth putting up with all the inconvenience.
I must remember that one reason it still works so well for the egrets is because they have very few needs. Least of all for a bookcase.And speaking of logistics, I withdraw my objections to everything, Your Honor, and yield to the honorable new mother of twins. Zounds!
Nuances — I love them, whether they’re in colors or in words. If you look carefully, you’ll see that almost every color in this scene is some shade of grey.
Being a word person, and having a daily need to understand what’s being said around, or to, me, and also having a need occasionally to communicate some fact or feeling of my own, it’s to be expected that I’d be listening pretty much all the time to the wonders of the Venetian language. Which, as you know by now, is what I mostly hear spoken around the neighborhood (as opposed to Italian), and which is a wizard’s trove of phrases and terms that are utterly Venetian.
I’m not saying that similar expressions might not be heard (with different accents and spelling) elsewhere in Italy — certainly the concepts are universal. But there are so many Venetian ways of putting things which are perfect for the thing described that I sometimes struggle to recall what might correspond to them in English. Or even in the language of the divine Dante, which is something the let’s-rewrite-the-nizioleti squad quickly discovered. Certain things only work in Venetian.
These phrases express myriad nuances of human behavior, in terms which are often intricately bound to what was, at one time, the ordinary stuff of everyday life here.
Here are a few of the more common ones, which I, or somebody, is almost certain to use in the course of a normal day, or couple of days:
The death of Ganelon. Little did he dream that his infamy would live on in Venice for a millennium and more. (The Roland Tapestry, projet-roland.d-t-x.com/pages/pagesGB/01prefaceA.html)
Magansese(mah-gan-SEH-zeh): This is my latest discovery and it’s a beaut. It means “two-faced,” “treacherous,” “dangerously, unscrupulously untrustworthy.” There is a lighter expression which you might use more commonly, which is to call someone “una bandiera di ogni vento” — a flag of every wind — a person who goes whichever way the wind, public opinion, fashion, happens to be blowing.
But to call someone magansese is bigger and darker, and it comes from a certain malefactor of the Middle Ages, no less, known in Italian as Gano de Maganza, or Gano from Mainz. In English, he’s known as Ganelon. He betrayed Charlemagne to the Muslims in 778, which is taking etymology, not to mention vituperation, back a breathtaking distance. (The whole story is recounted in the Chanson de Roland, which I know you remember becauseof all those Chanson de Roland bubblegum cards you collected when you were a kid.)
A traitor, in a word. A fatal, scheming, hideous traitor. One that died more than a thousand years ago. Just think — a person so bad that even when everybody’s forgotten who he was, the stench of his villainy lives on, perpetuated by everyday folks needing the perfect word to vilify their so-called friends.
If there’s more than one — they sometimes travel in packs — the plural is magansesi.
“Tarring the Boat,” by Edouard Manet (1873). (The Barnes Foundation). If you’ve gotten yourself impegola’d in some situation, this is what you feel like — one hopes without the fire.
Impegola‘ (im-peg-oh-AH): It’s a verb form taken from pegola, or pitch. To say that you find yourself “pitched” doesn’t mean you’ve been blackened, nor that you’re in danger of having feathers stuck all over you and then be run out of town.
You would say that you’re impegola’ (or impegolada, if a woman) when you realize that you’ve gotten yourself involved in something that’s awkward or unpleasant in some unanticipated way, but that you would find awkward or unpleasant to get out of. Stuck, in a word, just as pitch was mixed with tar to waterproof all those thousands of wooden ships that kept the Serenissima in the game. Stuck in a particularly tenacious way which makes you discontented. “I offered to give her little boy a few English lessons for a week and now I’m impegola’ with his whole class every day for a month.”
You could also say that somebody else has impegola’d you. In any case, you’re stuck and you’ll have to find a way out on your own.
Cascar in covolo (cas-CAR in co-VOH-yo). Fall into a trap. Not a huge, menacing trap, probably, but if you’ve experienced this you’ve been tricked, shnookered, a little bit hoodwinked. You can do it to somebody else, too — make them fall into a covolo.
You can arrange your nets in a number of ingenious ways, but the endgame is always the same: being funneled into the covolo. (“La Pesca nella Laguna di Venezia, ” 1981).
The “covolo” is a neat tubular construction for accumulating the fish which have let themselves be induced to swim along a stretch of net which you have tied to poles, only to discover that they have obliviously swum into a container you attached to the last pole, from which there is no way out.
This covolo has certainly carried many fish to their destiny, but here it’s been decorated more cheerfully for Christmas. Maybe these are the spirits of the fish. In any case, you can see how the entrance (on the bottom) makes it impossible to exit.
If you have fallen into somebody’s covolo, they’ve tricked you in some way. It could be a practical joke, or a neat way of getting you to agree to do something before you realize what’s going on. You in turn could induce somebody to fall into a covolo. It doesn’t have to be serious or life-threatening. But once the falling-into-it has occurred, it can take some doing to get out. If you agree to the phone company’s too-good-to-be-true sales pitch without reading the fine print, you may well discover you’ve fallen into their covolo, along with a batch of other fish.
Far gagiolo (far ga-JYOH-yo). To “do” or “be” or “behave as” gagiolo. This is what someone does who is trying to pull a fast one. (Not to be confused with making you fall into the covolo. Just go with it.)
Somebody of whatever age who attempts some nifty little gag which ought to succeed because of its unexpectedness, or its audacity, or just plain luck, is trying to do a gagiolo. When it works, people may smile. When it fails, people may still smile, but sardonically. When the jig is up on some piece of reckless chutzpah, someone might say “Wow, you really thought you could do a gagiolo.”
A clunky example might be the person who gets his buddy to punch his time card so that he (person A) can quit work early.
Or better yet, the kid who says the dog ate his homework, and even brings his dog to class hoping to convince the teacher that its evident gastrointestinal distress is the result of ingesting five pages of algebra. Doing a gagiolo doesn’t depend on whether it succeeds; it’s enough to have tried. But you don’t get extra points if you succeed, either. The tinge of shiftiness will discolor any triumph you might be inclined to enjoy.
But wait, I hear you cry. What, or who, is a gagiolo? I can answer that. I have discovered that it was the name of the pirate who swooped down (along with his men) in the year 973 and stole the girls from the church of San Pietro di Castello in mid-ceremony. This is a swashbuckling tale with a happy ending for the Venetians, whose rapid pursuit succeeded in retrieving the girls, along with their jewelry, and their virtue (I think). And it was the beginning of the “Festa de le Marie,” which was celebrated on February 2 every year thereafter until 1379.
Seeing that Venice had so brilliantly out-swashbuckled Gagiolo and his henchpirates, it’s only natural that he would have become a byword, one intended to be pronounced with the tiniest bit of a sneer. Venetians are still dissing him 13 centuries later.
These are four perfect musettos (“musetti”) in the butchershop window. Alberto has written that they are “lean and petaissi,” intending it to sound like the two things on earth that you can’t resist. Better musettos should be petaissi than people, I always say.
Petaisso(pet-ah-EE-so). Sticky, in a gummy sort of way. If you make meatloaf and mix the meat and egg and other ingredients with your hands, the material has become petaisso. So have your hands.
What use could this word have? Well, the butcher on the fondamenta has a sign in his window that advertises his musetto, whose quality is evidently superior because they’re said to be “petaissi.” Kind of gluey, due to the pork skin mixed into it, which is claimed to be part of its appeal.
Other things can be described as petaisso — maybe the viscid pavement after the acqua alta recedes, for example. But its ideal use is to describe a certain sort of person, or behavior. It’s basically when you overdo being nice, or complimentary, or helpful — to the extent that you either make the other person uncomfortable or you embarrass yourself. Writing a thank-you note that is just a little bit too grateful or appreciative could be a small example of being petaisso; or writing a note that’s just fine, but then following it up with a present. And then following it up with a phone call.
Petaisso behavior is at its worst when it is seeking, or disseminating, gossip. A person can be petaisso when she just has to find out that last little bit about why you came back early from vacation, and when she has to share this information with all sorts of other people. It’s not merely that she’s a gossip — a petaisso is a sticky sort of gossip that you can’t get off your hands, just like the raw meatloaf.
I suppose men could sometimes be petaisso, but they have a smaller repertoire. I don’t think they care about clothes, children, or boyfriends, but you could find yourself stuck with a man who wants to tell you every intimate detail about his last blood test and his prostate. Some men of a certain age seem to be convinced that this is important information which is desperately sought by their victim. And they become just as petaisso as a musetto about it.
Impesta’ (im-peh-STA). In Italian, the plague is la peste. As you know, it was a catastrophically fatal and contagious disease that devastated much of Europe in various periods, and Venice was no exception. To call someone “impesta'” is an ugly thing indeed; it not only means that in your opinion the person is already afflicted (ghastly) with the plague but is probably spreading it (even worse). You wouldn’t say it to someone’s face but you might be driven to say it about them. “This impesta’ never answers my phone call when he sees its my number, he’s been avoiding me for a week because he owes me money.” You should be really angry or exasperated to say it, and it’s never used in a humorous or affectionate backhanded way, like some other denigratory words.
You might also hear someone say that someone is “Brutto/a come la peste” — as ugly as the plague. No laughing matter, around here. I recommend that you avoid trying these words out, they could really backfire.
In some people’s mouths, these never stop clacking.
Sbatola(z-BAH-toe-a). I truly love this one. I can’t decline it for you, but “sbattere” is a verb which means “beat” or “bang”, the go-to word for the racket made by unsecured shutters in the wind, or a desperate person at your front door at midnight as the posse is closing in. Now imagine that sound being created by somebody’s jaws as they talk, and talk, and talk. To say that somebody’s “ga ‘na sbatola” means that when that person starts — and he or she is always in “start” mode — he or she will not stop, probably not even when you just walk away.
This is not ranting, this isn’t free-associating, this is sheer abundance of one-sided conversation which must, at all costs, be expended on friends, acquaintances, friends of acquaintances, acquaintances of friends. All it takes is to ask this indefatigable person how he is or how things are going or what he’s having for lunch or where he went to school, and you discover that you might as well have asked “What’s the plot of “War and Peace?”.
This picture has no significance — I just put it in because I like it.
Here’s what we’re getting today for a refreshing change of meteorological pace: Rain.
It was raining yesterday, too, and it’s expected to continue for another two, or maybe three, days.
Jan. 14: Changing perspective does nothing to alleviate the grimy appearance of the world. In Venice there are not 50 shades of grey. There appear to be about three, all too closely related to be allowed to marry.
Well, you say, at least it’s not fog. This is very true. But the grey remains. And the fog is expected to return.
I think that all the grey clouds in the northern hemisphere decided to come to Venice on holiday. They got bored, hanging day and night over Oslo and Bydgoszcz and the Kaliningrad Oblast. So here they are and they’re really enjoying their vacation.
Jan. 15. What can I say? If I say I wish we’d get snow or hail, it would sound like I want things to be worse. Maybe I just won’t say anything.
“Oh, we don’t want to do anything,” they all agreed; “We want to relax, look around, just chill for a while in the most beautiful city in the world that we’ve all heard so eternally much about. We’ll just hang out and be all grey and dismal while we’re at it.” All these clouds either bought a one-way ticket because they have no definite plans to go home, or they drove here in a friend’s car and now they’ve lost track of the friend. It happens.
But here’s something wonderful: I heard the year’s first blackbird yesterday morning. As you know, this is a pivotal moment for me. I won’t attempt a sonnet in praise of this avian avatar but I bring him forward as a sign that spring is still a possibility.
Obviously not Shelley’s famous skylark, but for me the unmistakable outline and color of the blackbird does the same job for me. Whether this bird’s spirit is blithe maybe open to discussion, but I’m enchanted by whoever created this image on the parapet by the Giardini. Sing on!
