In Maremma Read Online Free PDF

happiness makes itself. In Florence, the name given to that sense of being overwhelmed—and even made unwell—by beauty is Stendhal syndrome. One could suffer from a similar malady there. Beauty was one of its causes, though not the principal one: its principal cause was the sense of colliding with a happiness in the cosmos that seems endless, that comes almost as a breeze, or a descended magical cloud. This is boredom’s antonym.

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    I N OUR PART of Tuscany, there were sagre (festivals) celebrating, among other things, acqua cotta (cooked water), chestnuts, strawberries, strozzapreti (a fresh pasta made without eggs), snails, fava beans and pecorino, artichokes, bruschetta, tripe, panzanella (bread salad), grapes, capitone (eel), and polenta. One sagra was very much like another, however. Our most memorable was our first. DL is speaking here.

    Florence, late summer: all over the city bright yellow posters advertise a festival of tortellini and wild boar to be celebrated in the town of Ronta. I take this as a sign that the fall has nearly arrived—and about time, too: August was brutal, the Arno a malarial trickle, the city emptied of its inhabitants, an art-historical amusement park roamed by bands of grim-faced tourists. But now the August tourists have left, the Florentines have come stumbling back from the seaside, and fresh rain is flushing the river. It is no longer so hot that the switching on of a lightbulb is painful. Indeed, it is even possible to contemplate wearing sweaters.
    The season of work is also fast approaching, so in preparation for a book I want to write, I have become
engaged in looking for images of Tiresias, that mythical seer who came upon two copulating snakes and hit them with a stick, after which he spent seven years living as a woman. Ovid made Tiresias famous, as did T. S. Eliot, but according to my art historian friend Andrea, only one Italian painter, Giulio Carpioni, ever depicted him on canvas. Naturally I’m curious to see the picture. “Is there a book?” I ask.
    â€œYes, one, but written by an art historian who brings terrible luck. A boy took this book on an airplane and the plane ha caduto.”
    â€œBut how do you know—”
    â€œYou must never say the name of this art historian, and if anyone ever says his name in your presence, you must touch your coglione.”
    I pause to digest this information. “Do you have a copy of the book?” I then ask.
    â€œPer carità! I wouldn’t dare.”
    Well, I would. So I go to Libreria Internazionale Seeber on Via Tournabuoni and ask the very knowledgeable clerk if he knows the book. “Yes,” he says, “it is by _________________.” (I touch my coglione.) “We had one copy, but it sold three months ago. We were glad to have it out of the store.”
    â€œAnd will you be getting any more?”
    He looks at me as if I’m mad to suggest he take such a risk, so I thank him and leave. Poor Carpioni! I’m thinking. What a fate, to have been studied by ! And poor , who must live his life in exile, shunned by his peers, denied entry to the myriad conferences and congresses, the enjoyment of which, as far as I can tell, is the chief summertime occupation of the academic world. Why, right now just such a conference
is taking place in Florence: an international gathering of statisticians, one of whom calls me up when I get home from the bookstore; it seems that twenty years ago, in Paris, she introduced my brother to his wife. We meet for coffee at the Cantinetta Verrazzanno. “At this moment there are three thousand statisticians in Florence;” she tells me. “If you threw a stone in the Piazza della Signoria, you’d probably hit a statistician, and believe me, you’d have my blessing.” I smile. It occurs to me only later that even her joke is in its way statistical.
    On the way home I buy focaccia, tomatoes, and figs, but as is often the case