L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2021 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano F orget about mo- dern slang and the effects of so- cial media on everyday's lan- guage. It's time to talk about Dante. Yes, again: it's his year, in the end, expect to share few more morning coffees or relaxing evening aperitivi with him through our pages in the next few months. You see, it's easy to think about h i m a s s o m e b o r i n g f e l l a w h o w r o t e o l d - f a s h i o n e d poetry and had a penchant f o r f a i n t i n g a t t h e l e a s t opportune times — ah, how did we love those passages in the Divine Comedy and the Vita Nova where stress o r e m o t i o n s w o u l d p r o v e too much for our Sommo Poeta! — but Dante is way more than that. He is the father of the Italian langua- ge — we said a thing or two about it in our last edition — and a symbol of culture a n d p o e t r y , b u t w e o f t e n don't realize how present he is in the way we talk. Just like Shakespeare gifted the E n g l i s h l a n g u a g e w i t h a s t r i n g o f r e a l l y p o p u l a r e x p r e s s i o n s ( w a t c h d o g ? C h e c k . B r e a k t h e i c e ? Check. Wear one's heart on one's sleeve? Check), so did Dante to Italian. F o r e x a m p l e , d i d y o u know that the locution Bel Paese is a Dantean inven- tion? It was him who first c a l l e d o u r b e l o v e d h o m e "the beautiful country," in the Inferno 33, verse 80, del bel paese là dove il sì suona, " o f t h e b e a u t e o u s l a n d where 'sì' is heard," as one English translation recites. But there are many, many more. T h e a d j e c t i v e f e r t i l e ("fertile" in English) was introduced to the masses through the Divine Comedy: it comes from the Latin verb ferre, to produce, and Dante used it to describe Umbria, where San Francis of Assisi was born: a fertile costa, "a fertile land" that makes its appearance in Paradiso 31, verse 45. In spite of soun- ding a lot like modern slang, the ubiquitous expression stai fresco ("you can go whistle for it!") also comes from Dante. It has a slightly more complex story behind t h a n " f e r t i l e " a n d " B e l Paese," because it is strictly associated with the structu- re of Dante's Hell, where the worst of all sinners, traitors, spent eternity immersed in the frozen vastness of lake Cocytus, with icy wind — b l o w n b y n o o t h e r t h a n Lucifer himself — hitting t h e i r f a c e s f o r e t e r n i t y . C h i l l y p l a c e , I ' d s a y , a n d that's why il Poeta tells us i p e c c a t o r i s t a n n o f r e s c h i d o w n t h e r e , " s i n n e r s a r e kept cold" (Canto 32 verse 117). G a l e o t t o f u … i s t h e m o s t r o m a n t i c o f o u r D a n t e a n i n h e r i t a n c e s . I n truth, the verse continues with 'l libro e chi lo scrisse ("The book and writer both/ Were love's purveyors") and i t ' s F r a n c e s c a d a R i m i n i who utters it. Who's she? W e l l , o n e h a l f o f m o s t famous — and unfortunate — couple in the history of l i t e r a t u r e , w i t h t h e o n l y e x c e p t i o n , p e r h a p s , o f Romeo and Juliet. Forced into marriage with coura- g e o u s b u t d e f o r m e d Gianciotto Malatesta by her father, Francesca eventually f e l l i n l o v e w i t h h e r husband's brother, Paolo: t h e t w o h a d t h e h a b i t t o spend their afternoons rea- ding and it was while they w e r e i m m e r s e d i n t h e adventures of Lancelot and the Knights of the Round Table that, one faithful day, they succumbed to the call o f p a s s i o n . I n t h a t b o o k , Q u e e n G u i n e v e r e w a s pushed into the powerful arms of Sir Lancelot by her own seneschal Galehaut, a name that sounds just like galeotto to Italian ears. So, just like the noble servant was "the cause," so to speak, of his queen's adulterous r e l a t i o n s h i p , s o w a s t h e b o o k f o r F r a n c e s c a a n d Paolo. This is why, today, we use galeotto fu to intro- duce whatever made us fall in love with something or someone. One of my personal favo- r i t e s w h e n i t c o m e s t o D a n t e - c r e a t e d s a y i n g s i s certainly fare tremare le v e n e e i p o l s i , a dar kl y gothic way to say "being ter- r i f i e d , " s o m e t h i n g y o u ' d expect out of an Edgar Allan P o e ' s t a l e . L i t e r a l l y , i t means something scares you to the point that your "veins and wrists shake:" now, if that's not a powerful image, I d o n ' t k n o w w h a t i s . I l Poeta uses the expression in Canto 1 of the Inferno, ver- ses 87-90 when, terrified, he asks Virgil to save him from one of the three beasts of Hell, the she-wolf. The next two entries are so common I am sure you k n o w t h e m , i f y o u s p e a k Italian. When it comes to describe mediocrity, but we don't want to be too lingui- stically harsh, we usually say something — or someo- ne — is senza infamia e senza lode ("without prai- se or blame"), the idiomatic Italian version of that sanza 'nfamia e sanza lodo Virgil speaks in Inferno 3, verses 35-36, when describing the Ignavi, or "morally uncom- m i t t e d , " t o h i s d i s c i p l e Dante. And when we need to move on from a positive to negative topic in a discus- sion, we'd often say passia- mo alle dolenti note or, indeed, note dolenti ("let's move on to painful notes"), the words Dante says when h e h e a r s t h e t o r m e n t e d s c r e a m s o f t h e d a m n e d , which we find in Inferno 5, versus 25-26. That's quite a handful of words and expressions we u s e e v e r y s i n g l e d a y t h a t c o m e s t r a i g h t f r o m t h e Divine Comedy, and there's even more, in fact, too many to fit into one single article. P f f t ! A n d t h e r e i s s t i l l someone saying Dante is no longer relevant! GIULIA FRANCESCHINI HERITAGE HISTORY IDENTITY TRADITIONS Speaking like Dante! A statue of our Sommo Poeta, Dante Alighieri (Photo: © Floriano Rescigno | Dreamstime.com)

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