Dear Readers,
Italian is the most beautiful language in the world, because it has such an artistic pedigree i.e. Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), the great Italian poet. To buttress my claim I quote author Elisabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame, from whose book comes the homonymous film, starring actress Julia Roberts. As you may recall, prior to Italy’s unification, in 1861, Italians wrote and spoke in local dialects which often were mutually unfathomable. “In the sixteenth century, some Italian intellectuals got together and decided that this was absurd.
This Italian peninsula needed an Italian language, at least in the written form, which everyone could agree upon. So this gathering of intellectuals proceeded to do something unprecedented in the history of Europe; they hand- picked the most beautiful of all local dialects and crowned it Italian. In order to find the most beautiful dialect ever spoken in Italy, they had to reach back in time two hundred years to fourteenth- century Florence.
What this congress would henceforth be considered proper Italian was the personal language of the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. When Dante published his Divine Comedy back in 1321, detailing a visionary progression through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, he’d shocked the literature world by not writing in Latin. He felt that Latin was an elitist language, and that the use of it in serious prose turned literature into something that could only be bought with money, through the privilege of an aristocratic education.
Instead, Dante turned back to the streets, picking up the real Florentine language spoken by the residents of the city and using that language to tell his tale. A group of nationalist intellectuals much later in history sat down and decided that Dante’s Italian would now be the official language of Italy.” And so it came to pass that the Italian we speak today, is not Roman, Venetian or Neapolitan, but basically fourteenth century Florentine Italian as embellished by Western civilization’s great poet Dante Alighieri.
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Now, from Roland Bianchi, retired banker and my favorite local author (“Tales from a Tuscan Guitar”, “Delivery Boy”, “The Migration of Moro”, and recently “ReCAL Lections of a Bear”) comes word that his great, great, great grandfather Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi (1804-1873), was one of the intellectuals on “Italy’s language selection committee” responsible for establishing the Tuscan Dialect as the official language of modern Italy. Roland Bianchi, recently returned from Italy, shares bits about his forefather, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi with us. “Strapazzo” is a fun Italian word to pronounce.
It literally means stress; but it connotes more; like discomfort in an activity where you are hassled or frustrated. Travel is a good example. Travel is loaded with “strapazzo” and my wife Judy’s plan for a birthday trip for my 80th was no exception. Travel tales are notorious for scheduling conflicts, money conversion problems, security checks, rip offs, and one’s inadequacy to speak foreign languages.
The sound of zippers on luggage and finding a bathroom when you need one become exaggerated annoyances for me. Notwithstanding, the time with friends and cousins, especially in Italy, made up for all the “strapazzo” and confirmed a bit of family heritage I had almost forgotten. My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Guerrazzi and she was proud to tell me when I was a youngster, how she could trace her surname to Roman history. Guerra means War, in Italian from its Latin root. Guerrazzi were warriors in the Roman Senate. As a child, this didn’t impress me but later in life, strange coincidences stirred my curiosity.
My great, great, great grandfather, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi (1804-1873), wrote a classical Italian novel titled Beatrice Cenci, considered his masterwork among other books he authored. He graduated from the University of Pisa, in law, and later entered politics when Italy went through the “Risorgimento” or its unification struggles from city states to its central government of today. Francesco was a devotee of Dante Alighieri, (1262-1321) who wrote the Divine Comedy and was a follower of Giuseppe Garibaldi, (1807-1882) credited with being the unifier of the Italian city states.
Francesco was today’s equivalent of a left wing intellect whose writings eventually condemned him to prison for his radical leanings. He was incarcerated for five years for being pro unification. Part of his sentence was that he be deprived of pen ink, paper or any writing materials while in jail. According to my grandmother, he scratched the text and outline of his novel, Beatrice Cenci, with a rock on his cell wall. He erased and repeated the process memorizing the script and when he was released from jail, he published his masterwork within three months. In 1952, my then Irish fiancée and later mother of my children was taking Italian I at Cal Berkeley in anticipation of mar- rying into my Italian family.
I asked her one day how Italian classes were going. “I hate them,” she responded.“ Today they assigned this thick book by somebody named Guerrazzi and it’s tedious reading. It’s supposed to be an example of pure Italian grammar.” “I think he’s a couple of Greats away grandfather of mine,” I said in surprise.“Yeah, right,” she responded in disbelief. “Let me see the book” I argued. Sure enough, Beatrice Cenci by Guerrazzi. About twenty years later, my oldest son Russell, while at Harvard, tested the family lore by visiting the Harvard library where rare books can be read but not checked out.
“You got anything by a Guerrazzi?” he asked the librarian. The librarian answered she had several original prints and produced a copy of Beatrice Cenci. My sonflipped to the introduction fly page of the book to find an oil portrait reproduction of the author. “Can you Xerox this portrait for me?” he asked. “No, that’s prohibited” she said. A twenty dollar bribe later, Russell sent me our ancestor’s Xerox copy of his portrait. When I covered his mouth and nose, there was an unmistakable resemblance to my Dad, which was why my son sent me the Xerox. So, on my latest trip to Italy while visiting my cousins, the subject of Guerrazzi, came up. “You mean to say”, said my cousin, ”you have never been to his memorial on Monte Nero, near Livorno where he was born?” “No” I replied. I never took it seriously that he was my ancestor.”
“We’ll go tomorrow,” insisted my cousin and a two hours auto ride took my brother, who had joined me in Italy, and me, to Monte Nero, a mountain top overlooking the city and port of Livorno on the Mediterranean. Every mountain top in Italy has a church, a castle or a monastery and sometimes all three on its summit. This monastery, on Monte Nero, had a courtyard surrounded by arched alcoves dedicated to modern Italy’s founding fathers.The first was a relief of Dante Alighieri, with excerpts from his Divine Comedy carved in marble. The next arch had a statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, and depictions of battles the gen- eral had won to unify Italy.
The third arch honored Francesco Guerrazzi and his introduction to Beatrice Cenci was reproduced on marble, much like the Gettysburg address at the Lincoln Memorial. There were other founding fathers like architects, men of science and politicians throughout the rest of the plaza. We took pictures. When I got back home in the USA, I “googled” Guerrazzi and discovered about ten websites, biographies, etc., essentially confirming what my grandmother had been telling me all along. What surprised me the most, was that Guerrazzi promoted and was responsible for establishing the Tuscan Dialect as the official language for modern Italy because he admired the syntax of his literary hero Dante Alighieri.
The legalese he learned in law school in Pisa became today’s academic accepted dialect. Government documents are in Tuscan. TV news reporters speak Tuscan. Operas by Verdi and Puccini are in Tuscan dialect. The only exception I know is Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni, who wrote his opera in Sicilian. Newsprint exclusively uses the Tuscan dialect. True, other dialects like Sicilian and Genovese and others still persist but they are historical hangovers from the old city states.
When I had honeymooned in Rome some years ago we ate at a restaurant where they served us a honeymoon dessert consisting of two ice cream doves with slivered almonds as feathers. The dessert carvings were so large we could not consume them. We offered to share the treat with a family at the next table and the father introduced himself as a college professor. He said to me... “and where do you teach college?” “I’m not a teacher”, I answered, “I’m a banker.” “But you speak the Tuscan academic vernacular,” he persisted. “I learned to speak Italian from my Grandfather who was a Pisano and I had an ancestor named Guerrazzi”.
“Oh, that explains it”, said the professor. I guess the ghost of my forefather gave me away when I spoke in Tuscan idioms I didn’t know was proper usage. It has been fun discovering a celebrity in my history so late in my life. And, emotion and pride have definitely negated the “strapazzo” of travel and jet lag...”
