View from the Pier

Scenery is fine – but human nature is finer.
John Keats, 1795-1821

Mt Etna, Sicily

Sicily is a cultural mosaic of moods, attitudes, architecture, cuisine, and local lore, refracting centuries of conquest by neighboring civilizations covetous of its natural abundance and strategic location. Greater than the sum of its varied ethnic ancestries is Sicily’s pride in its diverse heritage. In my visit, prosaic snapshots of cultural influence swirled and then connected in a colorful kaleidoscope.

“Many centuries, many cultures” observed Vira Movelli, proprietress of an antique shop on fashionable Corso Umberto in Taormina, a resort town since the 1800s, nestled below volcanic Mt. Etna.

Amidst Greek Byzantine icons, ornately carved wooden tables in Moorish design, stone Romanesque architectural elements, and Murano glass chandeliers, she shrugged off her appearance of light eyes and dark hair.

“My grandmother was Norman-Franco, with red hair, green eyes. My grandfather was Arabic with Occidental eyes,” she said.

In Taormina, the recipe for a thriving and diverse service economy is built on the immigrants of today. The walls of Ristorante La Botte, owned by father and son Giovanni and Antonio Chemi, are adorned with pictures of the duo hamming for the camera with the likes of Woody Allen and Jacqueline Bissett.  Antonio served us an al fresco dinner under an arbor of grape leaves, and we dove into penne alla norma, an eggplant sauce, and pasta con le sarde, a sauce of sardines, tomatoes and pine nuts.

“The influence of Middle Eastern countries in Sicilian cooking is strong, it is old and near—the couscous, pistachios,” he said. “Today, we hire people from further away–Sri Lanka, Morocco. It is good—where they come from, they need the work and we have the work.”

On Corso Umberto, throngs of pedestrians and people-watchers enjoyed the “passeggiata,” or evening promenade. They glided by architecture of the ages, buildings in the Hellenistic, Roman, Medieval, gothic and baroque styles—one of which housed the town’s police station. Originally a private residence, its dusty rose-colored façade was etched with the Star of David.

Tucked among the maze of medieval alleys that criss-cross Taormina, we found Michael Samperi, who welcomed visitors into his solitary world on Via G. di Giovanni. He is the only remaining inlaid marble artisan in the area and one of just three such craftsmen on Sicily as best he knows.

Michael learned the trade from his father Gigi, who, in turn, learned it from a “maestro,” at a time when the skill was much more prevalent and marble still quarried in Taormina. When asked how far back his family roots extend in Sicily, Samperi responded with a smile, “As far back as I know. My father’s name is common in Calabria and Gerra, a little village close to here. My mother’s family is from Germany, where I get my name, Michael.”

He said the price of marble, which he now buys from Tuscany, has escalated. He inlays the stone with lava from Mt. Etna and rocks collected from the island’s beaches. Michael labors for long hours on each piece in his small studio, which is crammed with finished stone mosaics of every size and shape. He matter-of-factly noted that his traditional handiwork is a dying art, with factories in Tuscany using machines to churn out cookie-cutter pieces.

Michael pointed with pride to an oval dining table, its gleaming white surface inset with a quilt of colored marbles—Sicilian yellow, Taormina red, Serpentine green, Lapis lazuli—and black lava. All were stitched together painstakingly and seamlessly to represent the nearby volcano and its environs. The tableau would be unmistakably Taormina to anyone who has visited—the cone of Etna looming high over the red-tiled village rooftops, the distinctive ruins of Taormina’s 2^nd century Greek amphitheater atop the cliffs of Mt. Tauro, and the turquoise of the Ionian Sea.

Beauty as truth was a central tenant in the works of Romantic poet John Keats, despite—or maybe because of—a youth bereft of it. The son of a barman who ran central London’s Hoop and Swan pub, his father died when he was nine, and his mother passed away five years later. Without resources, he was assigned to apprentice with a surgeon, and at 20, entered medical school. His first surviving poem dates to the preceding year and he soon found himself torn between economics and his passion for poetry. His brother George wrote that John “feared that he should never be a poet, & if he was not he would destroy himself.”

Making a commitment to his art in 1816, he soon had supporters falling from the sky, and his first poem was soon published. In June 1818, Keats began a walking journey around Scotland and Ireland, catching a cold that ultimately led to tuberculosis. At 25, he died of the disease, which had also taken his mother and two brothers. It’s been said that derogatory reviews referring to his work as being of the “Cockney School” contributed to the death of the sensitive soul.

Despite the dismissive critiques from contemporaries, Keats work has long been considered some of the finest poetry in the English language. While known especially for his love of the country and sensuous descriptions of the beauty of nature, his poetry also resonates with deep philosophic questions. He is remembered in particular for a series of odes; his Ode to a Nightingale has been referred to as “one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages.” Through the odes, Keats explored the relationship between the soul, eternity, nature, and art.

Mt. Etna, in all its power and grandeur, has inspired art dating to the days of Greek mythology. It is the largest volcano in Europe, standing at almost 11,000 feet, and one of the most active in the world, almost constantly erupting. The name Etna is thought to have derived from the Greek word aitho meaning “to burn.” The Arabs called the mountain Gibel Utlamat or “mountain of fire.”

Mythologists sought to make sense of Etna’s eruptions. The god Aeolus was said to have imprisoned the winds in caves below Etna. According to the poet Aeschylus, the giant Typhon, confined within the volcano, was the cause of its eruptions. Vulcan, the god of fire, was said to have had his forge under Etna, while other myths said Cyclops maintained a smithy there, where he fashioned lightning bolts for Zeus to use as a weapon.

My wanderlust is propelled in part by a desire to behold dramatic scenery and breath-taking vistas like Etna, and experience the awe and humility they evoke in me. Certainly a truth I took in as I admired the volcano from afar was the force and endurance of nature, and the relative impermanence and powerlessness of man.

Yet, like Keats, ultimately, it is human nature that I find the most fascinating, particularly the desire to translate and share the powerful emotions beauty inspires, and impart whatever truth that holds for us.

While Keats’ spark was snuffed out at a young age, he lives on in his poetry. So, too, generations of diverse peoples persist on the Sicilian mountainside, in the shadow of Mt. Etna, crafting odes to the scenery that stirs their souls.

http://englishhistory.net/keats.html

http://www.bestofsicily.com/

For more images from Sicily, see Travel Photos.