The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories | ||
ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER
It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval
villa in the country, a mile or two from Florence. I cannot speak
the language; I am too old not to learn how, also too busy when I
am busy, and too indolent when I am not; wherefore some will
imagine that I am having a dull time of it. But it is not so.
The "help" are all natives; they talk Italian to me, I answer
in English; I do not understand them, they do not understand me,
consequently no harm is done, and everybody is satisfied. In order
to be just and fair, I throw in an Italian word when I have one,
and this has a good influence. I get the word out of the morning paper.
I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find
Yesterday's word was AVANTI. It sounds Shakespearian, and probably
means Avaunt and quit my sight. Today I have a whole phrase:
SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO. I do not know what it means, but it seems
to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction. Although as a rule
my words and phrases are good for one day and train only, I have
several that stay
During my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy and flowery place I was without news of the outside world, and was well content without it. It has been four weeks since I had seen a newspaper, and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace, and to saturate it with a feeling verging upon actual delight. Then came a change that was to be expected: the appetite for news began to rise again, after this invigorating rest. I had to feed it, but I was not willing to let it make me its helpless slave again; I determined to put it on a diet, and a strict and limited one. So I examined an Italian paper, with the idea of feeding it on that, and on that exclusively. On that exclusively, and without help of a dictionary. In this way I should surely be well protected against overloading and indigestion.
A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement. There were no scare-heads. That was good—supremely good. But there were headings—one-liners and two-liners—and that was good too; for without these, one must do as one does with a German paper—pay our precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover, in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you. The headline is a valuable thing.
Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule. Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to take no vital interest in it—indeed, you almost get tired of it. As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only— people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles, ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to think of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah of outlanders gone rotten. Give me the home product every time.
Very well. I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local; they were adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say one's friends. In the matter of world news there was not too much, but just about enough. I subscribed. I have had no occasion to regret it. Every morning I get all the news I need for the day; sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text. I have never had to call for a dictionary yet. I read the paper with ease. Often I do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me, but no matter, I get the idea. I will cut out a passage or two, then you see how limpid the language is:
Il ritorno dei Beati d'Italia
Elargizione del Re all' Ospedale italiano
The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back— they have been to England. The second line seems to mean that they enlarged the King at the Italian hospital. With a banquet, I suppose. An English banquet has that effect. Further:
Il ritorno dei Sovrani
a Roma
ROMA, 24, ore 22,50.—I Sovrani e le Principessine Reali si attendono
a Roma domani alle ore 15,51.
Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see. Date of the telegram,
Rome, November 24, ten minutes
"THEY ENLARGED THE KING"
[Description: Illustration of waiters serving dinner to the king.]
I do not know about Italian time, but I judge it begins at midnight and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk. In the following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty. If these are not matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 P.M., by my reckoning.
Spettacolli del di 25
TEATRO DELLA PERGOLA—(Ore 20,30)—Opera. BOH`EME. TEATRO
ALFIERI.—Compagnia drammatica Drago—(Ore 20,30)—LA LEGGE.
ALHAMBRA—(Ore 20,30)—Spettacolo variato. SALA EDISON—
Grandiosoo spettacolo Cinematografico: QUO VADIS?—Inaugurazione della
Chiesa Russa—In coda al Direttissimo—Vedute di Firenze con
gran movimeno—America: Transporto tronchi giganteschi—I ladri
in casa del Diavolo—Scene comiche. CINEMATOGRAFO—Via Brunelleschi
n. 4.—Programma straordinario, DON CHISCIOTTE—Prezzi populari.
The whole of that is intelligible to me—and sane and rational, too— except the remark about the Inauguration of a Russian Chinese. That one oversizes my hand. Give me five cards.
This is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded
and has a page of advertisements,
Una Principessa
che fugge con un cocchiere
PARIGI, 24.—Il MATIN ha da Berlino che la principessa
Schovenbare-Waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre. Sarebbe partita
col suo cocchiere.
La Principassa ha 27 anni.
Twenty-seven years old, and scomparve—scampered—on the 9th November. You see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman. I hope Sarebbe has not made a mistake, but I am afraid the chances are that she has. SONO DISPIACENTISSIMO.
There are several fires: also a couple of accidents. This is one of them:
Grave disgrazia sul Ponte Vecchio
Stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre Giuseppe Sciatti, di anni 55,
di Casellina e Torri, passava dal Ponte Vecchio, stando seduto sopra
un barroccio carico di verdura, perse l' equilibrio e cadde al suolo,
rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo.
Lo Sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo
della pubblica vettura n. 365, lo transporto a San Giovanni di Dio.
Ivi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba
destra e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50
giorni salvo complicazioni.
"I HOPE SAREBBE HAS NOT MADE A MISTAKE
[Description: Illustration of woman cleaning a horse while man watches from
a chair]
What it seems to say is this: "Serious Disgrace on the Old Old Bridge. This morning about 7.30, Mr. Joseph Sciatti, aged 55, of Casellina and Torri, while standing up in a sitting posture on top of a carico barrow of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?), lost his equilibrium and fell on himself, arriving with his left leg under one of the wheels of the vehicle.
"Said Sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens, who by means of public cab No. 365 transported to St. John of God."
Paragraph No. 3 is a little obscure, but I think it says that the medico set the broken left leg—right enough, since there was nothing the matter with the other one—and that several are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene.
I am sure I hope so myself.
There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a
language which you are not acquainted with—the charm that always goes
with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely
sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances;
you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the
baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt.
A dictionary would spoil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful
purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a
whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped
in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which
"'SERIOUS DISGRACE ON THE OLD OLD
BRIDGE
[Description: Illustration of man's head caught in wheel of horse-cart]
After a couple of days' rest I now come back to my subject and seek a case in point. I find it without trouble, in the morning paper; a cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris. All the words save one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian:
Revolverate in teatro
PARIGI, 27.—La PATRIE ha da Chicago:
Il guardiano del teatro dell'opera di Walace (Indiana), avendo voluto
espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety,
questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella.
Il guardiano ripose. Nacque una scarica generale. Grande panico
tra gli spettatori. Nessun ferito.
TRANSLATION.—"Revolveration in Theater. PARIS, 27TH. LA PATRIE has from Chicago: The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace, Indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends, tir'o (Fr. TIR'E, Anglice PULLED) manifold revolver-shots; great panic among the spectators. Nobody hurt."
It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera
of Wallace, Indiana, excited not a person in Europe but me, and so
came near to not
"'THE REVOLUTION IN THEATRE'"
[Description: Illustration of manpetting dog]
If I had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort I would study it, and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings, but there is no such work on the market. The existing phrase-books are inadequate. They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.
The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories | ||