Sicily Journal IV: Scicli's Chiafura

Photo: Hallie Cohen

Pasolini’s Il vangelo secondo Matteo used the smoke emanating from the famous caves of Scicli to evoke Dante’s purgatory. The caves were used as tombs by the original Sicilian inhabitants. It was only with waves of Arab and Byzantine invasion that the remains of the dead (who were buried in fetal positions in mother earth) were removed so that the caves could be turned into dwellings. In 1693 the town was struck by an earthquake and the well-to-do inhabitants, who had employed the caves for storage moved their nearby dwellings to a lower elevation where the Bourbons replaced the devastation of the earthquake with the ornate Sicilian Baroque which characterizes both the churches and palazzos which still exist today. The impoverished lower classes occupied the caves until l959 when the Chiafura, as they are called, became a source of shame to the post war government—interested in eradicating the association between Sicilians or Italians in general with cavemen. Today they have become a designated archeological site that is near becoming a source of pride and prices for the former caves, which are undergoing some degree of gentrification, are climbing with a growing market of vacationers who use them as summer homes. Whether some Milanese developer turns the Chiafura into condominiums with time shares remains to be seen.

Sicily Journal III: Stairway to Heaven

Photo: Hallie Cohen

You’ve heard about the perched villages of Southern France, the hill towns of Tuscany like the famous Montepulciano. Welcome to Sicily’s mountainous village of Caltagirone. If Tuscany and the South of France exude a certain ethereal quality, a repose in which the fine things of life are to be found, Caltagirone looks like something between a beehive and a extraterrestrial orbiter in which spacecraft are continually docking. Take the overcrowded tenements of Manhattan’s Little Italy and spread them over the surface of an enormous sphere and you will have an idea of what Caltagirone seems like at first sight. As if the climb to the top were not enough the city fathers have contrived to underline the verticality of their environment with a ceramic and botanic decoration of an ancient staircase by the village’s center, right down from Via Luigi Sturzo. the “Scala di Maria del Monte.” The scala, which has 142 steps, itself dates from the 17^th Century, but the ceramics were inlaid in l954, and are a testament to traditions of regional artisanry that date back to the Middle Ages. Few visitors who have made the climb to the top of Caltagirone will have the energy to ascend this magnificent staircase--essentially a stairway to heaven.

Sicily Journal II: Catania After Dark

Watercolor by Hallie Cohen

Terme Achilliano, the Roman baths, still exist under the magnificent Baroque Church in Catania’s Piazza Duomo with its famous elephant fountain. The contradiction between religiosity and sensuality (and a religiosity  that is often sensual) is epitomized in the fact that the foundation of the famous Sicilian church is a monument to sensuality. Only a few steps away from the Duomo is the Palazzo di Cultura where the show of provocative nudes by an artist named Maria Tripoli recently catalyzed a panel discussion on stalking, as church bells chimed in the distance. It should be mentioned the contradictions inherent in the Catanian sensibility, rooted as it is in paganism and Christianity are further underlined by the fact that the Palazzo formerly housed a convent and still retains arches and other elements associated with the structure's previous occupants. A retrospective of the work of an Italian painter named Alberto Abate, who died this past spring, “Dialoguo con la Testa,” (dealing with questions of sexual identity in works like “Il Monte de Venus”) was also on view and not far away on the Piazza Universita, members of the Teatro Stabile were raising a banner which read “Noi non siamo primi o secondo ad altro teatros siamo una teatro da cuore Siciliano.” We are not first or second to other theaters, we are a theater of the Sicilian heart. Though the renowned Sicilian playwright Luigi Pirandello is not the inspiration for the Teatro’s work, the great Sicilian dramatist  Giovanni Verga apparently is according to one of the participants preparing for an outdoor performance. Like religion and sensuality, antique beauty and squalor are also at war in this port city where there are streets named after Etna and the volcano itself is visible like a mirage from hotel windows. 

Sicily Journal I: Palazzo Corsini

Photo: Hallie Cohen

Descending down the Via Garibaldi from the American Academy in Rome, the Museo della Repubblica Romana e della memoria garibaldina and the Mausoleo Ossorio Gianicolense in back of which is the tomb of Goffredo Mameli the poet and adjustant to Garibaldi who died at 21 and composed “Fratelli d’Italia,” you come to the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara. The palazzo houses the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica and faces the Accademia Nationale Dei Lincei, a government supported institute that fosters the relationship between science and art. Galileo studied in the Biblioteca of the Accademia, whose ideas infuse the Palazzo and whose Caravaggio, Poussin and Fra Angelico’s now compete with an exhibit on minerals which also includes some exquisite antique texts. “I pigmenti nell’arte come nascono I colori” is an exhibit at the Palazzo which demonstrates the interweaving of science and art. The ghost of Garibaldi hangs over the ancient streets, leading to the Palazzo which is a kind of backwater to European culture filled as it is with lesser known works by artists like Rubens and Caracci. There’s even a painting by the father of Artemesia Gentilesci. The Palazzo is the kind of place where Guiseppe di Lampedusa the Sicilian writer of The Leopard, who died in Rome in l957, and wrote so artistically about the Risorgimento might have found solace.

The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations

Earlier this month, the blind human rights activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng escaped from house arrest and sought asylum in the US Embassy "Chinese Dissident is Released From Embassy, Causing Turmoil for U.S.", NYT, 5/2/12). In a previous incident in February, Wang Lijun, the police official, who was once an ally of the now deposed Bo Xilai sought refuge in the American consulate in Chengdu ("Frenzied Hours for U.S. on Fate of a Chinese Insider," NYT, 4/17/12). Both of these incidents were politically embarrassing to the United States and China, at a time when both were seeking to work out conflicts. Hillary Clinton had been in Peking ("Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng seeks meeting with Hillary Clinton," The Guardian 5/4/12) for bilateral talks when the whole Chen Guangcheng incident broke out. Henry Kissinger the quondam realpolitician (who oxymoronically also received the Nobel Peace Prize ) and former Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations has written a piece in the March/April Foreign Affairs, “The Future of U.S.-Chinese Relations” which is a handbook for future conflict resolution with the world’s second largest economy. In the section titled “The Risks of Rhetoric,” Kissinger thus writes, “The American debate, on both sides of the political divide, often describes China as a ‘rising power’ that will need to ‘mature’ and learn how to exercise responsibility on the world stage. China, however, sees itself not as a rising power but as a returning one, predominant in its region for two millennia and temporarily displaced by colonial exploiters taking advantage of Chinese domestic strife and decay. It views the prospect of a strong China exercising influence in economic, cultural, political and military affairs not as an unnatural challenge to the world order but rather as a return to normality. Americans need not agree with every aspect of the Chinese analysis to understand that lecturing a country with a history of millennia about its need to ‘grow up’ and behave ‘responsibly’ can be needlessly grating.” Earlier in the piece Kissinger talked about US “apprehensions” about a Sinocentric Asian bloc.” He also pointed out that some American analysts fear the “inherently brittle” nature of authoritarian regimes. On the other side of the fence, the Chinese might see, according to Kissinger, “the United States as a wounded super power determined to thwart the rise of any challenger, of which China is the most credible.” You marriage counselors have seen this before, two head strong clients, carrying historical baggage, and conflicting narratives about the ensuing conflicts that developed between them.

Dawkins vs God

We all know the great rivalries in boxing Louis and Schmeling, LaMotta and Robinson,Ali and Frazier, Ali and Foreman (which culminated in the Rumble in the Jungle), Hagler and Hearns, Ward and Gatti. But the realm of art and ideas also’s had its great bouts. Christopher Marlowe was killed in a fight at the tender age of 29, though not by the rival Shakespeare. Popper vs. Wittgenstein gained notoriety for the poker.   Llosa and Marquez came to blows over women and McCarthy vs Hellman was famous for Mary McCarthy’s quip about her opponent, “every word she writes is a lie including 'and' and 'the.'" William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow paired off in the Scopes Trial or Monkey Trial, as it was known. Shakespeare wasn’t around to defend himself when Tolstoy said to Chekhov that his plays were almost as bad as the bard’s. The recently deceased Carlos Fuentes got involved in a mud slinging contest with his old pal Octavio (Labyrinth of Solitude) Paz over politics that went right on to Paz’s death in l998. Gore Vidal and William Buckley similarly paired off over politics. Then of course there’s Jung and Freud whose contest over the metaphysical was recently dramatized in A Dangerous Method. Perhaps the greatest intellectual rivalry of all time is still drawing big crowds with Richard Dawkins coming close to knocking out God.

Lives of Our Leaders: Low Self-Esteem

Jim R Bounds/Associated Press

JFK got it on with Marilyn Monroe (and who the hell knows else). Not Bad. Bill Clinton gets himself impeached for having fellatio with an overweight intern who doesn’t bother to remove the incriminating evidence from her dress, but it’s nothing compared to John Edwards who ends up facing a stiff jail sentence ("Waiting for an Edwards Verdict, and Getting Acquainted With Greensboro," NYT, 5/22/12) for misuse of campaign funds to support Rielle Hunter who turned out to be better at making babies than videos (the job for which she was originally hired) as a Kim Severson pointed out in the Times ("Candidate, Philanderer, and Juggler, Too: Edwards Trial Shows Deception's Strains," NYT 5/20/12) On the other hand there does seem to be a double standard here. Americans are forgiving of the Aristocratic JFK who is merely exercising the droit du seigneur, but they are far less tolerant of their own good 'ole boys who spill the beans or knock up chicks and get them pregnant. Teddy Kennedy’s political career survived Chappaquidick and when you look at it the offense, which involved the loss of life, was a lot more egregious than misuse of campaign funds. While America doesn’t have a hereditary aristocracy, we make exceptions. We apologize for the randy Camelot inhabitant when he’s out on the hunt. Come on. Bill and John could have done better than Monica and Rielle. Both were attractive men with good credentials who would definitely have gotten almost any girl they wanted were they working the East Side Bar scene, but they apparently were insecure enough to end up with the kind of troubled personalities who, at least in Rielle’s case, like to take hostages. Neither the would-be president’s now deceased wife, nor the former president’s wife (and our current secretary of state), were too happy when they found out about their respective husbands’ shortcomings— though there are some who might argue that neither Clinton nor Edwards should be held accountable and that the kind of low self-esteem and compulsivity that both exhibited were symptoms of a disease.