Goodbye Maria

M.  died last night. The call came around seven thirty this morning while we were having our wake up coffee. Sergio answered and M’s son told us the bad news, which alas, we were expecting, but not quite so soon. We had been to the hospital to see her just a few hours earlier, around six- thirty, that same evening.  I had called her around lunchtime  to let her know we were coming for a visit. Italian hospitals generally let patients keep their cell phones on in their rooms, since  the  patients’ rooms are  rarely equipped with extension phones.  She sounded alert, but gaspy. Weeks before she entered the hospital, her abdomen had become swollen with fluid, and in the last phase, this condition had made it hard for her to walk, move about freely, and then at last, breathe. She had no trouble recognizing me on the phone, though I had some difficulties understanding her speech.  Her mobile reception wasn’t good – her voice kept breaking up, and despite our long acquaintance, some of her speech mannerisms still baffled me.  M. was a country woman, from a town in the mountains outlying Rome.  Her speech was always peppered with dialect, and it always made her laugh when I couldn’t understand. She was able to tell me what room she was in, and what floor.  I asked her how she felt and she said she was in a bad way –  and that day she felt particularly nervous.
My husband came home as usual around three from the office and we had a quick lunch, and then we were off- along the Via Prenestina to the hospital where she had been admitted just three weeks ago.   The 542 bus trundled by – a line that runs through my neighborhood, and I thought I could visit her again sometime by bus.  We went in and followed the arrows to her ward and found a small crowd of people outside the door to her room. We had never personally met anyone in her family, except for one of her daughters-in-law – so they looked at us in surprised as we approached the door.   The curtains were drawn and the lights were dim – a priest stood by the bed administering her last rites.  We were just in time to approach the bed, touch her cheek, say  goodbye.  Her face was sunk in her pillow and she wore an oxygen mask. Her eyes didn’t open, but she was aware of what was happening in the room. I think she recognized us.  Her son told us that her condition had suddenly worsened in the early afternoon.
M. was a special presence in our home  -- house-helper,  seamstress, nurse, handywoman.  She could fix or mend just about anything, and when faced with a problem she had never dealt with before, she relied on her natural, practical intelligence to suggest a possible solution. She could rewire a lamp or a burnt out wall socket, mend a hole in the wall,  cut and sew a tailored suit,  – and had numerous remedies for household disasters: stains, rips, tears, leaks, drips – she knew how to make things new again. She was an expert seamstress.  I liked to design clothes for myself and my husband – and she made those ideas real – sewing him linen slacks and shirts – and for me woolen jackets, trousers for work, linen shifts for summer, and silk dresses.   Occasionally she baked for us – a wonderful Genovese white cake for a birthday celebration or jam tarts when someone had given us a jar or two of  homemade jam.   Always cheerful and companionable –I wouldn’t have called her motherly – but caring and sensitive – and she loved a challenge. Let’s make a slip cover for this chair, I’d say – and though she had never made one before, she figured out a way to do it. We always had a project going – and ideas for future ones, yards of upholstery and dress fabric stashed in the closet.  In this,  I suppose, I was reliving part of my bond with my mother: sewing projects of all kinds for clothes and for the house.   
M. lived in a village about an hour and a half from Rome – half way up the mountains – once known for its salubrious air.  For years, she worked in Rome, coming in daily by bus – then by metro or city bus – to reach the homes of the several families where she was employed a few hours each day.  That day in September I realized what a sacrifice it must have been for her for all those years, decades, to leave her home, and go to Rome every day to work, threading down the narrow mountain road on a bus that was often late.  Sometimes in bad weather, the road washed out and there was no getting through.
  When she told us that she had decided to give up working or coming into Rome, I was disappointed.  How would we get along without her?  I had also just recently transferred back to Rome after 22 years of commuting to Viterbo for work.  I had planned my schedule around M.’s weekly visits –her invalid brother lived not far from our neighborhood -- I hoped to organize a sewing lab with her on my free mornings off, so that we could finally get to work on some of those projects we had talked about.
Our last project was a series of curtains now decorating nearly every room in our flat.   Dark cherry velvet in the bedroom – fiery satin brocade in the living room and studio, crisp printed cotton in the kitchen.  All made with remnants, inspired by drapes I had seen in Paris at a friend’s home—we had recreated something similar for a few well-spent euros.  While we sewed in the little studio, I asked her about her life.  Though we often chatted and recounted stories to each other when she  was about, I had never asked her about her childhood and youth.   After fifth grade, she had been sent out to work for a seamstress, and had quickly distinguished herself from among the other girls as being quick and precise with her needle. As years passed, she realized though that the seamstress wasn’t going to teach them how to make patterns or cut clothes.  She kept her eyes opened and learned by watching – assisted by her extraordinary knack for anything manual.
Shortly before M. was admitted to the hospital where she died, we  drove over one September afternoon to visit her in her village.  She had been in and out of the hospital over the summer and was suffering from what seemed to be circulatory problems that had swollen her feet in an alarming way and created a layer of scaly eczema all up her leg. She was happy to be at home, cheerful, and though impeded in her movements by the circulatory problems, she was in good spirits and hopeful that her ailments would improve now that the summer heat was fading.  Her apartment was as expected, quiet, polished and neat. The balcony of her bedroom was crowded with potted plants, and herbs – a whole row of basil plants.  She served us coffee in her little kitchen – where she was especially proud of two things: the old treadle sewing machine she still used –and a small woodstove with oven. The building, and her apartment were equipped with city gas – she had an ordinary gas cooking range in the kitchen, and radiators throughout the apartment. But there was nothing she liked better than to light the woodstove on a cold winter afternoon, open the sewing machine, and sit there sewing till late in the evening – maybe keeping an eye on a batch of cookies in the oven, or stirring a pot of tomato sauce simmering on the stovetop. 
M. laughed and talked loudly, wore garish clothes, hennaed her hair at home in an unattractive way, and  had become grossly overweight in the last few years.  She was not chic. Yet she had beautiful blue eyes, full pink lips curled in a pleasant half smile. One thing I used to notice when I’d come home before my husband, and M. had been in and gone to help with the cleaning.  There was a silence throughout the rooms, a sense of order and peace.  Not that everything was spic and span, dustless, smudgeless,  for it wasn’t. Yet the quality of attention she brought to household chores left a trace my husband and I could feel. 
On this unseasonably cold October day, the sun is shining, but there’s a chill wind. The noon sun filters in through the drapes M. made, filling the room  where I sit with warmth and rich color.

an update on Jeanne Hébuterne

An update on Jeanne Hebuterne

After my essay Missing Person in Montparnasse  The Case of Jeanne Hebuterne was published in the Literary Review nearly ten years ago, I have received requests from time to time regarding information about JH , her artwork, and her relationship to Modigliani.  Since that time, I have had an opportunity to pursue my research and this looks like as good a venue as any to share what I know.

My essay was inspired by a visit to an exhibition Modigliani ed I suoi ( Modigliani & company) held in Venice  and curated by Christian Parisot,  recognized authority on Modigliani and long time collaborator with  Jeanne Modigliani, daughter of Jeanne Hebuterne and Modigliani.  The core of that exhibition which sent a ripple of delight  round the world were the artworks of young Jeanne – several sketches and paintings. It was revealed that JH was indeed a very gifted  artist whose work had value in itself, and not just because of her  link to Modigliani.  The Venice show was the first public viewing of her work in 80 years. After Jeanne’s suicide all her artworks  had been collected by her brother and locked away in his studio.  It was Jeanne Modigliani who had first ferreted  this story  out and who throughout her life had worked tirelessly to strip away the legend of Modigliani as “drunken woman-basher”  and Jeanne as a silent, sacrificial lamb and  passive model.   Jeanne Modigliani  desired ardently to re-establish her connection with her mother as artist and to free her from the oblivion which the Hebuternes had imposed upon her.  It took her entire lifetime.

The documents and artworks exhibited in the Venice show seem to have come mainly from two sources:  Jeanne Modigliani who had then transmitted them to her archivist, Parisot, and the heirs of  Andre Hebuterne, Jeanne's older brother.   I should mention here that at one time the Hébuternes publicly claimed that no such work of Jeanne’s existed – that it had all been dispersed after her death. That however seems to be untrue, and after his death at the age of 90, the veils were lifted.

The  pieces in the Venice show were  scheduled  to be exhibited  in  Segovia  where  an unexpected event then occurred.  Claims were made that some pieces in the show were fakes, the police closed it down and the curator was charged with art forgery.

It is  this news  that Jeffrey Meyers appends to  his biography of Modigliani – with a dismissive note on Jeanne’s art : “Jeanne Hebuterne ‘s nephew said that works supposedly by her and exhibited in Segovia were fakes.”   This would suggest that JH was no artist. Indeed he goes on to say:” Marc Restellini…then co-director of the Musée du Luxembourg  in Paris had identified a number of fake drawings and reduced their value to a negligible amount.”  What actually came out in the proceedings of the trial were that some drawings shown in Segovia were thought to be copies of originals drawn by JH, while others “pastiches” – compositions not drawn by Jeanne at all.  What had happened was that after the Venice show, the Hebuterne heirs declined  to lend the works for further exhibition.   At  the  show in Segovia the curator exhibited other works which had  come into his possession independently of the Hebuterne heirs and it was these works which were subjected to inquiry.   

Restellini,  the expert who had identified the drawings as fakes  then became the curator of another show of the  Hebuterne materials  organized  in Japan.  He  is the author of a book about  Jeanne and Modigliani which includes in the back a  catalogue raisonné of JH’s works.  His research bears out what Jeanne Modigliani and Parisot had stressed all along – it was not only passion for each other that linked  Jeanne to Modigliani  but their shared passion for art.

A comparative study of REstellini and Parisot’s findings  reveals that despite their mutual rivalry – they draw a similar picture of JH and Modì -  attempting to remove the fabrications overlaid upon the pair by the sensational memoirs published after their death   by friends and acquaintances such as Andre Salmon.  Like Parisot, Restellini grants Jeanne individual status as an artist of promise and merit.

In his book, we discover that Jeanne and Modi often painted the same subjects – ie – when someone came to sit for a portrait, Jeanne and Modi  would sometimes both work at the same time in the studio – so that we have a  second perspective   on some of Modigliani’s portraits.  These doubles – ie  portraits of the same people  painted by  both Modi and Jeanne,  allow us to grasp Jeanne’s independent research as a painter  and appreciate her unique sensibility.  She was particularly sensitive to  background, décor, fashion  --the very things Modigliani  left out of his portraits --  and includes details of this nature in her work. In fact it is through her drawings and paintings that we may catch a   glimpse of the studio where they lived and worked together.

Certainly Jeanne Modigliani would be pleased to know that one of her wishes has been granted. The world has come to know Jeanne Hébuterne not only as Modì’s favorite model –but as an artist with an agenda  of her own.

Tea with Pier Isa and the Witches of Montecchio

Tea with Pier Isa and the Witches of Montecchio Part 2

Several years ago I received a curious phone call from an Italian author seeking a translator for her  novel about the witches of Montecchio – based on a true story, she insisted, for which historical documents exist.  Montecchio  is a sort of plateau in the highlands above  Bagnaia near Viterbo (Bagnaia is the site of the famous Villa Lante) – an isolated wooded area, unfrequented, except , probably, by boar and mushroom hunters. Like many wild spots in Tuscia, it is the site of several prehistoric stone monuments , left to molder  amid scrub and brambles.   I don’t remember the name of that author: she never called back again, but she had put a buzz in my ear – the witches of Montecchio – who might they have been?   Now and again over the years, fleeting bits of information about them came my way.   Last year, around Halloween, I posted what I knew about them in a blog, posted in the Red Room, and also on my website, http://www.lindalappin.net/

The  Irish poet  John Montague has written:  All around, shards of a lost tradition/ Scattered over the hills, tribal-And placenames, uncultivated pearls/ The whole landscape a manuscript/We had lost the skill to read/A part of our past disinherited/But fumbled, like a blind man/Along the fingertips of instinct.  That’s how I feel about the area of Tuscia. The whole territory of Viterbo is riddled with ruins – not only  the Etruscan tombs explored by Harriet in my novel  The Etruscan, but Pre- Etruscan altars – like the  step pyramids near Vitorchiano,  the prehistoric cave dwellings near Corviano,  the megaliths and other  eerie monuments  scattered all throughout the  Selva di Malano,  and many Neolithic sites.   Many sites are hidden,  disguised by overgrowths of vegetation, half buried in earth, entangled by the roots of trees, even sunk at the bottom of volcanic lakes.   

My first novel, The Etruscan, was an attempt to transmit the fascination I experienced myself in these places, and my more recent novels, including  Signatures in Stone, set in Bomarzo, and The Brotherhood of Miguel, also make use of this material.    What is most amazing to me about these places is that they are totally abandoned and forgotten, except by a few local historians, enthusiasts, and  occasional hikers.  There even seems to be a taboo connected to them. They inspire fear in the local population.  Researching some of the areas I describe in The Etruscan, I was astonished to learn that the old Roman bath located within the archaeological park of Barbarano Romano  had previously been regarded by the locals as the entryway to hell, and an extremely dangerous place to visit simply because the only access to this sunny thermal bath site carved on a ledge along a canyon wall, was through a dark, mossy  staircase cut in stone leading  down into the earth.

The stories told about Montecchio are similar – Local legend  claims that  snakes there do not hibernate, so that even in winter one is at risk.  Moreover,    it is home to a special snake with a huge head – as large as human head, or so the legend goes – absolutely terrifying if you run into one.   Such legends make you wonder about their origins---  were they merely a pretense to keep people away from areas where secret rites, frowned upon by the church,  were practiced, or do they represent the  performers of those rites who have been transformed by legend into snakes?  Throughout  the world’s mythologies, snakes represent  cosmic  energy and transformation.  Perhaps the legend means that in Montecchio those energies may be perceived and tapped? There is no doubt that the witches of Montecchio were related to some ancient fertility rite sacred to the Great Mother, for among the prehistoric monuments located in the area are a birthing trough and a  rounded menhir similar to  fertility monuments in India.

Last Sunday in Vitorchiano, I had an interesting guest at tea time, Pier Isa della Rupe,  a local writer,  painter, storyteller and researcher  who has spent years studying the witches and the area of Montecchio and who occasionally organizes special esoteric excursions to visit the place.   Among the things she unearthed  in her research was the documented evidence regarding the existence  of a female “confraternity”  -- which owned property on Montecchio in the middle ages, and operated in the area with an authority and power ( indeed they owned property)  unthinkable for women at the time.   What was the origin of that authority  and power? Was it connected in any way to the high regard Etruscan culture had once held women?  Could such a cultural attitude towards women have survived and been passed down through so many centuries from Etruscan times to the middle ages in that small corner of Italy?   

Whatever those women did up in  the woods of Montecchio – they were part of a secret tradition scattered throughout central Italy. Mont’ Amiata – another mysterious place on the border between Tuscia and Tuscany, also has a rich tradition of witches frequenting wooded areas where prehistoric monuments are located.  It is to this tradition that Charles Leland refers in his book  Etruscan Roman Remains. What Leland reveals was that  pagan, specifically, Etruscan religious beliefs and customs, which he describes as the Old religion,  continued to thrive in Italy into the nineteenth century, especially in the area of Tuscany,  passed down and disguised in many ways:  in stories, nursery rhymes, decoration, plant-lore, superstitions connected to animals, places, plants, healing, dowsing   etc. And so it is today – some of those beliefs still live on –slightly transformed , for example,  the belief that certain places  possess special powers that may be transmitted to people who visit them for this purpose.  In any case, as Pier della Rupe informs me – not anyone can visit Montecchio–for people  with negative  feelings or influences will be rooted to the spot, unable to go further,  legs so heavy they cannot  move.  So if by any chance you think you might want to visit the witches of Montecchio -  don’t go alone, and keep an eye out for snakes.

Linda Lappin gingerly tests the waters of the blogosphere

Yes, I have other blogs -- one on amazon, where I occasionally make posts related to my books that are sold there -- and another on my website, which is essentially a showcase for my books, published articles, interests, and events -- Usually in that blog, I post short essays about my life in Italy which have been published elsewhere,  or postcards, notes specifically about the history, culture, cuisine of Tuscia that remarkable corner of Italy where I have my get-away place and where Centro Pokkoli organizes its writers workshops and retreats. But a real blog, done as a  daily discipline, honestly telling it like it is, for better and for worse -- the shades and light --well I have never gotten very far with that.  Partly because  I am a terrible perfectionist. I can work on a 1500 word essay for weeks - blogs are not like that, however. You can't take that much time to shape and hone them.

Sometimes, seeing my enchanted little house in Tusica, or learning that I teach English at an Italian university and travel frequently to exotic places like Sardinia or Crete - people have expressed envy -- and yes, I am lucky, I have been blessed in many ways -- but there are always two sides to every coin. And Italy nowadays isn't a place only of pleasure and delight.

Years ago I sat in a piazza with a poet friend of mine, much older than me, who like me had first come to Rome on a Fulbright, and had considered staying here when his grant finished, but then went back to the US to conduct an illustrious career as a poet, man of letters, distinguished professor, critic, and translator.  I've always wondered, he said, what it would have been like if I stayed.

Well obviously, his life wouldn't have necessarily worked out like mine has.  Still maybe this blog might go some ways in showing what it's like to be an expat, an expat fairly integrated into another cultural system, and an expat who aspires to be a writer.

-it's a sort of schizoid life-  I have a multiple identity as writer, translator, teacher, journalist  and live in two houses, fortunately, with only one husband ---

I'll be talking about a little of everything here.  Daily life, shopping, food & family   politics,  the scarier things about Rome and Italy lately, travel, friends, recipes, culture shock, culture clashes, writing, and books. I'll close here for the moment. It's time to step into my kitchen and think about the dinner I have planned for tonight- a rich fish soup on a cold, windy day.