Dear Terri,
We filled up on antibiotics and took the kids to Venice for Carnevale . . . it was sublime. The city is a maze . . . perfect for my head right now . . . so magical a place, and then to have it invaded by the most outrageous and beautiful of masks! I bought two masks from an artist whose work I have admired for over a year now. My mask is a beautiful huge golden leaf with a face (like a Froud painting), and Carl's is a satyr mask, one of the first designs originally worn in Carnevale. It is fabulous. Taiko has a beautiful blue and gold woman's face, perfect on her, and I hope to go back sometime before we leave Italy and buy two or three more because they are so lovely. But very expensive. And these are papier-mâché -- the leather ones are close to three and four hundred dollars. Sigh. . . .
Venice is just so lovely. The water, the magic of the floating city, the mazes, and the sudden piazzas that open up in a chaotic fashion are thrilling. Nothing is at right angles as the buildings all sink and lean to one side or another. It is also the place where we get the word "ghetto," a Venetian word to describe the area where the Jews lived -- a neighborhood I want to get to next time I go. Also the little islands out on the lagoon, Burano, where they make lace, and Murano, where they make glass. So much to see.
The Carnevale was mad. Full of costumes, masks, and outrageous actions. One guy had a woman's dress on with a huge hoop skirt attached. He pranced around, the skirt swinging like a peacock tail, and then every now and then would open his blouse to reveal large foam breasts, squeeze the nipples, and kiss the crowd. Taiko says it was her favorite.
Ciao,
Midori
|
|
Terri,
I've been reading about the life of a Venetian courtesan-poet in the 16th century. Since Venice is Anna's city (my mask-maker), I wanted to know about the position of women there. Very interesting. Venetian women were clever in using the patriarchal system to survive -- but only at a cost to themselves. Venetian women had reputations as intellects and beauties but were at the mercy of public attacks by the very wealthy men who engaged them to increase their personal reputations. To be a whore in Italy in the Renaissance was to be a "taxed woman," because Venice, in particular, required prostitutes and courtesans to pay taxes on their trade. So while prostitution was reviled as immoral, it was tolerated as a source of revenue! Frenchmen often came to Venice to visit these almost mythologically beautiful courtesans . . . and then complained that they were so business like, requiring a sum of money for the "whole package" and a separate fee just for conversation.
I have also been reading about a fascinating argument in artistic theory of the time -- an essay written by Vasari about the woman painter Anguissola's work (also 16th century. There was a show of her work in Cremona and I am so sorry I missed it!) Vasari uses the Aristotelian arguments about the sexual nature of artistic creation and procreation. I had always imagined that my mask-maker worked out of her sexual center, and that her abortion (and subsequent failure to honor her dead, which is huge in the Italian cultural ethos) fucks up her head for work. So when I found Vasari talking about women's ability to be creative because they are "procreative," developing this argument in a wonderfully bizarre way, I just couldn't believe my luck. Vasari and Aristotle are, of course, sexist in their approach, claiming that as men take the greater role in procreation (sperm providing the heat by which life is generated), their artistic creativity is also superior -- so I can see a lovely argument forming between Anna and someone spouting Aristotle.
What else? . . . Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, a bizarre and fascinating study. The Darker Vision of the Renaissance, with papers about their cults of death, mysticism. Letters of the Renaissance, a lovely, touching letter from a man to his courtesan, calling her the most virtuous of women. Everything has been making the characters flesh out and have reasons, historical and cultural, for thinking and acting the way they do. They all read, of course, and I am reading what they would have been reading. . . .
But then . . . I have to stop reading and write, and the whole voice of the Commedia takes over. This isn't a treatise on art (not on the surface anyway); it is a play. Full of romance, bumbling around in the dark, a dark edge and an appetite. Every time I write a "serious" scene it has a way of dissolving into a Commedia moment -- a mask, a string of confusing and funny dialogue, some lust, some food.
I am so overwhelmed by the richness and variety on my plate. What a meal Italy is giving me! Still, sometimes I worry that even I may choke on so much. . . .
ciao bella,
Midori
|
|
Terri,
I just looked at the map . . . fabulous!!! The farmhouse you are renting is in an area midway between Florence and Assisi and Perugia . . . beautiful. This is a wonderful place and location. I think we should drive up on Saturday. This will give you two days in Milan to get over jet-lag, and me a couple of days to stock up on groceries before things close up tight for holidays -- as, believe me, they do here. We’ll spend a week or so with you in Poppi, but we haven’t made plans for Easter yet. Perhaps Stephen and I will drive back into Florence for the Easter vigil Saturday night. I am asking a teacher friend at school if he is interested in renting out his car to you for a month or two . . . I'll see him on Monday and find out.
I am happy that Armless Maiden is out and getting good notices. Yes, I got my copies from Tor. It is wonderful. Within the fantasy tradition of good storytelling, but sophisticated, with a good solid contemporary idea beneath it. It shows what good story telling can do . . . raise consciousness without being overly didactic. The reader should wake to the reality of the subject rather than shudder away from something too terrible to think about. I think in this the Greek dramatists had it right -- using masks to keep a certain emotional distance, allowing the audience to look upon what was otherwise unbearable and have it, if not explained, then addressed in a larger context. The stories of Armless Maiden do the same and I think it's very successful. Cool. Can't wait to see the reviews.
I'm at a writer's bus stop here -- between projects, sort of. A bunch of new things clamoring . . . and I'm trying to decide where to go and how fast. I’m still at work on Innamorati . . . but I have also been thinking of [an Italian fairy tale retelling] and I have a weird Bordertown story brewing. The hidden daughter of Corwin of Aldon house, Mister Perfect himself, flees Elfland to come to Bordertown . . . why? Because she's really part human and wants, after so many years of being odd in Elfland, to find her mother, who is still living in Bordertown. What interests me is the strange twist of a kid running into Bordertown to find a parent, rather than running away from a parent. Don't worry, I'll keep the land behind the Border mysterious, as always. . . .
O.K . . . I have to stop before Unix hangs up on me. . . .
See you soon!
Midori
|
|
Terri,
The weather has turned into spring . . . and oh, the light! Just wait till you come! We have been fine-tuning our cooking skills. I can make a pesto to die for, Stephen the tenderest homemade pasta imaginable . . . I am looking forward to feasts on the porch, looking over the Tuscana countryside. Books . . . talk . . . art. . . .
Tell Ellen I am having trouble getting hard materials on Roman pagan fairy tales in English here. I've discovered the library, but until my "certificata di residensia" comes through I can't get a library card and check things out . . . and browsing isn't allowed. But the best place to find that stuff in the States is through archeological studies, because the art work around the vases, etc., is all taken from myths and fairy tales . . . and bawdy ones too, I might add. Also books on masks tend to have a lot of fairy tale stuff.
Now I must get back to my own wayward book . . . back to the maze. . . .
Ciao tutti,
Midori
|
|
Terri,
Are you missing Tuscany? I’m sure Tuscano misses you -- and so do we. I’m glad you got those extra weeks making monoprints with Jaqueline in Poppi. I can’t wait to see them. It’s hot, hot, hot in Milano this week. It must be much cooler back in England. We want to go to the seaside soon, before we melt.
As for the book, I’m lost in the maze . . . I can’t find my way through it. I’m hoping it’s just a week of heat . . . and not that I’ve lost the plot somehow. I can’t even bear to look at the novel right now. I’m cooking . . . shopping . . . roaming through the streets and the markets with an ease I couldn’t even have imagined when we first arrived in Milano. It’s been good to be back in the international flow of life I remember from childhood, my parents, travels, Africa, international friends always coming and going . . . a sense of living in the wide, wide world that I seem to have lost (or maybe merely misplaced) during the last stretch of years while busy giving birth to kids and books in Milwaukee. (Not that I regret them!) I feel like I’m using all of myself again, not just one part, one mask. So why so much trouble with the book now??? I am suddenly feeling lost in the maze . . . turning corners and finding dead ends ahead of me. . . . I hope, damn it, it’s only the heat and that I’ll soon find my way again. . . .
ciao,
Midori
|
|
Dear Terri,
I’ve been trying to think of Italian fantasy recommendations for your magazine article . . . but I have been reading Italian fairy tales for such a different purpose (namely to create my own work) that I haven't really paid attention to synthesizing the experience of the narratives yet. I remain impressed though by how the tales and beliefs of antiquity and later Italy flowed together . . . not so much a crisis as in other parts of Europe, where Druids slammed against the oncoming church, but where all these strands of faith and storytelling merged, sometimes quite playfully. Italy is a country where saints and satyrs sat down together to dine . . . and I think this lends a richness to a lot of the storytelling. I don't always agree with Marina Warner [From the Beast to the Blonde], though I find her a fascinating scholar. But in her historical examples of the shrewish-hag-storyteller, and her negative examples of older women and lust, she has ignored the fact that Italy did not have quite the same hang-ups about women as other societies, like the French and those Calvinist Dutch. In the early Commedia of the 16th century, women performed on stage and were clever and witty -- outwitting men, yet needing/wanting them as lovers all the same. Men, however, came in for far more ribbing -- they were the oversexed lechers (the archetypal old man with no dignity in his scrambling for young girls, for instance) and they were the absolute butt of all the jokes . . . so I don't know. I think Italy gives one points for living well . . . satisfying the appetites, and being generous, well spoken and loyal to one's family. But then, [Italo] Calvino points out the difference between northern and southern Italy. There was the loose federation of guilds and banks in the north, and there was the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily which produced very different economies and cultures. (I think of south of Rome as being almost North Africa.) But nonetheless, through all the stories there seems to be the echo of antiquity . . . Virgil, Homer, Catullus, Martial, Ovid, Petronious . . . then Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio . . . St. Thomas Aquinas pulling together Aristotle and the Church making allowable the classics and classical vision within the orthodoxy of the church. I find it all very amazing and enriching . . . and just a history of contradictions.
I'm not much help, I think. You need some concrete thoughts on the tradition of Italian magical tales, and I admit to still stumbling in the dark. Actually, I am stumbling around in this labyrinth of a novel . . . enjoying it but worried that the next chapter will haul me up before yet another dead end wall. I have restructured it twice now . . . but I think I am finally on the right path. I remember that there is a myth about mazes that all you have to do is close your eyes, keep your hand in contact with the wall at all times, and you will find your way out. So I've been trying to write with my eyes shut . . . but I keep peeking!
Best of luck getting the article in.
Ciao bella (we ate rigatoni and fresh tomatoes with basil last night . . . heaven!),
Midori
|
|
Girlfriend,
How’s Devon, your work, your cottage, your complicated love life? How are the Frouds . . . the faeries . . . the sheep? (You do have sheep in Devon, don’t you? That’s what I picture . . . rain, green hills, mist, stone walls . . . and many sheep. But I bet the mail doesn’t come delivered by shepherd, as it did in Poppi!) We’re all well here, more or less, and busy. Milano is grey right now but in a hushed, pleasant way . . . cool and shadowy.
Innamorati is crazy, wonderful, and I’m loving it . . . finding new twists and kinks in the characters daily . . . they keep surprising me. Annoying me. And delighting me. Our lives are crazy, everything is up in the air, we don’t know if we’re going to be able to stay in Italy beyond this first year or not. But the book is good. It keeps me going. I can’t remember if this is the week you said you’d be away in London or not . . . but when you get this note, let me know how you are. I hope you survived the magazine deadline.
Ciao ragazza!
Midori
|
|
Terri:
I am reading a wonderful book called Italian Days by Barbara Harrison. You and Ellen would enjoy it very much -- she writes so well about Italy, and you will recognize much of the Florence she writes about. I have also finished Marquez's new book, Lovers and Demons. As always his prose is so fantastic . . . he is always such a storyteller, and everything he writes feels so traditional even while the edge it carries is modern. Love it. (I still think however that 100 Years of Solitude is his best work.)
Okay . . . the chapter is calling me. If I don't go now I'll get squirrelly and depressed! Funny isn't it? No matter how I feel, how worried or how itchy, once I begin writing, nothing else matters. Good thing too, or I'd be a clerk at Taco Bell.
Ciao ragazza,
Midori
|
|
 |
| Continue reading |
Copyright © 2000 by Midori Snyder
Copyright © by The Endicott Studio
|