Naples Quotes

I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.

Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli- I will forgive you.

Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.

Leave, instead. Get away for good, far from the life we’ve lived since birth. Settle in well-organized lands where everything really is possible. I had fled, in fact. Only to discover, in the decades to come, that I had been wrong, that it was a chain with larger and larger links: the neighborhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet. And this is how I see it today: it’s not the neighborhood that’s sick, it’s not Naples, it’s the entire earth, it’s the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting identical that I fled from.

On the 24th of February, 1810, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.

Here we are at last. The Italian proverb says “See Naples and die” but I say, see Naples and live; for there seems a great deal worth living for.

Alexander, me has roto el corazón. Pero por haberme llevado a tu espalda, por tirar de mi trineo de muerte, por darme tu último pedazo de pan, por el cuerpo que te destrozaste por mí, por el hijo que me has dado, por los veintinueve días que vivimos en el paraíso, por todas nuestras arenas blancas de Naples y nuestros vinos de Napa, por todos los días que has sido mi primer y mi último aliento, por Orbeli... Te perdonaré.

And for an instant he would remember Naples: sitting with Sasha in her tiny room; the jolt of surprise and delight he'd felt when the sun finally dropped into the center of her window and was captured inside her circle of wire. Now he turned to her, grinning. Her hair and face were aflame with orange light. "See," Sasha muttered, eyeing the sun. "It's mine.

Sasha's green eyes were right up against yours, the lashes interlocking. "In Naples," she said, "there were kids who were just lost. You knew they were never going to get back to what they'd been, or have a normal life. And then there were other ones who you thought, maybe they will." ... You opened your eyes, which you hadn't realized were shut again. "what I'm saying is, We're the survivors," Sasha said. ... "Not everyone is. But we are. Okay?

...And on my fourth morning in Naples, I woke up alone. There was a note on the table with the breakfast that Cinzia had quietly prepared for me. It read, "It could never be. But that's why it will always be - perfectly divine. Cinzia" City Solipsism: A Short Story

One feature of the usual script for plague: the disease invariably comes from somewhere else. The names for syphilis, when it began its epidemic sweep through Europe in the last decade of the fifteenth century are an exemplary illustration of the need to make a dreaded disease foreign. It was the "French pox" to the English, morbus Germanicus to the Parisians, the Naples sickness to the Florentines, the Chinese disease to the Japanese. But what may seem like a joke about the inevitability of chauvinism reveals a more important truth: that there is a link between imagining disease and imagining foreignness.

For the first time, I left Naples, left Campania. I discovered that I was afraid of everything: afraid of taking the wrong train, afraid of having to pee and not knowing where to do it, afraid that it would be night and I wouldn’t be able to orient myself in an unfamiliar city, afraid of being robbed. I put all my money in my bra, as my mother did, and spent hours in a state of wary anxiety that coexisted seamlessly with a growing sense of liberation.

For no reason, but the sunrise, the bay of Naples, the sea—you look at them and it makes you sad. What’s most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it’s better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself.

Watch me until I fall asleep. Watch me always even when you leave Naples. That way I'll know that you see me and I'm at peace.

Life can have an ironic geometry. Starting from the age of thirteen or fourteen I had aspired to a bourgeois decorum, proper Italian, a good life, cultured and reflective. Naples had seemed a wave that would drown me. I didn’t think the city could contain life forms different from those I had known as a child, violent or sensually lazy, tinged with sentimental vulgarity or obtusely fortified in defense of their own wretched degradation.

And that is how I see it today: it's not the neighborhood that's sick, it's not Naples, it's the entire earth, it's the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things.

The Spanish Influenza did not originate in Spain. In fact the first recorded case was in the United States, in Kansas, on March 9th, 1918. Beware the Ides of March. But because Spain was neutral in World War I, it did not sensor reports of the disease to the public. To tell the truth then, is to risk being remembered by its fiction. Countless countries laid blame to one another. What the US called the Spanish Influenza, Spain called the French Flu, or the Naples Soldier. What Germans dubbed the Russian Pest, the Russians called Chinese Flu.

Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. this traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.

...all the woods and strands of Naples re-echoed with — 'O! giorno felíce! O! giorno felíce!' 'You see,' said Paulo, when they had departed, and he came to himself again, “you see how people get through their misfortunes, if they have but a heart to bear up against them, and do nothing that can lie on their conscience afterwards; and how suddenly one comes to be happy, just when one is beginning to think one never is to be happy again!

The highest rational achievement of the finest intellects consists in grasping that certain matters lie beyond their powers to grasp.

In these written tears alone have I expiated the hardness and ingratitude of my heart of eighteen years. I can never read over these verses without adoring that youthful image which the transparent and plaintive waves of the Gulf of Naples will ever bring to me,—nor without hating myself. But souls above forgive. Hers has forgiven me. Forgive me, too, reader, for I have wept.

Go your way, seducers, flatterers, idlers, those glib of tongue and charlatans; I am not a seed that you can force to grow; my goal differs so from yours that I would be wasting my time in trying to explain where my inclination drives me.

He had violent passions, and on occasion desire seized his body so that he was driven to an orgy of lust, but he hated the instincts that robbed him of his self-possession. I think, even, he hated the inevitable partner in his debauchery. When he had regained command over himself, he shuddered at the sight of the woman he had enjoyed. His thoughts floated then serenely in the empyrean, and he felt towards her the horror that perhaps the painted butterfly, hovering about the flowers, feels to the filthy chrysalis from which it has triumphantly emerged. I suppose that art is a manifestation of the sexual instinct. It is the same emotion which is excited in the human heart by the sight of a lovely woman, the Bay of Naples under the yellow moon, and the Entombment of Titian. It is possible that Strickland hated the normal release of sex because it seemed to him brutal by comparison with the satisfaction of artistic creation.

These wafers had entered the mythology of the company, including their names: Tunguska, Vesuvius, Tokyo. The Vesuvius wafer put you on the Bay of Naples at 7:00 a.m. on August 24, A.D. 79, just before burning ash killed everyone. Tunguska left you in Siberia in 1908, just before the giant meteor struck, causing a shock wave that killed every living

Todas las mercancías tienen un origen oscuro. Es la ley del capitalismo.

He's delighted to read what the mayor of Naples says about driving there. Naples is the most chaotic city for drivers on earth. Ed loved it—he got to drive on the sidewalk while the pedestrians filled the street. “A green light is a green light, avanti, avanti,” the mayor explained. “A red light—just a suggestion.” And yellow? he was asked. “Yellow is for gaiety.

Naples is a strange city,” he says. “It’s in tatters in some places, absolutely run-down, but there’s also this persevering Mediterranean beauty, almost Grecian. It was the most bombed Italian city in World War Two and has a largely tragic history—a huge cholera epidemic, poverty, crime—but there’s this strength to this place and its people. I find that beauty next to decay is its own kind of stunning. You can really feel it when you’re there.

Your behavior inside your home is the real indicator of your character. Not in the workplace, not in school. Sure, it's nice to look good when you leave your home, and make a bella figure. But in terms of your identity, the most important thing is who you are with your parents, with your children, with your cousins. Th most important thing is how you behave with he people who really matter.

There is beauty to the run-down buildings, the laundry strung high overhead, the rhythm and drawl of daily life here. There is beauty, too, in the old Mediterranean architecture, buildings left over from centuries ago, before Naples became what it is today. There is beauty in the discrepancy -- two things that seems oppositional, coming together.

Just because the restaurant had Dynamite Shrimp on the menu, was that any reason for the place to blow up? (re April 15 release, Killer Kitchens

My return to Naples was like having a defective umbrella that suddenly closes over your head in a gust of wind.

Yet who could doubt, surveying the glorious spectacle of the Bay of Naples

Night knew no bounds. Goethe, on a moonlit evening in Naples, was “overwhelmed by a feeling of infinite space.

On the other hand, the sun of Naples might be conducive to learning something about the biochemistry of the embryonic development of marine animals.

People who go to Italy to look at ruins won’t have to go as far as Naples and Pompeii in the future.

A middle-aged mother in a little town called Naples has been named Miss Dreamsville.

...the city of Naples was like this: wonderful from a distance, but when seen close up, it was fragmentary, indefinable, and coarse...

People who go to Italy to look at ruins won’t have to go as far as Naples and Pompeii in the future.

hey! there's no room for Naples;' he had got to the wall by this time; 'but it's all one; it's in there!' He remained on his knees, looking up at his fellow-prisoner

he became King of Portugal, King of Naples, King of Sicily, the Duke of Milan,

Naples had seemed a wave that would drown me.

years that is exactly what he did, before resigning the office, retiring to his country house on the Bay of Naples and dying in his bed in 78 BCE. It was a surprisingly peaceful

Ah, there is no city that gives off so much noise and such a clamor as Naples.

There are always miracles here, they say about Naples.

And across the water, you would swear you could sniff it all; the cinnamon and the cloves, the frankincense and the honey and the licorice, the nutmeg and citrons, the myrrh and the rosewater from Persia in keg upon keg. You would think you could glimpse, heaped and glimmering, the sapphires and the emeralds and the gauzes woven with gold, the ostrich feathers and the elephant tusks, the gums and the ginger and the coral buttons mynheer Goswin the clerk of the Hanse might be wearing on his jacket next week. . . . The Flanders galleys put into harbor every night in their highly paid voyage from Venice, fanned down the Adriatic by the thick summer airs, drifting into Corfu and Otranto, nosing into and out of Sicily and round the heel of Italy as far as Naples; blowing handsomely across the western gulf to Majorca, and then to the north African coast, and up and round Spain and Portugal, dropping off the small, lucrative loads which were not needed for Bruges; taking on board a little olive oil, some candied orange peel, some scented leather, a trifle of plate and a parrot, some sugar loaves.

A German poet once said, "A Neapolitan (people who come from the area around Naples, Italy) would certainly be a different creature if he didn't feel himself wedged between God and the Devil.

Andersen himself believed that many of his finest stories were written after travels to Rome, Naples, Constantinople, and Athens in 1841. He returned to Copenhagen reinvigorated by the encounter with the 'Orient' and began inventing his own tales rather than relying on the folklore of his culture. Andersen believed that he had finally found his true voice, and 'The Snow Queen,' even if it does not mark a clean break with the earlier fairy tales, offers evidence of a more reflective style committed to forging new mythologies rather than producing lighthearted entertainments.

What is this self, this I that I am? I know not. One fine day, I awoke to find myself upon this earth; I discovered my fate to be forever linked with a certain body, character, estate. Am I to spend all my days, then, ineffectually seeking to alter that which cannot be altered, and so, meanwhile, forget to live? Rather do I propose to accept myself as I am, humbly submitting to my own defects.

CONGRATULATIONS DL Havlin! Your entry, "There are No Lights in Naples", an unpublished short fiction - flash fiction genre category, is a finalist for the 2016 Royal Palm Literary Awards competition!

One encounters in the streets, late at night on the evenings of fetes, the most strange and bizarre passers-by. Do these nights of popular celebration cause ancient and forgotten avatars to stir in the depths of the human soul? This evening, in the movement of the sweaty and excited crowd, I am certain that I passed between the masks of the liberated Bythinians and encountered the courtesans of the Roman decadence. There emerged, this evening, from that swarming esplanade of Des Invalides - amid the crackle of fireworks, the shooting stars, the stink of frying, the hiccuping of drunkards and the reeking atmosphere of menageries - the wild effusions of one of Nero's festivals. It was like the odour of a May evening on the Basso-Porto of Naples. It was easy to believe that the faces in that crowd were Sicilian.

And this is how I see it today: it’s not the neighborhood that’s sick, it’s not Naples, it’s the entire earth, it’s the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things.

YORK. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth, How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex To triumph, like an Amazonian trull, Upon their woes whom fortune captivates! But that thy face is, vizard-like, unchanging, Made impudent with use of evil deeds, I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush. To tell thee whence thou cam'st, of whom deriv'd, Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless. Thy father bears the type of King of Naples, Of both the Sicils and Jerusalem, Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman. Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult? It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen; Unless the adage must be verified, That beggars mounted run their horse to death. 'T is beauty that doth oft make women proud; But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small. 'T is virtue that doth make them most admir'd; The contrary doth make thee wond'red at. 'T is government that makes them seem divine; The want thereof makes thee abominable. Thou art as opposite to every good As the Antipodes are unto us, Or as the south to the Septentrion. O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide! How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child, To bid the father wipe his eyes withal, And yet be seen to bear a woman's face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. Bid'st thou me rage? why, now thou hast thy wish: Wouldst have me weep? why, now thou hast thy will; For raging wind blows up incessant showers, And when the rage allays the rain begins. These tears are my sweet Rutland's obsequies, And every drop cries vengeance for his death, 'Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.

Le bonheur le porta à une hauteur de pensées assez étrangère à son caractère; il considérait les événements de la vie lui, si jeune, comme si déjà il fût arrivé à sa dernière limite."Il faut en convenir, depuis mon arrivée à Parme, se dit-il enfin après plusieurs heures de rêveries délicieuses, je n'ai point eu de joie tranquille et parfaite, comme celle que je trouvais à Naples en galopant dans les chemins de Vomero ou en courant les rives de Misène. Tous

La città nascondeva inclinazione pedagogica. Senza volerti insegnare nulla ti costringeva ad apprendere, fra banalità, segreti pregevoli. I Napoletani li succhiavano col latte, ma ce n'era per tutti. Bastava stare attenti, riflettere.

Quella laggiù, dunque, quel vasto presepio di luci sparse tra macchie d'alberi dalle colline al mare, quell'immota distesa d'acqua nel grembo fra edifici e monti, in cui il Vesuvio verberava fuochi e le case barbagli d'oro vecchio, era Napoli.

I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors. If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t. . . . I very much love those mysterious volumes, both ancient and modern, that have no definite author but have had and continue to have an intense life of their own. They seem to me a sort of nighttime miracle, like the gifts of the Befana, which I waited for as a child. . . . True miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known. . . . Besides, isn’t it true that promotion is expensive? I will be the least expensive author of the publishing house. I’ll spare you even my presence.

You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If tomorrow they tell you you are to make no more water-pipes and saucepans but are to make steel helmets and machine-guns, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Woman at the counter and woman in the office. If tomorrow they tell you you are to fill shells and assemble telescopic sights for snipers' rifles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Research worker in the laboratory. If tomorrow they tell you you are to invent a new death for the old life, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Priest in the pulpit. If tomorrow they tell you you are to bless murder and declare war holy, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Pilot in your aeroplane. If tomorrow they tell you you are to carry bombs over the cities, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Man of the village and man of the town. If tomorrow they come and give you your call-up papers, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Mother in Normandy and mother in the Ukraine, mother in Vancouver and in London, you on the Hwangho and on the Mississippi, you in Naples and Hamburg and Cairo and Oslo - mothers in all parts of the earth, mothers of the world, if tomorrow they tell you you are to bear new soldiers for new battles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! For if you do not say NO - if YOU do not say no - mothers, then: then! In the bustling hazy harbour towns the big ships will fall silent as corpses against the dead deserted quay walls, their once shimmering bodies overgrown with seaweed and barnacles, smelling of graveyards and rotten fish. The trams will lie like senseless glass-eyed cages beside the twisted steel skeleton of wires and track. The sunny juicy vine will rot on decaying hillsides, rice will dry in the withered earth, potatoes will freeze in the unploughed land and cows will stick their death-still legs into the air like overturned chairs. In the fields beside rusted ploughs the corn will be flattened like a beaten army. Then the last human creature, with mangled entrails and infected lungs, will wander around, unanswered and lonely, under the poisonous glowing sun, among the immense mass graves and devastated cities. The last human creature, withered, mad, cursing, accusing - and the terrible accusation: WHY? will die unheard on the plains, drift through the ruins, seep into the rubble of churches, fall into pools of blood, unheard, unanswered, the last animal scream of the last human animal - All this will happen tomorrow, tomorrow, perhaps, perhaps even tonight, perhaps tonight, if - if - You do not say NO.

Chris had something better than manners, Tom saw, which was sensitivity. Tom was fascinated by the candlelight through the irises of his blue eyes, because so often Dickie’s eyes had looked the same late at night in Mongibello, or in some candlelit restaurant in Naples.

In Naples, there were kids who were just lost. You knew they were never going to get back to what they'd been, or have a normal life. And then there were other ones who you though, maybe they will. What I'm saying is, we're the survivors. Not everyone is. But we are. Okay?

My tone must have seemed hostile, even though I wasn’t angry or offended; there was just a touch of sarcasm. He tried to respond but he did so in an awkward, muddled way, half in dialect, half in Italian. He said he was sure that his mother was wandering around Naples as usual.

The irony behind the Church's disdain for the practice is that European Catholics have used saintly relics and bones as intermediaries for more than a thousand years. The ñatitas were similar in purpose to other skulls I had met several years earlier, on a trip to Naples, Italy.

Naples was the great European metropolis where faith in technology, in science, in economic development, in the kindness of nature, in history that leads of necessity to improvement, in democracy, was revealed, most clearly and far in advance, to be completely without foundation.

It is observable, that, as the old ROMANS, by applying themselves solely to war, were almost the only uncivilized people that ever possessed military discipline; so the modern ITALIANS are the only civilized people, among EUROPEANS, that ever wanted courage and a martial spirit. Those who would ascribe this effeminacy of the ITALIANS to their luxury, or politeness, or application to the arts, need but consider the FRENCH and ENGLISH, whose bravery is as uncontestable, as their love for the arts, and their assiduity in commerce. The ITALIAN historians give us a more satisfactory reason for this degeneracy of their countrymen. They shew us how the sword was dropped at once by all the ITALIAN sovereigns; while the VENETIAN aristocracy was jealous of its subjects, the FLORENTINE democracy applied itself entirely to commerce; ROME was governed by priests, and NAPLES by women. War then became the business of soldiers of fortune, who spared one another, and to the astonishment of the world, could engage a whole day in what they called a battle, and return at night to their camp, without the least bloodshed. What

The pilgrimage of Italy, which I now accomplished, had long been the object of my curious devotion. The passage of Mount Cenis, the regular streets of Turin, the Gothic cathedral of Milan, the scenery of the Boromean Islands, the marble palaces of Genoa, the beauties of Florence, the wonders of Rome, the curiosities of Naples, the galleries of Bologna, the singular aspect of Venice, the amphitheatre of Verona, and the Palladian architecture of Vicenza, are still present to my imagination. I read the Tuscan writers on the banks of the Arno; but my conversation was with the dead rather than the living, and the whole college of Cardinals was of less value in my eyes than the transfiguration of Raphael, the Apollo of the Vatican, or the massy greatness of the Coliseum. It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind. After Rome has kindled and satisfied the enthusiasm of the Classic pilgrim, his curiosity for all meaner objects insensibly subsides.

As time passed there was no more buying food, no money, no supplies. On some days, we wouldn’t even have a crumb to eat. There’s a vivid scene in Nanni Loy’s The Four Days of Naples, a movie made after the war about the uprising of the Neapolitans against the occupying Germans, in which one of the young characters sinks his teeth into a loaf of bread so voraciously, so desperately, I can still identify with him. In those four famous days in late September, when Naples rose up against the Germans—even before the Allies arrived, it was the climax of a terrible period of deprivation and marked the beginning of the end of the war in Italy.

The mainstay of Italian coffee lore, la tazzina del caffe, or an espresso, as served by one’s local bar and during the day consumed - generally - standing up, is another one of those things about which Italians have very strong feelings. The purists want is very dense, ristrettissimo, which is the way they serve it in Naples...

Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that they speak i’ the nose thus? FIRST MUSICIAN How, sir, how! CLOWN Are these, I pray you, wind instruments? FIRST MUSICIAN Ay, marry, are they, sir. CLOWN O, thereby hangs a tale. FIRST MUSICIAN Whereby hangs a tale, sir? CLOWN Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know.

No, we never did go back anywhere. Not to Heidelberg, not to Hamelin, not to Verona, not to Mont Majour - not so much as to Carcassonne itself. We talked of it, of course, but I guess Florence got all she wanted out of one look at a place. She had the seeing eye. I haven't, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which I want to return - towns with the blinding white sun upon them; stone pines against the blue of the sky; corners of gables, all carved and painted with stags and scarlet flowers and crow-stepped gables with the little saint at the top; and grey and pink palazzi and walled towns a mile or so back from the sea, on the Mediterranean, between Leghorn and Naples.

a 1922 speech at the Fascist Congress in Naples, Benito Mussolini declared: We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality….Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, we subordinate everything.1

Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute in his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Misérables.

When Sicily became part of the Kingdom of Naples, Palermo lost its capital status. It was never to regain it. It is now essentially a baroque city, beautiful though sadly dilapidated. But the setting – the Conca d’Oro or Shell of Gold – is as lovely as ever, and the Sicilian parliament still meets in King Roger’s old palace – so all, perhaps, is not lost.

Nous restions tous des heures sur nos bouts d’appartements décapotables pour nous observer, nous alpaguer, chacun avait son petit théâtre.

...she felt safe with Nicolo, and feared nothing.

Cosa Nostra

Ernst Jünger would say that greatness consists in being exposed to the storm.

No man can spend his income in two ways at once: consequently, he who is delightful in company will necessarily be less so in the society of his intimate acquaintance.

COSIMO FANZAGO

But beyond the extravagance of Rome's wealthiest citizens and flamboyant gourmands, a more restrained cuisine emerged for the masses: breads baked with emmer wheat; polenta made from ground barley; cheese, fresh and aged, made from the milk of cows and sheep; pork sausages and cured meats; vegetables grown in the fertile soil along the Tiber. In these staples, more than the spice-rubbed game and wine-soaked feasts of Apicius and his ilk, we see the earliest signs of Italian cuisine taking shape. The pillars of Italian cuisine, like the pillars of the Pantheon, are indeed old and sturdy. The arrival of pasta to Italy is a subject of deep, rancorous debate, but despite the legend that Marco Polo returned from his trip to Asia with ramen noodles in his satchel, historians believe that pasta has been eaten on the Italian peninsula since at least the Etruscan time. Pizza as we know it didn't hit the streets of Naples until the seventeenth century, when Old World tomato and, eventually, cheese, but the foundations were forged in the fires of Pompeii, where archaeologists have discovered 2,000-year-old ovens of the same size and shape as the modern wood-burning oven. Sheep's- and cow's-milk cheeses sold in the daily markets of ancient Rome were crude precursors of pecorino and Parmesan, cheeses that literally and figuratively hold vast swaths of Italian cuisine together. Olives and wine were fundamental for rich and poor alike.

The men also had more trouble keeping their work secret. It was easier for women, but the men all wanted to brag about going back to the past. Of course, they were forbidden by all sorts of contractual arrangements, but contracts could be forgotten after a few drinks in a bar. That was why Kramer had informed them all about the existence of several specially burned nav wafers. These wafers had entered the mythology of the company, including their names: Tunguska, Vesuvius, Tokyo. The Vesuvius wafer put you on the Bay of Naples at 7:00 a.m. on August 24, A.D. 79, just before burning ash killed everyone. Tunguska left you in Siberia in 1908, just before the giant meteor struck, causing a shock wave that killed every living thing for hundreds of miles. Tokyo put you in that city in 1923, just before the earthquake flattened it. The idea was if word of the project became public, you might end up with the wrong wafer on your next trip out. None of the military types were quite sure whether any of this was true, or just company mythology. Which was just how Kramer liked it.

But isn’t it a funny thing, he would sometimes reflect, that I’m not susceptible to that exclusive and passionate preoccupation that people call love? In those relationships that chance threw in my path at Novara or Naples, did I ever meet a woman whose company I preferred, even during the first few days, to an outing on a fine horse I had never ridden before?

I felt that in me fear could not put down roots, and even the lava, the fiery stream of melting matter that I imagined inside the earthly globe, and the fear it provoked in me, settled in my mind in orderly sentences, in harmonious images, became a pavement of black stones like the streets of Naples, a pavement where I was always and no matter what the center.

those who gave me the most pleasure. You know why? Because you’re an idiot, and even to fuck well it takes a little intelligence. For example you don’t know how to give a blow job, you’re hopeless, and it’s pointless to explain it to you, you can’t do it, it’s too obvious that it disgusts you. And he went on like that for a while, making speeches that became increasingly crude; with him vulgarity was normal. Then he wanted to explain clearly how things stood: he was marrying her because of the respect he felt for her father, a skilled pastry maker he was fond of; he was marrying her because one had to have a wife and even children and even an official house. But there should be no mistake: she was nothing to him, he hadn’t put her on a pedestal, she wasn’t the one he loved best, so she had better not be a pain in the ass, believing she had some rights. Brutal words. At a certain point Michele himself must have realized it, and he became gripped by a kind of melancholy. He had murmured that women for him were all games with a few holes for playing in. All. All except one. Lina was the only woman in the world he loved—love, yes, as in the films—and respected. He told me, Gigliola sobbed, that she would have known how to furnish this house. He told me that giving her money to spend, yes, that would be a pleasure. He told me that with her he could have become truly important, in Naples. He said to me: You remember what she did with the wedding photo, you remember how she fixed up the shop? And you, and Pinuccia, and all the others, what the fuck are you, what the fuck do you know how to do? He had said those things to her and not only those. He had told her that he thought about Lila night and day, but not with normal desire, his desire for her didn’t resemble what he knew. In reality he didn’t want her. That is, he didn’t want her the way he generally wanted women, to feel them under him, to turn them over, turn them again, open them up, break them, step on them, and crush them. He didn’t want her in order to have sex and then forget her. He wanted the subtlety of her mind with all its ideas. He wanted her imagination. And he wanted her without ruining her, to make her last. He wanted her not to screw her—that word applied to Lila disturbed him. He wanted to kiss her and caress her. He wanted to be caressed, helped, guided, commanded. He wanted to see how she changed with the passage of time, how she aged. He wanted to talk with her and be helped to talk. You understand? He spoke of her in way that to me, to me—when we are about to get married—he has never spoken.

The Germans evacuated Naples on October 1, 1943. During an Allied raid the previous September, hundreds of citizens had walked away and begun living in the caves outside the city. The Germans in their retreat bombed the entrance to the caves, forcing the citizens to stay underground. A typhus epidemic broke out. In the harbour scuttled ships were freshly mined underwater.

Temporarily then, for a short time only, they were to live in Palermo: the south of south. Every culture has its southerners—people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing, brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colorful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor lead enviable lives—envied, that is, by work-driven, sensually inhibited, less corruptly governed northerners. We are superior to them, say the northerners, clearly superior. We do not shirk our duties or tell lies as a matter of course, we work hard, we are punctual, we keep reliable accounts. But they have more fun than we do. Every country, including southern countries, has its south: below the equator, it lies north. Hanoi has Saigon, Sao Paulo has Rio, Delhi has Calcutta, Rome has Naples, and Naples, which to those at the top of this peninsula

At the turn of the century, New York had more speakers of German than anywhere in the world except Vienna and Berlin, more Irish than anywhere but Dublin, more Russians than in Kiev, more Italians than in Milan or Naples. In 1890 the United States had 800 German newspapers and as late as the outbreak of World War I Baltimore alone had four elementary schools teaching in German only.

So many places where I‘m not. I‘m not in Naples, in Tangier, Coimbra, Lisbon, New York, Yambol, and Istanbul. Not only am I not there, I am painfully absent. I am not there on a rainy afternoon in London, I am not there in the clamor of Madrid in the evening, I am not in Brooklyn in autumn, I am not there on the empty Sunday streets of Sofia or Turin, in the silence of a Bulgarian town in 1978…

THE FOLLOWING WORK was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is the purest Italian.

he refused absolutely to lead a caffè-haunting existence in one of the big towns of Italy.   “Can’t you see yourself on the Corso of Florence or Naples,” said the Duchessa, “with thoroughbred English horses? For the evenings a carriage, a charming apartment,” and so forth. She dwelt with exquisite relish on the details of this vulgar happiness, which she saw Fabrizio thrust from him with disdain. “He is a hero,” she thought.

Randy young couples in Naples don’t even bother with lovers’ lanes they simply park on any street and paste the windows with newspaper. A daughter with an encyclopaedic knowledge of current affairs is not something a Neapolitan father brags about. To ensure the undivided attentions of their partner some men prefer to paste the windows with the sports newspaper. Maybe that’s why La Gazzetta dello Sport is pink—to enhance the mood.

Creemos estúpidamente que, por alguna razón, un acto criminal debe ser más premeditado y deliberado que un acto inocuo. En realidad no hay diferencia. Los actos poseen una elasticidad de la que los juicios éticos carecen.

He had thought that his great wish to see Morel presented to the Queen of Naples could be denied only by the improbable death of the sovereign. But we think of the future as a reflection of the present projected into an empty space, while it is often the immediate result of causes which for the most part escape us. Less than an hour had passed, and M. de Charlus would now have given anything to ensure that Morel was not presented to the Queen.

Yes, Imma was consoled but only because Lila was introducing her to a permanent stream of splendors and miseries, a cyclical Naples where everything was marvelous and everything became gray and irrational and everything sparkled again, as when a cloud passes over the sun and the sun appears to flee, a timid, pale disk, near extinction, but not look, once the cloud dissolves it's suddenly dazzling again, so bright you have to shield your eyes with your hand.

It was her grandfather who'd told her the tale of this particular violin, over and over, as if the telling could stave off loss, as if the weight and scope of human history were not found in books or in those mythic universities in Rome and Naples that no one in their village had ever seen but, rather, were encoded in objects like this one, a violin touched by hundreds of hands, loved, used, stroked, pressed, made to outlive its owners, storing their secrets and lies

CHARLIE (Intently) You hate all white men, don’t you, Matoseh? TSHEMBE (A burst of laughter. Casting his eyes up) Oh, dear God, why? (He crosses down and away) Why do you all need it so?! This absolute lo-o-onging for my hatred! (A sad smile plays across his lips) I shall be honest with you, Mr. Morris. I do not “hate” all white men—but I desperately wish that I did. It would make everything infinitely easier! But I am afraid that, among other things, I have seen the slums of Liverpool and Dublin and the caves above Naples. I have seen Dachau and Anne Frank’s attic in Amsterdam. I have seen too many raw-knuckled Frenchmen coming out of the Metro at dawn and too many hungry Italian children to believe that those who raided Africa for three centuries ever “loved” the white race either. I would like to be simple-minded for you, but—(Turning these eyes that have “seen” up to the other with a smile)—I cannot. I have—(He touches his brow)—seen.

Naples had seemed a wave that would drown me. I didn’t think the city could contain life forms different from those I had known as a child, violent or sensually lazy, tinged with sentimental vulgarity or obtusely fortified in defense of their own wretched degradation. I didn’t even look for them, those forms, in the past or in a possible future. I had run away like a burn victim who, screaming, tears off the burned skin, believing that she is tearing off the burning itself.

He has got Niccolò Machiavelli's book, Principalities; it is a Latin edition, shoddily printed in Naples, which seems to have passed through many hands. He thinks of Niccolò on the battlefield; of Niccolò in the torture chamber. He feels he is in the torture chamber but he knows that one day he will find the door out, because it is he who has the key. Someone says to him, what is in your little book? and he says, a few aphorisms, a few truisms, nothing we didn't know before.

Poor Mrs. Charles sat between her silent companions terrified at the course of events, and a little bored. She was a rubbishy little creature, and she knew it. A telegram had dragged her from Naples to the death-bed of a woman whom she had scarcely known. A word from her husband had plunged her into mourning. She desired to mourn inwardly as well, but she wished that Mrs. Wilcox, since fated to die, could have died before the marriage, for then less would have been expected of her.

The ability to deal with synchronic variation is an essential part of our knowledge of language. We can cope not only with ‘Thursday’ and ‘Fursday’, but also with ‘eether’ and ‘eyether’, ‘dreamed’ and ‘dreamt’, ‘shedule’ and ‘skedule’, ‘am I not?’ and ‘aren’t I?’ and thousands of other variations in sounds, meanings and structures. When it comes to language, we are all incredibly good drivers – all of us have been trained to race in the streets of Naples, and this is why we don’t crash head-on into one another all the time.

He met indeed many accomplished and amiable ecclesiastics, but it seemed to him that the more thoughtful among them had either acquired their peace of mind at the cost of a certain sensitiveness, or had taken refuge in a study of the past, as the early hermits fled to the desert from the disorders of Antioch and Alexandria. None seemed disposed to face the actual problems of life, and this attitude of caution or indifference had produced a stagnation of thought that contrasted strongly with the animation of Sir William Hamilton’s circle in Naples. The result

that a statesman should devote his life to studying “the science of politics, in order to acquire in advance all the knowledge that it may be necessary for him to use at some future time”; that authority in a state must always be divided; and that of the three known forms of government—monarchy, aristocracy and people—the best is a mixture of all three, for each one taken on its own can lead to disaster: kings can be capricious, aristocrats self-interested, and “an unbridled multitude enjoying unwonted power more terrifying than a conflagration or a raging sea.” Often today I reread On the Republic, and always I am moved, especially by the passage at the end of book six, when Scipio describes how his grandfather appears to him in a dream and takes him up into the heavens to show him the smallness of the earth in comparison to the grandeur of the Milky Way, where the spirits of dead statesmen dwell as stars. The description was inspired by the vast, clear night skies above the Bay of Naples: I gazed in every direction and all appeared wonderfully beautiful. There were stars which we never see from earth, and they were all larger than we have ever imagined. The starry spheres were much greater than the earth; indeed the earth itself seemed to me so small that I was scornful of our empire, which covers only a single point, as it were, upon its surface. “If only you will look on high,” the old man tells Scipio, “and contemplate this eternal home and resting place, you will no longer bother with the gossip of the common herd or put your trust in human reward for your exploits. Nor will any man’s reputation endure very long, for what men say dies with them and is blotted out with the forgetfulness of posterity.

On the 24th of February, 1815, the look-out at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and rounding the Château d'If, got on board the vessel between Cape Morgion and Rion island. Immediately, and according to custom, the ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean were covered with spectators; it is always an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like the Pharaon, has been built, rigged, and laden at the old Phocee docks, and belongs to an owner of the city.

With effort, he concentrated on an editorial. It told of widespread industrial unrest in the Midlands and asserted that it was imperative to pay a fair wage for a fair day’s work. Another article lamented that the huge industrial machine of England was operating at only half capacity and cried that greater new markets must be found for the productive wealth it could spew forth; more production meant cheaper goods, increased employment, higher wages. There were news articles that told of tension and war clouds over France and Spain because of the succession to the Spanish throne; Prussia was spreading its tentacles into all the German states to dominate them and a Franco-Prussian confrontation was imminent; there were war clouds over Russia and the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire; war clouds over the Italian States that wished to throw out the upstart French King of Naples and join together or not to join together, and the Pope, French-supported, was involved in the political arena; there were war clouds over South Africa because the Boers – who had over the last four years trekked out of the Cape Colony to established the Transvaal and the Orange Free State – were now threatening the English colony of Natal and war was expected by the next mail; there were anti-Semitic riots and pogroms throughout Europe; Catholic were fighting against Protestants, Mohammedans against Hindus, against Catholics, against Protestants, and they fighting among themselves; there were Red Indian wars in America, animosity between the Northern and Southern states, animosity between America and Britain over Canada, trouble in Ireland, Sweden, Finland, India, Egypt, the Balkans  . . . ‘Does na matter what you read!’ Struan exploded to no one in particular. ‘The whole world’s mad, by God!

It was this motley band of modest peeps and plovers on the beach who reminded me of the human beings I loved best - the ones who didn't fit in. These birds may or may not have been capable of emotion, but the way they looked, beleaguered there, few in number, my outcast friends, was how I felt. I'd been told that it was bad to anthropomorphize, but I could no longer remember why. It was, in any case, anthropomorphic only to see yourself in other species, not to see them in yourself. To be hungry all the time, to be mad for sex, to not believe in global warming, to be shortsighted, to live without thought of your grandchildren, to spend half your life on personal grooming, to be perpetually on guard, to be compulsive, to be habit-bound, to be avid, to be unimpressed with humanity, to prefer your own kind: these were all ways of being like a bird. Later in the evening, in posh, necropolitan Naples, on a sidewalk outside a hotel whose elevator doors were decorated with huge blowups of cute children and the monosyllabic injunction SMILE, I spotted two disaffected teenagers, two little chicks, in full Goth plumage, and I wished that I could introduce them to the brownish-gray misfits on the beach.

And Viola is the idol, the theme of Naples. She is the spoiled sultana of the boards. To spoil her acting may be easy enough,—shall they spoil her nature? No, I think not. There, at home, she is still good and simple; and there, under the awning by the doorway,—there she still sits, divinely musing. How often, crook-trunked tree, she looks to thy green boughs; how often, like thee, in her dreams, and fancies, does she struggle for the light,—not the light of the stage-lamps. Pooh, child! be contented with the lamps, even with the rush-lights. A farthing candle is more convenient for household purposes than the stars.

In a 1922 speech at the Fascist Congress in Naples, Benito Mussolini declared: We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality….Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, we subordinate everything.1 Here, Mussolini makes clear that the fascist mythic past is intentionally mythical. The function of the mythic past, in fascist politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology—authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle.

IT IS NOT often that anyone entering a great city for the first time has the luck to witness such an incident as engaged Shelley’s attention when he drove into Naples. A youth ran out of a shop pursued by a man armed with a knife. The man overtook him and with one blow in the neck laid him dead on the road. Shelley had a tender heart. He didn’t look upon it as a bit of local colour; he was seized with horror and indignation. But when he expressed his emotions to a Calabrian priest who was travelling with him, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature, the priest laughed heartily and attempted to quiz him. Shelley says he never felt such an inclination to beat anyone.

Avevano ragione i Napoletani, che dai Greci antichi discendevano, quando, di fronte alla sventura, al dolore, borbottavano rassegnati: «Accossì adda ì», ben sapendo che nessuno, nulla modificano il corso delle cose. E che però niente al mondo dura un'eternità. Ogni fenomeno deve per forza generarne un altro, che gli somiglia perché è figlio, ma è pure diversissimo. Così dopo la pioggia viene il sereno, dopo il brutto il bello. Se non ci fossero dolore, brutto, pioggia, come gusteresti il contrario? Tu aspetta e ciò che deve avvenire avverrà. Se agisci per cambiarlo o evitarlo, vuol dire che doveva andare in questa "nuova" direzione. Il destino non puoi mai farlo fesso.

A fair questioin. You've been to Naples. Imagine it five hundred years ago. Would it have made a difference?" "I've never been to Naples, Mr. Stone. But yeah, anywhere would have been totally different. It's not about Italy. It's about isolation and freedom and wanting more than you have." "True.True. But...I was so sure.Didn't you talk about Vesuvius when we read The Last Days of Pompeii?" "I think you might be confusing me with someone else." "No,no.I'm quite sure it was you. Wasn't it?" "No.It wasn't." "Oh,now,Ella. I distinctly remember something about the cleansing aspects of fire...Oh." "Wrong aspects, Mr. Stone." "Right,right. Of course. My mistake. Okay. No harm done. So,about islands...

I read, in yellow, on the roof tile of a low structure: "Silvano free." He's free, we're free, all of us are free. Disgust at the torments that shackle us, the chains of heavy life. I leaned weakly on the blue-painted wall of a building on Via Alessandria, with letters cut in the stone: "Prince of Naples Nursery." That's where I was, accents of the south cried in my head, cities that were far apart became a single vice, the blue surface of the sea and the white of the Alps. Thirty years ago the poverella of Piazza Mazzini had been leaning against a wall, a house wall, as I was now, when her breath failed, out of desperation. I couldn't, now, like her, give myself the relief of protest, of revenge.

But the strains of the doleful song stirred such powerful nostalgia for lost loves and for things lost over the course of one's life and for lives, like my grandfather's, that had come long before mine that I was suddenly taken back to a poor, disconsolate universe of simple folk like Mafalda's ancestors, fretting and scurrying in the tiny vicoli of an old Naples whose memory I wanted to share word for word with Oliver now, as if he too, like Mafalda and Manfredi and Anchise and me, were a fellow southerner whom I'd met in a foreign port city and who'd instantly understand why the sound of this old song, like an ancient prayer for the dead in the deadest of languages, could bring tears even in those who couldn't understand a syllable.

Images juxtaposées des comportements virils à travers le monde : défilés militaires devant le Kremlin à Moscou, réunions de la Camorra à Naples, discours de réception à l'Académie française avec épées et uniformes verts, congrégation de motards en Californie, rites d'initiation des Indiens bororos du Brésil, proxénètes de Tel-Aviv, traders de Tokyo, supporters de foot de Manchester, sénateurs, francs-maçons, prisonniers - oh, les postures ! les attitudes ! les mécaniques ! oh, les mecs ! Aussi angoissés qu'arrogants, leur arrogance n'étant que l'envers de leur angoisse, car ils sont tellement plus mortels que nous ! Oh, l'attendrissant besoin de ces primates supérieurs sans utérus de se durcir et de se décorer, de parader et de pétarader pour se donner de l'allure, du poids et du sérieux !

... the exotic spices arriving daily from the East Indies and the Americas, the crates of sweet oranges and bitter lemons from Sicily, the apricots from Mesopotamia, the olive oil from Naples, the almonds from the Jordan valley... I have seen and smelled these delicacies at market. But does any English person know how to cook with such foods? I think back to my time in France and Italy, of all the delicacies that passed across my tongue. And then to the gardens I've seen in Tonbridge with their raised beds of sorrel, lettuce, cucumbers, marrows, pumpkins. Already the banks are starred bright with blackberries and rose hips, with damsons and sour sloes, the bloom still upon them. Trees are weighted down with green apples and yellow mottled pears and crab apples flushed pink and gold. Soon there will be fresh cobnuts in their husks, and ripe walnuts, and field mushrooms, and giant puffballs.

1837, cette année capitale sur le plan mondial, où pour la première fois le télégraphe rend simultanées les expériences humaines jusqu’alors isolées, n’est en général même pas mentionnée dans nos livres de classe, qui continuent malheureusement à juger plus important de raconter les guerres et les victoires de quelques généraux et de quelques nations, plutôt que les véritables triomphes de l’humanité – ceux qui sont collectifs. Et pourtant aucune date de l’histoire contemporaine ne peut se comparer quant à sa portée psychologique à celle-ci, où est intervenue cette mutation de la valeur du temps. Le monde est transformé depuis qu’il est possible de savoir à Paris ce qui se passe à la minute même à Moscou, à Naples et à Lisbonne. Il ne reste plus qu’un dernier pas à faire, et les autres continents seront eux aussi intégrés à ce grandiose ensemble, et l’on aura créé une conscience commune à l’humanité tout entière.

We start our meal in the kitchen, right beside the blazing oven, where one of Franco's cooks chops a filet of local grass-fed beef into rough cubes and dresses it with olive oil and wisps of lemon rind. A puffy disc of dough emerges from the oven, which Franco cuts into wedges before heaping it with mounds of this restrained tartare. The union of warm, smoky bread and cool, grassy beef is enough to make me want to camp out in the kitchen for the rest of the night.

des Habsburg, avec les Bourbons. Waterloo porte en croupe le droit divin. Il est vrai que, l’empire ayant été despotique, la royauté, par la réaction naturelle des choses, devait forcément être libérale, et qu’un ordre constitutionnel à contre-cœur est sorti de Waterloo, au grand regret des vainqueurs. C’est que la révolution ne peut être vraiment vaincue, et qu’étant providentielle et absolument fatale, elle reparaît toujours, avant Waterloo, dans Bonaparte jetant bas les vieux trônes, après Waterloo, dans Louis XVIII octroyant et subissant la charte. Bonaparte met un postillon sur le trône de Naples et un sergent sur le trône de Suède, employant l’inégalité à démontrer l’égalité ; Louis XVIII à Saint-Ouen contresigne la déclaration des droits de l’homme. Voulez-vous vous rendre compte de ce que c’est que la révolution, appelez-la Progrès ; et voulez-vous vous rendre compte de ce que c’est que le progrès, appelez-le Demain. Demain fait irrésistiblement son œuvre, et il la fait dès aujourd’hui

Fu un momento indimenticabile. Andammo verso via Caracciolo, sempre più vento, sempre più sole. Il Vesuvio era una forma delicata color pastello ai piedi della quale si ammucchiavano i ciottoli biancastri della città, il taglio color terra di Castel dell'Ovo, il mare. Ma che mare. Era agitatissimo, fragoroso, il vento toglieva il fiato, incollava i vestiti addosso e levava i capelli dalla fronte. Ci tenemmo dall'altro lato della strada insieme a una piccola folla che guardava lo spettacolo. Le onde ruzzolavano come tubi di metallo blu portando in cima la chiara d'uovo della spuma, poi si frangevano in mille schegge scintillanti e arrivavano fin sulla strada con un oh di meraviglia e timore da parte di tutti noi che guardavamo. Che peccato che non c'era Lila. Mi stenti stordita dalle raffiche potenti, dal rumore. Avevo l'impressione che, pur assorbendo molto di quello spettacolo, moltissime cose, troppe si spampanassero intorno senza lasciarsi afferrare. Mio padre mi strinse la mano come se temesse che sgusciassi via. Infatti avevo voglia di lasciarlo, correre, spostarmi, attraversare la strada, farmi investire dalle scaglie brillanti del mare. In quel momento così tremendo, pieno di luce e di clamore, mi finsi sola nel nuovo della città, nuova io stessa con tutta la vita davanti, esposta alla furia mobile delle cose ma sicuramente vincitrice: io, io e Lila, noi due con quella capacità che insieme - solo insieme - avevamo di prendere la massa di colori, di rumori, di cose e persone, e raccontarcela e darle forza".

If anything, it was hotter in the house. Crazy July heat. It got in your head. The kitchen was full of dirty dishes. Flies buzzed around a green plastic Hefty bag filled with Beefaroni and tuna-fish cans. The living room was dominated by a big old Zenith black-and-white TV he had rescued from the Naples dump. A big spayed brindle cat, name of Bernie Carbo, slept on top of it like a dead thing. The bedroom was where he worked on his writing. The bed itself was a rollaway, not made, the sheets stiff with come. No matter how much he was getting (and over the last two weeks that had been zero), he masturbated a great deal. Masturbation, he believed, was a sign of creativity. Across from the bed was his desk. A big old-fashioned Underwood sat on top of it. Manuscripts were stacked to both sides. More manuscripts, some in boxes, some secured with rubber bands, were piled up in one corner. He wrote a lot and he moved around a lot and his main luggage was his work--mostly poems, a few stories, a surreal play in which the characters spoke a grand total of nine words, and a novel he had attacked badly from six different angles. It had been five years since he had lived in one place long enough to get completely unpacked.

By his early-twenties, John F. Kennedy was living one of the most extraordinary young American lives of the twentieth century. He traveled in an orbit of unprecedented wealth, influence, global mobility, and power. As a student and as diplomatic assistant to his father, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940, Kennedy journeyed to England, Ireland, France, Moscow, Berlin, Beirut, Damascus, Athens, and Turkey, pausing briefly from a vacation on the French Riviera to sleep with the actress Marlene Dietrich. He met with top White House officials and traveled to Cuba, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Peru, and Ecuador. He gambled in a casino in Monte Carlo; visited Naples, Capri, Milan, Florence, Venice, and Rome; rode a camel at the Great Pyramid at Giza; attended the coronation of Pope Pius XII; and witnessed a rally for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He recalled of these momentous years, 'It was a great opportunity to see a period of history which was one of the most significant.' In a visit to British-occupied Palestine, Kennedy recalled, 'I saw the rock where our Lord ascended into heaven in a cloud, and [in] the same area, I saw the place where Mohammed was carried up to heaven on a white horse.

In awe at the sheer beauty of the setting, Celina stepped onto the balcony, which overlooked a terrace garden of fruit trees. "It's so beautiful here." She breathed in, catching the scent of fruit trees below. "What type of fruit are you growing?" "Mostly lemon," Sara said. "But also olive, grapefruit, orange, fig, and pomegranate. With our temperate climate, most everything thrives." Celina peered over the balcony's edge. To one side, a cliff dropped to the sea, while on the other, a terrace sprawled along the hilltop perch. Flaming pink bougainvillea and snowy white jasmine curled around the corners of grapevine-covered archways that framed the shimmering ocean view.

They looked at each other as with the feeling of an occasion missed; the present would have been so much better if the other, in the far distance, in the foreign land, hadn’t been so stupidly meagre. There weren’t, apparently, all counted, more than a dozen little old things that had succeeded in coming to pass between them; trivialities of youth, simplicities of freshness, stupidities of ignorance, small possible germs, but too deeply buried—too deeply (didn’t it seem?) to sprout after so many years. Marcher could only feel he ought to have rendered her some service—saved her from a capsized boat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing-bag, filched from her cab in the streets of Naples by a lazzarone with a stiletto. Or it would have been nice if he could have been taken with fever all alone at his hotel, and she could have come to look after him, to write to his people, to drive him out in convalescence. Then they would be in possession of the something or other that their actual show seemed to lack. It yet somehow presented itself, this show, as too good to be spoiled; so that they were reduced for a few minutes more to wondering a little helplessly why—since they seemed to know a certain number of the same people—their reunion had been so long averted. They didn’t use that name for it, but their delay from minute to minute to join the others was a kind of confession that they didn’t quite want it to be a failure.

In 1934, strongman Fulgencio Batista forced President Grau’s resignation. Then in 1940, Grau lost his bid for the Presidency to his adversary Batista. Four years later in 1944, he did win the election and took office for a four-year term starting on October 10th. After Grau won the election and was the President elect, Batista still in office, blatantly attacked the National Treasury, leaving the cupboards bare by the time Grau was actually sworn in as President. Since Grau and Batista were staunch adversaries, it is highly unlikely that any deal could have been made in 1946 to allow “Lucky” Luciano into Cuba, especially with Luciano having been exiled to Sicily by the United States government that preceding February. Still, Lansky had enough political pull within the Cuban government to prepare for a strong Mafia presence in Havana. In October of 1946, in an attempt to keep his whereabouts a secret, “Lucky” Luciano covertly boarded a freighter taking him from Naples, Italy, to Caracas, Venezuela. Then Luciano flew south to Rio de Janeiro and returned north to Mexico City. On October 29, 1946, he arranged for a private flight from Mexico City to Camagüey, Cuba, where Meyer Lansky met him. Having the right connections, Luciano passed through Cuban customs unimpeded and was whisked by car to the splendid Grand Hotel. Luciano, having just arrived in Cuba, was looking forward to setting up operations. Cuba would actually be a better place than the United States for what he had in mind.

So often have I studied the views of Florence, that I was familiar with the city before I ever set foot within its walls; I found that I could thread my way through the streets without a guide. Turning to the left I passed before a bookseller's shop, where I bought a couple of descriptive surveys of the city (guide). Twice only was I forced to inquire my way of passers by, who answered me with politeness which was wholly French and with a most singular accent; and at last I found myself before the facade of Santa Croce. Within, upon the right of the doorway, rises the tomb of Michelangelo; lo! There stands Canova's effigy of Alfieri; I needed no cicerone to recognise the features of the great Italian writer. Further still, I discovered the tomb of Machiavelli; while facing Michelangelo lies Galileo. What a race of men! And to these already named, Tuscany might further add Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. What a fantastic gathering! The tide of emotion which overwhelmed me flowed so deep that it scarce was to be distinguished from religious awe. The mystic dimness which filled the church, its plain, timbered roof, its unfinished facade – all these things spoke volumes to my soul. Ah! Could I but forget...! A Friar moved silently towards me; and I, in the place of that sense of revulsion all but bordering on physical horror which usually possesses me in such circumstances, discovered in my heart a feeling which was almost friendship. Was not he likewise a Friar, Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco, that great painter who invented the art of chiaroscuro, and showed it to Raphael, and was the forefather of Correggio? I spoke to my tonsured acquaintance, and found in him an exquisite degree of politeness. Indeed, he was delighted to meet a Frenchman. I begged him to unlock for me the chapel in the north-east corner of the church, where are preserved the frescoes of Volterrano. He introduced me to the place, then left me to my own devices. There, seated upon the step of a folds tool, with my head thrown back to rest upon the desk, so that I might let my gaze dwell on the ceiling, I underwent, through the medium of Volterrano's Sybills, the profoundest experience of ecstasy that, as far as I am aware, I ever encountered through the painter's art. My soul, affected by the very notion of being in Florence, and by proximity of those great men whose tombs I had just beheld, was already in a state of trance. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty, I could perceive its very essence close at hand; I could, as it were, feel the stuff of it beneath my fingertips. I had attained to that supreme degree of sensibility where the divine intimations of art merge with the impassioned sensuality of emotion. As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitations of the heart (that same symptom which, in Berlin, is referred to as an attack of nerves); the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground. I sat down on one of the benches which line the piazza di Santa Croce; in my wallet, I discovered the following lines by Ugo Foscolo, which I re-read now with a great surge of pleasure; I could find no fault with such poetry; I desperately needed to hear the voice of a friend who shared my own emotion (…)

Far more damaging to Calvin’s reputation was the case of Michael Servetus. An accomplished physician, skilled cartographer, and eclectic theologian from Spain, Servetus held maverick (and sometimes unbalanced) views on many points of Christian doctrine. In 1531, he published Seven Books on the Errors of the Trinity, enraging both Catholics and Protestants, Calvin among them. At one point, Servetus took up residence in Vienne, a suburb of Lyon about ninety miles from Geneva, where, under an assumed name, he began turning out heterodox books while also practicing medicine. His magnum opus, The Restitution of Christianity—a rebuttal of Calvin’s Institutes—rejected predestination, denied original sin, called infant baptism diabolical, and further deprecated the Trinity. Servetus imprudently sent Calvin a copy. Calvin sent back a copy of his Institutes. Servetus filled its margins with insulting comments, then returned it. A bitter exchange of letters followed, in which Servetus announced that the Archangel Michael was girding himself for Armageddon and that he, Servetus, would serve as his armor-bearer. Calvin sent Servetus’s letters to a contact in Vienne, who passed them on to Catholic inquisitors in Lyon. Servetus was promptly arrested and sent to prison, but after a few days he escaped by jumping over a prison wall. After spending three months wandering around France, he decided to seek refuge in Naples. En route, he inexplicably stopped in Geneva. Arriving on a Saturday, he attended Calvin’s lecture the next day. Though disguised, Servetus was recognized by some refugees from Lyon and immediately arrested. Calvin instructed one of his disciples to file capital charges against him with the magistrates for his various blasphemies. After a lengthy trial and multiple examinations, Servetus was condemned for writing against the Trinity and infant baptism and sentenced to death. He asked to be beheaded rather than burned, but the council refused, and on October 27, 1553, Servetus, with a copy of the Restitution tied to his arm, was sent to the stake. Shrieking in agony, he took half an hour to die. Calvin approved. “God makes clear that the false prophet is to be stoned without mercy,” he explained in Defense of the Orthodox Trinity Against the Errors of Michael Servetus. “We are to crush beneath our heel all affections of nature when his honor is involved. The father should not spare the child, nor the brother his brother, nor the husband his own wife or the friend who is dearer to him than life.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.

The invitation came from Studio Morra in Naples: Come and perform whatever you want. It was early 1975. With the scandalized reactions of the Belgrade press fresh in my mind, I planned a piece in which the audience would provide the action. I would merely be the object, the receptacle. My plan was to go to the gallery and just stand there, in black trousers and a black T-shirt, behind a table containing seventy-two objects: A hammer. A saw. A feather. A fork. A bottle of perfume. A bowler hat. An ax. A rose. A bell. Scissors. Needles. A pen. Honey. A lamb bone. A carving knife. A mirror. A newspaper. A shawl. Pins. Lipstick. Sugar. A Polaroid camera. Various other things. And a pistol, and one bullet lying next to it. When a big crowd had gathered at eight P.M., they found these instructions on the table: There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. Duration: 6 hours (8pm - 2am) Slowly at first and then quickly, things began to happen. It was very interesting: for the most part, the women in the gallery would tell the men what to do to me, rather than do it themselves (although later on, when someone stuck a pin into me, one woman wiped the tears from my eyes). For the most part, these were just normal members of the Italian art establishment and their wives. Ultimately I think the reason I wasn’t raped was that the wives were there. As evening turned into late night, a certain air of sexuality arose in the room. This came not from me but from the audience. We were in southern Italy, where the Catholic Church was so powerful, and there was this strong Madonna/whore dichotomy in attitudes toward women. After three hours, one man cut my shirt apart with the scissors and took it off. People manipulated me into various poses. If they turned my head down, I kept it down; if they turned it up, I kept it that way. I was a puppet—entirely passive. Bare-breasted, I stood there, and someone put the bowler hat on my head. With the lipstick, someone else wrote IO SONO LIBERO—“I am free”—on the mirror and stuck it in my hand. Someone else took the lipstick and wrote END across my forehead. A guy took Polaroids of me and stuck them in my hand, like playing cards. Things got more intense. A couple of people picked me up and carried me around. They put me on the table, spread my legs, stuck the knife in the table close to my crotch. Someone stuck pins into me. Someone else slowly poured a glass of water over my head. Someone cut my neck with the knife and sucked the blood. I still have the scar. There was one man—a very small man—who just stood very close to me, breathing heavily. This man scared me. Nobody else, nothing else, did. But he did. After a while, he put the bullet in the pistol and put the pistol in my right hand. He moved the pistol toward my neck and touched the trigger. There was a murmur in the crowd, and someone grabbed him. A scuffle broke out. Some of the audience obviously wanted to protect me; others wanted the performance to continue. This being southern Italy, voices were raised; tempers flared. The little man was hustled out of the gallery and the piece continued. In fact, the audience became more and more active, as if in a trance. And then, at two A.M., the gallerist came and told me the six hours were up. I stopped staring and looked directly at the audience. “The performance is over,” the gallerist said. “Thank you.” I looked like hell. I was half naked and bleeding; my hair was wet. And a strange thing happened: at this moment, the people who were still there suddenly became afraid of me. As I walked toward them, they ran out of the gallery.

Spaghetti alla puttanesca is typically made with tomatoes, olives, anchovies, capers, and garlic. It means, literally, "spaghetti in the style of a prostitute." It is a sloppy dish, the tomatoes and oil making the spaghetti lubricated and slippery. It is the sort of sauce that demands you slurp the noodles Goodfellas style, staining your cheeks with flecks of orange and red. It is very salty and very tangy and altogether very strong; after a small plate, you feel like you've had a visceral and significant experience. There are varying accounts as to when and how the dish originated- but the most likely explanation is that it became popular in the mid-twentieth century. The first documented mention of it is in Raffaele La Capria's 1961 novel, Ferito a Morte. According to the Italian Pasta Makers Union, spaghetti alla puttanesca was a very popular dish throughout the sixties, but its exact genesis is not quite known. Sandro Petti, a famous Napoli chef and co-owner of Ischian restaurant Rangio Fellone, claims to be its creator. Near closing time one evening, a group of customers sat at one of his tables and demanded to be served a meal. Running low on ingredients, Petti told them he didn't have enough to make anything, but they insisted. They were tired, and they were hungry, and they wanted pasta. "Facci una puttanata qualsiasi!" they cried. "Make any kind of garbage!" The late-night eater is not usually the most discerning. Petti raided the kitchen, finding four tomatoes, two olives, and a jar of capers, the base of the now-famous spaghetti dish; he included it on his menu the next day under the name spaghetti alla puttanesca. Others have their own origin myths. But the most common theory is that it was a quick, satisfying dish that the working girls of Naples could knock up with just a few key ingredients found at the back of the fridge- after a long and unforgiving night. As with all dishes containing tomatoes, there are lots of variations in technique. Some use a combination of tinned and fresh tomatoes, while others opt for a squirt of puree. Some require specifically cherry or plum tomatoes, while others go for a smooth, premade pasta. Many suggest that a teaspoon of sugar will "open up the flavor," though that has never really worked for me. I prefer fresh, chopped, and very ripe, cooked for a really long time. Tomatoes always take longer to cook than you think they will- I rarely go for anything less than an hour. This will make the sauce stronger, thicker, and less watery. Most recipes include onions, but I prefer to infuse the oil with onions, frying them until brown, then chucking them out. I like a little kick in most things, but especially in pasta, so I usually go for a generous dousing of chili flakes. I crush three or four cloves of garlic into the oil, then add any extras. The classic is olives, anchovies, and capers, though sometimes I add a handful of fresh spinach, which nicely soaks up any excess water- and the strange, metallic taste of cooked spinach adds an interesting extra dimension. The sauce is naturally quite salty, but I like to add a pinch of sea or Himalayan salt, too, which gives it a slightly more buttery taste, as opposed to the sharp, acrid salt of olives and anchovies. I once made this for a vegetarian friend, substituting braised tofu for anchovies. Usually a solid fish replacement, braised tofu is more like tuna than anchovy, so it was a mistake for puttanesca. It gave the dish an unpleasant solidity and heft. You want a fish that slips and melts into the pasta, not one that dominates it. In terms of garnishing, I go for dried oregano or fresh basil (never fresh oregano or dried basil) and a modest sprinkle of cheese. Oh, and I always use spaghetti. Not fettuccine. Not penne. Not farfalle. Not rigatoni. Not even linguine. Always spaghetti.

My friend Mimmo, who owns three men’s shops in Rome but who comes from Naples where his father was in the same business, says that nowadays, after two days in Naples, he can’t wait to leave again. “Life in Rome is not easy, but at least there are some certainties. In Naples, forget it. The only thing that counts there is prepotenza,” roughly, bullying or arrogance.

Cholera thrived on such features of early industrial development as chaotic and unplanned urbanization, rapid demographic growth, crowded slums with inadequate and insecure water supplies, substandard housing, an inadequate diet, ubiquitous filth, and the absence of sewers. When the vibrio disembarked in the port cities of Marseille, Hamburg, Valencia, and Naples, it found ideal conditions awaiting it.

Of these the most dramatic and far-reaching were the efforts not to retrofit the cities of Paris and Naples, but rather to rebuild them comprehensively.

Thus protected both belowground and above, renovated Naples would be impervious to the threat of a return of Asiatic cholera and would present itself as the only major city ever rebuilt for the purpose of defeating a single infectious disease.

Dad paid for him to gan ower to Naples for voice training and schooling, what with there not being much opportunity for opera in Govan and the Gorbals and all that, and how he got himself a few small singing parts but really it was too late to get into it all by then. Why, I ask. Because ice cream was in his blood son, Arty says all serious and sombre

With its street crime, prostitutes, and drug dealers, Milan was second only to Naples as the seediest city in Italy.

All the same, Aquinas had achieved what no one had before or since: a fusion of Platonized Christianity with Aristotle’s science of man. It is one of the great achievements of Western civilization. But it didn’t last. Even before Aquinas’s death, the old opposition would reassert itself. He would be forced to leave the University of Paris and die in his former home of Naples while the intellectual battle raged around him.

The first recorded European epidemic of syphilis erupted in late 1494 or early 1495. In the former year, Charles VIII of France led fifty thousand vagabond mercenaries from every alley of Europe to attack Naples, which he desired to rule.

Naples isn't so much the southernmost city in mainland Europe as the northernmost city in Africa.

Iedereen kent de uitdrukking 'Vedere Napoli e poi muori', oftewel 'Eerst Napels zien en dan sterven'. Met betrekking tot Rome zou ik een daaraan tegenovergesteld motto willen bepleiten, dat recht doet aan de even veelzijdige als vitale krachten die van deze stad uitgaan: 'Eerst Rome zien en dan leven.

Or one could see the broken arches of aqueducts such as the Acqua Claudia. At 43 miles long, and with arches 100 feet in height, this structure was a testament not only to the fresh drinking water enjoyed by the ancient Romans (in comparison with their descendants, who took their water from the tainted, foul-smelling Tiber) but also to their remarkable engineering skills. Some modern-day Romans were even ignorant of its purpose, believing it to have been used to import olive oil from Naples.

The man who rescued the crusade, Giannozzo Manetti, then fifty-nine years old, was the close friend and mentor of Vespasiano. For many years he had been at the heart of Florence’s humanist movement, one of the men who gathered in Vespasiano’s bookshop, “admirably disputing great things.” The son of one of Florence’s wealthiest merchants, he had studied alongside Tommaso Parentucelli, whose secretary he later became and for whom, when Tommaso became pope, he made translations from both Greek and Hebrew. He was a dedicated scholar, sleeping no more than five hours a night in order to devote more time to his studies. Like his friends Poggio and Leonardo Bruni, he was also a busy civic official, serving Florence numerous times as an ambassador to Venice, Genoa, Milan, Naples, and Rome. He took up the thankless post of governor of various Florentine dependencies such as Pistoia and Scarperia, where, as Vespasiano observed, he “found everything in great disorder and full of deadly feuds.”16 Manetti’s greatest claim to fame was his treatise On the Dignity and Excellence of Man, which he completed in 1452 and dedicated to King Alfonso of Naples. The tribute was a rare diplomatic misstep on Manetti’s part, because Alfonso was at war with Florence at the time, leading to mutterings in Florence of Manetti’s treason. Vespasiano prudently waited until 1455 and the Treaty of Lodi before producing a copy of the manuscript. As with the “Decades of the King,” the manuscript was elegantly and expertly produced, featuring the “new antique letters” and white vine-stem decorations in which Vespasiano had come to specialize. Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459): scholar, businessman, diplomat, writer.

As I went out of the room Lila started in her half-sleep, she whispered: "Watch me until I fall asleep. Watch me always, even when you leave Naples. That way I'll know that you see me and I'm at peace.

It took only five minutes for Tessa to realize that she had found her painting style. The brush glided over the surface of the canvas, the sable hairs leaving delicate marks in the Naples yellow, letting light shine through from underneath. The color slipped on like a veil over the grisaille, revealing just enough gray to make it look like flesh.

The end of the drama is well known, and how Jacques de Molai and his fellows perished in the flames. But before his execution, the Chief of the doomed Order organized and instituted what afterward came to be called Occult, Hermetic, or Scottish Masonry. In the gloom of his prison, the Grand Master created four Metropolitan Lodges, at Naples for the East, at Edinburg for the West, at Stockholm for the NOrth, and at Paris for the South. [The initials of his name, J.'.B.'.M.'. found in the same order in the first three Degrees, are but one of the many internal and cogent profs that such was the origin of modern Free-Masonry. The legend of Osiris was revived and adopted, to symbolize the destruction of the Order, and the resurrection of Hyrim, slain in the body of the Temple, of Hyrim Abai, the Master, as the martyr of fidelity to obligation, of Truth and Conscience, prophesied the restoration to life of the buried association.]

Here Naples was not bathed by the sea. I was sure that no one had ever seen this place or remembered it. In this dark pit only the fire of sexuality burned bright under an eerie black sky.

One could say that here ends working-class Naples (which is all of Naples) and civilized, bourgeois Naples begins, where people do not live in apartment buildings or hovels but only in villas surrounded by large, dark gardens and with their own beachfronts. In actuality, the division is not so precise, since one can find all over Naples beautiful buildings encircled by lush gardens, with marble staircases and drawing rooms, where it’s impossible to imagine the gloom and stench of the alleys right outside. Just as in Naples proper the areas of beauty and joy are islands, from Viale Elena onward, the islands, or exceptions, are ugliness and poverty.

I have not yet managed to understand this about the English; in Naples, if a man despises another, he spits in his face openly or insults his family, and then a fight ensues. Here, they shake one another’s hand, dine together, smile with their teeth only and wait until the other’s back is turned before striking their blow, and this agreed deception is called etiquette.

I used to become very restless. I was continually thinking of the life I would lead. I wanted to know what life had in store for me. I was particularly restless at some moments. You know there are such moments, especially in solitude. There was a small waterfall there; it fell from a height on the mountain, such a tiny thread, almost perpendicular—foaming, white and splashing. Though it fell from a great height it didn’t seem so high; it was the third of a mile away, but it only looked about fifty paces. I used to like listening to the sound of it at night. At such moments I was sometimes overcome with great restlessness; sometimes too at midday I wandered on the mountains, and stood alone halfway up a mountain surrounded by great ancient resinous pine trees; on the crest of the rock an old medieval castle in ruins; our little village far, far below, scarcely visible; bright sunshine, blue sky, and the terrible stillness. At such times I felt something was drawing me away, and I kept fancying that in walked straight on, far, far away and reached that line where sky and earth meet, there I should find the key to the mystery, there I should see a new life a thousand times richer and more turbulent than ours. I dreamed of some great town like Naples, full of palaces, noise, roar, life. And I dreamed of all sorts of things, indeed. But afterwards I fancied one might find a wealth of life even in prison.

His reputation is based largely on his thirty-seven-volume Natural History, an immense masterpiece in which, among countless other delights, is the first use of the word from which we derive today’s encyclopedia. It was during the late summer of A.D. 79, while pursuing his official task of investigating piracy in the Bay of Naples, that Pliny was persuaded to explore a peculiar cloud formation that appeared to be coming from the summit of the local mountain, Vesuvius. He was duly rowed ashore, visited a local village to calm the panicked inhabitants—and was promptly caught up in a massive eruption. He died of asphyxiation by volcanic gases on August 24, leaving behind him a vast reputation and, as memorial, a single word in the lexicon of modern vulcanology, Plinian. A Plinian eruption is now defined as an almighty, explosive eruption that all but destroys the entire volcano from which it emanates. And the most devastating Plinian event of the modern era occurred 1,804 years, almost to the day, after Pliny the Elder’s death: at Krakatoa.) Pepper has a confused reputation.

Israel, of course, was not a transit country due to its geographical location, but due to its designation as the default destination for Eastern European Jews—not all of whom planned on staying there. In fact, some of them never made it to the Jewish state at all. The logistics of transporting migrants to Israel were more complicated than to Germany; hence, it was more likely that people “got lost” on the way. Organized Jewish migrants used routes that were determined by Jewish Agency travel arrangements. An important relay in this migration arrangement was the port of Naples, where the streams of Eastern European and North African migrants to Israel converged. Naples had replaced Marseilles as the transit station for Jews from the Maghreb by the early 1960s due to the high concentration of North African Arabs in southern France and the resulting fear of friction this caused among the Israeli authorities.

You think…” “No.” He was smiling again. “I do not think. I dare not. The old duke is dead and the duchess packed off to her Spanish kin in Naples; that is all any man her knows but he.” He glanced at Domenico and then away. “And we know enough when we know so much.” “But Duke Carlo was old. I thought when I heard he was dead that he had died naturally.” “It is safer to think so. Believe it.

Except all that achieved was reminding him yet again of those high windows and bright colours in Naples when he could have been anything and gone anywhere. And

You will not be powerless in Naples, my dear daughter. Power is not something you are given. Power is something you take.

the sacrifice of the village of Altavilla, shelled out of existence because it might have contained Germans.

That's the way it always starts. By the third day of the convention, half of the delegates were having whispered conversations about which of the others were agents of the Knights of Malta or Opus Dei. There was even a rumor (I couldn't get it confirmed) that some of the delegates hired food tasters, gaunt pitiful children from the slums of Naples, even when they traveled to the other end of town for a sandwich.

In Naples, where pizza was invented, Fairchild tasted his first cheesy flatbread, a punishing food for first-timers, whose mouths could be scorched with hot, lavalike cheese. He was enchanted by the various shapes of macaroni. And pastries were works of history. Naples' mixed heritage over several centuries from the French, Spanish, and Austrians resulted in flaky, sweet pastries, yeast cakes drowned in rum, and deep-fried doughballs known as zeppole, each one an ancestor of the modern doughnut.

Every individual carries an instinctive drive for growth and self-improvement—a flame that propels our journey towards becoming the best version of ourselves. However, only a chosen few are able to harness this fire and use it to reach their highest potential. This book serves as your guide to join these few. It is your blueprint to fulfilling your potential and crafting a life that aligns with your truest self.

By working to become our highest selves, we are elevating ourselves and contributing to making the world a better place at the same time.

We must push ourselves and raise our consciousness to a level that allows our inner power to radiate. This is achieved by continually learning and growing in all aspects of our lives.

We gain positive forward momentum or flow by remaining in this high vibrational state. In the positive forward momentum state, things just seem to click. When we are going through our day in this positive forward state, it is like a snowball rolling down a giant hill getting stronger, faster, and bigger. Our goal should be to keep the positive momentum rolling forward as long as possible.

In the absence of love, fear steps in, serving as the seed for evil and low vibrational energy. Fear is never a solo traveler; it is always accompanied by its detrimental friends, such as hatred, jealousy, worry, and anxiety. Fear brings with it bad health, bad luck, misfortune, stress, negativity, and more, spreading like wildfire if left unchecked. It’s a dangerous cycle, where the more we give into fear, the more it becomes a reality in our life. As our thoughts become consumed by fear, it expands and attracts more harmful elements to partake in the devastation. The universe operates in mysterious ways, and the more fear we project, the more fear we attract. To break this cycle, it is crucial to replace fear with love, preventing negative thoughts from dominating and inflicting damage upon every facet of our existence.

Fear is an evil force and mind control is real. We must unplug from the negative and evil programming of phones, media, screens, and other methods that dim our inner light. It is time to plug back into positive energy, love, growth, and higher frequencies of the universe. It is time to take back control of our minds and our lives. Slow down, breathe, and bring ourselves back to the present moment. This state of calm allows us to think deeply about what we are doing in our lives, reflect on changes that should be made, and identify areas for improvement.

At the heart of The Power Life is the belief that we all have unique gifts to share with the world. When we commit to becoming our highest self, we can unleash those gifts and make a positive impact on those around us. We can create a ripple effect that extends far beyond our individual lives. It requires a daily practice of self-reflection, self- improvement, and self-discipline. We must be willing to face our fears and push beyond our limitations, and we must be willing to take risks and step outside of our comfort zone.

worship of even the very great is finally useless, Emerson says: It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily, and, now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.13 Emerson’s audience on that last day of August was not the assembly of judges, professors, ministers, school-board members, and other persons who had been institutionalized. It was, as it would henceforward be, the single hearer, the solitary reader, the friend—unknown but always singular—who felt and still may feel personally addressed and shaken by the collar when encountering Emerson’s startling observation that meek young persons “grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote those books.”14

As we wander, I’m struck by something so simple. In the heated couple on the corner, in the women carrying their shopping home, in the children playing and screaming in the streets. Naples is a place of connection. Of community. There is beauty to the run-down buildings, the laundry strung high overhead, the rhythm and drawl of daily life here. There is beauty, too, in the old Mediterranean architecture, buildings left over from centuries ago, before Naples became what it is today. There is beauty in the discrepancy—two things that seem oppositional, coming together. New and old, rich and ruined, history in its entirety, here at once. It’s a place that was once glorious and carries the memory not as a chip, but a promise. Again, someday.

Vespasiano was, as Ferrante told Piero de’ Medici, someone on whom the king relied for “information and experience.” Though Ferrante may not have initiated these reports, he certainly welcomed and encouraged them once they started arriving. In November 1467 he wrote Vespasiano to thank him for a letter sent ten days earlier, saying he was gratified to receive his news and urging Vespasiano to be diligent in reporting “the things happening there.”33 In another letter written a few weeks later, Ferrante thanked Vespasiano for supplying “a great deal of diverse news,” then wrote of making a great effort against “those who have disturbed the peace of Italy”—a reference to the Venetians and the ruler of Ferrara, Borso d’Este, who supported the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, and who was, like so many other involved parties, Ferrante included, one of Vespasiano’s customers.

Where the rattle of ducats failed to produce a result, Cincinello deployed other, more drastic means. When he was ambassador to Rome he arranged for the kidnapping of one of Ferrante’s enemies who was slipping in and out of the kingdom on some nefarious business. Determined to “get his hands on him,” Cincinello lured his victim beyond the gates of Rome, where he had him seized and gagged by a band of horsemen, then bundled to Naples and hauled before Ferrante. The king enjoyed taking his vengeance through such baleful whimsies as strangling his enemies and then embalming them for display in a museum of mummies in the Castelnuovo. This latest enemy did not, apparently, become the latest exhibit, because as Vespasiano, in a statement that strains the bounds of credulity, claimed, Ferrante was “a most clement man who had no wish to do violence,” and the offender was released with a caution. Vespasiano did admit that Cincinello’s actions, here and elsewhere, raised certain uncomfortable moral questions. “Now in this case,” he wrote of the kidnapping, “whether I agree or not, I pass no judgment, knowing Antonio to be a man of good conscience.

emanating from the thirty-thousand-dollar home on a quiet residential street in Naples

we turned north on 951 before we reached Naples, then west on 846 to come out at Naples Park Beach eight miles north of the city.

Tui Snider is a freelance writer, travel blogger, and photographer specializing in offbeat sites, overlooked history, cultural traditions, and quirky travel destinations. Her travel articles and photos have appeared in BMIbaby, easyJet, Wizzit, Click, Ling, PlanetEye Traveler, iStopover, SkyEurope, and North Texas Farm and Ranch magazines, among others. She also wrote the shopping chapter for the “Time Out Naples: Capri, Sorrento, and the Amalfi Coast 2010” travel guidebook. This is her first book.

See Naples, and then die!' That was a proud saying, Count, which we used to hear as we cruised under lateen sails about the glorious bay that reflects from its waters the fires of Vesuvius. We believed the boast then, Count. But I say now, 'See Quebec, and live

Everyone longs for a secret door, an opening to a world beyond loneliness — it’s part of the human imagination. But stand under the lowering baskets in Naples all you want — you can’t climb in, or be the women lowering them or the youths catching them and hoisting them to market. And these Arctic hills, gold, blue, and purple, were achingly remote: our ship floated past and they lay just beyond reach. Each breath was a cold shock and the land was magnetic, like an encounter with someone who truly sees you: yet we were offshore.

No, there is no romance so stirring, so thrilling, and so heartrending as life's great epic; but its fate is the same as that of the Bible — there are but few who care to read it.

She now discovered amidst them, the poet's flights of fancy, and the historian's seldom pleasing—ever instructive page. The first may transmit to posterity the records of a sublime genius, which once flashed in strong, but transient rays, through the tenement of clay it was given a moment to inhabit: and though the tenement decayed and the spirit fled, the essence of a mind which darted through the universe to cull each created and creative image to enrich an ever-varying fancy, is thus snatched from oblivion, and retained, spite of nature, amidst the mortality from which it has struggled, and is freed. The page of the historian can monarchs behold, and not offer up the sceptre to be disencumbered of the ponderous load that clogs their elevation! Can they read of armies stretch upon the plain, provinces laid waste, and countries desolated, and wish to be the mortal whose vengeance, or whose less fierce, but fatal decision sent those armies forth!

One of those captured was d'Ailly, as ordered by Louis of Anjou and the future king of Naples, on the charge of blasphemy, as well as conspiracy to create a governmental body above the Holy Office. Royal decrees were swiftly issued, prohibiting all discussion and mention of the general council, or “via concilii” on campus.  Spooked, the theology department was left with no other alternative but to rein it in. In 1383, the University of Paris officially declared their support for Antipope Clement VII of Avignon. Though

They needed to nip the resistance in the bud, as things were sure to worsen. After weighing out the pros and cons of the potential candidates, Pedro de Luna, the Cardinal Deacon of the Santa Maria in Cosmedin, suggested 60-year-old Bartolomeo Prignano, the Naples-born Archbishop of Bari. Luna portrayed Prignano as a “saintly, learned man.

In La Spezia, we settle into our seats on the train that will bring us all the way to Naples. Nina and I take the window seats facing each other across a tiny table. Tate, of course, sits next to Nina, which puts Darren next to me. Before the train even leaves the station, the three of them pull out their iPods and press the earbuds into their ears. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Soccer is Italy’s favorite sport, and is played and watched all over the country. Each Sunday the great stadiums of Milan, Turin, Naples, Rome, and Bologna are filled with thousands of fans. Italian club soccer teams are among the best in the world, and regularly win international competitions. The national Italian team won soccer’s World Cup in 1982. Wages for successful players are high, and this helps to attract soccer stars from many other countries. Cycling also is very popular, as a sport to both do and watch. The Grand Tour of Italy takes place each year, following a long, grueling course over mountainous country. Many Italians forsake their favorite cafes to watch this bicycle race on television. Other popular pastimes include bowls, a game played on a sanded rink, and card games, commonly seen in cafes and bars across the nation. During August, many businesses close and workers go on vacation to the coast or mountains. The big cities are mostly deserted, except for tourists.

You’ve saved your money and bought a ticket to Fashion Week in Milan. All the world’s great clothing designers will be showing their startling and beautiful designs. You’ll be one of the first to see them! Or picture yourself in Rome. You’re at a performance of the opera Aïda, written by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. You’re seated amid eighteen-hundred-year-old ruins under a starry sky, listening to magnificent music. You’ve got your snowboard and warm clothing so you can glide down the slopes the world’s greatest skiers took during the 2006 Winter Olympics near Turin. Or perhaps it’s summer, and you’re going to explore the sea caves of Capri, off the coast of Naples. Later, you can take a look at the towering columns at Agrigento, among the temples the ancient Greeks built on the island of Sicily long before Italy existed. In any one of these places, you might be one of the millions of tourists who visit Italy every year. But alongside the tourists are Italians, also appreciative of the wonders of their own country.

Rumbling Mountains Four active volcanoes shake the southern Apennines. One of these, Mount Vesuvius, lies on the shore of the Bay of Naples. The people who lived near it two thousand years ago didn’t know it was a volcano. Then, in A.D. 79, Vesuvius suddenly blew its top and hot ash filled the sky, burying the city of Pompeii and neighboring towns. Over the centuries, Vesuvius has erupted again from time to time, often with little warning. Mount Etna, on the island of Sicily, is more than three times higher than Vesuvius. It is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, producing frequent lava flows. Italy’s other two active volcanoes, Stromboli and Vulcano, belong to a group of islands called the Aeolians, off the northern coast of Sicily. Earthquakes also strike Italy. In 1693, an estimated one hundred thousand people died in an earthquake in Sicily. The most deadly recent quake in Italy occurred near Naples in 1980. It killed three thousand people.

Buried Cities During the Roman Empire, wealthy Romans took vacations in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The people in these towns did not know that nearby Mount Vesuvius doomed them. On August 24 in the year A.D. 79, the top blew off the mountain. Hot rock and ash buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. An estimated five thousand people died when their houses collapsed or they choked to death on the ash. After the Roman Empire ended, the people in neighboring cities forgot Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the sixteenth century, an architect named Domenico Fontana found evidence that cities were buried under 20 feet (6 m) of earth. It was another two hundred years before anyone began digging. In the 1800s, archaeologists were stunned to discover the perfectly preserved forms of people who had died trying to flee the volcano. They also uncovered graceful courtyards and beautiful homes with elegant tile floors and statues. These discoveries helped scientists learn what the daily life of the ancient Romans might have been like. In 2002, they found that the port area along the Gulf of Naples had houses built on stilts. Still more mysteries wait to be uncovered.

The Coming of the Greeks The southern part of the Italian boot is close to Greece, and several Greek cultures influenced he cultures of Italy. People from the Greek city of Corinth settled on Sicily. Starting about 734 B.C., they built a city called Syracuse on the island’s east coast. The Greeks ruled this city, and the Sicilians were enslaved. The Greeks established other cities on the mainland, in a cluster known as Magna Graecia, which means “Great Greece” in Latin, the language of ancient Rome. A later Greek city, called Poseidonia after Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, flourished in about 550 B.C. When Italic people conquered the city, which was located south of Naples, they changed its name to Paestum. The ruins of Greek temples there are among the best-preserved Greek structures anywhere.

Glorious Food Italians are known the world over for their food. Each region of Italy enjoys its own kind of cooing. For example, in Naples, pasta is served with a tomato-based sauce, while in the north, it is more often served with a white cheese sauce. The people of Genoa often put pesto, a flavorful mixture of basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and grated cheese, on their pasta. The grated cheese called Parmesan originated in the area around Parma. Italians also invented many other cheeses, including Gorgonzola, mozzarella, provolone, and ricotta. No one knows when pizza was invented, but the people of Naples made it popular. At first, pizza was a simple flatbread topped with tomato and garlic. Since then, it has evolved into countless variations, served all over Italy and the world. Italians tend to eat a light breakfast of coffee and perhaps a small bun. Lunch is often the main meal, while dinner tends to be lighter. Italian meals may include antipasti, an array of vegetables, cold cuts, and seafood; a pasta dish; a main course of meat or fish; a salad; and cheese and fruit. Bread is served with every meal. Italy is justly famous for its ice cream, which is called gelato. Fresh gelato is made regularly at ice cream shops called gelaterias. Italians are just as likely to gather, discussing sports and the world, in a gelateria as in a coffee shop. Many Italians drink a strong, dark coffee called espresso, which is served in tiny cups. Another type of Italian coffee, cappuccino, is espresso mixed with hot, frothed milk. Both espresso and cappuccino have become popular in North America. Meanwhile, many Italians are becoming increasingly fond of American-style fast food, a trend that bothers some Italians. In general, dinner is served later at night in southern Italy than in northern Italy. This is because many people in the south, as in most Mediterranean regions, traditionally took naps in the afternoon during the hottest part of the day. These naps are rapidly disappearing as a regular part of life, although many businesses still shut down for several hours in the early afternoon.

Naples and Pompeii Today we took the express train south to Naples. The guide on our city tour pointed out some of the magnificent cathedrals. We also explored the National Archaeological Museum. It contains some of the finest treasures in the world. It has coins, paintings, household items, and other artifacts from nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum. In A.D. 79 when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, these ancient cities were covered with a thick layer of hot ash and pumice stone. Thousands of people died. When archaeologists excavated the city more than 200 years ago, they found intact houses, temples, and shops. They even unearthed a bakery with bread still in the oven!

You think I would take a wild lily and trim it to appear an English rose? You shall meet the ton as a bright Italian star." Callie couldn't help but chuckle. "Capital. Shall we choose some fabrics?" The words sent the cluster of women around them into a flurry, rolling out yards of muslins and satins, jaconet and crepe, velvet and gros de Naples in every imaginable color and pattern. "Which do you like?" Callie asked. Juliana turned her attention to the pile of fabrics, a bemused smile on her face. Mariana approached and locked their arms together. Leaning close, she said, "I adore that mulberry crepe. It would go beautifully with your hair." Turning to Callie she said, "And you, sister?" Callie cocked her head in the direction of a willow green satin, and said, "If you don't leave here with an evening dress in satin, I shall be very disappointed." Juliana laughed. "Well, then I shall have to have it! And I do like that rose muslin." Madame Hebert lifted the bolt and passed it to a seamstress. "Excellent choice, signorina. May I suggest the gold satin as well? For evening, of course.

What Thomas McGuire did not know, as he stood cultivating his jumped conclusions, was that Estelle Delmonico had sweated nothing but a highly potent mixture of pure sugar and water ever since she was a day old. Unlike the musk of normal feminine perspiration, her glands exuded no smell- but the taste! Her late husband, Luigi, himself anything but ordinary, had caught on immediately to the magic of those sugary drops. Sweet Estelle was the greatest muse an ambitious pastry chef from Naples could ever wish for, and theirs was a match made in plum-sugared heaven.

Variations on a Summer Day" I Say of the gulls that they are flying In light blue air over dark blue sea. II A music more than a breath, but less Than the wind, sub-music like sub-speech, A repetition of unconscious things, Letters of rock and water, words Of the visible elements and of ours. III The rocks of the cliffs are the heads of dogs That turn into fishes and leap Into the sea. IV Star over Monhegan, Atlantic star, Lantern without a bearer, you drift, You, too, are drifting, in spite of your course; Unless in the darkness, brightly-crowned You are the will, if there is a will, Or the portent of a will that was, One of the portents of the will that was. V The leaves of the sea are shaken and shaken. There was a tree that was a father. We sat beneath it and sang our songs. VI It is cold to be forever young, To come to tragic shores and flow, In sapphire, round the sun-bleached stones, Being, for old men, time of their time. VII One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls, When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops. He mocks the guineas, challenges The crow, inciting various modes. The sparrow requites one, without intent. VIII An exercise in viewing the world. On the motive! But one looks at the sea As one improvises, on the piano. IX This cloudy world, by aid of land and sea, Night and day, wind and quiet, produces More nights, more days, more clouds, more worlds. X To change nature, not merely to change ideas, To escape from the body, so to feel Those feelings that the body balks, The feelings of the natures round us here: As a boat feels when it cuts blue water. XI Now, the timothy at Pemaquid That rolled in heat is silver-tipped And cold. The moon follows the sun like a French Translation of a Russian poet. XII Everywhere the spruce trees bury soldiers: Hugh March, a sergeant, a redcoat, killed, With his men, beyond the barbican. Everywhere spruce trees bury spruce trees. XIII Cover the sea with the sand rose. Fill The sky with the radiantiana Of spray. Let all the salt be gone. XIV Words add to the senses. The words for the dazzle Of mica, the dithering of grass, The Arachne integument of dead trees, Are the eye grown larger, more intense. XV The last island and its inhabitant, The two alike, distinguish blues, Until the difference between air And sea exists by grace alone, In objects, as white this, white that. XVI Round and round goes the bell of the water And round and round goes the water itself And that which is the pitch of its motion, The bell of its dome, the patron of sound. XVII Pass through the door and through the walls, Those bearing balsam, its field fragrance, Pine-figures bringing sleep to sleep. XVIII Low tide, flat water, sultry sun. One observes profoundest shadows rolling. Damariscotta dada doo. XIX One boy swims under a tub, one sits On top. Hurroo, the man-boat comes, In a man-makenesse, neater than Naples. XX You could almost see the brass on her gleaming, Not quite. The mist was to light what red Is to fire. And her mainmast tapered to nothing, Without teetering a millimeter's measure. The beads on her rails seemed to grasp at transparence. It was not yet the hour to be dauntlessly leaping.

St. Andrew of the Woods, Rome, Italy (1842) The next apparition took place in 1842 and was directly related to the first. Alphonse Tobie Ratisbonne was a twenty-eight-year-old Jewish man in the prime of his life who had just gotten engaged to marry. He was a lawyer from a wealthy family and was charming, good looking, and good humored. Prior to his wedding, he decided to spend the winter in Malta. At all costs, however, he wanted to avoid Rome because he hated Catholicism; the conversion and ordination of his brother Theodore had only fanned the flames of his already intense hatred of the Faith. But somehow, because of a delay with boats out of Naples and his own restlessness, Ratisbonne found himself in the Eternal City. With a few days to spend before his boat left for Malta, Ratisbonne caught up with some friends, including Baron Theodore de Bussières, who gave Ratisbonne a Miraculous Medal as a challenge to Ratisbonne’s fierce anti-Catholicism. The baron argued, “If it is just superstition, then it won’t harm you in the least to wear this or to read the memorare prayer.” Then on January 20, 1842, while waiting for the baron in the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte (“St. Andrew of the Woods”), Ratisbonne saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin. The brief vision of blinding beauty didn’t include an exchange of words, but by the end of it, Ratisbonne said he knew “all the secrets of divine pity.”3 He immediately converted to Catholicism, joined the priesthood, and moved to Israel with a ministry to convert the Jews. Ratisbonne’s conversion was so significant that even the pope heard of it and wanted to learn more about this “miraculous medal” and the nun who had it cast. The medal’s popularity swelled and Sister Catherine’s waned as she remained just another cloistered nun among many.

To our far left was the little island of Capri, and to the right, around the bay, Vesuvius smouldered away in the distance, rising green and blue above the horizon with the sprawling city of Naples around its base.

curiosity. In August of 79 A.D., while commanding a fleet in the Bay of Naples, the Roman statesman and author witnessed a volcano erupting nearby and went ahsore to get a closer look. Bad move:he landed barely two miles from Pompeii, the eruption was that of Vesuvius, and within forty-eight hours the poisonous gases it spewed into the atmosphere had killed him'.

The air was pure and still, and early sunshine sparkled on the heavy dew. In the valley sat cotton candy mist, and the distant hills stood softly, their edges blurred and colors muted by the moist air. Swallows and house martins swooped and dipped, hungry for their breakfasts, catching the first rise of insects of the day. The honeysuckle and roses had not yet warmed to release their scent, so the strongest smell was of wet grass and bracken. Laura smiled, breathing deeply, and walked lightly through the gate into the meadows. She hadn't the courage to head off onto the mountain on her own just yet but could not wait to explore the woods at the end of the fields. By the time she reached the first towering oaks, her feet were washed clean by the dew. She felt wonderfully refreshed and awake. As she wandered among the trees she had the sense of a place where time had stood still. Where man had left only a light footprint. Here were trees older than memory. Trees that had sheltered farmers and walkers for generations. Trees that had been meeting points for lovers and horse dealers. Trees that had provided fuel and food for families and for creatures of the forest with equal grace. As she walked deeper into the woods she noticed the quality of sound around her change. Gone were the open vistas and echoes of the meadows and their mountain backdrop. Here even the tiniest noises were close up, bouncing back off the trunks and branches, kept in by the dense foliage. The colors altered subtly, too. With the trees in full leaf the sunlight was filtered through bright green, giving a curious tinge to the woodland below. White wood anemones were not white at all, but the palest shade of Naples yellow. The silver lichens which grew in abundance bore a hint of olive. Even the miniature violets reflected a suggestion of viridian.

The scene lends itself to a dramatic portrayal. Here was Charles, heir of a long line of Catholic sovereigns--of Maximilian the romantic, of Ferdinand the Catholic, of Isabella the orthodox--scion of the house of Hapsburg, lord of Austria, Burgundy, the Low Countries, Spain, and Naples, Holy Roman Emperor, ruling over a vaster domain than any save Charlemagne, symbol of the medieval unities, incarnation of a glorious if vanishing heritage; and here before him stood a simple monk, a miner's son, with nothing to sustain him save his own faith in the Word of God. Here the past and the future were met. Some would see at this point the beginning of modern times. The contrast is real enough. Luther himself was sensible of it in a measure. He was well aware that he had not been reared as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but what overpowered him was not as much that he stood in the presence of the emperor as this, that he and the emperor alike were called upon to answer before Almighty God.

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By the end of the seventeenth century, as Anglican clergy in London were preaching Newton’s science, Italian scientists were standing trial in Naples for stating “that there had been men before Adam composed of atoms equal to those of other animals.

There is not a street in Naples in which some tough little kid in shorts and mismatched socks is not screaming up from the sidewalk to some other tough little kid on a rooftop nearby. Nor is there a building in this town that doesn't have at least one crooked old woman seated at her window, peering suspiciously down at the activity below.

virtual office space rental Fort Myers and Naples Florida

Off Castle Garden, a mile to the southeast, near the western edge of Governors Island, a ship lay resting through a foggy spring night before the long and arduous trip back to the old world—whether Riga, Naples, or Constantinople is not certain.

The basic philosophy of life seemed to be: What do I care? It's none of my business. [The philosophy of Naples, Italy.]

Two weeks after the flight of the government from Naples, the French moved an army of six thousand soldiers into the city, and by late January a cabal of enlightened aristocrats and professors had engendered a monstrosity that called itself the Parthenopean or Vesuvian Republic. Most

Pizzerias in big cities benefit from Italian natives or descendants thereof, people who understand that real pizza comes from Naples where the crusts are thin and the toppings simple. Samantha’s favorite was Lazio’s, a hole-in-the-wall in Tribeca where the cooks yelled in Italian as they baked the crusts in brick ovens. Like most things in her life these days, Lazio’s was far away. So was the pizza. The only place in Brady to get one to go was a sub shop in a cheap strip mall. Pizza Hut, along with most other national chains, had not penetrated deep into the small towns of Appalachia.

But Florence Nightingale was not born into such a family. She was, instead, born to a wealthy English couple who could afford a honeymoon that took several years and spanned the European continent. The honeymoon of William Edward and Frances Nightingale went on for so long that their two daughters were both born before the couple returned to their home in England. Florence was named after the Italian city where she was born. Her sister, Frances Parthenope,was similarly named in honor of her parents’ travels: Parthenopolis is an ancient Greek settlement in Naples.