Italy: Where Past Meets Present

Italy became a destination for us because Jan was asked to speak at the annual conference of the Italian Infant Massage Association. The event was held in Bologna. Our hosts were exceptionally kind and welcoming, and the audience was engaged. We sold all the Italian HUG DVDs we had brought, and I made it an all-day project to have more copies made there to meet the demand.

Through the Infant Massage conference Jan made a connection at the University of Bologna’s school of midwifery. As a result she was asked to give a lecture at the oldest University in the world. It’s hard to imagine an institution so venerable that Dante is on their alumni list!

We enjoyed being based in Bologna. It is not unlike Durham—a gritty, commercial, academic, transportation hub city—just many centuries older. Here, in what some consider the food capital of Italy, we grasped the obvious truth that the secret to great cooking lies in the ingredients. We discovered the rich taste of mortadella (the REAL “baloney”), of the vinegar from neighboring Modena (especially in its thick and sweet glassa form), and of the cheeses from nearby Parma and Gorganzola (sold and served to discerning Italian consumers before they get too dry). We bought pasta, bread, and salume (of various kinds) almost every day. I added extra kilometers of walking to compensate for my palate’s pleasures.

It was easy to take the train from Bologna for day trips to nearby, medieval cities such as Cremona, Ferrara, Padova (Padua), and Verona. The violin museum in Cremona (with its collection of Strads and other magnificent sixteenth-century instruments) was well worth a visit, but just winding through the streets of this lovely town was even more fun. Ferrara’s enormous central piazza and picturesque castle with a moat are stunning. Padova has a breathtaking, multi-domed cathedral and offered one of the highlights of our entire visit to Italy: the amazingly executed and beautifully preserved Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel.

I went to Verona in search of Shakespeare but discovered Gordon Parks instead. “Juliet’s house” (a lovely fantasy, but a real Renaissance home nonetheless) conveys a sense of the times and contains the bed constructed for the Zeferelli film, which Jan and I thoroughly enjoyed watched again—and appreciated even more for its skillful use of Verona as a set.

As I was smelling the heady jasmine in Verona and pondering whether Shakespeare could have visited Italy (he probably did not, though his fellow actor, Will Kempe, and his patron, the Earl of Southampton, both did), and why a third of his plays were set in Italy (probably so that he could present topics that would otherwise have run him afoul of censors or libel suits), I noticed a poster for a photography exhibit. The work of Gordon Parks, of all people, was on display in Verona.

Both the photos, and the gallery that contained them, were absolutely stunning. As you probably know, Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was one of America’s greatest photographers. His subjects included everyone from Malcolm, Martin, and Muhammad Ali to Marilyn Monroe. He is best known for his documentary work, and for being the first black employee of Life magazine (as well as a co-founder of Essence), but Parks’ scope as an artist was enormous. Beginning as a piano player in a brothel when he was a teenager, Parks was a lifelong musician. He wrote a piano concerto and several other works for orchestra. Parks was also a writer (The Learning Tree is his best known book), and he went on to become Hollywood’s first black director when he created the Shaft films. I learned at the exhibition that in 1976 Parks also made a dramatized film about Leadbelly.

One of Parks’ most iconic images is the one he did to illustrate his friend Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. It depicts a black man’s face peering sagely from a manhole. The basement setting for the Verona exhibition of Park’s photos could not have been more resonant. Viewers move from room to room of reinforced concrete walls, neutral but confined spaces that are here and there punctuated by glimpses of footers, foundations, and floors dating from Roman times.

Literally built upon the past, contemporary Verona preserves an intact Roman colosseum and an intact Roman amphitheater, both of which are still used as performing arts spaces. Seeing Parks in an ancient, underground setting brought home how universal his themes and images are, as well as how they are bound to a specifically American context, some of which I am old enough to have glimpsed firsthand.

I was touched to hear an Italian teacher, standing before the foundation of an old Roman prison, explaining American segregation to his high school students. It gave me hope for the world, as well as a sense of the powerful role art plays in keeping hope alive and well grounded.