What’s lost in the anglicisation of Italian place names? Monosyllabic Rome sounds very dull in contrast to Roma, which is full of movement, verve and energy. Firenze sounds like it's ablaze with art and sunshine, unlike the comparatively vapid Florence. (Mind you, this doesn’t apply to humans: I have a granddaughter called Florence and there’s nothing bland about our amazing Flo!) As for Naples, it sounds like a quiet suburb on the Metropolitan line but Napoli (with its essential extended first vowel) is a name as operatic, delicious and passionate as the city itself.
When I was a lad, you could walk into the cinema at any time and start watching the film from that point. This caused confusion about plot and characters: who's he? what’s she doing?we'd whisper until shushed by a grown up. Leaving our apartment on our first day in Napoli is like entering one of those continuously running films.
It’s a movie that stars a city apparently on the verge of being overwhelmed by chaos but never is because by the time the chaos has got itself organised (chaos being notoriously disorganised) the place has moved on to some new manifestation of itself. When even the chaos can’t keep up, you know you’re somewhere exciting.
We’re a couple of extras in this movie (playing a bewildered English couple) agog with uncertainty. Our sangfroid is melting in the January sun so we join the current and are swept along Spaccanapoli towards Piazza del Gesu Nuovo where a noisy demonstration is happening. The Carabinieri are doing something insouciant behind their sunglasses and a young lad in army fatigues looks on nervously. The demo quickly passes through the piazza, taking its anger and indignation with it, leaving us slightly bemused because we don’t know any of the reasons behind it. The right thing to do is have coffee.
We sit watching the staff behind the counter talking in urgent words and gestures. It's apparent someone is angry with someone and in his book Gesture in Naples, Andrea de Jorio - a Neapolitan priest writing in 1832 - helpfully identified 10 different ways of silently expressing anger or rage through gesture. They are: (1) “biting one’s lips”; (2) “biting one’s hands and single fingers”; (3) “tearing one’s hair”; (4) “scratching one’s face”; (5) “firmly enclosing one’s fist in the other hand and rubbing it with such force that the joints crack”; (6) “gnashing one’s teeth with wide open lips”; (7) “moving one’s lips with a shuddering, nervous rhythm”; (8) “stamping the ground with violence”; (9) “beating palm against palm, as if to applaud, once or twice only, with force.” The only gesture not easily understood is number 10, “pretending to bite one’s elbows.” It means, in words, “I will do anything to avenge myself, even the impossible, of which biting my elbows is a hyperbolic example.”
I can't claim we saw all ten but there was definitely some scratching of faces and gnashing of teeth but no elbow biting.
Had de Jorio been writing today, he might have come up with a lexicon of gestures while riding a scooter. At times, it feels like there are more Vespas than people in Naples since their riders don't limit themselves to roads but make extensive use of pavements as well. The best example of creative scootering I saw was a young woman riding her Vespa while yelling into a phone wedged between her ear and shoulder, at the same time carrying a bag of rubbish, which she deposited in the bin with a flourish before shooting across the pavement to join the main road.
These are just some of the scenes in the never-ending movie that is Napoli. It's on now - you can join it any time.
Scooters
Raise a glass….
Not disappointed with your colourful and vivid description of everyday life in Naapoli. It's almost transported me to the very coffee bar! 👍😂
I continue to marvel at your beautiful, vivacious, humorous, evocative writing! You manage to bring everything and everywhere you write about to life in the most delightful way :-) Thank you! x