While the cataclysmic events of this past week can easily suck all the oxygen out of the rooms of our daily lives, it's important to draw oxygen where we can. One of those places for my wife Becky and me has been a book called La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. by Dianne Hales.
Although one could debate the accuracy of the subtitle (especially the francophiles among us), we have nonetheless feasted (OK, nerded out a little) on the fascinating facts related to the Italian language. But not just the language itself, because language is inextricably tied to culture; and culture is made up of history, art, literature, religion, and plain old daily living -- including cooking and eating.
If you've traveled in Italy at all, this saying by Italian writer Italo Calvino will ring true:
"To know a territory, you need to eat it."
It is true that you can't fully experience any given culture without sampling its food, and no better place than Italy.
What many in the rest of the world are unaware of is that Italy wasn't even a nation until 1861. In the same year the US Civil War broke out, the various city states and regions of the Italian peninsula were grappling with the idea of uniting under a single flag -- and language. Because at the time there really was no standard Italian language, but hundreds of regional dialects. So as Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of the united Italy, brought all the disparate regions together, another problem presented itself, expressed by Massimo d'Azelio:
"We have made Italy; now we must make Italians."
And General Giuseppe Garibaldi, the great general who fought for the creation of the first Kingdom of Italy, famously said:
"It will be spaghetti, I swear to you, that will unite Italy."
And so it was -- although there are about as many variations and recipes of pasta and other Italian foods as there are towns and villages. You could say it all started with the Roman Empire -- the Roman armies brought back a vast array of new foods from the far-flung corners of the known world, and the culinary world hasn't been the same since.
Even French cuisine, arguably recognized as the culinary standard bearer of the Western world, was influenced by the Italians: Catherine de' Medici, the Italian noblewoman who married King Henri II of France and gave birth to two more French kings, brought with her her chefs, bakers, recipes, cup-bearers...and a new Italian invention called the fork. French cuisine was changed forever.
And for Italians, as for the French, it's about much more than the food itself; it's about the company in which one eats. As the saying goes,
"Chi mangia solo crepa solo." (Who eats alone dies alone.)
Indeed, if you are seen eating alone at a restaurant in Italy, chances are other diners will at least greet you or even raise a glass and wish you a Buon appetito so you don't feel quite so alone.
I'll eat to that.
Buon appetito.