Очи чёрные, очи страстные
Очи жгучие и прекрасные
Как люблю я вас, как боюсь я вас
Знать, увидел вас я в недобрый час
Oh, these gorgeous eyes, dark and glorious eyes,
Burn-with-passion eyes, how you hypnotise
Andrew appears in the November mists and amongst his olive trees, his eyes hooded, his hands expressing concern. His sheep wait to be milked. His background, as a city worker in London, may not obviously be the CV expected of a Seggiano sheep farmer, but he took it seriously, spending almost thirty years here, occupying and renovating three poderi, before moving to Corfu where he now lives, with his wife Yvonne, in an old olive mill.
An August Corrado looks hard at me and presents a fox he had kicked to death for terrorising his chickens. Corrado has lived his entire life (excepting a brief period on National Service, when he went as far as Livorno, some fifty kilometres away) within about ten kilometres square. He was born within fifty metres of this photograph and still lives about five hundred metres from it.
Corrado recommended that I kept the fox in the running water of the stream until I was ready to eat it. I passed on that and buried it, shallowly. When David, my friend who owned the house, arrived, the summer putrefaction was not concealed, and he conducted a more robust reburial.
Carlo, who saw action in the second Italo-Ethiopian War, stops for a moment on the way back from Seggiano to his home up the hill, a walk of at least one hour in the summer heat. He peers at the camera, slightly wary, not quite sure. Carlo was an engaging and patient man, and, despite his years, put me to shame with his daily toil and passive demeanour.
Carlo's wife, Gina, awaits her husband anxiously at their home. There were perhaps times when Carlo's conviviality would interfere with her culinary timings, but she herself was hospitality personified. For this photo she covered her feet with a shawl as she felt they wanted for elegance, but then gazed unblinking at me and the view behind, searching for her Carlo.
Another local contadino, who may also have lived most of his life within hundreds of metres of this photograph, indicates the valley below, staring out from the shade of his hat. His kind, with tiny plots of land and antique skills such as weaving willow twigs, is rapidly becoming a faint and imprecise memory.
In the meantime Corrado's wife, Concetta, who came under contract from Calabria, poses for me with her bunch of zucchini flowers and daughter Maria, since married (possibly by contract) to another contadino some three times her age from a village at least ten kilometres away. Concetta's open face reflects her kindness and patience, one who is never failing in hard work and care.
While another young lady, my wife, Amanda, elegant, refined, aristocratic (as befits), poses with a delicious bunch of zucchini flowers which Concetta had presented as a gift. The strong Tuscan sun does not catch the eyes - it is too strong, so instead it casts deep shadows. In case zucchini (courgette) flowers are not a common ingredient in your kitchen, just dip them in a light batter and fry quickly (though you do need to check for ants and earwigs first, as my children will aver!)
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| Autumn evening light, Tuscany |
You cannot see these women's faces, but mark their headgear. Those are sacks of marroni, the mature and largest edible castagne (sweet chestnuts). Life in rural Italy used to consist of so many annual and seasonal tasks, tough, but valuable, and everyone played a part. Again, below, the hat shades the eyes, though not the stare. Even the dogs.....
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| Cane da pastore Maremmano-Abruzzese |
At the other end of the spectrum, in a certain way, is the excess of the Carnival, a period of extravagance that precedes the austerity of Lent. Here the mask masks the face, to protect and disguise.
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| By the Doge's Palace, Venezia |
Carnival: Carne (meat/flesh/food) vale (goodbye/has value) is a farewell to feasting, and has become also an opportunity for parading in finery and disguise. In Venice, in particular, it is a masquerade, with the typically long nosed white masks that, herbal nosegays within the nasal cavities, pretended to save one from the pestilence. Here below are some empty masks - no eyes at all.
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| Masks for every occasion - Venezia |
Which connects quite neatly with certain other images of Italian life, Benito and Old Blue Eyes himself, Hitler, both of them caricatured with piercing gazes. In the late seventies I stopped for a coffee at the Aquila D'Oro Hotel (Golden Eagle) in Aquapendente on the Via Cassia (the main road from Milan to Rome before the autostrade) and noted on the wall a framed newscutting celebrating the fact that Adolf Hitler and Eva von Braun had stayed there on their first trip to Italy.....
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| The old brutalism on display in Venezia |
The Carnival in Rome is a slightly different affair, with less posturing and more individual expression. Here children are at the centre of the festivity, some impossibly young infants being dressed in improbable ways and labouring within meaningless suits, but then older people take to face painting and young girls and boys dress in ways that they themselves feel shows something of their personality.
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| Via dei Fori Imperiali |
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| Appia |
It is not just the carnival period that brings people out on parade. Every evening there is the Passeggiata, and every day there are those who just want to be seen, and be seen at their best at that, so paint the eyebrows and lashes.
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| Preparing for a shoot by the Spanish Steps |
Even if it is a professional engagement, under a blooming hat:
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| Waiting: Piazza d'Espagna |
Or a performance in the open air, eyes masked by mascara:
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| Dancers pausing during filming in Piazza del Popolo |
Of such performances there are innumerable examples: this picture below was taken on the island of Giglio some years ago, in the town of Castello, when a group of friends would meet every evening, every summer, to belt out dixieland jazz classics 'til the sun was gone. Strange coincidence that only last year I met one of these musicians in a village not far from Rome, who told me that sadly the clarinettist (a fine musician) had recently passed away.
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| Jazz on Giglio |
On a slightly different tack, children are the street performers par excellence in Italy. The climate (and cramped housing) has encouraged outdoor play and interaction wherever you go. These three chose to be cheeky (though their hooded eyes show some sense of shame) in a narrow lane somewhere above Amalfi, brimming with glee, the giveaway clue to their real interest in their hands and tucked under an arm - lemons! But not lemons such as you would slice into a gin and tonic - these Sorrento lemons (cedri) are sweet enough to eat raw.
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| The Sorrento Peninsula |
And children, of course, are the real centre of Italian life, with bright, brilliant eyes. Your passport to everything is a little child. Here Matthew Mawer, son of novelist Simon Mawer and his wife Connie, takes the air somewhere on the eastern slopes of the Apennines enjoying life to the full and looking the photographer boldly in the eye.
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| Gran Sasso or thereabouts |
And here Hannah slips down a slide outside the Carabinieri barracks in Orvieto, averting her gaze with a touch of coyness.
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| Orvieto |
Closely followed by her sister, Sarah, a twinkle in her eyes.
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| Orvieto |
And sleep is another theme in Italian life. In the sun, or in the shade, the eyes closed:
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| Anzio |
Young man, or old cat......
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| The Ghetto - Venezia |
And there are friends, and colleagues. On a trip to Stromboli (a petulant, active volcanic isle) with some thirty teenagers we were nearly stranded by high winds. Stromboli (one of the Aeolian islands) has no harbour, and the normal docking procedure is for the ferry boat to back up to a pontoon quay and embark passengers in a bit of a hurry. On this occasion the steamer had to hove to several hundred metres from the shore and we had to be rowed out in open boats which were launched through the breakers from the shingle beach by sturdy islanders. We made it, but were then tossed about upon the briny for several hours while we negotiated all the Aeolian islands on the way back to a windswept Milazzo on mainland Sicily. My colleagues, ever optimistic and caring for their charges, took a dim view of the weather, their stares concerned at the wind and the waves.
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| Michael and Isabel on board ship |
Other associates had different outlooks on life, as is natural. Dr Nick Henson, seen here with a head of hair like a rough crow's nest and the beady eyes of a woodpecker, is a brilliant naturalist and biologist, and I recently had the pleasure of studying his latest book, "Uccelli nel Parco del Circeo," ("Birds of the Circeo National Park"), which is a beautifully presented bird-watching guide.
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| Dr Nick on the Ponte Sant'Angelo, some years past! |
Then there were those amici who had not a care in the world, for whom the phrase "La Dolce Vita" was invented. Here Gerry and Maria take their duties of caring for the swimming pool most seriously (in a fashionable Roman suburb) during the Caddy family (FAO employees)'s summer absence in Canada.
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| Casal Palocco |
And there were work colleagues, with whom a brief snack or light lunch was a part of the daily duties. This trattoria and bar, at a point sixteen kilometres from the Ponte Milvio in Rome, was a staging post and restaurant for travellers to and from the Holy City. It was also at the site of St Ignatius of Loyola's transforming vision and just across the busy road is a little chapel to commemorate this, as well as a large building which was once a Jesuit Seminary but which is now the home of St George's British English School.
The colleagues pictured have long since moved on, as have I. Franco Fornasieri and his wife, Maria Pia, are no longer with us, though son Massimo still runs the bar, and the trattoria is not much changed.....
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| Trattoria del Quarto Secolo, La Storta, Via Cassia Km 16 |
Every picture tells a story, and this one tells of a trip to Siena at Christmas in the late seventies. Siena can be blisteringly hot in the summer, but can be bitterly cold in the winter. However, there is a local grappa which is well known for countering sub-zero temperatures (as used by ski instructors). Here Lindsay, caught in the striking winter light, is seen wondering where the next grappa will come from, his eyes cast to heaven for assistance.
In the years between the second world war and the turn of the millennium many faces (such as Carlo and Gina's above) masked experiences probably best forgotten. The war had passed up peninsular Italy with extreme pain and suffering. No one had been exempt. The food of Italy reflects the poverty of those years (and before) when meat would have been (a) a luxury and (b) possibly of suspect origin (a scene in Liliana Cavani's 1981 film "La Pelle" showed a hungry diner reconstructing the bones of a human hand at the bottom of his bowl). This tough cookie in a street market had seen life, and would take no nonsense.
And these two old girls, in a village to the north of Rome, could giggle at me in delight, but would have stories to tell if pressed.
And this chap, a fisherman in Fiumicino, communicated a certain enjoyment of life which looked forward, rather than back, though he didn't see Berlusconi coming!
And then there are faces cast in stone. There is something very Italian about the process of chipping human heads out of stone, perhaps inspired by the Ancient Greeks, but perfected by artists of the Roman Empire. It is still something that you see practised, though this one, on the Island of Favignana off the coast of Sicily, shows bold strokes but limited refinements.
A very different example is in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, where John Keats is commemorated in relief.
And everywhere you stumble in Italy there are faces, faces, faces. They may be fountains, or statues. Ancient or young, they seem to express character whichever way you see them. Here is a baroque fountain over a Roman bath, not far from the Ponte Sisto in Rome.
Here is the pose of authority:
Here is the face of disapproval:
Here is the surprise of innocence:
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| Monte Amiata |
And here a sense of confident independence:
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| The Gulf of Genova |
And here the absolute love of sunshine, good food and wine, and of "dolce far niente!"
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| Here's looking at you, kid..... |
No, not sad am I, nor so mad am I;
All my comforts lie in my destiny.
Just to realise my life’s worthiest prize
Did I sacrifice for those ardent eyes!
"Oci Ciornie" is a film made in 1987 with Marcello Mastroianni and Yelena Safonova, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov. The title come from a Russian song ("Dark Eyes") which has been a jazz standard, interpreted by artists as wide ranging as Django Reinhardt, Al Jonson, Gloria Jean (in the W C Fields' film "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break,") Bugs Bunny, Danny Kaye, Louis Armstrong and Judy Morris (in "Happy Feet.")
I love the song, the film and those dreamy deep pools that are people's eyes. These few photos (all taken between twenty and forty years ago in Italy) perhaps convey some of that? The thing about Italian eyes is that they have to be protected - hooded, shaded, covered, shadowed - so that in fact Italian eyes are seeing but not always seen. Only the children in their innocence have bright eyes. The rest, are dark. Oci Ciornie.
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| Calabria |
