BREXIT DAY

So it's over.
The UK has decided: its future will be out of the EU.

It will take some time to understand what this really means.
For the time being, it is a hard day for the Italian stock exchange: never so bad at -12%.

Many commentators say that if there is a positive side to the situation is that finally this is the end of the British anomaly: I want to play with you, but I play according to my rules, not yours.

It is like applying basketball rules while playing football.

Things will not be easy.

Two years ago the Scots voted to stay in the UK, now they have voted to stay within the EU.
What is going to happen?

Northern Ireland is seeing the opportunity to put an and to its century-long separation from the Republic, and has voted en masse for staying within the EU.

London has voted pro EU.

Young people have voted for the EU, but they have voted too little, so their future is going to be decided by old cronies living in lovely cottages in the sounthern counties, or in the dales of Yorkshire.

The Brits love challenges, it seems. And in a way we must admit that they are brave.

For the time being, we can only wait and see.

Call me Ishmael

Thank you Manuel, for your comment on De Gregori's Il canto delle sirene.

You got the point: "Ismaele" does refer to something.

Well, it is probably a hint to one of the most famous texts in American literature.

It starts with one of the most quoted lines in literature. Just three words:

            "Call me Ishamel",

which are able to trigger all the memories and reminiscences you can think of.

The novel is Melville's Moby Dick. As everybody knows - and you do not, don't you? - the enormous White Whale is one of the greatest symbols in modern times for the ineffable, for an obsession, for something that just eludes our capability to understand.

De Gregori may refer to it as well when he mentions "nella schiuma della nostra scia qualcosa appare e scompare". When we are alone, in the middle of nowhere, and we think we might be seeing something that we cannot pin down, that we would never dare give a name to. In other words,

            "Who is the third who walks always beside you?"

However, Ishmael is also the name of the son of Abraham in the Bible, and his name means "God has listened" (in the song, De Gregori repeats "Ascoltaci o Signore", which in itself is another quote, familiar to whomever has been to a Christian Catholic sevice).

For more, you can read the following article, from La Repubblica:

CON DE GREGORI VERSO L' IGNOTO

Enjoy!

Adrenaline

Do you need some adrenaline to survive all the revision work you are doing?

Sit back, relax, and watch this. Your life will be much easier!

Hancock Tower - Boston

I like this!

An architectural marvel designed by Henry N. Cobb of the firm I.M. Pei & Partners in 1976.
It is now officially named 200 Clarendon.

Gong

I am in an Icelandic mood, today.
How about this?

More sublime

But this - believe me - is only for real diehards!

Sublime

Just in case you are in need of some sublime in our WL existences:

Francesco De Gregori - Il canto delle sirene

TS Eliot meets Italian folk rock

Have fun finding references and quotes.

Il desiderio di essere come tutti

«Il 22 giugno 1974, al settantottesimo minuto di una partita di calcio, sono diventato comunista»

If you feel you have nothing to do, or if you feel like a break from all the revision and preparation, and if you would like to know about contemporary Italy, this is a book for you.

You will read it no time, and you will learn about the life of Italy along the second part of the 20th century: utopias and disillusions, political love and hatred, scandals and hopes.   

This is how its publisher describes it: 

Ogni uomo vive almeno una storia d'amore che dura tutta la vita: quella con il proprio tempo e il proprio Paese, il matrimonio (burrascoso) tra la vita privata e la vita pubblica. La grande scommessa di questo romanzo personale e politico, divertente, serissimo, provocatorio, è raccontare tutto ciò che concorre a fare di noi quello che siamo.

I have learnt more from it than from many essays and history books. Don't miss it.

Einaudi, 2015

pp. 280 

€ 13,00

ISBN 9788866213642

Hurricane Hits England

Grace Nichols (1950-)

It took a hurricane, to bring her closer
To the landscape.
Half the night she lay awake, 
The howling ship of the wind,
Its gathering rage,
Like some dark ancestral spectre.
Fearful and reassuring.

Talk to me Huracan
Talk to me Oya
Talk to me Shango
And Hattie,
My sweeping, back-home cousin.

Tell me why you visit
An English coast?
What is the meaning
Of old tongues
Reaping havoc
In new places?

The blinding illumination,
Even as you short-
Circuit us
Into further darkness?

What is the meaning of trees
Falling heavy as whales
Their crusted roots
Their cratered graves?

O why is my heart unchained?

Tropical Oya of the Weather,
I am aligning myself to you,
I am following the movement of your winds,
I am riding the mystery of your storm.

Ah, sweet mystery,
Come to break the frozen lake in me,
Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me,
Come to let me know
That the earth is the earth is the earth.

https://anthologypoems.wikispaces.com/Hurricane+Hits+England

A Supermarket in California

Allen Ginsberg, 1926 - 1997

  What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

  In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

  What peaches and what penumbras!  Whole families shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands!  Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

  I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

  I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?  What price bananas?  Are you my Angel?

  I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.

  We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

  Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close in a hour.  Which way does your beard point tonight?

  (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)

  Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.

  Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

  Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

—Berkeley, 1955

From Collected Poems 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg, published by Harper & Row. Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg. 

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/supermarket-california

A Far Cry from Africa

Derek Walcott, (1930-)

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt

Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,

Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.

Corpses are scattered through a paradise.

Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:

“Waste no compassion on these separate dead!”

Statistics justify and scholars seize

The salients of colonial policy.

What is that to the white child hacked in bed?

To savages, expendable as Jews?

Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break

In a white dust of ibises whose cries

Have wheeled since civilization’s dawn

From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.

The violence of beast on beast is read

As natural law, but upright man

Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.

Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars

Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,

While he calls courage still that native dread

Of the white peace contracted by the dead.

Again brutish necessity wipes its hands

Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again

A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,

The gorilla wrestles with the superman.

I who am poisoned with the blood of both,

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?

I who have cursed

The drunken officer of British rule, how choose

Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?

Betray them both, or give back what they give?

How can I face such slaughter and be cool?

How can I turn from Africa and live?

“A Far Cry from Africa” from Selected Poems by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 2007 by Derek Walcott. 

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/far-cry-africa