Liguria, Italy.
My Memories.
When I was little, my grandparents bought a house in Sestri Levante, a small village located along the Ligurian Riviera, in Italy. Since then, I like to take refuge there every time I can, losing myself in thoughts and simply relaxing. It’s easy for me to reach this half moon of land between sky and sea, as it’s only a two-hour car ride from Milan. Yet, this place seems so far away too, perhaps lost somewhere in my memories. I still remember when I was four or five, and my grandma used to push me around Sestri on my stroller because I was too lazy to walk. Well, she never suspected that I only played lazy, but I actually loved knowing I was the center of her world.
Nowadays I like travelling throughout the region with my husband, in search for hidden corners in a salt and sun smelling blooming nature. Liguria is a dream land to me, rich in intimate and unique details which suddenly appear to your side and fascinate you for their beauty---ancient defense towers stretching out towards the sky, small churches, chestnut woods, miles of walks with gorgeous panoramic views on sea and inland. It is the land where I spent my summers as a child and nourished my first innocent hopes and dreams.
Celebrating The Land - A Famous Italian Poet and His Words.
Prose writer, editor and translator who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1975, Eugenio Montale was born in Genoa. He spent his summers at the family villa in a small village nearby the Ligurian Riviera called Monterosso, and later images from its harsh landscape found their way into his poetry.
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A white dove has landed me among headstones, under spires where the sky nests. Dawns and lights in air; I've loved the sun, colors of honey, now I crave the dark, I want the smoldering fire, this tomb that doesn't soar, your stare that dares it to.
Collected Poems, 1920-1954, translation by Jonathan Galassi.
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To slump at noon thought-sick and pale under the scorching garden wall, to hear a snake scrape past, the blackbirds creak in the dry thorn thicket, the brushwood brake.
Between tufts of vetch, in the cracks of the ground to spy out the ants’ long lines of march; now they reach the top of a crumb-sized mound, the lines break, they stumble into a ditch.
To observe between the leaves the pulse beneath the sea’s scaly skin, while from the dry cliffs the cicada calls like a knife on the grinder’s stone.
And going into the sun’s blaze once more, to feel, with sad surprise how all life and its battles is in this walk alongside a wall topped with sharp bits of glass from broken bottles.
“Meriggiare pallido e assorto”, by Eugenio Montale, translation by Millicent Bell.
Liguria Through My Eyes.
