--My
Hometown -
by Rina FERRARELLi - A POEM ABOUT SAN GIOVANNI IN FIORE
--My
Hometown -
by Francesco
Saverio ALESSIO
--San
Giovanni in Fiore (1050 mt. about sea level)
is a small medieval town in the Sila mountain range in Calabria.
It has a population of 20.000, but half of them have emigrated
to other places.
--When
and who founded San Giovanni in Fiore
--San
Giovanni in Fiore was founded in the XIII century around the
Florens Abbey
which was built by Gioacchino
da Fiore, a medieval mystic and Cistercian
monk, who wrote a lot of books about the prophecy of the salvation
of the human race; for which
he was very renowend even that time. Dante
in the Divine Comedy decribed him as one "endowend
whith prophetic spirit".
--San
Giovanni in Fiore today
--In
the poem My
Hometown Rina
FERRARELLI describes the nostalgia she feels for the hometown
and her pride in her roots, also she talks about how the old
town is full of unused empty houses which were
built by past generations of people from San Giovanni in Fiore
for their children, but their children have never come back
to San Giovanni in Fiore to live in these houses.
Mediterranean Culture: Cultural antropologic
and urbanistic disaster for a History of italians and florenses
mass emigration
View of modern San Giovanni in
Fiore
Photography: Gaetano MASCARO, copyright
2003 ©
--In
the first chapter of the essay of "The
restless alliance between psychopathology and anthropology
(memories and reflections of an experience on the field)"
- drawn of the "I
fogli di Oriss", N 1, on 1993 - the Dr.
Salvatore INGLESE wrote: My first impression
was that of a place contained on him self, wrapped around
an invisible, monastic and claustrophobic secret.
--I
don't see a positive future for San Giovanni in Fiore unless
there a change of political class and the development of the
tourist industry.
--Beyond
the goldsmith tradition,
in the course of the History, the woven is the one that characterized
the handicraft production of San Giovanni in
Fiore, with bedspreads
and trousseaus with strongly coloured geometrical motifs,
some directly inspired by those of the hellenic
colonists who in their turn had been instructed
by Persian craftsmen. It’s useless to say that, beyond
small sporadic examples, currently this tradition is practically
extinct.
--Despite
its rich history and natural beauty San Giovanni in
Fiore today is in a state of economic and cultural
ruin, beacause of mass
emigration, political degradation and the failure of traditional
culture.
--by
Francesco
Saverio ALESSIO
 |
--My
Hometown
--The
old medieval town
on a steep mountainside
which boasts as its founder
Joachim of
Fiore
“di spirito
profetico dotato”
whom Dante put in the Paradiso
stayed the same until WWII
surviving it unscathed,
but now, even here,
narrow three story houses
fill every vacant space
and every garden
every single one
has been paved
made into a road or parking lot.
--What’s
amazing, though,
is not the greed
or the need to take part
in the twentieth century,
but the trust,
the confidence in the future.
The wars are forgotten,
the hunger, i padroni.
--Maybe
for the first time in history,
even here it’s America.
|
|
Rina
FERRARELLI
--Rina
FERRARELLI was
born in San Giovanni in Fiore but she emigrated to USA vhen
she was fifteen.
--She
has published a chapbook, Dreamsearch (Malafemmina Press,
1992), and a full-length book of original poems, Home Is a
Foreign Country (Eadmer Press, 1996); her translation Light
without Motion received the Italo
Calvino Prize. Her work has also appeared in many journals
and anthologies, including American Sports Poems (Orchard
Books, 1988), Artful
Dodge, Chelsea, Hudson Review, and International
Quarterly. She teaches English and translation theory
at the University
of Pittsburgh.
INTERNET
AND WEB EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
Francesco
Saverio Alessio in San Giovanni in Fiore - background: one
of his architectural decoration works
Photography:
Carmine
TALERICO - copyright
©
2001
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