Into the Heart of Darkness Part 1 - Napoli: The Volcano
Adventures in Napoli, Reggio di Calabria, and Palermo on the Island of Sicily
“Capo…….collo. Capo……..collo”, the butcher repeated slowly to me as he would to an idiot. “Capo”, as he touched his head to indicate its meaning. “Collo”, moving his hand down to his shoulder. This very popular (cold) cut is made from the head towards the shoulder. I already knew this, but watching this Neapolitan butcher explain to me what capocollo means was worth the demonstration.
I took it upon myself to investigate the American Italian word ‘gabbagool’ (popularized by the horrible TV show “The Sopranos”) while in Napoli. I made a mental note of bringing up this word to see if anyone could tell me its history, or whether it was still in use in Napoli. Visiting a butcher’s shop on Via Forcella in the heart of old Napoli seemed like the most logical start.
Travelogues were an enormously popular form of writing in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As travel was limited to those of available means, it was left up to them to relay to the Western European and North American masses what life was like in more remote parts of the globe. British, French and German writers excelled at this genre, but it was not entirely their preserve, as authors from places as far away as Persia and China did much the same for their own audiences.
To my mind, these travelogues are horribly interesting as they not only capture the places that these authors visited at a certain time in history, but they also informed us about the writer as well; all his/her prejudices, assumptions, politics, and so on. It’s a truism that travel can teach one about themselves just as much as it can about the places that they visit.
What also makes them worthwhile is the style and substance of their writings. These books are as far from 21st century political correctness as possible in most cases. Even certain European peoples (like my own ancestors in the Dalmatian Highlands, as characterized by Venetian academic and writer Alberto Fortis in his 18th century work “Voyage into Dalmatia”) are treated as semi-savages, whom civilization has either passed over or has never encountered. It is with inspiration that I now detail my time recently spent in Napoli, Reggio di Calabria, and Palermo, Sicily.
My Italophilia was cemented during my first visit to Italy in 1994. We were in transit from Switzerland down to the homeland during the war, and had to pass through Northern Italy. Having grown up in the midst of a massive Italian diaspora community in Southern Ontario (most having arrived in the 1950s and 60s, much later than their co-nationals in the USA), I absorbed much of their culture and some of their prejudices, especially regarding food. I also picked up some street Italian from the Calabrians and Abbruzese that dominate Canada’s Italian community. I dressed like a wop and spoke like wops do in Canada. I dated their women. This was all made easy by the many, many cultural similarities between them and my own people.