The Italian text is on the left side and the English translation is on the facing page. The translations from Italian to English are not, however, by the author, who happens to be a native English speaker. She hired a translator to move her newly-acquired Italian text into her own native tongue. Huh?
The author is Pulitzer Prize-winning Jhumpa Lahiri who wrote Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake and other books. She fell in love with the Italian language as a young traveler and twenty years after that decided to embark on a challenging experiment: she would learn Italian, really learn it, by immersing herself in Italian culture and speaking English only to her family. This involved moving her family to Rome
where she would begin to read and write only in Italian. This includes reading the classic literature in that language. Anyone who has attempted to learn a new language for a trip abroad will recognize the magnitude of this endeavor. I can get by in Germany or Austria with my limited German (mostly nouns, mostly food words), and in France with my simple French sentences and phrases. That's only one side of it, though, making myself understood. I can order Schnitzel, and waffles with chocolate, and get the water without bubbles. I can find my way through the Paris Metro, ask for the check in a restaurant, and get the water without bubbles there, too, but what if a German or French speaker is trying to make themselves understood to me? They speak fast, use tenses I haven't studied, and know way more nouns than I do. Lahiri's project is admirable.
The reason she embarked upon this journey was to learn to express herself using new words and language. As writers would say, she wanted to find a new voice. The book has an open ending, one in which Lahiri ponders which language she will use when she returns to the United States. She leaves the door open for Italian, but I think I'm hearing a possible preference for English. Either way, she anticipates a feeling of loss for the Italian language once she is no longer immersed in it.
This book was recommended reading for a writing class I took, and I used it in my own class to illustrate the power of words and the arbitrariness of the sounds we put together to form language. Lahiri has found new words for everything and learned to string them together to make a fascinating book. I wish I had thought of this idea...well, maybe not.
If you like big books full of fascinating information about genius innovators who changed the world in which we live, then this is a book for you to pick up right now. Walter Isaacson has outdone himself with this da Vinci tome. Each chapter is a treat. We may think of Leonardo as an artist, but please don't forget he was an inventor, engineer, musician, and stager of pageants. I wasn't aware of that last thing, but I was astonished at how many times it was his skills staging pageants that got him noticed by prospective employers (dukes, kings, and popes, FYI).
I picked up this book because I was working on a 3-week Lifelong Learning course on the European Renaissance. I like to include details that my students may not be familiar with, and recent information. That this book had plenty of interesting lesser-known details was no surprise given Isaacson's reputation for fine research. But it also supplied me with the compelling account of the painting, "La Bella Principessa," newly discovered in New York. Paralleling da Vinci's own penchant for combining art and science or technology, Isaacson walks us through the process for authenticating paintings believed to have been created by a particular artist. I don't want to spoil the outcome should you be convinced to read the book, but I'll just say there's a crime lab involved, and infared photography, and good old-fashioned critical thinking.
Did you know Leonardo was a pioneer of oil painting and used multiple thin layers of oil paint to create his distinctive effects? Parts of the Mona Lisa's face were created with thirty thin layers of oil paint to give her that luminous look.
Leonardo saved his ideas either in words or sketches in books we now know as Leonardo's Notebooks. these books are actually Commonplace Books, a concept used by many historical thinkers (including Thomas Jefferson and Sherlock Holmes!). These books tend to be smash-ups of ideas, and work like slow cookers for ideas and inspiration. I based my nonfiction writing course on the Commonplace Book, requiring that my students keep a designated notebook in which they add research, observations, free-writing, and ideas for their assigned Long Essay. I assure them that if they check in with their Commonplace Books daily, they will indeed be slow-cooking their ideas. Imagine my joy at reading about Leonardo's notebooks, AKA Commonplace Books, AKA Zibaldone. Isaacson spent an early chapter describing this practice. I feel validated.
Did you know Leonard invented musical instruments and played them well? He invented this Viola organista below. It sounds like a gang of stringed instruments, but it is played with a keyboard which runs a bow over the strings.
Perhaps Leonardo preferred to think of himself as an engineer or inventor, but the truth is he was a phenomenal painter. This books pages are printed on fine, heavy paper, which shows off the details of his awesome work. The book has some weight to it, literally and figuratively. It is a treasure.
