Seasons in Basilicata: A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village

Seasons in Basilicata: A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village

by David Yeadon
Seasons in Basilicata: A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village

Seasons in Basilicata: A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village

by David Yeadon

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Overview

Award-winning travel writer and illustrator, David Yeadon embarks with his wife, Anne on an exploration of the "lost word" of Basilicata, in the arch of Italy's boot. What is intended as a brief sojourn turns into an intriguing residency in the ancient hill village of Aliano, where Carlo Levi, author of the world-renowned memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, was imprisoned by Mussolini for anti-Fascist activities. As the Yeadons become immersed in Aliano's rich tapestry of people, traditions, and festivals, reveling in the rituals and rhythms of the grape and olive harvests, the culinary delights, and other peculiarities of place, they discover that much of the pagan strangeness that Carlo Levi and other notable authors revealed still lurks beneath the beguiling surface of Basilicata.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061979927
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 10/06/2009
Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
Format: eBook
Pages: 480
Sales rank: 767,060
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

David Yeadon is the author of Seasons in Basilicata and the bestselling National Geographic Guide to the World's Secret Places. He has written, illustrated, and designed more than twenty books about traveling around the world. He lives with his wife, Anne, in Mohegan Lake, New York.

Read an Excerpt

Seasons in Basilicata
A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village

Chapter One

The Lure of Levi

This is a closed world, shrouded in black veils, bloody and earthy— that other world where the peasants live and which no one can enter without a magic key . . . Here there is no definite boundary between the world of human beings and that of animals and even monsters. And there are many strange creatures here who have a dual nature . . . everything is bound up in natural magic . . . and a subterranean deity, black with shadows of the bowels of the earth . . .

Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli

Some say his coffin is full of rocks.

It lies deep in the heavy clay soil at the edge of the cemetery in Aliano. The cemetery is at the highest point of the village, on a watershed ridge above the Sauro and Agri Valleys. The views from there across the eroded calanchi canyons, which seem to be melting like cake frosting into the scrubby and scraggly olive orchards far below, are the finest in the village. And Carlo Levi's grave has the best view of all, west across the calanchi, the muscular outlines of the Pollino range and, on a clear spring day, the massive bulk of the Calabrian massif.

The grave site has recently been rebuilt with a simple two-walled enclosure overlooking a deep gorge, but the headstone remains the same as before, bearing its simple inscription: Carlo Levi 12.11.1902-4.1.1975.

Others say his actual remains are in Rome, jealously guarded by a lover. His nephew, Giovani Levi, who lives in Venice, is vague about the whole matter and prefers to discuss the impact of hisuncle's books and political career on the Mezzogiorno, "Land of the Midday Sun," that wild region dismissed by refined, affluent northerners as "the South" (with the usual complacent smirk) or, more offensively, "the land of the terroni" (peasants). As with everything involving Carlo Levi, opinions are divided, sometimes dramatically, ferociously. But all that will be revealed later.

For the moment Anne and I are sitting in the shade of a line of pine trees by Levi's grave, watching hawks float on the spirals in the heat of the "sacred time," the afternoon siesta. We're thinking about the life of this man who worked so arduously on behalf of his "beloved peasants," attempting to eradicate the centuries-old inequities of a harsh feudal system and create conditions conducive to human dignity and new economic progress in the South.

We're remembering his most famous book, Christ Stopped at Eboli—first published in English in 1947—and its impact on us both when we first read it years ago. One reviewer described it as "an unforgettable journey into the dark, ancient and richly human ethos of Southern Italy." Others saw deeper, more holistic nuances. An eminent European sociologist even suggested that the primitive elements Levi discovered here reflected "the deepest, darkest parts of the Soul of our World"—elements also dramatically reflected in Francesco Rosi's famous 1978 film of the book, featuring Italian heartthrob Gian Maria Volentè as Levi and Irene Pappas as his witch-housekeeper, Giulia Venere (Mango).

Levi wrote his masterwork following his confino, his house arrest in the remote Basilicatan hill town of Aliano, where he was exiled before World War II by an irate Mussolini, il Duce, who was determined to quell Levi's rampant, antifascist activities and writings. Almost sixty years later Levi's book, translated into thirty-seven languages, continues to provide insights into this wild region, located in the instep of Italy's "boot." Still mysterious and elusively tied to a darker age and deeper pagani touchstones of knowledge and belief, the region is relatively unchanged by the country's overreaching Catholic influence.

A true Renaissance man—physician, philosopher, artist, writer, inspired speaker, and later a senator in the Italian government— Levi was born in Turin on November 29, 1902, into an affluent, talented, and respected Jewish family. He graduated in medicine at the early age of twenty-two. That same year, he exhibited his artwork at the Biennale of Venice and began his vociferous antifascist activities, with the Giustizia e Libertà movement, which ultimately condemned him as a "threat to national security." He was sentenced to five years confino in one of Italy's wildest regions, a term that was reduced to seven months (from October 3, 1935, to May 20, 1936), following Mussolini's conquest of Ethiopia.

Those less impressed by Carlo Levi's political values and writings often refer dismissively to Christ Stopped at Eboli as a "novel," implying that much of the dark, bleak, primitive, sempre miseria ("always misery") peasant world in Aliano he describes—a world "which no one can enter without a magic key"—is largely fictitious. To some, it is either a figment of a vehemently antifascist, prounderclass imagination or, according to other cynics, a masterful work of mystical fantasy.

Prior to our time in Aliano and other places in a region that once harbored a host of strident socialist critics, the plight of Mezzogiorno peasants was regarded as beneath the dignity of national politicians to investigate and certainly never to acknowledge. One of the most outspoken "revolutionaries" was Rocco Scotellaro, a close friend of Levi's, who appeared in redheaded rhetorical fury in many of Levi's Aliano-period paintings. As a poet and ultimately the mayor (sindico) of Tricarico, Scotellaro used his verses and vision as powerful instruments for social and economic emancipation. Similarly, in the village of Tursi to the Southeast, Albino Pierro, a renowned poet who wrote in the local Arab-tinged dialect and was once a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, was also a reformist for the sperduti ("the forgotten people").

Levi saw himself primarily as a physician and a painter, and certainly never claimed to be a poet. However, both his art and his eloquent prose paint an intriguing and almost poetical portrait of Aliano, his place of exile in 1935-1936, the most strident era of the Mussolini fascist dictatorship. And there is no doubt, based upon our own time there, that Levi's descriptions of the setting and mood of the village of Aliano could not be bettered. Certainly not by me.

Here's a brief collage of Levi's impressions from his worldfamous book, which, as one critic suggested, became "the symbol of many other dire realities in our divided world today." That thought... Seasons in Basilicata
A Year in a Southern Italian Hill Village
. Copyright © by David Yeadon. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

What People are Saying About This

June Sawyers

“Wonderful account”

David Citino

“A compelling book...that comes close to re-creating the place and the man.”

Paul Carbray

“Delightful, with the odd twist to eerie.”

Pamela Paul

“Leave it to Yeadon to choose one of the country’s most overlooked provinces.”

Ann Geracimos

“This is a true traveler…who can make the most innocent encounter a memorable experience.”

Kathy Balog

“Yeadon leaves you pleasantly stuffed, slightly intoxicated and feeling warmer for the company.”

Dolores Derrickson

“One of the best travel writers in the world.”

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Award-winning travel writer and illustrator David Yeadon embarks with his wife, Anne, on an exploration of the wild, mountainous "lost world" of Basilicata, in the arch of Italy's boot. What is intended as a brief sojourn turns into a much longer and far more intriguing residency across the seasons. The Yeadons make a home in the ancient and alluring hill village of Aliano, where Carlo Levi, author of the world-renowned memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, was imprisoned by Mussolini during World War II for anti-Fascist activities.

The Yeadons become immersed in Aliano's rich tapestry of people, traditions, and festivals, reveling in the rituals and rhythms of the grape and olive harvests, the unique culinary delights of the region, and other enticing peculiarities of place. At the same time, they discover that much of the pagan strangeness that Carlo Levi and other notable authors revealed still lurks beneath the beguiling surface of Basilicata. Evocative illustrations and richly colorful, often humorous tales of life in the hill village form the framework for Seasons in Basilicata.

Topics for Discussion

  1. In his Seasons in Basilicata, David Yeadon has explored one of the wildest and least-known regions of Southern Italy. While many writers have celebrated the sophisticated charms of Northern Italy, why do you think the author selected Basilicata for his "seasons in" sojourn?

  2. Carlo Levi, author of the world-renowned Christ Stopped at Eboli (1937), enabled the author to observe and understand many of the pagan characteristics of Basilicata. Would these be an enticing element in your own explorations of such regions and why?

  3. The author has always illustrated his own travel books (20 and still counting). To what degree do you think the illustrations in Seasons in Basilicata enhance the book and increase the visual appeal of this wild region?

  4. Yeadon's travel books have invariably focused on 'hidden corners,' 'secret places,' and 'lost worlds' around the globe and Basilicata is the latest of his 'finds.' Do you think it's appealing to draw attention to such elusive places or should they be left relatively unexplored, and undisturbed?

  5. After almost three decades as an 'earth gypsy' travel writer the author believes that outer 'lost-worlds' exploration is a key metaphor for equally intriguing and revelationary inner exploration of our own hidden 'multi-selves.' Do you share this concept and if so, which events in the book seem to reflect and reinforce this philosophy?

  6. Southern Italian 'Slow Food' cuisine features significantly in Seasons in Basilicata. Do you feel this is reflected in the broader lifeways and daily rhythms of the local villagers and if so, in which specific activities and events?

  7. The author is a Yorkshireman born in a region of England renowned for its ironic, tongue-in-cheek humor. Do you feel this is reflected in his writings?

  8. Although the book is written primarily for an 'armchair-traveler' audience, do the author's descriptions and experiences in Basilicata make the region appealing as an actual destination particularly for 'cultural-travelers' or seekers of unusual and 'strange' destinations?

  9. Matera, Basilicata's unique 'cave-city,' was until its recent designation by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, considered by many to be an embarrassing reminder of past conditions of dire peasant-poverty in Southern Italy. There was even a local movement to eradicate all traces of this heritage. Do you feel it is important to retain and enhance such unique places and why?

About the author

David Yeadon was born in Yorkshire, England, and has lived in the United States for twenty-five years, writing and illustrating more than twenty travel books, including National Geographic's The World's Secret Places. Yeadon is also a regular contributor to many major travel magazines. He and his wife, Anne, live in upstate New York, Italy, and Japan.

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