Lorca and Italy

Lorca is amazingly popular in Italy, particularly in the South. He translates easily, of course, but, perhaps his popularity in cities like Palermo, Bari, and Naples is also the result of affinities stemming from the long term Spanish presence in Southern Italy (I remember the curious experience of reading what I thought was some odd dialect of Italian inscriptions carved into old walls in Sorento and Naples, only to realize, after a few seconds, that I was reading some pretty bog standard Spanish), a similarity of history (a Latin Catholic overlay of infrastructure laid down by what had been a reasonbly longlived Islamic conquest), and even a similarity of climate and landscape. Of course, Lorca's anti-fascist credentials are impeccable and that helps too in a country where, despite Berlusconi's recent return to power and the presence of genuine fascists (suitably modernized) in the government, you can't be a true intellectual if you are not a Marxist.

On a completely unrelated note, while exploring the many bookstores of Como this past week (the bookstore density in Como is similar to the coffee shop density in London), I discovered a facing page translation of Finnegans Wake into Italian. Very wild indeed.