That Awful Mess on the via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda [161]
Irnerius, teacher of law of Bologna, was the first great commentator on Roman law (1065-1125).
Prati, a section of Rome on the left bank of the Tiber, a fashionable residential district in the early years of this century.
La Gajola is a little island off the tip of Cape Posillipo, just outside Naples.
Vittorio Amedeo II of Sardinia once gave his Collare dell'Annunziata (a decoration corresponding, more or less, to the Garter) to a group of poor subjects—an episode included in all Italian school-books for the edification of young students during the Monarchy.
The Italian Mint is in Piazza Verdi, Rome.
A reference to Alcide de Gasperi, Prime Minister of Italy at the time this book was being written.
Mussolini numbered the years of the "Fascist Era." The Year Fifteen would be 1937.
The little town of Predappio was Mussolini's birthplace.
Barbisa is the Milanese dialect word for the female organ.
"Comit" is the abbreviation for the Banca Commerciale Italiane.
Alessandro Galilei (1691-1737), architect of St. John Lateran, the beloved "San Giovanni" of the Romans.
Virginia assumes that the word pediatra (pediatrician) has something to do with feet (piedi).
Rome's Regina Coeli prison is on the Via della Lungara.
The law in Italy is enforced not only by the police, locally, but also by the carabinieri (formerly the Royal Carabinieri), a national force with a long tradition. There is ill-concealed rivalry between the two forces.
Another reference to Mussolini, son of Rosa Maltoni.
The "mountain" is that of the French revolutionary Convention. The "bull" is Danton. An obscure reference, prompted by Gadda's wide reading in French history.
The "fourth shore," an Italian jingoist slogan, referring to the shore of Libya, Italy's onetime colony.
A private reference. The Sicilian sculptor Francesco Messina was, apparently, at one time the owner of a red Lancia.
The Milanese engineer Luigi Vittorio Bertarelli was President of the Italian Touring Club and sponsored, about this time, a campaign to set up the standard Italian road signs all over the country, arousing Gadda's ire.
Vitori and Luis are Milanese dialect for Vittorio and Luigi, the names of the hapless Bertarelli.
"Hypocarduccian" is a reference to the patriotic poet Giosue Carducci (1835-1907).
References to the Italian revolution of 1848 and the brief Roman Republic of 1849.
"Gregorian" has a faintly Papal flavor, but in Roman dialect gregorio also means the "behind."
La difesa della razza was the publication of the Italian racists, sponsored by the Fascists after the special (i.e., antisemitic) laws of 1938.
The Foro Italico—formerly Foro Mussolini—is a complex of stadiums, swimming pool, and other sports buildings on the northern outskirts of Rome. It was—and still is—decorated by pseudo-heroic male statues, each representing a city or a region of Italy. Latium (Lazio) is the region of Rome.
The Priory of the Knights of Malta is on the Aventine Hill, just above the Clivo de' Publicii.
Pinturicchio (or Pintoricchio) was a nickname, meaning "little" painter; Doctor Fumi is making a pun on the name.
That is to say, to Ingravallo's native Molise.
Another reference to Mussolini.
The sibyl of Cumae (just outside Naples) was renowned in ancient times, described by Virgil in Book Six of the Aeneid.
To ward off the evil eye.
A complicated and typically Gaddian aside: he refers to the bureaucratic confusion which once had him registered as Paolo Emilio. (Paulus Emilius, in 216 B.C., advised Varro not to fight Hannibal; Varro did and was defeated at Cannae. Paulus was killed, having refused to flee when the opportunity was given him.) Then he was registered as Paolo Maria, before he succeeded in having his name entered properly, correcting also "Gadola" into "Gadda."
R.R.C.C., the Royal Carabinieri.
A reference to the Bernini St. Teresa in Ecstasy, in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.
Fara Filiorum Petri is the peculiar name of a small town in the Abruzzo from which, apparently, this carabiniere private comes. Gadda refers to