The discreet charm of an ancient land

by Simeone Andrulli

"What is Basilicata? Basilicata was an immense forest. We need to go back to ancient times in order to solve its problems" said Francesco Saverio Nitti at the beginning of the century.
Nervous hills, haggard bushes, yellowish grass blades, dry riverbeds ready to swell frighteningly after the slightest rainfall. Torrents and badlands are not a peculiarity of Basilicata but it is perhaps here where this geological disorder is enormously showy.

"Forest precedes man, desert follows him" said Chateaubriand about the Mediterranean landscape. In fact, not so long ago Basilicata was covered by forests whose impenetrability was well-known to Romans who colonized it marginally throughout their domination. Its ancient inhabitants, the Lucanians as they allied with Hannibal, and the fate assigned to them by the Urbs (Rome) was not magnanimous as they were condemned to total isolation. Perhaps due to this ancestral isolation, unlike other Italian regions Basilicata has maintained unaltered peasant traditions. Horses and oxen have been replaced by tractors but the atmosphere is still the same. The yellow harvest of June is followed by the black and acrid August landscape. The first fall rainfall seep into the water thirsting soil and the dull colors of the summer end are enriched by new tones and the soil opened by plough, shows an unsuspected color range variety. Trees let their leaves fall at the first cold spell... seasons punctually follow.

"Observing is not the same thing like watching attentively. Look carefully at this color and tell me what it reminds you of. If the color changes, you are not looking anymore at what I meant. We observe to see what we haven't seen while we were not observing" (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

In Basilicata you can see all or nothing! Hills as big as mountains, houses on the top of the highest peak. The towns, so similar so different, look like that. Perhaps it is there where they invented the birds. The road winds like a spiral staircase and take refuge in town to escape from badlands extreme steepness, from valley shade, from malaria old stories whispered by dark bushes. Throughout the sky, out of the roof and gardens, down to white precipices made of high ridges, ravines and caves for pigs, cloudy forms of birds fall down like rain. There is not end at their flight, in the summer full of azure winds and warmth and food and gaiety, in woods and space forbidden to man. The words evaporate among bird screeching, they bounce off the nibbles grasses and slip into the pigsties dug into the sandstone where pigs smile, grunt and dream. They dream a bog rich of acorns and figs, they grunt at the memory of the udders of a sow on heat, they smile at the sun and their pigtails become curly gone into ecstasy.

The main road, "il corso", consists of one or two floor rocky houses flaunting grayish plaster remains. In the houses, where women and old folks live, men are few. Girls of marriageable age sigh love with the old game "he loves me, he loves me not"; they check in the mirror their reflection to be offered to the eyes of young men resting on street corners. Shut up in their room, smothered by twilight, a young woman draws saliva signs around her nipples: she dreams the flesh terrors and the bride's ring.
In the street, black dressed women juggle with absurd bundles over their head. A young woman with trousers slips through the arches. An old yellowish dog is lying down on the ground, full of centuries-old boredom...

Basilicata has changed very little. There are more antennas than roofs. The women crowd around the peddler: he brings important news from the near town touched along his itinerary. Television tells of wars, economic crisis, all things that are too big and faraway to be really interested on. Overall it doesn't mention who is dead and how, who got married and with whom, if that annoying pain of the aunt of the near town is over...Time scanned by sun and stars not by clocks. During the hottest hours cicadas fill the air with their amorous calls...