United States or Somalia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Or, rather, let us say that this mere loose love of the albas and Wachtlieder and "Flamenca," is the substratum, nay, is the very flesh and blood, of the spiritual passion to which, in later days, we owe the book of Beatrice. The poets of the Middle Ages strove after the criminal possession of another man's wife.
Such a man is Petrarch; and yet, by the irresistible purifying and elevating power of the "Vita Nuova," this man came to write not other albas and serenas, not other love-songs to be added to the love-songs of Provence, but those sonnets and canzoni which for four centuries taught the world, too coarse as yet to receive Dante's passion at first hand, a nobler and more spiritual love.
And the roguish looks and gestures of our lackeys were also in use amongst them: "O Jane, a tergo quern nulls ciconia pinsit, Nec manus, auriculas imitari est mobilis albas, Nec lingua, quantum sitiat canis Appula, tantum." The Argian and Roman ladies mourned in white, as ours did formerly and should do still, were I to govern in this point. But there are whole books on this subject.
Ad Vigilias Albas "White Nights," nights not of quite blank forgetfulness, certainly. But it is with the ancestors of Marius I seem to have been talking in the old city of Luna, that in his day had already passed away. It was sunset when I found myself at the door of the Inn in Sarzana.
No excuse for lying abed was accepted; up, and on the floor we knelt, then she passed on to where the mayordomo, or foreman, and his men were gathering in the courtyard. Here, too, was the cook with the Indian maids, busy making tortillas for the morning meal. 'Your Albas, my children, my mother would say in her clear, firm voice.
As I take my leave, reluctantly, for, I would stay longer, my hostess is so sweet, my host so charming, I catch sight of the name of the villa cut into the rosy marble of the gates: "Ad Vigilias Albas" I read, and then and then ... Why, what is this? I must have fallen asleep in that old theatre among the débris and the fine grass.
Word Of The Day