"Our lives are Swiss," Emily Dickinson wrote in 1859, "So still-so
cool." But over the Alps, "Italy stands the other side." For
Dickinson, as for many other writers and artists, Italy has been
the land of light, a seductive source of invention, enchantment,
and freedom. So it was for Helen Barolini, who, as a student in
Rome after World War II, wrote her first poetry and gave birth to
her own creative life, reinvigorating her mother tongue. In this
book, Barolini celebrates the lives of other women whose
imaginations succumbed to the lure of Italy. Here Barolini profiles
six gifted women transformed by Italy's mythic appeal. Unlike
Barolini herself, they were not daughters of the great Italian
diaspora. Rather, they were drawn to an idea of "Italy" and its
gifts-in whose welcome a new self could be created. Or discovered.
Emily Dickinson traveled to Italy only in the imaginative genius of
her verse. Margaret Fuller struggled alongside her Italian lover in
the political revolutions that gave birth to the Italian Republic,
while the novelist and short-story writer Constance Fennimore
Woolson found her home in Venice and Florence. Here, too, is the
flamboyant artist Mabel Dodge Luhan, entertaining at her villa near
Florence; and Marguerite Chapin of Connecticut, who married an
Italian prince and in Rome founded the premier literary review of
the mid-century, Botteghe Oscure. Finally, here is Iris Cutting
Origo, the Anglo-American heiress who, with her Italian nobleman
husband, built a Tuscan estate, where she wrote acclaimed
biographies-and created a refuge from Mussolini's fascism. Linking
these lives, Barolini shows, is the transforming catalyst of change
in a new land. Their Other Side is a wise, warm, and deeply felt
literary journey that brilliantly captures the enduring effects of
Italy as a place, a culture, and an experience.
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