Signora Yona

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
  - John Ciardi

Don't you think of the oddest things at the oddest times, like me?

I got the Ciardi quote above as my quote of the day on my Google News page. It reminded me of the translation of The Inferno that I read while I was in college while I was taking Italian. The course was taught by a lovely, quirky, must-have-been-over-90 woman from Sicilia.

She was great. She would interrupt the class to tell us stories ("Do you know how de Mafia start? Would you like to know it? I tell you...") but somehow we all learned enough Italian to justify a two semester course. I think we studied a little harder so she'd have more time to tell stories.

She had great, wizened, knarled fingers, and you were never sure who she was pointing at when she asked questions. She was bad with names, so sometimes you'd just shout out the answer so we could move on and get to the stories. She was opinionated and brash, often funny, occasionally maddening, like when she forced my two friends to say they were "nello stato del New York" to answer "Where are you from?", because if they just said "New York", she assumed they meant the city and not the state, and she wouldn't budge on that one. The day she asked me where I was from and I answered (with more Italian than this, but it's been more than ten years now and I can't recall the exact syntax and vocabulary) "Virginia", she asked me, "Where is it, this Virginia?" I had to draw it for her on a piece of paper. Allow me to refer you to the name of this blog. That's the blind leading the blind.

The Signora invited us to her house for dinner in the second semester. It was amazing. She made dishes from every area of Italy, and told us their traditional backgrounds as we ate. The food was great, she got a little drunk on the wine we all brought with us as hostess gifts, and she almost cried when my group of five who caught a ride with the one master's student in the course who had a car brought her flowers as well.

Anyway, back to Ciardi. I was re-reading The Inferno, and I brought my copy with me to class one day to ask her a question about it afterwards. She saw it on my stack of books and spat out, "Ciardi! No, no. Do not read this. This translation is no good. I will translate for you before I let you read Ciardi."

I almost threw the book in the trash right then, just to please her. I stuck it in my bag and promised her I would buy a different translation. Never got around to asking my question. I still have that same copy of the Ciardi version. I wish I'd gotten her to sign it or something. And I wish I had a picture of her, that look of disgust and conviction on her face.

She's surely not with us anymore. She must have been, like I said, in her mid-nineties when she taught me.

Io li manco, Signora.