This year, as a result of winning the Rome Prize, I'm on research leave from my normal job, which involves teaching courses on Western Civ, Medieval European History, the History of Medicine, and similar. In theory, I'm supposed to be "nose to the grindstone," traveling from archive to archive, autopsying and comparing all 65 surviving manuscripts of my specific medical text--Gariopontus of Salerno's "Passionarius" or "Book of Diseases"--and churning out a publishable critical edition of this important 11th century author. I am (quite honestly) the world's leading authority on this topic, though only Historians of Medicine might know, or care. This is my "thing": manuscripts, and this text my specialty. I should be a pure hermit, living in the libraries or camped on the microfilm reader in the basement, doing nothing else. The project is, in truth, much too large for one year's work, but with more free time, I am making substantial progress. It feels wonderful.
But in addition to this, I'm learning much more than which manuscripts were produced in
In reality, moreover, I'm learning how to get by with only a limited ability in spoken Italian (in graduate school in the US, we learn how to READ 5 or 6 foreign languages; speaking them is for the privileged few who can afford to spend years abroad, which I definitely was NOT). I'm learning with intense pleasure how to appreciate the sheer beauty of another culture, where historically significant artifacts are found on every street, in every corner--even inside some of my favorite shops! Buy a pair of shoes, admire the Roman columns embedded in the back wall of the shop. Need a cafe macchiato? Look! that fountain in their courtyard is 2,000 years old. The ease with which Romans accept their city's heritage is very similar to the ease with which they walk down the cobble-stone streets of Trastevere, on 4" heels, talking on their telefonini and dodging killer traffic. And looking glamorous all the while! This is, truly, the country that invented Fashion. And invented Sprezzatura.
There's a lot for an outsider to learn here. And I am learning. Every day presents fresh opportunities. One can't, after all, blink oneself, Genie-style, from the top of the Gianicolo straight into the reading-room at the Biblioteca Angelica. One has to walk there, down the hill, through the streets, and past the fruit and flowerstalls --sweet with freesias and hyacinths-- that circle the feet of the great scientist/philosopher, Giordano Bruno. (At the mere thought of him, bibliographic listings flash before my eyes, as do imagined scenes of his execution.) I’m not the most talkative of persons, not gregarious by nature. I don’t strike up conversations with total strangers easily. But I have a nodding relationship with at least two of the flower vendors on the Campo de' Fiori—I buy from them every week, after all, spending as much on flowers as I do on wine, both of which are incomparably cheap here—, and also with the bartender in the cafe opposite the Palazzo Farnese, where they make wonderful coffee, tasty tremazzini (little triangle sandwiches), and rosy-red spremuta d’arancia made from Sicilian Blood Oranges. Both are on the way to and from the libraries, so justifiable (especially since one can't eat a sandwich while examining a unique 11th century manuscript).
I'm learning, slowly and humbly: an American scholar abroad. There are so very *many* things I do not know, despite my very expensive, very prolonged graduate education at one of
