DOI chapter:
Chapter III: Past and Present - Santa Lucia, etc.
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59000#0122
Past and Present—Santa Lucia, Etc.
this legendary derivation may have had some share in
the naming of the castle. Round it, in the summer
nights, the eels are speared by the light of torches.
The subject has inspired one of the most graceful of di
Giacomo’s Poems of a Monastery—the poem of the young
acolyte who has taken upon himself a vain vocation :—
“Under the Castle del Ovo
The spearing of eels gleams bright,
And the dim-skinned fishermen light
Their torches of fiery glow
Where the prow of the barque dips low
To search the depths of the night.
“ But the all subtle sea
Lets not its depths divine,
Lets no heaven wholly shine
Through its profundity;
And this convent seems to me
Deep as the soundless brine.
“ For when I gaze around
I see men on every side
Who seem to escape me—to hide,
To be dumb, or to make no sound !
And I think, even I, ah me !
Such depths for my life have found.” 1
Unconsciously this may express the new sentiment of
our time, in a city whose two hundred monasteries have
dwindled down since Ferdinand suppressed the richest
to the lingering few of to-day.
Whilst the monastic life is more limited than it was
a century ago, the old religious festivals and ceremonies
1 From the dialect of ll Monasterio, di Giacomo.
55
this legendary derivation may have had some share in
the naming of the castle. Round it, in the summer
nights, the eels are speared by the light of torches.
The subject has inspired one of the most graceful of di
Giacomo’s Poems of a Monastery—the poem of the young
acolyte who has taken upon himself a vain vocation :—
“Under the Castle del Ovo
The spearing of eels gleams bright,
And the dim-skinned fishermen light
Their torches of fiery glow
Where the prow of the barque dips low
To search the depths of the night.
“ But the all subtle sea
Lets not its depths divine,
Lets no heaven wholly shine
Through its profundity;
And this convent seems to me
Deep as the soundless brine.
“ For when I gaze around
I see men on every side
Who seem to escape me—to hide,
To be dumb, or to make no sound !
And I think, even I, ah me !
Such depths for my life have found.” 1
Unconsciously this may express the new sentiment of
our time, in a city whose two hundred monasteries have
dwindled down since Ferdinand suppressed the richest
to the lingering few of to-day.
Whilst the monastic life is more limited than it was
a century ago, the old religious festivals and ceremonies
1 From the dialect of ll Monasterio, di Giacomo.
55