James Joyce, Ulysses (London: Penguin Books, 1986)
Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (London: Pimlico, 1991)
Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by Rolfe Humphries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983)
Ranier Maria Rilke, Selected Poems of Ranier Maria Rilke, trans. by Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage, 1989)
Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience (London: Penguin Books, 1986)
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material: Excerpts from Verdi: A Biography by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz (1993), by permission of Oxford University Press; excerpts from Rolfe Humphries’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1983), with permission of Indiana University Press; an excerpt from La camera da letto by Attilio Bertolucci (translated here by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi), by permission of Garzanti, Italy; an excerpt from C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation of Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma, by permission of Liveright Publishing; an excerpt from Mario Luzi’s Viaggio terrestre e celeste di Simone Martini (translated here by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi), by permission of Garzanti, Italy; an excerpt from Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, by permission of Penguin Books USA; an excerpt from Bruce Penman’s translation of The Betrothed by A. Manzoni (1972), by permission of Penguin Books Ltd., London; excerpts from Ulysses by James Joyce, by permission of Random House, New York; an excerpt of from A Woman’s Essays by Virginia Woolf, by permission of the Society of Authors, London.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Thanks to the following sources for permission to use their photographs: Stanislao Farri for the Parma baptistery and cathedral; Franco Furoncoli for Correggio’s paintings (of Diana, from the Camera di San Paolo), (the dome in San Giovanni), and (a detail from the Camera di San Paolo); Alinari / Art Resource New York for Piero della Francesca’s La Madonna del Parto; Foto Marburg / Art Resource New York for Parmigianino’s self-portrait; Franco Furoncoli for Torrechiara; Giovanni Amoretti / Foto Amoretti for the Romanesque figure; Franco Furoncoli for Verdi’s gate at Sant’Agata; Pierre Charles George and Photo Moderne in Geneva for Calvin’s chair; the Galleria Nazionale–Palazzo Pilotta in Parma for Correggio’s ceiling in the Camera di San Paolo; Scala / Art Resource New York for Lavinia Fontana’s portrait of a family; Franco Furoncoli for the Bodoni room in the Biblioteca Palatina and the interior of the Teatro Regio; Alinari / Art Resource New York for Antelami’s Madonna and Child; Franco Furoncoli for the Parma cathedral; the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma for the homemaker; the Archivio Monastero del Corpus Domini in Bologna for Giulio Morina’s drawing; and Stanislao Farri for the street scene, Borgo della Posta.
All other photographs were provided by the author.
Praise for Mother Tongue
“This book is a large, beautiful window into the intelligent, literate, reflective life of Italy—intimately lived and observed by a modern American woman. A wise and delightful work, admirable in its synthesis of understanding, independence, and rare humility.”
—SHIRLEY HAZZARD
“Mother Tongue is a memoir of extraordinary richness and honesty. As it contemplates the life of a young American writer who joins her Italian husband in Parma, it steadily draws in a bounty of startling and finally consoling news from a dauntless new life in a very old place.”
—REYNOLDS PRICE
“Compelling … [Wilde-Menozzi] moves freely between narrative roles and structures … Her writing manifests one of her own beliefs about literary women: they must work to say things that haven’t been said before … In the age of the confessional memoir, Wilde-Menozzi’s greatest strength is her belief that even the most peripheral and small of subjects become extraordinary when looked at and thought of thoroughly enough … Wilde-Menozzi’s intellect and literary risk-taking are to be admired.”
—KATHLEEN VESLANY, Creative Nonfiction
“[Wilde-Menozzi] delves deeply into both the negative and the positive aspects of Italy’s close-knit families and devotion to tradition … Wilde-Menozzi’s writing is original and often poetic and moving.”
—Publishers Weekly
“It is in the confrontation of the cultures, and in [its] restless questioning about how one should live one’s life, that Mother Tongue shows its strength.”
—CONSTANCE JOHN, Books in Canada
“The depth of understanding Wallis Wilde-Menozzi has acquired about Italy is striking … Mother Tongue is a complex book that aspires to provide, at one and the same time, a rounded picture of a city and of a woman describing the flow of life itself … as in a symphony.”
—FRANCESCA AVANZINI, Gazzetta di Parma
“How do I adequately describe and praise Mother Tongue: An American Life in Italy by Wisconsin-born Wallis Wilde-Menozzi? … This woman can write; better yet, she can see, both inward and outward.”
—LOIS BLINKHORN, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“A poignant and poetic memoir of an American woman’s life in Parma, Italy … Wilde-Menozzi is passionate, sensuous, even fierce … Life, death, politics, language, art, books, food, and love commingle on the page … Evocative and moving.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“In Mother Tongue, an American writer enters deeply into the life of Italian culture as she learns to understand its manners and mores, the greatness of its art and the surprising differences in its formation of self. Written with empathy and vivid insight, this is a memoir that acknowledges the difficulties, as well as the possibilities for self-enlargement.”
ALSO BY WALLIS WILDE-MENOZZI
The Other Side of the Tiber: Reflections on Time in Italy
Toscanelli’s Ray
About the Author
Wallis Wilde-Menozzi is the author of The Other Side of the Tiber and Toscanelli’s Ray. Her poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in Granta, The Best Spiritual Writing, Words Without Borders, AGNI, and Tel Aviv Review. A collection of her essays was published in Italian as L’oceano è dentro di noi. Her new book on silence is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She teaches narrative writing, most recently to Nigerian women awaiting their Italian papers. You can sign up for author updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Foreword, by Patricia Hampl
Preface to the 2020 Edition
1 LANDING
2 ZEROES
3 ALBA
4 BUTTERFLIES
5 THE SCREAM
6 GIOVANNA
7 SECOND THOUGHTS
8 PAPER
10 SIGNS OF THE WOMEN
11 FATHER
12 BASEMENT
13 THE BLACK DREAMS
14 EDUCATION
15 SYSTEMS
16 THE “IN” BASKET
17 CALVIN’S CHAIR
18 DARKLING I LISTEN
19 EPPUR SI MUOVE
20 N.
21 CLARE
22 JAMES
23 PALATINA LIBRARY
24 GETTING THERE
25 FINDING LANGUAGE
26 DUCKS
27 BREAD
28 PLACE
29 BOWL OF FIRE
Bibliography
Permissions Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
Praise for Mother Tongue
Also by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
About the Author
Copyright
A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 1997 by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
Preface copyright © 2020 by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
Foreword copyright © 2020 by Patricia Hampl
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published in 1997 by North Point Press
This paperback edition, 2020
Owing to limitations of space, all acknowledgments for permission to reprint previously published material and all illustration credits can be found here.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Wilde-Menozzi, Wallis.
Mother tongue : an American life in Italy / Wallis Wilde-Menozzi.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-86547-501-6 (alk. paper)
1. Wilde-Menozzi, Wallis—Homes and haunts—Italy—Parma. 2. Americans—Italy—Parma—Biography. 3. Authors, American—20th Century—Homes and haunts—Italy—Parma. 4. Parma (Italy)—Social life and customs. I. Title.
DG975.P25W55 1977
945’.4400413—dc20
96041229
eISBN 978-0-374-72085-8
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