Napoli è mille colori. The teeming City: from Serao’s Paese di Cuccagna to de Giovanni’s Narrative

Abstract

Among the cities most “traversed” by the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an important place is occupied by Naples. Described by its children and by travelers passing through, in novels and reports, immortalized in representations of various kinds – from the views of Pitloo to canvases by Migliaro, from photography to cinematography (from Mario Martone’s Il sindaco del rione Sanità, to the latest Sorrentino in It was the Hand of God, passing through two “foreigners” like Turturro and Ozpetek, directors respectively of Passione and Napoli velata), Naples is described in a thousand different ways, but never in an aseptic way. In the story of the city, in fact, two essential elements are never missing: the gaze of the observer and the human element that is an integral part of the landscape. Evoked even in music (from Marechiare to Napul’è by Pino Daniele), the city remains an ineffable mystery for its own inhabitants and its vision is refracted in a thousand images, from black and white to color, each of which contains a piece of truth. To the ecstatic contemplation, from above, of the Gulf and Vesuvius, are opposed, in the lower part, as much in writing as in visual representations, dark alleys, streets teeming with life, love and pain, hope and resignation, luxury and misery. This will be the path that will lead us, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, from the tumultuous city of Matilde Serao’s Paese di Cuccagna to the equally animated city of Maurizio de Giovanni without Naples having lost its ability to amaze and be told in its many different colors.