Tuesday 13 December 2011

Candy-Red Apples in Heiligenstadt
Vienna at Christmastime


Candy Apple Red
I had to look twice,
to believe what I was seeing:
Apple-candy red apples,
hanging on a tree in Vienna in December!
Visions of crisp candied apples
danced in my head -
each one shiny red, lined up in rows
at a food stall at Piazza Navona's
Christmas market, back in Rome,
the air permeated by the smell of hot candy,
intensified by the cotton candy spun
by the same vendor.
From some far windy corner,
the sound of a Zampogna,
played by zampognari, shepherds, who travel
from the Abruzzi mountains down
to Rome at Christmastime.

*

The red links above will lead
you to a documentary about the Zampogna -
Italian bagpipes - and an introduction to
Natalia Ginzburg's "Winter in Abruzzi",
from her short story collection
"The Little Virtues"
.

The next links will take you to
a story about a
Christmas Zampagnaro
and the Italian Christmas song
"Tu scendi dalle stelle" -
"From Starry Skies Thou Comest" -
played on a Zampogna here,
and is sung by Lucio Dalla here

Good night
from Vienna!


Photographed
9 December 2011
in Heiligenstadt
19th District

Images and Text
© by Merisi

5 comments:

  1. I'm confused
    Are we in Roma or Vienna?
    Does it matter?
    Not a jot!
    Lovely rosy red apples will always a peel.
    xxcarolg

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paris Breakfasts,

    Marcel Proust is not the only to experience involuntary memories, remembrances of things past! ;-)

    ”I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran though me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that had happened to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin…this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?”

    ReplyDelete
  3. Red apples on a bare tree. There's a philosophy there, I'm sure of it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Charles,
    I looked thrice, getting as close as possible to the fence, I could not believe that those glossy red globes where real apples!

    ReplyDelete
  5. That tree LOOKS really delicious !!!
    (and TASTES really unusual !!!
    I LOVE it !!!
    Marie-Noëlle

    ReplyDelete

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