La Festa delle Palme.
There are no consistencies to uphold in Italy, no conventionalities to overcome, and festa-making revels in true glory among the pleasure-loving natures, that are soft and fiery, mad and merry, all at one time. No fickle chances disturb the course of fasts and feasts; the Roman Church holds her sway above all else, self-sufficient and serene; and the people have learnt to love the old days and seasons by this time, and are nothing loth to lend their aid to the pageant. Yet even were her children deaf to the call, the Church would still put up her pictures, nor alter one jot of her proceedings because of their indifference. Amid all that is false and hollow the system has its good side, as most systems have; the Roman Church binds the people together with her festivals, even if they scoff at them now and then, and to her we owe the beauty of the broad lights and shades that are thus cast over the nation as a whole. Seasons change and come again (now days of joy, now days of woe) bringing each some brightly-painted symbol of ancient tradition, some well-worn mystery that has hadits hold for ages on the imaginative mind of the people; symbols and mysteries work their way as of old, the days that are gone are linked to the days that are, so that, in their festas, the people of Italy are one nation from end to end of the land. They may not believe very clearly—many do not pretend to believe at all—but they find a zest none the less eager for that, in each of the seasons as it comes, with its mysteries to be marvelled at, and its duties to be done. It isfesta, andfestagarb must be donned,festabells must sound. The people put on their bright colours, and are merry with a matter-of-course and yet a true merriment, as though they caught the light-heartedness reflected from their blues and reds and yellows. And when gala days are over, and Lent is to be met, they put aside their carnival and eat ‘magro’ almost as contentedly!
Carnival over, the pranks of the masqueraders are followed closely by Lent’s fastings, and these would perhaps scarcely be borne so patiently, were it not for the solace that can be seen throughout the forty days in the distance. That solace is the Feast of the Palms, with the strange week of mixed penance and excitement, of gay sights interwoven with sorry dirges, that ushers in the Eastertide.
In days when people all go abroad, and can criticise and scan for themselves, talk about these things wouldseem almost superfluous were it not for those spots that lie beyond the range of the stream of travellers rushing on year after year towards the great capital, and that can yet show, within their capacity, as fair and joyous a festival as any that reigns supreme at St. Peter’s, or flaunts its gaudy pageant along the streets of Rome. Little roadside nooks there are upon the shores of the Mediterranean, or among the clefts of the Apennines—places still unspoiled and unmolested by the foreigners, with their levelling influence—where perhaps the festival will be even quainter than in any of the towns. Here and there, on the lip of little dainty bays that secretly lie along the coast, palm-trees flourish in the fertile soil, with the soft and sultry breath of African deserts blowing gently upon them from across the Mediterranean. Sometimes they stand alone in their grace, growing up erect and sudden from out the moist hot earth, with arched and slender branches that are set around their heads and that droop gently with the weight of tapering leaves. Sometimes they grow in knots along the shore, or in little plantations that stretch upward towards the hills. The pale-blue sky is spread above the pale-blue sea, and above the deeper-coloured earth, and the palm-trees stand up quietly against it, with frail outlines clearly traced in the keen air.
All along the Riviera, whether in towns or villages,there isfestafor Passion-week and Easter. In rain as in sunshine, processions march forth beneath weather-worn banners to worship familiar relics, and bells chime gaily, and fresh veils and kerchiefs are pulled out to deck pious or laughing faces, while the palms are blessed and the Holy Sepulchre is built up around the altar.
And yet it is not the Cornice villages, nor the sunny groves where the palms have their birth, that I remember at this season most willingly. Again, the crooked ways of Genoa, her gorgeous churches and ample piazzas, are the things that rise before me as the Easter time comes back once more.
The Festival of Palms seems always to have been one of the dearest of gala-days to the hearts of the Genoese people. Spring is then at hand, that will bring flowers and fruits and warm days. Passion-week is close on the festival’s joy, and there is woe to be met ere the Easter sun can dawn, so the people make merry for Palm Sunday and for many days before. Upon the first days of the preceding week those branches are gathered from the sunny plantations of Bordighera, that are to be plaited and adorned and consecrated in the churches, that they may wither out a whole year above the bed of some peasant woman or child. Not such a fair life, perhaps, as the life of those sister branches that flourish and wave and grow green againin the pale sunshine and the cool night-breezes of the shores; but the same blue sky of Italy is overhead, and beneath it even the yellow boughs on a whitewashed wall have their fitting grace.
On Monday the market of San Domenico begins to be filled with peasants who bring palms from the Riviera, and by Wednesday the long leaves are ready bleached to be fashioned into the wonted curious shapes; for they may not remain green as nature bade them. By some process handed down from past generations they are dyed of a faintly yellow colour, that they may the better last unshrivelled from Eastertide to Eastertide again for sacred guards and memories. The market-place, always a wondrous scene of confusion and vociferation, is now more perturbed than ever. The palms are set up in queer water-tubs, whence they are taken one by one to be rapidly transformed into fantastic shapes beneath the swift hands of girls who have grown deft in the art of flower-weaving for which Genoa is specially famous. The women split the slender fibres asunder, and then braid them together again and build them up in a strange medley of loops and bows, from whose midst one spray of the natural leaves is allowed to wave; at last they fasten little patches of gold-leaf upon the plaits, and stick a bit of olive-branch coquettishly on one side. The making of thepalmeis a true exampleof Italian taste, that loves nothing so well in its natural as in its artificial state. Flowers grow with little tending and have beauty enough; magnolias and pomegranates, camellia and oleander trees, bloom each in turn throughout the land, and never fail in their perfection, and still the people have no higher praise for the fairest blossoms of their glens and their gardens than the words, ‘They are as good as false ones!’
As the days wear on—Thursday, Friday, Saturday—customers grow frequent on the market-places, and inevitable vociferations wax more eager as the sale progresses:
‘That palm there, with the golden leaf—how much, good woman?’
‘Forty-threesoldi.’
‘Holy Virgin, you would rob the Lord Almighty himself! I will give you thirty-five!’
‘Not for the world. I would sooner present it myself to San Lorenzo.’
And so the bargaining goes on for, perhaps, half-an-hour, until the prize is carried off for some two or three centimes more than the first sum offered by the purchaser. No Genoese marketer would dream of buying at the price demanded, nor a seller of asking at first the price he means to take at last.
In theVia dé Orefici, or the Goldsmiths’ Street,there are also booths set up, and the palm-plaiting is going on vigorously. This street is narrow, too narrow to be one of the main thoroughfares; but it is also one of the most picturesque of the town. Most of the jewellers’ shops have no plate-glass windows, they stand out into the street, as it were, because the frames in which the gold-work is set are fixed to the outer walls; and the shops themselves are freely open to the passers, their glittering display of gold and silver filigree making the way brightly gorgeous with a character that is quite peculiar. There is no room for booths in theVia dé Orefici, but in a little piazza close by, called thePiazza di Campetto, the buying and selling of the palms go on busily. Throngs of people stream out thence into the narrow streets around, where palaces stand up stately on either side and, through a strip of blue sky above, the sun looks down furtively upon dark and winding ways that are bright now with colour and alive with hurrying folk. They are alive and strong and busy, yet even in their bustle and merriment they seem like some picture of the old life in those by-gone days when the lordly palaces and winding streets first grew into being.
As the night draws on, the workers kindle rough pine torches, whose fierce uneven light flares and flickers across the piazza and upon the faces of near bystanders; the sky looks black then overhead, and there are blackshadows side by side with the red glare. The sale of palms must cease early on the Sunday morning, so that by Saturday night the holders of booths are well pleased to have their stock nearly disposed of. At all events the palms must be ready plaited to be set in the large market before sunrise to-morrow, because by eight o’clock the Piazza S. Domenico must be clear, even of marketers who have left their purchase to the last minute before church time.
Masses are being sung betimes, and the churches will be crowded long before the great service of the day at eleven o’clock. The streets are full to overflowing. Through the greatPiazza delle Fontane Amorosethe people flock in a strange medley, each class in special attire. There are women of the merchant class, complacent in new spring dresses, who wear their fresh muslinpezzottiafter the new mode, the better to display their cunningly-plaited hair and ornaments of finely-wrought gold. There are servant-girls who have not much gold to show, but whose tresses are even more prettily arranged: and these smooth their black-silk aprons with an air of superiority as they note the factory girls, who have theirs only of woollen stuff. There are people of the gentry, who wear silk dresses and bonnets of Paris fashion, as they think, but these do not appear to much advantage on a day like this. Then there arepeasant women, whose gorgeous red and orange-coloured kerchiefs serve better than all the rest to paint the streets over with brilliant tone; their ornaments are of massive gold moulded into ancient forms, the scarves that drape their heads and shoulders of many colours grotesquely designed, and of thicker material than the town-women’s muslinpezzotti; they call the thick scarfmezzaro.
The crowds wend their way through the town to the different churches, and now before the ducal palace they begin to grow denser than ever, for this is the way to the cathedral, where the Archbishop of Genoa is to bless the palms himself, at high mass. The great steps of the Duomo are covered with the multitude; the people press up them between the carven lions, through the beautiful gateways, and stand thickly packed beneath the central arch, where St. Laurence lies stretched on the torturing irons, and still other people are fighting their way through the piazza, and keep pouring in from the back streets. Boys and girls, men and women, mothers with swaddled infants, children that can barely walk alone and that have to be perched on the great lions which flank the steps of the Duomo, that they may have a chance of a sight of the procession; old women with ugly faces, who seem to be the more devout for their ugliness; men, of whom many make but a poor show even of outward respect;—all are jostled together uponthe steps and in the entrances; and within the church’s aisles more people again are moving.
ON-LOOKERS AT THE PROCESSION OF PALMS.
ON-LOOKERS AT THE PROCESSION OF PALMS.
The chanting and preaching begin within, varied now and then by the rise and fall of barely suppressed voicesthroughout the nave. Then the procession comes forth—banners and images, and crowds of children bearing their white palms. The priest’s monotone continues within, and the procession outside makes answer. Its flag-bearers knock upon the gates of the church, and then the palms and the banners enter again. There is more of the ceremony, but even the people attend but sparingly to it. The crowd lingers awhile; some kneel on the steps to pray, some enter the cathedral as best they can for benediction; many more wait about outside and talk and laugh and gesticulate, but when mass is done, mothers and fathers claim their children from out the procession, and the multitudes disperse quietly.
The day’s afternoon is spent in the public ways and the public gardens. Perfect enjoyment for an Italian is the enjoyment of idleness, and he wears it with a graceful sort of sincerity. Day sinks into darkness, but the caffès are still open. The fire must not die out too soon, since with the morrow fasting must begin again.
So, amid laughter and jollity,La festa delle Palmesinks away with everything else that is gone into the past things of the year.