The Quiet Exhilaration of Reading in Italian

Thirty years ago, I left for a semester abroad in Siena, Italy—a decision that, were my life a novel, I might call the “inciting incident.” Once I arrived, I resolved to truly immerse myself in the culture, and being fluent in Italian became an obsession—a lonely one, since I often forced myself to forfeit outings with other Americans so I could instead practice Italian. I’d struggled to learn the language in my freshman year of college, but once in Italy, nothing short of fluency would satisfy me.

One of the first words I learned on the ground in Italy was the verb scherzare. It means “to joke” and is indispensable for following almost any conversation with Italians. During a trip I took to Sicily, a Palermo policeman warned me about strange men near the station by yanking on the skin below his eye with his finger, and uttering a single word, occhio, which simply means “eye.” I was hooked.

Mastering Italian gave me a sense of accomplishment, something I rarely and later , and rediscovered titans like and , who allow me through their works to unravel—or at least revel in—the mysteries of Italy in Italian. In an essay from the anthology the writer cites the “incessant and often perverse doubleness” of being fluent in two languages. Italian is like a twin who accompanies me everywhere—for better or for worse. When I was a student, and later an expat, living in Italy and speaking Italian simultaneously enchanted and befuddled me. I longed for something different but sometimes recoiled at how that difference isolated me: all those lonely walks in Siena hoping someone would talk to me in Italian; wishing as I heard the tell-tale clatter of forks and knives filtering out of the windows that someone would call down to me with an invitation to a meal.