Seductiveness of the South

THE south of Italy is known as the Mezzogiorno, the hot "midday".

Parts of the region are still desperately poor and backward.

Aliano, the one-horse Mezzogiorno town, where Carlo Levi set Christ Stopped at Eboli, has changed little since 1945, when the book was published.

The women still balance heavy jars on their heads; there is a darkness in their eyes of death.

Charles Lister, a 72-year-old Englishman, has toured the Mezzogiorno on a moped (instead of the more sensible train or bus). His travel book, Heel to Toe, began life as a series of letters sent home to his wife. A grouchy fellow, he complains of queue-jumping, government red tape and public displays of kissing. Sex seems to be at the forefront of the author's mind.

He notes that in Naples, parks have been specially designated for weekend lovemaking in cars; pregnancies have resulted when vehicles were rammed from behind by impatient motorists. Easily excited, Lister's prose is a riot of colourful similes, which can irritate as it tends to the overblown. For instance, in Brindisi, Australian backpackers have "biceps like Sydney Bridge". Cripes.

Lister is good company, however, as he phuts across Apulia and Calabria on his Vespa. He has an eye for amusing detail, and tells us that, locally, VIP stands for Visto in Prigione - seen in prison. He clearly admires the Edwardian traveller Norman Douglas, whose Old Calabria is an undisputed masterpiece.

Like Douglas, Lister combines mandarin observation with lewd or caustic comment. After inspecting the purpledyed Codex Purpureus in Rossano (a sixth century Greek manuscript illustrating the life of Christ), the next moment he is appraising a group of middle-aged women dressed in "kitsch Versace".

Coincidentally, Gianni and Donatella Versace had grown up in a village nearby; Gianni's life was ended by an assassin's bullet, in the classic Calabrian way.

Lister was brave to venture into Calabria's awesomely remote Isole Greganica. High in the misty Aspromonte, these mountain villages are a known refuge for hoodlums on the run. In fact, the Calabrian version of the Sicilian Mafia, the fearful 'Ndrangheta, has sequestered kidnap victims here in the past. When Edward Lear sketched the region's fantastic rocks and waterfalls, he was mobbed for the trouble. That was in 1847, but tourists are still advised to stay away.

Like many northerners who come to the Italian south, Lister is charmed by the liquid softness of the landscape and people. His description of the mosaic floor of Otranto's Norman cathedral, with its intertwining branches full of birds, animals and fish, is exemplary.

The region's Roman amphitheatres, Arab pleasure palaces, beaches and pine forests have impressed Lister with their magic. The result is an engaging - if occasionally overwritten - book that had me itching to head south again.

Copyright 2002
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