Read Online Anonyponymous by John Bemelmans Marciano - Free Book Online
Authors: John Bemelmans Marciano
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Saint Pantaleon’s stock went up dramatically in places like hard-hit Venice, where a spectacular church was dedicated to him in thanks for delivering the city from the plague. He later won even more ardent veneration in the Serenissima with the advent of the lottery and his designation as the heavenly provider of winning numbers. San Pantalone became so identified with the city in fact that his name was borrowed by the commedia dell’arte for the character of the prototypically greedy Venetian merchant.
The commedia dell’arte had storylines harking back to Roman times but was played out as improvisational farce. Each actor of the troupe dressed in mask and costume as one of a repertory of stock characters, such as Arlecchino, easily recognizable in his trademark diamond-patch outfit and better known to us by his Frenchified name, Harlequin. The costume signature of Pantalone was a pair of red leggings that reached the feet, a distinctively Venetian manner of cladding the legs that audiences outside the Veneto found odd and remarkable. Over the years and in various languages, the character’s name was borrowed to describe varying fashions of long trousers and related garments. This makes it hard to pin down exactly how and when American English adapted the anglicized name Pantaloon, but by the mid-1800s the term had comfortably been shortened to pants. Around this same time women first began wearing bloomers, which were advocated as an advancement in women’s freedom (quite literally, as it was seriously hard to move in those hoop skirts), most passionately by women’s rights and temperance activist Amelia Jenks Bloomer.
pa·pa·raz·zi n. A member of the media who stalks celebrities.
On his trip to Calabria in the winter of 1897–1898, English novelist George Gissing stopped for a few nights in Catanzaro, staying at the Baedeker-recommended Albergo Centrale. In his room he found a printed card addressed to guests.
“The proprietor,” Gissing later summarized the note, “had learnt with extreme regret that certain travellers who slept under his roof were in the habit of taking their meals at other places of entertainment. This practice, he desired it to be known, not only hurt his personal feelings— tocca il suo morale —but did harm to the reputation of his establishment. Assuring all and sundry that he would do his utmost to maintain a high standard of culinary excellence, the proprietor ended by begging his honourable clients that they would bestow their kind favours on the restaurant of the house . . . and therewith signed himself— Coriolano Paparazzo.”
Sixty years later a screenwriter in Rome was beset by a different problem. Ennio Flaiano was working with director Federico Fellini on a movie about international society and the nightlife of the Via Veneto. Their protagonist was a reporter who had an ever-present companion, a character based on the brazen new breed of photographer who made a living shooting stealth photos of celebrities on the town. The problem was what to call him. Flaiano desperately wanted the perfect name, a name that would make the character come alive. By chance, he opened up a new Italian translation of Gissing’s 1901 travel book By the Ionian Sea to a random page and saw the peculiar surname of the owner of the Albergo Centrale. “Paparazzo,” Flaiano wrote in his notes, “the name of the photographer will be ‘Paparazzo.’ ”
The movie, La Dolce Vita , was a smash success, and in its plural Italian form the word paparazzi has entered the world lexicon, giving old Coriolano a reputation he never expected. As Flaiano summed up, “Names have their destiny.”
pas·qui·nade n. The public ridiculing of a person in written verse or prose.
Piazza Navona was one of Rome’s most fashionable addresses long before the Via Veneto, and going way back was the site of the Stadium of Domitian, the field of which is traced in the piazza’s unusual oval shape. The badly
The commedia dell’arte had storylines harking back to Roman times but was played out as improvisational farce. Each actor of the troupe dressed in mask and costume as one of a repertory of stock characters, such as Arlecchino, easily recognizable in his trademark diamond-patch outfit and better known to us by his Frenchified name, Harlequin. The costume signature of Pantalone was a pair of red leggings that reached the feet, a distinctively Venetian manner of cladding the legs that audiences outside the Veneto found odd and remarkable. Over the years and in various languages, the character’s name was borrowed to describe varying fashions of long trousers and related garments. This makes it hard to pin down exactly how and when American English adapted the anglicized name Pantaloon, but by the mid-1800s the term had comfortably been shortened to pants. Around this same time women first began wearing bloomers, which were advocated as an advancement in women’s freedom (quite literally, as it was seriously hard to move in those hoop skirts), most passionately by women’s rights and temperance activist Amelia Jenks Bloomer.
pa·pa·raz·zi n. A member of the media who stalks celebrities.
On his trip to Calabria in the winter of 1897–1898, English novelist George Gissing stopped for a few nights in Catanzaro, staying at the Baedeker-recommended Albergo Centrale. In his room he found a printed card addressed to guests.
“The proprietor,” Gissing later summarized the note, “had learnt with extreme regret that certain travellers who slept under his roof were in the habit of taking their meals at other places of entertainment. This practice, he desired it to be known, not only hurt his personal feelings— tocca il suo morale —but did harm to the reputation of his establishment. Assuring all and sundry that he would do his utmost to maintain a high standard of culinary excellence, the proprietor ended by begging his honourable clients that they would bestow their kind favours on the restaurant of the house . . . and therewith signed himself— Coriolano Paparazzo.”
Sixty years later a screenwriter in Rome was beset by a different problem. Ennio Flaiano was working with director Federico Fellini on a movie about international society and the nightlife of the Via Veneto. Their protagonist was a reporter who had an ever-present companion, a character based on the brazen new breed of photographer who made a living shooting stealth photos of celebrities on the town. The problem was what to call him. Flaiano desperately wanted the perfect name, a name that would make the character come alive. By chance, he opened up a new Italian translation of Gissing’s 1901 travel book By the Ionian Sea to a random page and saw the peculiar surname of the owner of the Albergo Centrale. “Paparazzo,” Flaiano wrote in his notes, “the name of the photographer will be ‘Paparazzo.’ ”
The movie, La Dolce Vita , was a smash success, and in its plural Italian form the word paparazzi has entered the world lexicon, giving old Coriolano a reputation he never expected. As Flaiano summed up, “Names have their destiny.”
pas·qui·nade n. The public ridiculing of a person in written verse or prose.
Piazza Navona was one of Rome’s most fashionable addresses long before the Via Veneto, and going way back was the site of the Stadium of Domitian, the field of which is traced in the piazza’s unusual oval shape. The badly
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