The “Salmon Syndrome” and Nostalgia: How Silver Bridges Help Us Get Across

 

The summer heat has settled upon Arizona’s desert, and I have to minimize my outdoor activities for a short while. My dog agrees, and takes only two long walks these days – one before sunrise, and another two hours after sunset.

So, this morning I found refuge in thoughts especially about seas and lakes.

The Mediterranean, the bluest of seas, shaped my youth. As an adult I have traveled on and around all the oceans of our planet and countless lakes. Yet, when I think of the Mediterranean, the origin of the Greek words nostos and algos always come to mind. The western combination of these words is nostalgia, translated as “acute homesickness”, or returning home (nostos) and pain (algos).

As a healthcare professional, I spent many years in Italy, especially Bari, Bologna and Ferrara. At the University of Bologna I learned about Giovanni Pascoli, a 19^th century poet and homme des letters. His poetry was a celebration of the quotidian, written simply but with a touch of mysticism. One of his poems, title “Mare” (Sea) is a classic.

I had not read that poem for decades, and this morning’s nostalgia lead me to a search for “Mare”. 

I found a lovely literary blog site by Matilda Colarossi, a writer who translates in English classic and modern fiction Italian works. Her translation of Pascoli’s “Mare” is beautifully done and can be found via this link: https://paralleltexts.blog/2022/06/08/giovanni-pascoli-mare-sea/

 Here is the poem, in its original language and the translation to English by Colarossi:

Mare   Giovanni Pascoli   M’affaccio alla finestra, e vedo il mare: vanno le stelle, tremolano l’onde. Vedo stelle passare, onde passare: un guizzo chiama, un palpito risponde.   Ecco sospira l’acqua, alita il vento: sul mare è apparso un bel ponte d’argento.   Ponte gettato sui laghi sereni, per chi dunque sei fatto e dove meni?

Sea   Giovanni Pascoli   I look out my window, I see the sea: a flitting of stars, a quivering of waves. I see stars passing, waves passing; a flicker calls, a throb replies.   Now the water sighs, the winds exhales: on the sea a silver bridge appears.   Bridge thrown over silent lakes, for whom are you made, where do you lead?     Translation ©Matilda Colarossi 2022

 

Celebrating the daily moments many of us take for granted or find ordinary has been the impetus of the expression genres I have pursued in the past half a century. As a photographer, I have looked for stories in streets of four continents, and captured them in B&W. My first book was a novella, and the half a dozen that followed were travel stories about people and places. My poetry was published in anthologies and British medical journals always dealing with people’s attitudes to the basic joys, fears and hopes, no matter their cultural inheritance, language they spoke or history they never forget.

As such, it has always been about “returning home”, the pain of that return never shadowing the joy of each return. It has been about nostalgia, which I have renamed as “The Salmon Syndrome” – we return home to give a chance for the next generations to return home, at their own time, for one last time.

Back to Pascoli’s poem.

The first stanza’s imagery is elegant yet simple.  We all have experienced the waves and stars when near a sea. What breaks that usual scenery is poet’s description of the sea suddenly sighing, winds exhaling and the waters acquiring a human expression. And, there is the mysticism – a silver bridge appears out of that transformation. More, that bridge is not only in or above the sea, but the poet has also seen it over “silent lakes”, bodies of water that perhaps do not sigh, and winds do not exhale. And Pascoli suggests that silver bridges are made for lakes, even when he sees one in the sea.

Those four short lines make us think. Not about the poet, but about ourselves. Where do these bridges lead? Is the sea, home of rivers, also home of lakes? Are those bridges even more transcendent as paths to our own consciousness? Do they make us homesick, be that of a terrestrial or a mystic home?

… And, I recalled a moment in Trento, next to Lago Di Caldonazzo, with a friend. We looked at the calm lake but somehow she thought of bridges too, and used a charming Italian saying to bring her own thoughtful mysticism to the apparent serenity surrounding us:

“Ma, l’aqua cheta la butta giú I ponti” – our best bridges can be destroyed by calm waters.

I wrote about that moment here: https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2023/04/i-muri-hanno-orecchi-ma-aqua-in-bocca.html

 

I am glad it is 102F degrees outside and that my dog is snoring under my desk as I write. It was a refreshing, memories journey back to Bologna and re-reading Pascoli’s “Mare”.

 

PS/ The photo of the bridge is one I took in Paris, over the Seine. The man on the river wall is pensive.  The bridge is not made of silver. And the ducks are listening to the water sigh.

 

July 4, 2024

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024