Introduction:
Who is Mary Hamer
Mary Hamer is a writer and author whose works have appeared in the Economist, the Guardian and the Independent. She taught at Cambridge for twenty years, has contributed to television and radio programs and has written five books, winning The Virginia Prize 2011 with the novel “Kipling & Trix”.
Before her trip to Puglia, I had the honour to suggest for her two “preparatory” books: Otranto, by Maria Corti and The Land of Remorse, by E. De Martino.
Puglia and me
Born and raised in Puglia, I spent several years in Rome and Milan before moving to London. It was then, when I looked at my region from afar, that I clearly understood its uniqueness.
It’s not in the pristine sea and it’s not in the elegant richness of its Baroque altars. It’s not in the mesmerising sunsets and it’s not even in the song of cicadas during the lazy summer afternoons.
The exceptional and rare beauty of Puglia is in the thousands of faces and stories, in the intense pain and enormous acts of generosity and greatness which have shaped for centuries the geography and soul of this Italian land.
The two books
That’s why I suggested Mary Hamer – a woman who is used to painstakingly explore cultures and human feelings through books – two reads able to uncover the Puglian spirit:
- Otranto, by Maria Corti, a novel about the most eminent episode in Otranto history: the sack of the city by the Turks in 1482.
- The Land of Remorse, by E. De Martino an anthropologic research about Tarantism, a cultural/psychological phenomenon which spread in Puglia until the 50’s.
Chiara Tenuzzo
Director of Aria of Puglia
The following is Mary Hamer’s reportage of her trip to southern Puglia.
Looking at Puglia with new eyes
I flew into Puglia newly aware of its past. Otranto, a gripping historical novel by the distinguished Italian, Maria Corti—not to be confused with Horace Walpole’s gothic fantasy, The Castle of Otranto—had opened my eyes.
Instead of seeing the heel of Italy as remote, I now understood how perilously open it had lain to all the marauding parties of the Mediterranean. Arriving in the ancient walled town of Otranto, we were eager to find the ramparts so bravely defended by the fishermen against the Turks in 1482.
Otranto the brave
If I hadn’t learned of that history, read of the massacre that followed, of the horses stabled in a Cathedral that had run with blood, would I have taken in the deep resonances of that place? Perhaps Otranto would have passed me by, registered as just another charming old town, with its castle and its cathedral. For sure, I would have marvelled over the cathedral’s vast bold mosaic floor.
King Arthur shared the space with an elephant and with Cain and Abel. But it would have been easy to miss the brooding force of those bones, stacked with the skulls in seven tall glass cases in the side-chapel: eight hundred men were beheaded when the city fell.
Adorable distractions
In researching our trip, we’d decided to limit the driving in spite of the temptations offered all over the map.
Even so, there were more appealing towns and villages south of Bari, where we landed, than we could possibly have taken in. In fact, we were constantly distracted. A delightful little bar in Polignano with its terrace overlooking the sea lured us back for a return trip.
Climbing the altar
Personally, I really wanted to make it to Galatina. Drawn again by history but in this case a history that was fairly recent. Until at least the middle of the last century a chapel there, dedicated to St. Paul, was the devotional centre of an age-old survival, Tarantism.
It’s not difficult to see why some might have found the rites practised in the chapel disturbing. Sufferers who made the journey from round about to arrive on the feast of St Paul had not come to sit quietly and pray. They were taking licence to lie on the floor moaning, to dance frantically, even to climb over the altar.
The practice used to be considered further proof of the backwardness of the Mezzogiorno. Then in 1959, the cultural anthropologist, Ernesto De Martino assembled a team of scholars including a neuropsychiatrist, toxicologist, psychologist, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, social worker and photographer to investigate what was going on.
Dancing against depression
hey arrived at a fascinating, if unprovable conclusion. Sufferers from Tarantism claimed they had been bitten by a snake or a spider and so required special treatment: that is, to be enticed from a deep lethargy with music and bright colours.
What if this were the surviving form of an ancient treatment for depression, asked De Martino and his team? It could have been a way of securing social harmony, avoiding conflict. Those who claimed to have been bitten seemed to come from the poorest, least respected and most exploited ranks of society.
Seeking out St Paul’s chapel, I was excited to confirm all my reading. There in the small courtyard behind was the ‘sacred’ well that sufferers used to drink from. It was still locked up, as De Martino describes, for the Mayor had had it sealed when the rites seemed to be threatening public order.
Hurrying back to the station to catch our train on to Gallipoli, I rejoiced that, thanks to Chiara Tenuzzo’ and her advice, I had come to Puglia well prepared.
Mary Hamer