MUSIC and Meditations: "Fenesta Che Lucive" performed by Franco Corelli

 Elio (Timothee Chalamet) & Oliver (Armie Hammer)

At Monet's Berm (fan art)

~*~

GLORIOUS

Today we look at the book, CMBYN

And a song that was mentioned in the novel

On Elio and Oliver's last night together in Rome

They went to a party that lasted well into the night.

Upon leaving the party, Elio and Oliver

Walked (staggered) around the streets of Rome.

During this walk is when

They kissed a kiss that stopped time.

In later years, Elio would return to the spot of that kiss

To remember that brilliant moment -

That eternal kiss

After the kiss, Elio and Oliver were 

Walking back to their hotel

And here is where the narrative picks up:

"We turned left and, heading toward Piazza Febo, suddenly, from nowhere, made out someone strumming a guitar, singing not a rock song, but as we got closer, an old, old Neapolitan tune. "Fenesta ca lucive." 

It took me a moment to recognize it. Then I remembered. Mafalda had taught me that song years ago when I was a boy. It was her lullaby. I hardly knew Naples, and, other than for her and her immediate entourage, and a few casual visits to Naples with my parents, had never had contact with Neapolitans. But the strains of the doleful song stirred such powerful nostalgia for lost loves and for things lost over the course of one's life and for lives, like my grandfather's, that had come long before mine that I was suddenly taken back to a poor, disconsolate universe of simple folk like Mafalda's ancestors, fretting and scurrying in the tiny vicoli of an old Naples whose memory I wanted to share word for word with Oliver now, as if he too, like Mafalda and Manfredi and Anchise and me, were a fellow southerner whom I'd met in a foreign port city and who'd instantly understand why the sound of this old song,  like an ancient prayer for the dead in the deadest of languages, could bring tears even in those who couldn't understand a syllable.

The song reminded him of the Israeli national anthem, he said. Or was it inspired by The Moldau. On second thought, it might have been an aria from Bellini's Sonnambula. Warm, but still off, I said, though the song has often been attributed to Bellini. We're clementizing, he said.

I translated the words from Neapolitan to Italian to English. It's about a young man who passes by his beloved's window only to be told by her sister that Nennella has died, from the mouth where flowers once blossomed only worms emerge. Farewell, window, for my Nenna can no longer look out again. 

A German tourist, who seemed all alone and quite drunk himself that night, had overheard me translating the song into English and approached us, begging in halting English to know if I could be so kind as to translate the words into German as well. Along the way to our hotel, I taught Oliver and the German how to sing the refrain, which all three of us repeated again and again, our voices reverberating in the narrow, damp alleys of Rome as each mangled his own version of Neapolitan. Finally we said goodbye to the German on Piazza Navona. On our way to our hotel, Oliver and I began to sing the refrain again, softly,

'Chiagneva sempe ca durmeva sola,

mo dorme co' li muorte accompagnata.'

'She always wept because she slept alone,

Now she sleeps among the dead.'

I can, from the distance of years now, still think I'm hearing the voices of two young men singing these words in Neapolitan toward daybreak, neither realizing, as they held each other and kissed again and again on the dark lanes of old Rome, that this was the last night they would ever make love again."

~Andre Aciman

(Call Me by Your Name)

And here is the song they were singing
(The old songs were so morbid)
As you listen, imagine a man looking up to a window
The window from which his lover and he would talk
That special place where he remembered his true love 
This loved one whose light was no longer there
And yet whose light would forever shine within his heart

Fenesta Che Lucive
English translation

Fenesta che lucive e mo nun luce...

The once-lit window, now dark...
means that my beloved is ill...
Her sister looks out and tells me:
Your beloved is dead and buried...

She always wept because she slept alone,
Now she sleeps among the dead.
She always wept because she slept alone,
Now she sleeps among the dead.

Go to the church, and look into her coffin
See how your beloved is now...
From the mouth that once came words of love,
But now only worms...Oh! What sadness!

Now she sleeps among the dead.
She always wept because she slept alone,
Now she sleeps among the dead.

Franco Corelli

"Fenesta Che Lucive"

YouTube Direct Link: https://youtu.be/aW65effv6H0