An Italian Journey

Around 1951, French writer Giono (1895-1970)--who in these pages claims that he is not a traveler.... I seem scarcely to have moved in fifty years""--left his staid, familiar life and traveled with his wife and another couple to post-WWII Italy. Here, Giono (The Horseman on the Roof; Angelo), known for his novels depicting provincial settings, first explores Turin in Piedmont, the homeland of his father's family. From there, he travels steadily westward, though remaining in the Italian north--for him, ""there is nothing attractive about places like Naples and Capri. The exquisite azure blue bores me as much as the rocks and flowers."" He journeys to Milan, Brescia, Lake Garda (where ""Mussolini set up the vicious yet ineffectual Republic of Salo"") and Lonato, where the ""countryside of Virgil's Georgics"" can be seen. Giono shares folktales and historical tidbits as related by the locals he meets--though many details will be obscure for those not as familiar with Italian history as he. Traveling through Verona, he finally reaches the dustless city of Venice, where Venetian girls, while very stylish and pale, are so anemic that they have to go to the abattoir to drink blood from a freshly slaughtered ox. While Giono sometimes directs readers to less interesting cul-de-sacs, he captures nicely (assisted by Cumming's translation) the beautiful and seemingly quiet Italian countryside and its people, offering a striking contrast to the many Italian films of the same time that depicted a more depressed and tumultuous nation. (Dec.)