In defence of La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita is alive and kicking. But it’s not a place, it’s an abstract noun, in ones head, or rather in ones heart and the spirit of youth.

In defence of La Dolce Vita.

There seem to be a slew of articles attempting to debunk La Dolce Vita so I thought I would wade in with my own tuppence worth

There is no photo which encapsulates Italy. This is one of literally thousands of tiny moments which together make up La Dolce Vita for me.

Am I qualified to speak on things Italian?

Well, no. Always as an expat/immigrant as I do not believe you become Italian by virtue of living there. So I speak as an outsider.

That said, my ‘qualifications’ if you like for an opinion on Italy are - a life long love of the country its people, art and culture. After studying the Italian Renaissance at Uni it took me a decade to get a job in Rome. In the meantime I did everything to learn Italian from the UK at a time when that meant dry Italian text books or having an Italian Au Pair living in (even though I had no children.) I lived in Rome for a decade, and have ever since spent half a year in Italy, until now when with the kids education complete we can finally complete our move to Italy.

In that time we have experienced a life time of real life in Italy. We have had broken wrists, spines, burst appendix, given birth, had several burglaries, two cars and a vespa stolen, taken on the mafia and lost, attended weddings, baptisms and funerals and all the other little things that make up everyday life. When it comes to Italy my heart might be full of love but my feet are on the ground and my head is clear.

My bloglet is all about the things that make up my version of La Dolce Vita. In my La Dolce Vita posts which may have contributed to this ire, I always and only talk about things that are free and where finances are not a bar to entry.

I rarely give restaurant recommendations for entirely selfish reasons- they are my secret discoveries and precious as truly Italian secrets that I am not willing to share. Also because who am I to know if someone likes elegant or rustic food, white table clothes or to sit on bales of straw?

I have never been paid a word for anything I write or endorse - I write for pleasure, not profit. That said, I think it is a bit below the belt to imply that writers who are paid for their opinions should be treated as false- that payment taints and devalues what they say. I am not an influencer but I imagine that normal market forces apply – if you give unreliable information then your brand credibility is impacted. Trust is built on integrity. I imagine most influencers want to protect the integrity of their brand above all else since it is the only thing they own.

People are entitled to experience and judge Italy entirely as they find it. New comers are entitled to be excited and see the country with eyes full of wonder. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth if people, who like Italy enough to make it their permanent home, tread on other people’s dreams, directly or indirectly putting them off coming. Let others, the young and inexperienced enjoy the wonder of a country even if old hacks have now become jaded and take things which were once wonderful for granted.

It is not just about whose reality is right. Attempting to explode myths, stamping on a wonder for the simple sweet things in life drains the world of hope.

I spent my 20’s was slogging away in a soul destroying job in the city that paid well but that I loathed. I have a poem I wrote back then. It’s called 9.40 am (to allow for the commute city hours started at 9.30am) It begins – ‘in my head I scream and keep on screaming’

I was unhappy for years with no way out and believe me I exhausted every avenue. The only hope I had was that I would in the end find a way, anyway, if I had to dig a tunnel I would, to get to Italy. If someone had taken that hope away I’d have been one of those standing on Waterloo bridge waiting to plunge into the oblivion of the Thames. It seemed particularly egregious to me that those who are ‘living the dream’ even if they perceive it as a nightmare, seek to poison, or stamp on the fragile dreams of others, somehow acting as Cerberus hounds refusing admission to a country they, despite not liking it, call home.

There are generations of people who have fallen in love with Italy and La Dolce Vita. I doubt they were all wrong.

First define your terms. The literal translation of La Dolce Vita is The sweet life. The sweetness of living, of being alive. I am only interested in the Italian words not the American corruption of ‘sweet’ into luxurious or somehow depraved.

What is La Dolce Vita?

It’s a sense of wonder, and a sense of conscious appreciation. It is a state of mind, it is appreciating flashes of happiness in the joy of every day life. Here a list of examples of La Dolce Vita found in Italy (and elsewhere, no doubt)

A cacophony of a dawn chorus;

sunshine/ferocious thunderstorms/fresh fallen snow;

walks/cycle rides/first and last swims of summer;

clouds of jasmine, rose, orange blossom scented air;

fireflies and nightingales;

full rose moons, fountains by moonlight, skinny dipping;

the sound of vespas and the smell of fresh coffee

neighbours with open arms and kisses;

… with trays full of tomatoes or apricots and strawberries;

the shop keeper whispering his own recipe for limocello;

falling in love to the background of the bridges or fountains of Rome, of Florence, of Venice.

Saying La Dolce Vita doesn’t exist is not the same as saying for example there is no Father Christmas. It is the equivalent of saying, love does not exist, nor happiness. It is true some people do not find love and happiness or the other abstract nouns in their life, but this does not mean they do not exist.

And perhaps La Dolce Vita is hidden in the wonder of youth and perhaps the sad truth is that as we get old and jaded, and seen-it-all, been-there-done-it, no longer fall in love, perhaps when we say there is no Dolce Vita, we are actually saying we have got old and grumpy. Well, I say do not go quietly into the night.

For as long as I have my senses- and Italy explodes the senses- I will enjoy La Dolce Vita and as long as blood runs to my heart, I will love and appreciate transient beauty and experience. To shutter down ones capacity to find simple pleasures in life, is not only to grow jaded and old but to begin to die, fade away, and dissolve. If you don’t appreciate life, you are no longer living it. My mother is rotting from the inside out, riddled with dementia in an old peoples home. What wouldn’t she and I give, for her to wander around a twilight evening with bats sweeping overhead, and fireflies lighting heavy scented roses one last time?

What La Dolce Vita is not.

You cannot buy La Dolce Vita. Money does not bring happiness-ask any wage slave with a mortgage around their neck. Riches do not give an appreciate of simple pleasures. All money does is give a choice. Riches and a prestigious job are not the keys to La Dolce Vita. In fact, they get in the way.

La Dolce Vita is not a measure of how well the Italian economy is performing. It is not a measure of the extent to which to which the government is aligned to one’s political views. It is not a measure of how easy it is to get a job, or how tedious the paperwork is. It is not a measure of how inconvenient it is not to have brought the right clothes for the climate for which the fault lies squarely in ignorance. It is not a comparison of the pros and cons of your home country.

Brigadoon is not found on a Tuscan hillside, Roman via or in the bottle green glassy seas of the Amalfi coast. La Dolce Vita is not heaven. If you want perfection, gamble on a religion, die and fingers crossed you’ll go to the heaven of your choice. I have no expectation of finding heaven on earth anymore than I expect to love to be rose tints and chocolates, and not farts and compromise. You cannot look for La Dolce Vita on a map because it is within you (or not)

I think that La Dolce Vita is actually a reflection of the Italian spirit which says DESPITE the economy/ the politics/ frustrations of every day life DESPITE that there is joy to be found in sweet simple things. La Dolce Vita is found in adversity not in wealth and privilege.

La Dolce Vita’s sister expression is ‘La Dolce Fare Niente’ the joy of indolence, of doing nothing. But that joy can only be experienced as a contrast, as a break from doing something. Again, my mother, bedridden and curled up cannot move, but that is not La Dolce Fare Niente, it is a slow slide to death.

But it is all a matter of perspective. When I first went down to Rome in the mid 90’s there was a fashionable ‘ennuie’ People were standing drinking cocktails on a roof top in Trastevere in the twilight of a glorious sunset, in a city that seeps with history and legend. I was so incredibly grateful to have finally got there. Yet all they did was look beautiful as if they had slipped from the pages of Vogue only to moan and complain. We are social animals, the ennuie was contagious. I was appalled. I think the expression is along the lines of ‘some people make you happy when you arrive, others when they leave’ These beautiful butterflies sucked the oxygen, the joy out of life, I couldn’t bare them nor was I prepared to effect ennuie to fit in. Ennuie, in Rome?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or perhaps more pertinently as Anais Nin said ‘we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are’

I found my tribe, the ones with wonder, and appreciation and – joie de vivre. I was working in humanitarian aid, in and out of refugee camps and war zones. I had the contrast, and an appreciation of the fragility of life and we definitely, but definitely went full throttle on La Dolce Vita.

La Dolce Vita is alive and kicking. But it’s not a place, it’s an abstract noun, in ones head, or rather in ones heart and the spirit of youth.