Dianne Hales - La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World

In the gleaming kitchen of her culinary academy in Florence, I ask an architect-turned-chef-turned-restaurateur about the passions that changed her life: How did she know that she was choosing the right one to follow?

She sighs. Ah, signora, we do not choose our passion. Passion chooses us.

I understand. Italy chose me.

More than thirty years ago, shivering in a frigid Swiss station after a talk in Gstaad, I impetuously switched trains and headed south to a sun-kissed country Id never visited. I had no reservations, no itinerary, no inkling of what I might discover. The last thing I expected was to fall in lovebut I did.

Day by day, sometimes hour by hour, Italy seduced me with tastes, sounds, scents, and sensations Id never encountered before. With every morsel and marvel, I yearned for more. I was far from the first person to succumb to Italys charms. Countless others have swooned for its food, wine, incomparable art, or breathtaking sceneryas will many more in the centuries to come.

I fell for the Italians. Old and young, flirtatious men and gracious women, they drew me in, not just with their easy smiles and effortless charm, but with a magnetic intensity that pulled me ever closer. With scarcely a shred of their language, I yearned to communicate with these intriguing strangersmore marvelous than the land, as the British author E. M. Forster so aptly said.

At the least, I longed to decipher the tsunami of words that washed over me on that first semisilent journey. After I returned to the United States, I immersed myself in Italian classes, movies, and conversation groups. My linguistic infatuation eventually inspired a book, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the Worlds Most Enchanting Language.

Kindred Italophiles embraced my labor of love, which garnered a spot on the New York Times bestseller list and won for me the great honor of an Italian knighthood, with the title of Cavaliere dellOrdine della Stella della Solidariet Italiana (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity). Yet even after La Bella Linguas success, Italy didnt loosen its grip on me.

Through Italian friends and friends of friends, I became captivated by the real woman immortalized by Leonardo in his Mona Lisa. Over the course of several years, I walked the streets in Florence where she lived, knelt in the chapel where she prayed, ventured into the long-abandoned convent where she diedand wrote Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered. It too found a warm welcome among lovers of art, Italy, or both.

So are you done with Italy? asked a man at one of my readings.

God, no! I exclaimed. He was asking the wrong question, just as I had done in Florence. The very notion seemed unthinkableand impossible. Italy wasnt done with me.

AT FIRST, ITALYS SYMPHONY of chaos had simply swept over me. Every time I emerged from a train stationin Milan, Florence, Venice, RomeI longed for more eyes to see, more ears to listen, more neurons to process the sensations bombarding me. As I returned year after year, Italy tugged me deeper into its explosive energy. Passion poured into my soul like a river.

Diannewife, mother, journalist, serious and sensiblemorphed into Diana, dancing barefoot under the Tuscan moon and delighting in everything from fresh-fried fiori di zucca (zucchini flowers) to tart and tingly limoncello. Without realizing exactly how, I became appassionata, a word that dates back to the fourteenth century and translates as taken by passion. I didnt fight this sweet seduction. I indulged it, embraced it, delighted in it.

When I described my quasi obsession to a sophisticated Roman, she pegged it immediately as una passione italiana. There are two types, she said with the seen-done-tried-that worldliness of the Eternal City. There is the passion that you take to bed, but beyond children, what does it get you? Then there are the passions that create something, that take you beyond yourself and outlast you.

I chose to pursue the latteron my own or with my often-bemused but endlessly supportive husband. Searching for the sources and secrets of la passione italiana became my passion. I pursued its trail north to the Dolomites and south to Sicily, from Sardinias rugged western coast to Venices labyrinth of canals. As I homed in on specific passions, I visited Florence for its art, Rome for its antiquities, Assisi for its saints, Piedmont for its wines, Milan for its fashion, Emilia-Romagna for its food and fast cars.

Every destination led to a dozen detours, each one a revelation. I trekked through pagan temples, ancient ruins, medieval chapels, glass furnaces, silk mills, fashion salons, restaurants, workshops, studios, concert halls, street markets, vineyards, wine cellars, olive groves, movie sets, and museums of every ilk. Back in the United States, I devoured histories, biographies, memoirs, diaries, novels, poems, and travelogues.

I focused on the passions that have left indelible fingerprints on culture, but to a great extent, the ones in this book, just like other passions, chose me. What intrigued me most were the stories of passionate Italiansfamous, unknown, legendary, actual, historical, contemporary. You will meet many in these pages. Yet every profile is a mere for instance, with a dozen alternatives that I could have included instead.