ispirazione
I've been listening lately to the various works of Giacomo Puccini. I share his passion for bearing witness to others with specificity, grief, and love. Sometimes deep listening is the most potent activism; it keeps alive what nothing else can.
Of particular interest is the beloved aria Un bel dì in Madame Butterfly — the deep song to which I've done my deep listening — which informed and nourished a life’s work spent chasing a thing that can be described succinctly in Italian, but in English only with dissertations:
Ispirazione.
There are attempts to reduce the translation to one English word, such as inspiration or authenticity. My understanding of the concept is limited, but both seem to apply, as one might give separate names to each facet of a delicate carving. The definition that seems most apt to me is the one I heard first, a long time ago, words burned into my memory by dark eyes and dim candles, from a poet who fairly brimmed with the stuff himself. It was three hours before the sun rose, and we were idling, and we were talking about everything and nothing, and he called ispirazione “the memory of lives the Italians never knew.”
That seems like a good take to me.
I feel sometimes as though all of history and physics demands my attention in an instant, the nervous system of the earth surging up through my soles, all the intrigue and joy of a billion years charging each breath, each swallow, with beauty the result. This may seem an odd assertion in a time when the word “sublime” is used to praise a slice of cheesecake, but those who remember its older sense of wondrous beauty will understand. Mountains in winter are beautiful. Mountains in winter as the snow and ice cover everything at once? Sublime.
If Whitman turned up no “foul meat” with his plow and spade, it was only for lack of seeing what was there. Authenticity comes from burying what you love in the ground, a connection that can’t be rent through years of exile. A deep song lived here with me and is buried now, its component notes feeding the trees. And then what’s left when you lose that loss?
Ispirazione.
It doesn't translate precisely into English, but some languages will serve better.
