I.vi. Coursework

Bologna is celebrated for producing popes, painters, and sausage"
- Lord Byron

“Questo corso è la Storia Medievale?”
    “Sì.” My reply. It was a strange reversal of roles, me being asked a question.
    “Sei Italiana?” I asked, a few moments later, after I had spotted the map of Bologna in her hands. No. She was an American, from Brown University, equally confused as I was.
   And so my first real acquaintance in Bologna, if you’re not counting saints, painters, and architects of course. No. My first human contact, and with someone in the same boat as I. What relief. What relief also to find that she, too struggled to comprehend professor Muzzarelli, the diminutive yet assertive Italian woman who was elucidating the salient themes of Medieval History.
   Muzzarelli, addressing those of us fortunate enough to have found a seat in the packed room, would mention that the Middle Ages are not what we think they were, that dates and people are important, that several North American universities are built in the Gothic style because it is a style of learning, and that for several weeks during the term she would be away for personal reasons. I liked her. At the very least, I liked what I could understand of her.
   I had to concentrate in that small but pleasant vaulted classroom, despite the view through the door onto the sun-drenched courtyard where students gathered around the wellhead to smoke. I couldn’t drift off and let my mind wander. I couldn’t ask myself what glorious things once adorned this ceiling, before some more utilitarian administrator decided that the walls of his palace, no longer the demesne of aristocrats but now a seat of Learning, should be painted beige. I had to concentrate on the Italian. If I didn’t make a specific effort, focusing on every word, every syllable, it would all just fly by like Arabic, Gaelic, or Chinese. I was not used to this, this beautiful but obtuse language. I can listen to anything in French or English, passively as I like, and it will register. But Italian is a marathon and my six months were strained to keep up.
   Had I only been learning it for six months? It seemed like longer. I remember in my freshman year a girl telling me that I knew Italian just as well, because I could pronounce things like Cimabue and Lorenzetti. If only it were that simple. I find myself now knowing how to say things like “brushwork” and “synthetic perspective”, without knowing how to conjugate the imperfect. But language grows on you, and I’ll figure it out. I can pronounce “Giotto” correctly, and that is half the battle.