ACI
TREZZA
Acitrezza,
totalling some 5,000 inhabitants, is a small fishing village dominated
on the seaward side by the Rocks of the Cyclops, a treacherous pointed
mass of black lava rising up from the crystal-like waters. The Odissey
tells that these were hurled by Polyphemus against Ulysses who had
blinded him by thrusting a flaming stake into hin only eye; the
hero then escaped with his companions by clinging to the bellies
of rams belonging to the Cyclops. Beside the rocks sits the island
of Lachea, now a biology research station run by the University
of Catania.
Acitrezza
was chosen by the writer Giovanni Verga to set his celebrated novel
I Malavoglia. The little harbor bathed in sunshine and dotted with
multi-colored boats, seems inhabited by the ghosts of his fictitious
characters; so easy to imagine Maruzza and the other members of
the Malavoglia family, waiting here anxiously on the shore, ceaselessly
searching the horizon, alas in vain, for the Provvidenza with his
cargo of lupins. Here Luchino Visconti shooted his film La Terra
Trema (The Earth Trembles) that he draw from Verga’s novel
I Malavoglia.
After
midnight, the wind began to raise merry hell, as if all the cats
in the village were on the roof, shaking the shutters. You could
hear the sea lowing around the high rocks so that it seemed as if
the cattle from Sant’Alfio market were gathered there and
day broke as black as a traitor’s soul
...
The village boats were drawn up on the beach, and well-moored to
the boulders below the wash-place ...
The
only people on the beach were Padron ‘Ntoni, because of that
load of lupins he had at sea, along with the Provvidenza, and his
son Bastainazzo to boot. |
