Of walnut and grape picking...all the way to prelapsarian times

 Funny how picking walnuts these fall days leads unavoidably to recalling grape-picking long ago, when I was still a kid. A whole bunch of people—men women and kids—would be clustered around the vines to pick grapes and toss them in wicker baskets. There would be lots of joking among the women and men. There would be lots of singing too. The kids, especially, were encouraged to sing, since, as everybody knew, the more you sang, the less time you spent gobbling up grapes...

And this recollection of grape-picking as a kid leads just as naturally to recalling how kids always referred to their elders as “vu” (Friulian for the Italian “voi” or the English “you”), while for the grownups every kid was a simple “tu.” (The importance of this distinction may not be easy to understand for people who are used to refer to people, regardless of age or status, as “you” and nothing but “you.”

And since one thing always leads to another, this little recollection of the use of pronouns brings to mind my grandparents and the way their use of pronouns reveal so much about how they related to one another: for him, she was always a TU, while for her he was always a VU. And this was true for most other grandparents. This sort of thing, today, is hard to imagine, just as it is hard to imagine that, despite this, there could have been harmony between my grandparents (and there was).

And if all this sounds kind of funny, just think of how our very first grandparents (Adam and Eve) related to one another, at least according to Milton, some of whose poetry I am currently translating and working on):

“...luj par contemplasiòn formàt e valòu,

par teneresa ic, e pa la grasia pì dolsa,

luj doma par Diu, e ic par Diu in luj:

la so front largja e vuli sublìm a declaràvin

sovranitàt suprema; e i so ris di Gjacìnt

da la so front ghi colàvin jù a raps

fin, ma no pi'n jù, da li so spàlis da omp:

ic invensi a lasava che i so cjaviej indoràs

ghi colàsin jù coma un vel fin ai flancs,

sgardufàs, ma cun motu bièl di ondulùtis,

coma anelùs di vit, po, ca volèvin diši

sotmisiòn, ma voluda cun dolsa persuašiòn,

da ic rinduda, da luj volentej risevuda,

rinduda cun sotmisiòn timiduta, modèst orgoj,

e cu la pì dolsa ešitasiòn da maroša.”

(Hee for God only, shee for God in him: 

His fair large Front and Eye sublime declar'd 

Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin Locks 

Round from his parted forelock manly hung 

Clustring, but not beneath his shoulders broad: 

Shee as a vail down to the slender waste 

Her unadorned golden tresses wore 

Dissheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav'd 

As the Vine curles her tendrils, which impli'd 

Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway, 

And by her yeilded, by him best receivd, 

Yeilded with coy submission, modest pride, 

And sweet reluctant amorous delay.)

(Paradise Lost, Book IV)

For my grandfather, as indicated, my grandmother was always a “tu.” Yet their relationship, though not, maybe, as idyllic as that of Milton's Adam and Eve, was always pretty harmonius, at least in my memory. In fact, it was, in the long run, more harmonious than that of Adam and Eve, who ended up by running into serious gliches.