In the September issue of Food and Wine magazine, columnist Elizabeth Gilbert considers the modern Roman mindset, in a piece entitled "Sidewalk Rage."
While others in the West have a "Cartesian mind," she says -- they go from point A to point B and get enraged at anything in their way -- the denizens of Rome are different.
"The classical Italian mindset .... meanders, pauses, stretches out its legs in the sun and takes the long route," Gilbert says.
She gives for example Her Italian friend, who felt perfectly comfortable one warm Roman day in pushing his chair into the middle of a sidewalk the better to enjoy his repast of fried asparagus. No passing Italian pedestrians minded or said anything -- only a German tourist.
I wonder how this mindset -- quirky, romantic, leisurely - fits with the ancient Rome I have been studying -- the drilled and disciplined Imperial legions, the code of laws, the great machine of Roman civilization that once stretched from Britain to the hills of Hungary.
Can a people change so much, a whole cultural mindset shift like that?
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
When in Rome ...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Books are written by people of a specific mindset as well. You can look at all aspects of life from one point of view or another. I prefer the buffet where you can consider all the choices.
:wink:
So is it possible that the two characteristics, as different as they are, exist side by side in the same people, like some sort of cultural schizophrenia?
And while the ancient Romans conquered, they too sat and ate and drank like gluttons.....and fiddled while Rome burned!
Peace
Aye.
When the governments been overthrown.
What a lovely post.
Thanks!
Scarlett & Viaggiatore
Odat: So they worked hard and then played hard.
Scarlett: Thank You.
Hey.. I am actually living in Egypt not far from the isis temple... I add you as a favourite, hope you don't mind... Hugs Nadiyya
In NYC, the person who so blocked traffic for his own comfort would be soundly trounced today, or 300 years ago. Perhaps it takes a bit longer for such wholesale shifts in the social fabric.
I think it's a good question. We've unhooked in many ways - no tv, we don't go to movies, no newspapers - yet we are caught by the Time Bandit every time.
And in some respects, I think it's all about ego. I am important so I'm busy. I'm going to sit on this sidewalk because I can. Same thing, different wrapper.
Claudia: I didn't get any sense of egoism from that article, just a cultural mindset of "take it easy, folks, you can go around me today, tomorrow I'll go around you."
If ego was involved, then all the other Romans having to go around that guy would have been bashing his head into the pavement.
Post a Comment