Bel paese

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Bel paese , also spelled Belpaese , is a classic poetic name for Italy . The common Italian phrase means to German as much as "beautiful country" and so directs by a Antonomasie a deemed central feature of Italy, namely the beauty .

The phrase bel paese as a geographical location goes back to the Italian literature of the late Middle Ages , namely Dante and Petrarch .

“... del bel paese là dove 'l sì suona.”

"... of the beautiful country where the sì sounds."

- Dante : Divina Commedia , Inferno XXXIII, 80

“... il bel paese ch'Appennin parte, e 'l mar circonda e l'Alpe.”

"... the beautiful land that the Apennines divides and surround the sea and the Alps."

- Petrarch : Canzoniere , CXLVI

At the solidification of the trope had Madame de Staël decisive contribution by the petrarkischen verses her 1807 novel, Corinne ou l'Italie as epigraph prefaced. The formulation of Dante was u. a. Quoted by Vittorio Alfieri in his autobiography, who in the passage nel bel paese qui dove il sì suona, however, replaced the somewhat distant là ("there") with a passionate qui ("here").

The phrase achieved great fame beyond literary circles through a book by the geoscientist and patriot Antonio Stoppani , who in 1876 in his much-read popular scientific work Il Bel Paese: Conversazioni sulle bellezze naturali, la geologia e la geografia fisica d'Italia ('The beautiful land: Conversations on the natural beauties, geology and physical geography of Italy ') described the natural beauties of Italy. The book title is also said to have served as a direct template for the naming of the Bel Paese cheese , which was created by Egidio Galbani as the Italian answer to French cheese imports.

There are different interpretations of the psychological keynote when the term bel paese is used today . For example, it is assumed that the Italians basically meant the “most beautiful country” by the “beautiful country”, which makes the phrase seem like megalomania . Other interpreters, on the other hand, attribute a polemical overtone or a frequently occurring ironic note to the formulation , which gives bel paese the character of an antiphrasis .

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ A b c d Matteo Di Gesù: L'Italia nella letteratura italiana. Una ricognizione . In: InVerbis 1, 2011, pp. 13–34, here p. 16.
  2. ↑ Bèl Paése. Treccani.it - ​​L'enciclopedia italiana, accessed February 20, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Sì is the Italian word for "yes"; Reference is made to the area of ​​distribution of the Italian language in contrast to the areas of the oc and the oïl .
  4. ↑ The Apennine Peninsula , delimited to the north by the Alps and surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea , roughly corresponds to the understanding of Italy as a geographical area.
  5. ↑ John Ayto: The Diner's Dictionary . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-964024-9 , p. 29.
  6. ^ Fabiano Guatteri: Formaggi. Conoscere e riconoscere le produioni più diffuse d'Italia e d'Europa . De Agostini, Novara 2005, ISBN 978-88-418-2006-3 , p. 149.
  7. ↑ Ulrich Ladurner : The pizza chauvinist. The time , archived from the original on June 8, 2013 ; accessed on February 20, 2015 .
  8. ↑ belpaese. il Sabatini Coletti: Dizionario della Lingua Italiana, accessed February 20, 2015 .