Stefano Masini

Nunzio Primavera is a Rome-based journalist with firm Sicilian roots, having been born in Enna, ‘the belvedere of Sicily’. The island’s habits, ideas, customs and feelings invariably come to the surface in his writing. He dedicates this enjoyable, erudite study to celebrations and festivals that punctuate the traditional calendar in the order in which remote events—that exist only in the popular imagination or actually happened—follow one upon another in the course of the year. The subtitle ‘A journey through food and faith in the Italy of fairs’ should not deceive us as to the real narrative structure. This is no mere collection of recurring patron saints’ days, fairs and traditional markets, nor is it a statistical census of Italy’s piazzas and campanili.
The chapters are arranged to allow the reader easy access to the stories of the most significant events that, each time they are repeated, promptly renew the profound bond that exists between the communities involved and the areas in which they live.
As any portion of land is not a simple geographical zone to be delimited by physical boundaries, likewise any episode that recounts the reiteration of local rites possesses a value that differs from that of the countless citations, memories and myths that already satisfy curiosities of a more frivolous nature. It is necessary to delve deeper and seek out something of higher quality. It is also important to be aware that it is the sacred and profound aspects of religious ceremonies and customs in general that allow us to grasp all the richness of a population.
Consciously realizing the intense historicity of collective behavior and the regulative role of its subsequent, faith-driven repetition, the author writes that ‘Italy is a treasure trove of history and art, of culture and taste, of folklore and poetry, of faith and desecration.
Thousands of years of history and the meeting of diverse peoples and cultures have left a profound mark and helped enrich a thousand different local areas. All this has generated a heritage that makes Italy the country in which human beings rediscover their roots and their passions, at once strong and simple, ephemeral and refined’.
Essentially, the hammer of time has elevated to a leading role in experience natural phenomena (the phases of the moon, natural events) economic and social practices (threshing, transhumance) and the votive offerings of worshippers of Sant’Agata, San Ranieri or Sant’Efisio. All this is part of a shared ethos that creates an indispensable harmony between piazzas and campanili, between civil passion and faith, between expectation and hope.
The passing of time and collective repetition express the characteristics and values of diverse socio-political communities. Even when the battles of history halt localistic development and shape the unity of a population’s legal dimension, the complexity of facts and habits still remains. Indeed, only loyalty to origins, of soil and blood, can ensure the ongoing continuity of institutions and social cohesion.
In a global reality—to which we have yet to grow accustomed—in which the weight of physical distance has progressively been reduced and the tangible sense of values consistent with our historical identity has waned, the painstaking and fascinating rediscovery of an itinerary of events transcends the attempt, albeit successful, to draw the attention to a lively, mysterious reality.
This cognitive operation serves to translate the level of cohesion and motivation that we find at the social level into pride in belonging to a land, to an art and to a confraternity. It provides the pull to drag us out of the ‘quick sands’ of indistinctness that join the money and market aspects to the egoistic quality of our lives.
Building something solid and enduring by clinging to the material of tradition is, nonetheless, a way of curbing the decline of an economy caged in a reality of commodities commercialized at the cheapest price on a planetary scale.
The regeneration of agriculture as part of the optimization of matchless competitive advantages of the land starts here, playing on the enviable competitive position granted to enterprises by the value of the climatic-natural heritage and the seduction of the artisticcultural heritage.
The glimpse of festivals and traditions that Nunzio Primavera reveals to us through his apparently detached erudite writer’s lens cannot hide the explosive charge of a project that places the production of goods and services by multifunctional agricultural enterprises in an ever expanding circuit of exploratory consumption of places, discovery of lands of origin and interest towards local wine and food.
The recovery and conservation of devotion to a saint and the memory of a feast are an opportunity not only to give expression to cultural roots, but also to actualize a tradition by discovering the roots of the future. They thus reflect a system of relations with the land and its elements of identity (history, culture, customs) that are the most effective way of devising modes of presenting quality foods and services.

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