EMMANUEL STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE ON THE 2014 TRIP TO ITALY:

SELECTED PASSAGES AND VIDEOS FROM THEIR FINAL REPORTS

Nicholas

For the most part, Milan is a hidden city. On the outside you’ll find dull earthy-colored buildings with renaissance style balconies filled with vivid greens yellows and reds of various flora. The city is heavily sprinkled with cafés but its exterior is plagued with graffiti. On the inside of this historic city you can find the most extraordinary aspects of life taken from the intense Italian culture. For example, the city is very go go go, the pace of the people must be one of the fastest in the world, yet everyone takes the time for a cappuccino break and gossip...another pillar of Italian culture found in Milan was friendship. Friendship was seen everywhere, whether in big groups, two people, couples, old friends, everyone was out and in a way showing off how fierce their respected friendships were. My friends and I emulated this by going to aperitivo and simply talking for close to three hours, long after the food and drinks were gone. We could have sit there for days comparing each other’s cultures and lives.

Molly

Manzoni’s house is located a short walk away from La Scala, one of the most important cultural locations in Milan. The theatre is still in use today as it was in the time of Manzoni, and it was quite an experience to sit and view the same stage that Milan’s elite spent their nights at more than one hundred years ago. The fact Manzoni’s work, The Betrothed, had such a crucial role in shaping today’s Italian culture goes interestingly with the fact that Manzoni made his home in one of the most culturally rich areas of Milan. ... The grand buildings with ornate facades seem to match well with the importance of Manzoni as a symbol of Italian culture and unification.

On the other hand, Alda Merini’s neighborhood feels like a different world...The quaint neighborhood with narrow streets and tiny houses contrasts greatly with the grand appearance of Manzoni’s neighborhood, which makes sense when you compare the writing of the two authors...The poetry of Alda Merini is much more raw and scattered than the prose of Manzoni. She wrote about her own human emotions and struggles, so when I saw the crooked streets and mismatched buildings of her neighborhood I could picture that as the backdrop of her writing....I think it’s lovely that it has become a cute area with many shops and places to eat, drink, and socialize. It seems appropriate that Alda Merini’s neighborhood has become a place for people to hang out and be human, when her writing was so down to earth.

Aria

For the four weeks that we were in Milan I was able to learn so much about the city, the culture and the language. We were greeted with open hearts, and it became a temporary home for me. I also developed great friendships with everyone in the group, and truly consider all of them friends. I’m really grateful for this especially because it was a running joke between us that at school we probably would have never talked to one another. Although I love Milan and would like to return for a semester, I’m happy to be leaving with great memories and great friends.

Tamarra
Knowing that Milan was the fashion capital, I expected to be blown away by the clothing and the designer stores. Instead, it was the beautiful buildings and scenery that captivated me.

The language, the culture, and the food were all different than what I assumed that it would be like. But because I am a part of a family that involves very many different heritages and cultures, I was not completely thrown off.

One of the field trips that most stood out to me during my time in Italy was the trip to the Holocaust memorial…I felt the connection from my ancestors to the victims of the holocaust. Primo Levi had to suffer for 11 months in a concentration camp called Auschwitz. Being able to visit this Holocaust memorial gave us a little taste at what Levi had to encounter before he had actually entered the camp.

Marie

“Pirandello had begun to focus his writing on the themes of psychology even before he knew of the work of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.” He focused his writings on “the relativity of truth, and a rejection of the idea of any objective reality not at the mercy of individual vision.” Of these writings, “Six Characters is the most arresting presentation of the typical Pirandellian contrast between art, which is unchanging, and life, which is an inconstant flux. Characters that have been rejected by their author materialize on stage, throbbing with a more intense vitality than the real actors, who, inevitably, distort their drama as they attempt its presentation.”

My intention is to use Pirandello’s feelings and theories/ideas as an inspiration and metaphor for this literary research paper. I will do so by comparing my adventures in Milan with my Today’s Italy class to Pirandello’s philosophy, while attempting to recreate some of his style of writing that was used in his preface for Six Characters in Search of an Author.

While at Emmanuel College, I “did not succeed in uncovering this meaning in the [seven] characters” of my Today’s Italy class “and I concluded therefore that it was no use making them live” within my personal life in the form of a relationship.

[In Milan].The seven characters got to know each other as though they were dancing an awkward tango, in which they tiptoe around each other until they reach a level of comfort. Once this level of comfort is reached, the characters will slowly and perhaps unwillingly uncover their masks that they keep up to maintain their acting. This will, in turn, allow for each of the seven characters’ true and natural character to come out and greet one another. I think that lack of a working Wi-Fi connection helped speed up this process…

I did have a fantastic time in Milan with my fellow classmates. Everybody was wonderful and I really hope that we do not disappear from each other’s lives as easily as Pirandello’s six characters did in the end of his play. I hope that we will all reminisce about our adventures we shared with each other when we are back at Emmanuel.