bello

bello
beautiful, lovely, wonderful

“Wow!” “Cool!” “Fantastic!” “Terrific!” “Fabulous!” We couldn’t say enough to praise the magnificent fireworks exploding over Porto Ercole in celebration of its patron Saint Erasmo. I turned to one of our guests, a young Umbrian winemaker, and asked what he thought. He replied with a single word, “Bello!”, and I realized that in these two simple syllables, he had said it all.

Italian, la bella lingua, has no greater—or more ubiquitous—compliment. A nice thing is qualcosa di bello. Italy itself long ago earned the nickname il bel paese (the beautiful country). Beautiful singing—bel canto—took flight here. Italy’s designers clothe il bel mondo, the fashionable world. Its citizens have perfected the standard of courtesy and style known as bella figura, which applies even to life’s end. “Fare una bella morte” means to die a noble or good death.

All of which was just too bello for the British writer Aldous Huxley, who complained, “From a cornice by Michelangelo to a belpaese cheese or the most horrible dribbling baby, everything is beautiful.” But as I’ve listened to Italians, I’ve realized that not every “bello” is una bella parola (a kind word).

An out-and-out scoundrel, for example, is un mascalzone bell’e buono who might tell tales “delle belle”—real beauts or whoppers, we’d say in English—or try to farsi bello con le penne del pavone (make himself beautiful with the peacock’s feathers—with borrowed finery, that is).

Yet Italian reverence for beauty (la bellezza) is genuine and runs deep. When I complimented a hostess on her exquisitely decorated dinner table, she taught me an Italian proverb: Anche l’occhio vuole la sua parte. The eye also wants its due. Italians grow up knowing that it is as important to feed the hungry eye as the hungry stomach.

One day I was watching toddlers romp among the sculptures and fountains of Florence’s Boboli Gardens. “Do they even see the beauty all around them?” I asked my companion. “Certo,” she replied, “Sentono la bellezza.” The verb she chose—the third-person plural of sentire—goes beyond “seeing” to encompass all the senses. These fortunate children, I realized, were breathing in beauty like air. And what could be more bello than that?

Sayings and Expressions:

il bello della vita – the beauty of life

fare la bella vita – to live the high life

Questo è sole per bellezza – this is only for decoration

“Non è bello quel che è bello, è bello quel che piace”—it’s not that which is beautiful that is beautiful; what’s beautiful is what pleases one”; in other words, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.