Levanzo. Loneliest island yet
Levanzo is “island” by definition. Few houses, narrow and quiet streets, total absence of any motorized means of locomotion. Otherwise, life is punctuated by the sea and the whims of the weather. In this small corner of the world, enclosed in just under 6 km2, there are no hotels. Here you arrive and decide how long to stay in this seaport. Let it be for a limited amount of time. Or forever.
In this long pursuit of what I can call “Slow Living,” I have often wondered what drives one to embrace what is not just a passage of time, but a definite philosophy, the result of dedication and ideals.
I have not yet come to a clear conclusion, but what I can say is that it all comes down to essentiality. To a return to appreciating the true value of everything, whether it is a simple way of life or a boorish lovesickness. Because losing (and this remains a personal virtuosity of mine, which I am sure is shared by most) the path that leads us to essentiality is a characteristic of modern man, who can never completely disconnect himself from everything around him; especially given the current situation, in an ever-evolving and changing world where everything is firmly connected.
And instead, there are those places, outside of time and space, where this ideal, appears vivid. We have already learned about them during this long journey, which once again takes us by sea.
Levanzo: Intimate island for long inhale and thinning thoughts. A certainty, greeted by a blink of the eye and a sigh of the wind. This isolation makes it wild and romantic. Certainly it was its insignificant size and marginality that attracted me. I wondered who could live here and how. I wondered what it felt like to be in the middle of the sea, in summer but especially in winter, in this kind of pebble thrown into the Mediterranean.
“The sea – the horizon of all islanders […] All extend their gaze, imagination and hope into the distances of the ocean […] The sea enters into the latent longing and nostalgia of the islander – whether of brooding disposition or exuberant temperament. It represents infinity.” Maria Lamas
All visions of the sea. And the islander makes each vision a dream-his dream. Between the islanders and the sea there are secret affinities, just as there are secret resentments and passions, which many times do not pass from the subconscious. These are the feelings that originate insular psychology. I am speaking in general terms, with special reference to the islander’s yearning for escape and the deep-rooted love that forever clings him to the island, wherever he is, whatever his background, even though he knows that he would feel asphyxiated again if he came back here to stay.
“I passionately love my island! Regardless of that, I feel so sick, nostalgic here. But I cannot live for a long time away from it.”
– outburst of an islander who lucidly understands the spell and “sickness” of the island.
A dualism that becomes an inherent characteristic, just like that feeling that has no definite definition and takes refuge in a simple “mal” for a linguistic convention.
Why the island? Because it is the point where I isolate myself, where I am alone: it is a point separated from the rest of the world, not because it actually is, but because in my state of mind I can separate myself from it.
How can one not find oneself in the words of Ungaretti, which exhaustively summarize this condition of being. In which each of us is “forced” by the island itself to carry out that process of introspection.
Starting with the very pivotal element: The sea. That reflects, summarizes, amplifies, embraces, splits…and lets loose the capacity to love.
© Italysegreta
James Gandola