editorial
NoonJanuary 26, 2023 – 08:27
Of Piero Treccagnoli
In the end, only Pino Daniele will remain. And not much. That might be enough. We’d make it enough, but we struggle to say goodbye to the pine tree (with a small letter) of songs. And to the postcard pine tree. To Pinus Pinea, so sonorous even in the scientific name. Unfortunately the card is leaving, Naples is leaving. Enough with the mawkish invitations to the most poignant and traditionalist nostalgia that would make the eternal futurists take up the flamethrower. Well, the foliage of the Mediterranean pines of Posillipo, with that beautiful hat so choreographic, cut off in the past years, will not be replanted, pastinati as the local idiom dictates. And even those who perish by natural or parasitic death will no longer have to be replaced. There is a decision (in the form of a discouragement) by the Municipality of Naples which adapts to the trap of the opinions of a technical table set up for the pungent question and a clean cut to the controversies, regrets, the holographic of recent years. Zac and find other postcards and other tunes. Environmentalists and those looking for a little shade in the panoramic curves will have to make do with branches of a different nature. Soaring leaves caressed by the wind and no more needles, pine cones, pine nuts (with what they cost) and the scent of resin. Farewell also to the annoying chirping of the summer cicadas. Another poem to wink at the hills of foreign latitudes.
No more those roots with a prehistoric vigor that made the asphalt rise like a slow and inexorable war of the worlds. Too dangerous, we agree, harassing the most hardened motorists and runners. Among the botanical-administrative reasons that overturn age-old certainties and well-rooted clichés, one stands out: the habitat of the poetic hill, as addictive as you like, would not be the right habitat for the pine. Wow we’ve been wrong for ages and ages. They had always been there, but they were clandestine, brazenly posted. Intruders, abusive at their own risk. And even at the risk and peril of the Neapolitans, it must be said. Because they don’t stay alert at the first weather alert. However, one wonders if Posillipo is a suitable habitat for man as we have messed it up. The inadequacy of the pines to the habitat that goes up from Mergellina to go back down to Coroglio is surprising, because they are trees that, to the inexperienced eye of those unfamiliar with botany, married happily with the Mediterranean maquis, capable as they were of invading and proliferating in endless pine forests, to contend, up to half a century, living space, meter after meter, with the sand dunes of the Domitian coast. In Posillipo there were few relics left which the love for the landscape and for gouaches protected and exalted. Other times, also because the inexorable march of the parasites did the rest. Again according to the experts of the technical table, there is no remedy against their voracious mouths, you just want to spray them with poison. They resist everything. Few stories, therefore, the solitary or accompanied pine must get rid of. We’ll figure it out. The poet said: everything passes prey to the time of withering, but also, it should be added, under man’s hatchet. We’ll get over it, but don’t you dare saw Pino Daniele.
January 26, 2023 | 08:27
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