The Economist May 28th 2022 Culture 77UrbanadventuresThe living and the dead
“F
inding himself under increasing
scrutiny from no fewer than seven
cardinals,” Raimondo di Sangro, prince of
Sansevero in the 18th century, “had them
killed and from their skin and bones inge
niously fashioned seven chairs.” It is, as
Marius Kociejowski soon concedes, “terri
ble to begin a chapter on a lie or what may
be construed as a cheap ploy in order to
grab the reader’s attention”. The same
doubtless applies to the start of a review.
Mr Kociejowski at least has a purpose: to
illustrate the “black legend” surrounding
one of the many extraordinary characters
who flit through the pages of his equally
extraordinary book.
A Neapolitan alchemist, Freemason
and inventor, di Sangro mastered eight
languages, made fireworks that for the first
time included “several shades of the colour
green” and invented a waterproof cape, a
doublebarrelled arquebus and—why, oh
why, did this not catch on before the ad
vent of Twitter?—a punctuation mark to
denote that the preceding sentence is to be
taken ironically. He also dabbled in palin
genesis (the reconstruction of bodies fromtheirashes),oneofseveral reasons for the
belief that there was something supernat
ural behind the astonishing, veiled statues
he commissioned for his family chapel,
the Cappella Sansevero.
To write about Naples, you really need
to be a poet—or, even better, an antiquari
an bookseller. Mr Kociejowski is both and
has produced a delightful work that is as
eclectic, labyrinthine, ironic and shocking
as the city itself.
The idea of “a door leading to another
door and yet another serves perfectly as a
way to understand Naples”, he remarks.
And that is what, metaphorically, awaits
his readers. “The Serpent Coiled in Naples”
opens with a discussion of an utterly futile
tome. “De Regia Theca Calamaria”(“On a
Royal Inkpot”) was published in 1756 by
Jacopo Martorelli, a Neapolitan professor
who devoted 738 pages to the said inkpot
before it was shown unequivocally to have
been a jewellery box—a discovery that un
surprisingly tipped him into a “profound
existential crisis”.
That is merely the first of Mr Kociejow
ski’s doors. Others introduce readers to the
theory that “much of what we take to be
Greek culture was in fact exported from
ancient Italy”; to a rap band that has com
pressed into a fiveminute song the entire
history of Naples; and to the incisions in
the façade of the church of Gesù Nuova that
are claimed to be Aramaic letters used inthe 15th century to represent musical
notes. The score they produce yields a 45
minute piece that apparently, and rather
disappointingly, sounds like “the sound
track to a lowbudget horror film”.
There is perhaps no city in Europe in
which the living and the dead coexist so
intimately as in Naples, none in which pa
ganism is so inextricably entwined with
Christianity, and none in which the past—
including the very remote past—is so
much a part of the present. Among the
places Mr Kociejowski visits is another
church, San Pietro ad Aram. The current
structure was built in the second half of the
17th century. But “it replaced an earlier
church built in 870 or thereabouts. This in
turn was erected over an earlier paleo
Christian church and, beneath that, an
ancient Greek temple.”
That paleoChristian church leads Mr
Kociejowski to the first bishop of Naples, St
Aspren, to whom believers pray to fend off
migraine. Bayer, a German pharmaceutical
firm, adapted the saint’s name for its won
der drug, aspirin—or so Mr Kociejowski
avers. But the headacherelieving divine
does not feature in Bayer’s explanation of
its product’s name, which it says comes
from the Latin name of the plant from
which salicylic acid, the aspirin precursor,
is derived. Nor was Raffaele Piria, the
chemist who first isolated salicylic acid, a
Neapolitan, as the author states. Rather, he
was born in Calabria. Every so often, the ro
mantic in Mr Kociejowski gets the better of
the rigorous (indeed, heroic) researcher.
To write his book, he lived in Forcella,
one of the dodgiest districts in the home
town of the Camorra, the Neapolitan Ma
fia. Forcella means “fork”, as in “bifurca
tion” or “Y”. “Dig deeper and what comes
up is the symbol of the Pythagorean School
that was located somewhere in the area,”
he writes. A digression on the use of the
Ycross in medieval art (and on the priest’s
chasuble) arrives at a group of stones near
a division in the road in Forcella, probably
dating from the 3rd century bc, when they
formed part of the ancient wall of Greek
Neapolis or an equally venerable gate. On a
railing around the stones hangs a sign
“calling upon passersby to remember
Maikol Giuseppe Russo, a young father of
two, who became yet another innocent
bystander fallen to random gunfire.”
Naples is populated by Italy’s friendli
est, cheeriest, most welcoming citizens. It
is a magically seductive place in which it
can often feel as if the wisdom of an older,
emptier world is tantalisingly within
reach. Yet it is also a city in which you can
find, as Mr Kociejowski did one night on
the main thoroughfare, the body of a drug
addict shot dead through the eye.
As he notes, it is quite possible to
become Neapolitan. “Whetheritistobe
recommended is another matter.”nA portrait of Naples captures the beguiling city’s peril and allureThe Serpent Coiled in Naples.
By Marius Kociejowski. Haus Publishing;
464 pages; £20. To be published in
America by University of Chicago Press
in September; $27.95