FIRST STAGE: PORTELA COLLA
BORGESE GENIUS LOCI
"Up there in the Madonie, the name given to the Sicilian Apennines, where I have never yet returned, the country of my childhood lies. In all the grand scenery, oleanders lining the classic valley, olive trees from rim to rim, clear peaks descending in rows from central citadels down to the sea, and finally the sea of Imera, cut into a wedge. Behind this final dramatic scene, no other city or village can be seen. Polizzi Generosa, draped in its superb epithet, towers alone".
G.A. Borgese, Corriere della Sera, 30 luglio 1952, now in Gandolfo Librizzi, Il viaggio di un cosmopolita. Il percorso umano e culturale di Borgese attraverso le lettere ai familiari, Palermo University Press, 2022, p. 162
SECOND STAGE: PIANO BATTAGLIA
BORGESE GENIUS LOCI
"The road skirts the Madonie mountain range, a classically sonorous name for mountains as beautiful as the Apennines in Abruzzo, shaded by beech trees, home to hawks and the song of crusading waters and heroic names such as the Piano della Battaglia, which recurs several times in memory of the stubborn Muslim resistance to Count Roger's crusading army".
G.A. Borgese, Il grande circuito della targa Florio, article published in the L’Ora newspaper in November 1905 to mark the first edition of the Targa Florio held in spring 1906, now in Gandolfo Librizzi, Il viaggio di un cosmopolita. Il percorso umano e culturale di Borgese attraverso le lettere ai familiari, Palermo University Press, 2022, p. 55
SUMMIT OF MOUNT MUFARA
Etna and Polizzi are visible.
BORGESE GENIUS LOCI
"In the small mountain village, up there on the cliff, with a view of the sea, not far from here - I like to say that I am a Palermitan because of the sea I saw as a child, but I am also somewhat a native of Catania, our mater artium, the artistic capital of our country, because of the mountain on which I was born and which has its roots connected with that of Mount Etna - on that mountain where I have sometimes fancied that the soldiers of Nicias marching from Imera towards Syracuse built a castle and called it polition, the small city: what a great honour, therefore, to be not only of Greek origin in Sicily but even of Ionian origin - in that house of which I wrote a memory which did not leave me indifferent as I was writing it in my final narrative book that I will publish shortly [...]".
G.A. Borgese, Discorso sulla Sicilia (ai siciliani?), 1931, Fondo Borgese presso Biblioteca Umanistica dell’Università agli Studi di Firenze; now in G.A. Borgese, Una Sicilia senza Aranci, a cura di Ivan Pupo, Roma, Avagliano editore, 2005, pp. 101-102
