FIRST STAGE: CHIESA DI MARIA SANTISSIMA ASSUNTA
BORGESE GENIUS LOCI
"It is 17 September, the day of the patron saint, San Gandolfo, a Lombard Franciscan who walked as far as the Madonie Mountains and his broom bloomed with jasmine lilies. It is no longer lily season; but I still have in my nostrils, and in every pore, the aroma and blue of a September day between those mountains and the sea."
G.A. Borgese, Nature morte, Melone e gelato, Corriere della Sera, Wednesday 19 March 1952
SECOND STAGE: THE PROCESSION OF THE SANTO AFTER THE "ACCHIANATA"
BORGESE GENIUS LOCI
"There was the beautiful procession, with the many-coloured wooden saint borne aloft, and the cries (Viva viva San Gannorfu) the bearers and the people at the breaks and passages; and behind the saint, the priests, in gowns - so many, in the municipality of five thousand souls and thirty churches - with candles in their hands - but the flame is almost invisible, such is the light from heaven - and the litanies […]"
G.A. Borgese, Nature morte, Melone e gelato, Corriere della Sera, Wednesday 19 March 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. 164
FINAL STAGE: THE FAIR
BORGESE GENIUS LOCI
"The bells ringing, incense, firecrackers, tambourines, long meals, the folded hands. In the afternoon, the main attraction is the fair in Piazza Grande. There is crockery; a battering ram or bull bedecked with flowers rides through; above all, there are the stalls with a small selection of toys, and the nougats, almonds, hard mint candy, liquorice and even ice cream. But our home is far away; it is on the last spur of the hill".
G.A. Borgese, Nature morte, Melone e gelato, Corriere della Sera, Wednesday 19 March 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. 164