il macellaio

tearing it up, endlessly analyzing the infinite possible interpretations in your mind, that's a waste of time, he said. the melody, the harmony of poetry is something you feel in your gut.

dario cecchini had very large hands and a collection of appropriately large knives. the wall of his shop read 'chi mangia la fiorentina unnà paura di nulla.' he who eats a steak alla fiorentina fears nothing. this is also written on his business card, which encourages prospective clients to make an appointment. dario cecchini is a butcher.

the shop was decorated with an incredible diversity of elegant art. restored antique furniture was balanced against wild modern sculpture. next to some of these latter pieces were silly sketches by the sculptors, made on the shop's own butcher paper. in the corner, a heavy door with a window looked into the stainless steel cooler: there were six sides of beef hanging on enormous hooks, and more chains hung down, waiting. already wrapped, cuts of pork, veal, and boar peeked out of the drawers in a plastic chest. in the corner chilled a stained white bucket, half full of unidentifiable innards.

behind the elegant curve of the glass display case, there was a small scale, piles of butcher paper, and an old machine that seemed capable of vacuum sealing a vespa. we were there after hours; the case was empty and spotless except for a few sheets of paper set parallel on the steel display platters - orders phoned and faxed in, notes to the two apprentices. next to the case, right out on the floor of the shop, was a wooden table about waist high. the legs were 4x4s, and the surface was 18 inches thick, curving slightly on the bottom. three feet long and two feet wide, it was half a tree: the surface was a hundred dark dents and in the center, a shallow worn into the wood by the rocking of a heavy blade. the block shone, greased with the fat of bones. i couldn't stop staring at it, and cecchini said simply, 'i made that.'

in addition to having this exclusive and impeccably decorated butcher shop, signore cecchini owns and runs a restaurant across the street that is open 3 nights a week and has no menu. you eat what he brings you. and until recently, if you caught him at the right time and in the right mood, he would recite sonnets of 13th and 14th century vulgar tuscan poets and hundreds of lines from dante's inferno before going back into his locker to hang hundreds of pounds of top-quality beef on stainless steel hooks.

but signore cecchini doesn't do dante anymore. he feels that roberto benigni and other italian actors have made dante a commodity. it's fashionable to recite dante now in soccer stadiums. or, benigni recites a canto on television and the next day every italian bookstore is sold out of the comedy, only so those books can gather dust on another set of shelves. signore cecchini is also a showman, no doubt: even while we were being introduced he threw out a wide variety of tuscan cuss words, trying to shock and alienate the theorists from the university, the people who want to take what is sacred to him and show it the self-indulgent saw of literary theory.

i asked signore cecchini if there was a connection in his mind between his love of poetry and the work that he does with his hands, tearing up animal bodies with his huge hands and his huge knives. he said, 'listen, i'm not a dante scholar, a dantista. i'm a butcher. i think that poetry is something that the soul needs to be healthy, and the only way i know how to approach poetry is to learn it by memory, to feel the words in my gut and then, from there, to speak them out loud.'

dario cecchini is relatively famous in italy and even abroad for his odd combination of callings. he has appeared on 'the today show.' this notoriety allows him to request his clients to make appointments, to serve whatever he wants at his restaurant, and to make a sack of money doing it. it could be argued that, to some extent he too has sold out, using poetry as a way to compliment and enrich himself. he doesn't seem to mind the attention it brings him.

but i want to let this butcher have his ego and his success. not because only very few butchers jump up on their counters to recite poetry for their customers and neighbors, but because all butchers know about bodies, about how much they weigh. and because all butchers cut themselves sooner or later. cecchini's reaction to this latest commodification of dante seemed almost physical, as if hearing dante torn up and sold for 50€ a seat gave him the same pain as seeing a choice cut ground up for goulash, or nicking a finger with one of his cleavers. swearing at us, refusing to recite in public, it was as if he was instinctively pressing this wound with his unmarked hand, or sticking the bleeding finger in his mouth.

why does it feel so right to do that, anyway? it makes us seem more animals than enlightened beings. and maybe that's the point. he may reject complex interpretations, he may cuss and stomp and make a little scene, and it may have all been part of the performance, the act - but i bought it: for cecchini, poetry has weight. he feels it in his bones, feels it running in his veins. to see it be made into a fad, sold on the auction block for cheap; that cuts him, and deep.