Page 36 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

36 from Italy to the Canary Islands

still remember how amazed I was as a child when, for the first time,
on a clear Spring day, on the terrace of my house, I caught sight of
Corsica, far far away, seemingly floating on the blue waters of the
Ligurian Sea. Who knows how many times Lanzarotto Malocello, too, as
a small child, might have daydreamed while looking at that view, imagin-
ing adventures and discoveries across the sea...
I believe that it was precisely those views and those horizons which
led the Ligurians to love the sea. Living on a land lacking in resources but
with plenty of timber, positioned before the flat “motorway” of the sea,
kingdom of winds, the Ligurians developed courage, a sense of adventure
and trade-related business.
I am honoured to introduce this book which I believe can help lift the
veil of mystery still surrounding our hero, of whom our city is proud to be
the birthplace, who walked along the streets of the old walled village and
who, as just a boy, learnt how to control sails and rudder by “tacking” in
our waters, just like in a game, like all those of his age did.
Seven centuries have passed since then, the blink of an eye in the big
picture of the history of man, and yet, although only twenty generations
separate us from him, there are very few documents and the information
we have is conflicting. What is certain, however, is that the Malocellos
were such a rich Genoese family, with land and houses in this area, that the
malus augellus is still a part of the coat of arms of nearby Celle.
His journeys were more those of an explorer than of a trader, animated
by that “ardore a divenir del mondo esperto” (desire to be experienced with
the world); by consent the rediscovery of the insulae Fortunatae in modern
times was attributed to him, on the route of Dante’s Ulysses, who the Divine
Poet, precisely in those years, imagined as having gone beyond the Pillars
of Hercules “sempre acquistando dal lato mancino” (evermore gaining on
the larboard side) and reaching a place with a very high mountain in view.
The tales of sailors who travelled along that route speak of an extreme-
ly high mountain (Pico de Teide), the view of which accompanied them
for hours and hours, and which I like to think of as having been quoted in
the poem as an echo of the discovery which had just been made in those
very years when Dante was writing his Comedy, or as fantastic news of
someone who had pushed himself too far but was still able to return.
Because many stories about the lands across the “unknown sea” circu-
lated among sailors, also because, especially in Lusitania, the gulf stream
would wash up wood from unknown trees or fire-finished canes and more