The mainland island of Ischia was uninhabitable for centuries due to pirates. This ancient fortress behind me was built off the coast. Thousands of people, including my ancestors, an order of nuns called The Poor Clares, and the star of this story, a poet named Vittoria Colonna, once lived here. You might recognize the location from My Brilliant Friend.
Michelangelo said the stonecutter’s wife who nursed him in the quarry when his mother was ill put marble dust, and the hammer and chisels, in his blood. I feel this way about the volcanic dust of Naples, and this rock in particular.
Seismic activity in the region causes the ground to tremble with a vibration you feel in your bones. According to mythology, this is caused by a monster locally known as Tifeo who once fought with Zeus, the king of the gods.
Tifeo, a giant monster with flame blazing from his mouth, leathery bat wings and a hundred dragon heads, nearly beat Zeus, whose thunderbolts were powerless against this foe. Zeus flung a rock at his enemy — this rock — and pinned the giant underneath it where he remains to this day. He vents his rage in the form of earthquakes, flame and eruptions. He is visible in various ways in the verdant landscape, including his profile appearing in the shape of Mount Epomeo, for example.
Ischia’s long history rises from the sea, with the remnants of ancient inhabitants sometimes surfacing. But one inhabitant grabbed me on the first day I visited. A poet who called this rock mio scoglio — my rock. Her personal mantra, “They break themselves who try to break me.” She also compared herself to the waves beating on the rock’s raw surface below. Vittoria Colonna. I saw her painted eyes on the cover of a book in the gift shop of Il Monastero, the hotel on the rock lovingly maintained and restored by the Mattera family.
The last time I was on the rock, Nicola Mattera took me up to the garden, with the ruins of Vittoria Colonna’s castle behind us, and told me he feels my soul on the rock. And it is. I feel it there now.
Who was this mysterious figure, Vittoria Colonna? Why was her fate tied to this rock?