entry
Dec. 2011, updated Mar. 2021
Gay Odin
The
first time I saw the 1920s delivery van driving
around Naples with the company name "Gay Odin" on the
side, I was, of course, taken with the name. Assuming the
now anachronistic and original meaning of "gay" and
assuming the other element to refer to the Norse God of
wisdom, poetry, war and agriculture, I came up with "Happy
Wotan" (another form of the name in Germanic mythology).
"What a strange name for a company!" sez I. As it turns
out, that bit of amateur word sleuthing did pretty well in
a recent contest for Fallacious Etymologies. (I enter a
lot of such contests and do well most of the time!)The name of the company comes simply from the marriage of Isidoro Odin and Onorina Gay. Mr. Wotan was originally from Alba in Piedmont, way up north. He moved to Naples around 1900, opened a chocolate shop, did very well and, in 1922, with his wife opened what is now the best-known chocolate factory in Naples and one of the best known such establishments in all of Italy. The main plant is still in the original building off of via dei Mille in the Chiaia section of town. It was designed by Angelo Trevisan, one of the leading exponents of the turn-of-the-century style known in Italian as "Liberty" (and in English as Art Nouveau). The building was declared a national monument in 1993.
Walking into the entrance is like going back in time. Everything is burnished metal and dark mahogany, with period ads and illustrations on the walls. The factory uses a combination of functional older equipment and newer machinery. The theory underlying production at Gay Odin is that anything can be made of chocolate (such as gigantic hollow Easter eggs and small wooden logs) or at least covered in chocolate (such as coffee beans and chili peppers). The place ranks high on various lists of interesting things to do in Naples (once you finish with the castles, churches, and ancient Greek and Roman tunnels).
The delivery van, the mechanized icon of Gay Odin, referred to above is, alas, not original, but it's pretty nifty anyway. It is a reproduction of a van from the 1920s manufactured by the Fleur De Lys company in Newark in Britain. The company started reproducing these vehicles in 1983, calling the model the "Newark." They are hand-made and solid. They look old, but are mechanically quite up-to-date. Gay Odin got the one in the photo in 1990.
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Dante's Easter Egg
Easter is almost here and Gay Odin is still doing what it does best --make chocolate. It is combining that with what Italy does best, celebrate the father of the Italian Language, "the Supreme Poet," Dante Alighieri, who died 700 years ago, in 1321. The company has put the finishing touches on a Dante Easter Egg, two meters high and weighing 300 kg. All chocolate.
The Egg is decorated with a portrait of Dante and some verses from The Divine Comedy. The portrait shows him in his traditional red robes and laurel wreath, based on the fresco in the Duomo in Florence. The owner of Gay Odin, Marisa del Vecchio" told newspapers, "For about 30 years, on the occasion of Easter, we have dedicated a giant egg to a great event or character" - "this year the choice could only be Dante Alighieri." The depiction of Dante shows the poet holding a manuscript of his epic work with two sentences written on them, the first and last verses of the "Inferno" in his Divina Commedia, under any conditions among the best known and most often cited in all of Italian literature. This year they are poignantly relevant for reasons that require no further comment from me. The first verse is:
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
che la diritta via era smarrita.
In Longfellow's 1867 translation:
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
The final verse of the Inferno ends with:
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. (Inferno XXXIV, 139)
Again from Longfellow:
..."and thus we went up and saw the stars again".
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