Laudator Temporis Acti

Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989), The Day of the Owl, tr. Archibald Coloquhoun and Arthur Oliver (New York: New York Review Books, 2003), p. 16:

Sposito had a baby face, but the brothers Colasberna and their associates were in holy terror of his presence, the terror of a merciless inquisition, of the black seed of the written word. 'White soil, black seed. Beware the man who sows it. He never forgets,' says the proverb.

Aveva una faccia infantile, il carabiniere Sposito: ma i fratelli Colasberna e i loro soci dalla sua presenza ebbero mortale inquietudine, il terrore della spietata inquisizione, della nera semenza della scrittura. Bianca campagna, nera semenza: l'uomo che la fa, sempre la pensa dice l'indovinello della scrittura.

Thanks to Eric Thomson for a link to the riddle (l'indovinello).

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More from Eric Thomson:

Raimondo Moncada (Agrigento b.1967) writes (original in Italian):

You carry Sicily within you. Always. Even when you’re no longer breathing its air. Its soul, its culture, its language, its ancient wisdom, and its idioms remain within you. In the book Sicily as Metaphor (an interview by Marcelle Padovani, published by Mondadori), Leonardo Sciascia speaks at length about his homeland, his works, his mentors, and his connections. There’s a passage in which Leonardo Sciascia discusses writing, mentioning the old saying “Bianca campagna, niura simenza, l’omu chi la fa sempri la penza” (White field, black seed, the man who does it is always thinking about it).

“I love to recall a riddle that goes: ‘Bianca campagna, nera semenza, l'uomo che la fa sempre la pensa’. The ‘white field’ is the sheet of paper, the ‘black seed’ is the writing, and ‘the man who does it’ is the writer, who must always be on his guard, thinking about what he’s writing and what he’s written.

This is a riddle from my region, and its true message is actually this: writing is important for those who know how to do it, and even more so for those who don’t know how to do it, don’t know how to see it, and don’t know how to read it.”

Moncada states that the old saying ("antico detto”), which Sciascia calls a riddle (“indovinello”) is from his region (Agrigento) and quotes the original Sicilian dialect version, which appears to be, if not a conflation or intellectualized deformation, at least a variation, of the following “indovinelli", recorded in Giuseppe Pitré (1841-1916), Biblioteca delle tradizioni popolari siciliane vol. XX (Turin and Palermo: Carlo Clausen, 1897), pp 226-227:

a) Bianca maisa e nivura semenza,
L’omu chi simina sedi e penza.

[Bianco maggese e nera sementa
l’uomo che semina, siede e pensa]

White fallow land and black seed
the man who sows, sits and thinks.

b) Bianca muntagna e nìgrura simenza,
Miatu l’omo chi si la penza!

[Bianca montagna e nera semenza,
Beato l'uomo che la pensa!]

White mountain and black seed
Blessed is the man who thinks of it [i.e. writing]

In Sciascia, ‘sempre la pensa’ allows what was originally a riddle to be elevated into an apophthegm throwing light on the writer’s craft, glossed ‘on his guard, thinking about what he’s writing and what he’s written’. In the context of the The Day of the Owl, it has the force of a threat (‘He never forgets’). ‘Si la penza’ in riddle b) I take to mean simply ‘solves the riddle’ and in a) ‘sedi (e penza)’ contrasts the sedentary nature of writing compared with (upright) sowing. On the analogy of secondary epic, ‘sempri la penza’ sounds like secondary riddling.

Related post: The Quill Is My Plough.