Odesa and Naples: Exploring Beauty, Decay, and Cultural Identity

- If I were 40 years younger, tell me, would you marry me?
- If I were 40 years older, would you marry me?
- You're smart!

I was inspired to write this blog by the movie Partenope by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino. This movie is primarily about beauty. The action takes place in Naples. The main character is a girl named Parthenope, born in 1950 and given a name that refers to ancient Greek mythology. It is Parthenope's siren that is mentioned in the myth of the founding of Naples. This is "a monumental and deeply romantic story of the life of one extraordinary woman," the synopsis says. "For me, this is a movie about the beauty of the decay of my city. My Odesa by the sea. Who is she-a siren or a myth?

We recently talked about this with Marina Avdeeva, an art historian from Odesa.

Я: Listen, we are similar to these Italians. The sea, the slow vibe, family ties, matriarchy, kichukha, corruption...

М: I know Naples well and have been to almost all the locations myself. The place where Parthenope is brought by the King of Naples is the poorest and most controversial cluster of living in Europe. The quarter is located right behind the main cathedral in the center. There is a network of catacombs, a whole city. These are the dynasties of smugglers. And the bishop? Animal intuition, the senses of a hunter. Naples and Odesa have similar characters.

"Fleas and aesthetics are intertwined in Odesa," says Odesa-based photographer Oleksandr Yakymchuk, whose photographs are compared to Naples in the 1950s.

Photo: Oleksandr Yakymchuk

Glitter and poverty. I like to watch this. I love the way Mrs. Lyudmyla in a white fur coat, who is known to the whole neighborhood in our dormitory center, drinks coffee in the fierce Odesa brothels. By the way, it's also near the cathedral.

Photo: Natalia Dovbysh

Recently, I came across the news that Edward Gardner, a conductor from London, was performing in one of the opera houses in Naples. The day before, two choristers had fought there. The conductor said that the choir consisted of two quarreling mafia families who had mutilated each other. The mayor of Naples called these words "serious and unfounded accusations."

"This is a high," I screamed when I read it. I can still see Trukhanov and his mother at the concert. It doesn't take long to tell Odessans about the two mafia families.

What interested me the most in the film was the ironic speech of the actress Greta Kuhl, who came to her native Naples and accused the locals of bad taste. It reminded me of my youth, when I was a student at the Faculty of Philosophy and even then we were talking about how Odesa is a swamp for a person who hasn't found his feet.

Here is the full quote from the "divine virgin": "The problem is with you, Neapolitans. You are gloomy without knowing it, you walk hand in hand with terror without knowing it. You are untidy and steeped in folklore. Everyone is laughing at you. And you do not notice. Are you proud of being smart? But what will this intelligence of yours bring you? You are poor, cowardly. You are always whining. You steal and sin. You are always ready to blame others. On the invaders. Corrupt politicians. On an unscrupulous developer. The real shame is you. You, the city of miserable disaster. And you brag about it. You have no future. I am no longer a Neapolitan. I'm going back to the North. I was able to escape, but you did not! You are all dead."

What do I want to say? Odesa can also become a kind of siren and drag you down, but only if you have not found yourself. As soon as a person understands everything about himself, he returns to Odesa or stops hating it so much. Think of the former director of the Odesa Art Museum, Oleksandr Roitburd, who once returned to Odesa from Kyiv. Even now, despite the war, artists and musicians return to Odesa because they cannot live without it. Because they have friends, family, lovers, exes here. The wealthy North has money, but not a soul that needs a performance.

"Odesa is the center of the universe," says my producer friend, who lives in Kyiv but keeps coming back here.

I answer that we, like the gods, have everything: glitter, poverty, the pretense of capital gloss, and intimacy. A Greek myth, in a word.

"Odesa is a kind of trash that you miss in Kyiv," film critics who came to our Odesa Film Festival once explained to me, swimming naked at night and drinking champagne on the roadway.

But not everyone sees Odesa this way. Nowadays, many people even close to me, who do not feel this sunny, provocative and freedom-loving city in their hearts, have started to talk about how imperial, Soviet, crooked and gangster Odesa still prevails in the mass culture. Therefore, everything that happened must be destroyed, erased from memory.

That's where the trash is. They want to make something sterile and "Ukrainian and spiritual" out of Odesa. This is a misconception. The city has always chosen a pro-Ukrainian position, but it has never been from above. I'm sorry, North, here is the South - things don't work like that.

I'm really sick of these "mother's decolonizers" who talk about the "Russianness" of our Kira Muratova, the inadmissibility of showing her films made in Russian, and calls not to call her a Ukrainian director.

"Why are the victims of Stalin's repressions, Odesa's Russian-speaking writers Olesha and Babel, and the same Kataev and Paustovsky, dangerous?" asks Ivan Kozlenko, an Odesa writer, cultural critic, and former director general of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center. "The cleansing of Odesa's multicultural landscape threatens to leave behind a wasteland, not a new local mythology," he believes.

"When I see these tacky videos about Ukrainian Odesa fromUkrainska Pravda and many other publications, I feel sorry for you. You are fighting the old myth of Odesa and you yourself are shilling for Privoz, showing the disgusting saleswoman Sveta. But my Odesa is not Sveta. Although I have nothing against her personally. I'm just not talking about that. Odesa is about writers, musicians, artists, photographers. Where are they in your city?

In your photos: Stepan Alekian

Odesa's "bandits and drunken sailors" never even dreamed of the way you are pushing"Ukrainian spirituality" on them.

But I don't want to talk about it anymore.

When the news changes so rapidly that you already live in a world where Ukraine has "started a war," it is important not to lose yourself and go cuckoo.

My answer is to turn off the tape, turn on the Mediterranean hedonism and the intimacy of being.

"I can't live in the United States for the next four years and breathe the same air as Elon Musk," says Oprah Winfrey about her decision to stop her legendary show and move to Italy.

I understand.

Photo: Nata Chernetska

We are all in the gutter. It's just that some of us are looking at the stars, as Oscar Wilde said. So, I invite you to go to the sea and look at the stars. Yes, I want to live forever, but here, between heaven and earth, maybe in the huts on the 16th century side of the Big Fountain.

Ната Чернецька

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