Pulecenella

Pulecenella. Seventy-five is the mask of Naples, and he isn’t the cheerful figure sold to tourists: Pulcinella is hungry, takes slaps, says the truths others keep quiet and survives everything. He was born in street theater as a starving servant, and over four centuries he became the picture an entire people formed of itself — cunning out of necessity, never mean, able to laugh the day after a disaster. His black mask covers half his face and leaves the mouth uncovered: it hides and shows at the same time, which is exactly what anyone who has to get by does. The baggy white costume belongs to someone who owns nothing and has nothing to lose. In dreams, seventy-five arrives when there’s double-dealing involved, but the likable kind: putting a good face on a bad situation, playing a part so as not to make things worse, saying a serious truth as a joke because, said seriously, nobody would listen. It’s also the number of those who don’t give up: Pulcinella takes his beatings and stays on his feet, and that’s why Naples truly loves him. The images that lead here look like him: the jaw, which the mask leaves bare, and the threat, which he takes every day and answers with a joke. If seventy-five came up in your dream, there was a mask. It isn’t an accusation — masks are useful, and anyone who has never worn one has had an easy life. The question, if anything, is whether you still feel at home underneath it.