The Feast

The Feast

By Laura Cadamuro

Photograph by Hannah Brunnschweiler

When I asked my Dutch flatmate if playing the lottery was something popular in the Netherlands, she looked at me giggling: apparently, it is just seen as any other gambling game, not at all in a positive light.  

But if you play the lottery in Italy, things can be sometimes different. This is not to say that gambling is encouraged, of course, but the lottery game has a strict connection to folkloric roots that still have their influence on how people perceive this game nowadays – even if it is becoming less and less popular, I must say.  

You may wonder why I am writing about the lottery in this magazine issue that is all about celebrating Inter Magazine’s 20th anniversary, but I can assure you there is a reason behind it. Just let me take things slowly a little bit and tell you something more about the lottery game, which has a rather fascinating history.  

The first signs of a lottery game go back to the Han dynasty and, after that, to the Roman Empire. But it is just during the Middle Ages that the first lotteries to offer tickets for sale with prizes were held. Nowadays, some countries have outlawed the lottery, while in other countries they are state-owned, and they have government given rules. The oldest – and still running! – state-owned lottery was the Dutch Staatsloterij, established in 1726. 

Betting at the lottery is not extremely popular among young people, and some of you may not know how it works – at least I did not before playing for the first and only time in my life. So, if you ever wanted to know how the lottery works, you basically have to bet on some numbers (usually between 1 and 90) and then, every month, a draw is organized and you can check whether you have winning numbers or not. Rules can be slightly different from one country to another, but that is how it works generally.  

But how to choose your numbers?  

Well, of course you can choose them randomly, just because you like them, or because you try to make mathematical predictions on the winning number, but in Italy popular beliefs and traditions enter the stage when people play. The choosing of numbers is connected to dreams. How so, you may think? Well, the fascinating thing is that a sort of “dictionaries” to interpret dreams and to make a correspondence between them and numbers, so that you can then bet them on the national lottery. One of the most famous ones is the Smorfia napoletana even if other variants exist in other parts of Italy as well; however, the Neapolitan version is widely known across the whole country.  

Example of an illustrated Smorfia napoletana. Numbers are associated with a single thing. If you, for instance, dream about a cat, according to this Smorfia, you should play number 3 at the lottery.  

This tradition traces its origins back to antiquity: in fact, the name Smorfia itself apparently originated from the Greek God Morpheus and according to some theories is tightly bound to the Jewish Kabbala, according to which every number, letter, sound or word contains a hidden meaning. The esoteric Jewish mysticism, in fact, spread throughout Europe and took different forms, such as the Catholic Kabbala, often referred to as Cabala or Cabbala1. Since the Kabbala also originated as an oral tradition, it may be possible that it entered popular beliefs and traditions and later contributed to the development of the Smorfia in the form we know it now. But, as I said, the Smorfia is also connected to the Greek God of dreams, Morpheus. It is known that in Greece it was quite common to practice oinerocriticism, i.e. interpreting dreams. Thus, the Smorfia may well be an extension of this habit, since Neaples – literally Neapolis, “new city” in Greek – was a Greek colony. There is not just one single version of the Smorfia napoletana, even though there are similarities throughout most parts of the interpretations. It  was at first an oral tradition that just later saw the light in printed editions. Since it was also made for uneducated people, a lot of illustrated adaptations exist as well. However, these latter are simpler, since a single image is connected to a number. The first written samples saw the light in the so called Libri dei sogni, “Books of dreams” and as the title says, it is clear the connection to the interpretation of dreams. In the most basic editions, these books were just dictionaries with a direct translation of an object, noun, verb etc. into a number, while more complex ones also offered game strategies2 

A variety of nouns, events, sayings and other elements are connected to numbers. For instance, an insane person is number 22, the hen is number 57, but a singing hen is number 8 and a hen with a chicken is number 3. One of the most famous ones is the last one, 90: fear. So, if you ever have a dream where you are frightened out of your wits by a singing hen, you should play 90 and 8.  

Why I have been talking to you about the lottery for so long? A striking and unintended coincidence occurred. In the Smorfia napoletana number 20, the one we are celebrating with this issue, has the most suitable association of all: feast!  

Feasts, celebrations and rituals have a long and enthralling history themselves, and it is of particular interest the analysis of the differences between festivities in the antiquity and our own modern way of experiencing them. According to some scholars, we have lost a proper way to celebrate rituals, and we cannot experience them as we did in antiquity, since we do not own the connection to an alternative or magic dimension anymore3. During the 18th century, festivities became more and more something that took place for a selected élite, rather than a community shared event, and it took the form of feasts how we are used to think about them now: a gathering of people having a nice time, probably dancing, often with some kind of performance in the middle, when we ourselves are not enacting a performance, playing a role we think we must somehow assume. Of course, there is nothing wrong with feasts the way we celebrate them now, but it is interesting to notice how it is one of the many signs of a cultural shift that traces back to the scientific revolution. But analyzing in detail the changes in how we experience rituals nowadays would take up too much space here.  

So, for now, let’s just celebrate Inter’s 20th birthday! 

Bibliography:

General definitions of the Smorfia napoletana, the lottery and the Kabbala are took from Wikipedia 

 

On Kabbala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah 

On Smorfia napoletana: de Sanctis Ricciardone, P., “La “Smorfia” nell’Ottocento italiano: tradizione scritta e tradizione orale”, in La ricerca folklorica, n. 15, apr. 1987, pp. 27-32, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1479480 

On rituals: Starobinski, J., L’invention de la liberté, 1700-1789, Skira, 1964 

Jesi, F., La festa: antropologia, etnologia, folklore, Rosenberg & Sellier, 1977 

Aby Warburg talked about it in different essays, among others “I costumi teatrali per gli intermezzi del 1589, in Id., La rinascita del paganesimo antico” and Warburg, A. and Mainland, W. F., “A Lecture on Serpent Ritual”, in Journal of the Warburg Institute, n. 4, Apr. 1939, pp. 277-292, https://www.jstor.org/stable/750040  

Han, B.-C., The Disappearance of Rituals, Polity Press, 2020 

Picture is taken from https://www.pmstudionews.com/home/news-e-colonna-infame/news/la-colonna-infame-la-smorfia-napoletana-e-la-fotografia  

Laura Cadamuro is a master student at UvA. Born and raised in Italy, she moved to Amsterdam to study communication. She studied Modern Philology during her previous master and literature remains her first love, but she’s curious about anything that captures her attention. Her main interests are comparative literature studies and she always wants to find out more on anything that relates to art, philosophy or sociology (especially when it’s intertwined with politics).

Hannah Brunnschweiler is bachelor’s student of Communication Science. As of now, she does not know what specific domain she wants to study in but is curious about persuasive or political communication. In her studies, she enjoys statistics and conducting research. Outside of university, she enjoys going on walks, listening to music or reading. She loves being creative, whether that is through photography or learning how to play a new song. For Inter, Hannah acts as a co-editor-in-chief as well as managing media and outreach.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *