Venice, Wish You Were Here #8

This one is interesting because the postal rubber stamp is different. Most of the postcards I’ve shared here have a round rubber stamp, often from Venezia Ferrovia. But this one is Palazzo Grassi. Too bad part of it is missing!

It reads, “Cari saluti ora. Chi sempre ti pensa. Luciano” Dated 25 July 1951.

Though I speak some Italian, this phrasing was odd to me, so I reached out to Adriano to ask for help with the translation. Here is what he replied:

“The words are clear but it is the arrangement within the sentence suggests a text that is not recent. It was written so long ago. The normal phrase would be:

‘Chi ti pensa sempre’ (subject, verb, adverb) but inverting the words changes everything and the sentence acquires an ancient and poetic tone but stylistically very dated and a bit cloying.

It is as if the writer had wanted to draw attention to the adverb ‘always’ and had wanted to lay an impassable boulder at the beginning of the sentence almost to make the recipient feel guilty communicating to him that it was his only and constant thought, his fixation.”

What a fabulous interpretation!

The best part: Notice the handwriting on the front, bottom right corner, where Luciano has written “cara mia” with an arrow pointing to the corner. Maybe he was sitting in that spot when he wrote the postcard. Can you read the name of the recipient?

The address is Nella Corcetta Pulfero, Provincia, Udine, a tiny town of 902 people (in 2019) in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, up near the border. It’s not really that far from Venice, at least not as far as other postcards I’ve shared. Still, Luciano seems to be sad to be away from the one he always thinks about.