There are languages whose grammar and vocabulary have evolved differently according to the social standing of those who speak them; languages, that is, in which there is a learned and courtly version alongside a variant that is uneducated and rooted in the vernacular, without the latter necessarily being a simplification of the former. Then, there are languages in which the decisive factor is the gender of the speaker: constructions and vocabulary that are commonly used by men are unseemly, uncommon, or even religiously forbidden to women, and vice versa. Some traces of this differentiation can be found (or could until a few years ago) in Western languages as well, where many crude words, and most curse words, are still restricted to male use.
There is, however, an odd expression that sounds distinctly feminine and whose use, limited to northern Italy though not strictly to dialect, is slowly dying out. Leggere la vita (“to read the life”) of someone means to speak ill of him, to talk about him behind his back, to gossip about him, and to spread stories about his misdeeds, whether real or imaginary. The term is used only in the second and third person: I never read anyone his life. I’ve never heard a man utter this expression, and if someone were to oblige me to do so, I confess that I would feel an inhibition, unmistakably ancestral in character. Of course, I’m not trying to say that only women “read the life”; men do it and always have, but they don’t use the term to describe it.
You might think that the phrase alludes to “reading someone’s life on his hand,” the way palm readers do, but that is quite unlikely: all they read on the palm of your hand is positive and pleasant traits and predictions. All the same, it’s possible that this interpretation had something to do with the popularity of the locution, as if, by spreading word of someone’s misdeeds, one truly were “reading,” in depth and, as it were, against the light, the nature and purpose of his life, recognizing his intrinsic wickedness; it has long been noted that the soul of language is pessimistic.
The true origin of the phrase is different. While reading a fine German novel by Luise Rinser (Der schwarze Esel, The Black Donkey), I found an expression I’d never heard before, “die Leviten zu lesen,” that is, “to read the Levites,” in an episode that had nothing to do with the Levites or Leviticus, and in a context that instead suggested “to scold, to remonstrate.” It stirred my curiosity, perhaps in part because it involved in some sense my own name, and I tried to clarify the matter. It promised to be a modest but enjoyable effort, like all projects that one undertakes not because one’s job requires it or to acquire merit or prestige but out of the gratuitous curiosity of an inexpert dilettante—out of a sense of fun and playfulness, a wish to “play at being a philologist,” the way children “play at being a doctor,” or “play at being ladies.” I started leafing through dictionaries and vocabularies.
To my surprise, the German dictionary contained the phrase. Under “Levit,” or Levite, it added, laconically, “jemandem die Leviten lesen” (that is, “to read the Levites to someone”): to scold someone. Enchanting, but less than helpful, were the indications offered by the venerable Gran Dizionario Piemontese-Italiano, by V. di Sant’Albino, which I transcribe here verbatim:
—Lese la vita a un: To reprimand someone, the same as giving someone a rebuke or reproof, that is, to chastise, deliver a resounding lecture; and also simply to tell someone off, loud and clear.
And a little further down:
—Apeña chità un, lesie la vita apress: Fare le scale di sant’Ambrogio. Provincial manner of speech, meaning, to censure someone, criticize him, speak ill of him immediately after parting company.
Terse, but definitive, was the Dizionario etimologico del dialetto piemontese, by A. Levi, published by Paravia and recently reprinted by the Bottega di Erasmo. Under the entry Vita (leze la) we find:
“To reproach.” From the monastic custom of reading Leviticus at matins: A. XVI.367.
By following this last bibliographic indication, I learned that at the turn of the twentieth century several linguists had delved into this manner of reading the life, and in their opinion as well the two expressions, Italian and German, have the same origin: at matins, which is usually in the dark of night, it was customary in many monasteries and convents—after the psalms and hymns had been sung, and following the reading of the Holy Scriptures and especially of Leviticus—for the prior to address the individual monks, praising them for their achievements or, more frequently, criticizing them for their shortcomings; in other words, once “the Levites were read,” the scoldings were about to begin. Now, to Italian ears, it is only a short step from “leggere i Leviti” to “leggere la vita.”
We may well suppose that, in some monastic order with especially strict rules, this reading, unfailingly repeated in the chill of the night, harbinger of the bitter medicine of reproofs, roused an intense anguish among the younger brothers, and that its reverberations, however distorted and now almost indecipherable, have come down to us on the age-old stream of everyday language. In the same way, at the mouth of a river, we may see fragments of ordinary objects floating, no longer recognizable, which have been torn away and dragged downstream by the current from some remote, unknown valley.