35. I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance (it is a Machiavelli in the shape of a devil who expresses this maxim in the prologue to Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta).
36. The sacred is in fact the place or experience or activity in which there have been unreserved compromises, without any possible reconsideration. Now there is nothing more compromising than to give origin to a life or to put an end to one. To conceive or to kill.
37. The italian state: a monstrous and vulnerable system, an arbitrary and vindictive machine on the verge of openly avowed illegitimacy, but at that same time recklessly lax, a veritable administrative colander. Its laws often have the look and feel of offhanded reprisals. Since the state assumes that you want to defraud it, it goes ahead and defrauds you, even beating you to the draw, so now you have no option but to be even faster, and extract your handgun to defraud the state first, necessarily becoming, this time for real, the con man that the state first took you for. In other words, nobody cares whether the citizen is honest or dishonest: he is given the shakedown on the assumption that he’s out to shake down others, so that in the end, what with the succession of reciprocal extortions (this must be the underlying reasoning) between state and individual, you wind up breaking even in the end.
39. Cursed be this entirely literary obsession with “the best of youth,” that nucleus of untainted hopes and innocence: everyone convinced of course that it was theirs, the best of youth, the most luminous and courageous—the winged ideals, the “stupendous passion” . . .
40. Two quotes from saints about Italy’s two capitals: “Milan fears gods but little, men not at all” (St. Ambrose) and “the Romans devour one another” (St. Jerome).
41. What a pain in the neck is the constant daily journalism exercise of anti-Italian rhetoric! As old as Noah’s ark, embellished with a variety of contemptuous rhetorical flourishes. What a relentless annoyance, the refrain that we, poor we, “never had the Protestant Reformation”! Well, Germany had it, in fact, a German invented it, that Protestant Reformation, and the starry sky overhead and the moral law below—and yet how the Germans waved their arms, tossing flowers at the SS troops marching past! Whereas we . . . ancient, dating back to time out of mind, but still too recent; decadent for centuries now but still spoiled rotten by the economic boom and terrorized by the recession; overloaded with culture, every sort of culture, especially the kind that can be transformed in a single night from “ruin” into “rubble”—and yet deeply ignorant, the true donkeys of Europe, the last in the class, with a university system worse than anything you can find in the Third World, overtaken even by countries with mass starvation, where the women go around with their heads covered; illiterates poisoned by a steady overdose of TV; eloquent and aphasic; with the complex of the dominators and the vices of the dominated; cheerful and “simpatici” but at the same time afflicted by a continual regret, moaning in a lament that never seems to come to an end . . .
42. The chief characteristic of the hero is certainly not purity, if anything impurity, bound up with the violence that he exercises and by which he is contaminated. There may be knights, free of fear, but there are none, absolutely none, free of sin.
43. There are demented stories that, as you tell them, the more you exaggerate, the closer you come to the truth. Normally it is best to beware of overemphasis. Anyone who has a great deal to say tells a great number of lies. But only with demented stories can you begin to understand demented situations, embrace them, even if only to get them as far from you as possible.
44. Heroic characters who draw their bow to the quavering utmost, horses racing at a full gallop, towers set atop the highest walls, clashes between armies with glittering suits of armor—sabotage, reprisals, ambushes, looting and plunder, summary executions. You can fool yourself into thinking that war is the former—but it almost always winds up turning out more like the latter.
47. The hero is a dead man walking, who has taken a vow to death, wedded to it, without death a widower, a blind man. He is a prince straddling two realms, alive among the dead who march in their serried ranks, already deceased and yet present, like El Cid, riding at the head of his armies. Temporal continuity and spatial contiguity between the dead and the living. But the confusion engendered by the indiscriminate cult of death at a time when no one knows any longer what death even is ensures that nowadays we call a “hero” and celebrate as such any person who has fallen, even if he performed no memorable deeds of any kind. The title then is awarded to those who ought more properly to be described as victims.
48. To write books about the faults of the Italians, against the Italians, to show just what fools the Italians are, how corrupt, what scoundrels, how cowardly and shameless they really are, has always been and becomes constantly more fashionable, to the point that it has given rise to a full-fledged literary genre or tradition, with shelves dedicated to the category in every bookstore. Those who specialize in this category are sharp-eyed, disenchanted journalists, reasonably good stylists, tireless collectors of stories of turpitude from judicial sources, as well as historical and literary authorities, great writers of the past and politicians embittered by the realization that every effort to redeem the Italians seems to have been in vain. Using doses of indignation alternating with or blended with humor and satire, they plunge their hands into the abundance of materials within reach of anyone who wishes to demonstrate that this people cannot, will never be able to succeed, will never change, never discount its atrocious, sad, or ridiculous sins.
49. Whatever behavior the Italians might engage in, they target it for sarcasm or scorn: some particular custom meets with their disapproval, but then so does its diametric opposite: if the Italians save, it’s because they are afraid of the future, they’re mistrustful, they hide their money under their mattress; if the Italians squander their money and run up debts it’s because they’re slaves of the false myths of consumerism, corrupt and facile. They can be accused at the same time of cowardice and recklessness, of being terrified of the slightest risk and of living on the razor’s edge. They scold them for having short memories and being flighty and superficial and, at the same time, of being chained to the past.
51. There is only one common enemy: weakness. And immediately following, two lukewarm virtues: prudence and patience. The seventies tried to be everything except for these three much hated things. No doubt, there was very little prudence or patience in circulation in those years, and very few practicing either quality. Weakness, since it cannot be uprooted from the souls of individuals, was more generally concealed, disguised, camouflaged, like a voice trying to avoid being recognized on the phone. Many of those who acted like tough guys in those years were trying to conceal something squeaky or neurotic in their character, overcome their weakness with swagger, blow themselves up, brace themselves . . . When they tried to raise their voices, what came out was a falsetto.
52. In Italy, apparently, it is only with violence and threats that the status quo can be defended and only with violence and threats that the status quo can be modified.
53. Not just demonstrations in the street, but also religious processions have, when you look carefully, a menacing tacit undertone. The faithful address their patron saint with an extortionate and impudent devotion: either you answer our prayers (send us the rain, erase our sins, free us from the cholera outbreak, etc.) or else you can forget about this nice festival, the votive candles, the chants, the flowers . . .
55. A country where every social issue becomes a criminal matter; and where every criminal act can be given a social explanation. An army that has more often been given the order to open fire on its own people, during demonstrations and strikes.
58. There are moments, historical phases, winters, springs, when everyone engages in political violence: demonstrators, reactionaries, revolutionaries, terrorists, the police, the Carabinieri, security forces, intelligence services, ordinary citizens, criminals, vigilantes by day and night.
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br /> 59. A revolutionary blend: professionals of violence + dilettantes of violence + young men driven by fanaticism/idealism/romanticism/athletic spirit + poor intellectuals driven by resentment + rich intellectuals driven by esthetic scorn + the alienated, driven by alienation.
61. The quality of divinity, if exiled and repudiated, returns in the form of the demoniacal.
64. Certainly there is something stupid, but there might also be something profoundly noble, in stubbornly ignoring reality and holding it in contempt. Don’t pay too much attention to reality, flying over it or running headlong against it are both attitudes worthy of a noble spirit.
65. The time that we ought to use for action, we waste on preparation.
70. If you want men to be eager to rush into war against each other, to spill rivers of blood, all you need to do is “capitalize words that mean nothing.”
71. Enthusiasm and fanaticism go hand in hand. Only those who lack all enthusiasm are in no danger of becoming fanatics. It is said that the only ones who have a reasonably realistic view of life are the depressed, that is, those who have pathologically ceased to harbor any illusions about their state. When they wake up every morning, they see the world the way it really is, an unbearable vision, and that is why they’re tempted to dive back under the covers and just never get out of bed, and so how are they supposed to believe, what are they supposed to hope for?
72. It is not possible that everyone forms all their own opinions, beliefs, and certainties, or even just the indispensable rules of behavior to live by; therefore, even the freest, most independent spirit ends up adopting, unevaluated, a vast number of precooked, received notions. While that is true, it is especially true in politics: the domain in which the greatest number of dogmas prosper and thrive. Even more so than in religions, which, by comparison with many political convictions, appear far more open, changeable, flexible, and infinitely less based upon precepts. There the truth is slippery and elusive.
73. In reality there is no contradiction between an authentic need of faith and its instrumentalization, in fact, these two things almost always go together.
74. Faith is real even when its object is false.
75. In religions, the instrumental aspect and authentic faith, the anxiety for salvation and the lack of scruples, holiness and the abominable, miracles and cheap tricks, fanatics and illumined visionaries and charlatans and real prophets and false prophets all get mixed up together, sometimes overlapping, that is, they are sometimes the same thing, and equally circumfused. The halo glows around the blessed head that emits a wafting aroma of holiness with the same light that exists only in the eyes of those who look at it as a splendid cult effect. The object of devotion and at the same time, an effect of that same devotion.
76. Of both politics and religion, only one thing is asked: redemption.
79. Purity cannot exist as innocence. If it did, then only the innocent would be pure. And the innocent don’t exist. Not even the innocents in the “Massacre of the Innocents” were innocents, since they had borne the burden of sin from birth, or really we should say, it was birth itself that constituted their sin. It is coming into the world, per se, that is sin, and at the same time, sin’s expiation. Instead of “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children!” an angry God might just as well have shouted at Eve, “Thou shalt bring forth children!” and nothing more, since that was the punishment, to give birth and be born, to enter the world only to end up sliding down into the maw of death, Holy Scripture is quite clear on the point! The penalty to be served for the sin committed is, quite simply, life. But life the way it really is, once the veil of the Earthly Paradise has been rent asunder. That is, with pregnancies, diseases, old age . . . And so if that innocence is denied us from the very outset, it can only be obtained with forgetfulness and the various means available to attain that oblivion. By forgetting who you are, where you come from, in short, by forgetting your chains: denying that you were ever born.
80. When a childhood has been too happy and carefree, you drag it through your adolescence as a burden. One’s past happiness is an intolerable weight to carry: what you’ve left behind your back becomes a monkey on your back. And a considerable portion of my current unhappiness as an adult and, I can imagine, soon enough, that even greater, if residual, unhappiness as an old man is due to the excessively great and powerful joy I once experienced, only to see it vanish.
81. During my adolescence I felt that nothing could protect me from my anguish. When it came, the black phantom wholly possessed me. A knot blocked my throat, my heart rose until it kept me from breathing, I couldn’t stop sighing incessantly, there were no more sounds around me, except for the dull roar of my blood, a muffled, fearsome silence descended over the room, I felt alternately hot and cold, my eyes filled with tears for no good reason, tears that couldn’t seem to tumble out. I felt like crying and vomiting. I was clogged, saturated with grief. I went into the bathroom, but I couldn’t do it. I knelt there, with my face hovering over the pot. Then I hugged myself in a disconsolate embrace. Everything appeared unfriendly, hostile. That’s not right: everything appeared distant and pointless. Even that’s not right: everything seemed ridiculous and nothing more. Finally, a few tears rolled down my cheeks, scalding them, burning them, my tears were boiling hot. The most terrible thing for me was that even amid the immense sorrow I remained aware that there was no reason in the world for me to feel like that. This endless sorrow had no cause. Nothing terrible had happened, at the very most some minor displeasure and sometimes not even that, and a black curtain descended over the day, time stopped, all my strength vanished at once, there was no longer enough energy to string one minute together with the minute that followed.
82. The principal element, the true protagonist and, at the same time, the internal enemy of Italian society and culture: rhetoric. It is on rhetoric and by rhetoric, making use of well-established, well-tested rhetoric or else inventing new variants, that politicians, journalists, and writers, make their living, in a so-to-speak professional manner, but so do industrialists and magistrates and factory workers and mothers and students and all the corporations and guilds that, like so many colorful swatches of cloth, make up the clothing of the nation. Politicians cannot dream of doing without rhetoric, and that is obvious, but neither can the journalists who criticize what those politicians do. The so-called man in the street, moreover, is usually a champion at rhetoric, especially if he is interviewed on television, a medium that either intimidates or amplifies the emphasis of those who express themselves on it. The Italian rhetorical tradition is unbeatable and pervasive: during the first half of the twentieth century it was by and large an appanage of the right wing (thunderous, pompous, turgid, hyperbolic to the verge of the purest surrealism), in the second half, on the other hand, it belonged to the left wing (menacing or whiny, depending on the topics discussed), and on a continuous basis, dusting everything with its fine haze, odorous of grief and goodness, we can turn to the rhetoric of Catholic origin. Thanks to the power of rhetoric, it becomes possible to say everything: rhetoric does not hesitate in the face of falsehood, much less in the face of the truth, which it overwhelms and chops fine and blends and utilizes freely. You can be every bit as rhetorical when telling lies as speaking the truth: even when telling the truth, you can’t always tell it stark and naked, the way it is, you can’t help but garnish it with rhetoric, which means that you wind up being false even while you tell the truth: you falsify the truth to make sure that it’s having the proper effect, perhaps because you don’t have too much confidence in it, you believe that it’s a petty, tawdry thing, that it’s not enough, unless it is pumped up, reinforced, hammered, fired skyward, made to resonate like a clashing gong and flutter in the breeze like a flag. It’s an instinct that’s too strong: the writer and the journalist and the orator and the preacher, in Italy, even when they’re right, when they’re absolutely right, when they’re right in a sacrosanct way, and their rightness would be more than suffi
cient to uphold their point of view, they can’t help but bedeck it, armor it, impregnate it, and saturate it with rhetoric. The words of our language, so rich and so spectacular, are an irresistible temptation; and their prehensile syntax seems designed expressly to hook together and pile up as many as possible, as if trying to build a barricade around their own truth, to protect it, only ultimately concealing it, instead.
83. There are two rhetorics that are mirror images of each other and equivalent: the rhetoric of consensus and the rhetoric of dissent, since in a universe consisting of two opposing poles those who dissent from something automatically find themselves consenting to the opposite thing, so that it’s immediately clear in which direction the contentious spirit is veering. For that matter, the various contenders know that it’s a skirmish, a verbal entertainment at the end of which the victor will be determined only by measuring his skill at presenting his own arguments and attacking the arguments of others: in fields as complex as, for instance, the economy, economic meltdown, economic recovery, recipes for economic recovery, which are debated and discussed relentlessly on TV shows, who among the spectators and home audience is going to be capable of evaluating the arguments on their own merits, independently, that is, of the persuasiveness of their patter, their confidence, the impression they give off of being perfectly at their ease? Almost no one, I’m afraid, or perhaps no one at all. I certainly wouldn’t be able to. I’m the classic case of someone who understands nothing and makes up his mind strictly based on likability, obnoxiousness, or partisan affiliation—the true pillars of my ethical convictions.
84. Usually, people speak of Italy as the land of illegality. A place where laws are constantly being broken. Probably that’s true, I can’t deny it. And yet I can’t help but be astonished at how seldom it actually happens. How rarely, that is, anyone actually violates a rule, even in a country as disrespectful and inclined toward the illicit shortcut as is ours. Perhaps because it happens in an automatic and almost unconscious manner, we have a hard time realizing the enormous number of rules and regulations that we do observe, I’m not even saying every day, but every hour, perhaps every minute of our passing lives. For one single rule that we might be breaking, in fact, there are ten others that we have obeyed, or even a hundred, without even noticing it. I’m talking about every sort of law: from traffic regulations to conventional greetings, standards of hygiene, the most unremarkable prescriptions about how we walk, look, eat, breathe, speak, add and subtract, and even the rules of any sport or profession. In fact, when we make love, we’re respecting certain procedures. This virtually constant obedience is much, much less visible than the episodic infraction: we have incorporated the routine in our lives to such an extent that we forget how extraordinary and unnatural it is. Our default setting, it turns out, is actually to walk the straight and narrow, and in comparison the transgression stands out as an event. That is why I’m astonished that every time I’m stopped at a red light and there is no one coming from either direction, all the cars and motorcycles don’t simply take off at top speed, given that the red light at that point is superfluous; I’m amazed that every evening ninety-nine convicts out of a hundred on a day pass return tamely to prison after spending the day out, whether it’s on a furlough or because they’re on partial liberty; I’m amazed that adultery isn’t a frantic, everyday practice; I am stunned that the blond lady I see crossing the street, there, isn’t immediately robbed of her purse and jewelry. Could it be that out of the hundred people she crosses paths with, there isn’t one, I say, not one, who thinks of doing it, and then does it? How many blond women with purses and fine embellishments weren’t robbed today? Shouldn’t that statistic be much more surprising than the ultimately trifling number of successful purse snatchings? And this, in fact, even in Italy, where it seems as if everyone does exactly as they please and obeys nobody and nothing. Anarchists and individualists and heretics that we think we are but actually aren’t. Even in Italy, autopilot for the most part steers individuals away from transgression; not out of goodness, or because anyone is convinced of the justice of the laws that they are respecting; just out of sheer self-preservation. Transgressing, over the long run or even the short run, always causes much more trouble than does obedience. Crimes subversion and madness are, in other words, relatively rare things: most of the time we conform, we adapt, we submit to laws written and unwritten, we comply with codes that tell us, Do this! Don’t do that! at furious pace, even if we hardly notice it.
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