The Story of a Humble Christian
Silone increasingly took to thinking and writing that humanity’s situation (if not fate) was tragic. There were many times when loneliness and anxiety goaded him to remember with “sharp nostalgia the paternal home, with its old order, peace, and security,” but he refused to permit a “love of comfort” to prevail over a “love of truth.”
For much of the 1960s, Silone, accompanied by Darina, sought out the convents of the Little Sisters of Father Charles de Foucauld as well as lonely monasteries in Abruzzo. The impetus was as much a spiritual anxiety as a desire to do research that would culminate in The Story of a Humble Christian. Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916), born in Strasbourg, had a religious transfiguration at age twenty-eight and devoted his life to both contemplating the Divine and actively assisting the most miserable and outcast members of society. Although de Foucauld had been born into an aristocratic family, no doubt Silone felt an affinity with the French boy who was orphaned at age six, lost his faith at age sixteen, and then lost his grandfather, who had functioned much like Silone’s maternal grandmother, at age twenty. Although his grandfather had left the young man a small fortune, it was soon squandered. Much like St. Augustine, he lived a dissolute life and was last in his class at cavalry school. Like that other “fool of God,” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, he felt called to the desert and left for Tamanrasset in southern Algeria in 1907 and spent time in North Africa, learning both Arabic and Hebrew. In 1886, establishing himself in Paris, he set to work on his book Reconnaissance au Maroc, recounting his travels across Morocco disguised as a rabbi (shades of Pietro Spina/Paolo Spada). When he visited the Église St. Augustin, he experienced a revelation and began to think of himself as a “fool of God.” Two years later, he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and chose to model his life on Jesus (“the hidden life of the poor and humble worker of Nazareth”). He spent most of the rest of his life in North Africa, developing an appreciation for Islam, ransoming several slaves, and translating the Gospels into Tamachek, the language of the Tuareg. In December 1916, he was assassinated by members of the Tuareg (even though they had once saved his life when he fell ill). His rule established both the Little Sisters of Sacré-Coeur and the Little Brothers in 1933 and, in 1939, the Little Sisters of Jesus. It was this last that attracted the attention of Darina, who introduced the group to Silone as well as the writings of de Foucauld (who was beatified on November 13, 2005). De Foucauld’s motto and daily prayer, “Mon Dieu, si vous existez, faites que je vous connaise” (My God, if you exist, let me know you), expressed a view different from Silone’s. Silone had written that, far from being similar to the “seekers of God” in Russia who went in search of the Divine, he tried to hide from a seeking God, only to be found and “devoured.”
Now Silone traveled throughout Abruzzo, visiting monasteries, convents, libraries, churches in trace of his ideal Christian, the late-thirteenth-century hermit Pietro Angelerio da Morrone. From his hideaway in the Maiella mountains, Morrone was brought news that he had been named pope by the College of Cardinals. In order to prevent the papacy from falling into the hands of the powerful Caetani or Colonna families, the cardinals in their divinely inspired wisdom chose the humble servant Pietro. When the delegation arrived with the news and a noble white horse to bring Morrone to Rome, he insisted on riding a donkey instead. At the local church, what is now the basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, in August 1294, he was crowned pope and took the name Celestine V.
Pietro da Morrone had been born ca. 1215 (at least half a dozen towns claim the honor of his birthplace) and in 1235 retreated to Monte Pallano, where he lived in a cave dug out with his own hands. His reputation for sanctity was such that he was forced to retire to Monte Morrone and the almost inaccessible peaks of the Maiella, seeking solitude from crowds of devout Christians. In 1294, the conclave at Perugia named him pope. After only a few months as Vicar of Christ, astonished and dismayed by the extraordinary corruption of the church, Celestine V resigned the papacy on December 13, thereby earning Dante’s eternal wrath as “colui che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto” (he, through cowardice, who made the great refusal). His successor, Pope Boniface VIII (Benedetto Caetani, also finding a place in Dante’s Inferno for simony), had him imprisoned in the Castello Fumone, near Anagni. For two years Celestine survived, dying in May 1296.
Silone retreated himself, to the less spartan quarters of a hotel in Rocca di Cambio in the Abruzzo. There he completed his second play, The Story of a Humble Christian. With his beloved Celestine buried nearby in the basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, the writer immersed himself in the world of Christian hermits and Franciscan monks, and the theology of Joachim of Fiore—so much so that they started to permeate his dreams. Silone was especially moved by the landscape, a topography that lent itself to hermitage and meditation. The Maiella range and the mountain for which it is named had a strange fascination for him. “For us Abruzzesi, the Maiella is our Mount Lebanon.” Its sacred character is, not surprisingly, tied to a local tradition of cursing and swearing. “They summon it in their hour of need to give them strength to react against life’s many adversaries,” one writer has recently noted. “Maiella takes its name from the goddess Maja who, after years of searching for her son, ended her days there. Maja was a harsh deity yet loving and gentle with her children. The primitive churches and hermitages present in even the range’s most inaccessible valleys and gorges are a constant reminder of the spiritual importance of these peaks which, wherever you are in the area, seem to fill the horizon. So close, you could reach out your hand to touch them. Yet the closer you get the farther they seem to recede.”
Silone decided to make a pilgrimage of sorts to the hermitage of Sant’Onofrio, on the Maiella, where Pietro da Morrone had escaped when the delegation from the papal enclave tried to find him and tell him that he had been elected pope. From there he could see the ruins of the house of Ovid, the Abbey of the Holy Spirit, and some buildings of a prisoner of war camp; in short, a palimpsest of the pagan, Christian, and contemporary history of the Abruzzo. When he met an old peasant gathering herbs on the mountain, they fell to talking and the old man asked about St. Celestine, he not being one of the more popular saints. For what graces or favors was he known? When Silone answered with solemnity, “Celestine can help us in avoiding the temptations of power,” the old peasant burst into laughter but then gravely commented, “Then he’s not a saint for us poor people; he’s for the priests.” Silone found this wandering among the monasteries, hermitages, and peasants more fruitful for his research than days spent in archives and provincial libraries.
In was in this landscape that Silone set out to tell the story of a poor Christian caught between his sincere faith and the corruptions of power. For Celestine, as for Silone, Christ was infinitely more than the institution of the church. By the summer of 1967, between Rocca di Cambio, Rome, and Pescasseroli, he had completed the manuscript and sent it on to his publisher. “I am fairly satisfied,” he wrote to a friend. “In a few days I shall return to Rome . . . and return to my usual life, except that in the meantime I have become very old.”
A first draft of the play had contained an explosive revelation, which was deleted from the published version. Silone had given this first draft to Diego Fabbri, who was shocked to read that Silone had uncovered evidence that Celestine V had been assassinated (his skull had been crushed). “What an ending!” Fabbri had blurted out to Silone. “You have one of the most extraordinary endings in drama.” But Silone observed Fabbri with “that clear and slightly sad smile of his.” Silone rewrote the ending, refusing to use the evidence as a finale, refusing to “cause scandal.” The published version was more subtle:
CELESTINO: Will you restore me to my children?
BONIFACE VIII: How dare you hope for that? No, no. You will receive instead the punishment you deserve.
CELESTINO (makes him a deep bow, resigned, and answers gently): I will pray for you.
In a
sort of epilogue (“The Mystery of the End”), Silone alludes to Celestino’s grim fate through the words of one of his followers.
FRA GIOACCHINO: Tell me, what will they do with him? What do you think?
FRA TOMMASO (slowly, hesitantly, almost stammering because of his inner dismay): It’s probable they’ll offer him some further compromise. And there’s no doubt he will refuse. And then I’m afraid they’ll kill him . . . And then, then they will make him a saint. We mustn’t try to understand. The destiny of some saints, while they are alive, is one of the most profound mysteries of the Church.
Pope Paul VI, having read the play and been asked his opinion, ambiguously replied that it was written “with great serenity.”
It seemed as though with the publication of Emergency Exit in 1965 both the public and the literary establishment were now ready to accept Silone. The Story of a Humble Christian was a critical and commercial success, with Mondadori publishing thirteen printings in three years. Never one to chase awards, Silone found himself showered with them late in life. Honorary degrees from Yale University (1966), Toulouse (1969; the official citation mentioned the anticipation in his work of “May 1968”), and Warwick (1972); the Jerusalem Prize in 1969; the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur (1973); Cavaliere di Gran Croce (1982). In 1976, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature; two years later, his name was again among those being considered.
In September 1968, Silone won the Super Campiello literary prize. The ceremony in Venice could have been a scene from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita with Gina Lollobrigida presiding at the magnificent Teatro Verde on the island of San Giorgio. The only actor missing from the mise-en-scène was the author himself, at home recovering from yet another bout of illness. To prevent another “scandal” from erupting by his absence, which he did not want to be interpreted as a snub or protest, he availed himself of an offer from RAI to tape a message to those assembled in Venice. But he couldn’t resist a sardonic comment: “I didn’t feel well enough to be there,” he said in the interview, “but I didn’t want to be rude . . . So I have made use of this TV, which, even though it is an annoying medium, at times can be a great help.”
In the cataclysmic year of 1968, nothing—at first glance—might have seemed farther from the streets of Paris than The Story of a Humble Christian. Yet Silone was astute enough to see a connection between 1968 and the thirteenth century:
If the idea of utopia has not been extinguished either in politics or religion, it is because it responds to a profound need rooted in man. There is in the conscience of man a restlessness that no reform and no material well-being can satisfy.
The history of utopia is therefore the history of hope that is always deluded, but a tenacious hope. No rational criticism can uproot it, and it is important to recognize it even under different connotations.
Interviewed by a student a year later, Silone expressed sympathy and solidarity with the young protesters. “In the depths of my soul, the demonstrations fill me with joy. In them, in their most serious element, I recognize the same impulse that, as a youth, pushed me into the fray. That which is most disgusting in the society in which we live is its bad faith [malafede].”
Irving Howe, in his intellectual autobiography, recalled how—although from a vastly different background—he had been drawn to the work of Silone. Howe wrote mainly about nineteenth-century European novelists and “that group of twentieth-century writers who had gone through the ideological traumas of our age. No more, for instance, than Silone could avoid the subjects that had chosen him, could I avoid his work once it had chosen me. That in a final reckoning he would not be counted among the great writers of the century I knew quite well. It hardly mattered. I wrote about his books because his questions were also mine.”
During the 1960s, Silone traveled less and stayed closer to the apartment in Rome. His daily schedule seldom varied: He walked every morning to the post office in Piazza Bologna to mail his letters and purchased several newspapers and journals on the way home. He passed the rest of the day in his study, reading the newspapers and journals, writing letters, and oftentimes receiving students and scholars who were studying some aspect of his work. No one was turned away. To those who lamented his withdrawal from public life, he responded that his solitude was only an exterior one: “I no longer speak at meetings and I have a certain repugnance for conferences. Life is too short to waste it chattering. But ever since I limited my public appearances, I feel less alone than before. It’s when I work in my studio, with the door closed and the phone off the hook, that I really feel like I am communicating with others.”
Late in life, Herling asked Silone when he first became conscious of his vocation as a writer. Silone, visibly moved, responded immediately: It all began when he was a child, sitting beside his mother the weaver, listening as the women told Bible stories and simple tales of human events, often tied to the history of the small town. Those two things—the slow, careful, patient process of the weaving and the fate of ordinary human beings—had fused in Silone’s imagination. “I have always aspired,” he confessed, “to a writing capable of evoking the life of my fellow townspeople, of the peasants; a compact prose, simple yet dense.” That writing was extraordinarily difficult. When engaged in a novel, the process was terrible and sometimes terrifying. He would retire to his study for hours, not emerging as he struggled with haunted landscapes and complex characters. He could find no distance between himself and his characters and once wrote that even after he finished a novel (an act he considered arbitrary), the characters continued to live in him, maturing, changing, constantly evolving. Those characters—Berardo Viola, Pietro Spina, Andrea Cipriani, Rocco De Donatis, Daniele, Celestino V, and even Luigi Murica and Severina—were born from his own suffering and need for redemption, a redemption that could not be found in either socialism or orthodox Christianity.
Herling came away from their conversation in a contemplative and somber mood. From the dark apartment on via Villa Ricotti near Piazza Bologna, Silone moved with difficulty, and the task of simply rising from a chair took great effort. The lines in his face bore the traces of enormous fatigue, Herling wrote in his diary, yet it had been “enriched by the slow distillation of his thought.” Between Fontamara and The Story of a Humble Christian, nearly forty years of time and experience had intervened, yet they barely registered because Silone had insisted on quello che conta davvero (that which really counts). “It is like a stone that is sculpted day by day by a stream of running water and indifferent to the gurgle of novelty, fashion, ideological rhetoric, political demagogy, and intellectual coquetry that the stream carries away.” Herling was surely correct in discerning Silone’s steadfastness in the face of varying ideological and literary currents, but he could not have failed to taste the bitterness of that stream.
On Suicide
Although he once claimed that it was “one of the many things that I could not understand,” Silone was haunted by thoughts of suicide and death much of his life: the death of siblings to disease and accident, a father’s early death from tuberculosis (a fate that seemed reserved for the son as well), a mother who perished in an earthquake, a last remaining brother dying in prison. Plagued all his life by ill health, he was told by his doctors in 1930 that he had not long to live. Tormented by melancholy, depression, and thoughts of suicide, he had written Fontamara so that he could die among his own people. In the short story “Letizia,” about a professional weeper, a trade traced back to antiquity in the Mediterranean world, she asks the narrator, who has returned from a Swiss exile, how they weep in that northern country. When he reveals that some of the dignified Swiss women are too proud to show tears, Letizia gives him a sorrowful look. “ ‘You know,’ she said after she had thought it over for a moment, ‘I am very poor and not in a position to do anything for you; but I want you to promise me one thing: I want you to promise me that you will come back here to your own town to die. I’d love to weep over your corpse.’ ” The author cons
idered it “the greatest sign of affection she could have shown me.”
Around Christmas 1950, just after the inaugural conference of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Silone again apparently contemplated suicide. He opened the essay “The Choice of Companions” with a meditation on the too-numerous suicides of talented writers in the twentieth century. Considering the more significant expressions of the sense of “bewilderment, boredom and disgust” produced by the times, Silone thought not so much of the works of Heidegger, Jaspers, or Sartre but to the suicides of Sergei Esenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Ernst Toller, Kurt Tucholsky, Stefan Zweig, Klaus Mann, Drieu La Rochelle, F. O. Matthiessen, Cesare Pavese, and others. “What a mournful band of spirits they are, listed together this way.”
Silone warned against easy generalizations and facile psychoanalysis. “How can one possibly know for certain what private despair drives a human being to take his own life?” The suicides could not be tied to a particular political or social structure; they had taken place under Fascist, Nazi, Stalinist regimes as well as the democracies of the West. Neither the triumph of revolution nor a belief in the trajectory of History could save these souls. The religious and humanist traditions of the West were also unable to prevent their deaths. Linking all the disparate individual causes—whether political persecution, exile, personal isolation, physical suffering, disease, or “abnormality”—Silone found “the same confession of anxiety and desperation over the difficult struggle to live, and, in the last analysis, its uselessness.” It was this sense of nihilism—first defined by Nietzsche—that had overwhelmed not only the intelligentsia but popular and working culture as well.
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