The Secrets of Italy

by Corrado Augias

  The plot involves several generations, and concludes with the story of Consalvo Uzeda, son of Prince Giacomo XIV, who scales the rungs of political power. Even though he is a fiercely pro-Bourbon reactionary at heart, he senses the winds of change and pretends to be a leftist, thereby winning election as a representative in parliament. The Sicilian proverb Chinati giunco che passa la piena (“Bend like a reed with the floodwater for this, too, shall pass”—in other words, go with the flow) perfectly describes this mind-set.

  Not everything, nor everyone, is like that. But the fact that such sentiments so frequently turn up in literature—from Pirandello to Verga, Sciascia, and Tomasi di Lampedusa—reveals certain symptoms. In his preface to the biography of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Salvatore Savoia, a scholar of Sicilian history, writes that early on Sicilians welcomed Italian unification with real enthusiasm. But all too quickly, “All illusions of miraculous redemption soured into a sense of failure, or were so diminished by the march of history as to become unrecognizable. And Sicily—a place that has remained staunchly ahistorical throughout its long history, spent centuries lauding its latest conqueror, and clung to its fundamental skepticism while at the same time ever-ready to embrace new illusions—remained utterly immobile, irredeemable even. So has it been since time immemorial, and so it will remain, perhaps forevermore. Up until today, at any rate.”20

  5.

  THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOUTH

  In 1860 Luigi Carlo Farini (1812–66), a distinguished political moderate who had served as minister of the interior, followed Savoy King Victor Emmanuel II to Naples. On October 26 he was a witness at the so-called Handshake of Teano, whereby Giuseppe Garibaldi handed the regions of southern Italy that he and his troops had wrested from the Neapolitan Bourbons over to the king.

  The following day Farini wrote to Count Cavour in the north. The letter is less famous than the meeting at Teano, but much more significant, as it includes his impressions of the South: “Molise and the ‘Lands of Labor’—what kind of lands are these? There is such savagery here! Italy? No, this is Africa: compared to these oafs, the bedouins are the very blossom of civil-minded virtue.” Farini was clearly shocked, and wrote of how the Bourbons had given the dregs of southern society carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, merely to maintain their teetering position of power. He also described how the populace had taken advantage of its unbridled freedom in the worst possible way: “Even the oafish womenfolk commit murder, and worse: they bind gents … by their testicles and drag them through the streets, and then, snip-snap! Unbelievable horrors …”1

  The letter was upsetting, and the cognitive capacities of its author might already have been compromised—soon thereafter he succumbed to an unspecified mental illness. But not even he would have let himself write such things had they not reflected some aspect of reality, and his sentiments matched those of the ruling class in general, which was highly disconcerted upon suddenly discovering the worrisome conditions down South.

  Silvio Spaventa, a statesman who had ancestral roots in Abruzzo and eventually settled in Naples after a series of adventurous travels, echoes Farini’s same dismay in a letter to his brother Bertrando, also dated October 1860:

  Everywhere people beg and grab whatever they can—everything here is an endless messing about, scheming, stealing. One cannot imagine how this place could ever be brought to even the slightest degree of logical order; it is as if society’s moral cornerstones had been dug up and tossed out. I fear that the arrival of the king and his government will be of little to no use here. But they must come, and come quickly.

  In 1961 Senator Diomede Pantaleoni (father of noted economist Maffeo Pantaleoni) wrote to his fellow statesman Marco Minghetti: “In Calabria one must travel in caravans, as if crossing the desert, to defend oneself from the Arabs and bedouins.” The author and journalist Giuseppe Bandi, one of Garibaldi’s supporting troops, wrote a book about the unification campaign in which he describes the Sicilian language as “highly African.” Even as late as 1921 the journalist Giuseppe Prezzolini wrote that Italy is divided into two main parts: “The European part, which ends somewhere around Rome, and the African or Balkan part, which goes from Rome southward.”2 In 1909 the great scholar and politician Giustino Fortunato—an expert on the South and on agriculture who was originally from Lucania (present-day Basilicata)—wrote, “The North belongs to Central Europe, while the South is part of the Mediterranean zone. On the one side Europe comes to an end, and on the other side Northern Africa and Asia Minor begin.” Traveling toward Palermo, he adds, he saw a group of men approaching, “all on horseback, wearing skullcaps, with muskets across their saddles, like a bunch of bedouins.” Even our dear Leopardi described Naples as “a city of slackers, scoundrels, and buffoons, half barbarian, half African.” In short, many found the discovery of the South highly traumatic. Cavour himself, father of the unification movement, had “descended” the boot only as far as Florence; he never set foot in Rome, and had only the vaguest notions regarding the rest of the peninsula.

  The historic truth is that, after quelling the revolutions of 1848, Ferdinand II, king of the Two Sicilies, had enacted harsh measures of repression in an attempt to isolate his kingdom from any outside political and intellectual influences. In 1861 the first census under the united Kingdom of Italy confirmed that, while illiteracy in the North hovered around 67 percent, in the South it reached a frightful 87 percent. According to the noted linguist Tullio De Mauro, the use of Italian as a standard means of communication was limited to 0.8 percent of the peninsula’s population—or, out of 20 million, approximately 160,000 people.3

  Indeed, among all modern national languages, Italian is the sole language to have existed for centuries almost exclusively as the voice of the learned elite, of officials, of orators, of the justice system. It is a jumble of liturgical, pompous lingo, with an arduous syntax, jam-packed with odd mannerisms, or, as has often been said, anchilosato, “stiffened” like a bunch of rigid bones—which is precisely why the Neapolitan writer and patriot Luigi Settembrini wrote: “When a population loses its homeland and its freedom and is dispersed worldwide, its language takes the place of its homeland and everything else.… And that is exactly what happened in Italy; the first thing we wanted when we finally felt Italian, after three centuries of slavery, was our shared language.”4 Settembrini was also a victim of the Bourbon repressions enacted after 1848, and barely escaped the gallows.

  In the newborn Kingdom of Italy the idea of a southern population marred by “repugnant vices” and “profound corruption” began to spread at every level, from Cavour’s correspondences, which repeatedly return to the subject, to the shared opinion of the emergent middle classes. Thus a situation that was already compromised became decidedly critical as the phenomenon of brigandage spread and, alongside the “Roman Question” (the survival of a state run by a Church that had long since proved to be an anachronistic obstruction), was one of the tragic problems the kingdom’s new government had to deal with. Newspaper articles and images of captured brigands reinforced the idea that the South was a sinister, mysterious place populated by outlaws. Terrifying, picaresque rumors of a decidedly medieval tone began to spread, sparking people’s vivid imaginations with visions of thugs drinking out of human skulls, devouring the still-beating hearts of their slain enemies. But actual brigands really did exist—lots of them—and not just in the South. The Apennine mountains in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, as well as the Maremma area of Tuscany, were chock-full of such rogues. To this day the more rustic taverns in Maremma proudly display old pictures of dead brigands posed before the camera, gun in hand, propped up against a wall or tree trunk.

  But the brigands down South remained a separate, much more vexing issue. Viewed within the broader picture of widespread illiteracy, abject poverty, and social degradation, they flourished in little-known territories, mixing in with populations whose loyalty to the new kingdom was often dubious, despite the institution of a “plebiscite
.” This phenomenon was aggravated by the persistence of an essentially feudal system in a sparsely populated, harsh, mountainous land filled with easy hideouts in dense forests, caves, and ravines.

  In 1799, Bourbon King Ferdinand IV of Naples had called on a noble cadet from Calabria known as Cardinal Ruffo to win back Naples. His army (the lazzari5) consisted primarily of brigands and fugitives. Once their mission was complete, a few ringleaders were decorated or promoted to general. One such man was Michele Arcangelo Pezza (1771–1806), an ambiguous character who became famous as a fearless adventurer, a cruel brigand, and a valiant warrior under the name Fra Diavolo (“Brother Devil”).

  He has been the subject of many films (even one starring Laurel and Hardy) and equally numerous texts. Alexandre Dumas’s historic novel La Sanfelice (about noblewoman Maria Luisa Sanfelice) involves Fra Diavolo, and his Count of Monte Cristo includes a romantically vivid portrayal of one of his gangs.

  Stendhal also wrote about Fra Diavolo in an impassioned essay on Italian brigands. His text is quite effective, even if it does not always hew to historic fact.6 For example:

  All Italy trembled in 1806 at the very name of Fra Diavolo. Born in Itri, this brigand spread terror mainly along the Mediterranean coast, confining his activities to the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples. The sun-blackened former monk and ex-convict killed his fellow brigands by taste and out of need, sometimes saving them on a whim or helping them out of kindness. In all he did, he was devoted to the Virgin and the saints. After a life of brigandage he went on to become a counter-revolutionary, rising to the rank of a senior officer in the army of Cardinal Ruffo and cutting throats in Naples out of a sense of duty to the altar and the throne. He was always covered in amulets and armed with daggers. After many deeds of astonishing boldness and courage, Fra Diavolo fell captive to a French detachment. He was tried and hanged.

  Brigandage after Italian unification therefore had something to do with an established tradition that had fascinated foreign writers because of its adventurous, picaresque, colorful prose potential. And such brigands fit perfectly in an Italy that was viewed as a nation rife with bloody crime, betrayal, superstition, and intrigue. Their actions seem to be a mixture of ferocity and popular justice, authoritarianism and anarchy. Acting with utter indifference, brigands can just as easily right a wrong as they can deny someone his freedom by force—the sole means by which they act, unless of course some gentleman commissions them for his cause, handing them a uniform to don and a musket to wield.

  But central/southern Italy, from Lazio down, was the region that became most familiar with large-scale brigands, such that popular customs were seeded with the germ of a criminality that grew stronger over time. The region’s brigands flourished in step with its increasing wealth, such that a parallel, underground economy sprouted up next to—and often was far larger than—the legitimate economy. Once again, from Stendhal:

  The whole of Italy was infested by brigands, but it was mainly in the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples that they held sway for the longest time and where they operated in the most constant and methodical way. There they had an organization, privileges, and a guarantee of impunity. If they became strong enough to intimidate governments, their fortune was made. It was therefore towards this goal that they constantly aimed throughout the period during which they plied their infamous trade. A man felt he was back in the days of the barbarians when, in the absence of any law, force was the only arbiter, the only recognized power. What kind of government is it that can be reduced to trembling before a handful of criminals! Twenty or thirty men could spread terror throughout a country and force all the pope’s troops into battle.

  Even as they committed their crimes or led lives of profligacy, the brigands never forgot their religious practices, although they usually took the form of simple superstition.7 This coarse devotion, which the Church never decisively condemned, is also rooted in a centuries-long tradition.

  A bandit, accused of several murders, appears before his judges. Far from denying the crimes imputed to him, he admits others until then unknown to the law; but when someone asks if he observed the fast day, the devout rascal grows angry and is mortally offended. “Are you accusing me of not being a good Christian?” he says bitterly to the interrogating magistrate.

  The ultimate motivation of this “faith” is that, because the brigand’s actions continually involve risking life and limb, he wants some guarantee of eternal salvation. His uncouthness leaves him indifferent to the blasphemous disconnect between his crimes and the overall message of Christianity.

  In the course of such an adventurous life, the two things that comfort the Italian brigand and that he never lays aside are his gun for defending his life and his medallion of the Virgin for saving his soul. Nothing is more terrifying than this blend of ferocity and superstition. The outlaw is convinced that death on the scaffold, preceded by a priest’s absolution, will assure him a place in heaven.

  The following cruel episode, once again found in Stendhal, perfectly illustrates the primitive ferocity such brigands were capable of unleashing. It is no coincidence that similarly violent events have recurred over the years: in 1860 during the riots in Bronte, Sicily, under Garibaldi’s push for unification; during the period of outright civil war in the wake of World War I; and still today in mafia-related vendettas, which have involved acts as heinous as disposing of a child’s body by dumping it in acid.

  The band known as Independence—commanded, I believe, by De Cesaris—reigned over Calabria in 1817 with absolute and terrible power. The group consisted of thirty men and four women. Landowners and farmers were the main tribute payers. They took pains not to fail to place, on a certain day at a certain hour at the foot of a tree or the base of a column, whatever was demanded of them. One farmer however wanted to rid himself of this heavy burden. Instead of bringing his tribute, he tipped off the authorities, and troops on foot and horseback surrounded the Independents. Finding themselves tricked, the brigands shot their way out, leaving the field covered with the bodies of their enemies. Three days later, they took the most terrible revenge on the ill-fated farmer. Having tortured him and condemned him to death, they threw him into a huge cauldron in which milk was boiled to make cheese. The bandits then forced each of his servants to eat a piece of their master’s body.

  For years on end such phenomena devastated Italy’s southern regions. Their root causes have been analyzed from very different perspectives. In general it could be said that the various social, political, and criminal factors were so closely intertwined that it proved hard to isolate and evaluate each component without accepting specific preconceptions.

  Many Southerners considered the arrival of the “Piedmontese,” as supporters of Cavour and Garibaldi were referred to, an invasion. It is also worth noting that, considered from the perspective of international law (ius gentium or “law of nations” as it used to be known), Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand was an act of brigandage that, nowadays, would certainly be condemned by the United Nations: a thousand-odd unofficial soldiers attacked and invaded an officially recognized kingdom. To give the campaign the “legitimacy” it deserves, you have to look beyond the strictly legal level to consider the push toward territorial unification the way the more educated, well-informed people in the Papal States and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies saw it. In both cases the general populace had been left behind, as the economy languished and land management remained the way it had been in the Middle Ages, complete with vast tracts of unfarmed, undeveloped estates. To give just one example, in 1861 the Basilicata region had 124 townships, of which 91 had no roads.

  In June 1862 several democratic representatives in parliament presented an official memorandum on the South, in an attempt to overcome the government’s reluctance to confront the situation head-on. One theory maintained that brigandage was a consequence of the political line held by conservative supporters of Cavour (who had died on June 6, 1861) and Bettino Ricasoli, which
was on the one hand repressive, but on the other took a conciliatory approach to the Bourbon regime. The proposed solution was to increase public-works projects to reduce high unemployment, and then entrust the peacekeeping process to Garibaldi, the only Northerner who enjoyed a degree of popularity in the South as well, perhaps because of his atypical temperament. Although his impetuousness and somewhat confused political ideas make him recognizably Italian, other aspects of his character are decidedly off-kilter for what you might expect from a model leader.

  For instance, he was a great general—sharper and more courageous than most military figures throughout Italian history—but the end of his life, spent in exile on the small island of Caprera, revealed his eccentricity. He departed for the island with a bit of money gathered by a friend, some coffee beans, some sugar, a few seeds, and a sack of dried codfish. Compared with Garibaldi, Cincinnatus almost looks like a wastrel. But even within his lifetime Garibaldi had become a legend, and his nickname “Eroe dei due mondi” (“Hero of the Two Worlds”) was not mere rhetoric.8

  After having done combat on both sides of the Atlantic, trying to defend the glorious yet short-lived Roman Republic in 1849, losing his beloved wife (who had fought at his side) during their retreat from the besieging troops, and turning down the modest pension the government had offered him, he left for the shores of New York, where he landed in 1850. One of the Italians who had charitably pulled together some funds to help him out was a former stagehand from Florence who had also circled half the globe, a wild genius who was fighting to keep the Americans from stealing his patent for the invention of a strange gadget that let people talk across relatively long distances. He called it the telegrafo parlante or telettrofono (“talking telegraph” or “telectrophone”), and if it really worked it would be revolutionary. In the end it did, and it was—but without his name attached.9