The Secrets of Italy

by Corrado Augias

  10. Luca Clerici, ed., Scrittori italiani di viaggio. 1700–1861 (Milan: Mondadori, 2008).

  11. Francesco Petrarch, Canzoniere, trans. Mark Musa (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 237, poem 146, verses 13–14: “il bel paese / ch’Appennin parte e ’l mar circonda e l’Alpe …”

  1. ITALIANS AS SEEN FROM THE OUTSIDE

  1. George Gordon Byron, Byron: A Self-Portrait—Letters and Diaries 1798 to 1824, vol. II (London: John Murray, 1950), pp. 693–94.

  2. In his memoirs, D’Azeglio famously stated: “L’Italia è fatta. Restano da fare gli Italiani”—roughly, “Italy has been created, now we must create Italians.”—Trans.

  3. Corrado Augias, I segreti di Londra (Milan: Mondadori, 2003).—Trans.

  4. Lucio Sponza, Italian Immigrants in Nineteenth Century Britain: Realities and Images (Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1988).

  5. Mario Praz, “Scoperta dell’Italia,” in Bellezza e bizzarria. Saggi scelti, ed. Andrea Cane (Milan: Mondadori, 2002).

  6. Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (Philadelphia: Robert Campbell and Co., 1797), chapter 11; note that the Italian translation the author quoted in the original (“gli occhi semiaperti, sintomo di tradimento, saettanti di tanto in tanto”) casts the aged monk’s eyes as “half open, a symptom of treachery …”—Trans.

  7. Praz, “Scoperta dell’Italia.”

  8. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Letters from Italy,” from vol. II of Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations, and Fragments, ed. Mary Shelley (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840), letter III, April 20, 1818. The surrounding passage reads: “The people here, though inoffensive enough, seem both in body and soul a miserable race … I do not think that I have seen a gleam of intelligence in the countenance of man since I passed the Alps …*” The asterisk leads to an equally revealing note added by his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who edited the volume this letter was published in: “These impressions of Shelley, with regard to the Italians, formed in ignorance, and with precipitation, became altogether altered after a longer stay in Italy. He quickly discovered the extraordinary intelligence and genius of this wonderful people, amidst the ignorance in which they are carefully kept by their rulers, and the vices, fostered by a religious system, which these same rulers have used as their most successful engine.”—Trans.

  9. Ibid., letter XV, December 22, 1818.—Trans.

  10. The American writer Edith Wharton expressed similar sentiments: “I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.” From a letter dated March 8, 1903, in The Letters of Edith Wharton (New York: Scribner, 1988).—Trans.

  11. See A Roman Journal, ed. and trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Orion Press, 1957).—Trans.

  12. Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948), pp. 173–74. [The author’s original cites Ervino Pocar’s Italian translation.—Trans.]

  13. Italy suffered major losses in this 1917 battle (named after the town where it took place, present-day Kobarid, Slovenia), and morale fell so low that most of the troops willingly surrendered. Marshal Luigi Cadorna was forced to resign after the defeat, not least because he had a reputation for poor diplomacy and had dismissed several hundred of his own generals, colonels, and battalion commanders before the battle even began. Following his replacement by Armando Diaz and Pietro Badoglio, the Italian government established propaganda offices, promising soldiers land and social justice in an attempt to make up for the detrimental effects of Cadorna’s draconian rule. Henceforth the term “Caporetto” took on particular resonance in Italy, denoting cowardly rule and humiliating defeat.

  14. In adition to his memoirs and several essays on tyranny and other forms of government, Alfieri is best known for his many Greek-influenced tragedies, including Filippo, Antigone, Saul, and Maria Stuarda.—Trans.

  15. See George Macaulay Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), p. 261.—Trans.

  2. ITALIANS AS SEEN FROM THE INSIDE

  1. Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics?, trans. Martin McLaughlin (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), p. 6.

  2. Verga’s I Malavoglia was first translated into English by Mary A. Craig and published as The House by the Medlar Tree (New York: Harper & Bros., 1890); it was retranslated and reissued by several publishers over the following century. Although Fogazzaro’s novel Malombra has not yet appeared in English, Carmine Gallone directed a silent film adaptation released in 1917. Collodi’s Le avventure di Pinocchio was first translated into English by M. A. Murray and published as The Story of a Puppet, or The Adventures of Pinocchio (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892); it has also been retranslated, republished, and adapted for stage and screen in countless versions.—Trans.

  3. De Amicis’s Cuore (the title literally means “heart”) has been translated into English many times—the edition used here was translated by Isabel F. Hapgood and published as Cuore (Heart): An Italian Schoolboy’s Journal (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1887); in 1948 a film adaptation was released by renowned directors Vittorio De Sica and Duilio Coletti. The version of D’Annunzio’s Il piacere quoted here was translated by Georgina Harding and Arthur Symons and published as The Child of Pleasure (New York: Modern Library, 1898).—Trans.

  4. Edmondo De Amicis, Pagine sparse (Milan: Tipografia editrice Lombarda, 1874). The original reads: “Sì, io piccino, io povero, io che campo di pan nero e vo vestito di cenci, io sconosciuto al mondo e oggetto di compassione per i pochi che mi conoscono, io se voglio, se studio, se fatico, posso costringere un giorno diecimila persone, il fiore dei cittadini della mia città, a star zitti, come fanno adesso, per sentire il mio nome, a sporger il capo per vedermi; a mormorare: – Eccolo là; – a dire ai loro fanciulli vestiti di velluto: – Fate come lui!… – Sono capace a star levato la notte, io. Non ho lume? Ma io mi farò dare i mozziconi di candela dal vicino.”—Trans.

  5. Mimì Mosso, I tempi del Cuore: vita e lettere di Edmondo De Amicis ed Emilio Treves (Milan: Mondadori, 1925).

  6. De Amicis, Heart, pp. 8–9. The original Italian has a slightly different tone, whereby Garrone “is always eating,” and Votini is “dressed well, too well.”—Trans.

  7. Ibid., p. 63.—Trans.

  8. Ibid., preface.—Trans.

  9. Ibid., pp. 160, 301.—Trans.

  10. Ibid., p. 206–7.—Trans.

  11. Literally “The Resurgence,” this term refers to the nineteenth-century period that culminated in Italian unification.

  12. Ibid., pp. 62–63.—Trans.

  13. Umberto Eco, Diario minimo (Milan: Mondadori, 1963). [This essay was not included in the English edition of the book. Gaetano Bresci was the anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy; Eco draws a parallel between Franti and Bresci, recasting the boy in De Amicis’s novel as a figure of resistance combating militaristic, nationalist ideologies.—Trans.]

  14. Ibid.

  15. No publication details are available, but the original reads: “Era il tempo in cui più torbida ferveva l’operosità dei distruttori e dei costruttori. Insieme con nuvoli di polvere si propagava una specie di follia edificatoria, con un turbine improvviso … Fu allora, dappertutto, come un contagio di volgarità. Nel contrasto incessante degli affari, nella furia quasi feroce degli appetiti e delle passioni, nell’esercizio disordinato ed esclusivo delle attività utili, ogni senso estetico fu smarrito, ogni rispetto del passato fu deposto.”—Trans.

  16. Edoardo Scarfoglio, Il libro di Don Chisciotte (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1990).

  17. “La giovinezza mia barbara e forte / in braccio de le femmine s’uccide.”—Trans.


  18. “La testa / in dietro a l’improvviso abbandonò. Le chiome / effuse le composero un letto ov’ella, come / per morire, si stese. Un irrigidimento, / quasi un gelo di morte, l’occupò. Lo spavento / m’invase … / Ma fu morte / breve. Tornò la vita ne l’onda del piacere. / Chino a lei su la bocca io tutto, come a bere / da un calice, fremendo di conquista, sentivo / le punte del suo petto insorgere, al lascivo / tentar de le mie dita, quali carnosi fiori …”—Trans.

  19. “Quando (al pensier, le vene mi tremano pur di dolcezza) / io mi partii, com’ebro, dalla sua casa amata; / su per le vie che ancóra fervean de l’estreme diurne / opere, de’ sonanti carri, de’ rauchi gridi, / tutta sentii dal cuore segreto l’anima alzarsi / cupidamente … / Agile da le gote capaci il Tritone a que’ fochi / dava lo stel de l’acqua, che si spandea qual chioma. / Tremula di baleni, accesa di porpora al sommo, / libera in ciel, la grande casa dei Barberini / parvemi quel palagio ch’eletto avrei agli amori / nostri; e il desio mi finse quivi superbi amori: / fulgidi amori e lussi mirabili ed ozii profondi; / una più larga forza, una più calda vita.”—Trans.

  20. Gabriele D’Annunzio, Lettere a Barbara Leoni (Florence: Sansoni, 1954).

  21. D’Annunzio, Pleasure, p. 62.—Trans.

  22. D’Annunzio, Pleasure, p. 195.—Trans.

  23. Ibid., p. 4.—Trans.

  24. Ibid., p. 20. I have translated the portions in brackets directly from the original, as they were omitted in the (much tamer, censored) English version.—Trans.

  25. Ibid., p. 40.—Trans.

  26. Ibid., p. 49.—Trans.

  27. Ibid., p. 244.—Trans.

  28. “Loreto impagliato ed il busto d’Alfieri, di Napoleone, / i fiori in cornice (le buone cose di pessimo gusto!) / il caminetto un po’ tetro, le scatole senza confetti, / i frutti di marmo protetti dalle campane di vetro, / un qualche raro balocco, gli scrigni fatti di valve, / gli oggetti con mònito, salve, ricordo, le noci di cocco, / Venezia ritratta a musaici, gli acquarelli un po’ scialbi, / le stampe, i cofani, gli albi dipinti d’anemoni arcaici.”—Trans.

  3. LEOPARDI IN ROME

  1. Leopardi referred to it as “l’odiato sepolcro.”—Trans.

  2. The author quotes a verse from Leopardi’s posthumously published satirical poem Paralipomeni della Batracomiomachia inspired by this region: “Come chi d’Appennin varcato il dorso / presso Fuligno …”—Trans.

  3. Alfredo Panzini, Casa Leopardi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1948).

  4. “Mio signor padre,” “Caro signor padre,” “Carissimo papà,” respectively.—Trans.

  5. Leopardi, Zibaldone, pp. 75–77.

  6. “Les gens d’esprit, à Rome, ont du brio … Je ne connais pas, en Europe, de salons préférables à ceux de Rome.” Stendhal, Promenades dans Rome (Paris: Seule, 1829).

  7. Note also that Belli wrote an entire sonnet consisting almost exclusively of a long list of synonyms for this part of the female anatomy.—Trans.

  4. PALERMO, ON THE BORDER BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

  1. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard, trans. Archibald Colquhoun (New York: Pantheon, 2007), p. 177.—Trans.

  2. “A bandit in the eyes of France, a hero in the eyes of Provence.”

  3. Guido Piovene, Viaggio in Italia (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1993), p. 583. The text began as a series of radio transmissions about the author’s voyage around Italy between 1953 and 1956, and was issued as a landmark book in 1957.—Trans.

  4. Literally, “act of faith”—the Inquisition’s ceremony for pronouncing judgment on the accused and determining an act of penance. Broadly speaking, it refers to the execution of a heretic.

  5. Zullino, Guida.

  6. Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 235.

  7. Translators have rendered this line in various ways, some hewing more closely to the biblical version than others: Geoffrey L. Bickersteth, “Scorn all that is, for all is vain, vain, vain” (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1923); Jonathan Galassi, “the boundless vanity of it all” (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012); David Gascoyne, “the everlasting emptiness of it all” (Portland, OR: Charles Seluzicki, 1983); Eamon Grennan, “the infinite all is vanity of it all” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Paul Lawton, “the vast vanity of everything” (Dublin: University College Dublin Foundation for Italian Studies, 1996); J. M. Morrison, “vanity, that sure-set bourne / Reserved for all, thee, Nature, ever scorn” (London: Gay and Bird, 1900); J. G. Nichols, “this infinity of nothingness” (New York: Routledge, 2003); John Humphreys Whitfield, “the infinite vanity of all that is” (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1967).—Trans.

  8. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 5, scene 1.—Trans.

  9. Pirandello, Cap and Bells, p. 23. Original: “Deve sapere che abbiamo tutti come tre corde d’orologio in testa. La seria, la civile e la pazza.”—Trans.

  10. Luigi Pirandello, Henry IV, trans. Tom Stoppard (New York: Grove Press, 2004), pp. 48–49. Original: “E via sì sono pazzo! Ma allora, perdio, inginocchiatevi! Inginocchiatevi! Vi ordino di inginocchiarvi tutti davanti a me—così. E toccate tre volte la terra con la fronte! Giù! Tutti, davanti ai pazzi, si deve stare così.”—Trans.

  11. See chapter 1, note 3.—Trans.

  12. Andrea Camilleri, “La Sicilia degli stravaganti,” in laRepubblica-Venerdì, April 28, 2000.

  13. Germana Agnetti and Angelo Barbato, Il barone Pisani e la Real Casa dei Matti (Palermo: Sellerio, 1987). Original: “Lo abbandono, nel quale trovai per verità questo luogo, se dai miei occhi non fosse stato veduto, da chiunque uditolo avessi, io non lo avrei giammai creduto. Esso la sembianza di un serraglio di fiere presentava piuttosto che di abitazione di umane creature. In volgere lo sguardo nell’interno dell’angusto edificio, poche cellette scorgevansi oscure sordide malsane: parte ai matti destinate, e parte alle matte. Colà stavansi rinchiusi, ed indistintamente ammucchiati, i maniaci i dementi i furiosi i melanconici. Alcuni di loro sopra poca paglia e sudicia distesi, i più sulla nuda terra. Molti eran del tutto ignudi, vari coperti di cenci, altri in ischifosi stracci avvolti; e tutti a modo di bestie catenati, e di fastidiosi insetti ricolmi, e fame e sete, e freddo, e caldo, e scherni, e strazj, e battiture pativano. Estenuati gl’infelici, e quasi distrutti gli occhi tenean fissi in ogni uomo che improvviso compariva loro innanzi; e compresi di spavento per sospetto di nuovi affanni, in impeti subitamente rompeano di rabbia e di furore. Quindi assicurati dagli atti compassionevoli di chi pietosamente li guardava, dolenti oltre modo pietà chiedevano, le margini dei ferri mostrando, e le lividezze delle percosse di che tutto il corpo avean pieno.”—Trans.

  14. From notes written by the chaplain of the fortress prison in San Leo (a town in the Appenine foothills southwest of Rimini) where Cagliostro died. Little is known about the chaplain, but this statement is now a panel in an exhibition detailing the horrifying conditions in the prison.—Trans.

  15. Both Eco and La Duca’s contributions (the latter’s essay is titled “Storia e leggenda dei Beati Paoli”) appear in the 1971 edition; see Luigi Natoli, I beati Paoli (Palermo: Flaccovio Editore, 1971). Unfortunately none of these texts have yet been translated into English. The sect’s name literally means “Blessed Pauls.”—Trans.

  16. “Complesso d’inferiorità (sociale),” see Antonio Gramsci, Letteratura e vita nazionale (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1971).—Trans.

  17. Leopoldo Franchetti and Sidney Sonnino, Condizioni politiche e amministrative della Sicilia (Rome: Donzelli Editori, 2000).—Trans.

  18. First published as I viceré (Milan: F. Gundani, 1894); English trans. Archibald Colquhoun (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962).—Trans.

  19. Federico De Roberto, letter to Ferdinando Di Giorgi, July 16, 1891.

  20. Salvatore Savoia, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Palermo: Flaccovio Editore, 2010).

  5. THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOUTH

  1. Giovanni Belardelli deals with the same issues in an article ti
tled “Italie e nel 1860 il Sud divenne Africa” (“Italies, and in 1860 the South Became Africa”), Corriere della Sera, April 9, 1998.

  2. Giuseppe Prezzolini, Codice della vita italiana, chapter 4 (Florence: La Voce, 1921).

  3. Tullio De Mauro, Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita (Bari: Laterza, 1963).

  4. Luigi Settembrini, Ricordanze della mia vita (Milan: BUR, 1964).

  5. The term literally means “Lazaruses”—i.e., men who rise again—but is also related to the term lazzarone, literally “big Lazarus,” but by extension “scoundrel, rascal, lazybones, blackguard, laggard.”—Trans.

  6. All quotes from Stendhal in this chapter were taken from his essay “Brigands in Italy” in Roman Tales, trans. Susan Ashe (London: HarperCollins, 2012), pp. 262, 253, 258, and 265, respectively.

  7. Even the hideout of mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano—captured in 2006 after forty years at large—was discovered with sacred imagery and symbols, along with a Bible he read to pass the days, despite the fact that his formal education had ended with the second grade. He had been issued two life sentences in absentia.

  8. Cincinnatus refers to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519–430 B.C.E.), a Roman aristocrat and statesman who was twice granted supreme powers he relinquished as soon as his work was complete, thereby becoming a paragon of modesty and virtuous civic service. Garibaldi’s nickname is a nod to the fact that he had proven his valor in both the Old World and the New World.—Trans.

  9. A chapter of my book I segreti di New York (“Secrets of New York”) (Milan: Mondadori, 2000) is devoted to Meucci.

  10. Oscar de Poli, De Naples à Palerme 1863–1864 (Paris: Dupray de la Maherie, 1865).

  11. From the parliamentary report on the government investigation of brigandage, in La civiltà cattolica, October–November 1863.

  12. Massimo d’Azeglio, I Savoia e il massacro del Sud (Rome: Grandmelò, 1996).