The Secrets of Italy Read online

  There are many events that prove how deeply intertwined the Italian peninsula’s various cities have been throughout history. One curious example is that in 1248, when Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (a.k.a. stupor mundi, the “world wonder”), lost a decisive battle in Parma, the city’s inhabitants took possession of the harem that followed him everywhere he went and divvied up its three hundred concubines. The emperor had gathered women from all across Europe at his main residence in Palermo, and they all ended up in Parma.6

  The few lines I quoted from Virgil’s Aeneid earlier on have to do with the methodology I follow in recounting the stories featured throughout this book. I often combine real history as it actually happened with the stories (and histories) of literature. Although the latter may be interwoven with fantasy, it also supplements reality, exposing its true power. Attilio Brilli, an expert on travel writing, maintains that the written word can become a tool for time travel as well: “[The printed page] can become the best passport for those of us who move about in a world without differences, flattened atop a great void. Visiting a place means going beyond appearances, beyond the obvious, to listen to the echoing remembrances that have accumulated there; reading, then, means seeing places through our own eyes as well as through the eyes of those who came long before us, with their preferences and their tastes, creating a fascinating play of reflected doubles and recompositions.”7 The work of poet and essayist Giacomo Leopardi fits this idea perfectly, as we shall see in the chapter on Rome. He traveled a lot despite his poor health, and was tossed about in unbelievably uncomfortable horse-drawn carriages on abominably rough roads for days on end. In his travels he’s accompanied by a deep discontent for which he knew only one remedy. On July 23, 1827, he writes:

  After changing my place of residence many times and staying here or there for different periods of time, either months or years, I noticed that I was never happy, never centered within myself, never at home in any place, however excellent it might otherwise be, until I had memories to attach to that place, to the rooms where I lived, to the streets, to the houses I visited. The memories consisted only in my being able to say: I was here a long time ago. This is what I did, saw, heard so many months ago; a thing that would not be of any importance otherwise, but the recollection, being able to recall it, made it important and sweet.8

  These recollections, the memories and fantasies he referred to as “fictions” and “illusions,” were what held him back from the brink of despair. In 1828, when he was thirty years old, he recorded a related thought:

  For the sensitive and imaginative man who lives as I have lived for a long time, continually feeling and imagining, the world and objects are in a peculiar way double. He will see a tower, a landscape, with his eyes; he will hear the sound of a bell with his ears; and at the same time in his imagination he will see another tower, another landscape, he will hear another sound. In this second mode of perceiving objects resides all the beauty and pleasure of concrete things.9

  In this sense, fantasies can help us better see reality; they’re useful in transforming history into a story—not to confuse ideas further, but rather to clarify them.

  In 2008 I came across a book, hot off the press, devoted to Italian travel writers (from the period between 1700 and 1861) with a superb preface by Luca Clerici. It includes some curious points of view, such as the adventures of Vincenzo Coronelli (1650–1718), a Franciscan friar, cartographer, encyclopedist, and overall bizarre character. One of the indomitable friar’s ventures, from 1681 to 1683, was to construct two massive world maps for Louis XIV, the Sun King, and he moved to Paris expressly for the job. The first globe, measuring almost sixteen feet in diameter, depicts planet Earth with all the continents known at the time. The second depicts the heavens, with the constellations positioned exactly as they had been at the king’s birth. The two ingenious artifacts weigh a total of about four tons, and are now in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Their restless designer made an interesting observation about travel, which serves, he wrote, to become acquainted with “the spirit of nations, their laws, the products they make, and their uses.”10 That’s one way to use travel: as a means to open yourself up to other experiences or, as we now think of it, other cultures.

  The poet Ippolito Pindemonte saw travel differently. In his satirical sermon I Viaggi (“Travel”) he declares his absolute conviction that it’s best to just stay put: “Oh felice chi mai non pose il piede / fuor della terra, nel cui grembo nacque!”—“How happy is he who never sets foot outside the land he was born in!” And then there’s Carlo Silvestri, a nobleman from Rovigo, who wrote a book dedicated to the bishop of nearby Adria with the longwinded title Istorica e geografica descrizione delle antiche paludi Adriane, ora chiamate Lagune di Venezia, e del corso di que’ fiumi, che in varj tempi hanno contributto al loro interramento (“Historical and Geographic Description of the Ancient Hatrian Marshes, Now Known as the Venetian Lagoon, and the Courses of Those Rivers Which, over Various Time Periods, Have Contributed to Their Infilling,” and that’s just the title—there’s a subtitle, too). In it, he confesses that he’s open to the idea of travel as long as it has a specific aim, and he criticizes those who “Sweat and fret and go to great lengths to hear all about … India, Japan, New Zealand, the Australian lands, and other not-quite-discovered places that might well be sheer fantasy—all the while gravely paying no attention to the events happening in their very own homeland; indeed, they remain so ignorant that they could scarcely say a thing about it, it would be like asking them about some unexplored land situated in the imaginary terrain of the Moon.”

  These words of the forgotten Silvestri give us another good idea of what travel is, they elucidate what a true voyage of discovery can be; as Proust once observed, it isn’t a matter of seeking out new lands, but of gaining new eyes, a fresh perspective. Ultimately, the true voyage lies somewhere between fantasy and reality, and we can’t necessarily assume that so-called reality is always the most important aspect. In Italy, as I said earlier, the past is of such importance (such weight, some would say) that you can’t really ignore it if you want to gain some understanding of the place.

  I’ve taken you through a rather long, somewhat circuitous introduction, so let us now return to the initial question of “secrets.” This book explores a few places, people, archetypal figures, and moments—both real and fictional—culled from the chronicles of history as well as from literature. I certainly could’ve chosen others, or could have included two or three or a hundred times as many tales. Italian history harbors such (dramatic) richness that there are plenty of examples like the ones included here. Thousands of years, millions of protagonists, dozens of armies, hundreds of cities, entire civilizations born and wiped out from this narrow territory—to quote Petrarch, “let that fair land the Apennines divide / and sea and Alps surround … hear it ring out.”11 And so my choices were personal—that is, arbitrary. A series of impressions, memories, and readings from my youth suggested this selection. The only criterion that could be considered objective was my goal of finding some degree of geographic balance between North, Center, and South in such a long and narrow land.

  It isn’t enough to look at Italy as it is today; if we’re to have any understanding of it we have to remember the many events of its past, the more fantastic side of things, and its “chimeras.” This voyage will therefore take us not only through space, but also back through time.

  1.

  ITALIANS AS SEEN FROM THE OUTSIDE

  George Gordon Byron arrived in Pisa in November 1821, where he stayed along the banks of the Arno in Palazzo Lanfranchi. Once there, he began frequenting the Shelleys and their circle of sophisticated eccentrics, which also included Teresa and Pietro Gamba, and they all whiled away the days with literary pursuits, long rides on horseback, and shooting practice at a nearby countryside property. In a December 1821 letter to publisher John Murray, Byron writes:

  I have got here into a famous old feuda
l palazzo, on the Arno, large enough for a garrison, with dungeons below and cells in the walls, and so full of Ghosts, that the learned Fletcher (my valet) has begged leave to change his room, and then refused to occupy his new room, because there were more ghosts there than in the other. It is quite true that there are most extraordinary noises (as in all old buildings), which have terrified the servants so as to incommode me extremely.1

  Aside from the supposed ghosts lurking in Byron’s palazzo, there’s another ghost that’s long haunted, and continues to haunt, Italians’ consciences: the way that they, as a people, might be judged from the outside—the way foreigners might think of them and describe them. Italians had inhabited the peninsula for a long time, well before the Kingdom of Italy was officially established. In the interest of rigor, and perhaps to be a bit provocative, the early statesman Massimo d’Azeglio’s famous prophecy could be turned on its head:2 It was the Italians, not Italy, that already existed—therefore, the only thing left to be unified wasn’t the Italian people, but rather the country of Italy.

  Outside eyes looking in at the peninsula’s varied populations have always understood that reality, and have managed to capture certain behavioral constants in the context of a geographic entity, infused with customs, that often appeared fractured and contradictory—fascinating in some respects, repulsive in others. This vast gap between very positive and very negative poles is practically unique in all of Europe. No other population has ever been the subject of such sharply contrasting judgments, also because no other population has ever judged itself in such contrasting ways.

  In short, the way in which foreigners have viewed Italians is in large part a consequence of the way in which Italians have viewed themselves. This was the case long ago, and remains true to this day—a fact made clear when the judgments some “authoritative” foreign news publications issue on Italy from time to time are generally based on similar evaluations expressed in Italian newspapers.

  Some years ago a group of students at Princeton University was asked to define the Italian temperament, and the vast majority chose three adjectives: artistic, impulsive, passionate. This social psychology survey dates back nearly three decades, but I don’t think such judgments have changed much since, especially because similar sentiments were already surfacing not just thirty years ago, but two hundred years ago; in some cases the judgments were even harsher back then, in the sense that terms like impulsivity and passion were more closely associated with crime, betrayal, and corruption. I mentioned these perspectives in an earlier book of mine,3 but I’m bringing them up again because their validity is also proven, for what it’s worth, by my experiences living abroad; I’ve heard those adjectives, or similar ones, repeated countless times. Lucio Sponza, an economist from Venice who now teaches in England, has done extensive research into how Great Britain’s ideas about Italy took shape, and what impact they’ve had.

  Here’s one possible summary of his findings: “On one side of the coin was ‘Italy,’ the country of beauty and culture; on the other side were the ‘Italians,’ an ingenious but corrupt, untrustworthy, and licentious race.”4 This judgment exposes an erroneous stereotype, as its internal contradiction makes clear: how is it possible that a people so “corrupt, untrustworthy, and licentious” managed to create such a strong tradition—not just of beauty, but of a harmonious, coherent, affable beauty? But the power of prejudice lies precisely in its ability to prevail irrespective of any coherent thought, obeying solely the need to sum up a series of disparate impressions into a single judgment, however brutal. Mario Praz, one of Italy’s sharpest scholars of English literature, once wrote an essay that touches upon the way a few late-eighteenth-century English writers described Italians:

  The general Italian populace was viewed as filthy, lazy, criminal; the upper classes were considered poor, rude, and universally adulterous; both plebeians and aristocrats were thought superstitious and abject in the the face of tyrants. Venetians quickly came to blows at the slightest provocation, Neapolitans were naturally diabolical, and so on. Above all, Italians’ religious devotion irritated the English of that period.5

  Travelers returning to England from their grand tour in Italy unanimously referred to the fact that the Italian peninsula was like an enormous museum fallen into ruin, populated by wretched, dissolute masses who noisily gathered in the streets—practically living outdoors thanks to the gentle climate—covered in rags or half naked, utterly unaware of its past glory. This vision, which inspired mixed reactions of both allure and horror, was applied with particular frequency to the Papal States and the South, described as the most destitute regions, inhabited by indolent, often ravenous ne’er-do-wells who were quick only when it came time to draw their daggers.

  One of the most successful gothic genre novels of the time that used just such tropes was Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797), whose title contains all the major plot elements. The action begins in 1764 in a convent near Naples, with the Inquisition as sinister backdrop. The plot centers on the mysterious Father Schedoni and two unhappy lovers, Elena Rosalba and Vincenzo di Vivaldi. It’s filled with dark adventures, shady atmospherics, sins, betrayals, and crimes. Schedoni always wears black, and dons a wide-brimmed hat that nearly hides his “lambent lustre of eyes, which seemed to still retain somewhat of the fire and genius.”6 Thus, as early as the late eighteenth century, we’ve already found a hugely popular novel depicting the archetype of the treacherous Italian, which became widespread not only in literature but in newspaper accounts as well—a stereotype that the foreign policies of countless successive governments only reinforced over time.

  An old note I once jotted down, unfortunately without any source citation, quotes an English critic from around the late nineteenth century, I believe: “Monasteries appeared as subtle and sadistic prisons, while in the churches each confessional box seemed to shade the progress of some wicked machination.” Not least because of its boisterous, pagan religiosity (that’s how the English have always seen it, at least), Italy became the favorite setting for stories filled with horrific events, conspiracies, imbroglios, merciless murders. To once again quote Praz: “These scandals, with their attendant dark and mysterious atmospheres, couldn’t help but rehash the contemporary cultural agenda in ‘black’ novels modeled on Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1765); Mrs. Radcliffe took that model and perfected it toward the end of the century, pilfering picturesque descriptions of the Italian landscape from recent travelers’ reports, and turning to Elizabethan drama for tips on how to portray the quintessentially sinister, Machiavellian Italian.”7

  The great romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a man with most refined sensibilities, writes in one of his letters from Italy: “The men are hardly men; they look like a tribe of stupid and shrivelled slaves.”8 As for the women: “[T]he Italian women … are perhaps the most contemptible of all who exist under the moon—the most ignorant, the most disgusting, the most bigoted.”9 Those are pretty excessive judgments, even if you consider the fact that he had been marveling at the miserable conditions most Italians lived in at the time.

  The Swiss writer Charles Victor de Bonstetten (1745–1832) took an interest in various aspects of European culture and published many works on the topic, including a book titled L’homme du midi et l’homme du nord (“Northerners and Southerners,” 1824). One of its central ideas is that Northerners, forced by the harsh, inclement climate to spend most of their time indoors, are more inclined to be reflective, to have a calm balance, and, collectively speaking, organize harmonious social lives. Southerners, on the other hand, surrounded as they are by a paradisiacal climate and a benevolent, sunny, mild natural realm (it’s no accident that a famous Neapolitan song says “Chist’ è ’o paese d’o sole,” “This is the land of the sun”), have, over time, metamorphosed into “creatures light as flies, living day to day from the nectar of the many flowers that cover the land in which they live.”

  In Bonstet
ten’s rather naive view, the “South” includes everything below the Alps, such that various Italians become one stereotypical Italian, a model that pays no heed to social class, geographic differences, or professional types. Ultimately, he participates in the widespread nineteenth-century prejudice that considers Italy solely in light of its climate, “landscape,” and fascinating “ruins,” all of which become the stereotype of an idealized past, when not reduced to being mere “picturesque backdrops” for a few watercolors. The Italians who live in such places exist only as anthropological specimens, and beyond that function they’re considered an irritating reality, sometimes even an obstacle interrupting the contemplation of an otherwise extraordinary scene infused with nature and culture. From the hundreds of examples of how the Italian landscape was portrayed according to a “transfigured realism” in the arts, let’s take the paintings of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875), in which a simultaneously lush yet harsh form of nature is depicted before a backdrop of imposing classical-era ruins. These are the city walls, arches, columns—the simulacra and the lonely towers Leopardi speaks of—now separated from all possible “glory.” For more than a century, those were the only things foreign visitors to Italy were capable of taking in.

  But then even Marcel Proust once wrote, heading home after a trip to Italy, that the real barbarian territory isn’t a land that’s never had any art, but the one that’s chock-full of masterpieces yet doesn’t know how to appreciate or preserve them.10 These few lines echo, albeit from a different perspective, the same condemnation repeated countless times, in countless essays and works of literature.