Event Highlights: European Voices – A Reading and Conversation with Author and Translator Tim Parks
On Thursday, April 16th, the Center for the Study of Europe in coordination with the BU Center for Humanities, the BU Translation Seminar, the Interdisciplinary Center in Italian Studies, and the College of General Studies hosted Tim Parks to speak on the topic of Italian character.
Tim Parks is an author and translator, and has lived in Italy for twenty-one years. His works of fiction have enthralled many, with subject matter spanning from violent art enthusiasts to political thrillers. His non-fiction work has focused especially on Italy and Verona, where he resides, and include Italian Neighbors, A Season with Verona, and most recently Italian Ways. He has studied Italian history and language in depth, and has also worked as a translator for twentieth century fiction and poetry.
His full speech, including readings from some of his novels and a question and answer period, can be found here:
Parks proclaimed his goal of the talk as to “try and talk about Italian national character as a sort of existential condition”, and to try and understand that condition. Throughout his speech, and indeed throughout all of his works, he referenced heavily the works of various modern Italian poets.
Using his own personal experience as a foreigner living in Italy, Parks opened his speech with a series of anecdotes on the relationship between foreigners and ‘guests’ in Italy. He supported the commonly referenced maxim regarding Italian culture, wherein “Italians are endlessly criticizing one another, but cannot abide with external criticism” with humorous accounts of personal experience. Underlying this, he argued, is a strict sense of belonging and not belonging within Italy, that hearkens back to familial ties. This mentality had lead him, even after decades in Italy, to feel still a guest. He argued that this stems from a lack of “real society” in Italy- and to explain these phenomena, Parks turned to nihilism.
Italian thinkers had conceptualized nihilism before its rise with Nietzsche, and Parks argued that this can explain much of Italian society. Italians, like nihilists, place little value in formal society and collective standards. Each Italian creates their own “cult of behavior”. One symptom of this is the relationship with honor and dishonor in Italian culture- if there is no societal standard that is enforced for judgement, can anyone be truly honored or dishonored? Looking at examples of historical figures, politicians, and public figures, it is easy to see in Italy the lack of a common condemnation or judgement. Figures like Mussolini and Francesco Schettino both face very mixed reactions even today.
Another trend Parks noted is Italian conversation, where insult are “the only form”. He referenced the comparison made between Italians and French. The French and it British, as it says, laugh at individuals behind their backs, but respect them to their face, while Italians laugh to their face and know no respect. Sociologists studying this topic have hypothesized that this lack of respect, and lack of illusion, have severe impacts on Italian self-esteem.
The ultimate expression of this ‘nihilism’ is expressed in the quote referenced by Parks, that “life doesn’t have truth or substance, and in Italy it does not even have the appearance of it. You cannot fool yourself into thinking that life might be serious.” And with political scandals that go nowhere, deeply embedded crime rings, and economic disparity, modern Italian life can seem to lend credence to this view.
Parks sees Italy as “a nation in search of a collective illusion” to escape this cynicism, and traces its historical development along this same search. In his explanation, he uses deep historical trends, specific examples, arts, international relations, and more to back to his case. He read from his book Italian Ways on the sense of Italy presented by its train stations, and entertained audience questions on prospects for the future, historical causation, and more.
-Kaitlyn Perreault, ’18