33
IGNAZIO SILONE
Lionel Abel
T
HE HEROIC PEASANTS
of
Fontamara
tum towards the city, poli-
tics, theory. The intellectual hero of
Bread and Wine
looks towards
the country, ethics, the heart; and finally, with mystical hope, on high.
Now what is the relationship between these very different movements?
Almost all of the characters of
Fontamara
are peasants, ignorant,
primitive, mystified, and Silone particularly loves them for their
directness and simplicity of heart. The whole of the action in which
they are involved is determined by forces flowing from the city and
interpreted by concepts originating in the city. The form of the action
is a turning to the city. Two turnings, rather. First the Fontamarans
turn as one turns to face an antagonist, and then they look to the city
for help. From the city come the armed men who shut off their elec-
tric lights and divert the stream they need to water their truck gar-
dens; in the city jail, Viola Berardo, the most violent and masterful
of the Fontamarans, learns why these things have come to pass; for
the Unknown Hand, a man of the city, Berardo sacrifices his life.
I said that the peasants are ignorant and mystified. The fascist thugs
outgeneral them in every engagement. But the Fontamarans try to
understand what is happening. Their efforts to understand bring still
heavier blows. But the blows rained on their heads by Mussolini's
anned men do not instil them with a disrespect for theory. On the
contrary, these peasarits are very theoretical. Not that they are good
at handling abstractions, but they do try, however inadequately, to
generalize their experience. The knowledge of each one becomes part
of the experience of the group. These peasants are not like peasants
in the pages of Hamsun and Giono, absorbed in an intuitive relation
to the mysteries of nature. They are engaged in a bitter tactical
struggle against the mystifications of society.
So perfectly constructed is
Fontamara,
that to get at its mean-
ingsone has only to enumerate its events from the time the peasants'
lightsare cut off until they start their newspaper to answer the political
question "What is to be done?"
The movement of
Bread and Wine,
Silone's recent novel, is less
pure, more surreptitious, less dramatic, more beautiful. Pietro Spina,
an exiled revolutionary, returns to Italy, and disguised as a priest seeks
contact with the scattered remnants of the former socialist groups.
Butthere are no such groups. Of still uncorrupted and seriolls revolu-
tionaries only a handful are left-for long periods of time out of
