PAGES FROM A JOURNAL
47
some new impulse towards some end, some work to be done . . .
but I tell myself sometimes, often, that for the time being I have said
what I have to say and that my cycle is closed. This is also why
I shall depart without too much regret.
To be at odds with his times-there lies the
raison d'etre
of
the artist. And that is why I hardly admit ·that his only significant
value is as a mirror. He moderates, opposes, leads. And that is also
why he is often not understood at first except by the few.
*
*
*
(Sorrento)
Nobility, grace, voluptuousness. For here no trace of softness
accompanies the joy of living. Among the luxurious vines, everywhere
one sees the effort of man and the triumph of the spirit. In no other
land, certainly, is there a happier marriage of vegetation and a bold
architecture, where often only the festooning vine tempers with a smile
an excessive severity.
Nobility;
that word halim:s me, in Italy–
where the most sensual caress approaches spirituality.
Everything pleases me-even the volcanic tufa at Sorrento,
and these profound ravines, these crevasses, which must have a
special name of their own in geology, one which I should like to
know. They are due, it seems to me, not so much to erosion (although
a little water still flows at the bottom of the gulf) but to some
abrupt seismic break. The walls remain sheer like the quarries of
Syracuse, with the same luxurious flowering at their base. But it
seems even more plausible, that the earth opens, like a bursting
grenade, from the effect of the heat.
I will never be able to say how much I owe to Italy or how
deeply I was, and remain, in love with her.
The buildings, the walls along the roads, are covered with in–
scriptions in gigantic letters; salutes to Il Duce and quotations from
his
speeches-perfect slogans, admirably chosen and well fitted
to arouse the youth, to
enlist
it. Above all, these three words:
Believe.
Obey.
Fight.
appear most frequently, as if conscious of summing
up the very spirit of fascist doctrine. These words shed a certain
light and show me, in the process, the proper "stand" for anti–
fascism. And nothing brings more confusion than the adoption of this
slogan by communism itself, which still pretends to be anti-fascist,
but is no longer so, except out of political expediency, communism
which asks recruits to the party to
believe,
to
obey
and to
fight,
without questioning, without criticism, with blind submission. Three–
fourths of the Italian inscriptions would be just as suitable on the
walls
of Moscow. They tell me that one can triumph over an advers–
ary
only on his own terrain, and only with his own arms, that sword
