THE CHARLATAN STATE
255
tures,"
8
fashioned superb revolutionary armies that heroically defied the
Romahs until they were completely exterminated, the last of their leaders
killing himself on a deserted altar, consecrating his blood to the infernal
deities. For Sicilian priests like Pantaleone, and for the unknown friar
"black as an Ethiopian" who led the Garibaldian rabble against the Bour–
bons ·and was the first to fall in one of the battles of 1860, the mother's
gene is dominant.
Contemporarily, Fascism has abolished capitalism in all but fact;
and while burning its effigy at the stake makes a violent noise on paper.
(Nobody
outside Italy takes D'Annunzio's politics seriously: a boy scout
made mayor of the city for the day; but Mussolini's "theories" are taken
internationally as gospel.) Mussolini's decrees abolishing the
latifundia
of Sicily are about as significant as the Sicilian Constitution of 1812, of
~orry
fate, which abolished feudalism; i.e., as Trevelyan wrote, th.e large
farms were now called
"ex-feudi.
Before 1812 they were
feudi."
Musso–
lini has learned much, too much, from the English. Today an ex-capital–
ist government run by ex-socialists writes away the ex-feudalism spawned
by Englishmen, kidnapped by Neapolitans, ransomed by Piedmontese. The
genealogy of the modern Sicilian character.
'Mommsen.
CONTRIBUTORS
SAUL BELLOW, a young Chicago writer, is now in the Army. Colt Press is
bringing out his first novel,
The Very Dark Trees .
...
WALLACE FowLIE is
in the Department of Romance Languages at Yale University. He writes:
"At present I am working on a book about modern French poetry; it will
dealy mainly with Mallarme, Rimbaud, Valery and Claude!." ... MAX
EAsTMAN's latest book is
Heroes I Have Known
...
]AMES T. FARRELL's
latest book is
$1,000
a
Week,
a collection of short stories.... LIONEL
TRILLING is in the Department of English at Columbia University; his
biography of Matthew Arnold is well known.... BYRON VAZAKAS lives in
Reading, Pa.; his poems have appeared before in PARTISAN REVIEW....
WINTHROP PALMER's ballet play, "The Man from Midian," is currently
being performed by the Dance Players.... ALFRED HAYES lives in New
York City... . EvE MERRIAM conducts "Out of the Ivory Tower," a series
o£ modern poetry programs given weekly over Station WQXR in New
York
C~y
.... EcmiO MATTINA lives in Easton, Pa. This is his first pub–
lished work "outside of a few letters-to-editors."
It
is an excerpt from a
!!tudy comparing Cagliostro and Hitler, and was written in the winter of
1941. ...
E:tNEST NAGEL is a member of the Philosophy Department of
Columbia University.... LIONEL ABEL has published verse and criticism
in
PARTISAN REVIEW,
View
and other magazines.... CHRISTOPHER ISHER·
WOOD
is a well-known English poet and novelist; he is now living in this
country.... RICHARD V. CHASE, a member of the English Department of
Columbia University, lives in Fairfield, Conn.... H. P. LAZARUS has pub–
lished book reviews in
The Nation
and other magazines.
