LETTER FROM ITALY
A summer resort
in
Italy is not the best angle from which
to observe political and intellectual life. Caught as I am between the
sun and the sea, two days out of three I even forget to buy the daily
paper. Sticking to a rigid schedule, I manage to concentrate on writing
and reading for about four hours every day. An effort after which
ideas and mental preoccupations swarm loose from my hold like
frightened butterflies, and only the eyes remain active, admiring the
velvet green of the pines, the gray green of the olive trees, the emerald
of the vine, the viridian of the cypresses; staring at the sea in the
distance, icy green near the shore, then of the softest blue, and finally
of a luminous purple: "wine-dark," as the Mediterranean is bound to
appear since Homer invented that not-so-poetic comparison. And not
caring. I am not sure I enjoy it, but there is Italy's magic act again:
the suspension of all realities but Nature's. It forces happiness on you
in much the same way that the host forces food and drink on his guests
at an Italian table.
If
one does not feel happy, one risks feeling embar–
rassed and guilty.
Nature notwithstanding, I occasionally read the paper, especially
the city column, and come across such items as this: "An incredible
episode! Fourteen-year-old boy hangs himself from the window of his
room." "An overwhelmingly sad event," explains the article, "occurred
yesterday morning at 21, via del Canale: a 14-year-old boy has ended
his life by hanging himself from the bars of a window ... The suicide
was an unemployed mason . . . Except for unemployment and the
utter poverty of the whole family, there seems to have been no disquiet–
ing factor in the boy's existence. Nobody could have suspected such
a desperate intention in so young a heart . . . No logical justification
can be found. The police are investigating the case."
Under fascism suicide, an act of irremediable individualism, was
censored. Under Demochristian rule it is found baffling, especially
suicide for such material reasons as poverty. Unrequited love being
more melodramatic would have seemed more "logical" a justification
to the journalist who had to write that item. Within the pattern of
Italian conformism despair, in any case, is a disease of some sort and
the sign of a state of obstinate sin and ill will on the part of the individual.
