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PARTISAN REVIEW
is no more than a superstructure upon an essentially pagan civilization.
Norman Douglas had already observed that the adult Jesus was out–
side southern experience and that his teachings were repugnant. Indeed,
theirs are not the Christian but the natural virtues of a realistic people
living within the social and cosmic confines of
((La miseria"-a
world
in which to love one's neighbor, to let down one's guard in the face of
the relentless struggle for existence, would simply mean to commit
suicide.
The Christian view of the abyss between sinful man and
the
Eternal Father and the mediating function of Christ the Savior
has
little meaning to the peasant, who is not afraid of death and hardly
conscious of sin. Death and suffering are natural ingredients of
"La
miseria,"
while faults and shortcomings are no more than human.
The
abyss, to him, is rather between a perfect deity, a god who is the cosmic
order personified, and the misery of daily life. In his religious existence
this is evident in the contrast of two faiths held concurrently: the
faith
in a divine power, unsullied by earthly life, and in a magic conception,
expressed in a myriad of saints and superstitions, in which the cosmic
has been reduced to human proportions as it were, and made operative
in the petty struggles of workaday existence.
The mediator, strange to say, is not Christ but the Madonna.
In
a sense, the Madonna is part and parcel of the magic life, and in fact,
there is not one Madonna but a great variety of them. At one moun–
tain sanctuary I was informed that the local Madonna was one of
seven sisters, and when I asked which of the seven was the Mother of
God, I was bluntly told that none of the seven had anything to do
with the Madonna "down there in the village church." On the other
hand, the Madonna is more than just a local saint: not only can help
be magically obtained through her (as through any other saint)
in
our daily troubles, we can also orgiastically obtain union with her, the
Cosmic Mother in whom all suffering has become meaningful.
This will explain why in the south of Italy feasts in honor of
Christ are exceedingly few, why celebrations in honor of the Holy
Trinity are vitiated by the earthiness of local pagan rites, why
the
Sacraments have often little more than a formal magic value, while
religious passion seeks its satisfaction in the feasts of local saints and
of the Madonna particularly. Characteristically enough, they are fre–
quently held around sanctuaries on isolated mountainsides to which
throngs of peasants come from faraway places. Often the feast starts
in the evening and lasts a whole night and day. Then groups of peas–
ants bivouac around open fires while a young goat is roasted and ancient
