RETURN TO FONTAMARA
309
The conflict between Communist orthodoxy and socialist faith ap–
peared to Silone as both simple and fundamental. It was not a conflict
between opposing political arguments but between ideology and every–
day reality, between hierarchy and society, between the functionaries
of a far-away power and the
cafoni.
If
the ideology were true, then
the reality would be false; if the hierarchy were infallible, the society
of the oppressed would be in error; if the instructions of the function–
aries expressed a superior truth, then the very existence of the
cafoni
would be an obstinate "deviation." The contrast, finally, was so simple
and absolute that it became comic. And from this contrast springs
Silone's irony: "Was the life of Fontamara, then,
less
real than the his–
torical process?"
If
one had to answer "yes" then one would find one's self on
well-trodden ground, since princes and popes, ministers and
duci,
tax
collectors and representatives of order had always maintained the same
principle, namely, that the
cafoni
are wrong by nature; and now the
great Communist Party was catching up with these venerable institu–
tions, demonstrating once again how right the peasants were to place
little faith in "changes." But if the answer was "no," then in spite of
everything it was still permissible to hope and believe.
It was not Silone's purpose to exalt these "primitives." Rather, he
wished to show how deficient modern faiths and superstitions were, how
comically abstract the order they proposed, if they failed not only to
revive but even to affect this abandoned community, disfigured and
petrified by time. The
cafoni
are grotesque; but how much more gro–
tesque is an "historical" world in which the life of the
cafoni,
their
rites and customs, worn out by habit and repetition and never revital–
ized-remains as an example of moral truth?
It is Silone's great merit that he has known how to recall in the
context of today's struggles the existence of this immemorial reality,
a reality that should cause the modern world to question its pride, and
at the same time give it reasons for not despairing. This is Silone's
value as a writer; and it is by no means a purely literary one.
Rather than novels, Silone's books are apologues and moral fables.
Their theme and their style are those of an educated peasant who speaks
so as to be understood by other peasants. Therefore he must explain
himself through homely and familiar examples;
if
he wishes to move
his audience he must do so in a manner which they understand. Indeed,
there is something of the country priest about Silone, a priest without
hierarchical fetters and without theology-free, imaginative and rustic,
as much by birth as by deliberate choice.
