Articles by: Tom Verso

  • Op-Eds

    Bond Rating Agencies Moody’s and S&P are advised – “Don’t be mess’n” with Italy.


     The role of international credit rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s in causing the great post WW II recession has been noted by various business news publications since the onset of the crash and failing recovery.  However, beyond talking about these agencies' ability to affect national and international financial markets at will, little has been done to rein in their market power – until they started “mess’n” with Italy.

     

    Back on September 25, 2008, the international financial publication Bloomberg carried an article by Elliot Smith who wrote:

     

    “In August 2004, Moody's Corp. unveiled a new credit-rating model that Wall Street banks used to sow the seeds of their own demise. The formula allowed securities firms to sell more top-rated, subprime mortgage-backed bonds than ever before.

     

    A week later Standard & Poor’s, under the threat of losing market share to Moody’s, also changed their “credit-rating model”.  Thus demonstrating that ratings agencies do not use ‘objective’ market criteria to arrive at “credit-ratings”.  Their only concern is their own profits and not the investors who rely on their ratings to make decisions - Caveat emptor. In short,

     

    “The world's two largest bond-analysis providers repeatedly eased their standards as they pursued profits from structured investment pools sold by their clients, according to company documents, e-mails and interviews with more than 50 Wall Street professionals.”

     

    Since then there has been a lot of journalistic “ink” spilt and political talk about the seeming untoward practices of these agencies.  But, for all the talk there has been no significant action until last Thursday (August 4, 2011) when southern-Italian prosecutors launched an investigation into the criteria these agencies used to down grade Italian securities.

     

    Huffington Report carried a Reuters reported from Milan:

     

    “Italian prosecutors have seized documents at the offices of rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's in a probe over suspected "anomalous" fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

     

    The measure is aimed at "verifying whether these agencies respect regulations as they carry out their work," Carlo Maria Capistro, who heads the prosecutors' office in the southern town of  Trani which is leading the probe, told Reuters.

     

    The Trani prosecutors have opened two probes -- one for each rating agency -- after a complaint by two consumer groups over the impact of their reports about Italy on Milan stock prices...the probe was aimed at finding out whether the market's sharp drop was due to a precise scheme by hedge funds and other unidentified players that could be linked to the negative comments about Italian public finances by the rating agencies."

     

    It remains to be seen if these investigations are serious or just political profiling.  However, it is a well document fact that when Italian prosecutor (especially those south of Rome) are serious, they are tenacious pit bulls that can and have brought down Italian governments.



    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ax3vfya_Vtdo

     

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/italian-prosecutors-seize-rating-agencies-documents_n_918253.html

     

     

  • Op-Eds

    Italian Women in fiction: from “La Scapigliatura” to Lisa Scottoline...“You’ve come a long way baby!”


    Introduction
     
    Scapigliatura:
     
    “During the 1860s [through the 1880s] a group of literary artists (some of them also painters and composers) active mostly in Milan came to be known as ‘scapigliatura’.  They where radically opposed to bourgeois manners, habits, and aesthetic ideals” (Dictionary of Italian Literature emp. +). 
     
    “...an artistic movement [consisting of ] painters, composers, and writers who rejected bourgeois values in morality and art” (translator’s “Introduction” to Passion i.e. translation of Fosca emp.+)
     
    Call me a cynic if you will, but... Living a self-indulgent bohemian urban life style and struggling with the profound issues of adolescent-esque love affairs (immortalized in Puccini’s La Bohème), scapigliati artist were opposing bourgeois moral values while sipping cappuccino in Milan’s cafes.  Meanwhile, south of Rome Terroni brigadista were fighting to the death the immoral bourgeoisie invading armies of the Piedmont.
     
    For example, the renowned scapigliatista Iginio Ugo Tarchitte wrote the unrequited love novel Fosca, printed in serials for the Milan literary magazine “Pungolo”, to the delight of Milanese literati.  How nice! How sweet!  Writing and reading love stories in the spirit of rejecting bourgeois morality, while the hundred and ten thousand man strong bourgeoisie Piedmontese army was ravaging the people of Two Sicilies.  In contemporary idiom – “Go Figure!”
     
    Nevertheless, apart from the absurd moral claims of these nineteenth century northern Italian ‘Hippies’, from the point of view of social history, their work is a window into the values of their times and provides a basis for studying the evolution of those values down to the literature of present day Italian Americana.  Much can be learned about the history and culture of Italian Americana from a comparative analysis of novels like Fosca and those of today’s Lisa Scottoline.
     
    Fosca
     
    The main plot of the novel is the story of the relation between Giorgio a young Italian Army officer and Fosca the cousin of Giorgio’s superior officer.  The sub-plot has to do with the relationship between Giorgio and a married women Clara. For purposes of this discussion, the most significant aspect of the novel is the hysterical (literally) characteristics of Fosca.
     
    The character Fosca that Tarchetti introduced is far different than the hysterical Fosca he developed in his plot. Fosca is introduced as more of a twenty-first century women than nineteenth.  She is intelligent, well educated, widely read, analytical and witty.  We are told:
     
    “[Fosca] devours books, she is a bookworm, she reads the way [men] smoke... [Giorgio] lent her Rousseau’s la nouvella Heloise, La Fortaine’s L’Homme Singulier  and  les Confessions a las Tombe...[She] returned them with paper notes and marked passages [that revealed] an intelligence that was robust, subtle, perspicacious.  That woman was gifted... (Passion  p. 40 emp.+)
     
    “She was tall and stood erect...displayed pliancy, grace, was courteous and dressed with a great deal of elegance.” (p. 42)
     
    “Her spirit was not superficial; her intelligence was much more profound than a woman’s intellect ordinarily is; she was clever, and possessed a refinement of manners that was quite singular.” (p. 47 emp.+)
     
    Such were the introductory descriptions that Tarchetti gives us to this extraordinary woman.  He then goes on to put words in her mouth to complement and reinforce the description.  In a philosophical discussion about “death”, Giorgio asks rhetorically:
     
    “Does not the mere sensation of existing, seeing, hearing, touching, moving, breathing in this place make life attractive to you?”
     
    Fosca’s response would have delighted Shakespeare:
     
    Why didn’t you add ‘thinking’...You don’t know the abysses of thought...nor its tortures...It is one thing to imagine, to delude yourself, and quite another to experience and be conscious of a true blessing...who would prefer the possession of the smallest blessing to the image of an immeasurable one?” (p50-53 emp.+)
     
    Thus, in chapter seventeen of a fifty-chapter book we are introduced to this gracious and intelligent woman.  However, this representation proves to be ephemeral.  For the rest of the novel Tarchetti reverts Fosca to her times, a wily manipulative woman who uses her ‘looks’ and ‘illness’ to manipulate her man. Not unlike Cleopatra, also an intelligent woman who used her beauty to entice and control, Fosca uses her ugliness to the same end.  Tarchetti transformers her into a manipulative antagonists who destroys her devoted cousin, herself and Giorgio.
     
    Fosca suffers from hysteria.  Hysteria throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth with the writings of Freud denoted in medical parlance a psychopathology peculiar to women and associated with sexuality e.g. repression.  Along with and due to the hysterical conditions, Fosca suffered various physical illnesses.  The sum total of her conditions resulted in a woman who was extreme ‘ugly’ and skinny. In short, not only was she unattractive, but more accurately repulsive. 
     
    Her physical condition in turn gave rise to loneliness and wanting for love.  From the time of her introduction to Giorgio, she used her condition to manipulate his kindness and his own psychological issues to her selfish ends; resulting in the tragic ending of the novel.  In the nineteenth century a woman had no place to apply their intelligence.  And, if they were unattractive they were if not literally then de facto cloistered. 
     
    One hundred and fifty years later, intelligent Italian American women are still struggling to actualize themselves in a society that is both male dominated and often at odds with the Italian American value system.  Lisa Scottoline explores these issues in the context of legal and moral conflicts of her Italian American female “gumshoe” lawyers.
     
    “Great” literature and Scottoline’s melodramas
     
    Lisa Scottoline’s Novels
     


    Titles
    Published
    Everywhere That Mary Went

    1993
    Final Appeal
    1994
    Running From the Law
    1996
    Legal Tender
    1996
    Rough Justice
    1997
    Mistaken Identity
    1999
    Moment of Truth
    2000
    The Vendetta Defense
    2001
    Counting Trouble
    2002
    Dead Ringer
    2003
    Killer Smile
    2004
    Devil's Corner
    2005
    Dirty Blonde
    2006
    Daddy's Girl
    2007
    Lady Killer
    2008
    Look Again
    2009
    Think Twice
    2010
    Save Me

    2011
     
    To my mind (i.e. subjective aesthetic judgment), Lisa Scottoline has in her a (perhaps the) great post-Little Italy Italian American novel.  She has a thorough grasp of the people, history, culture and issues of contemporary Italian Americana and she is an excellent writer.  However, I don’t think she will write such a book. Indeed, I don’t think she is capable.  She lacks what Miguel de Unamuno called the “tragic sense of life” or the “existential dread” of Sartre and Camus.  In short, what is generally thought to be “great literature” is ‘heavy’. 
     
    Unlike DeLillo who, while brushing up to but falling short of a great post Little Italy novel with “Underworld”, destroyed Bronzini and emasculated Nick; Scottoline loves her Italian American characters and Italianita too much to inflict Orestia-esque suffering and destruction on them.  In short, she can’t sing the “goat’s song.”
     
    She is only capable of ‘Yea saying’ when it comes to Italians.  Which is not to say she is unaware or does not explore their shortcomings.  However, those shortcomings are cast as Italian manifestations of ‘human frailty’ generally.  And, she has the self-confidence in her heritage to cast those shortcomings comically.  In contradistinction of the contemporary hypersensitive defensive ethnic milieu, she allows Italian Americans to laugh at themselves. She has too much sense of humor to write tragedy.  Her wit pours out of her characters' mouths even in the most incongruous unhumorous scenes. 
     
    Further, she is a great melodramatic writer; she loves to tell a good story and twist a plot beyond the reader’s anticipation. Deus ex machina, thought to be a shortcoming of literary plots, is her forte.  She is uncanny in contriving situations that drive the plot's rising and falling actions.  Just when the protagonist seems to have escaped a situation, or the plot seems to be at a dead-end, the machina ‘kicks-in’ and “it’s off and running again.”
     
    {Parenthetical note: There are those who argue that a definitive characteristics of ‘excellent’ literature, as opposed to lesser melodramatic writing, is a plot where action is rigorously governed by cause and effect – i.e. every action in the plot is ‘caused’ by an antecedent action – see for example, Elder Olsen of the “Chicago Critics” and Lajos Egri in his book “The Art of Dramatic Writing”. 
     
    However, it should be pointed out that the plot of a literary masterpiece such as “Crime and Punishment” is repeatedly moved by characters who (ex machina) ‘just happen’ to meet on the streets of a city the size of St. Petersburg.  And, the not so highly regarded (in literary circles) novel “The Godfather” has, I would argue, an absolutely perfect ‘cause and effect’ plot. 
     
    In short, plot is a not the characteristic of excellent literature. The “tragic senses of life” is probably a better measure of great literature and differentiator of melodrama}
      
    Scottoline’s Women
     
    University “Chairs of Wisdom” would not place Scottoline on student’s ‘must read” literature list – if on the list at all.  Her fun to read “Nancy Drew” like detective stories are not the type of reading for which one gets college credit (the motto of college literature: “No Pain – No Gain”). However, when placed in the context of Italian and Italian American social history, Scottoline’s books are significant and, I would say, must reading!  I would especially highly recommend them for southern-Italian American adolescent reading as a window to their history and culture; especially the excellent historic novel Killer Smile, that explores the internment of Italian Americans during the Second World War.
     
    The single most prominent aspect of contemporary American Italianita in her books are her female Italian American characters.  The plots of her fictional works are mostly built around the lives of Italian American female lawyers (amateur detectives) working in the all female law firm of Rosato & Associates.  It is though the eyes of these Italian American women that the reader ‘sees’ the history and fossilized remnants of “Little Italy” (south Philadelphia).  Through them we see the post Little Italy world in which the Italian American woman lives, works and struggles to reconcile her peasant origins and values with the contemporary urban world.  And, with them the reader is invited to Socratically probe the often contradictory and nebulous concepts of ‘justice’ vs. ‘legal’, and evil (nature vs. nurture).
     
    Conclusion
     
    Scottoline’s Italian women are at once the same and radically different than Tarchetti’s Fosca.  Like Fosca they are the product of the same Italian cultural roots affecting a women in a “man’s world” where female intelligence is not respected; and at the same time they are a giant evolutionary step away from Fosac in that they continually render male dominance moot.  Scottoline's women do succeed, albeit with super effort.
     
    Looking at the ape we see the human and looking at the human we see the ape.  Similarly, we see Fosca in Scottoline’s women and vise versa.
     
    American students of southern-Italian descent should be able to study the literature of post-Risorgimento Italy and contemporary Italian American writers in the context of a unified evolving Italian culture.  Tell that to the "Chairs of Wisdom"!

  • DeLillo’s “Underworld”: No Patria Meridionale History – No southern-Italian American Culture


     Preface Literature and Reality

     
    A hardcore empiricist who virtually never reads fiction, with the exception of a pop detective story when down with the flu; it never occurred to me to read anything like the “post-modern” novels of Don DeLillo.  Not only literature challenged; but also, after concerted efforts, I gave up trying to understand what “post-modern” means.
     
    However, when I came across a magazine excerpt from “Underworld”, an absolutely brilliant rendition of 1951 Bronx 'Little Italy', I gave pause.  I’ve read the two great cultural-anthropology studies of Boston’s North End and West End ‘Little Italy’ neighborhoods; respectively, W. F. Whyte’s “Street Corner Society, and H. J. Gans’ “Urban Villagers”.   Yet, there seemed to be more ‘reality’ in DeLillo’s fictional representation than these meticulous highly and rightfully acclaimed empirical studies.
     
    Aristotle said: “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”  A history student, I absolutely rejected the notion that poets (whom I could not understand) grasp a greater truth than empirical researchers. 
     
    Nevertheless, I always felt the above studies of Boston, even with all their meticulously documented Aristotelian “particulars”, were missing something fundamental – the essence, if you will, of the southern-Italian American culture.  I grew up in a ‘Little Italy’ neighborhood much like those described, but I could not relate to the anthropological representations. For example, in my youth, I ‘hung-out’ on street corners much like those described by Whyte, and I found his descriptions factually accurate.  However, the descriptions of the street corner scenes lacked Italianita. They lacked southern-Italian American idiom and the nuaces of ‘street corner’ conversations.  Culture is conveyed best in language. 
     
    DeLillo is just the opposite. Idiom and nuance pour out of every sentence.  For example, I count at least 45 Italian slang expressions in DeLillo’s section on ‘Little Italy’, used in perfect context: Malavita, Madonn, Mannaggia l’America, Cafone, stunat, finalmente, u’gazz, tizzoons, etc.  The characters in the book did not speak Italian, nor did my street corner companions and I.  Nevertheless, I recognized and remembered every one of the words and how they were used on my street corner, in my Little Italy neighborhood.
     
    Little Italy idiom was laced with Italian words, expressions, intonations and gestures. Unlike many social scientist, fiction writers are highly sensitized too the nuances of language and their cultural implications.  Ultimately, culture is the reality of an ethnic group.  To know an ethnic group, is to know its culture, is to know its language.
     
    Accordingly, DeLillo’s reality is not simply a sociological study in fictionalized form. DeLillo’s Little Italy is not just the Bronx; his is virtually all Little Italies – Aristotle’s “poetic universal”. Anyone who has known a Little Italy, anywhere in the country (Boston, Chicago, Rochester, etc.), will find themselves in DeLillo’s rendering.   He does not simply describe; he recreates. The reader can vicariously experience people and events.  Reading the dialogues in the novel is like ‘listening-in’; it’s like standing off to the side listening to real people talking.
     
    Further, his southern-Italian American culture is not limit the to historic Little Italy.  He takes the readers beyond Little Italy.  He follows the southern-Italian American through the destruction of their ‘urban villages’ and the demise of their culture.  Cultural demise is implied by the phrase DeLillo inserts at an incongruent narrative point that seems meaningless in the context: “No history, no future.”
     
    Southern-Italian Americans have no knowledge of their Patria Meridionale history before “Little Italy”, and it’s increasingly obvious there is no future for their culture beyond ‘nostalgic illusions’, ‘media cartoons’, ‘Renaissance fantasies’ and, of course FOOD.
     
    Introduction
     
    The main plot of the book is essentially a ‘coming of age’ story line following the protagonist (half Italian/half Irish) Nick Shay from a seventeen year old youth in 1951 Bronx until he is sixty-ish in 1990s Phoenix Arizona. But, this is an 827-page (post-modern) novel with a very complicated backwards in time plot involving many characters, subplots, nuances, etc.  No summary could possible do justice this book.  For purposes of this presentation, I will consider an aspect of the Nick Shay and Bronzini characters as extended metaphors representing the essence of Little Italy culture, its demise and the consequences for southern-Italian American culture.
     
    Bronzini, to my mind, is the personification of the pre-1960s Little Italy culture, the essence of southern-Italian American culture and its demise subsequent to the suburban migration.  Nick Shay becomes the personification of the culturally empty southern-Italian American in post-1960s suburbia.  Both men suffer from the lost southern-Italian American culture after the Little Italy decades - once vibrant personalities in their natural physical and cultural milieu, and then psychologically emptied in post-Little Italy assimilated America.
     
    In 1951 Bronx:
     
    “Bronzini thought that walking was an art.”
     
    In 1990s Phoenix suburb, Nick thinks about 1951 Bronx:
     
    “I long for the days...when I was alive on the earth...when I walked real streets...”
     
    The pre-Ellis Island south-of-Rome Italian culture was a village culture.  The southern-Italian American culture was an urban village culture, a culture of city streets.  When southern-Italian Americans left their urban villages, left their city streets, they left their culture behind.
     
    1951 - Little Italy the Bronx
     
    Nothing differentiates the pre-1960s from the post more than the car.  The car made the move to the spread out suburbs possible. Bronzini’s 1951 world is the un-spread out world of:


    “Compact neighborhoods... He didn’t own a car, didn’t want one, didn’t need one, wouldn’t take one if someone gave it to him. ”
     
    Bronzini is a “happy man”; a second generation Italian American high school science teacher married with a two-year old daughter. Through Bronzini’s eyes we see the “compact neighborhood” of southern-Italian American urban village street life: children at play, barbers, butchers, waiters, priest, the old, the young, men, women, wives, mothers, etc.  Just like the southern Italian and Sicilian villages, from which the immigrants came, every facet of life is present in the compact -urban village-neighborhoods they created.
     
    Bronzini’s Walk
     
    "Bronzini thought that walking was an art.  He was out nearly every day after school, letting the route produce a medley of sounds and forms and movements, letting the voices fall and the aromas deploy in ways that vary, but not too much, from day to day...there’s a European texture of the streets, things done the old slow faithful way...this is the only art Bronzini mastered - walking these streets and letting the senses collect what is routinely here.
     
    ...card players at social club...woman buys a flounder in the market...aproned boy warp the fish in a major headline...men doing interesting jobs, day labor, painters in drop coveralls, men with sledgehammers, Sicilians with faces grained with stone dust.
     
    ...George the waiter having a smoke during a lull...George the Barber was sweeping the floor...voices from Italian radio drifting faintly out the open door...The butcher called to people walking by.
     
    He walked across the street so he could wave to George the Barber. How children adapt, using brick walls and lampposts and fire hydrants.  He watched a girl trying one end of her jump rope to a window grille and getting her little brother to turn the other end.  Then she stood in the middle and jumped.  No history, no future.  He watched a boy playing handball against himself, hitting Chinese killers.  The hi-bounce rubber ball, the pink spaldeen, rapping back from the brick facade. And the fullness of a moment in the play street...girls playing jacks and jumping double dutch...boys at boxball, marbles and ringolievio...Salugi they cried, that strange word, maybe some corruption of the Italian saluto...It’s a dying practice kids playing in city streets..
     
    Nick is a 17-year old, third generation grandchild of an Italian immigrant. He is also part of the ‘streets’; but as a youth, Nick’s Little Italy world is a slightly different variation of Bronzini’s:
     
    “After work he got dropped off near the zoo and walked past his brother’s school...He came to the building where they lived and turned at Donato’s grocery...down the narrow street...down a set of concrete steps into the network of alleyways that ran between five or six buildings...Down the yards as they were called...Close-set buildings. Laundry lines, slant light, patches of weeds, a few would-be gardens and bare ailanthus trees and the fire escapes that fixed fretwork patterns of light and shade on the walls and paved surfaces.
    He’s spent his childhood half in the streets and half down the yards with a little extra squeezed in for the rooftops and fire escapes.”

     
    1990 Little Italy the Bronx
     
    Bronzini doesn’t walk the streets anymore:
     
    “He spent more time indoors when there were people in the halls.  He’d seen a hypodermic syringe on the second-story landing and now there were people in the halls...He heard them breathing in the halls and knew he had food for two days easy and when the milk went sour he could open a can of peaches and dump the fruit and syrupy juice on the breakfast cereal...He heard them late at night and knew he could stretch the chopped meat, bulk up the tomato soup with macaroni, and they didn’t live in the building and would find another place.
     
    Bronzini on change and not change:
     
    “You don’t want to be shocked.  You’re reluctant to blame anyone.  But you went to the old streets...You saw your building.  The squalor around it.  The empty lot with the razor wire...The men.  Who are they, standing around doing nothing?  Poor people.  They’re very shocking...And these were your streets.  It’s a curious rite of passage...Visit the old places.  First you wonder how you lived so uncomplainingly in such cramped circumstances.  The streets are narrower, the buildings smaller than you ever remembered. It’s like coming back to Lilliput.  And think of the rooms.  Think of the tiny bathroom, shared by the family, by the grandparents, by the uncle who’s slightly u’pazz..
     
    And you want to ask me why I’m still here...I’m too rooted to leave...too narrow.
     
    1990 Phoenix
     
    Nick:
     
    “Marian wanted me to tell her about the old streets, the street games, the street fights, the alley sex...some execution now and then of some wayward member of whatever organized group she imagined might be operating thereabouts...
     
    She thought my mother’s arrival might yield the basic savor she could not get from laconic Nick.  But my mother only talked about the lazy grades I got in school and how I fell out of a tree when I was eight.
     
    Just as the southern-Italian immigrants left their villages in Italy behind and moved to American cities, their southern-Italian American grandchildren left the urban villages behind and moved out of the cities to the suburbs.  But, whereas the Italian immigrants brought their culture with them, recreated it in the American cities, the grandchildren left the culture of Little Italy behind – they assimilated.  But, not completely!  They could not completely forget their primordial Patrai Meridionale – they could not forget their Being.
     
    Nick - “there’s an Italian word for it...”
     
    “ I tell my wife there’s an Italian word that explains everything.  Then I tell her the word.  She says, What does this explain?  And she answers, Nothing.
    The word that explains nothing in this case is lontananza.  Distance or remoteness, sure.  But as I use the word, as I interpret it...it’s the perfected distance of the gangster, the syndicated mobster – the made man.  Once you’re a made man, you don’t need the constant living influence of sources outside yourself.  You’er all there.  You’re handmade.  You’re a sturdy Roman wall.”
     
    I tell my colleague: there’s word in Italian...Dietrologia.  It means the science of what is behind something.  A suspicious event.  The science of what is behind an event.”
     
    Language is culture.  Nick could not forget his urban village language – the only thing left of his urban village culture.  The words kept coming to mind – a haunting refrain reminding him that he is, in his Being, a Terroni (southern Italian).
     
    Conclusion 
    No Patria Meridionale History – No Southern-Italian American Culture
     
    With the two characters Bronzini and Nick, DeLillo captures the post WW II twentieth century southern-Italian American experience in poetry – not history.
     
    Bronzini embodies the bygone robust urban Little Italy cultural past.  Nick, the present culturally empty southern-Italian American in suburbia, left with only “the words” - linguistic shards, the remnants of a once mighty culture.  Southern-Italian American culture is lontanaza (distant and remote), and how that came to be is dietrologica (something behind the event).
  • Op-Eds

    The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies: 11th Century Origin and 21st Century Ghost


    Introduction – Two Shrines
     
    On the Adriatic coast of Italy, in the province of Foggia, there is a peninsula know as “Promontoriao del Gargano.  On this peninsula are two sacred Catholic shrines: the fifth century Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo sul Gargano (sometimes called simply Monte Gargano) and the twenty-first century Shrine of Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo.  They are approximately 15 miles apart (“by way a crow fly’s”- see Google map below).

     
    Apart from their religious significance, from a secular social history point of view, the political and cultural implications associated with these shrines cannot be overstated, and their proximity to one another is fascinating.
     
    Monte Gargano is associated with the coming of the Normans and the political unification of the Patria Meridionale (southern Italian/Sicilian homeland) state, which came to be known as the “Two Sicilies”. 
     
    The Shrine of Padre Pio may be considered a symbol for the Patria Meridionale culture; a culture persisting 150 years after the state was forcibly melded into the Italian nation state – the ghost of the Two Sicilies.
     
     
    I. Origin of “Two Sicilies” – culture and state
     
    A. Before the Normans –
    Birth of the Patria Meridionale culture
     

    After the fall of the Roman Empire, southern Italy and Sicily were disengaged and separated from northern Italy.  Professor Barbara M. Kreutz, in her masterful source document history, “Before the Normans – Southern Italy in the Ninth & Tenth Centuries”, writes:

     
    “…the lower half of the Italian peninsula, the portion lying below Rome, first became a separate and distinct geopolitical region in 774, with the Carolingian conquest of northern Italy…From 774 on southern Italy mostly pursued its own separate destiny until it achieve political unity late in the eleventh century under the Normans… (p.1 emp.+)
     
    Similarly, the classical scholar and world historian Arnold J. Toynbee writes:
     
    “...the geographic nucleus of Western Civilization consisted of what were in 775 AD the dominions of Charlemagne…[centered in] what the Romans had known as Gaul…with extension into the northern parts of Italy…” (A Study of History, vol. I, p.32 emp.+)
     
    This division of Italy at the birth of Western Civilization was not simply or only a geographic division.  More importantly, the division of Italy was an ethnic and political divide.  Kerutz:
     
    “The events of 774 not only drew a new boundary and set southern Italy apart; they also altered the dynamics of the ethnic and political forces within that region. (p. 1 emp.+)
     
    Note: Prof. Kerutz refers to the “ethnic forces”.  To my mind, this is significant because the different ethnic roots of the people respectively north and south of Rome imply significantly different cultural roots of Patria Meridionale vis-à-vis the North.
     
    Ethnically, with the exception of the Lombard minority, the South was predominately, as it always was, a Mediterranean society with cultural roots tracing back into the ancient Mediterranean civilizations (Greece, Anatolia, Phoenicia, Egypt, etc.).  Whereas, the Carolingian / northern Italian culture, was largely affected by people from the Eurasian Steppes, coming through the collapsing northern marches of the Roman Empire.
     
    More specifically, between circa 774 until the Norman conquest circa 1100 A.D., the major social groups affecting the political and cultural development of southern Italy and Sicily were the Lombards, Byzantines and Arabs; whereas, north of Rome the papacy, Carolingians and Ottonians were the determining forces.  Kerutz:
     
    “For three centuries, Byzantium and southern Lombards would confront each other in the lower half of the [Italian] peninsula.  Moreover, both would be profoundly affected...by the Arab conquest of Sicily...southern Italy [became] the graveyard of papal, Carolingian, and Ottonian ambitions” (p.1 emp.+)
     
    Thus, we can say the birth of the Patria Meridionale culture occurred during this pre-Norman period, and that culture was ethnically different than the North – it was a Mediterranean culture. 
     
    B. The Normans –
                Birth of the Patria Meridionale state “Two Sicilies”
     
    Regarding the arrival of the Normans in southern Italy, there are conflicting accounts from 11th Century source documents.  However, one description, given much credence by many very competent historians working with source documents, is that in the early 11th Century (circa 1016) forty Norman pilgrims, returning from the Holy Land, stopped to pay homage to Michael the Arch-Angel; the Norman patron saint and patron of the great abbey (and later great Gothic Cathedral) Mont-Saint-Michel.  For example, G. A. Loud writes:
     
    “William of Apulia said that the first Normans to come to southern Italy were pilgrims.  They had gone to the shrine of St Michael on Monte Gargano.  There they had encountered Melus who had begged for their assistance in his fight against the Greeks, and as a result they had gone home to recruit help, and then returned to Italy, met Melus and joined him in his attack on Apulia.”
     
    “This account should not be underestimated because of the possible links between the shrine of St Michael on the Gargano and Mont St Michel in Normandy...Nor was the presence of Melus at Monte Gargan entirely impossible” (“The Age of Robert Guiscard – Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest, p. 61-62; 65)
     
    While the first appearance of a mere forty Normans may seem innocuous, they soon brought prodigious numbers of marvelous fighting brethren to bear on the Lombards, Byzantines and Arabs.  By the year 1091 the Normans defeated all.  Thereby, unifying southern Italy and Sicily into a single political entity, which had been known in the ancient world as Magna Grecia and in the modern as “Two Sicilies.”
     
    From 1091 to the 1861 Risorgimento, southern Italy and Sicily were essentially united, although, many revolts and wars resulted in periodic separations.  For example, after the 1282 Sicilian Vespers the French Angevin overlords were driving out of Sicily but maintained control of the southern mainland. 
     
    “However, in 1416 Alfonso of Aragon took Naples from the Angevins and ...Sicily would now be referred to as one of ‘two Sicilies’, the Sicily ‘beyond the straits’ as opposed to the Sicily ‘on this side of the straits’...”
    (Sicily: An Informal History, Sammartino & Roberts, p. 81, emp.+)
     
    II. Ghost of theTwo Sicilies
     
    A. Southern Question
     
    Throughout the more than 1,000 years of violent turbulent political history of the “Two Sicilies” state, its distinctive and differentiating Patria Meridionale culture evolved fairly homogeneously across the various communities (e.g. Sicily, Calabria, Naples, etc.). 
     
    Evidence of Patria Meridionale cultural homogeneity and persistence two or three generations after the Risorgimento can be seen in the America immigrant communities circa 1900. Even though these people came from various highly isolated sections of the Two Sicilies region, they showed a remarkable cultural commonality in mores, mannerisms, religion, food, music, mourning/lamentation, superstitions (e.g. evil-eye), etc.  For example, various communities had special patron saints and had festival days to celebrate those saints.  The Neapolitans celebrated San Gennaro, the Sicilians St. Joseph, etc.
     
    Further Evidence of Patria Meridionale cultural homogeneity and persistence post-Risorgimento is the appearance of “The Southern Question” literature, and expressions like “Italy ends at the Garigliano”, shortly after the Risorgimento and well into the twentieth century; clearly indicating that the Two Sicilies region south of Rome was (is) viewed as a single homogenously differentiated social-cultural entity.
     
    More recently, contemporary anthropological research indicates that the South is STILL a distinct homogeneous persistent cultural entity within the Italian state.  See for example: Italy's Southern Question: Orientalism in One Country edited by Jane Schneider.  Also, the scholarly works of John Dickie, Gabriella Gribaudi and other social scientist in Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction” edited by Forgacs & Lumley.  Of course, and perhaps most importantly, the political sociology of “League Nord-esque” issues and rhetoric cannot be ignored. 
     
    In short, the South could not be united with the North simply by (in contemporary parlance) “regime change”; i.e. kick out the Bourbons, substitute the Piedmontese, and presto Italy is unified.  It may be unified politically, but not culturally.
     
    The cultural ghost of Two Sicilies is still present!
     
    B. Religion and culture
     
    One of the most obvious and significant aspects of any culture is its religion. Accordingly, when considering the Patria Meridionale culture, religion is an important characteristic to take into consideration, and the role of Saints is particularly significant.  Anthropologist Mia Di Tota agrees with Gramsic’s “Observations on Folklore”; he writes:
     
    “Saint cults in Southern Italy constitutes an important aspect of a folklore tradition that Gramsci once characterized as a ‘reflex of the cultural conditions.
     
    “Saint cults have political, social, and economic significance...political forces in mainstream Italian society have not been able to completely transform the cultural distinctiveness of the South…
     
    “This attitude is apparent even TODAY in an Italy that is divided into two distinct parts: the industrially developed North...and the industrially undeveloped South which is referred to as ‘The South Italian problem.’ (“Saint Cults and Political Alignments in Southern Italy” -Dialectical Anthropology, 1981, vol.5 #4, p. 317, emp.+)
     
    Saint Padre Pio
     
    While Padre Pio is universally, as a matter of faith, acknowledged as a Saint by all Catholics, and the millions who throng to his shrine are not limited to southern Italians; nevertheless, I have found ‘oral’ evidence that southern Italians embrace his sanctity with a unique anachronistic (pre-Vatican II reform) fervor; a fervor that would be consistent with what historians and anthropologist report as characteristic of southern “Saint Cults”.
     
    In Rochester, NY, recent southern Italian immigrants (i.e. post 1960) led a drive to raise two million dollars to build a five thousand square foot “Padre Pio Chapel”; more accurately, a ‘so-called’ Chapel.  Paraphrasing Gertrude Steins’ Rose: “A Church by any other name is still a Church” - see picture below. 
     
     
    In grocery stores, shoe repair shops, etc. southern Italian merchants have Padre Pio’s picture prominently displayed and donation boxes, always brimming with ‘folding money’.  When I talk to these recent “off the boat” merchants and their customers about Padre Pio, they speak in emotional terms and corresponding animated expressions reminiscent of my childhood in the ‘Little Italy’ neighborhood of my grandparents pre-WW I immigrant generation.  Moreover, they report that friends, relatives, and neighbors in their hometowns in Italy (which they visit periodically) feel the same spiritual attraction (affection) for the man they think of as a “southern Italian Saint.”
     
    Put another way: a stigmata canonized German would not conjure the same outpouring of emotional response.  There would be no ‘Herr Pio’ Chapel built.  The fact that Padre Pio is a man, cleric and saint of the South motivates the southern Italian fervor I have observed in Rochester and heard reported about in southern Italy.
     
    To my mind, the response to Saint Padre Pio is consistent with what Gramsci, Di Tota and other social scientist have reported about the significance of “Saint Cults” in the Patria Meridionale culture.
     
    The cultural ghost of Two Sicilies is still present!
     
    Conclusion
     
    Approximately 1000 years after the Norman visit to the Monte Gargano sanctuary, and 150 years after the demise of the state they create, a second sanctuary stands just 15 miles away as a testament to the persistence of that state’s Patria Meridionale culture.
     

    The defiant cultural ghost of Two Sicilies looks north - “I will not yield!”     
  • Op-Eds

    “Chickens come home to roost” – Italian Studies suffers consequences for aversion to Patria Meridionale.


    Introduction
     
    With the recent announcement that SUNY Albany, following other colleges and universities around the country, is discontinuing its Italian Studies program (“because few students are enrolled”), one would hope this would motivate the Italian American literati to reflect about curriculum affects on enrollment numbers.
     
    Specifically, why are there not robust Italian Studies programs in a nation with seventeen million self-identified Italian descendants?  No doubt there are many socio-economic variables affecting enrollment.  Humanities studies are not seen as vocationally relevant, especially in an ever-increasingly stressed economy.  For example, in a recent interview, a state governor bragged about his success “reforming education” by dramatically increasing the number of welding programs in his state colleges.
     
    However, there are also pedagogical variables that affect humanities education generally and Italian Studies particularly, independent of economics; variables associated with motivation and perception of relevance.  Regardless of the economy: if students are not motivated and do not have a perception of relevance they will not enroll in Italian Studies.
     
    Motivation and relevance are a function of curriculum; i.e. subject matter - what is taught! 
     
    Accordingly, Italian Studies' teachers and the Italian American literati should think of these program cut backs as a message from the southern-Italian American people that it’s a time for you to reflect..."We do not find your curriculums meaningful or relevant!"
     
    What you teach - does not tell us about our progenitors – who they were /who we are!
    What you teach - does not inspire us and motivate us to study more!
    What you teach - does not fill us with pride and love for our Patria Meridionale!
     
    Italian Studies - High School Curriculums
     
    Students who apply to college for engineering programs do so because in high school they had experiences that motivated them to become engineers.  Similarly, students who choose college majors in biology and chemistry with a mind to becoming doctors have been motivated to do so in high school. 
     
    We cannot conceive of a high school student with no math/science education majoring in a college math/science program.  Indeed, why would a student with no math/science education even consider a college major in the math and science fields?
     
    In short, high school experiences motivate students for college.  Yet, Italian Studies’ educators seem oblivious to this pedagogical ‘truism’.  They seem to think that interests in Italian Studies are like “Athena who leaped from the head of Zeus a complete form”  - no development, no evolution.
     
    Consider New York State’s high school curriculum and tell me why one should be so shocked that Italian Studies is being eliminated at SUNY Albany for lack of interest as measured by enrollment numbers.  You cannot find a spec of the history and culture of southern Italy and Sicily in that curriculum. Italian studies in high school consist of ephemeral stopovers in Rome and Florence.
     
    What is there in the high school curriculum that would motivate a southern-Italian American student to major in Italian Studies in college?
     
    Italian Studies - College Curriculums
     
    Nevertheless, even if high school curriculums motivated southern-Italian American students to pursue studies of their Patria Meridionale history and culture, what is available to them in colleges and universities? Renaissance studies - that sliver of Italian history on the Arno! 


    Certainly not the     great mass of Italian history south of Rome; the vortex of all Mediterranean cultures, reaching back into the ancient river civilizations and penetrating deep into modern northern European cultures, is complete ignored. 
     
    Consider, SUNY Albany’s Italian Studies course description for “A ITA 315 Italian Civilization: From the Etruscans to Galileo”:
     
    “An introduction to Italian culture from the Etruscans to the Renaissance, with emphasis on the contributions of Dante, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo...”
     
    Seemingly, not much happened in the thousand years between the Etruscans and the Renaissance and certainly there are no Terroni worth emphasizing. Note also, Etruscans were a northern culture.  'Italian' in 'Italian Studies' always means 'northern Italian'.
     
    Southern-Italian American students are required to read the minutia in Dante’s poetry and study the shades of blue in Michelangelo’s frescos, all of which tells them nothing about their history and culture. Yet, they never hear about the thirty-two books written by the great Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus; who writes to them - for them - comes from the same neighborhood as them.
     
    Virtually all Euro-Americans/ethnics (English, Irish, French, German, Russian, Spanish) find their history and culture in the history, literature, music and art curriculums; similarly Asian, African and Jewish Americans.  
     
    Yet, seventeen million southern-Italian Americans are invisible in the high school, college and university curriculums.  Ours are the only students who do not see themselves in their textbooks. Ours is the only Euro-American/ethnic group that is not present in the American education system, secondary and post-secondary.
     
    Conclusion
     
    In sum, we all genuinely feel for and empathize with Italian Studies teachers put “on the dole”.  However, if we are going to bring them back, then we must invigorate and revolutionize Italian Studies programs in high schools and universities with curriculums that are meaningful - not just beautiful in verse and paint. 
     

    Hopefully, all those smiling faces at the AP Italian celebration party will now reflect on their Pyrrhic Victory and begin putting their formidable prestige, influence and money to work creating meaningful south of Rome studies programs for our schools and universities.  They might start by hiring some laid off teachers to develop Curriculum Patria Meridionale. 
  • Op-Eds

    Tuscan ‘lingua franca’ Dialect vs. southern-Italian ‘indigenous’ Languages


    AP Victory !
    ...corks popping, faces beaming, toasting, embracing
    ...Spirit of southern masses looks on smiling, thinking:
    ...naiveté, hubris
    ...how many celebrations 2,500 years - nay more
    ...another Lingua Franca
    ...another pretender to the throne of southern culture
    ...sense of history lacks
    ...put the corks back
    ...Piedmontese as others will leave
    ...taking Tuscan dialect back
    ...where it should be
     
     
    /////
     
    Lingue Franche
     
    “Speech”, renowned classical scholar, linguist and world historian Arnold J. Toynbee posits:
     
    “grows out of the need for communication between equals who are bound together by common interests and by a regulated system of intercourse.”
    (A Study of History v.1 p.174 n.1)
     
    When one society comes to dominate another through war and/or commerce, there arises a need for a common language (speech) to facilitate “communication between [people] who are bound together by common interests and by a regulated system of intercourse.”
     
    Thus, for example, when the Piedmontese militarily conquered and commercially dominated southern Italy and Sicily beginning in 1860, there arose a need for a common language understood by both the Piedmontese and the people south of Rome.  Such languages imposed for purpose of communication between diverse linguistic societies are called Lingue Franche (singular: Lingua Franca).
     
    Very often the lingua franca imposed by the dominating society is the mother tongue of that society.  For example, English, the mother tongue of Britain, was the lingua franca of the British Empire; i.e. English was the language of government, commerce and university education in all the Empire countries.
     
    However, historically there are examples of the dominating country imposing a lingua franca not of its own mother tongue.  Thus, for example, the Piedmontese selected the Tuscan dialect for the lingua franca to be used in all its Italian dominions, even though Tuscan was not the mother tongue of Piedmont.
     
    Tuscan – Mediterranean Lingua Franca
     
    Centuries before the Piedmontese conquest of Italy, Tuscan was functioning as the lingua franca for much of northern Italy, and beyond into the Levant.  Toynbee writes:
     
    “In the so-called 'medieval' period of Western history, we see the Tuscan dialect of Italian eclipsing its rivals and at the same time being propagated round all the shores of the Mediterranean by Venetian and Genoese seamen and traders and empire-builders, as well as by Pisans and Florentines who spoke Tuscan as their mother-tongue...”
    (Study v.5 p.502)
     
    Later, long after the Italian city state zenith, Tuscan still prevailed as a lingua franca around the Mediterranean.  Toynbee:
     
    “This Pan-Mediterranean currency of the Italian language in its Tuscan shape outlived the prosperity, and even the independence, of the medieval Italian city-states.
     
    "In the sixteenth century Italian [Tuscan] was the service language of an Ottoman Navy that was then fast driving its Venetian and Genoese opponents out of Levantine waters...
     
    “In the nineteenth century, again, the same Italian [Tuscan] was the service language of a Hapsburg Navy whose Imperial-Royal masters were successful from 1814 to 1859 in reducing Italy herself to the mere 'geographical expression' that Metternich had pronounced her to be.
     
    “In fact the Osmanlis and the Hapsburgs each in turn found themselves constrained to employ an Italian [Tuscan] medium of communication as an indispensable element for the purpose of holding the Italian people in check; and thus the Italian [Tuscan] language succeeded twice over in forcing itself down the throats of strangers who were so far from speaking it by nature that they were actually the mortal enemies of the people who had inherited it as their mother-tongue.
    (Study v.5 p.502)
     
    Tuscan –Lingua Franca of Italy


    Clearly, when the Piedmontese set their course to bring the whole of Italy under their control; realizing that they would need a universal language to unite all the diverse regional languages, Tuscan was an obvious choice. 
     
    Choice is the operative concept here; for Tuscan was not the mother tongue of the Piedmont.  Denis Mack Smith writes:
     
    “The Piedmont, which emerged as a nucleus around which the rest of Italy could gather was one with no great tradition of italianità.  It was a partly French-speaking area, which straddled the Alps and had existed only on the borderline of Italian history.
     
    “The House of Savoy, which lead the Italian revolution, was until the eighteenth century centered on the French and Swiss side of the mountains.
     
    “There was no exclusive feeling for Italy in Savoy’s almost French rulers. Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi were born subjects of France, and Napoleon's sister stood godmother at Cavour's christening. (Italy: Modern History p. 17-18 emp.+)
     
    Indeed, the complete lack of understanding of the language that would become the national language of Italy on the part of the leaders of Italian unification is stunning. The first seven elections to the position of Prime Minster were shared by five men that had to be taught Italian[Tuscan]. Smith:
     
    "Like Garibaldi, Cavour had an imperfect knowledge of Italian, and he preferred to write in French. Other people had to revise his newspaper articles, and his secretary found it painful to hear him speak Italian in public.
     
    Until quite lately, the Italian language had been unacceptable in Turin society and Cavour was not untypical in being more at home in French literature and English history than in Italian... General Lamarmora was one of the last Italian statesmen to have to learn Italian almost as a new language. (Modern History p.20)
     
    Nevertheless, Tuscan was the French-esque Piedmontese lingua franca of choice, and it became the national language of Italy. The point here is the ostensibly arbitrary almost capricious way, through the force of arms, by which southern Italians and Sicilians came to speak Tuscan through no choice of their own.
     
    Class Character of Lingue Franche
     
    Again, Toynbee’s stipulation above:
     
    “Speech grows out of the need for communication between equals who are bound together by common interests and by a regulated system of intercourse.” (emp. +)
     
    His comprehensive study of all the various examples of lingue franche in world history clearly indicates their class character. 
     
    “Equals with common interest” is virtually a definition of a political-economic class. 
     
    Consider for example, the imposition of English lingua franca in British Raj India and its very obvious class character.  Toynbee:
     
    “In 1829 the British Indian Government made English the medium for its diplomatic correspondence, and in 1835 the medium for higher education in its dominions. 
     
    But, in the conduct of judicial and fiscal proceedings...local vernaculars were used.” (Study v.7 p.243 emp. +)
     
    Clearly, there is a class distinction in what constitutes the standard language. Government and higher education used English, and the masses (“the great unwashed”) spoke in the vernacular.
     
    Tuscan class character in Sicily
     
    One can find no better example of the class character of lingue franche than the complete failure of Tuscan to penetrate the peasant class of Sicily almost 100 years (five generations) after it was imposed on the institutions of government, commerce and education.  Luchio Visconti’s 1948 film La terra trema exemplifies this failure.
     
    In 1948, Luchino Visconti adapted Giovanni Verga’s I Malavoglia, bringing the story to a modern film setting. The resulting film, La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), starred only non-professional actors and was filmed in the same village (Aci Trezza) as the novel was set in.
     
    Because the local dialect differed so much from the Italian spoken in Romeand the other major cities, the film had to be subtitled even in its domestic release.
     
    Clearly, the masses of Sicilians knew nothing of the Tuscan lingua franca.
     
    Tuscan lingua franca Today
     
    After the 1950’s the advent of mass media radio, television, film etc, and the increased levels of public education in the South, Tuscan increasingly penetrated the masses.  However, its victory is still limited and, if the past is a guide to the future, may be ephemeral.
     
    Even today, after generations of post war compulsory education, where children are forced to learn the alien lingua franca Tuscan dialect, and the dialect is exclusively used by media, and in the bourgeoisie and literati institutions; the languages of the South are still prevalent and seemingly thriving.
     
    In their introduction to a fascinating collection of essays Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, David Forgacs and Robert Lumley observe:
     
    “Italy has remained uniquely plurilingual, with...very large number of 'ItaloRomance' dialects which are still used by many speakers (often now in alternation with one or other of the many regional and social varieties of Italian).” (p.14 emp.+)
     
    Tullio de Mauro, one of the essayists writes:
     
    “The 'Italian dialects' -- which are very strongly differentiated and very viable, being used, even today, by more than 60 per cent of the population and, in fact, being used exclusively, that is, not alternating with Italian or another language, by 14 per cent of the population” (p. 95 emp.+)
     
    Tuscan in southern-Italian Americana
     
    As noted above, lingue franche are always a class phenomena.  The foreign military and commercial dominating culture imposes the lingua franca of choice; and an all too willing bourgeoisie and literati, recognizing the realpolitik implications for wealth and careers embrace it.  However, the masses continue to use the native tongue.
     
    In America, the southern Italian languages were struck a mortal blow during WW II by the government’s “Don’t Speak the Language of the Enemy” propaganda program.  Italy was the enemy; therefore, we should not speak our native languages. 
     
    However, even this mass propaganda program could not have succeed if the Italian American literati did not embrace it with a passionate fervor.  After the war they devoted themselves to exclusively teaching the language, history and culture of northern renaissance Italy.  One could not find and still cannot find courses let alone degrees in the languages, history and culture of southern Italy and Sicily.  (This is to say: if one takes a random sample of all the Italian courses and degrees offered in the American higher education system since WW II, the probability of finding a course or a degree in southern-Italianita offered is close enough to zero to treat it as such.)
     
    The Italian American literati have fully embraced the language and corresponding culture of Dante, rejecting the languages and culture of Naples and Aci Trezza, although they love to indulge nostalgic reminiscing about their southern nonni.

    Orientalism in southern-Italian Americana

     
    Accordingly, the progeny of southern Italy in American schools today have no teachers - no one to teach them the language, history and culture of their forefathers. 
     

    But, they can get college credits if they pass the AP Tuscan exams! 


       
  • Op-Eds

    Sicilian and Southern Italian languages: Lessons of Norway and Ireland


    Introduction
     
    Both Norway and Ireland experienced invasion, occupation and colonization on scale that few other countries in modern times have known.  The magnitude of the occupation and depth of the social penetration obliterated whole aspects of their respective cultures; not the least of which was their national language and literature, rendered essentially ‘dead’.  Yet, in the twentieth century both countries have managed to resuscitate, as it were, those ‘dead languages’.
     
    The story of that resuscitation process has implication for students of the social history of Sicilian and other southern Italian languages, both in Italy and the US. 
     
    Dead Languages
     
    "Archaism”, classical scholar, linguist and world history Arnold J. Toynbee posits, “means an attempt to recapture some elements from the past of the society..."
    (A Study of History v6 p 49 n3 emp.+)
     
    Examples of such “past elements” are language and literature:
     
    "When the spirit of Archaism is moved to express itself in the field of Language and Literature, the supreme tour de force to which it can address itself is bringing a 'dead language' to life again by putting it back into circulation as a living vernacular... " (Study v6 p63 emp.+)
     
    Two examples of such an archaic “supreme tour de force” bringing a "dead language” back into “living vernacular” can be see in twentieth Norway and Ireland. 
     
    Norway
     
    Norway lost its political independence upon being forcefully taken into the Calmar Union with Sweden and Denmark in 1397.  Essentially it never regained its complete independence until 1905. Toynbee reports:
     
    “During the greater part of this period of more than 500 years Norway was politically united with Denmark under conditions which made her culturally as well as politically subordinate to Denmark.
     
    “In these circumstances the indigenous Scandinavian literature in the Norse language gave place to a version of literature written in Danish by Norwegians.
     
    “[Accordingly,] the Norse language died out in the fourteenth century; and by the sixteenth century Old Norse had ceased to be generally intelligible to the literate public in Norway...[Indeed,] Norwegian men-of-letters made translations of foreign language not into Norse but into Danish for the benefit of Norwegian readers.
    (Study v6 p64)
     
    In short, the indigenous national language of Norway ceased to exist and was replaced by the Danish lingua franca.
     
     NOTE: the role that the “men[people]-of-letters”  (writers of literature and translators) played in the subordination of the national language to the lingua franca; the acquiescence of the indigenous literati and teachers is a necessary condition for the successful substitution of a lingua franca for a national language. 
     
    Beginning in the early nineteenth century the spirit of nationalism began to take hold in Norway and a movement began to cultivate a “New Norse (Nynorsk)”.  Upon achieving complete independence in the twentieth century, the Nynorsk movement gained momentum and today has achieve an official legal status and is used widely in Norway.
     
    Ireland
     
    Similarly, the Irish language Gaeige was the victim of foreign conquest and cultural domination by England.   In the ninetieth century, the British government ordered that only English was to be taught in Irish schools.  This combined with commercial domination, the great famine and the massive emigration of Irish nationals resulted in the virtual death of the Irish native tongue. 


    NOTE: Again, the role of teachers ("men [people]-of-letters" - literati) in the subordination of Irish national language.
     
    However, as with the Norwegians, after regained their political independence in the twentieth century, there developed a movement to regain the historic language, which has also gained official and legal status.  For example, in 2003 the Official Languages Act decreed that government publications be in both Irish and English.
     
    Sicilian and Southern Italian languages
     
    As with the Norwegians and the Irish, Sicily and the south of Italy were conquered and had a lingua franca imposed.  The Piedmontese in 1860 militarily conquered the South, dominated commercially and educationally; and imposed Tuscan as the official lingua franca of government, commerce and “men-of-letters” (i.e. indigenous literati).
     
    NOTE: Again, the role of “men [people]-of-letters”.  Playing the game of “counterfactual history”, one might speculate what would have been the post-Risorgimento linguistic history of Sicily and the South if the literati had resisted the Tuscan imposition.
     
    However, the Tuscan language, unlike the Norwegian and Irish lingua franca, has not succeeded in rendering the indigenous languages ‘dead’.  Indeed, there is significant evidence that after 150 years (8 generations) the indigenous languages are still robust even though the lingua franc pervades all mass media, government, commerce and educational institutions.
     
    For example, in their introduction to a fascinating collection of essays Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, David Forgacs and Robert Lumley observe:
     
    “Italy has remained uniquely plurilingual, with...very large number of 'ItaloRomance' dialects which are still used by many speakers (often now in alternation with one or other of the many regional and social varieties of Italian).” (p.14 emp.+)
     
    Tullio de Mauro, one of the essayists writes:
     
    “The 'Italian dialects' -- which are very strongly differentiated and very viable, being used, even today, by more than 60 per cent of the population and, in fact, being used exclusively, that is, not alternating with Italian or another language, by 14 per cent of the population” (p. 95)
     
    Why an indigenous language?
     
    Nationalism
     
    Clearly, there are complex social-psychological reasons why a people will revert to a ‘dead language’ like those of Norway and Ireland; or sustain a ‘marked for dead’ language such as those south of Rome.  Nationalism is one such obvious social-psychological category, which was a significant factor in the case of Norway and Ireland 
     
    However, the persistence of the Italian languages south of Rome does not seem to be based on nationalism. These are diverse people with diverse languages who have no history of a sense of any social structure that approaches a modern nation state or national esprit.  Accordingly, there must be other social-psychological factors contributing to the need to preserver the indigenous language.
     
    History and Culture  - Hermeneutics
     
    In a brilliant seminal pedagogic textbook on methods of historians used at the University of Paris circa 1900, the authors posit that historians must be proficient:
     
    “... in the art of recognizing and determining hidden meanings in texts, which has always occupied a large space in the theory of hermeneutic and the exegesis of classical authors.” (Introduction to the Study of History, Langlois & Seignobos 1897; 1926 translation, p152 emp.+)
     
    Thus, while historians must know the language of the society they study, they cannot be satisfied with dictionary meanings of the text. 
     
    Dr. Joseph F. Privitera in his book Beginner’s Sicilian clearly understands this hermeneutic concept of hidden meanings. He writes:
     
    “Language is a mainstream of the life and culture of a people; it reflects its history, its manners and its very thoughts.” (p 23)
     
    The “life and culture” and “history of a people” are the “hidden meanings” in the language to which Langlois and Seignobos were referring. 
     
    More than a ‘donkey’
     
    For example, consider the following three words respectively in English, Tuscan and Sicilian: ‘donkey’, ‘asino’ and ‘sceccu’. The denotative (dictionary) meaning for all three is the same object (i.e. animal).  Thus, the following three sentences have the same meaning based solely on denotative definitions:
     
    -There is a ‘donkey’.
    -There is an ‘asino’.
    -There is a ‘sceccu’.
     
    All three sentences convey the same thought to the listener; i.e. locating the position of the same animal.
     
    However, there is a ‘hidden’ -“historical /cultural”- meaning in the Sicilian word ‘sceccu’ that is not contained in the English ‘donkey’ or Tuscan ‘asino’.
    Dr. Privitera:
     
    “Sceccu (SHEH koo) comes from the Arabic ‘Sheikh, a name given by the islanders to the donkey, in derision of their medieval Saracen masters, who rode on donkeys from village to village, maintaining order and collecting taxes.  (p 23)
     
    In short, the history of Sicily is contained in the language of Sicily.
    Dr. Privitera:
     
    “The same language tells you who occupied the island, used it and abused it – the early Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, the Byzantines the French and the Spanish Bourbons.” P23
     
    No historian trained in hermeneutic historiography would presume to write the history of Sicily based solely on the denotative meanings of Sicilian words.  Similarly, literary criticism that does not take into consideration the hidden historical cultural meanings of the text would not be very enlightening. 
     
    Another delightful example of hidden historical cultural meanings not obvious in the denotative definition, Dr. Privitera:
     
    “Say ciceri (CHEE cheh ree) chickpeas and the Sicilian Vespers leap to mind when, in the thirteenth century, the islanders rebelled against the French, their new oppressive masters.  The Sicilians were able to identify the French by their French pronunciation (SEE say ree) of the word ciceri.  Those who could not pronounce ciceri correctly were put to the sword. ( p24)
     
    Again three words denote the same object (i.e. same dictionary meaning):
    English - ‘chickpea’,
    Tuscan -  ‘cece,’
    Sicilian - ‘ciceri’. 
    However, the Sicilian word ‘ciceri’ is chuck-full of hidden history and culture that the Tuscan ‘cece’ or the English ‘chickpea’ are lacking.
     
    Thus, apart from nationalistic motivation to preserve or revive an indigenous language there is an historical cultural motivation.  Language contains the history and culture of a people; to give it up is to give up the history and culture.  The Norwegians and Irish refused to part with their language (i.e. part with their history and culture) and seemingly the people south of Rome are resisting the historically and culturally empty Tuscan lingua franca imposed on them.
     
    Southern-Italian Americana- Illusionary Cultural Roads
     
    To my mind, the death of Sicilian and southern-Italian languages in American explains, what I judge to be, the death of the authentic Italian American history/culture. 
     
    The only thing that passes for Italian American history/culture today are nostalgic anecdotal images largely conjured by movies, televisions and family oral traditions of Little Italy fading with each passing generation. 
     
    There is absolutely no knowledge of our history before the great immigration.  In school the progeny of southern Italy learn the Tuscan lingua franca and the northern Renaissance art culture.
     
    NOTE: Again, the role of the Italian American “men [people]-of-letters” (literati) TEACHERS who are charged with the education of southern-Italian American children. Recall, the British demanded that English be taught in Irish schools.  Ultimately, it is indigenous teachers who kill a national language and thereby the history and culture of the people.
     
    Americans of southern-Italian descent would do well reflecting on the revival of the ‘dead languages’ in Norway and Ireland, and the resistance to Tuscan lingua franca south of Rome. 
     
    In the absence of a hermeneutically reviling reality based historic/cultural language, southern-Italian Americans have two illusionary historic/cultural roads to choose from:
     
    mass media illusions  - Jersey Shore, Sopranos, Casino, Goodfellows, Donnie Brasco, etc.
    or
    Tuscan- esque literati illusions - Tuscan language and Renaissance.
     
  • Op-Eds

    Palermo: Ancient Rivers and Modern Streets


    Introduction



    Historians come to know the past based on documents from and about the past.  Documents are commonly thought to be in the form of newspapers, diaries, letters, literature, etc.  However, maps are also documents and those who enquire into the past should not ignore the social implications that can be gleaned from the geographic information contained in map documents.   For example, the history of Sicily cannot be divorced from the history of Palermo.  All the coveters of Sicily came to Palermo. When studying the history of Palermo, maps are especially important because of the radical geographic change the port of Palermo has undergone during its history.  From the first Phoenician settlement circa 750 BC down to the present, the geography of the Cala port area has undergone continual change in the direction of reducing its size and significance.  When reading about the historic events that took place at Palermo, it would be a mistake to envision them taking place in the modern geographic city setting.  As the great historian of Sicily Edward A. Freeman succinctly put it:   “It was in ancient Panormos, not modern Palermo, that Frederick the Emperor reigned and let his dust.”   


    Map Documents of Palermo’s history

      Map I: “Panormous & Solous"   Edward A. Freeman, in his absolutely brilliant scholarly 1891 book “History of Sicily from Earliest Times”, includes the map below describing northwestern Sicily circa 750 BC when the Phoenicians were colonizing the area.  


    Map I

     
     
    Nomenclature – Panormous not Zis (Sis)



    Notice the location labeled Panormous.  That’s the ancient Greek name for present day Palermo meaning ‘All-haven’.  Although Palermo was originally a Phoenician settlement, Freeman uses the ancient Greek word Panormous. Currently, there are numerous on-line popular history articles about Palermo, aimed at the general reading public and/or tourist market, which refer to the Phoenician settlement by the Semitic name Zis or Sis.     Freeman rejected the name Ziz [i.e. Zis or Sis?] for detailed scholarly reasons that would go beyond the scope of this presentation.  However, summarizing he wrote:  


    “The name Ziz it seems now to be left an open question...It may be that some day a Semitic name for the All-Haven may be brought to light.” P 250

     

      That day as far as I can determine has not come.  I have not been able to find any scholarly references to ancient historic documents wherein the Phoenician word Zis or Sis is used to name the colony that became Palermo.  No doubt there is much speculation; however, I do not believe there are documents that have “brought the Semitic name to light”; i.e. documents that definitively establish the Phoenician name as Zis or Sis. However, I am not a classical scholar.  It seems to me, the burden of documentation (parenthetical or footnote reference) for such claims is on those who refer to ancient Palermo as Ziz or Sis.  


    Panormos –“All-haven”      


    Freeman tells us the Greek name Panormos (All-haven) was a generic name at the time of Greek colonization; it was used to name many ports in the Mediterranean. However, Panormos (All-haven) was an especially appropriate name for the site that would become the city of Palermo.  He writes:  


    “The Greek name Panormos is shared by not a few other havens in many parts of the Greek seas; but it was never more worthily applied than to this, so truly and specially the All-haven, which the native historians of the island ruled to be the fairest haven of all Sicily.”(p. 250 emp+)



    However, the port of Palermo as seen today hardly qualifies as “the fairest haven of all Sicily”.  He writes:  


    “The site would hardly have been so named if what the ancients looked at had been the Palermo of the present day.  A visitor who had seen the Great Harbour of Syracuse and the Zanklon of Messana, might be inclined to wonder at the judgment of the native historian which placed the haven of Panormos first of all.” (p. 252)
     

    To understand why the ancients considered today’s mundane Sicilian port of Palermo “the fairest haven of all [ancient] Sicily” one has to study the geographic evolution of the site.  Using maps below, the evolution from “fairest” to mundane will be developed.   Map Ia: Close up view of Panormos   For purposes of discussion, the Panormos area on the Freeman map has been enlarged and labeled to establish the relationship between the ancient Phoenician settlement and the modern city of Palermo.  


    Map Ia

     

     

    The red line indicating present day Via Vittorio Emanuele added to Freeman’s map gives a sense of how the original colony relates to the present day city.  Notice that the line crosses over a portion of water between the sections Freeman labels “Old Town” and “New Town.”  Today the rivers on either side of Via Vittoio Emanuele no longer exist and the Via does not cross any water; indicating that the geography of Palermo has changed dramatically from ancient times to the present.  Also, Freeman comments:  

    “All-Haven looks far different now from what it was when the glance of the first Phoenician shipman marked it...His ships could then anchor in waters which have since changed into the streets of a great and busy city.”
     
    “An inlet of the sea, making its way inland by a narrow mouth, presently parted off into two branches, and left a tongue of land between them.” (p. 258 emp. +)
     

    The Cala bay of today’s Palermo originally projected inland where it met the two rivers forming an inland harbor. In short, The Rivers Papireto and Kemonia and the inland portion of Cala bay have “changed into streets”.    Freeman indicates two sections of Panormos: “Old Town” and “New Town”.  Old Town is the original Phoenician settlement located on a peninsula bounded by two rivers and an inlet bay.

    Map II from Britannic 1911 edition (text added)  


    In the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 Edition, an article on Palermo co-authored by Edward Freeman included a late nineteenth century map of Palermo with the outlines of the two ancient rivers and the expanded Cala harbor inlet overlaid on the city streets.   I have overlaid texts for purposes of discussion and placing the rivers in a contemporary context.  


    Map II

     
    Color codes:

     

    - BLUE indicate current places
    - GREEN the old rivers
    - RED line the Via Vittorio Emanule
    - DashRED line the section of Via Vittorio that passes thru the old harbor section
    -Dash MAROON line the current Via Roma built circa 1890
    - ORANGE underlines give emphasis to map texts
    - Lampedua’s house is noted as a point of interest for his readers
     

    Notice:   1) Underlined in orange are the sections of the city “Old Town” and “Neapolis” (i.e. Greek for “New Town”).  As with Map Ia above, “Old Town” is located on a peninsula formed by the Kemonia River on the south and the Papireto River on the north.  This was the location of the original Phoenician settlement.   2) The Cala inlet came inland much further than it does today forming a harbor up to today's Via Roma and along “Old Town.”   3) The section of today’s Via Vittorio Emanuele from “Old Town” to “Neapolis”, as indicated in map Ia above, would have been covered by the harbour waters in ancient times.  


    “The fairest haven of all Sicily”

      This map clearly indicates why Panormous was “the fairest haven of all Sicily”.  Ships in the harbor would be protected from the ravages of storms, rough seas and enemy navies.  They could be loaded, unloaded and repaired in calm protected waters and environment.  Generally, the geography was protective and created a sense of security for the inhabitants. The geographic character of the harbor today would have offered none of these advantages to the ancients.


     

    Map III – River geology  


    This map comes from a geological study of Palermo earthquakes: “MICROTREMOR MEASUREMENTS IN PALERMO...” Giovanna Culterera et al (see: http://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/wcee/article/13_915.pdf)  


    “Past earthquakes (1726, 1823, 1940) were related to the presence of two ancient rivers, Papireto and Kemonia, which were buried and filled during the 17th century.
     
    “The two riverbeds are about 150 m wide and 10-30 m deep, and they met in downtown Palermo reaching the sea at the old harbor.”
     
    Map III

     

     
     
    As with map II above, this is a late nineteenth century map, which the geologists have on laid the ancient waters, and I have annotated. The water locations were determined by scientifically analyzed material brought up from ‘boreholes’ the geologist drilled.  Thus, they were able to differentiate the area of seawater from fresh water in the ancient harbor. 



    Note: Two significant differences between Map II and Map III  


    1) On the Freeman Map II, the upper end of the Kemonia River near Piazza Vitoria shows the river widening into a lake or pond.  This widening does not appear on the geologist’s map.  However, it may be that the ancient lake (pound) was not very deep and the urban development removed the geological residuals.  Accordingly, the geologist’s boreholes would not pick up indications of the lake (pound).  This is just my speculation.  


    2) Very interesting to me is the geologist’s map labels the peninsula between the two rivers as Neapolis.  This clearly contradicts Freeman who labeled the same area “Old Town” and places “New Town” (Neapolis) at the entrance of the bay on the shoreline.   The geologist did not indicate the source of their nineteenth century map so it is not possible to reconcile the differences.  However, given the very great depth of Freeman’s documentation of ancient Sicily, in multiple publications, it is reasonable to suspect the geologist map is mislabeled.  However, one should keep an open mind and do further reading until the contradiction is resolved one way or the other.  

    Nomenclature: River Names  


    As noted above, Freeman eschewed using the Semitic name Ziz for want of convincing documentation.  While he does not comment on the river names it is interesting that he does not use the names Papireto or Kemonia; rather, he identifies the rivers as ‘North’ and “South” (i.e. Papireto and Kemonia respectively).  It may be that the Greek names were applied to the rivers many centuries after the origins of Panormus.  Consider the following:  


    Papireto      


    Papireto (as I understand it) is the Greek word for Papyrus, and the “North River” was called Papireto because papyrus was grown on the river. However, there is a significant disagreement about when papyrus was grown on the “North River”.   There are currently writers of popular history and tourist on-line publications who claim that the Phoenicians brought it from Egypt to Sicily and there are records of it in Greek areas of Sicily in 300 B.C.  However, they cite no scholarly documentation.   In opposition to these claims, in an 1885 publication “The Wanderings of plants an animals from their first home”, the author Victor Hehn writes:

     

    “...it is a historical fact that the ancients knew nothing of the papyrus plant in Sicily, so that it could not have existed in that island.  It must have been the Arabs that brought it from Syria shortly before the beginning of the tenth century. 
     
    “Ibn Hauqal, who wrote in 977-8 AD, is the first writer that mentions it.  It was probably planted first on the little river near Palermo, which was called Papireto after it... (p 233 emp. +)

     

      I cannot judge the accuracy of the Hehn’s work; however, the fact that he extensively cites ancient Greek an Latin sources in the ancient languages suggest that his work must be treated with deference.  Those who would contradict him are obliged to cite similar scholarly sources and provide similar rigorous analysis.  

    Kemonia  


    Jeremy Johns in his 2002 book “Arabic administration in Norman Sicily” writes:

     

    “Kemonia, comes from the Greek meaning ‘the winter [river]’ the name of the seasonal water-course which ran to the south of the city centre... (p. 220 footnote 22).

     

    Interestingly, Johns makes the claim that the Kemonia was a seasonal river and its name implies it ran in the winter and dried in the summer.  However, Freeman makes no mention that I am aware of that the ‘South River’ was seasonal.   


    Indeed, it seems that it was anything but seasonal in ancient times because there are numerous sources indicating the river was a primary line of defense for the Phoenicians against the Greeks and Romans and in turn the Romans against the Carthaginians.  A river that dried up in the summer would not be much of a defensive line.  


    Accordingly, it seems that Kemonia was not an ancient denotation of the “South River”.  Rather, it came about at a much later time when the flow of the river had significantly diminished. Again, there seems to be a need for more rigorous scholarship about the river nomenclature.  Or, perhaps there is but I am not aware of it!  


    [Note: I am not suggesting that popular history/tourist works go into detail historiographic discussions.  But a parenthetical reference citation would be appropriate –seems to me]  


    Where did the rivers go?  


    Freeman argues that the “All-have” water system gradually and continually decreased over the centuries.  He writes:  


    “Since the fourteenth century of our era the two branches of the haven have been gradually filled up, and have become dry land; a small survival only of the All-haven abides in the little port called the Cala. 
     
    “And we may be sure that the changes which have gone on so actively in these later centuries had begun much earlier...We are tempted to think that Atilius found a greater All-haven than Belisarious and Belisarious a greater one than Roger. (p. 260)
     

    Specifically, as to the demise of the Papireto, accordingly to Hehn (above):  


    “...in the year 1591 the then Viceroy caused the whole district to be drained because of the malaria bred by the Papireto, and the papyrus grove was destroyed. But even now (1885) the place is called Piano del papireto, and the papyrus is still cultivated in the public gardens there.” (p.233)

     

      And, the Kemonia: as indicated above it seems to have just transitioned from a full river to a seasonal river to no river.  


    Current maps of Palermo’s

    Ancient Rivers and Modern Streets

      Below are two Google maps of Palermo on which I have attempted to roughly draw the outline of “All-haven” waters; first current streets map and second a current satellite view.


    They are meant for illustration - not perfect representation.    


    Map IV Google Street Map with “All-haven” overlay

     
     
     
    Map V Google Satellite map with “All-haven” overlay
     



     
     
  • Op-Eds

    Sicily’s Class Character circa 1900 - Lampedusa vs. Booker Taliaferro Washington


    Preface

     

    Generally, it seems to me, Americans of southern-Italian descent think of their history as beginning at Ellis Island  (What kind of a culture is only 100 years old?).

     

     

    To the extent that they consider their history back to the “old country”, their images and thoughts are largely romanticized nostalgia conjured by fragmented oral family histories, media fantasies and the very robust marketing of the northern-Italian tourist industry.

     

    If southern-Italian Americans go to Italy, often they go to the northern Renaissance centers to experience a culture far removed from the reality of their southern-Italian origins. 

     

    If they go to the South, they see a new reality far removed from what their ancestors left behind.  Today, for example, the town of Campofraco Sicily, on the road from Palermo to Agrigento, is a delightful place not remotely similar to the horrific sulfur mining center described by Booker T. Washington exactly 100 years ago.

     

    The historian seeks knowledge of past societies based on evidence in documents about those social realities.  The purpose of this essay is to consider the Sicilian peasant’s reality during the great migration circa 1900, based on Lampedusa’s autobiographical works The Leopard and The Siren – “Places of my infancy: A Memory”, and Booker T. Washington’s 1910 travelogue The Man Furthest Down

     

    Sicilian Wealth – The Have and Have-nots

     

    The Haves



     

     


    The enormous wealth accumulated by the Sicilian aristocracy up to the early 20th century is well document in fiction (e.g. “The Leopard”), biography (e.g. “A Memory”), art history (e.g. “Palazzi of Sicily”, “Sicilian Twilight”, “Baroque Architecture of Sicily”), and the many still existing palazzi the aristocrats called ‘home’.

    For example, Lampedusa writes:

     

    “Of our six houses, I loved Casa Lampedusa best...its 1600 square yards was all at my disposal... a real kingdom for a boy...but my mother loved the 100 room Santa Margherita summer house best.

     

     

    Lampedusa’s famous novel The Leopard and his autobiographical essay “A Memory” provide a quintessential description of the Sicilian aristocracy’s life style at its height and demise.  The Leopard is said to be a fictional representation of the events surrounding the life of Lampedusa’s grandfather at the time of Garibaldi’s 1860 invasion of Sicily.   However, his autobiographical essay “A Memory” clearly shows the life style described in the novel perfectly matches the reality of his own incredibly opulent life in the early 1900s. 

     

    For example, in the novel there is a detailed description of the arduous late summer journey Don Fabrizio and his family take to their fictional summer home “Donnafugata” and their reception upon arrival.  This trip and reception very closely matches Lampedusa’s autobiographic description of his family’s actual “Santa Margherita” summer sojourn.

     

    In short, both the novel and autobiography are documentary  ‘windows’ through which we see the Sicilian aristocracy’s profound wealth up to the early 20th century. 

     

    Whence the wealth

           – if not strong backs and skilled hands

                   put to the land?

     

    Although Lempedusa provides detailed descriptions of aristocratic life opulence down to the lavatory, there is a conspicuous lack of references to the source of the phenomenal aristocratic wealth. 

     

    The source of the wealth is doubly mysterious because in both fiction and biography he provides detailed descriptions of the impoverished Sicilian countryside.  In as much as the economic system was essential feudal latifundia (i.e. share cropping), how could such an impoverished countryside support the aristocracy’s insatiable consumption?

     

    Again, the summer trip: in his autobiographic essay, Lampedusa describes the land over which his family traveled to and around their Santa Margherita home.  It is almost exactly the same as the description of the land Don Fabrizio’s family crossed to fictional Donnafugata. 

    He writes:

     

    “For hours we crossed the desperately sad landscape of western Sicily...the train rails seeming laid on the sand itself; the sun, already hot, was broiling...among stony hills and fields...”

     

    “...Misilbesi is a sunbaked cross-roads marked by...deserted tracks that seemed to be leading to Hades rather than to Sciacca or Sambuca

     

    Again, the question comes to mind:

     

    How does such a “desperately sad landscape” yield the phenomena wealth accumulated by the Lampedusas and the other families of the Sicilian Aristocracy? 

     

    In neither work (“Leopard” or “Memory”) does Lempedusa address the question of the source of wealth. To answer the question of the source of the wealth one has to seek other sources.

     

    For example, the historian Fernand Braudel wrote:

     

    “It was no accident then that the feudal estates bought up by the Doria family in Sicily were wheat-growing lands laying on the vital axis linking Palermo and Agrigento...

     

    “From early on...Sicily had its caricatori near the ports – huge warehouses where grain was piled...

     

    “Florence had the means to buy grain from Sicily, and was able to reserve her own land for more rewarding crops.”

     

    The “wheat growing...vital axis linking Palermo and Agrigento” matches exactly the route traveled by Lampedusa to Santa Margherita. 

     

    While the land was as he described it during his late August journey; he fails to mention, in the prior months it was a rich agricultural expanse.  Indeed, Lampedusa does give a hint of its richness.  He alludes to “fields of mown corn”. 

     

    Clearly, he is traveling after the harvest and in the hottest part of the summer; leaving the impression that this late summer post-harvested “desperately sad landscape” was typical! 

     

    Lampedusa seems to be going out of his way to denigrate the Sicilian countryside - the same countryside that supports his lavish life style.  (Is there no end to the insults Sicily must endure?)

     

    In short, given the historian’s texts, and the absence of any other explanation, it seems reasonable to conclude: the wealth of the Sicilian aristocracy was based on Sicily’s prodigious agricultural production. 

     

    Which brings up the question of who did the actual producing – certainly not the members of the Lampedusa family?

     

    The Have-Nots – Sharecroppers (but, oh so little share!)

     

    The absence of any reference to the source of Sicilian aristocratic wealth is complimented by the virtual absence of any reference to the Sicilian peasantry, with the exception of a couple of shorts in the novel meant to create the illusion of Don Fabrizio’s magnanimity.

     

    Lempadusa ignores the peasants for obvious reasons; they were the source of the aristocracy’s wealth!  The peasants were the people who created the wealth through their skill and labor.  They grew and harvested the crops sold to Europe and North Africa, and the Aristocracy spent the money garnered from the sales.  (“Such a deal!”)

     

    Booker T. Washington, a former American slave described Sicily’s agricultural economy in the very years that Lempadusa was romping in his 1600 square yard boyhood “kingdom”, and his mother delighting in her 100 room summer house.  He writes:

     

    “I refer to the great landowners, who in Sicily do not live on the land, but make their homes in the cities and support themselves from the rents...of their properties.

     

    Ostensively the “rents” must have been pretty substantial to support the Lampedusa-esque garish life style.  In turn, the money for the rent must have come from selling the crops grown on land owned by the aristocracy.     

     

    How the system works; Washington writes (paraphrased text for emphasis):

     

    “This is the way the crop is divided. Tenants get what’s left after the landlord takes his due:

     

    -he takes double or triple the measure of seed he 

                  had advanced

    -he takes a portion for the cost of guarding the 

                  field while the grain is ripening

    -he takes another portion for the saints

    -he takes something for using

           the threshing floor and the storehouse

    -he takes a portion for his loans and interest

    -he takes for anything else that occurs to him

    -he takes half of what’s left and

           the farmer gets the balance.

     

    He takes...He takes...He takes... from the poor man

     

    - who has watered the soil with his sweat

    - who does not sleep more than two hours at harvest

    - who sleeps in the open field at night

    - who finds shelters of straw, nest in rock,

               holes in ground

     
    - who lives for days or months eating raw greens

    - who is happy...

    if he receives as much as a third or a quarter

       of the grain he has harvested.

     

    After the harvest the sharecropper returns home where...

     

    “ At night all his family crowd into a one room cave...in which the air is thick with smoke, because there is no chimney...In the corner there is frequently only one bunk, upon which the entire family sleeps, and for the most part it consists of nothing more than a heap of straw...

    "...the coarseness of such a family existence is beyond description...” – this from a former American slave!

     

     

    Sicilian work ethic

     

    Washington has one final point that should be savored by Americans of Sicilian descent (indeed, all southern-Italians):

     

    “I have often heard it said that people who are born under the soft southern skies are habitually indolent, and never learn to work there, as they do in more northern latitudes. 

     

    This is certainly not true of Sicily, for, so far as my experience goes, there is no other country in Europe where incessant labour is so largely the lot of the masses of the people.

     

    Certainly there is no other country where so much of the labour of all kinds, the skilled labour of the artisan as well as the rough labour of digging and carrying on the streets and in the mines, is performed by children, especially boys.”

     

    Such is the historic reality of southern-Italian American origins.

     

     

  • The Mussolini Contradiction - Boston’s North End “Street Corner Society”


    The Mussolini Contradiction
     
    In my experience, I find a contradiction between the mass culture ‘characterization’ of Mussolini and the ‘opinions’ of first generation southern-Italian immigrants and their American born sons who fought in Italy during WW II. 
     
    There is a contradiction between school and media representations of Mussolini and my memories of conversations heard on the street and at dinner tables in my southern-Italian American urban village during the post WW II years.
     
    This contradiction flashes vividly whenever I see the picture of Mussolini hanging upside down from a meat hook in a Milan gas station.  Invariably the immortal lines of Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony comes to mind: 
     
    "The evil that men do lives after them;
    the good is oft interred with their bones..."
     
    This is not to say I mean to play the role of Mark Anthony tacitly denying Mussolini’s crimes (sins) and celebrating him in anyway. 
     
    Rather, mine is purely an historiographic interest in the opinions of southern-Italian Americans about Mussolini in the years before and after the war, and how those opinions contradict the generally accepted representations of the man.
     
    Oral History – Rochester, NY
     
    In the conversations I remember from my youth, the men never outright and totally condemned Mussolini, as they categorically condemned Hitler.  Whereas Hitler was unequivocally ‘evil’ with absolutely no redeeming qualities, Mussolini was criticized-with-qualification.  Typical comments:
     
    He did a lot that was wrong, but he also tried to do some worthwhile things for Italy…
     
    Invading Africa was wrong; but what about all the other European countries that have been doing it for centuries - the French still own Algeria…
     
    He spent a lot of money on public works projects – so did Roosevelt…
     
    They make fun of his train projects like he was a little kid playing with trains.  But, how can you have industry without trains.  Look at all the New York Central train yards in Rochester…etc. 
     
    Also, and importantly to my mind, the children of the immigrants, men who fought in Italy, men whose brothers and friends died in Italy, did not categorically condemn Mussolini.  Rather, he was thought of as a man who made mistakes and was a victim of his ambition (i.e. human frailty).
     
    I found this contradiction between Rochester’s southern-Italian American oral history and school/media history intriguing. I wondered if there was any basis for generalizing to the southern-Italian American population as a whole.
     
    The historian comes to know a society by critically analyzing the documents created by or about the society. I wondered if there was documentary evidence corroborating my oral anecdotes; thus, providing a basis for generalizing about southern-Italian American opinion of Mussolini in the years proximate to WW II.
     
    I found such documentation in William Wythe’s renowned anthropological study of the late 1930s Boston North End neighborhood - “Street Corner Society.”
     
    “Street Corner Society”
     
    William Wythe lived in the North End from February 1937 until July 1940. Using the anthropological method known as ‘Participant-Observation’, he befriended and integrated himself into various groups (‘participation’) and systematically recorded notes about events and conversations (‘observation’).
     
    The North End at that time was, in the author’s words, “inhabited almost exclusively by [southern-] Italian immigrants and their children.”  Needless to say, after three and a half years of observation and note taking, the book contains an enormous about information about the southern-Italian Americans living in the North End; including two fascinating reports about Mussolini opinions.
     
    First, there is a report similar to mine of an oral tradition expressing a sympathetic view of Mussolini.  Second, and especially interesting, there is documented voting records corroborating both oral histories.  For an historian, when documented statistics corroborate oral history – ‘it don’t get better than that!’
     
    Oral history – North End
     
    Wythe reports:
     
    “Chick Morelli expressed a very common sentiment when he addressed his Italian Community Club:
     
    ‘Whatever you fellows may think of Mussolini, you’ve got to admit one thing.  He has done more to get respect for the Italian people than anybody else.   The Italians get a lot more respect now than when I started going to school.  And you can thank Mussolini for that.’ ” (emp+)
     
    Document history
     
    This oral claim of a “very common [positive] sentiment” about Mussolini correlates with North End voting patterns for Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Whyte reports:
     
    “In his first two campaigns Roosevelt had been tremendously popular in [the North End].  At this time Roosevelt and democracy did not conflict with Mussolini and fascism in the minds of [North End] people.  They would say, ‘Mussolini for Italy; Roosevelt for the United States.’
     
    However, after Roosevelt attacked Mussolini in his famous “stab-in-the-back” University of Virginia speech on June 10, 1940, North End sentiment turn precipitously and measurably against Roosevelt.  Whyte writes:
     
    “[The effect of the speech] can be roughly measured by the following [North End] votes in the elections of 1936 and 1940.
     
    1936 Election
     
    Roosevelt …...    89%
    Landon    …....    11
     
    1940 Election
     
    Roosevelt ……    51%
    Willkie  ………… 49
     
    “In 1936 Roosevelt carried [the North End] by 3,278 votes; in 1940 his margin was 117 votes.  The Democratic candidate for Massachusetts governor…was able to poll 63 per cent of the [North End] vote to Roosevelt’s 51 per cent”
     
    Conclusion
     
    Two oral traditions from two southern-Italian American neighborhoods in two different cities corroborated by objective voting statistics is strong evidence (albeit not conclusive) that the Mussolini sentiment of southern-Italian Americans during the years surrounding WW II may be characterized with Shakespeare’s “Evil that men do…” verse.
     
    Final Thought
     
    I have little knowledge about the history of Fascist Italy.  I have even less understanding about the concept of Justice. 
     
    Accordingly, I leave it to historians, philosophers, theologians and morally confident people to judge the appropriateness of the brutally vicious dehumanizing mob vengeance the Communist exacted from Mussolini.
     
    However, there is one indubitable fact I believe all Americans of southern-Italian descent should keep in mind.
     
    The shot, kicked, stoned and spat upon trophies
    at the center of the Milanesi celebration
       - hanging upside down from meat hooks –

         were the mutilated carcasses of…Italians! 

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