In the early stages of coming to terms with this place called Italy, helping me greatly is the book by Tobias Jones who moved to Parma in 1999.
Named the Dark Heart of Italy, I couldn’t possibly comment on that at this early stage but already some things have become apparent to a man whose eyes have never been turned this way but rather to colder climes. No doubt most readers would have more knowledge of the two Sicilies than I.
Yet bear with me as I make my discoveries and kindly add things you yourself picked up in your travels, to round out the picture.
Stato
Firstly, there is no state called Italy, except in politicians’ minds. It has gone through so many hands, been somebody’s baby, from the Borgias to Berlusconi and the city state is still so deeply entrenched in most places that it explains why Modicans refer to themselves as either that or Sicilian, the south, part of ‘Africa’, as they apply their northern neighbours’ epithet for them.
‘Provincialism combined with urbane cosmopolitanism’ is the way to go.
Catholicism
The religion is clerical, people’s attendance largely social and yet fervent for all that. As the bells chime just now, it is a contrast to where I was two weeks ago with the Muslim prayer call from the minarets.
One place this comes through is if you are convicted of wrong doing in the law court in Primo Grado. No one thinks that is the end of the matter – you’ll be absolved in Secondo Grado later. Sin on Saturday, absolution on Sunday.
Furbo
Some time back I ran an article on this – the admiration for someone who can con his way round the system and make something for himself. Much better, as Jones says, to be furbo [mildly dodgy] than ingenuo [naïve]. To pay an unnecessary fee, to do things by the book, to declare campaign contributions and resign for irregularities, so beloved by the British – that raises eyebrows here.
Ethics
There is bel and brutto. That’s all. Not right and wrong. One dresses to shop, one’s ailments and poverty is not spoken of and is disguised as far as possible.
Laissez faire and bureaucracy
Anything official involves largesse, obsequiousness, long queues, crawling on the belly and begging, in flowery language, to be allowed to pay your outrageous tax and get that little stamp on the document which goes with the other stamped documents which go with the other red tape to pay your fee on this or that. Legitimacy is everything, even to proving you’re a citizen.
On the other hand, the average life has no end goal, no explanation, no rules – it just is. To feel is more important than to think. The summum bonum is figura – the thing you have achieved, which you have made yourself into.
Fantasy and reality
Somewhere in here is the merging of fantasy and reality. Reality is euphemized or ignored, hidden away beneath a layer of words, which are fantasy, which is the real reality, sometimes in blood through history. History and story are the same word in Italian – storia.
Passing someone on the path
An ASBO was coming the other way in south London once and wanted me to step aside. When I didn’t, I got ‘Oh, for f--- sake,’ and other gems but I dug in and refused to move, even pulling a sandwich out of a bag to eat to while away the hours. Twenty minutes later he gave it away.
In Russia, he saw me coming, I saw him coming, we ignored the other and at the crossing point it was two walruses clashing, followed by his denunciations, ‘But it was my path.’
In Modica, he saw me coming, we both stepped aside, he said grazie and buona sera, I responded in kind.
That’s about as far as I’ve got so far on this place here where a gale is currently blowing through the shutter slats and the tiled floor feels cool beneath the feet as I write this.
