INJUSTICE IN ITALY
REVIEW: Alvaro, Corrado. Revolt in Aspromonte. Norfolk, Ct and New York: New Directions Press, 1962.
Corrado Alvaro was born in Calabria (one of the provinces of the Italian south) in 1895, was an infantry officer in WWI, a journalist and writer of novels, poems, short stories and travel books. He died in 1956. His novel, Gente in Aspromonte, published in 1932, was translated by Frances Frenaye and published as Revolt in Aspromonte by New Directions Press in 1962. Alvaro was one of a generation of Italian writers who attempted to explain modern Italy, few of whom are known in the U.S.
Modern Italian literature is ignored in America. There is a prejudice against things Italian with the U.S. media and in the education system. The prejudice isolates persons of Italian descent from a true perspective of the country of their heritage. Italy is thus viewed by them in a nostalgic haze. The assimilated Italian community in America, now in its fourth and fifth generation, assumes that Italy was a place of sweetness and light, a conflicted but noble nation. That Southern Italy, in particular, was a poor but picturesque region suffused with warmth and “amore.” The reality is much different. That community has not considered the historical fact that twenty-six million Italians emigrated from Italy in the one hundred years from approximately 1860 to 1960, and to Canada, Australia and Argentina (besides other South and Central American countries) besides the United States. Most of the immigrants were from the South. This is more by far than emigrated from any other country.
There has never been an organized revolt in Southern Italy. The title of the book, thus, translating “Gente” (people) of Italian to “Revolt” in English is disingenuous; it makes an active case out of something that was intended by its author to be passive. I assume it was done to appease an Anglo readership, as indicative of hope. There was no hope in Italy. The peasants were severely suppressed. There have instead been muddled insurrections led by illiterate bandits. Rather, the Italians of the Mezzogiorno, when they got the chance, revolted with their feet, and abandoned their region and country. This is a condemnation of Italy. The truth is that Italy was and remains the most violent, corrupt and unjust country in Europe.
There are no people who understand injustice as thoroughly as do Italians. It is an integral but despicable part of their heritage. Southern Italians, most especially, have lived with the curse of injustice, spawned by violence, corruption and inherited privilege, for millennia. Some of them, and as they appear in those books of the mafia gangster cult in America, have internalized such pathology, and perpetuate it in the New World. (That literary cult which deals in glamorous fantasy and disgraceful stereotyping is contemptible.) There is an old proverb from the south of Italy that clarifies the issue: “He who has money and friends f*cks justice in the ass.” This is rough but pertinent to the discussion.
Alvaro comprehended the societal pathology endemic to Italy. His novel is a study of injustice as it works its tragic way through a region, a village and a family. That region, the Aspromonte Mountains of Calabria, has long been known as the roughest corner of Europe. Southern Italy was enmeshed in centuries of superstition and poverty, where daily life was one of indignity, insult and petty feud. The story is written in a spare, direct, appealing style that disguises the enormity of the evils it describes. The sad and bitter tale ends with the son, Antonello, returning to his village from brutal labor elsewhere. He has almost starved to death by sacrificing himself for his family. He is intent on vengeance. He torches the forest of the local nobility, who are stupid and bestial persons, slaughters their animals and gives the meat to his fellow peasants. He thereby ruins himself and the nobility. He speaks the last words of the book, as he waits to be captured while the forest rages in flames and the people feast on the free provender. “There he awaited his fate. When he saw the gleam of the carabinieri’s caps and their guns pointing at him from behind the trees, he threw down his own weapon and stepped forward to greet them. ‘At last,’ he said, ‘I have met Justice face to face. It’s taken me long enough to catch up with Her and say what I have to say.’”
That is an apt parting image for the province of Calabria and of Italy, then as now, since it has never been reformed: With the people riotous over food and the sulphurous fumes of the Hell it believes in infusing the land, the sky and the populace.
The novel might have meaning for us in America at the beginning of the 21st century, whether we are of Italian descent or not.
(TRC Final Revision 08-17-09)
