Italy and Italians
Italy is universally considered a particularly unpredictable and deceptive country. Some people even believe that this is the only absolutely certain thing about it. They are, of course, right some of the time, but also wrong as often. There are no sure guides to what Italy is and what it might do next. Italians themselves are almost always baffled by their own behaviour. The only people who have no doubts and hold very definitive and clear ideas about the country and its inhabitants are foreigners who streak through it in a few days, possibly for the first time in their lives. Everything around them confirms what they have always known about Italy and the Italians-their tastes, habits, cuisine (Strictly olive oil, garlic, and tomato sauce), their governments (inefficient and short-lived), love life, talents (artistic), virtues (private), vices (public), and political inclination.
Foreigners who linger longer and those who come back begin at a certain point to be disturbed by vague doubts. They suspect that things and people may not always be what they appear to be, and Italian words may not invariably mean what the dictionary says. Those who settle here (journalists, businessmen, art historians, husbands or wives of Italians, affluent expatriates, opera singers, archeologists, retired diplomats) end by discovering that there are no hard-and-fast rules. One must be en garde all the time, learn the hard way to distinguish between when one must be wary and when one can relax. Above all, one must remind oneself to resist the seduction of the famous fatal beauty, of the all-pervading charm, and of the inevitable compassion that the poor people, so mistreated by fate, history, economic forces, ill fortune, and bad rulers, inspire.
Some foreign residents realize at one point that many Italians never and all Italians, given the right circumstances, do not behave like proverbial Italians. They can be as surprisingly honest, punctual, faithful, tidy, efficient, truthful, and courageous as highly esteemed people with a better international reputation. The only rule to follow, these foreign residents discover, is the old Italian proverb that says, “Fidarsi è bene non fidarsi è meglio” (to trust is good, not to trust is better). An illustration of this bewildering quality of life was years ago put in a nutshell by a foreign correspondent. He said, “In Moscow one knows nothing but understands everything, in Rome one knows everything but understands nothing”.
All this is, of course true. It is not true, however, what many foreigners believe, that Italians enjoy and are at their best living precariously in a disorderly country ruled by inept and impotent, or arbitrary and corrupt governments. They never liked it. As Ignazio Silone wrote once, “There are no sadder people than those gay Italians”. For centuries, since the early Middle Ages, they have dreamed the some impossible dream of being one day governed with freedom and justice. Of being able to dedicate their energies solely to their work and not the task of avoiding cramping and frustrating laws of defending themselves from dangerous and powerful enemies. They dreamed can be traced down the centuries in many documents, books, poems, and paintings, from Dante’s De Monarchia, Macchiavelli’s Il Principe, Giuseppe Mazzini’s and Vincenzo Gioberti’s Oeuvres, down to a large number of contemporary essays, newspaper columns, and political programs. The visible symbols of all this are the fourteenth-century frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo pubblico in Siena. They are called "Il Malgoverno" and "Il Buongoverno". The “bad government” is filled with battles, turmoil, ruins, corpses, and desolation. The “good government” shows farmers ploughing, craftsmen working, fat cattle, vineyards loaded with grapes, and beaming happy faces. Italian history could in fact be interpreted as a vain and sickening search for il Buongoverno down the centuries.
Italy found it an extremely long and anguishing experience to turn itself into a moderately modern, adequately prosperous, reasonably well-governed, orderly, reliable, punctual, and internationally respected country, and to do all this in order to defend its recently acquired independence and fragile unity. In fact, for a number of reason the process has been longer and more tempestuous than in most other western European nations.
Even today, the aggressively up-to-date appearance of some non-vital aspects of contemporary life, the enthusiastic acceptance of “progressive” political theories and way-out art forms should not deceive strangers. After more than a century is not yet thoroughly modern. Its heart is still largely in the past. This is not entirely a disadvantage. In fact it is the reason why Italy attracts and charms so many visitors. It is still a refuge from the impersonal discipline and the boredom of life in their well-organized, predictable countries.
The individual Italian only obeys the rules that he has privately decided are just and useful. Signs on trains categorically forbid, in French and German, leaning out of the windows: Il est défendu de se pencher en dehors and Nicht hinauslehnen. (In older days the German sign even said it was Polizeilich verboten). The Italian sign is a mere courteous suggestion. It leaves each man free to decide whether to lean out or not. It says, E’ pericoloso sporgersi, or “ It is dangerous to lean out”. The reader has been warned. Let him do as he prefers. Let him die if he wishes.
