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Vespers in Vienna

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Bruce Marshall

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“It makes Celia furious that around ninety percent of the women on Italian TV are fabulous specimens with great legs, superb chests and hair as glossy as a mink's pelt, and that every prime-time programme, whether it be a games show or football analysis, seems to require the presence of an attractive young woman with no discernible function other than to be decorative. She shakes her head in disbelief at the shopping channels, with their delirious women screaming about the wonders of the latest buttock-firming apparatus, and bald blokes in shiny suits shouting ‘Buy my carpets! Buy my jewellery, for God's sake!' hour after hour after hour. She can't resolve the contradictions of a country where spontaneous generosity is as likely to be encountered as petty deviousness; where a predilection for emetically sentimental ballads accompanies a disconcertingly hard-headed approach to interpersonal relationships (friends summarily discarded, to be barely acknowledged when they pass on the streets); where veneration for tradition competes with an infatuation with the latest technology, however low the standard of manufacture (the toilet in Elisabetta's apartment wouldn't look out of place on the Acropolis, but it doesn't flush properly; her brother-in-law's Ferrari is as fragile as a newborn giraffe); where sophistication and the maintenance of ‘la bella figura’ are of primary importance, while the television programmes are the most infantile and demeaning in the world; where there's a church on every corner yet religion often seems a form of social decoration, albeit a form of decoration that's essential to life - 'It's like the wallpaper is holding the house up,’ Celia wrote from Rome. She'll never make sense of Italy, but that's the attraction, or a major part of it, which is something Charlie will never understand, she says. But he does understand it to an extent. He can understand how one might find it interesting for a while, for the duration of a holiday; he just doesn't understand how an English person - an English woman, especially - could live there.”

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Book:Telescope
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“Tínhamos que encarar o rosto obsceno daquela realidade que nos tocou no destino. Aquele barquinho naufragado estava cheio de somalis, essa era realidade! Cheio de homens e mulheres, de seres humanos reduzidos a larvas. Aquela embarcação de papel estava cheia de gente com o nariz como o meu, com a boca como a minha, com os meus cotovelos. Todos nós da diáspora somali, no dia em que ficamos sabendo dessa notícia, não sabíamos o que fazer com os nossos corpos. Os que morreram nas costas da ilha de Lampedusa tinham provocado não somente uma comoção sem igual, mas um mal-estar. Por que eles morreram e nós estávamos vivos? Por que o destino nos dividiu em dois? A estação melhorou muitíssimo nos últimos anos. De uma parte, houve a restauração feita pela prefeitura, de outra, várias comunidades migrantes também se organizaram. Há lojinhas de todo tipo. Quer colocar aplique no cabelo? Quer um pouco de cardamomo para os chás condimentados do seu recanto? Quer um tecido com a história da rainha de Sabá para pendurar nas paredes de casa? Em Termini, encontram-se coisas fantásticas: de saris a raiz de rummay para escovar os dentes, e até goiabada que os brasileiros comem com queijo e chamam romanticamente de 'Romeu & Julieta'. E também quantidades infinitas de eenjera e zighinì. Moha, em sua época de ouro, pintou e bordou. Eu e minha mãe éramos espectadoras mudas das confusões que ele armava. Por um período, ele teve até três nomes. Louis para as mulheres que achavam que ele fosse sul-americano, Ali para as brancas que não sabiam pronunciar seu verdadeiro nome (e todas as vezes lhe diziam 'Que massa, como Ali Babá', e Amedeo para as mais duras na queda e experientes. Só disse seu nome verdadeiro à mulher que se tornou, por fim, a mulher da sua vida. 'Eu não queria estragar o nome. É o que me sobrou da Somália, além de vocês.”

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Book:La mia casa è dove sono
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“Thomas Edison hailed him as the "genius of the modern age”; Gandhi, as a “superman.” Winston Churchill pledged to stand by him in his “struggle against the bestial appetites of Leninism.” Newspapers in Rome, host to the Vatican, referred to him as “the incarnation of God.” In the end, people who had worshipped [Benito Mussolini's] every move hung his corpse upside down next to his mistress’s near a gas station in Milan.”

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Book:Fascism: A Warning
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“The Fascists grew because millions of Italians hated what they were seeing in their country and were afraid of what the world was witnessing in Bolshevik Russia. In speech after speech, Mussolini offered an alternative. He urged his countrymen to reject the capitalists who wanted to exploit them, the Socialists who were bent on disrupting their lives, and the crooked and spineless politicians who talked and talked while their beloved homeland sank further into the abyss. Instead of pitting class against class, he proposed that Italians unite—workers, students, soldiers, and businesspeople—and form a common front against the world. He asked his supporters to contemplate a future in which those who belonged to his movement would always look out for one another, while the parasites who had been holding the country back—the foreign, the weak, the politically unreliable—would be left to fend for themselves. He called on his followers to believe in an Italy that would be prosperous because it was self-sufficient, and respected because it was feared. This was how twentieth-century Fascism began: with a magnetic leader exploiting widespread dissatisfaction by promising all things.”

GovernmentFearLeadersFascismItalyFascistsItaliansBenito Mussolini
Book:Fascism: A Warning
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“Μου αρέσει η Ιταλία; Ιδού το ερώτημα. Είχα πάντα την αίσθηση ότι ήταν τρομερή χώρα. Η απερίγραπτη ομορφιά της συνοδεύεται με τις πιο ζοφερές σκέψεις. Όπου και να πας θα βρείς ίχνη από αίμα και δάκρυα. Για να είμαι ειλικρινής, αυτό ισχύει παντού στον κόσμο, εδώ όμως είναι πολύ πιο εμφανές απ ότι στις άλλες χώρες. Καθώς περνούσαν οι αιώνες, έρχονταν κι έφευγαν πόλεμοι και τυραννίες, τρομερές θεομηνίες, αμέτρητα βάσανα στα παλάτια και στα καλύβια. Διακρίνεις κάτι το ανήλεο στον γαλανό ουρανό που θεώρησε απαθής όλα αυτά. Σε ότι αφορά τον κόσμο, μπορείτε να διακρίνετε αιώνες οδύνης ζωγραφισμένους επάνω σε αυτά τα πρόσωπα και να τους ακούσετε στη φωνή των ανθρώπων. Ναι, ναι, μου αρέσει η Ιταλία. Αλλά με την ευγενέστερη σημασία της λέξης.”

TravelItaly19th CenturyItaly Journey
Book:By the Ionian Sea
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