Novelists From Italy

"The , together with Wall Street, is the world’s biggest “launderette” of drug trafficking’s dirty money. It’s in , or in British branches or foreign banks, that criminal money gets laundered. And banks, in turn, are profiting by moving around and investing these huge amounts of liquid assets. Liquidity is what they’re after, especially in times of crisis. And liquidity is what criminal organisations have. All banks need to do is to lower their monitoring standards, their anti-laundering standards, and the job is done. The scandals concerning the relationship between banks and drug trafficking that emerged in the past few years are a proof of this. The case is an example. Europe’s first credit institute in terms of market capitalisation, one of the biggest banking groups in the world, has laundered drug money. ... Most of the world’s money laundering would not exist without the support of banks, who, in order to hide their account holders’ and investors’ identity, exploit the scheme: shell companies controlled by in turn by other shall companies based offshore, run by legal firms through trusts, in an infinite series of steps that make it impossible to track down the true account holder."

"A very interesting report on the London property market as a refuge for secret assets and dirty money – published in March 2015 by Transparency UK – spoke of money coming from corruption or corrupt individuals, without ever mentioning the word “”; nor did it ever mention “organised crime”. The reason is simple: with the exception of a few very rare cases, in the UK the mafia is not something that you can see or hear. There aren’t dead bodies on the streets, or shootings. In Mexico or in Italy, between corpses, blood and drug seizures it’s impossible to think that the Mafia doesn’t exist. In Italy and in Mexico Mafia is loud and it smells of blood. In London, as in Paris, it exists, but it’s quiet, it acts in the dark. And most of all it doesn’t have the pungent smell of blood, but the reassuring smell of money. It’s not true that money doesn’t smell, it does smell indeed, but you definitely can’t rely on your sense of smell to identify criminal money."

"But the problem is that the boundaries of tax havens themselves can become very blurred. London is an international financial system that sees trillions of dollars from all over the world go through it each year, and that offers the most sought after financial services. This alone would be enough to make this city a desired anchorage for those looking to launder and reinvest unlawful funds. But there is more; besides this, the British capital is at the heart of the world’s most important offshore system."

"The only company to have made a profit is the one in the , but because it’s in a tax haven, it doesn’t pay tax. This is how a company is able to generate revenue without having to pay tax anywhere. In tax havens, boundaries between what’s legal and illegal become very blurred. The recent leak on the Panama Papers revealed how international leaders, celebrities and businessmen from all over the world were using offshore companies to avoid making their assets public and, in some cases, potentially to dodge tax or hide illegal activities. Panama is where criminal capitalism and legal capitalism become one. ... Today in the heart of Panama you can still find the money of Mexican Narcos and major European businessmen. Different origin, same advantages."

"If we were to ask which country is the most corrupt in the world, the first answer to come to mind would be dictated by the perceived level of corruption. Perhaps one might think of Mexico, of South American countries, of African countries, of the Middle East or Italy. But the most corrupt is the UK. It’s not a type of a corruption that concerns civil servants, policemen or mayors; it’s a type of a corruption that is consubstantial to economic system. The British economic system feeds itself on corruption. And in the midst of this, the and its citizens have not woken up to the plight that their country is going through. A plight greater than earthquakes, greater than terror attacks."

"Unlawful revenue which, after being conveniently cleaned, is then reinvested within the legal economy: polluting it, corrupting it, forging it, killing it. Whether it’s reinvested in the London property market, in Parisian restaurants, or in hostels on the . Drug trafficking money will buy homes that honest folk can no longer afford; it will open shops that will sell at more competitive prices than legitimate shops; it will start businesses that can afford to be more competitive than clean businesses. But one thing must be clear: these businesses are not interested in being successful; the main purpose for which they were created was to , turning money that shouldn’t even exist into clean and usable money. In silence, illegal assets are moving around and undermining our economy and our democracies. In silence. But it doesn’t stop here; organised crime is providing us with a winning economic model. Organised crime is the only segment of global economy to have not been affected by the ; to have profited from the crisis, to have fed on the crisis, to have contributed to the crisis. And it’s in the crisis that it finds its satellite activities, such as usury, gambling, counterfeiting. But the most important – and most alarming – aspect of this issue is that it’s exactly in times of crisis that criminal organisations find their safe haven in banks."

"Certainly, female writing exists, but mainly because even writing is powerfully conditioned by the historical-cultural construction that is gender. That said, gender has an increasingly wide mesh, its rules have been relaxed, and it is more and more difficult to reconstruct what has influenced and formed us as writers…"

"I believe that they have put a spotlight on what women have always known and have always been more or less silent about. Patriarchal domination, even — despite appearances — in the West, is still very entrenched, and each of us, in the most diverse places, in the most varied forms, suffers the humiliation of being a silent victim or a fearful accomplice or a reluctant rebel or even a diligent accuser of victims rather than of the rapists. Paradoxically, I don’t feel that there are great differences between the women of the Neapolitan neighborhood whose story I told and Hollywood actresses or the educated, refined women who work at the highest levels of our socioeconomic system…"

"No, I never plan my stories. A detailed outline is enough for me to lose interest in the whole thing. Even a brief oral summary makes the desire to write what I have in mind vanish. I am one of those who begin to write knowing only a few essential features of the story they intend to tell. The rest they discover line by line."

"I don’t know if my writing has the energy you say it does. Of course, if that energy exists, it’s because either it finds no other outlets or, consciously or not, I’ve refused to give it other outlets. Of course, when I write, I draw on parts of myself, of my memory, that are agitated, fragmented, that make me uncomfortable. A story, in my view, is worth writing only if its core comes from there."

"Later, every form of religious belief seemed absurd to me, and death was as if disfigured. [...] Today I would never say: he has gone away. I’ve lost the sense of the crossing over: nothing goes up to heaven, we don’t move to another world, we don’t return, we aren’t reborn. We remain definitively immobile; death is the last point on the segment of life that has chanced to be ours."

"I can’t say precisely. I don’t think anyone really knows how a story takes shape. When it’s done you try to explain how it happened, but every effort, at least in my case, is insufficient. There is a before, made up of fragments of memory, and an after, when the story begins. But before and after, I have to admit, are useful only in answering your question now in an intelligible way."

"I can’t give you a precise answer. It may have had its origin in the death of a friend of mine, or in a crowded wedding celebration, or perhaps in the need to return to themes and images of an earlier book, ‘The Lost Daughter.’ One never knows where a story comes from; it’s the product of a variety of suggestions that, together with others that you are not aware of and never will be, excite your mind."

"Mi stupisco, quando vedo gente giovane mangiare carne. Mi sembra talmente cosa d'altre epoche! La gioventù carnivora non è coi tempi, ha uno stomaco da secolo XIX, che carnivorizzò l'Europa... Cibarsi di pezzi di animali macellati è un'anomalia, fuori della dieta vegetariana non c'è giovinezza vera. La carne è per lo più un'angosciata abitudine dei vecchi. Richiedere piatti di carne, parlarne, ricordarli è cosa da vecchi, e da vecchi incapaci di svecchiarsi con una dieta decisamente alternativa."

"Today medical school is attended by mobs, not students; a mob receives its degree, a Doctor-Mob practises the medical profession. We learn to distrust it immediately; this mob may even be armed, may even be equipped with powerful weapons. Whoever wishes to become a doctor should reflect before entering the profession; enter only if you are determined to be different and to adopt different principles and teachings. Otherwise do not enter."

"La gente mangia carne e pensa: "Diventerò forte come un bue". Dimenticando che il bue mangia erba. Mangiarsi con gusto un animale è assassinio premeditato a scopo di libidine. Digerirlo, occultamento di cadavere."

"If you want to know something about these people and enjoy them somewhat, before buying the map of the city you should buy the sonnets of Gioacchino Belli, the true guide of Rome. It's easy reading, educational and fun. Dante should be read to understand Florence and the Florentines; Belli, to understand Rome and the Romans. The first one never makes you laugh, the second makes you laugh all the time. And then get to know the inns."

"Catholics in our age when confronted with dogma do not react or yield; they stay neutral, and receive it as one news item among others, as if it were a simple formality. It is as if they lacked the background needed in order to understand. It was the highest point of the Holy Year, the summit to be attained on that morning of All Saints. The prize, the great reward of those who had followed it in faith and fervor. The Pontiff's words flew over the square with a swish of wings, as if a multitude of doves had been released. One had only to close his eyes and let himself be carried away in an ecstasy of light. Instead, it became a perfect example of the contradiction inherent in our age, when man has learned to fly with his body only to forget the great flights of the soul. The people in Saint Peter's square looked like birds with severed wings."

"When men have been deprived of faith and have been taught to hate work, so that they see it as an unbearable burden which provides illicit gain for crooked exploiters, then nothing is left but to go into the squares and shout the inner void which devours them, until they look like lost souls. Man reduced to a mere passage for food faces despair as soon as food becomes scarce or tasteless."

"Science in its amazing conquests, the mind in its almost infinite ways, have only limited, barred, and obstructed their search for a reality which doesn't exist, since everything is real and everything is unreal. What do I care if I fly like a sparrow or a finch if my mind remains that of the sparrow and the finch."

"From the moment painting ceased to be religious it started to decay, so that now it has reached a childishness that borders on idiocy. People who admire it are even greater idiots than those who paint. Art loses all reason for being if it's not animated by a great feeling."

"The things that are being done in Jerusalem are not much different from those being done in Rome, New York, Berlin, Paris, everywhere. A hundred years more and all cities will resemble each other with enervating sameness, with gray, uniform flatness."

"Italian humorist Giovanni Guareschi–a staunch anti-communist journalist and writer–coined a famous sentence to mock Stalinists “Contrordine, compagni!”, i.e., “Counter-order, comrades!”. It was the sudden announcement of an impromptu change in policies and ideas that activists ought to support with the same enthusiasm and dedication they previously displayed for their blatant contrary. Guareschi’s amusing assumption was that, no matter what, communists dully obey whatever kind of order comes from the party, inhaling the “official truth” (even typos in articles and manifestos) from a “third nostril” that nature provided them with."

"‘Don Camillo, the system of teaching Christian charity by knocking people over the head is one that doesn’t appeal to me,’ the Lord answered severely."

"Those were the days when there was a great deal of argument about that piece of international machinery known as the ‘Atlantic Pact’, which may have owed its name to the fact that between words and deeds there lies the breadth of an ocean."

"The party delegate was one of those gloomy, tight-lipped persons who seem to have been made for wearing a red scarf round the neck and a tommy-gun slung from one shoulder."

"But the young people of today are benighted creatures born with telephone numbers imprinted on their brains, and where passion is concerned they have about as much grace as a pig in a cornfield."

"I was born near the Po and it is the only respectable river in all Italy. To be respectable, a river must flow through a plain because water was created to stay horizontal and only when it is perfectly horizontal does it preserve its natural dignity. Niagara falls is an embarrassing phenomenon, like a man who walks on his hands."

"Minutes and seconds are strictly city preoccupations. In the city people hurry, hurry so as not to waste a single minute, and fail to realize that they are throwing a lifetime away."

"In the valley a bicycle is just as necessary as a pair of shoes, in fact more so. Because even if a man hasn’t any shoes he can still ride a bicycle, whereas if he hasn’t a bicycle he must surely travel on foot."

"This reminded me of what Ignazio Silone said in 1945 soon after he returned to Italy from his Zurich exile: "The Fascism of tomorrow will never say 'I am Fascism.' It will say: 'I am anti-Fascism.'""

"Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place."

"What struck me most about the Russian Communists, even in such really exceptional personalities as Lenin and Trotsky, was their utter incapacity to be fair in discussing opinions that conflicted with their own. The adversary, simply for daring to contradict, at once became a traitor, an opportunist, a hireling. An adversary in good faith is inconceivable to the Russian Communists. What an aberration of conscience this is, for so-called materialists and rationalists absolutely in their polemics to uphold the primacy of morals over intelligence! To find a comparable infatuation one has to go back to the Inquisition."

""Political regimes come and go, but bad habits endure." (alt trans = 'remain')"

"«There are moments when Caterina is Duchampian with the digital medium, as in “UFOp (Unidentified Flying Objects Poetry)” (1999) and in “Poem in Red” (2004). You can think of Davinio’s work as something resembling the imagination without wires and the Words in Freedom, the second phase of the Italian Futurism (from 1909 to 1914), because she retrieves this technique and applies it in the digital realization of her videopoems, net poetry, in the structure of Karenina.it» (Jorge Luiz Antonio about Davinio's video and net-art) In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«This collection of poems by Caterina Davinio […] rewards the reader with fascinating lines and jarring phrases that bring fresh and dangerous enjoyment to the practice. Be alert, all who enter here» (David W. Seaman about Serial Phenomenologies)In Caterina Davinio, Fenomenologie seriali / Serial Phenomenologies, Campanotto, Pasian di Prato (UD) 2010"

"«Reading Caterina Davinio’s Waiting for the End of the World, one is reminded of so many writers taking on the task of speaking for a desperate people – Léopold Sédar Senghor, whose conflated “Black Woman” and Africa make his mouth lyrical, Aimé Césaire, in his “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land,” accepting and speaking for his people in all their ugliness and suffering. But Caterina’s poet is not speaking of her own land: in this double poem anchored in Africa and India, she seems to take on the burden of the former British Empire. That is why T.S. Eliot came to mind, if not also Rudyard Kipling and in a sad way, Ernest Hemingway» (David W. Seaman about Waiting for the End of the World)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«“White / tells my story.” In my humble opinion, this is the couplet that “epitomizes” the work, which is miraculously saved from the devil, by the artist Caterina Davinio […] Indeed, the protagonist of the vital scenes is heroin. […] Davinio’s language is fast and cutting, cut by the broken bottles in the street.» (Nunzio Festa about Il libro dell'oppio / The Book of Opium)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«Nevertheless it is about themes endowed with depth, rather uncomfortable in a culture that often seeks from poetry almost a consolation or at least a reconciliation with the world. Davinio’s poetry is instead problematic, not at all conciliatory or reconciled. Caterina develops her themes in a vibrant language, dry and almost essential, taut and antirhetorical» (Gianmario Lucini)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"«Sharp poetry, essential, cutting, between irony and tragedy, with lightning flashes of desperation and piety, of memory and anguish. It has a painful and lost grandeur» (Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"Only our voices and gray strips of palm like shining backs of coleoptera, atrocious and suffering under the infinite sun; …"

"«It is the poetry of Rimbaud removed from the soot of the history of literature» (Paolo Mantioni about Il libro dell'oppio / The Book of Opium)In Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, Fermenti, Rome 2012"

"And I go down the stairs again with the screeching of my worn out soul P. G. tunes instruments for his golden arm alchemy in a metropolitan shell The squeak of time was thrown back into the cracks where the plaster has the form of a twisting branch and my veins are sturdy trunks, scaly, for drops of green sap nourishment rising from the bowels of the earth, …"

"I am ashamed of the polished words, so I hide them throwing rough and crude notes like the Rondanini Pietà still raw with matter on the lines of crystal like the soul that sparkles in one’s eyes. ..."

"The head tumbles between the legs like a wooden ball you fall, dark night in the eyes, the door a span away inaccessible you are on your knees ..."

"«She is able to oscillate between classical allusions to the holy books and the works of great poets like Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Borges, Artaud and Celan, and then she comes to terms with the Beat Generation, with Ferlinghetti, Corso, with the philosophy of the existentialists. With immediate acceptances, repulses, with vast ignitions and immense fires, with echoes of jazz and pop music» (Dante Maffia about Fatti deprecabili/Deprecable Facts) rhizome.org"

"E-literature is certainly a broader concept than e-poetry, but it can also be limiting: like Verlaine in a famous line from his Art Poétique, one might conclude: et tout le reste est e-littérature, to emphasize the imponderable specificity of poetry."

"When I speak of language, I do not only mean poetic or verbal language: I am thinking of the language of mathematics, of physics, et cetera. It is a fascinating topic. Language is an interface between us and the world. Beyond language there is nothing but pure mystical contemplation of the universe."

"Now that everything is, or may be, "digital" and could contemplate its membership in an e-category, the final product should be always studied, not only in its appearance, but in its process, structure, in its modes of functioning and of presentation / fruition and also in an historical perspective."

"If language is a virus from space, even people could be disguised aliens on our planet, because language is inextricably bound to human mental processes, in the forms of our intelligence, to the extent that symbolic language is what makes us different from other living beings."