Authors From Italy

"The soul is what you make, and the bonds are good if they enter it, bad if they remain against or outside, even if they call them holy. (p. 59)"

"The cultural industry is largely a myth, a target of convenience, as the devil and witches were in other times. If anything, the industry and public moods are in the same boat: the set of products ends up regularly corresponding to a genuine demand."

"There are no holy laws, in the physical world and in the moral world; but all the laws, as they are discovered, are holy. (p. 61)"

"One of the offices of art is to convey regrets and remorse."

"«Now I understand what good the horror of renunciation and the terror of dying can do. Well, now I say to myself: there is only one way to avoid meeting death, that of dying first. I will have to be afraid, very afraid, and thanks to it I will not give up anything, I will not break any bonds, I will not admit abandonment: I will close myself alive in an absolute world, which is already the afterlife. Then the vice of cowardice and selfishness, avarice and pride, will become a non-mortal loyalty, in which death cannot have an effect, because its passing will be any moment of our absolute life. This is why I won't let you die away from me.""

"The soul lives for the work, only for the work. Without the work one is not a soul. (p. 124)"

"Every new moment of life is an additional right to refuse death."

"I believe that the modern writer must live everything in public, in the company of dialogue with others, outside the myth of restraint."

"The films of James Bond, to the usual mixture of violence, sex, technology, add something more, which marked the moment: an aestheticism of images, a touch of dandyism, a preciousness of the horror, in which motifs typical late nineteenth century machines seemed to filter through futuristic and science fiction machines."

"Every human pleasure finds its opposite and its destruction within itself."

"The main tool that remains to assert itself to European countries is their old culture. Our political class does not seem to be convinced of this. [...] Italy's risk is to become one of the peoples of low culture, since it is possible to be intelligent and of low culture. (p. 865)"

"I abhor false coherences and the fiction of the conclusions reached."

"I love the dead transmitted to poetic memory, not unburied corpses."

"Guido Piovene, De America, Garzanti, Milan, C.E.1961."

"Our country is inferior to none in the number of minds and in the quality of intelligence at the source. But that intelligence can hardly take on a political value and a political prestige, and seldom emits voices that carry with it a universal interest. In no other country like us does the whole field seem to be occupied by activists of all kinds; Nowhere else, almost by tacit agreement of businessmen and sociologists, is the conviction that only money and food problems matter. (p. 863)"

"On the whole, Bari does not resemble Milan, as is claimed, but rather Genoa; and, between the two cities, Bari is more composed and more northern in appearance. In fact, there are few cafes; the street life has neither the importance, nor the color, nor the flair usual in the South. The street of Bari is a passage, with only a practical function, not a living room or a stage; with the exception of the working-class neighborhoods of old Bari. The people of Bari, and the Apulian in general, especially of Swabian descent, have a taste for cleanliness that is not felt even in the Po Valley. Even in the poorest streets, the inhabitants never cease to scrub the houses, polish them, give them lime. (pp. 768-769)"

"Rieti is a beautiful city, lively and aristocratic. The Middle Ages of the Romanesque Cathedral, although rebuilt inside, of the Palace of the Popes, which dates back to the end of the thirteenth century, with its powerful Gothic arches, and of some districts with narrow streets, external stairways, severed towers, archivolts, is superimposed on the work of centuries later, the loggia of Vignola, many noble palaces. [...] As we have said, Rieti gathers a nucleus of Roman aristocracy, and bears its imprint. (p. 809)"

"The problems of culture today move to the foreground, leading us to react on this terrain where slow infiltration, served by the crowd of mediocre intelligent people, replaces the massive frontal attack."

"Ninfa That park is one of the most beautiful places in Lazio; so lost and segregated that, thinking of the pompous villas of the Roman aristocracy, it seems to have changed the world. Rather, it would seem that they have been suddenly taken to the East; or in that garden of a short story by Boccaccio, which a necromancer brings to life in one night. (p. 817)"

"You can reach it from bare beaches, and suddenly you see a mushroom grove of tall modern buildings. Power is growing visibly, gripped by building fever. This cladding of tenements [...] surrounds the old core of the Bourbon town, which, however, is far from dead. As soon as you enter it, you find it again, with the main street narrow, and with the alleys arranged in such a way as to cut the wind; In fact, Potenza is a city in the middle of the mountains, with fine and windy air. The wide, modern streets are on the outskirts. The interior has its grace, and some beautiful churches, such as the cathedral, St. Francis, St. Michael the Archangel. (p. 738)"

"It seems that Matera overlooks an uncovered and inhabited subsoil, which together forms a larger city. Such a gathering of semi-cavemen, in which the existence of prehistory is uninterruptedly prolonged, has no parallel in Europe, and is among the Italian landscapes that generate the most amazement. Crisscrossed by rocky valleys, Matera is a kind of Siena of the South, more remote in time [...] (p. 747)"

"Loveless Lovers (C.E.1948) – screenplay"

"Puglia is our region where the East is most felt. The people of Bari remember as a recent fairy tale the years in which the Albanians crossed the sea laden with gold coins; since the Albanians then considered Bari their market and even went down there to buy a hat. (p. 767)"

"The Lucania is a part of the South, which suffered acutely from isolation, from a very long decadence, from an ungrateful land. [...] Many villages received water and electricity only after C.E.1945, and others only in recent years the road; Recent statistics indicated that a good half of the population was illiterate. However, Lucania produced numerous geniuses, some of great importance. She possesses in abundance the virtues that we will call ancient, being industrious, strong-willed, quiet, with a deep feeling of family. (pp. 737-738)"

"Bari refutes the clichés about the South. Commercial and bourgeois, it has few traditions of baronial and landed aristocracy, unlike, for example, Lecce and Brindisi. The typical average Bari man is sparse, exact, dedicated to his business, fond of old administrative methods and savings. You can see him in the shop, until late at night, through the door ajar, concentrating on the accounts. (p. 768)"

"Palermo The design of the mountains and rocks surrounding the port, tending to ochre and violet, on the waters of a deep blue, as contemplated by the Pilgrim, is less sweet, less tender, but purer than that of the mountains surrounding Naples. As in Greece, in Sicily nature has remained stuck in eternal models, and instead men have changed. Contrast makes nature even higher and farther away; The soul of the beholder is forced into a kind of perpetual seesaw. (p. 585)"

"The encounter with nuraghe art takes place first in Cagliari, in the National Archaeological Museum. Here it can best be compared with foreign civilizations. In fact, the Roman department is also important, and even more so than the Punic one, with its sensual and cruel divinities. But the Nuragic department stands out from the rest and marks Sardinia better. There is the rare case of a museum without repetition elsewhere, embedded in this land like nature and customs. (p. 707)"

"The self-criticism that I like is quick, dry, turns the page immediately."

"A trip to the Marche region, not hurried, leads to see wonders. (p. 513)"

"Ascoli Piceno [...] is one of the most beautiful small towns in Italy, and I don't see any other that resembles it. Gide preferred it [...] as beautiful as some cities in southern France, not so much for this or that monument in a special way, but for its whole, for its anthological quality, for an enchantment that comes from nothing and everything. More than any other, it must be defended from stupid disembowelment. You must have walked through it, starting from Piazza del Popolo, the Italian square that together with that of San Marco in Venice gives more of an impression of a hall, surrounded by arcades, closed by the stupendous apse of San Francesco; or along the Baptistery of the Duomo; or along the steep banks of the Tronto; and in the narrow streets, called "rue," where the palaces are countless; and that spread out into small squares [...] Ascoli is a city of towers, anthological as we have said, because there are many styles, the Romanesque, the Gothic, the Renaissance, the Baroque. But the Romanesque remains the constant background, the color; stone-walled, windowless churches; a travertine of a warm, uniform grey, without plaster [...] That grey marble is all ornamented, worked, engraved [...] here, on every door and window, you see fruit, foliage, female caryatids, flowers, animals, stars, or even simply proverbs and carved sentences. (p. 534)"

"Wherever you feel the space. Therefore The Eagle is gay. Located at over 700 meters, the highest, if I'm not mistaken, among the Italian provincial capitals after Enna and Potenza, it is a city that breathes. The gaze, as soon as it finds an opening, immediately goes far away, with the immediacy of a submerged body that comes to the surface, up to the Gran Sasso and the Sirente, dominating the vast basin. (pp. 557-558)"

"Italy, with its landscapes, is a distillation of the world, the Marche of Italy. (p. 508)"

"After the fall of Rome, Benevento had another period of splendour under Lombard rule, and was the most important Lombard fief in the South. Under Rome, and in the Middle Ages, it was a great center of commercial traffic between the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas. The people of Benevento care about that distant background of internationalism. The very names, scholars tell me, in the documents in the archives, show that the families came from all over; the population had an international composition, and Benevento something of the metropolis. (p. 496)"

"Today Benevento is largely a brand new city with oases of beautiful monuments. Even in the remnants of what was once the intellectual aristocracy of the South, alive although numerically restricted, I have noticed here a passion for art, a defense of the artistic and archaeological heritage, which are less common in the North of Italy. It is that humanistic passion that in the South of Italy now threatens to be shipwrecked, but which here is kept awake, as I said, also by civic pride. (pp. 496-497)"

"On Calabria It is certainly the strangest of our regions. In its vast mountain areas it sometimes does not seem to be in the South, but in Switzerland, in South Tyrol, in the Scandinavian countries. From this imaginary North you jump to olive forests, along coasts of the classic Mediterranean type. It is wedged with canyons reminiscent of the United States, stretches of African desert and corners where the buildings retain some memory of Byzantium. It would seem that the debris of different worlds has collapsed together here; that an arbitrary deity, after having created the continents and seasons, amused himself by breaking them to mix their shining fragments. (pp. 559-660)"

"[...] the Arch of Trajan, perhaps the most beautiful and harmonious of the existing Roman arches, more beautiful than those of Rome. And it is also a strangely modern arch, since you can see Trajan in the bas-reliefs dedicated to social and welfare works. (p. 497)"

"The Royal Palace of Caserta The charm of this Neapolitan Versailles [...] comes for me above all from a certain gratuitous and fabulous that emanates from this palace of disproportionate size rising in the middle of a flat plain: there is, as we have already said, a Neapolitan avant-lettre surrealism, which was born from the theatrical splendour of Naples: and which consists in living great architectural fantasies where they least expect them. The park itself, crossed by the waters falling from a mound, then flowing in a slight slope from basin to basin, interrupted by white groups of large statues, animals, divinities, winds that swell the cheeks, Actaeon transformed into a deer and torn to pieces by dogs, is a macroscopic fantasy, in which everything seems to be a little bigger than it should be; This generates a disturbance of the imagination, which the Baroque called wonder. There is a clear desire to surpass in pomp the great European palaces and the great metropolises; the contrast between this dream and the reality of the environment means that Caserta, much more than that of Versailles, is a fantasy palace. (pp. 493-494)"

"You climb the tawny yellow side of the mountain; at the foot there is the plain, the immense quadrilateral of the palace; Then you go inland, and the plain disappears. There exists in Provence a splendid and illustrious city abandoned among the rocks, Les Beaux; , Lombard, built in the eighth century, formerly the seat of bishops and counts, is its Italian equivalent. Only Les Beaux is of two styles, medieval and Renaissance, Caserta all medieval; and Les Beaux is celebrated in France, while old Caserta is almost unknown to us. Capable of accommodating many thousands of people, it contains about two hundred. It is a knot of dead and monochrome houses and alleys, the yellowish color of travertine; all around a landscape of barren, stony hills, sown with spikes of towers; A still and perfect landscape. (p. 494)"

"There is a greater civic and historical pride in Benevento than in the other provincial cities of Campania. (p. 496)"

"Salerno is different from Naples, in appearance and spirit. This is where a lot of clichés about southern Italy fall. The appearance is in fact almost northern, and the cleanliness almost Swiss. The speeches are dry, short, typical of active people. [...] Those who know Salerno life intimately tell me that it is a mixture, typical of southern Italy in this phase of transition, and in the leading places, of still patriarchal customs and modernisms sometimes even strange and excessive. [...] If you look closely at Salerno, you get the impression of a fairly typical centre of the transformation phase of southern Italy. Industrialization and prosperity are progressing, even if the old liabilities still weigh heavily. (pp. 477-478)"

"The successful man, within the walls of his own home, is often unsuccessful and unhappy."

"Benevento is not Naples, and he wants to let you know. Their character, the people of Benevento point out to me, is already very different from that of the rest of Campania: harder, more closed, more Alpine. Salerno has something Milanese about it as much as is possible in the South; I found in Avellino perfect specimens of a certain type of Southern intellectual, intelligent, pessimistic, who contemplates himself and his ailments as a chapter of history. The people of Benevento, on the other hand, carry, if anything, to the South some characteristics of the Trentinos. The climate itself is cold, not very Campanian; The beautiful views of the province are alpine. (p. 496)"

"There were those who told me that the two gardens of Ravello, at Villa Rufolo and at Cimbrone, are the most extraordinary gardens in the world together with those of Charleston in South Carolina; And it is right in the sense that neither one nor the other has equivalents elsewhere. Perhaps the gardeners in Ravello were influenced by the British. Of course, they have acquired the art of matching very different colors by throwing them haphazardly, as if on a palette, refraining from overly drawn flower beds. They are gardens, those of Ravello, romantic, of a brilliant scapigliatura. (p. 477)"

"[...] about the Alpine municipalities, I will say in passing that one, Capracotta, is the highest of the Apennine municipalities, and therefore the winter is closed by snow and ice. (p. 575)"

"Naples is not a city for purists. I see a small baroque church, which carries the statue of an angel halfway up to the same height, and extends on the same floor with the window and balcony of an unpretentious house. On the balcony stands a woman, elbow to elbow with the statue of the angel; this is really Naples; Let the house and the balcony be torn down, and the church will also have become sloppy. In all cities, but especially in Naples, it is clear that art is not only made up of what we call works of art. (p. 433)"

"It is an accent that I have often heard resonate in Naples in a different form. An enchantment in living, but combined with the implication that living has something painful for itself. There is a kind of pendulum between that enchantment and that hidden implication: you never know which one will prevail. (p. 437)"

"In Naples, as in Paris, it is difficult to hear, at least in conversation, those absolute, radically negative judgments that are heard elsewhere; as in Paris, the tendency is rather towards absolution, naturally with a somewhat skeptical undertone, and without delving too deeply; There is always, in the judgments, a humor and a politeness of worldly capital. (p. 443)"

"Children, "creatures" are swarming. Even in average restaurants, there are few patrons without children around. Naples is a lactating and suckling city, perpetually pregnant. A Neapolitan demigod is love; In the popular consciousness, love is redeemed through creation. (p. 432)"

"Just as they have found a way to live with saints, miracles, science and technology, these people live in confidence with occult forces and cosmic powers. Everywhere he juggles with his mischief, like the little boat on the waves of the sea. This is also why I believe that the volcano of Naples, like the archaeological excavations of the Neapolitan area, have no equivalent anywhere in the world: everything in Naples is humanized twice. (pp. 464-465)"

"A splendid legacy of Bourbon rule, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples|National Museum]] is inside the soul of Naples, and a foreigner notices it more than a Neapolitan himself. [...] Roman life here loses all academic solemnity, and approaches with a loquacious realism; confidence takes the place of reverence; you couldn't think of a museum like this if not in Naples [...] (pp. 465-466)"