Italian Identity

[Foxy]

Here I'd like to offer a summit in English from the book "L'Identità Italiana" (The Italian Identity), written by the professor and journalist Ernesto Galli della Loggia. The purpose is first to make foreigners know and understand my country, and second to (I hope) interest my countrymen and to stimulate considerations about Italy, especially on its cultural peculiarities.

I will follow the structure of the book, giving of it only a summit, chapter after chapter.


1) An extraordinarian geographical position.

North and South, East and West.

Italy has got a very particular geographical position. Not only it stays in the centre of Europe and has got a prolonged form that goes from the Alpine scenario to the subtropical areas of Sicily and Calabria; it is also a bridge between Eastern and Western Europe. The Padanian Plane, for exemple, has been for centuries a door (and still is) that connects the Balcanian peninsula (and world) to the Atlantic, Franco-Iberic area.
Maybe distracted by the most visible dualism of the peninsula, North and South, it is often forgotten the other great dualism: East vs West.
Communications between the two banks of the Appennine have been for centuries very hard, almost null. Still today the costal cities of the two banks (the Adriatic and the Tirrenic) have more exchanges with the foreign countries on the opposite bank of the sea than with the Italian region behind the Appennine.
Therefore, the Tyrrenic coast has and has always got trades and exchanges with France (Norther regions), Spain (central regions) and Northern Africa (southern regions); instead, the Adriatic side had relations with the Balcanian Peninsula (North and Central regions) and with Greece.
The inclination of Italy must be taken in consideration indeed, becouse all the cities which are southernmore than the line Cassino-Porto S. Giorgio are also easternmore than Trieste, the Easternmost Northern Italian city.
So the South is also a South East and Otranto, the easternmost Italian city, lies under the same axis of Budapest and of Danzica.
The dualism East-West was rapresented very well during the Sea Republics era, when Genoa and Venice were rival cities and the Adriatic Sea was called "The Gulf of Venice".
An interesting proof of this dualism is also the random fact that during the '700 the two banks of Tuscan-Umbrian Appennine were connected by only 2 transitable bridges.
The two coasts developed great differences and peculiar identities.
About geography, we have also to mention the deepest climatic differences that are in Italy. While the Alpine brand and some points of the Appennine acheve temperatures that in winter become colder than various places of Northern Europe, Sicily and some parts of Southern Italy present a subtropical climate.

A harsh climate.

A stereotyped image sees Italy as a country with a good climate, where fruits born spontaneously without great efforts.
On the contrary, Italy has a climate which is very hostile to agriculture, that produces a surplus only with big efforts and great creativity. This is at the base of two aspects that unified Italy: the poorty, that for centuries afflicted the country, and the slyness-creativity.
Agriculture used to be very harsh and usually was a subsistence farmer.
The most disadvantaged areas were the South and some areas of the North.
The coastal areas were also very problematic, becouse until some decades ago many of them were covered by marshlands, often guesting malaria, a real plague for those zones. Affected by malaria where the Southern part of Abruzzo, part of Latium, Apulia, most Sicily, Campania and Calabria.
The happy, but often false image of a good climate dates back to the ancient time, when, comparing Italy to the other Mediterranean countries, its climate was better for farmer.

The Beauty
An other unificator of Italy is the beauty. Italy is <<The Beautiful Country>> par excellence. But what makes Italy beautiful, especially to the eyes of a foreigner?
First, Italy hosts a lot of different landscapes and often in very short distances you can see total diverse sights. A visitor coming from the North will cross the dramatic scenario of the Alpine zone and will meet soon the lakes that lie under the mountains. Then he will cross the central brand, characterized by the wonderful medieval villages, set on the side of a hill or of a mountain, of Tuscany, Marche, Latium, Umbria and Abruzzo, to meet endly the sea, the gulfs and the isles of the South. To this you have to add the vulcanic phenomens of some coastal areas, that add dramacity to their natural beauty.
It is the contrast water-grave to make Italy beautiful, but not only.
You see an atropomorfization of the nature in Italy, that gives it a peaceful beauty.
Longfellow wrote: <<Italy is and always will be the land of the sun and of the song (...) the land of the dreams and of the delicious visions>>.
Shelley wrote about Florence : <<The sight is the most bright and elegant I have ever seen>>.
But the true beauty and also the beauty that has most impact on psychology is the presence of the ruins. Old ruins are everywhere in Italy, also out of the urban centre. The beauty of Italy is, for this reason, also a beauty of the ruins, that attracts and attracted many people, especially those with an high cultural backround, like Goethe, Winkelmann, Shelley, etc.etc.


[To be continued...]

[Foxy]

The classical past

A singular destiny wanted that Italy was first the epicentre of the Roman and classical culture, then also the epicentre of christianism. Thank to that, Italy acquired forever a preminent position in the culture of Europe and of the world. Italy preservs the identity of every European.
But it is thank to this incidence that in Italy the class of the well-read has always had a central role, first in the figures of the laic humanist, later shifted into that of the the modern intellectual, but also in the figure of the erudite churchman.
Italy has on its shulders the weight of its glorious past. No civil force historically thinkable could emulate the power of the Imperial Rome or of the Roman Pontiff, but at the same time history itself forced Italy to confront with that past,<<to be worthy of it>>.
Inch by inch, Italy purposed itself goals of universal greatness.
It is not enough to have some dozens of writers to create a national identity, something deeper must be in Italy to perceive ourself as one only nation.
This perception is the biggest legacy of the Roman world.

Roman heritage: unity and language

The first to give a unitarian name to Italy were the peoples of the Sabellic- Samnitic stock in the I century b.C. They united to rebel to Rome and called their capital Italia. Romans continued to perceive Italy as a non-omogeneous country, crossed by a strong dualism: a warlike, harsh and bellicose osco-sabellic central-South Italy (from which they excluded Magna Graecia and the isles, perceived as Hellenic) and a pious, gentle Etruscan-celtic North.
Also the Roman domination of Italy was particular and less omogeneous of what people think: Romans didn't institute a province in Italy, on the contrary they preferred other political forms: foedus and societas (pact and alliance). Rome formed alliances not with the whole peninsula, but rather with every city hall.
This specific trait rapresented for Italy an unitarian experience, different from the experience of the other provinces under the Roman power. Thank to that in Italy the processe of urbanization started in advance and still constitute a common trait. On the other side, this experience was also dividing: <<Italy of the hundreds cities>>, segmentation and distinction of the various parts.
Every Italian city is a duplication of The City par excellence, with its column and its arcs, that rapresent the physical identity in which Italians never stopped to recognize themselves.
The language is even more important: until XVIII century Latin was still the most diffuse language in the high circles and the language of instruction. Still today 70% of Italian words are from Latin. It is the Romance language with most latinisms and latinisms improve in number if we pass from the tecnical words to the common/daily words.

Roman heritage: the law

Roman law obviously found its fatherland in Italy (in Germany it found its second fatherland). Often the law was privilege of the high classes, in particular the lawyers (always very incident and powerful in Italy).
The voulgar Roman law never stopped to exist among low classes, though mixed with the germanic law of the invasors, while the learned law was perceived as high, remote and prestigious, a mean by which the various dominators of Italy justified themselves.
Where the English right is pragmatic, Roman right needs lawyers and notaries, and also a large burocracy.
The law became very soon something very distant from the masses and was perceived by the lowest classes as something right to mislead and cheat people who had not the means to understand it.
On the opposite side, the high classes often used it with arrogance, like if they were <<legibus solutus>> (free respect to the law).
From this it has origin the semianarchical conception of Italians and their wariness of the law.

Catholicism: good and bad consequences

It was the Church that for centuries substituted itself to the void of the law. Church was close to the low classes and was also the only indigenous political power of the peninsula.
Catholicism influenced almost every aspect of the Italian man: his morality, his tastes, his feelings, his Weltanschaaung.
The christianization of Italy, the christianization of its countrysides, happened by the work of the monks and of the churches, scattered everywhere. This produced in the countryside a strange mix of catholicism and neo-paganism (in some Appenninic sanctuaries, especially of the centre/South, it is still celebrated some rituals of clear pagan origins).
Catholicism in the rural areas supplied the need of protection of the masses and caused in them a sort of fascination, that led often to a radicalization of the evangelic message.
The cult of Madonna is, after Christ, the most diffuse cult in Italy and finds its highest picks just in the rural areas. Madonna belongs to the mass first and only later to the institutions. Madonna supplies the need of a deeper and more inner confession. Her cult is sweeter, more free, less controlled. She is the personalization of the relation with the trascendence.
Italian masses developed a conception of the life where you can count up only on yourself and on people who deeply know you and whom you deeply know. This is an aspect which is common in the whole peninsula.
The bad points of the Church were substancially the Counter-Riformation, especially the means it adopted, and the fact that it took part in mantaining Italy politically divided, as it called a foreign country to help its interests everytime they were threaten.
The Counter-Reformation operated mostly by the Inquisition. It suffocated every aspect of individualism: it controlled every tought, every word, every important moment of the life of the single.
It was the fear the mean it used most. Negative consequences were the predominion of the obbedience over the conscience, the custom to assent without consent, a formal and only ritualistic religiously, which is after all void, the custom to dualism and dissimulation, very common among Italians.
But it is in the ART that Italian catholicism finds its quintessence, in Giotto's scenes, in Caravaggio's Madonnas, in Michelangelo's and Bernini's architectures.
It is the art that flourished in Italy that brought on catholicism the highest and most sybolic mark: by that catholicism aquired definitely its beauty and its imagine of human hopes.

[Foxy]

A breaking up past

Since the fall of Rome, until 20th September 1870, when the Piemontese troops entered Rome, Italy has been divided. It means that for 15 centuries Italy has been divided. The foreign interference has always been strong, starting from the barbaric invasions. An other breaking up role was carried out by the Holy See, that has never hesitated to call the foreigner in defence of its interests every time that they were threaten, suppressing every hope and effort of building a national State.
A similar situation is strange to the rest of Europe, except to the Balcanian Peninsula, where the outcome has been different and where the breaking forces resulted stronger than the centrilizing pressure. In this sense, Italy has been able to find a unity, avoiding the destiny of its Balcanian neighbour.
But, after all, even the unification of Italy has been anomalous, the product of the interference of a foreign force: usually a unification starts from the centre and expands in the area around. In the case of Italy, the boost to the reunification started from an extreme border of the peninsula, including Nizza and Savoia, two areas still strongly connected with the close France. It can be said that the reunification has been a case of foreign interference itself, although anomalous!

A feudal and monarchic South

The South, respect to the North, is the area of the monarchy. It is the monarchy per exellence of Italy. Particolarisms are indeed less strong in the South of the country rather than in the North, and the South itself appears as more omogeneous and compact (with the exception of Sicily, that, being an isle, developed its own peculiarities).
An exemple of the diversity is the way that universities born in the North and in the South. While in Bologna the university born spontanously, in the South the first was founded in Neaples for will of the Emperor Friedrick II. Soon a class of lawyers and funcionaries took off and still today the main particularism in the South are based on wealth rather than on the city of provenience.

The North of the cities

On the contrary the North very soon took an own indipence from the power of the emperor and adopted its city assett.
The city was the place of the conflict with the lordly power but was also the fulcrum of the particularisms. The cities were destined to an eternal crash against each others, the destiny of the city became the destiny of the single man, leading to a perfect identification between the interests of the single and the interests of his city. The city was the centre of the development of a great culture, the centre of the art, the centre of local cults, but also the centre of the particularisms, until in a certain moment the Foreigner, profiting from the internal division of the Italian cities, could conquest them without great efforts.
Yet the city rapresented a great pick in the flourishment of the arts and of the culture. It became expression of a new culture itself. It was the symbol of an Italy strongly determined to govern itself without the interference of a foreign power - in the specific of the emperor, although the price to pay was high.
Yet, city doesn't mean democracy. The cities were governed by a limited number of families and individuals; they developed, in short, an oligarchic system. Despite this, they were able to arouse the interest of the people for the res publica,for the public thing. In the cities many crafs and technics born and developed. The cities financed the art as expression of their prestige. In short, cities developed an original culture, that we can call "city culture". The city was a closed world where the identification of the single with his city was extreme and where the interest of the single for the politics was far higher than in the South.
The price to pay was a strong particularism and a situation of eternal conflict, where the main damages to the other Italian cities were made by other Italian cities.

Regions and provinces

After the reunification it was soon clear that the new State standed on very fragile bases, underlined by the strong opposition North vs South. In the name of this dualism, all the other particularism were ignored.
To a deep analysis the region has not more historical bases than the central State. The real cell of socio-territorial aggregation in Italy is the city, the provice at most, an institution that paradoxally doesn't find a real political rapresentation today. The regions only in sporadic cases are perceived as a cell and this cases are in the best ipothesy exceptions, not the general rule.