The Boy from Gluck Street

A song I’ve loved since I was a young boy, “Il ragazzo della via Gluck” (“The Boy from Gluck Street”) is not just a song, it’s a piece of pop music and cultural history. It was originally written and recorded by Italian pop music legend Adriano Celentano in 1966—the lyrics are by Luciano Beretta and Miki Del Prete—and soon became a world hit, translated and recorded in 18 languages by numerous artists, including American pop singer Verdelle Smith (“Tar and Cement”), French singer and songwriter Françoise Hardy (“La maison où j’ai grandi”) and Swedish singer Anna-Lena Löfgren (“Lyckliga gatan”), who also covered a German version of the song (“Immer am Sontag”).

Adriano Celentano’s vocation as a counter artist was evident since the very beginning of his artistic career. Italy’s best-loved singer and songwriter, and one of the greatest selling non-English language recording artists of all time, he characteristically performs his songs with a Brechtian detachment to the text and is the creator of a broken, syncopated language that he alternates with a crooner style. His whole career, not only as a singer & songwriter but also as an actor, director, producer, as well as a host of TV programs, bears witness to his intellectual integrity and his deep commitment to promoting values and principles such as fairness, friendship, kindness, and love for one another. All this, however, without indulging in sentimentalism or presenting a Manichean worldview, but always with strength and simplicity—and with a grain of folly: who could ever forget his legendary television monologues with his “lunatic” and Buster Keatonesque ecstatic pauses?

Prominent film directors such as Ermanno Olmi, Federico Fellini—who asked him to play himself in La dolce vita—and Pier Paolo Pasolini were fascinated by his free-thinking attitude and independent spirit, and saw in him a poetic and at the same time a down-to-earth representative of traditional values and aspirations in the face of a tumultuous period of huge social and economic change. Needless to say, as a result of the rapid modernization and industrialization of the country, a huge urban sprawl—which dramatically changed the face of Italy’s cities and towns—took place in the 1950s and the 1960s. Definitely against the tide and somewhat prophetically at the time, Adriano spoke out against the “cement tsunami” and the consequent loss of identity and traditional ways of life. The autobiographical “Il ragazzo della via Gluck” became his manifesto against “unsustainable development.”

The following is a literal translation from the original, which is quite different from the above mentioned “Tar and Cement” (by American songwriters Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance):

The Boy from Gluck Street

This is the story of one of us,
who was also born by chance in Gluck Street,
in a house outside the city,
quiet people, who worked.
Where there was grass there is now
a city, and that house
amid the green now,
where may it be?

This kid from Gluck Street,
enjoyed playing with me,
but one day he said,
“I’m going to the city,”
and he said while weeping,
I asked him, “Friend,
aren’t you glad?
You’re finally going to live in the city.
There you will find
the things that you didn’t have here,
you can wash at home without going
down in the yard! ”
“My dear friend,” he said,
“I was born here,
and in this street
now I’m leaving my heart.
But how can’t you understand,
it’s lucky for you who remain
barefoot to play in the fields,
while there downtown
I’ll breathe concrete.

But there will come a day
when I’ll come back
here and I will hear the friendly train
whistling like this – ua-ua ”
The years go by, but eight are long
But that kid has come a long way
But doesn’t forget his first home
Now with the money he can buy it
He comes back and doesn’t find
the friends he had
Only houses upon houses,
tar and concrete.
Where there was grass
there is now a city
And that house amid
the green now
where may it be?
I don’t know, I don’t know, why
they go on building houses
And don’t let the grass, don’t let the grass,
And don’t
let the grass, don’t let the grass,
And no, if we go on like this
I wonder how we will do,
who knows, who knows how we
will do.


All in all, besides being (by far) my favorite Italian singer, I’ve always had the utmost respect for Adriano Celentano as a person, and I’m pleased to pay tribute to him with this post. To conclude, this, in my opinion, is his core message in a nutshell, in his own words (and in his typically imaginative style):

What we are losing is the utopian dimension of life. Sometimes I say things that seem impossible to achieve, and yet there are many things that seemed impossible at one time but they are very real today. My concern is that if we lose our belief in utopia the world will get worse and worse. Today we live longer than in the past, the quality of life has improved, we have medicine that saves lives, but still the world is headed for disaster, because we have abandoned our past to climb higher and higher. But if you climb a very tall ladder and then cannot climb down again, you cannot save beautiful things. The lack of Beauty is a problem. The key to the future is Beauty. There are not only skyscrapers, we are a part of nature. There are helicopters, but there are no meadows. [Rockpolitik, (in Italian, translation mine) edited by M. Ciotta, Bompiani, 2006]

As is more than evident from the above quoted passage, Celentano’s “utopianism” is one of its own kind, and his utopia is a back-to-the-future one rather than a traditional one. After all, unlike most of his fellow Italian artists, he has never been sympathetic to leftists, nor has he never hidden his deep Christian faith and beliefs. In other words, he is a true contrarian—and I thank him for that!

Books

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means.


~ Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, 1980 (English translation by William Weaver, 1982).

When Umberto Eco wrote The Name of the Rose (it was released in Italy in 1980, followed by French and English editions two years later) he could never have imagined what a cultural phenomenon he'd created. No one who loves and cares about books and their fate in the present world should miss reading, re-reading and reflecting upon this great novel. The Name of the Rose is a book that speaks of other books, a book whose main focus are the books themselves...

Blessed Are the Contrarians

All right, that’s it, I’m done with this job. My new book is out just in time for Christmas. Here is the Preface to Blessed Are the Contrarians: Diary of a Journey Through Interesting Times.

I wish you all 

a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

PREFACE

Blessed are the contrarians, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. But they must be very, very careful in these “Interesting Times,” in the Chinese sense. Unless you think that “May you live in interesting times” after all is a blessing and not a curse, or better still the first of three curses of increasing degrees of severity, the other two being “May the government be aware of you,” and “May you find what you are looking for.” But in this case you had better not read this book—and you can’t say I didn’t warn you!

Let’s start from the beginning, which can only be the title of this book, with the first question: Who or what is a contrarian? Well, that is not an easy question to answer. The fact is that there are many kinds of contrarians. Way too many to come up with a description that fits them all.

Broadly speaking, however, contrarians are those who go against the current (as the dictionary states), who take opposing stands from the majority: in the stock markets they buy when others sell and vice-versa; in religious matters, if they are Christians, they continue to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, in spite of the Zeitgeist, and if they are not they have the utmost respect for what Christianity is all about and for its contribution to civilization. In matters of culture, education and lifestyles, they are “old-fashioned” while the rest of the world seems to be hell bent on transmuting order into chaos.

Philosophically speaking, there are two main types of contrarians: thinkers who are marginal and unconventional during their own life time, but posthumously become very popular and trendy, and those who “thought different” in their lifetime, to quote Steve Jobs, and their works still continue to go against the mainstream in the present time. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, belongs to the first category, whilst Montaigne belongs to the second—that of the truest and the most representative contrarians, in my own personal (and perhaps questionable) opinion. And that’s where I shall start from, as you will see.

This book is a kind of diary of a journey through our time—politics, culture, lifestyles, worldviews, etc.—and back home again, where “home” stands for a sense of belonging to something stronger than the spirit of our times. In other words what this book represents is a sort of explanation—though not a systematic one—of why I disagree with certain mainstream views in several domains. And this from a conservative and Christian point of view, that is to say the perspectives that come under severe attack from secular and progressive ideologies, the over-influential schools of thought of our time.

I have selected for this volume some of the articles posted on my blog over the last few years, those most suitable for this traditional mode of communication. The “diary” entries are not arranged in any chronological order, but in accordance to subject pertinence. This was done to make it easier for the reader to surf through the book. After all, as Albert Einstein once said, time is only an illusion—though sometimes an interesting one!

431st Anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, Oct. 7, 1571

The Battle of Lepanto, H. Letter, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich/London.

On October 7 the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, but the feast has its origin in an event, the battle of Lepanto, that took place on Oct. 7, 1571, when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of southern European Catholic maritime states, decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire on the northern edge of the Gulf of Corinth, off western Greece.

According to some historical accounts, such as those recorded in the Vatican Archives, on Oct. 7, 1571 Pope Pius V entered the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore to pray the Rosary and ask Our Lady to intercede for a Catholic victory. Later on that day, the Pope was granted a miraculous vision of the Holy League’s stunning victory. He is said to have suddenly interrupted his business with some Cardinals, and looking up, cried out, “A truce to business! Our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which He has just given the Catholic army.”

As military historian John F. Guilmartin, Jr. put it, “Turkish victory at Lepanto would have been a catastrophe of the first magnitude for Christendom and Europe would have followed a historical trajectory strikingly different from that which obtained.”

A few details about the event (from Wikipedia):

The members of the Holy League were the Republic of Venice, the Papacy, the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights Hospitaller, the Spanish Empire (including Kingdom of Naples, Kingdom of Sicily and Kingdom of Sardinia) and others. Its fleet consisted of 206 galleys and 6 galleasses (large new galleys, invented by the Venetians, which carried substantial artillery) and was commanded by John of Austria, the illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
Vessels had been contributed by the various Christian states: 109 galleys and 6 galleasses from the Republic of Venice, 32 galleys from the Kingdom of Naples, 10 galleys fromSpain, 7 galleys each from the Kingdom of Sicily and the Pope, 5 galleys from the Republic of Genoa, 3 galleys of the Order of Saint Stephen from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, 3 galleys each from the Duchy of Savoy and the Knights of Malta, and some privately owned galleys.

A Pilgrim at Euro 2012

Cesare Prandelli

Even though I love this game, I’m not a big soccer fan, except for international tournaments such as the Champions League, the European Championships, and the World Cup. That’s why I’m watching—and enjoying—Euro 2012, and not just because Italy are doing very well, though that helps, of course—by the way, hey German friends, how do you feel about next Thursday?

The Camaldolese Monastery near Krakow
Photo courtesy: Nicko's Photos

Yet that’s not what I want to talk about right now, not strictly speaking, at least. In fact, I want to talk about pilgrimages… Well, in reality the (two) pilgrimages in question are those made by Italy coach Cesare Prandelli and his staff during the Euro 2012 soccer championships. The first time, after beating Ireland and reaching the Euro quarter-finals, they went to a Camaldolese monastery in the middle of the night (a 13-mile walk):

The Camaldolese monks - whose origins are in Italy but who run a monastery outside Krakow - met the squad before the tournament and the team staff promised to make a pilgrimage to the monastery if they got out of Group C.
No one expected coach Prandelli, his backroom team and federation vice president and former midfielder Demetrio Albertini to take the walk at 3am local time, shortly after arriving back in Krakow from beating the Irish 2-0 in Poznan.
The federation said in a statement that the group, who first 'had to deal with the jokes of the players... who went off to bed', took three-and-a-half hours to complete the walk and returned to the team base at 7am - by car. [Mail Online]

The second time, after beating England and reaching the semifinals, they went to a Franciscan convent near Wieliczka (a 7-mile nocturnal walk):

Italy's attacking spirit on the field is proving hard to beat. Coach Cesare Prandelli's religious commitment is also holding strong.
For the second time at the European Championship, Prandelli and his entire coaching staff celebrated a victory with a nocturnal pilgrimage to a monastery near the squad's base outside Krakow.
After the win over Ireland last week, the 14-member group embarked on a 21-kilometer (13-mile) trek at 3 a.m. to a Camaldolese monastery. This time they got a later start and walked only 11 kilometers (7 miles) to a closer monastery.
The reason for the delay and the shorter trip early Monday was because Italy required extra time and a penalty shootout to beat England in the quarterfinals on Sunday. Also, anti-doping authorities held up forward Mario Balotelli for an hour, delaying the flight back from Kiev, Ukraine.
The team plane touched down in Krakow at about 4 a.m. Then once the squad reached the team hotel in Wieliczka, the players went to bed and the staff — including security members and other officials — embarked on their pilgrimage. [SFGate]

The Franciscan Convent near Wieliczka
Photo courtesy: franciszkanie.pl

Nice story, isn’t it? In these times of doubt and skepticism, here is a man of faith. Of true and simple faith. Here is a man who lost his wife—after a long and painful illness—in the middle of a season in 2007, but who did not lost his “center.” Here is how he described—in an interview he gave to Jesus, an Italian Catholic magazine, and eventually republished in la Repubblica newspaper—his own faith experience: “I grew up in a believing family. Then, when they reach adolescence, many make different choices. Instead, I kept on believing and practicing. I live my spirituality by attending Mass, but not only by that.” Asked to explain what he meant by that “not only,” he answered: “Well, I’m sorry but I don’t like very much to talk about what I do, they are very private things, talking about them makes me feel ill at ease…, I don’t want to put them on display, nor do I want people to think that I want to put them on display, because I don’t have to sell anything to anyone—I just think people have to do what they feel they have to do…”

Well, what to say? Not that I think that prayers and pilgrimages may grant you victory over your enemies, er, I mean opponents—that would be a bit too easy, wouldn’t it? And yet, it is written: “If God with us who can be against us?” So if I were you, my German (and Portuguese, and Spanish) friends, I’d be very careful from now on—and don’t say I hadn’t told you so! But that being said, may the best team win!

Never Trust Friends!

F. Hayez, portrait of Alessandro Manzoni
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

“ One of the greatest comforts of this life is friendship; and one of the comforts of friendship is that of having someone we can trust with a secret. But friendship does not pair us off into couples, as marriage does; each of us generally has more than one friend to his name, and so a chain is formed, of which no man can see the end. When we allow ourselves the comfort of depositing a secret in the bosom of a friend, we inspire him with the wish to enjoy the same comfort for himself. It is true that we always ask him not to tell anyone else; and this is a condition which, if taken literally, would break the series of comforting confidences at once. But the general practice is to regard the obligation as one which prevents a man from passing the secret on, except to an equally trusted friend and on the same condition of silence. From trusted friend to trusted friend, the secret travels and travels along an unending chain, until it reaches the ears of the very man or men from whom the first speaker meant to keep it for ever. It would generally require a long time to get there, if each of us only had two friends—one to confide the secret to us, and another to whom we can pass it on. But there are some privileged men who have hundreds of friends, and once a secret reaches one of them, its subsequent journeys are so rapid and multitudinous that no one can keep track of them. ”


~ Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed, Chapter 11. Transl. Bruce Penman, 1972, Penguin Books, London/New York

Yesterday, March 7, 2012, was the 227th anniversary of the birth of Alessandro Manzoni, and Google celebrated him with a doodle. I myself couldn’t help but do my part to celebrate him, and decided to quote one of my favorite passages of The Betrothed. This passage is fairly representative of Manzoni’s style and sense of humor. Do you think he is too pessimistic about friendship? Well, not as much as this guy:

“Trust not any man with thy life, credit, or estate. For it is mere folly for a man to enthrall himself to his friend, as though, occasion being offered, he might not become an enemy.” (Lord William Cecil Burleigh)

Google Doodle: Alessandro Manzoni's 227th Birthday

Renaissance Faces

Andrea Mantegna, Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan

Pollaiuolo, Portrait of a Young Lady

If one pays attention to the way things have always been in the painting field, I think it’s just as Oriana Fallaci once said, “Listen: if I am a painter and I do your portrait, have I or haven’t I the right to paint you as I want?” I mean, portraits are not as much a matter of objectivity—which has very little to do with truth, as far as my philosophical understanding of this whole thing goes—but of insight, intuition and inspiration. That’s also why it’s common sense that a great portrait is very often (if not always) much more a portrait of the painter rather than of the subject. And this is how the art of portraiture is doubly individualistic: first in regard to the subject; and second with regard to the artist. It’s no surprise, then, if portraiture is one of the most typical expressions of the age of the Renaissance, that is to say the period in which, in accordance with the cliché (but a well-founded one), the “individual” came into being—and at any rate, the emergence in 15th-century Italy of the personal portrait as a distinct and polyvalent art form is indisputable and undisputed.

With this being said, here is the point of this post. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, have partnered to organize a landmark project tracing the development of the Italian portrait in the fifteenth century. The exhibition, titled “Renaissance Faces - Masterpieces of Italian Portraiture” (Gesichter der Renaissance - Meisterwerke Italienischer Portrait-Kunst), started on August 25 at the Bode Museum in Berlin and runs through November 20. After which the show is due to travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (December21, 2011 through March 18, 2012).

Luca Signorelli
Portrait of an Elderly Man

The exhibition—with some 150 works, from 50 great museums, by more than 40 masters of the early Renaissance—takes the visitors from the beginnings of portraiture in Florence and details its spread and stylistic developments in the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Bologna, Milan, Urbino, Naples, papal Rome, and finally in Venice, where only late in the century a portrait tradition established itself.

The works on display are by the most important artists of the period: Donatello, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Pisanello, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Mantegna, Masaccio, Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, to mention only a few names.



But the major highlight is Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” from the Czartoryski Collection, Cracow. Indeed, Charles Baudelaire was right when he said, “Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even—all must combine to realize a character. “



In short, as far as I can tell, whether you are currently in Berlin, or will be in New York from December 21 to March 18, this exhibition is a must see.

“Stelutis Alpinis” (Alpine Edelweiss)

Edelweiss - The flower of the Alps

It’s what might be called a modern madrigal, more precisely a modern villotta, in fact it has most of the characteristics of the rustic song form which first became current in the early 16th century in northern Italy. But most of all this song is a cornerstone of the Alpini choral repertoire, and a sort of national anthem for the Friulian people, in whose dialect—or language, as my friends from Friuli would say—it was written by Arturo Zardini, a primary school teacher, back in 1920.

“Stelutis Alpinis” (meaning edelweiss, the flower which symbolizes the Alps) tells the story of a dead soldier of WWI who asks his wife to pick up an edelweiss from the place where he was buried, somewhere over the mountains: “Pick one of those edelweiss / It will remind you of our love…” That’s why when someone dies on the mountains Friulans sing this song at the funeral—while in the other Italian Alpine regions they usually sing “Signore delle cime,” yet another sad but very beautiful song of the Alpini.

“Stelutis Alpinis” is such a beautiful song that it has been adapted and performed in many different ways, in both choral and solo modes. Here are a couple of examples. The first is a traditional version, performed by the choir of the Brigata Alpina “Julia” (subtitled in English), the latter is a wonderful rendition (and adaptation) by the Italian singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori. The song is included in the album Prendere o lasciare (1996).






P.S. Needless to say, this post is especially dedicated to Italian legendary climber Walter Bonatti (R.I.P.), whose funeral will be held tomorrow in Lecco.

In Memoriam: Walter Bonatti

Italian legendary climber Walter Bonatti has died at age 81. His record was impressive and amazing: at 18 he made the fourth ascent of the north face of the Pointe Walker on the Grandes Jorasses in the Mont Blanc range, at 21 he made the first ascent of the Grand Capucin rock pinnacle, at 24 he was the youngest man to be chosen to join the Italian K2 expedition... a long track record of successes and achievements (see here, here, here, and here to get an idea).

And yet, to be honest, what amazes me most is the fact that, unlike most of his fellow mountaineers—at least as far as I know—he had not followed in his father’s footsteps, nor he was, in his early years, a mountain man, having grown up on the banks of the Po River, in the flatlands of Lombardy and Emilia. He was an outsider. “My character and personality were already beginning to form in my childhood home by the River Po: the great river was like an ocean for me, the sandy river banks like deserts and the Alpine foothills on the horizon the highest mountains in the world,” he said in a 2010 interview. But he used to spend his holidays by his uncles in the mountains of Bergamo… and thus it happened that he decided to become a mountain guide and to move to Courmayeur, below the mighty Mont Blanc group. And that’s where the real life of Bonatti started. The life of a man who reached out for the uttermost difficulty, the unexplored. He cobbled a philosophy from his passion: pursuit of the impossible, he called it. His was a story of independence and freedom of spirit: there is no such thing as the “destiny,” man is the master of his own destiny.

“He was among the greatest of all time, without a shadow of a doubt,” the British mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington (nineteen expeditions to the Himalayas, including four to Mount Everest and the first ascent of the south face of Annapurna) told the Guardian. And Doug Scott, one of the first two Britons to conquer Everest, called Bonatti “perhaps the finest Alpinist there has ever been.”

His memoir The Mountains of My Life, which was republished in English in 2010 to celebrate his 80th birthday, is certainly one of the best books in mountaineering literature.

Rest in peace, Man of the Impossible.

Cannavaro Retires

Soccer legend and Italy’s 2006 World Cup winning captain Fabio Cannavaro retires after persistent knee injuries. The photo of him holding the trophy aloft became the defining image of the 2006 tournament.

Italy’s top 15 cultural exports

Petrarch, by Andrea del Castagno
(Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

I must confess that debating on what is typically English or French or Italian, etc., is something I like less and less as time goes by and I get older. And this for the simple reason that I like to think of the West (or “Western Civilization”) more as a whole, as a single and, somehow, complete entity, than as the sum of its parts. This, of course, without smoothing down or denying the peculiarities of each nation and its peoples.

But perhaps it’s me who is missing something here. The fact is, in my view, that one cannot think of Shakespeare, to make an example, without thinking of the ancient Rome and the Italian cities of Venice and Verona. Or, to make another example, one cannot think of the American Revolution without thinking of the marquis de Lafayette and the French Revolution, and vice versa. And even the American exceptionalism, which, besides being at the heart of American conservatism, is also real and true per se, would be inconceivable without referring to, say, its Puritan roots, that is, its deep English roots. It was one Puritan leader, John Winthrop, who first expressed the idea that the Puritan community of New England should serve as a model community—the “City upon a Hill”—for the rest of the world!

But the above said is only a preamble for the real issue of this post, that is, what the Independent says about Italy and its contribution to the world. It’s a list of fifteen Italian cultural typicalities (“Italy’s top 15 cultural exports”), including Dante and Leonardo da Vinci, the sonnet, and, why not, beautiful women, great soccer players, and fast cars. The choices are questionable in some cases, but nonetheless arguable. In any case, it’s a loving tribute to Italy from a British newspaper, or, as I would prefer to say, a gracious homage to an Italian speaking Western country from an English speaking Western newspaper. In other words, a tribute to the West itself, and a must read piece.

As for the sonnet, however, more precise information is necessary. The article says that “the 14-line, strictly rhyming poem so loved by Shakespeare derives from a 14th-century scholar called Francesco Petrarca, aka Petrarch.” Well, I’m bound to say that it is Giacomo da Lentini (1210 circa – 1260 circa), head of the Sicilian School under Frederick II, who is traditionally credited with the invention of the sonnet. Moreover, other Italian poets, including Dante and Guido Cavalcanti, wrote sonnets some decades before Petrarch (1304-1374). But then again, it was Petrarch who polished and perfected the sonnet form (the vast majority of his 366 poems collected in the Canzoniere were sonnets). Not by chance the Petrarchan sonnet still bears his name...

In Memoriam: Enzo Bearzot

Enzo Bearzot, the legendary coach who led the Italian soccer team to its third World Cup victory in 1982, died yesterday at 83. I guess you don’t need to be a soccer fanatic or even a fan to mourn him, being a normal Italian, or otherwise a non-Italian who loves soccer, would do just fine. He has certainly been one of the most beloved Italians of his time, and this, at least in my eyes, not just because of his success as a coach, but also, if not above all, because of his human qualities: his sobriety, fortitude, integrity, and courage.

In his essay “Courage,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that there are three qualities which “conspicuously attract the wonder and reverence of mankind”–disinterestedness, “as shown in indifference to the ordinary bribes and influences of conduct—a purpose so sincere and generous that it cannot be tempted aside by any prospects of wealth or other private advantage,” practical power, “one who, seeing the wishes of men, knows how to come at their end; whispers to this friend, argues down that adversary, moulds society to his purpose, and looks at all men as wax for his hands; takes command of them (…) as the man that knows more does of the man that knows less, and leads them in glad surprise to the very point where they would be,” and courage, “the perfect will, which no terrors can shake, which is attracted by frowns or threats or hostile armies, nay, needs these to awake and fan its reserved energies into a pure flame, and is never quite itself until the hazard is extreme; then it is serene and fertile, and all its powers play well.”

That’s just how I’d describe Enzo Bearzot’s character. And that’s also how those who had the privilege of knowing him well are actually describing him in these sad hours of mourning (see here, here, here, and here).

The following recollection is only one of a number of examples of his philosophy of life:

Bearzot will be remembered for the undying belief he showed in his players and his tactics, qualities he admirably demonstrated in Spain.
Bearzot took tremendous flack for selecting out-of-form forward Paolo Rossi at the start of the 1982 tournament. The criticisms only grew louder as a lethargic Italy stumbled to draws against Poland, Peru and Cameroon in the first round, and only managed to qualify for the knockout stages by the skin of its teeth.
Rossi had failed to score in all three matches, and when he was substituted in Italy's next game against Argentina, again without scoring, Italian journalists were calling for the manager's head.
But Bearzot had faith in Rossi and he was duly rewarded. Rossi recorded a marvelous hat trick against Brazil in Italy's next match scored both goals in a 2-0 win over Poland in semifinals and netted the opener in a 3-1 win over West Germany in the final. With six goals, Rossi finished as the tournament’s top scorer and was named the competition's MVP.

“Enzo Bearzot was one of Italy’s greatest figures in the 20th century,” Paolo Rossi told the Italian news agency ANSA. “He was like a father to me and without him I would never have achieved what I did.”

As Jeff Powell, sports columnist who covered Bearzot during the ‘82 World Cup, writes in today’s Daily Mail,

The morning after that triumph Bearzot walked into the press conference, poured champagne for all the journalists who had vilified him and invited them to join him in a toast: Forza Italia.
This product of the Italian FA coaching regime had inspired a new mentality which generated a subsequent World Cup victory in Germany 2006 and which injected ambition, energy and adventure into Serie A.
My friend Enzo - who died on Tuesday aged 83 - was pure class.

Rest in peace, dear old man, we will always miss you.

The Bad Italy, The Good Italy

How many times have we seen scenes like this on TV? What a damned country this is to live in where things like this can happen! But then again, one might ask, ‘Isn’t this why Italy is Italy, or—as many of us Northern Italians prefer to think—Isn’t this why Southern Italians are Southern Italians?’ As a matter of fact, there is not one Italy but, at least, two, the north and the south. That’s also why in Italy averages mean nothing: the two Italies are so different that general statistics are grossly misleading. Yet, one might argue, along with former editor of The Economist Bill Emmott that this sort of distinction isn’t really the most important one to make (Emmott was still the editor of the British magazione when, back in 2001, a cover story entitled “Why Silvio Berlusconi is unfit to lead Italy” was published by The Economist). “Standing further back, looking from afar,” he writes in his new book, “I wondered whether it might actually be more useful to think of Italy’s divide in a different way. What I started to ponder was whether Italy’s most important division, in fact its most important division through centuries of history, might not be geographical but moral or philosophical. What I mean is a divide between the Bad Italy and the Good Italy.”

It’s a very interesting approach, and quite an optimistic one, as we will see later on, though, as with everything in this world, it is not really new. In fact the central thesis of the book echoes the one of The Italians - A Full-length Portrait Featuring Their Manners And Morals, by Luigi Barzini Jr, who distinguished “the two Italies:” the one that created and nurtured such luminaries as Dante Alighieri, St. Thomas of Aquino, and Leonardo da Vinci; the other, feeble and prone to catastrophe, backward in political action if not in thought, “invaded, ravaged, sacked, and humiliated in every century.”

Unfortunately, the book, which appeared a few days ago in Italian translation (Forza, Italia. Come ripartire dopo Berlusconi), has not yet been published in English. But the first chapter of the English (original) version is available to be read here—and that’s where I’m quoting from.

The Bad Italy is not Italy at all, but it is certainly Italian. It is not Italy because it is all about selfishness. It starts of course with corruption and criminality, but is better described as the urge to seek power in order to abuse it for self‐interested purposes, to amass power to reward friends, family, bag carriers and sexual partners regardless of merit or ability, and by doing so to build clans and other networks that are beholden to you, and that live by enriching themselves at the expense of others, by closing doors rather than opening them, by excluding rather than including.
(…)
This Bad Italy can best be compared to a parasite or, worse, a cancer. It is not a cancer that spreads and kills quickly, but one that grows bit by bit, gradually weakening its host. Certainly, that cancer has been spreading in recent years, flouting the hopes of many, both outside and inside Italy, that after Tangentopoli it would recede. It did recede, for a while, but then, facilitated and inspired from the very top of government, it has spread again. No one with their eyes open can honestly claim otherwise. But to say so is not to say that everything is hopeless.
(…)
If the Bad Italy is supreme, how is it that an Italian became the world’s youngest ever three‐Michelin‐star chef at the age of 27, or that the country is so rich in entrepreneurs despite the known difficulties in starting a business? How can Italy still have been the world’s fifth‐largest manufacturer in 2009 (after the US, China, Japan and Germany, in that order, according to a study by IHS Global Insight, an economic consultancy1), if it is being destroyed by Chinese competition? How can the “Eurostar” trains on which I have been travelling round the country be so much more comfortable and punctual than English ones (even if they are not really any faster)?
If it is all hopeless, how can I have encountered Italian companies leading the world in selling fitness equipment, sunglasses, cashmere clothing, light aircraft and much else besides, or new anti‐Mafia movements, or towns that have found new post‐industrial life or have pushed out the criminals, or Venice’s extraordinary flood‐control scheme, or journalists willing and able to tell the truth about what has been going on? It is plainly not an easy struggle, nor always a winning one. But the Good Italy is there, fighting away.
I am not just seeing a few rays of light in a dark cave, as if I was pointing out that Saddam Hussein was really a good family man or that there is some spark of creativity in North Korea. The Good Italy is more than that, much more.
(…)
For that is where the Good Italy resides, in moral sentiments, fellowfeeling, but also a spirit of openness, a desire for progress and modernity, a desire with Smith for “the wealth of nations” not just the wealth of individuals and groups. Over the centuries, it seems to me, this Good Italy has battled regularly against the Bad Italy, trying to beat back the cancerous efforts to eat away at excellence, at quality, at merit, at justice, at fairness, at truth itself. If it had failed, Italy really would not exist.
So I decided to look for the Good Italy, and to try see what can be done to make it stronger. The confidence to do this grew and grew as I began to find and talk to young people who turned out to be open minded, positive in attitude, connected to the world, and dedicated to changing things for the better.

What to say? Although not really new, as I already said, this book is worth reading. Unlike Luigi Barzini’s The Italians, written in 1964, the Italy described by Emmott is not anymore one of poverty and illiteracy. Hence, perhaps, its cautious, but palpable, optimism:

People have often remarked that Italy is an economic and political creature that should not in principle be capable of flying but does, one that breaks all the normal rules of economic aerodynamics, rather like a Bumble Bee.
They then devote their time to working out how it does so. I think that analogy is wrong. It reflects a mistaken view that there is some standard model for success as an economy and society, some formula that everyone must follow. Yet a mere lance at the world shows that this is not really true or at least meaningful, for there are vast differences between France and America, Japan and Britain, Italy and China, all of which have succeeded in achieving great progress, despite their diversities.
(…)
This country has become one of the richest in the world, one of the greatest in the world, thanks to the success of the Good Italy in overcoming the dead‐weight, the burden of the Bad, especially in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The reason why Italy does fly, why it doesn’t tumble tragically to the ground, is that the Good Italy stops it from crashing, by fighting back against the Bad, by pushing back the line between the two—sometimes, admittedly, only just in time.
It could happen again. If you want it to.

Raphael in London

Raphael, The Sacrifice at Lystra 

Four tapestries by Raphael have been reunited with the Urbinate’s original cartoons for the first time in nearly 500 years for a major exhibition in London (Victoria and Albert Museum, September 8 through October 24, 2010), made possible by a collaboration between the V&A and the Vatican Museums. Even Raphael himself never saw them together, nor is this a juxtaposition Londoners, as well as the rest of the world, are ever likely to see repeated, since both the tapestries and the designs are judged to be too fragile to be moved more than once in a lifetime.

The V&A’s Raphael expert Mark Evans described the event as a dream come true. “When the Vatican telephoned us in February offering to provide the tapestries for an exhibition, I couldn’t believe it” he said. “I’d always thought that logistic difficulties and a lack of political support would have made it impossible.” And Vatican Museums Director Antonio Paolucci echoes these words by saying, “This is a unique, one-off and unforgettable occasion, it has long been the dream of every art historian to see the cartoons and the tapestries alongside one another and it is indeed marvelous (...) to see how tapestry subtly alters the form and colors.”

To give a better idea of what we are talking about, let’s recall the testimony of the early art-historian and Raphael’s contemporary Giorgio Vasari, according to which the reception of the finished product was enthusiastic: “After they had been completed, the tapestries were sent back to Rome. The work was of such wonderful beauty that it astonished anyone who saw it to think that it could have been possible to weave the hair and the beards so finely and to have given such softness to the flesh merely by the use of threads.”

The tapestries (Acts of St Peter and St Paul, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Christ’s Charge to Peter, The Healing of the Lame Man, and The Sacrifice at Lystra) were made for the Sistine Chapel. Raphael was commissioned by Pope Leo X to design them, then they were woven in Brussels, Europe’s leading center for tapestry-weaving, and finally sent to Rome for display.  As Arnold Nesselrath, who edited the exhibition book with Mark Evans and Clare Browne, writes in his essay on the Sistine Chapel (as reported in this NYT article), the tapestries were displayed when major liturgical services were celebrated by the pope.

The last of the Romans

Time for another post about books. But this time the subject is more an author and his work in general than a specific book. And this just because I can’t think of one of this author’s books without thinking of the others too. Not that I have read them all …, actually only four : Empire of Dragons, Ides of March, Akropolis. La grande epopea di Atene (which is not translated in English), and The Last Legion, that was sold to a major film production in the US—the homonymous film, starring Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley, was released in 2007 (see Wikipedia). I’m talking about Valerio Massimo Manfredi (website).

Manfredi is an Italian historian and archaeologist who since 1978 has spent his time teaching in several European and American universities, digging ruins in the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, and writing novels, including the enormously successful Alexander trilogy, published in thirty-six languages in fifty-five countries. His wife, Christine Fedderson Manfredi, translates his published works from Italian to English. Manfredi was voted Man of the Year 1999 by the American Biographical Institute.

Of course, most of Manfredi’s novels are historical fiction, and that’s just the reason why I started reading them—I love history much more than literature (especially fiction) per se. The first novel I read by Manfredi, a couple of years ago, was The Last Legion. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It exceeded my (not so high) expectations in several ways: well written, fascinating, never boring, the kind of “books that give you emotions and enrich your soul with values and ideas,” as Manfredi himself said in an interview. The story is set in the 5th century, notably at the time of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire under its last Emperor, Romulus Augustus. This is coupled with other facts and legends from the history of Britain and fantastic elements from the legend of King Arthur. Enough to make me stop reading … in other circumstances, but not in this one.

Obviously, as Professor of Classical Archaeology, Manfredi has extensive knowledge about the classical world, which helps him enormously when he writes about the age in which the story is set, but asked “how much research is still involved when he writes a new book,” he answered that

technical knowledge is just grammar, basic elements on which one recreates a credible environment from which also the story and the characters take credibility. Language, mentality, gestures, costumes, landscape, food, climate, everything must be impeccably authentic and has to be recreated in the most natural way. Yes, sometimes you have to check some detail in the sources because you can't remember everything by heart but the real task is to blow passion and feelings in the dramatis personae and in their actions. You have to recognize what part of those men and women survives in you as a modern man, how deep your roots go in the ground.

But then again, although in Manfredi’s own words, “It’s only a question of quality, intensity, visionary capacity,” his “technical knowledge”—or, better still, both his “technical knowledge” of and his genuine passion for the classical world (and the combination of the two)—is one of the reasons, if not the main reason, why I am tempted to say that he is a unique case in the recent history of world literature. Another reason is his sense of mystery. Again in Manfredi’s own words,

In an overpopulated world, in a swarm that loves the reflectors and kills the mystery, people need to dream. When I was a child and lived in the country, you could perceive the unknown just going out in the night. Trees’ branches like giants, the owl’s cry, everything was big, magic, frightening. Nowadays they’re WWF’s affairs...

However, in the case of The Last Legion, the mystery is intriguing—one of the main characters is a certain Ambrosinus, whose real (Druid) name is Merlin…—but not the main object of the novel, but rather it is the relations between Romans and barbarians: an extraordinarily well-crafted piece of European and Western history that should be read in schools.

In the case of Empire of Dragons, instead, the main object is not, despite the appearances to the contrary, the extraordinary Chinese adventures of Marcus Metellus Aquila—legate of the Second Augusta Legion, hero of the empire—but rather it is the ancient Roman concept of virtus, which included strength and courage, poverty and frugality (“so highly and continuously honored”). Fides, constantia, dignitas ... the virtues of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the famed farmer-soldier who saved the state of Rome from the Sabines …

What a great history lesson, and what a wave of nostalgia.

Hey, not to forget the Florentine secretary

Do you remember the famous Machiavellian “eulogy” of mankind in the seventeenth chapter of The Prince, entitled “Concerning cruelty and clemency, and whether it is better to be loved than feared?” If you don’t, here is how it goes—brace yourselves, it’s not exactly what we could call an optimistic perspective on human nature, nonetheless please read carefully the following passage (I’ll explain why later on …):

Because this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you.
[…]
and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.
Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated, which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.

The whole thing couldn’t have been formulated in a more straightforward and clear language. I said I would explain later why a careful reading of the above passage was needed. Well, you can find the reason here (Jeremy Rifkin’s “fresh ideas about human nature” …):

The new understanding goes hand-in-hand with discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuro-cognitive science and child development that reveal that human beings are biologically predisposed to be empathic. Our core nature is shown not to be rational, detached, acquisitive, aggressive and narcissistic, as Enlightenment philosophers claimed, but affectionate, highly social, co-operative and interdependent. Homo sapiens is giving way to homo empathicus.
Fresh ideas about human nature throw into doubt many of the core assumptions of classical economic theory. Adam Smith argued that human nature inclined individuals to pursue self-interest in the market. Echoing Smith's contention, Garrett Hardin wrote a celebrated essay more than 40 years ago entitled "The Tragedy of the Commons". He suggested that co-operation in shared ventures inevitably failed because of the selfish human drives that invariably surfaced.
If this is universally true, how do we explain hundreds of millions of young people sharing creativity and knowledge in collaborative spaces such as Wikipedia and Linux? The millennial generation is celebrating the global commons every day, apparently unmindful of Hardin's warning. For millennials, the notion of collaborating to advance the collective interest in networks often trumps "going it alone" in markets.

And so on. At this point, as Norman Geras puts it, one might well reply, “Not to forget the dark side, hey.” That is, “Hey, not to forget the Florentine secretary.” And you wouldn’t even need to read the eighteenth chapter (“Concerning the way in which princes should keep the faith”)—the one which “has given greater offence than any other portion of Machiavelli’s writings,” in Laurence Arthur Burd’s words—to believe me:

A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate reasons to excuse this non-observance. Of this endless modern examples could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.
[…]
Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.
For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar …

And so on, just in case …

The Austrian School of economics: its Italian roots

Several early Italian economists influenced the development of continental European economic thought in the centuries before Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of economics: Gian Francesco Lottini (1512–1572), Bernardo Davanzati (1529–1606), Geminiano Montanari (1633–1687), and Ferdinando Galiani (1728–1787). Galiani, in particular, with his contributions to value theory, interest theory, and economic policy, had a great influence on the Austrian School of economics itself. Read this article at the Ludwig von Mises Institute website to learn more. Here is an excerpt:

Galiani believed that government generally should not interfere in the natural workings of the economy. A government that attempts to stimulate all sectors of the economy, agricultural and industrial, stimulates nothing. Stimulation means that a particular sector is given preference over the other sectors, and how can one sector be given preference over another if all sectors are stimulated?

Quite interesting, indeed. It’s also interesting to note that Friedrich Nietzsche, who was an expert in matters of intellectual excellence, in his Beyond Good and Evil pointed out his “friend” Ferdinando Galiani as an example of Cynic of genius and described him as “the most profound, sharp-sighted, and perhaps also the foulest man of his century” (please note that foul, in Nietzsche’s vocabulary, is perhaps the greatest compliment…). He also wrote that Galiani “was far profounder than Voltaire and consequently also a good deal more taciturn.”

Furthermore, Galiani’s 1769 Dialogues sur le commerce des blés, written in French with vivacious wit and a light and pleasing style (you can read it here), delighted Voltaire, who in his Dictionnaire philosophique (“BLÉ ou BLED”) spoke of it as a book in the production of which Plato and Moliere might have been combined  (“[Galiani] trouva le secret de faire, même en français, des dialogues aussi amusants que nos meilleurs romans, et aussi instructives que nos meilleurs livres sérieux”). What is surprising is that Galiani is still relatively little known.

[Thanks: The Commentator]

Forget about soccer for a moment...

Italy’s national soccer coach Marcello Lippi, speaking at the start of a two-day training camp on Tuesday:

Italy is never the favorite for the World Cup and that helps. But look at our history. We’ve won four times and lost once to Brazil on penalties. If we had won that shootout we would have five World Cups now and Brazil would have four. […] They say a lot of things in the rest of the world, but Italy has always been a protagonist at the World Cup and I’m extremely confident that this group is going to do great as well.

True. Absolutely. Never the favorite, but … There is something weird in this. But this is not just a soccer issue, this is a much wider one. Forget about soccer for a moment and think of other fields—such as the economy, to give an example—to which the above “rule” may be applied. But this theory can be easily turned upside down: if recent Italian political history teaches us anything, it is that (here) bad things happen when you less expect. That’s also why Italy is a mystery to most people, including the Italians. No way to escape.

PS: Speaking of “bad things” and bad news, this—whether unexpected or not…—could be a perfect example of how not to behave in politics (unlike the second act of the play).

Night Song of a Wandering Shepherd in Asia (Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia)

Yet another poetic, philosophical and aesthetic interlude between one political post and another—a sort of “ecology of political blogging” is needed, in my opinion!

In a previous post on the great 19th century Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi I drew attention to what seems to be a fascinating intellectual paradox, but it isn’t: I mean, the “phenomenon” may well be fascinating, but on closer inspection it’s not a paradox… I’m talking about the religious reading of Leopardi himself, despite his inclination toward pessimism—Leopardi’s deeply pessimistic Weltanschauung, in both a “historical” and a “cosmic” sense, is based on an empirical and mechanistic world view (inspired, among others, by John Locke), denying purpose in the universe, and seeking to explain all phenomena solely by efficient causality.

Now it’s time for me to introduce a poem which is a sort of manifesto of both Leopardi’s pessimism and his “religiousness,” the Canto Notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia, (“Night Song of a Wandering Shepherd in Asia”). It’s by far my favorite Leopardi poem, a powerful meditation on the meaning of life, and, in my opinion, one of the most profound things ever written.

However, before reading, please bear in mind the following scheme: we human beings seek an infinite fulfilment, an infinite coherence, an infinite wisdom and comprehension, an infinite love, an infinite perfection. But we do not have the capacity to achieve any of these things, and the mystery of life, the mystery of happiness, seems always one step beyond us. Yet, does this necessarily mean that, at the end of the road, there’s only darkness and despair? Perhaps so.

Embedded in that “perhaps” is the possibility of hope. By our own power we are hopeless, but, as St Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee” (Nos fecisti ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te). Leopardi’s “restless heart,” far more than his pessimistic Weltanschauung, is what this wonderful poem seems to be all about.


Night Song Of A Wandering Shepherd In Asia
(Italian)

What doest thou in heaven, O moon?
Say, silent moon, what doest thou?
Thou risest in the evening; thoughtfully
Thou wanderest o'er the plain,
Then sinkest to thy rest again.
And art thou never satisfied
With going o'er and o'er the selfsame ways?
Art never wearied? Dost thou still
Upon these valleys love to gaze?
How much thy life is like
The shepherd's life, forlorn!
He rises in the early dawn,
He moves his flock along the plain;
The selfsame flocks, and streams, and herbs
He sees again;
Then drops to rest, the day's work o'er;
And hopes for nothing more.
Tell me, O moon, what signifies his life
To him, thy life to thee? Say, whither tend
My weary, short-lived pilgrimage,
Thy course, that knows no end?

And old man, gray, infirm,
Half-clad, and barefoot, he,
Beneath his burden bending wearily,
O'er mountain and o'er vale,
Sharp rocks, and briars, and burning sand,
In wind, and storm, alike in sultry heat
And in the winter's cold,
His constant course doth hold;
On, on, he, panting, goes,
Nor pause, nor rest he knows;
Through rushing torrents, over watery wastes;
He falls, gets up again,
And ever more and more he hastes,
Torn, bleeding, and arrives at last
Where ends the path,
Where all his troubles end;
A vast abyss and horrible,
Where plunging headlong, he forgets them all.
Such scene of suffering, and of strife,
O moon, is this our mortal life.
In travail man is born;
His birth too oft the cause of death,
And with his earliest breath
He pain and torment feels: e'en from the first,
His parents fondly strive
To comfort him in his distress;
And if he lives and grows,
They struggle hard, as best they may,
With pleasant words and deeds to cheer him up,
And seek with kindly care,
To strengthen him his cruel lot to bear.
This is the best that they can do
For the poor child, however fond and true.
But wherefore give him life?
Why bring him up at all,
If this be all?
If life is nought but pain and care,
Why, why should we the burden bear?
O spotless moon, such is
Our mortal life, indeed;
But thou immortal art,
Nor wilt, perhaps, unto my words give heed.

Yet thou, eternal, lonely wanderer,
Who, thoughtful, lookest on this earthly scene,
Must surely understand
What all our sighs and sufferings mean;
What means this death,
This color from our cheeks that fades,
This passing from the earth, and losing sight
Of every dear, familiar scene.
Well must thou comprehend
The reason of these things; must see
The good the morning and the evening bring:
Thou knowest, thou, what love it is
That brings sweet smiles unto the face of spring;
The meaning of the Summer's glow,
And of the Winter's frost and snow,
And of the silent, endless flight of Time.
A thousand things to thee their secrets yield,
That from the simple shepherd are concealed.
Oft as I gaze at thee,
In silence resting o'er the desert plain,
Which in the distance borders on the sky,
Or following me, as I, by slow degrees,
My flocks before me drive;
And when I gaze upon the stars at night,
In thought I ask myself,
"Why all these torches bright?
What mean these depths of air,
This vast, this silent sky,
This nightly solitude? And what am I?"
Thus to myself I talk; and of this grand,
Magnificent expanse,
And its untold inhabitants,
And all this mighty motion, and this stir
Of things above, and things below,
No rest that ever know,
But as they still revolve, must still return
Unto the place from which they came,--
Of this, alas, I find nor end nor aim!
But thou, immortal, surely knowest all.
This I well know, and feel;
From these eternal rounds,
And from my being frail,
Others, perchance, may pleasure, profit gain;
To me life is but pain.

My flock, now resting there, how happy thou,
That knowest not, I think, thy misery!
O how I envy thee!
Not only that from suffering
Thou seemingly art free;
That every trouble, every loss,
Each sudden fear, thou canst so soon forget;
But more because thou sufferest
No weariness of mind.
When in the shade, upon the grass reclined,
Thou seemest happy and content,
And great part of the year by thee
In sweet release from care is spent.
But when I sit upon the grass
And in the friendly shade, upon my mind
A weight I feel, a sense of weariness,
That, as I sit, doth still increase
And rob me of all rest and peace.
And yet I wish for nought,
And have, till now, no reason to complain.
What joy, how much I cannot say;
But thou some pleasure dost obtain.
My joys are few enough;
But not for that do I lament.
Ah, couldst thou speak, I would inquire:
Tell me, dear flock, the reason why
Each weary breast can rest at ease,
While all things round him seem to please;
And yet, if  I lie down to rest,
I am by anxious thoughts oppressed?

Perhaps, if I had wings
Above the clouds to fly,
And could the stars all number, one by one,
Or like the lightning leap from rock to rock,
I might be happier, my dear flock,
I might be happier, gentle moon!
Perhaps my thought still wanders from the truth,
When I at others' fortunes look:
Perhaps in every state beneath the sun,
Or high, or low, in cradle or in stall,
The day of birth is fatal to us all.

___

First written for The Metaphysical Peregrine

___