Friday 8 July 2016

Christ stopped at Eboli

An Italian friend heard that I liked Primo Levi, and asked me, had I read any works by Primo’s cousin, Carlo Levi? I hadn’t? Mama mia, it’s really worth the read! So when I finally found one of Carlo Levi’s books, Christ stopped at Eboli, on the shelf of a second-hand bookshop, I didn’t hesitate.
The truth is that there’s no family relationship between Primo and Carlo Levi, apart from the fairly likely descendance from the same biblical tribe.


Still, there’s some degree of resemblance in their excellent writing: dispassionate descriptions of a totally unfamiliar world, with even their own self examined through the eyes of an outsider, the "author". The small, strange worlds they describe are worlds apart: Auschwitz and its aftermath for Primo, the small village of Gagliano in Southern Italy for Carlo, where he was exiled by Mussolini’s government in the mid 1930’s for anti-fascist activity. Gagliano is lost in the middle of the remote and poverty stricken hills of Lucania, south of Naples. The people in the village are eternal outsiders, eking out an existence on inhospitable malaria-infested hills, adhering to a strict age-old division between nobility and peasants. The nobles are almost as poor as the peasants - the richer ones having long since left - and the remaining ones are all smouldering with hatred and envy for one another in a never-ending fight to grasp one of the few government-paid civil service posts. They despise the peasants, who in turn despise them. Among the nobles are two doctors with little or no medical know-how and even less desire to heal anybody, and the daughters of an apothecarist who continue to distribute their own mixtures of drugs and medicines with unknown proportions of whatever they can get their hands on. The peasants are all hungry and sick with malaria, working like slaves to grow a few meagre crops on their minuscule plots of land. They rightly expect nothing from Rome except for taxes and regulations that will crush them even further. Rome has never done anything for them since ancient times - they have always been and will always be the outsiders.

Painting by Carlo Levi, probably representing the peasants of Gagliano

This is the miserable world into which Carlo Levi is forced in 1935. He hopes to spend a quiet time there painting landscapes and peasants, but instead the rumor circulates even before his arrival that he is a trained doctor - a real one - and from his very first evening there the peasants throng at his doorstep to beg him to come and care for their sick. He doesn’t wish to be drawn into local politics, but cannot find it in himself to turn away the sick. And so, little by little, he gets to know the peasants and their hidden, timeless, introspective world, filled with magic and witchcraft, diseases and charms to ward them off, misery and strange tales of hidden treasures. The region was home to organised groups of bandits in the 1800’s, and these live on in the peasants’ imagination as heroes of sorts, members of their own cast who fought the desperate fight against the unjust order of the world, knowing from the outset they would lose. They would get caught and be publicly hung, and yet they kept on fighting because it was the only dignified reaction. And of course, they hid marvellous treasures in dark caves and forests.

Painting by Carlo Levi, probably representing the barren landscapes surrounding Gagliano
When Carlo Levi looks for a housekeeper, the local policeman’s wife, who helps him purely out of spite for the quack doctors whom she hates, explains that no honest peasant woman would come into his house: it is their firm belief that a man and a woman alone cannot control themselves, and for a woman to step into his house means she has given herself to him. The only women who will accept to come are the “witches” - woman learned in witchcraft, having no interest in social propriety. Most of them have a dozen or so children from a dozen different lovers. And so, a witch it is who comes to live with Carlo Levi, drawing him even closer to the world of the peasants, teaching him some of her witchcraft, cooking his food and cleaning his house.

Carlo Levi believed the hidden, despised world of Gagliano would continue to exist in the same misery, regardless of political upheavals in Rome, from fascist to democratic and back again. He saw no hope for a change coming from above, and from below there would only be occasional violent outbreaks, crushed down with ruthless cruelty by whomever happened to be governing at the time. Was he right? Has Southern Italy remained unchanged since the 1930’s? Or have the remote villages all been abandoned, as so many of our villages have here in France, except as collections of holiday homes for rich city-dwellers? I’d be curious to know.

Carlo Levi painting at his studio

6 comments:

  1. What a great job reviewing one of my all-time favorite books, Moyshele. You have a gift. I have read the book several times, in Italian and in English. The English translation, done almost immediately after Carlo wrote the original, is excellently done and very faithful to the original both literally and sentimentally (I am a translator of Italian into English, and therefore my opinion has some weight in this area). Those who choose to further explore the life and work of Carlo Levi will no doubt uncover, as I have, an extraordinary mind, a sensitive soul and an open heart.

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    1. Thanks John! Indeed, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, admire Carlo Levi for his open mind, acute vision and clear writing style, and only wish I can some day read it in the original Italian. I haven't read much Italian literature: almost all of Primo Levi, and, almost twenty years ago, Natalia Ginzburg and some short stories by Dino Buzzati. As a translator from Italian into English, I'd be curious to know which books you'd recommend? I'm most interested in litarary autobiography, but am open to other genres as well.

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  2. Regarding your questions about Italian literature, I asked my Italian wife who is much more familiar with it than I am. She suggested that you start with these first two: “Zeno’s Conscience” by Italo Svevo, and “The Leopard” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. She assured me that you will enjoy them. Regarding Natalia Ginzburg, as you like autobiographical material, my wife says that you should love “Family Sayings,” about her childhood up through her adult life. Apparently much of Ginzburg’s work is drawn from her experiences, though fictionalized.

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  3. Continuation of previous comment: Because of my love for this book (“Christ Stopped at Eboli”) I have done much work on the family tree of Carlo Levi. I will give you a short synopsis (actually, Moyshele, there is so much interesting history here, it is difficult to know where to stop). He was the second of four children (Luisa, his sister, was born 1898), born in 1902 into a family of Jewish professionals and intellectuals. His father was Ercole, a doctor, and his mother was Annetta Treves, whose famous brother, Claudio, fought a sabre duel with Mussolini in 1915. He had many relationships with women but he never married. However, one of his longer term relationships was with Paola Levi, the sister of Natalia Ginzburg, whose first husband was the famous anti-fascist, Leone Ginzburg (who was tortured and killed in 1944 by the Germans in the Rome prison, Regina Coeli).

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  4. Continuation of previous post: The plot thickens – Paola Levi married the soon-to-be industrialist Adriano Olivetti (the story of the Olivetti family is very interesting in itself), with whom she had two children – Roberto and Lidia. However, although married to Adriano, she was still very much connected to Carlo, and reportedly they had a daughter together, Anna, in 1937. This is, of course, not really acknowledged by the Olivetti clan (as you might expect). From my genealogical research, I discovered that Anna has married and has two daughters and a son – but I do not have the names, and I get the very strong idea that they wish to remain anonymous – and they have every right to remain so. However, for me, this is very interesting to know that Carlo, although he died of pneumonia in 1975 and is buried in Aliano (Gagliano in the book), is survived and lives on through his daughter and his grandchildren. Just imagine if they inherited some of all of his genius!

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    1. Wow, John! There are quite a few fascinating threads to follow up on there. First of all - regarding Italian literature - I'll try to get a hold of all of those books and report on them here in the blog once I've read them. Regarding Carlo Levi - I find it fascinating how interconnected so many of the Italian anti-fascists are. To be the nephew of the man who fought a duel with the Duce is something. And the lover of Natalia Ginzburg's sister. There are quite a few hints here of the history of Mussolini with the Jews. Reading up on some of the names you dropped, and following links on the web wherever they would lead me, I discovered for the first time that Mussolini's lover and counselor was Jewish: Margherita Sarfatti. I know so very little about the rise of Italian fascism - unlike German fascism, about which I am fairly well read. Maybe the place to start would be a good history of the period!

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