the sun, and the earth, _l'Italia_.'
So we drank in salute of Italy. They sent their greeting by me.
'You know in Italy there is the sun, the sun,' said Alfredo to me,
profoundly moved, wet-mouthed, tipsy.
I was reminded of Enrico Persevalli and his terrifying cry at the end of
_Ghosts_:
'_Il sole, il sole!_'
So we talked for a while of Italy. They had a pained tenderness for it,
sad, reserved.
'Don't you want to go back?' I said, pressing them to tell me
definitely. 'Won't you go back some time?'
'Yes,' they said, 'we will go back.'
But they spoke reservedly, without freedom. We talked about Italy, about
songs, and Carnival; about the food, polenta, and salt. They laughed at
my pretending to cut the slabs of polenta with a string: that rejoiced
them all: it took them back to the Italian mezzo-giorno, the bells
jangling in the campanile, the eating after the heavy work on the land.
But they laughed with the slight pain and contempt and fondness which
every man feels towards his past, when he has struggled away from that
past, from the conditions which made it.
They loved Italy passionately; but they would not go back. All their
blood, all their senses were Italian, needed the Italian sky, the
speech, the sensuous life. They could hardly live except through the
senses. Their minds were not developed, mentally they were children,
lovable, naïve, almost fragile children. But sensually they were men:
sensually they were accomplished.
Yet a new tiny flower was struggling to open in them, the flower of a
new spirit. The substratum of Italy has always been pagan, sensuous, the
most potent symbol the sexual symbol. The child is really a
non-Christian symbol: it is the symbol of mans's triumph of eternal life
in procreation. The worship of the Cross never really held good in
Italy. The Christianity of Northern Europe has never had any
place there.
And now, when Northern Europe is turning back on its own Christianity,
denying it all, the Italians are struggling with might and main against
the sensuous spirit which still dominates them. When Northern Europe,
whether it hates Nietzsche or not, is crying out for the Dionysic
ecstasy, practising on itself the Dionysic ecstasy, Southern Europe is
breaking free from Dionysus, from the triumphal affirmation of life over
death, immortality through procreation.
I could see these sons of Italy would never go back. Men like Paolo and
Il Duro broke away only to return. The dominance of the old form was too
strong for them. Call it love of country or love of the village,
campanilismo, or what not, it was the dominance of the old pagan form,
the old affirmation of immortality through procreation, as opposed to
the Christian affirmation of immortality through self-death and
social love.
But 'John' and these Italians in Switzerland were a generation younger,
and they would not go back, at least not to the old Italy. Suffer as
they might, and they did suffer, wincing in every nerve and fibre from
the cold material insentience of the northern countries and of America,
still they would endure this for the sake of something else they wanted.
They would suffer a death in the flesh, as 'John' had suffered in
fighting the street crowd, as these men suffered year after year cramped
in their black gloomy cold Swiss valley, working in the factory. But
there would come a new spirit out of it.
Even Alfredo was submitted to the new process; though he belonged
entirely by nature to the sort of Il Duro, he was purely sensuous and
mindless. But under the influence of Giuseppino he was thrown down, as
fallow to the new spirit that would come.
And then, when the others were all partially tipsy, the Giuseppino began
to talk to me. In him was a steady flame burning, burning, burning, a
flame of the mind, of the spirit, something new and clear, something
that held even the soft, sensuous Alfredo in submission, besides all the
others, who had some little development of mind.
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