Interpreting Italians

By Jeffrey Bailey

Interpreting Italians is a socio-cultural travel guide designed for people whose interest in Italy goes beyond the readymade impression or the hackneyed cliché. It is a serious effort to understand what the ‘Italian temperament’ actually is, how it came to be, and the impact it has had both on Italians themselves and on the outsiders who attempt to live intimately and knowledgeably among them.

To this end, it offers a thoughtful interpretation of those aspects of Italian culture and history – furbizia and bella figura, the piazza and the casa, the role of the mother, the extravagance of the Baroque and the personal as well as architectural significance of the façade – that have at once reflected and compounded Italians’ attitudes to foreigners and to each other by examining their approaches to love and sex, religion and politics, food and the family, language and bureaucracy, regionalism and immigration, sport and the Mafia.

The book consists of eighteen concise but well-documented essays and five appendices that, in addition to an extensive reading list, provide practical suggestions to visitors relating to the preparation of menus and the selection of walking tours and excursions to sites often overlooked by the casual tourist. Interpreting Italians will be a useful aid to anyone truly curious about discovering what makes Italians tick. With updates

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Dec 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781784626082

Jeffrey Bailey

Jeffrey Bailey is a freelance writer whose non-fiction work has focused on travel pieces, literary interviews and socio-cultural essays and whose fiction includes short stories, plays and screenplays. Raised in Southern California, he has also lived in France and currently resides in Morocco where, in addition to writing, he works as a translator and University lecturer in English.

Book preview

INTERPRETING

ITALIANS

Copyright © 2015 Jeffrey Bailey

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador

9 Priory Business Park,

Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,

Leicestershire. LE8 0RX

Tel: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

ISBN 978 1784626 082

Cover photo courtesy of Antonello Villani.

American forms of spelling and punctuation have been chosen for this text.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In addition to Thomas Govero, without whose initial contributions this project would never have been undertaken, the author wishes to thank Mariagrazia Villani and Alessandra Di Toppa of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome for kindly responding to numerous research queries, and to Antonello Villani of the American University of Rome for providing the cover photograph. Very special thanks are extended to Beverly Cerchio and David Lebo for the practical help and moral support they so generously gave by reading through the manuscript, and to Francis Poole of the University of Delaware for his equally thoughtful comments and encouragement.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

I Locus Amoenus

II La Furbizia

III La Bella Figura

IV Mamma Mia!

V La Casa

VI The Piazza

VII The Façade

VIII The Baroque

IX Tourist Italy

X Parla Italiano?

XI Ti Amo

XII Buon Appetito

XIII Ego Te Absolvo

XIV Noi Italiotti

XV Welcome to Byzantium

XVI Bye-Bye Bunga-Bunga (Until Next Time)

XVII Calcio Fever

XVIII Lest We Forget: La Mafia

References

Appendix I: Time-line and Map of the Italian Peninsula

Appendix II: Five Recommended Excursions

Appendix III: Four Recommended Walking Tours of Rome

Appendix IV: Six Recommended Menus

Appendix V: Recommended Reading

Appendix VI: Updates by Chapter

Appendix VII: Updates and Addenda

Appendix VIII: Updates through October 2022

Appendix IX: Updates 2023

About the Author

PREFACE

The eighteen short essay-chapters and accompanying Appendices which comprise this volume are intended for anyone with a serious interest in Italy, but especially for visitors planning a long-term stay; their aim is not to solve the Italian riddle but to provide useful clues to deciphering it. The themes dealt with presuppose that such a riddle continues to exist despite the often standardizing and homogenizing effects of cultural globalization, and the method of handling them grew out of a series of long conversations with Thomas Govero, professor of Classical Studies at John Cabot University and former Fulbright scholar at the American Academy in Rome, on the subject of our shared fascination for a place and a people we had come to know intimately over a period of several decades. Far from being merely academic, this fascination was rooted in a visceral reaction, felt by so many foreigners, to the topographical beauty of the country and the peculiar charm of her people, and also to a pervading sense that, however well-versed one might become in the historical and sociological complexities of Italy, the Italians themselves remained elusive and enigmatic. Like a game whose rules one had studied but had yet to master, daily contact with them, whether commercial, professional or personal, was a disconcerting mixture of the pleasant and the quirky, sometimes even the irksome – an almost perpetual reinforcement of the impression that being in but not of was not a matter of choice but had been predetermined by the very fact of foreignness. While this was a feeling shared by numerous foreign colleagues and acquaintances, it interfered very little with the desire to stay on and seek out a place among the Italians – or, more precisely, to come to terms with the position assigned to us, as tenuous and peripheral as it sometimes seemed. We had made Italian friends whose interest in us we knew to be genuine and whose acceptance of us was undoubtedly sincere; we had even, at one point or another, been adopted into an Italian family and experienced firsthand the warmth and conviviality which have typified Italian life for centuries. We had also had enough contact with other Mediterranean peoples to understand both what Italians shared with their neighbors and what set them apart. The privilege of long periods of work, study and leisure was frequently a heady awakening unto wonders in which each day brought its own reward by simply being another day in Italy; still, the fact remained that we were de facto interlopers no matter how long we stayed, expected at some point to move on to some other place where Italians believed we really belonged.

Ultimately, it was the lingering sensation of being perennially temporary that provided the incentive for this project. From the outset, it was clear that such an undertaking could only be accomplished honestly by rejecting the latter-day Romantic notion, common to so much of contemporary writing on Italy, that one must adulate in order to appreciate; rather than sweep the dust under the carpet, the intention was to show just how much of it there was to sweep. The resulting essays have been arranged to explore first the fundamental traits of the Italian temperament and then the wider implications of those traits on Italian society and institutions, but they need not be read in any particular order. Unless otherwise noted, statistical and topical information reflects the situation in Italy as of late summer 2013; updates to the end of October 2014 have either been integrated into the text or provided as endnotes for the essays on politics, the bureaucracy, the Papacy, immigration and football, with updates to mid-June 2015 provided in the Time-line, Appendix 1. Taken all together, the essays are meant less as definitive explanations of what constitutes Italianness than as cogent interpretations of character and motivation supported by references to the history, customs, socio-cultural conditions and political factors that have forged Italian identity over the millennia. Disagreement or debate may arise from certain observations, but this can only be a good thing if, as hoped, such divergences promote further reflection and analysis. The primary goal of this volume is really to help prepare foreign visitors for what awaits them, and perhaps to offer a deeper insight into a culture and way of life which, since the heyday of the Roman Republic, have held so many millions in thrall.

June 2015

N.B.: Chapter updates to mid-November 2018 have been added to this edition as Appendix VI.

I

LOCUS AMOENUS

"Terra tripudium, venustus laetus fortunatus silva quod domus beatus."

The land of joy, the lovely glades of the fortunate wood and the home of the blest.

– Vergil, The Aeneid, Book 6

"Lei potrebbe avere l’universo se potrai avere Italia."

You may have the universe if I may have Italy.

– Giuseppe Verdi

To the ancients of the Roman world, Italy was a state of mind. Far more than the merely geographical center of a multi-ethnic empire, it was, first and foremost, the locus amoenus – that revered and singularly accommodating land, synonymous with well-being, where benevolent gods shared their bounty with men and fulfilled all hopes and desires. For most people today – foreigners who long to visit and those who, having visited, yearn to return – this enchanted kingdom image remains essentially unchanged. It is a view shared by the vast majority of modern Italians, for whom Italy is not simply Italia but Bell’Italia, Il Bel Paese: "The Beautiful Country." The scores of publications, televised travelogues and documentaries dedicated to the marvels of Italian art and architecture, to the country’s breathtaking scenery and mesmerizing panoramas, to its history steeped in legend, triumph and grandeur, are aimed not only at the visitor but just as frequently at Italians themselves – affirmations of the Italian credo that, of all the nations in the world, their own Bell’Italia is the most beautiful.

There is certainly much to justify this view. At least since the 18th century, when the Romantic notion of Antiquity came into vogue and expressions of superlative sublimity became bywords for the peninsula, the rest of the world has been inclined to accord Italy first place in the international beauty pageant. The designations Bell’Italia and Il Bel Paese are meant to denote more than the physical qualities of Italy – towering mountains, magnificent valleys, undulating plains, vast beaches of white sand, majestic cathedrals, lofty castles and quaint villages dominating hilltops, acres of frescoes, miles of galleries lined with fabulous paintings and statuary – but equally, especially to the Italian mind, an irresistibly superior way of life which will have the tourist rushing back as soon as possible. Italians are firmly persuaded that a combination of natural wonders, inimitable lifestyle and incomparable artistic heritage (which is estimated to comprise at least sixty percent of all of the world’s great art as well as more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than any other country, fifty-one in mid-2014) merits such an ebullient response. Since the preaching of the Romantic Gospel of Italian Glory first began some three hundred years ago, most travelers have been prepared to accept it without question, ready and eager to drop their jaws at the countless treasures the country has on offer. They are delighted, sometimes even spellbound, by the handsomeness of the people, the exquisite taste and presentation of the food, the elegance of the clothes, the grace of the furniture and architectural styles, the array of smart consumer products of every description, all available to them in a setting of preternatural splendor. Perhaps more than in any other place, preconceived notions are justified in Italy, and relatively few people leave wondering what all the fuss was about. Statistically, this is borne out by the 47.7 million tourists who arrived in 2013, making it the fifth most popular tourist destination in the world (after France, Spain, the United States and China), and by the determination of so many of these people, their visit barely over, to make their coin in the fountain wishes for a quick return come true.

In fact, the beauty of Italy can be viewed as the equivalent in natural terms of the peninsula’s agitated history, the result of its being situated at the heart of a geological disaster zone. The African Plate continues to push up towards the northeast against southeastern Europe, wreaking havoc throughout its pressure area, especially in Turkey, Greece and the central parts of Italy. The country is buckling up in the middle and falling off into the sea on both sides, the millennia of tremendous natural forces having created in their wake the wonders at which tourists stand in awe, from the Apennine Mountains, sprawling southward from the Po Valley and dotted with ski resorts and tourist villages, to the dramatic cliffs and seafronts of Cinque Terre and the Amalfi Coast, with inlets of amazing beauty such as those found at Sperlonga and Formio and in large swaths of southern Calabria. At seven and a half thousand kilometers, the Italian coastline is the third longest in Europe, after Norway and Greece with their respective fjords and islands, and is less than five hundred miles short of equaling that of the Continental United States even though its land mass, at 301,230 square kilometers (116,306 square miles) is only somewhat larger than Arizona’s. These fabled shores, however, have been both a blessing and a curse, for Italy is especially vulnerable to the ecological threats of both tectonic plate movement and rising sea levels. If the western beaches fronting the generally calm Tyrrhenian Sea remain less damaged by erosion, parts of the eastern coastline are quickly disappearing under the Adriatic. The city of Venice is known to be sinking at an alarming rate of 2.5 centimeters per century, and in early 2013 the installation of an elaborate, multi-billion-euro floodgate system, consisting of locks and giant caissons, was finally begun in a desperate effort to save it from a last, fatal flood – an eventuality underscored by the inundations of December 2008 and November 2012, when the high-water mark reached its greatest level since 1986, 1.56 meters, and left seventy percent of the city surface under water. The gorgeous islands off the western coast – Sardinia, the Aeolian Islands near Sicily and an archipelago stretching down from Tuscany to Campania – are all the result of geological stress of formidable dimensions, their magnificence a reminder of how ancient chaos has wrought not just splendor but fragility.

Perhaps better than any of the other geographical curiosities created by the African Plate, Italy’s volcanoes epitomize the degree to which danger and enchantment coincide in the Italian landscape. The impact of volcanoes in Italy is legendary, most particularly the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 23, A.D. 79, which sealed off the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Torre Annuziata and Castelmare di Stabia, creating a virtual time-capsule and providing the country with some of its most visited tourist sites since excavation of these places began in the middle of the 18th century. Significantly, the rush to Italy which started at that time and has steadily increased ever since (Pompeii alone receives well over two million visitors a year) is the direct result of geological disaster. A historically less catastrophic but even more dramatic volcano is Mount Aetna; the largest in Europe, it dominates the eastern coast of Sicily, rising more than 3,300 meters in the air as it slopes majestically seaward. With its crest often snowbound even as it spews its fiery contents, it, too, functions as a magnet for intrepid travelers, although access to the crater was closed in mid-May 2014 due to recent hyperactivity. The Solfatara volcano north of Naples also draws crowds of visitors who enjoy the scintillating experience of walking inside the crater while sulphur fumes rise up all around them; and the volcano on Stromboli, one of the Aeolian Islands off Sicily – extolled in the 1949 eponymous film by Roberto Rossellini – is yet another major attraction offering visitors an equal combination of pulchritude and peril.

Like the ancient Romans, modern Italians have profited from these natural wonders by creating thermal baths and therapeutic centers in areas of volcanic activity. Italy is endowed with an enormous variety of mineral water, and a thriving industry has grown up around this resource. Different levels or types of volcanic mineral content have resulted in the creation of scores of brands of water, each used to treat specific ailments; there is water designated for the liver, the kidney, the heart, dermatological and circulatory problems, rheumatism and arthritis. This abundance has turned Italians into bottled-water addicts, disdainful of the perfectly drinkable tap-water available in their own kitchens.

One needn’t evoke images of Pompeii to be reminded of Italy’s geologically tenuous position. While the threat of eruption poised to the three hundred thousand people living on the slopes and in the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius near Naples remains constant, the North and Center are confronted by frequent, climate-change-related floods such as those which ravished large parts of Liguria and Tuscany in October 2011 and, in November 2012, drastically reduced the production in Tuscany and Umbria of quintessential crops, primarily chestnuts, apples, pears, honey, vintage grapes and the durum wheat used for traditional pastas; this disconcerting cycle continued in mid-winter 2014 with more major flooding in Venice, severe mudslides occurring throughout Lazio and Tuscany and in the coastal areas of Sicily, the Tiber rising to spill-over levels near Rome and the Arno threatening serious damage to the historic center of Pisa and to Florence’s landmark Ponte Vecchio. The greatest natural menace to the peninsula, however, is posed by tectonic instability. Great parts of Italy, stretching from the south to the northeast, reside on fault-lines, making high-scale tremors commonplace; studies have revealed that as many as seven thousand incidences of seismic activity occur every year. On April 6, 2009, when the charming Medieval city of L’Aquila, capital of the Abruzzo region, was struck by a major (6.3-level) earthquake which killed some three hundred people and left more than twenty thousand homeless, and again on May 20 and 29, 2012, when two others respectively measuring 6.0 and 5.8 destroyed scores of historic buildings in the Emilia-Romagna region and displaced some fifteen thousand people, the world was starkly reminded of just how devastating such tremors can be. More Italians died in earthquakes in the 20th century than of any other cause, six hundred thousand of them; more than one hundred thousand died in the greatest seismic convulsion in European history, which hit the Straits of Messina in 1908 and destroyed ninety percent of the cities of Messina and Reggio di Calabria. All of this, of course, is part of a historical continuum: more damage was done by earthquakes to the ancient city of Rome than by all the bloody foreign invasions that plagued it after the Fall, and much of the city, including the entire western wall of the Colosseum, was ravaged by an especially violent one in the 11th century. In the face of so much natural frenzy, Italians have adopted what might be called a fatalistic, if not foolhardy, attitude. Very little is done to prepare for the incessant threat of killer quakes, and even modern construction seldom takes the probability of seismic damage into account. Nor do Italians seem to mind the aesthetic devastation wrought by haphazard building campaigns, begun in the nineteen-sixties and -seventies, which have permanently marred some of their most fabulous landscapes; with its scores of industrial plants and pell-mell habitations, for example, the Bay of Naples and large parts of the Roman Campagna have irretrievably lost the picture-postcard perfection they had maintained until only half a century ago.

Luckily, Nature in Italy is resilient. In addition to its pristine beaches and stunning mountains, the country remains heavily wooded; owing to a significant amount of rural-to-urban migration, its forest areas have, in fact, doubled since 1955. These areas offer a superb haven for all sorts of wildlife, including deer, wild boar and colonies of birds of dizzying diversity, all of which are able to survive because of the distance of modern cities and human population pressures. The decades-long depopulation of rural regions has resulted in entire villages being abandoned, making them available for purchase by affluent, and usually foreign, private parties. Like Austria, Switzerland and France, Italy also has its own Alpine region, the existence of which accentuated the idyllic appeal of the country to Northern Europeans when they first began arriving in significant numbers in the 18th century. There was a sense, often noted by these travelers, of entering a mystical domain, of leaving behind the greyness and cold of the North and being propelled into a realm of luminous verdure and beguilement. Beyond the Alps lay green, sunlit plains which themselves led to the palm, olive and citrus groves of the South and to seaside cliffs sweeping downward to seemingly endless, unspoiled beaches. The erstwhile tourist, like the modern one, was captivated by the romance of it all, giving rise to the ongoing myth of Italy as Eden retrieved.

The 18th-century conviction that Italy embodied earthly bliss was not, however, unanimously supported by the experience of later, less awestruck visitors. In his Pictures from Italy, Dickens provided a veritable litany of complaints about the country and the people: the brigandage, the filth and squalor, the miserable food, the paltry accommodations, the arrogance of the upper classes, the general lack of hospitality, the slipshod presentation of works of art and the indifference towards maintaining the treasures of the past. Similar criticisms were voiced – by Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain and other visiting literati – right up to the 20th century. Although many of these problems were addressed with the establishment of modern Italy in 1870, it really wasn’t until Mussolini came to power in late 1922 that a systematic effort was made to meet the expectations of visitors by focusing much of the economy on tourism. The railways were extended, quality hotels were built and general standards were significantly improved with a far greater insistence on cleanliness. Bars, restaurants and railway stations were required to provide drinkable water to anyone who requested it, while the police ensured more efficient protection from rogues, pickpockets and pesky cicerone (self-appointed, and frequently criminal, guides). Such attentions went a long way to making Italian sojourns more pleasant in the period between the two World Wars, allowing wealthy Americans, and Europeans from other countries, to appreciate the ubiquitous beauty of the art and natural scenery with relative ease and comfort.

With the rise of mass tourism in recent years, the ambiguity of the Italian welcome has become noticeably more pronounced. Service frequently fluctuates between abrupt and surly, prices are often exorbitant and rip-offs in restaurants, hotels, taxis and tourist shops are commonplace. The story carried by the international media in the summer of 2009, of a Japanese couple who had been charged €700 in one of Rome’s most famous restaurants (later closed for hygienic reasons) for a simple lunch of fish, pasta and a bottle of wine, is more than anecdotal. In the face of bad press and economic hardship, rates of tourism have generally declined among those groups that served as the industry’s mainstay for more than fifty years: Americans, Northern Europeans and the Japanese. The Italian response is usually one of indifference; Italians seem to take for granted that tourists have deep pockets and that the phenomenal charm of the country and the uniqueness of its art treasures will keep them coming no matter how badly they are treated. For the most part, particularly with the onslaught of new tourists from Eastern Europe, India, Southeast Asia and Latin America, this attitude has been justified.

The cooler, offhand treatment which the contemporary visitor is likely to encounter notwithstanding, Italy remains for most tourists, regardless of their origins, a latter-day locus amoenus. Few complain about the food, which is abundant, varied and usually well prepared, and fewer still express disappointment with the museums or the artwork in them, despite the ever-increasing cost of entry or the fact that opening and closing times are often only arbitrarily respected. With certain significant exceptions – Pompeii being the most noteworthy owing to the serious neglect it has suffered for decades – they are struck by the impressive maintenance of most sites, an effort begun under Mussolini whose orders to preserve the country’s ancient heritage sometimes resulted in remarkable restorations (exemplified by the Arch of Constantine in Rome, the friezes of which had long disappeared only to be recreated in all their antique lustre), and by more recent restorations, such as that of the Sistine Chapel, whose former brilliance has been revealed thanks to the financial aid of Japanese television. A sense of anticipation as they are about to visit some of the greatest works of art or sites of historical and archaeological interest they will ever see in their lives – as they stand in line to enter the Vatican Museum, or approach the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or await a glimpse of Michelangelo’s David, or journey towards the storied ruins at Paestum or Tivoli – render many tourists far less critical of the annoyances and foibles around them than they might be elsewhere. At times it would seem that the Gospel of Italian Glory has had a hypnotic, even anaesthetizing, effect on those who have taken it to heart.

Apart from the magnificence of its nature and the abundance of its art, perhaps what most impresses the visitor to Italy in the long term, and continues to reinforce the widespread image of Italians as a tolerant and hospitable people, has been their apparent willingness to accommodate behavior which would be completely inadmissible if demonstrated by Italians themselves, especially in small towns and rural areas. This means that a double standard has developed, with heavy tourism occupying one realm of social deportment and conventional Italian culture occupying the other. The dolce far niente images of wine, women and song, for centuries attributed to Italians by admiring, and often envious outsiders, masks the fundamentally sober and constrained temper of Italian society with its well-defined parameters distinguishing acceptable behavior from that which is not. The far freer, sometimes even loutish, attitudes of certain visitors from North America and Northern Europe – for example, the hordes of young foreigners who gather for drunken, all-night parties in such piazze as the Campo dei Fiori or Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome – have greatly influenced younger generations of Italians who have become not only observers of, but also frequently participants in, behavioral patterns which were unthinkable even in the recent past. Exacerbated by recent political and socio-economic woes of potentially calamitous proportions, this has caused a major change in Italian society and the emergence of a new attitude towards social conduct. While wider latitude has been granted to young people, in particular, there has also been a distancing process, most notable in cities like Venice where the outsider is often seen principally as an economic necessity and many individuals, and entire families, retreat from any but the most superficial contact with invading foreigners in order to preserve their traditionally more reserved way of life.

In a world of mass tourism and economic uncertainty threatening social upheaval, the locus amoenus magic of Italy depends increasingly on assuming a state of mind similar to that of the ancient patricians and philosophers who fled the urban chaos of their time to spend large parts of the year communing with Mother Earth in sylvan settings. Thankfully, such communing is still possible in Italy today. Greenery abounds in accessible areas, some even within the city limits of frenetic centers like Rome and Florence, and all regions of the country offer havens of relaxation and peaceful contemplation. Visitors who fail to venture into such places will have missed the most enjoyable and edifying aspect of their stay, and perhaps have run the risk of learning the hard way what this volume aims to analyze, or at least to evoke: the degree to which the Italian welcome is likely to entail as much wariness as warmth and a successful sojourn to rely on maintaining, at all cost, a philosophical forbearance.

II

LA FURBIZIA

"Momento audere semper."

Remember always to dare.

– Gabriele d’Annuzio

"Il segreto a prendere di cose fatte è agire."

The secret of getting things done is to act.

– Dante Alighieri

Mention Italians and the floodgates of cliché open wide, a rush of readymade notions simply awaiting confirmation. The first-time visitor will likely expect Italians to be, in equal measure, romantic, excitable, capricious, garrulous, gregarious and, of course, musical. Few Italians are likely to dispute the aptness of such stereotypes; a sufficient dose of truth, after all, is what makes clichés clichés. That this or that Italian may well be indifferent, phlegmatic, even-keeled, taciturn, reclusive or tone-deaf begs the point, for what the typical Italian is, or most wants to be to perceived as being, is something the newcomer to Italy is quite likely to have left off the list: furbo. The quality of furbizia – a consistent shrewdness which enables one to size-up instantly any situation and draw from it some personal advantage over others – is the hallmark of Italian individualism. It is the product of centuries of social conditioning in which rising above the crowd – with few qualms about how this is done – is considered the only guaranteed, or worthwhile, path to success. An ability to distinguish oneself from the masses in Italy depends far less on intellectual acuity per se than on proof of superior cunning. The word "furbo, in fact, often replaces intelligente in Italian conversation, for intelligence will usually be associated with academic or aesthetic matters only and may actually imply a certain nerdiness." Furbizia, however, is synonymous with street-smarts, denoting a capacity to outmaneuver the next guy and, by skillfully manipulating opponents, stand out from the common herd.

The history of Italy is indistinguishable from the great men – and a few great women, as well – whose success was measured by their extraordinary shrewdness. This was true as much in ancient times as it is now. It is worth recalling that Julius Caesar not only outspent his adversaries and competitors in the Senate, but that he also outsmarted and upstaged them. His ascension to the dictatorship owed, in a word, to his being more furbo than his enemies, his furbizia being rooted both in unbridled ambition (I would rather be first in a village than second at Rome.) and in a particularly prescient – one might even say sardonic – grasp of human nature (Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.). As the personification of Roman authority par excellence, he set the example of how to achieve enduring influence in a world of constant and dangerous power-plays. Perhaps the most notable embodiment of furbizia from the Medieval period was the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II Hohenstaufen. His German name and connections notwithstanding, Frederick was born in the Marches region of Italy, raised in Sicily and impregnated with an understanding of how the complicated political machinations, rife throughout the Italy of his time, operated. He mastered furbizia in a way his rivals could never match, consistently outfoxing the papal and civil authorities until his control of the entire peninsula could no longer be challenged. Furbizia was also the key to Napoleon’s phenomenal triumphs. His strategic and tactical genius lay in his Corsican roots and upbringing, in a recognition that success was a matter of duping rivals and exploiting the gullibility of the people (In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.; The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.). His gift for manipulating people and situations to achieve his own ends had been equaled in France only by that other product of the Italian ethos, Giulio Mazzarino, better known to history as Cardinal Mazarin, the power behind the throne during the minority of Louis XIV. In the 20th century, Benito Mussolini was the indisputably pre-eminent figure in Italian politics, and his rise to power (not to mention his ability to keep it for as long as he did) can, again, be best explained by his indomitable furbizia. He rose from the lowest social class, beginning as a simple elementary schoolteacher who joined the Socialist Party and doggedly worked his way through the ranks, earning a reputation as a determined firebrand and even going to jail in the process of promoting a vicious ideology which he once described as a religious concept. Eventually, he emerged as the most flamboyant of the country’s political figures, founding the Fascist Party and, as dictator, heading the longest-surviving government in Italian history, twenty-one years. His contempt for the people who adored him (The mass, whether it be a crowd or an army, is vile.) and the brutality of his quasi-religion (Blood alone moves the wheels of history.) did nothing to diminish the fervor of the millions of Italians who followed him to his ingloriously violent end. In short, great success in Italy has always been associated with respect for individuals who stand out from others less for their humanistic qualities or their willingness for self-sacrifice than for their undeterred, even ruthless, pursuit of their own ambition – their capacity, in essence, to prove themselves more furbo than those around them.

Julius Caesar was by no means the only example of how deeply furbizia was rooted in Antiquity. The Roman philosopher Cicero stated that life was a quest for glory, an idea accepted and shared by all true Romans for whom the achievement of honor and distinction was the highest goal life could offer. This principally came from being the paterfamilias, the head of an extended family over which a man exercised absolute control. It could also be obtained through military valor, by winning great victories in the manner not only of Caesar but also of Pompey, Marius, Sulla, Scipio Africanus and other notable generals whose success was a direct consequence of this culturally-sanctioned (in fact, culturally-dictated) obsession with grandeur. It could derive, as well, from distinguishing oneself in the arts – in poetry or rhetoric – or from garnering political influence in the community. Glory, of course, is the result of individual success, and whether military, political or artistic, the persistent demonstration of relentless one-upmanship was the primary means of its accomplishment. As much as the lessons of the great Roman poets and philosophers strove to warn humanity away from wasting time on vain pursuits and to elevate the human character by the cultivation of higher instincts, the necessity of cunning as a social tool pervaded many of their works. Ovid (author of the admonishment: Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.) found no apparent paradox in the admission: It is annoying to be honest to no purpose. And Seneca the Younger, a usually unwavering voice of conscience during the worst phases of Nero’s tyrannical reign, advised, Toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other, further observing, Without an adversary, prowess shrivels. We see how great and efficient it really is only when it shows by endurance what it is capable of. The fierce pursuit of excellence in ancient Rome, in other words, required not simply outstanding moral fiber but also conniving cleverness, a willingness to dissemble and obfuscate, and the designation of an enemy above whom one was honor-bound to rise in triumph. The collective interest was therefore seen to be served less by cooperation and empathy than by the determination of an undaunted individual to amass a following and crush all opposition.

The veneration of personalities who tower above the throng is equally apparent in Italian Catholicism. The admiration, even adoration, of the conspicuous individual has long made Italy the foremost country of both great sinners and great saints. There are, in fact, more Italian saints than of any other national origin, and the possibility of a person achieving sainthood remains far more likely in Italy than anywhere else. This is due less to Italy’s position as the seat of the Roman Catholic Church than to the mentality that creates saints in the first place: the value placed on individualism whose core, in the Italian mode, is furbizia. Saints in Italy have always emerged from the mundane patterns of society either by means of sanctity alone or, more usually, by a combination of sanctity and a commitment to causes which underscored their superiority to the common run of humanity. In the case of Francis of Assisi – the pre-eminent Italian saint, respected throughout the world by Catholics and non-Catholics alike – this meant challenging the institutions of the day by reviving attachment to the ancient ecclesiastical values of simplicity and asceticism, and doing so by means of unwonted personal example. The changes he wrought in terms of worship and monastic life, despite the early resistance of the Church hierarchy, came about by the tremendous impression he had made among the masses; the popular ardor he inspired was simply too great for the institutional Church to ignore, much less condemn. Attributing his triumph to holiness alone would be to overlook the craftiness by which he outwitted the initially wary Curia and Papacy, the most formidable powers of 13th-century Italy. Given the historical predominance of furbizia in all phases of Italian life, one can reasonably assume that St. Francis’s exhortation, Above all the grace and gifts that Christ gives to His beloved is that of overcoming self, has either been forgotten by the Italians or consciously reinterpreted to make overcoming self less a matter of self-effacement than of self-aggrandizement. Many other saints were, of course, either linked to the Papacy or were themselves popes, emphasizing the often symbiotic relationship between sanctity and power. Fifty-five of the first sixty-two popes were canonized (the seven non-canonized ones being considered anti-popes), and this ancient tradition has continued into the present-day with the canonization in 1954 of the first pope of the 20th century, Pius X, and with the far more recent beatifications of Pius IX, John XXIII,