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曹长青提到的法拉奇长文全文在此！（第一部分） -- Anonymous - (74426 Byte) 2002-12-22 周日, 上午1:30 (334 reads) |
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作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
Masochists, yes, masochists. Why? Do you want to talk about what you call the Contrast–between–the–Two–Cultures? Well, if you really must know, it bothers me to even talk about two cultures: to put them on the same plane as though they were two parallel realities of equal weight and equal measure. Because behind our civilization we have Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Phydias, for God’s sake. We have ancient Greece with its Parthenon and its discovery of Democracy. We have ancient Rome with its greatness, its laws, its concept of Law. Its sculptures, its literature, its architecture. Its buildings, its amphitheaters, its aqueducts, its bridges and its roads. We have a revolutionary, that Christ who died on the cross, who taught us (too bad if we didn’t learn it) the concept of love and of justice. Yes, I know, there’s also a Church that gave me the Inquisition. That tortured me and burned me a thousand times at the stake. That oppressed me for centuries, that for centuries forced me to sculpt and paint only Christs and Madonnas, that almost killed Galileo Galilei. Humiliated him, shut him up. But it also made a great contribution to the History of Thought: Yes or no? And then behind our civilization we also have the Renaissance. We have Leonardo da Vinci, we have Michaelangelo, we have Raphael, we have the music of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven. And on and on through Rossini and Donizetti and Verdi and Company. That music without which we could not live and which is prohibited in their culture or supposed culture. God forbid you should whistle a tune or hum the chorus of Nabucco. And finally we have Science, for God’s sake. A science that has understood a lot of diseases and that cures them. I am still alive, for now, thanks to our science. Not Mohammed’s. A science that has invented marvellous machines. The train, the car, the airplane, the spaceships with which we’ve gone to the Moon and Mars and soon will go who knows where. A science that has changed the face of this planet with electricity, the radio, the telephone, the TV, and by the way: is it true that the gurus of the left don’t want to say what I have just said?!? God, what pricks! They will never change.
And now the fatal question: what is behind the other culture? Damned if I know. I search and search and find only Mohammed with his Koran and Averroe with his scholarly merits (The Commentaries on Aristotle, et cetera.) Arafat also finds numbers and math. Again yelling in my face, again covering me with spit, he told me in 1972 that his culture was superior to mine, far superior to mine, because his grandparents had invented numbers and math. But Arafat has a short memory. That’s why he changes his mind and contradicts himself every five minutes. His grandparents did not invent numbers and math. They invented the graphic symbols for numbers that we infidels use as well. Math was conceived almost simultaneously by all ancient civilizations. In Mesopotamia, in Greece, in India, in China, in Egypt, among the Mayans...Your grandparents, my illustrious Mr. Arafat, left us nothing but a few beautiful mosques and a book they’ve been breaking my balls with for the past thousand four hundred years like not even the Christians do with their Bible or the Jews with their Torah. And now let’s see just what are the positive features that distinguish this Koran. Positive, really? Ever since the sons of Allah half–destroyed New York, the scholars of Islam have done nothing but sing the praises of Mohammed, explain how the Koran preaches peace, brotherhood and justice. (Even Bush has been chiming in. Poor Bush. It goes without saying that Bush has to keep on good terms with the twenty–four million Muslim–Americans, convince them to squeal what they know about the relatives, friends or acquaintances who might turn out to be devoted to Osama Bin Laden). So what do we do with the whole Eye–for–an–Eye–Tooth–for–a–Tooth business? What do we do with the chador, or better with the veil that covers the faces of Muslim women so that in order to glan ce at the person next to them the poor wretches have to peer through a close–meshed net at eye–level? What do we do with polygamy and the principle that women count less than camels, that they can’t go to school, they can’t go to the doctor, they can’t have their pictures taken, etc.? What do we do with the veto on alcohol and the death penalty for those who drink it? This is in the Koran, too. And it doesn’t seem all that just, all that brotherly, all that peaceful.
So here’s my answer to your question on the Contrast–between–the–Two–Cultures: I say in this world there’s room for everyone. In your own home you can do whatever you want. And if in some countries the women are so stupid as to accept the chador, or rather the veil you peer out of through a close-meshed net at eye level, that’s their problem. If they are such birdbrains as to accept not going to school, not going to the doctor, not having their pictures taken, that’s their problem. If they are such idiots as to marry some asshole who wants four wives, that’s their problem. If their men are so silly as not to drink beer or wine, ditto. Far be it from me to stand in their way. I was raised with the concept of liberty, I was, and my mother used to say: "Variety is what makes the world beautiful." But if they presume to impose the same things on me, in my home...And they do presume it. Osama Bin Laden says that the entire planet Earth must become Muslim, that we must convert to Islam, that he will convert us by fair means or foul, that this is why he massacres us and will continue to do so. And this can’t be pleasing to us. It can’t help but make us itch to turn the tables and kill him. But this thing won’t end, won’t die out with the death of Osama Bin Laden. Because there are tens of thousands of Osama Bin Ladens by now, and they’re not only in Afghanistan or in other Arabic countries. They’re everywhere, and the most hardened ones are right in the Western world. In our cities, in our roads, in our universities, in the ganglions of technology. That technology that any dolt can handle. The Crusade has been in progress for some time. It works like a Swiss watch, sustained by a faith and a malice comparable only to the faith and malice of Torquemada when he led the Inquisition. The fact is that dealing with them is impossible. Reasoning, unthinkable. Treating them with indulgence, tolerance or hope, suicide. Whoever thinks differently is deluded.
This is coming from one who has known this type of fanaticism rather well in Iran, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Saudia Arabia, in Kuwait, in Libya, in Jordan, in Lebanon, and at home. That is, in Italy. Known it, and had it chillingly confirmed through a number of trivial episodes—or rather, grotesque ones. I’ll never forget what happened to me at the Iranian Embassy in Rome when I asked for a visa to go to Teheran, to interview Khomeini, and I showed up wearing red nail polish. To them, this is a sign of immorality. They treated me like a whore to be burned at the stake. They ordered me to take off that red immediately. And if I hadn’t told them, or rather screamed at them, what I really felt like taking off—or better yet, cutting off of them...Nor can I forget what happened in Qom, Khomeini’s holy city where as a woman I was turned away from all the hotels. To interview Khomeini I had to wear chador, to put on the chador I had to take off my jeans, to take off my jeans I had to find a secluded place. Naturally, I could have performed the operation in the car in which I had arrived from Teheran. But the interpreter wouldn’t let me. You’re–crazy, you’re–crazy, you–get–shot–in–Qom–for–doing–something–like–that. He preferred to bring me to the former Royal Palace where a merciful custodian took us in and let us use the former Throne Room. I actually felt like the Virgin Mary who has to take refuge with Joseph in the barn heated by the donkey and the ox to give birth to Baby Jesus. But the Koran forbids a man and a woman not married to each other to be alone behin d a closed door, and alas, all of a sudden the door opened. The mullah in charge of Morality Control barged in screaming shame–shame, sin–sin, and there was only one way not to wind up being shot: get married. Sign the temporary (four months) marriage certificate the mullah was fanning in our faces. The problem was that the interpreter had a Spanish wife, a woman by the name of Consuelo who was not at all disposed to accept polygamy, and I didn’t want to marry anyone. Least of all an Iranian with a Spanish wife not at all disposed to accept polygamy. At the same time I didn’t want to be shot, that is, miss my interview with Khomeini. As I was debating what to do in this dilemma...
You’re laughing, I’m sure. These seem like jokes to you. In that case, I won’t tell you the rest of this episode. To make you cry I’ll tell you about the twelve young impure men I saw executed at Dacca at the end of the Bangladesh war. They executed them on the field of Dacca stadium, with bayonet blows to the torso or abdomen, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded in the name of God from the bleachers. They thundered "Allah akbar, Allah akbar." Yes, I know: the ancient Romans, those ancient Romans of whom my culture is so proud, entertained themselves in the Coliseum by watching the deaths of Christians fed to the lions. I know, I know: in every country of Europe the Christians, those Christians whose contribution to the History of Thought I recognize despite my atheism, entertained themselves by watching the burning of heretics. But a lot of time has passed since then, we have become a little more civilized, and even the sons of Allah ought to have figured out by now that certain things are just not done. After the twelve impure young men they killed a little boy who had thrown himself at the executioners to save his brother who had been condemned to death. They smashed his head with their combat boots. And if you don’t believe it, well, reread my report or the reports of the French and German journalists who, horrified as I was, were there with me. Or better: look at the photographs that one of them took. Anyway this isn’t even what I want to underline. It’s that, at the conclusion of the slaughter, the twenty thousand faithful (many of whom were women) left the bleachers and went down on the field. Not as a disorganized mob, no. In an orderly manner, with solemnity. They slowly formed a line and, again in the name of God, walked over the cadavers. All the while thundering Allah–akbar, Allah–akbar. They destroyed them like the Twin Towers of New York. They reduced them to a bleeding carpet of smashed bones.
Oh, I could go on ad infinitum. Tell you things never told, things to make your hair stand on end. About that dotard Khomeini, for example, who after our interview held an assembly at Qom to declare that I had accused him of cutting off women’s breasts. He extracted a video from this assembly that was shown for months on Teheran television so that, when I returned to Teheran the next year, I was arrested as soon as I got off the plane. It looked bad for me, you know, very bad. This was the period of the American hostages...I could tell you about Mujib Rahman, who, again at Dacca, had ordered his guerillas to eliminate me as a dangerous European, and lucky for me an English colonel saved me at the risk of his life. Or about that Palestinian named Habash who held me for twenty minutes with a machine gun pointed at my head. God, what people! The only ones I’ve had a civil relationship with remain poor Ali Bhutto, the first prime minister of Pakistan, who was hanged because he was too friendly to the West, and the most excellent king of Jordan: King Hussein. But those two were as Muslim as I am Catholic. Anyway I want to get to the point of my argument. A point that will not please many, given that defending one’s own culture, in Italy, is becoming a mortal sin. And given that, intimidated by the inapt term "racist," everyone shuts up like rabbits.
I don’t go pitching tents at M ecca. I don’t go singing Our Fathers and Hail Marys in front of Mohammed’s tomb. I don’t go peeing on the marble of their mosques; I don’t go shitting at the feet of their minarets. When I find myself in their countries (something from which I never derive pleasure), I never forget that I am a guest and a foreigner. I am careful not to offend them with clothing or gestures or behavior that are normal for us but impermissible to them. I treat them with dutiful respect, dutiful courtesy, and I excuse myself when through mistake or ignorance I infringe some rule or superstition of theirs. And the images I’ve had before my eyes while writing this scream of pain and indignation haven’t always been those of the apocalyptic scenes I started with. Sometimes I see another image instead, a symbolic (and therefore infuriating) one: the huge tent with which the Somalian Muslims disfigured and befouled and profaned the Piazza del Duomo at Florence for three months last summer. My city.
A tent put up in order to beg–condemn–insult the Italian government that hosted them but wouldn’t give them the papers necessary to rove about Europe and wouldn’t let them bring the hordes of their relatives to Italy. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, pregnant sisters–in–law, and if they had their way, their relatives’relatives as well. A tent situated next to the beautiful palazzo of the Archbishop on whose sidewalk they kept the shoes or sandals that are lined up outside the mosques in their countries. And along with the shoes or sandals, the empty bottles of water they’d used to wash their feet before praying. A tent placed in front of the cathedral with Brunelleschi’s cupola and by the side of the Baptistery with Ghiberti’s golden doors. A tent, finally, furnished like a sleazy little apartment: seats, tables, chaise–lounges, mattresses for sleeping and for fucking, ovens for cooking food and plaguing the piazza with smoke and stench. And, thanks to the customary irresponsibility of ENEL, which cares about our works of art about as much as it cares about our landscape, furnished with electric light. Thanks to a radio tape player, enriched by the uncouth wailing of a muezzin who punctually exorted the faithful, deafened the infidels, and smothered the sound of the church bells. Add to all this the yellow streaks of urine that profaned the marble of the Baptistry. (My, these sons of Allah sure have a long range! However did they manage to hit the target when they were held back by a protective railing that kept it nearly two whole meters away from their urinary equipment?) And along with the yellow streaks of urine, the stench of the excrement that blocked the door of San Salvatore al Vescovo: that exquisite Romanesque church (year 1000) that stands at the rear of the Piazza del Duomo and that the sons of Allah transformed into a shithouse. You’re well aware of this.
You’re well aware because I’m the one who called you, begged you to talk about it in the Corriere, remember? I also called the mayor, who, I admit, came politely to my house. He listened to me, he agreed with me: "You’re right. You’re quite right." But he didn’t remove the tent. He forgot or he wasn’t able. I also called the Foreign Minister, who was a Florentine, indeed one of those Florentines who speaks with a very Florentine accent, not to mention being involved in the whole affair. And he too, I admit, listened to me. He agreed with me: "Oh, yes. You’re right, yes." But he didn’t lift a finger to remove that tent, and as for the sons of Allah who urinated on the Baptistery and shat all over San Salvatore al Vescovo, he moved quickly to appease them. (I understand that the fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins and pregnant sisters-in-law are now where they wanted to be. That is in Florence and in other cities of Europe.) So I changed tactics. I called a nice police officer who directs the security office and said to him: "My dear officer, I am not a politician. When I say I ’m going to do something, I do it. I also know something about war and have certain skills. If by tomorrow you don’t get that fucking tent out of here, I will burn it. I swear on my honor that I will burn it, that not even a regiment of carabinieri could stop me, and I want to be arrested for it. Taken to jail in handcuffs. That way I’ll get into all the newspapers." Well, being more intelligent than the others, in the space of a few hours he got rid of it. In place of the tent there remained only an immense and disgusting stain of filth. It was a Pyrrhic victory, though. Because it had no effect on the other atrocities that for years have wounded and humiliated what used to be the capital of art and culture and beauty.
It did nothing to discourage the other arrogant guests of the city: the Albanians, the Sudanese, the Bengalese, the Tunisians, the Algerians, the Pakistani, the Nigerians who contribute with so much fervor to the drug trade and prostitution which, it appears, are not prohibited by the Koran. Oh yes: they’re all right where they were before my policeman took away the tent. In the courtyard of the Uffizi Galleries, at the foot of Giotto’s tower. In front of the Loggia dell’Orcagna, around the Loggie del Porcellino. Opposite the National Library, at the entrances to the museums. On Ponte Vecchio where every so often they kill each other with knives or revolvers. Along the banks of the Arno where they asked for and received municipal funding. (That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: municipal funding.) In the churchyard of San Lorenzo where they get drunk on wine and beer and liquor, bunch of hypocrites, and where they utter obscenities at women. (Last summer in that churchyard they even tried it with me, an old lady. Needless to say they lived to regret it. Oooh, did they regret it! One of them’s still there whimpering over his genitals.) In the historic streets where they camp out on the pretext of selling merchandise. By "merchandise" I mean purses and bags illegally copied from patented models, photo murals, pencils, African statuettes that ignorant tourists take for Bernini sculptures, stuff–to–sniff. ("Je connais mes droits, I know my rights" one of them hissed at me on Ponte Vecchio, one who I’d seen selling stuff–to–sniff). And God forbid that a citizen protest, God forbid that someone tell him to take–those–rights–of–yours–and–go–exercise–them–at–home. "Racist, racist!" God forbid that a pedestrian brush up against a presumed Bernini sculpture while trying to walk through the merchandise that blocks the way. "Racist, racist!" God forbid that a metro cop should walk up to him and dare to say, "Signor son of Allah, Your Excellence, would you mind moving over a hairsbreadth to let people get by?" They’d eat him alive. They’d go after him with knives. At the very least, they’d insult his mother and progeny. "Racist, racist!" And people just take it, resigned. They don’t react even if you yell what my old man used to yell during fascism: "Don’t you care at all about dignity? Don’t you have even a little pride, you big sheep?"
The same thing happens in other cities, I know. At Turin, for example. That Turin that created Italy and now doesn’t even seem like an Italian city. It seems like Algiers, Dacca, Nairobi, Damascus, Beirut. At Venice. That Venice where the pigeons of Piazza San Marco have been replaced by little rugs with "merchandise" and even Othello would feel ill at ease. At Genoa. That Genoa where the marvellous palazzi that Rubens so admired have been seized by them and are now perishing like beautiful women who have been raped. At Rome. That Rome where the cynicism of a politics of every falsehood and every color courts them in the hope of obtaining their future votes, and where the Pope himself protects them. (Your Holiness, why in the name of the One God don’t you take them into the Vatican? Strictly on condition, of course, that they refrain from shitting on the Sistine Chapel and the paintings of Raphael.) And here’s something I really don’t u nderstand. Instead of sons of Allah, in Italy they call them "foreign laborers." Or else "manual–labor–for–which–there–is–demand." And I don’t doubt that some of them work. The Italians have become such little lords. They vacation in Seychelles, come to New York to buy sheets at Bloomingdale’s. They’re ashamed to be laborers and farmers, and won’t be associated with the proletariat. But those of whom I speak, what kind of laborers are they? What work do they do? In what way do they satisfy the demand for manual labor that the Italian ex–proletariat no longer supplies? Camping out in the city on the pretext of selling merchandise? Loitering and defacing our monuments? Praying five times a day? And then there’s something else I don’t understand. If they’re really so poor, who’s giving them the money for the voyage by ship or rubber dinghy that brings them to Italy? Who gives them the ten million lira a head (at least ten million) necessary to buy the ticket? It’s not by any chance Osama Bin Laden looking to launch a conquest not only of souls, but of real estate?
Well, even if he’s not the one giving them money, the situation bothers me. Even if our guests are absolutely innocent, even if there’s no one among them who wants to destroy the Tower of Pisa or the Tower of Giotto, wants to put me in chador, wants to burn me at the stake of a new Inquisition, their presence alarms me. It makes me uncomfortable. And whoever takes this situation lightly or optimistically is wrong. And even more wrong is the person who compares the wave of migration hitting Italy and Europe to that which spilled into America in the second half of the 1800’s or rather at the end of the 1800’s and the beginning of the 1900’s. Now I’ll tell you why.
Not long ago I happened to catch a phrase uttered by one of the thousand prime ministers that have honored Italy with their presence over these past few decades. "Well, my uncle was an immigrant too! I can remember him leaving for America with his little cardboard suitcase." Or something along those lines. No, my friend. No. It’s not the same thing at all. And it’s not for two rather simple reasons.
The first is that the wave of migration to America that took place in the latter half of the 1800’s was not clandestine and was not carried out by bullying on the part of those who effected it. It was the Americans themselves who wanted it, urged it, and by a specific act of Congress. "Come, come, we need you. If you come, we’ll give you a nice piece of land." The Americans even made a movie about it. That one with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and what struck me about it was the ending. The scene with the poor souls running to plant a little white flag on the piece of land they want to claim as theirs, so that only the youngest and strongest are able to make it. The rest wind up with diddly squat and some of them die in the process. To my knowledge, there was never any act of Parliament in Italy inviting or rather urging our present guests to leave their countries. Come–come–we–really–need–you, if–you–come–we’ll–give–you–a–little–farm–in–Chianti. They came to us on their own initiative, with their accursed dinghies and in the teeth of the customs officers who tried to send them back. What occurred was not an immigration, it was more of an invasion conducted under an emblem of secrecy. A secrecy that’s disturbing because it’s not meek and dolorous but arrogant and protected by the cynicism of politicians who close an eye or maybe even both. I’ll never forget the way these stow–aways filled the piazzas of Italy with assemblies last year to clamor for visas. Those distorted, savage faces. Those raised fists, threatening. Those baleful voices that took me back to the Teheran of Khomeini. I’ll never forget it because I felt offended by their bullying in my home, and because I felt made fun of by the ministers who told us: "We’d like to deport them but we don’t know where they’re hiding." Bastards! There were thousands of them in those pia zzas and they sure as hell weren’t hiding. To deport them all they had to do was put them in line, please–right–this–way–sir, and escort them to a port or airport.
The second reason, my dear nephew of the uncle with the little cardboard suitcase, is one even a schoolboy could understand. It requires only two elements to expound. One: America is a continent. And in the latter half of the 1800’s when the American Congress gave the green light to immigration, this continent was practically unpopulated. Most of the population was massed in the eastern states, in other words those on the side of the Atlantic, and there were even fewer people in the Midwest. California was practically empty. Well, Italy isn’t a continent. It’s a very small country, and far from unpopulated. Two: America is a very young country. If you recall that the War of Independence took place at the end of the 1700’s, you can deduce that it’s only two hundred years old and you understand why its cultural identity is not yet well defined. Italy, on the other hand, is a very old country. Its history goes back at least three thousand years. Its cultural identity is thus very precise—and let’s not beat around the bush: that identity has quite a bit to do with a religion called Christian religion and a church called the Catholic Church. People like me have a nice little saying: the–Catholic–church–has–nothing–to–do–with–me. But boy does it have to do with me. Whether I like it or not, it has to do with me. And how could it not? I was born into a landscape of churches, convents, Christs, Madonnas, Saints. The first music I heard coming into the world was the music of church bells. Those bells of Santa Maria del Fiore that were smothered by the uncouth voice of the muezzin during the Tent Age. And I grew up in that music, in that landscape. And it was through that music and that landscape that I learned what architecture is, what sculpture is, what painting is, what art is. It was through that church (which I later rejected) that I began to ask myself what is Good, what is Evil, and by God...
There: you see? I wrote "by God" again. With all my secularism, all my atheism, I am so imbued with Catholic culture that it’s even part of my way of expressing myself. Oh God, my God, thank God, by God, sweet Jesus, good God, Mother Mary, here a Christ, there a Christ. These words come so spontaneously to me that I don’t even realize I’m speaking or writing them. And you want me to lay it all out? Even if I’ve never pardoned Catholicism for the infamies it inflicted on me for centuries, starting with the Inquisition that burned even my grandmother—poor grandmother!—even if I’ve never gotten along well with priests and have no use for their prayers, all the same I really love the music of church bells. It caresses my heart. I also love those painted or sculpted Christs and Madonnas and Saints. In fact I have a thing for icons. I also love monasteries and convents. They give me a sense of peace, and sometimes I envy those inside. And then let’s admit it: our cathedrals are more beautiful than mosques and synagogues. Yes or no? They’re also more beautiful than Protestant churches. Look, my family’s cemetery is Protestant. It accepts the dead of all religions but it’s Protestant. And one of my great–grandmothers was Walensian. One of my great–aunts, Evangelist. I never knew my Walensian great–grandmother. But I did know the Evangelist great–aunt. When I was a little girl she would always take me to her church functions in Via de’Benci at Florence, and...God, how bored I was! I felt so alone with those faithful who did nothing but sing psalms, that priest who wasn’t a priest and did nothing but read the Bible, that church that didn’t seem like a church and apart from a little pulpit had nothing but a big crucifix. No angels, no Madonnas, no incense. I even missed the smell of incense, and would rather have been in the nearby Basilica di Santa Croce where they had these things. The things I was used to. And I’ll say more: in my country house, in Tuscany, there is a tiny little chapel. It’s always closed. No one goes there since my mother died. But I go there sometimes, to dust, to make sure the mice haven’t made a nest, and despite my secular upbringing I feel comfortable there. Despite my priest–hating tendencies, I move there with casual ease. And I believe that the vast majority of Italians would confess the same thing. (Even Berlinguer, the head of the Italian Communist Party, confessed as much to me.)
Good God! (Here we go again.) I’m telling you that we Italians are not in the same position as the Americans: mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, hodgepodge of a thousand cultures, at once open to every invasion and able to stave it off. I’m telling you that, for the very reason that our cultural identity is so precise and defined by so many centuries, it cannot sustain a wave of immigration composed of people who in one way or another want to change our way of life. Our values. I’m telling you that we have no room for muezzins, for minarets, for false teetotalers, for their fucking Middle Ages, for their fucking chador. And if we had room, I wouldn’t give it to them. Because it would be the equivalent of throwing away Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, the Renaissance, the Risorgimento, the liberty that for better or worse we fought for and won, our Patria. It would mean giving them Italy. And I won’t give them Italy.
I am Italian. The fools who think I’m an American by now are wrong. I’ve never asked for American citizenship. Years ago an American ambassador offered it to me on Celebrity Status, and after thanking him I replied: "Sir, I’m very tied to America. I’m always arguing with it, always telling it off, but I’m still profoundly tied to it. For me America is a lover—no, a husband—to whom I will always be faithful. Assuming he doesn’t sleep around on me. I care about this husband of mine. And I never forget that if he hadn’t troubled himself to wage war on Hitler and Mussolini, today I’d speak German. I never forget that if he hadn’t kept an eye on the Soviet Union, today I’d speak Russian. I care about him and I like him. I like for example that when I come back to New York and hand over my passport and green card, the customs agent gives me a big smile and says "Welcome home." The gesture seems so generous, so affectionate. I also remember that America has always been the Refugium Peccatorum for people without a homeland. But I already have a homeland, sir. Italy is my Patria, and Italy is my mamma. I love Italy, sir. And it would seem like renouncing my mamma to take American citizenship." I also told him that my language is Italian, that I write in Italian, whereas I only translate myself in English. Just as I translate myself in French, feeling it to be a foreign language. And then I told him that when I listen to Mameli’s anthem I get emotional. That when I hear that "Fratelli–d'Italia, l'Italia–s'è–desta, parapà–parapà–parapà", I get a lump in my throat. I don’t even notice that as anthems go, it’s pretty ugly. I only think: that’s the anthem of my Patria. I also get a lump in my throat when I see the white red and green flag waving. Apart from the stadium hooligans, that is.
I have a white red and green flag from the 1800s. It’s full of stains, stains of blood, all pink from mice. And despite the fact that it has the coat of arms of the House of Savoy in the center (though without Cavour and without Victor Emmanuel II and without Garibaldi who bowed to that coat of arms we would never have unified Italy), I hold onto it like gold. I treasure it as a jewel. Christ! We died for that flag! Hanged, shot, decapitated. Killed by the Austrians, by the Pope, by the Duke of Modena, by the Bourbons. We carried out the Risorgimento with that flag. And the unification of Italy, and the war in Carso, and the Resistance. My maternal great–great–grandfather Giobatta fought for that flag at Curtatone and Montanara and was horribly disfigured by an Austrian rocket. My paternal uncles endured every kind of pain for that flag in the trenches of Carso. My father was arrested and tortured for that flag by the nazi–fascists at Villa Triste. My whole family fought for that flag in the Resistance, and I did too. In the ranks of Justice and Liberty, with the battle name Emilia. I was fourteen. The next year when they discharged me from the Volunteer Italian Army Corps of Liberty, I felt so proud. Jesus and Mary, I had been an Italian soldier! And when I found out that along with the discharge went 14,450 lire, I didn’t know whether to accept it or not. It seemed wrong to accept it for doing my duty to the Patria. Then I did accept it. None of us had shoes at home. And with that money I bought shoes for myself and my little sisters.
Obviously my homeland, my Italy, is not the Italy of today. The scheming, vulgar, fat–dumb–and–happy Italy of Italians whose only concern is getting their pensions by 50 and whose only passions are foreign vacations and soccer matches. The rotten, stupid, cowardly Italy, of little hyenas who would sell their daughter to a Beirut whorehouse in order to shake the hand of a Hollywood divo or diva but if Osama Bin Laden’s kamikazes reduce thousands of New Yorkers to a mountain of ashes that seem like ground coffee they snigger contentedly good–it–serves–America–right. The squalid, faint–hearted, soulless Italy, of presumptuous and incompetent political parties that don’t know how to win or lose but know how to glue the fat posteriors of their representatives into the seat of a deputy or minister or mayor. The still–Mussolinesque Italy of black and red fascists that make you think of Ennio Flaiano’s terrible joke: "In Italy there are two kinds of fascists: fascists and anti–fascists." Nor is it the Italy of the magistrates and politicians who in their ignorance of proper verb tense commit monstrous errors of syntax while pontificating on television screens. (You don’t say, "If it was," you animals! You say "If it were.") Nor is it the Italy of young people who, having similar teachers, are drowning in the most scandalous ignorance, the most excruciating superficiality, drowning in emptiness. So that they add errors of spelling to errors of syntax and if you ask them who the Carbonari were, who the liberals were, who Silvio Pellico was, who Mazzini was, who Massimo D’Azeglio was, who Cavour was, who Victor Emmanuel II was, they look at you with dulled pupils and dangling tongues. They know nothing or at most they know how to play the comfortable role of aspiring terrorists in a time of peace and democracy, how to wave black flags, hide their faces behind ski masks, the little fools. Inept fools.
And even less is it the Italy of the chattering insects who after reading this will hate me for having written the truth. Between one bowl of spaghetti and another they’ll curse me and hope I get killed by one of those whom they protect, that is by Osama Bin Laden. No, no: my Italy is an ideal Italy. It’s an Italy that I dreamed of as a young girl, when I was discharged from the Italian Volunteer Army Corps of Liberty, and I was full of illusions. An intelligent, dignified, courageous Italy, and therefore worthy of respect. And this Italy, an Italy that exists even if it is silenced or ridiculed or insulted—woe to anyone who lays a finger on it. Woe to anyone who robs it from me or invades it. Because whether the invaders are Napoleon’s French or Francis Joseph’s Austrians or Hitler’s Germans or Osama Bin Ladin’s comrades, it’s all the same to me. Whether they invade it using cannons or rubber dinghies, ditto.
And with that I bid you an affectionate farewell, my dear Ferruccio, and I warn you: ask nothing further of me. Least of all, to get involved in disputes or pointless polemics. I’ve said what I had to say. Anger and pride ordered me to. Age and a clean conscience allowed me to. But now I have to get back to work; I don’t want to be disturbed. End of story.
作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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