L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 20 L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 2017 KEN SCAMBRAY C arlo Levi's Words Are Stone is an unrecognized classic in the travel book genre. However, this is not a travel book for the sightseeing tourist. Levi is after a Sicilian h i s t o r y o f a n o t h e r s o r t . H i s impressions of Sicily, even if his book is set the post-war period, inform us why so many Sicilians left their villages for America at the beginning of the twentieth century. Born in Turin, Levi (1902- 1975) was a doctor by trade, but became a renowned painter and writer. In the early 1930s, as a result of his anti-Fascist activi- ties, Mussolini exiled him for a year to village in Basilicata, (Lucania). He recorded his expe- rience in his now classic work, C r i s t o s i è f e r m a t o a E b o l i (Christ Stopped at Eboli), In 1963 and 1968 he was elected to the Italian senate. He opens his first essay by describing a curious but reveal- ing incident in the village of Isnello, near Palermo. At the vil- l a g e ' s g a t e h e e n c o u n t e r s a Pontiac and inside is Vincent I m p e l l i t t e r i , a t t h e t i m e t h e mayor of New York City, 1950- 53. Mayor Impellitteri has tri- umphantly returned to his native village: the successful prodigal son who had left as a new-born and had achieved the American dream. The mayor is mobbed by the villagers. He is the living embodiment of mythological America. Young people touch his car, as they do the statues of the saints in their village church, with the hope that the American- made car might bring them the same good fortune one day to travel to mythical America and to become as successful as the mayor. Though Levi does not say it, in their adoration of the mayor, the village's young peo- ple inadvertently reveal a sad truth for them: that success is something that lies outside the precincts of their native paese. When he leaves Isnello, ahe travels to Lercara, the site of Sicily's infamous sulfur mines. The workers, including women and children, work below the m i n i m u m w a g e a n d u n d e r "pitiable working conditions." T h o u g h t h e r e i s a s t r i k e i n progress, it is clear that nothing will change for the workers. The foreman he tries to speak with is intransigent. Levi writes that the whole scene is an expe- rience out of another, far more primitive historical period. In the morning, in the shadow of Mt. Etna, he passes "the land of the Duke and memories of De Felice." Levi alludes to the Northern Italian government's harsh repression of the peasant revolt of 1891 when they tried to form a workers' union under the leadership of Giuseppe De Felice (1859-1920). He passes also the f e u d a l c a s t l e o f t h e B a r o n Spitalieri, who owned vast tracts of land, and then the famous Dutchy of Bronte, owned by H o r a t i o N e l s o n . T h e s e v a s t estates were also the location of peasant revolts and brutal repres- sion by the Garibaldian general Nino Bixio (1827-73). Along the way, he evokes also mytho- logical Sicily, the Cyclopes who lived in the bowels of Mt. Etna and the white stones in the sea t h a t P o l y p h e m o u s f l u n g a t Ulysses upon his clever escape. Like Etna's lava flows laid one on top of the other over millions of years, history, politics, myth layers Sicilian history. Levi abruptly cuts to the tragedy still evident to the observer: "the Duchy of Bronte can be taken as an example (like the mines of L e r c a r a F r i d d i ) o f t h e m o s t absurd historical anachronism, the stubborn survival of a long- lost feudal world and the daunt- ing attempts of the peasants to live as men." L a t e r , i n t h e t o w n o f A c i The square in poggioreale city rebuild after the earthquake. © Kcho | Dreamstime A view over old town of Erice. © Lev Levin | Dreamstime The coastal village of Trappeto, the home of Danilo Dolci (1924-1972). © Naten | Dreamstime T r e z z a , h e h o n o r s t h e g r e a t Sicilian novelist Giovanni Verga w h o , i n T h e H o u s e b y t h e Medlar Tree, gave voice to oth- e r w i s e v o i c e l e s s p e a s a n t s : "Verga's vision was internal to his world; it identified itself in the vision of the fisherman, the gossipy women, the grandfather of the daughter, their shared, patient, obscure destiny." From Aci Trezza he travels to Palermo, Monreale, Trapani, and Erice. While in Monreale, he and a friend discuss the Mafia, a friend to no one, except its own partners in crime, secular and religious. Levi's next stop is the coastal village of Trappeto, the home of Danilo Dolci (1924-1972). Dolci became world famous for his advocacy of the poor and work- ing class and his opposition to the Mafia, which threatened his life. Levi describes the poverty in Trappeto: "the disease, mental illiteracy, crime, and prostitu- tion," the results of "the murder- ous effects of an age-old pover- ty," perpetuated by the heirs of f e u d a l l a n d o w n e r s a n d , o f course, their partners in crime, the Mafia. In a discussion in Bagheria with a young prince, without comprehension of his own words, the prince reveals how for centuries aristocrats have turned a blind eye to the plight of the peasants around them. In Sciara, south of Palermo, h e i n t e r v i e w s f r i e n d s o f t h e assassinated organizer, Salvatore Carnevale. He finds a "desper- ately poor town," a "feudal vil- lage" imprisoned in that same relentless poverty. When the peasants under Carnevale's lead- ership won a temporary victory over the landowners and the Mafia, the Mafia assassinated him and defiantly left its hall- mark on the deed: "shots fired into the face, to disfigure the corpse, in a mark of contempt: the next day forty chickens were stolen for the traditional ban- quet." It worked: the town was terrorized. No one, not even his friends or supporters, visited C a r n e v a l e ' s b o d y i n t h e morgue. A s h e d e p a r t s S i c i l y , h e writes that he leaves behind the sacrifices of such men as Dolci a n d C a r n e v a le , a n d th e e v il, "labyrinthine architecture of the Mafia." Levi writes in the final paragraph. "Sicily is moving like all of the South of Italy, is mov- ing, but in its own particular ways." He offers hope that Sicily i s " c o u r a g e o u s l y g a i n i n g a n awareness of its own existence." Levi was correct. In my visits to Sicily over the last forty years, I noticed it has changed for the better, especially Bivona and Poggioreale, where my grand- parents were born. Bivona's his- torical monuments have been immaculately restored over the years. And Poggioreale nuova takes great pride in the ruins of the historical Poggioreale vec- c h i a , d e s t r o y e d b y t h e 1 9 6 8 earthquake and uninhabitable, but still standing like a latter day Pompeii five kilometers to the north. Villagers' sense of their historical identity is the well- spring of their pride. As Pino Aprile wrote recently in Il Sud Puzza, "Sta succedendo qual- cosa giù a Sud; succede ovunque e tutto insieme. Ed è qualcosa di buono." Ken Scambray's latest book is Queen Calafia's Paradise: C a l i f o r n i a a n d t h e I t a l i a n American Novel. LIFE PEOPLE MOVIES MUSIC BOOKS Words are Stone: Impressions of Sicily by Carlo Levi.Trans. by Antony Shugaar London: Hesperus Press, 1955.

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