The Young Idealist: Red Shirts

Quando finisce una guerra
le bugie degli sconfitti vengono smascherate,
le bugie dei vincitori diventano Storia
(Arrigo Petacco)

Palerm, March 4, 1861. Monday.

The sun shines on Palermo. It is 12:20pm when the old steamer Ercole releases its moorings. It is headed to Naples. On that steamship the last members of the expedition of the Thousand Red Shirts, the last ones left in Sicily, have embarked - the arrival is scheduled for the following morning. Three hours later also the Pompei left the port of Palermo, a steamship by far faster than the Ercole. On the same route, there are also two rickety tartanes with high-sounding names, the Angel Raffaele and La Madonna dell'Arco, and also an English war vessel is on the same route. It wouldn't be solitary navigation. But after turning a few degrees north-east and disappearing on the horizon the Ercole vanished, without any trace of ever existing.

Can the bad be more abundant than the good?

Red Shirts 

Once I believed in The Providence, but not now, not any longer. I thought The Providence was a moral force that ruled the world. Now instead I believe in the power of my strength, the only power that keeps me alive.
Time writes moral not God. Men write moral not God. Flesh and bones write moral not God.
Blood writes moral.

Incerto tempore incertis locis[1].

My life spanned two centuries. Therefore, I know the slight following of the many possibilities of life from a direction to another direction. I know the secret of swerving. There cannot be a free and fulfilled personal life until there is no free possibility to choose in compatibility with what the Moral has preordained for you.
It’s because of these wanderings of mine that I have been putting together my own particular idea of Patria.
For her, I knew the victory, for her I knew the defeat. For her, I knew the fight. For her, I knew the war. For her, I knew the honesty. For her, I knew the calumny.
I survived all them, though. And I loved, I loved all the women I met. But one above all others.
And I found life to be good, the day I knew how to choose, and I learned how to take control of my destiny.

We left Palermo; I see the skyline in the distance from the deck of the ship. We are headed to Naples. Tomorrow I will be in Naples. Magical and mysterious land, where the sun generates fruits in one day when elsewhere a month wouldn’t be enough.

I was ordered to take my account books to Turin. They are waiting for me. Garibaldi has made many enemies in that city. 

Dear Silvia,
I started this voyage to Turin, right now. I am on the deck of the steamship. I watch the see…and if I must be honest with you, I am afraid. I am afraid of this sea. I don’t know why but it just scares me. And this is the first time in my life, that I have fear of the sea. It is probably because I am seized by a state of anguish that it is not difficult to collect all my memories, now. Above all those of my childhood.
One thing has been spinning around my head for the last weeks. I am a child of despair. A child born to a desperate mother. I inherited it from her. A poor thing, my mother, ousted from her family in Venice, she died in a hospital and left me in the custody of filthy priests. Jesuits. I still have a vague memory of their slippery hands trying to caress my hair. And I shudder when I think about their bad breath lurking behind me.
I’ve never known my father. It was said that he died from heartbreak at being abandoned by my mother. For these many reasons, I say that I am a son of despair. I wrap myself in the darkness of my solitude, and in the desperation of my innocence.
I am depressed, Silvia.
I put all my passion for serving my ideals to forget my despair and overcome the depression. Foscolo's words come to mind "O my Lorenzo! I don't have the peace I hoped for from solitude”.
Dear Silvia, I hoped in solitude. I hoped in its power to heal the suffering that I carry within me. I am sure that you can understand me. You can understand what I mean. I believe you are born with an innate knowledge of human nature.
Do you remember how proud I felt, when we were children, and I enjoyed your favours for three days running?
We played a comedy, you me and the other boys. I don’t think there was any Court of Love ever ruled by one woman with such tyranny. We had to obey you at all costs, adore you as you demanded, and smile and laugh because you disliked everybody who was moody, and you were immediately prone to discarding him.
In those days I knew the disorders of precocious senses, that your spirit had awakened in my flesh.
Now vice is with us, it grows everywhere. Vice, corruption and betrayal. But these are not times in which the mortification of the moral can be a remedy. It's time for a new will and vigour. 

The same sea, the same island had offered their welcome on May 11, 1860, to a thousand of young people in red shirts and grey trousers. At approximately 1:00 p.m, two steamers had come in sight, under Sardinian colours, and, steaming right up to the mole, began to discharge large bodies of armed foreigners. Boats of all kinds were soon around to assist in landing the men.
Five or six miles distant was a Neapolitan steamer of war, and, further off, a large sailing frigate. The first bore up for the port. The armed foreigners in red shirt were out of the vessel aground, but, for some reason, the Neapolitan steamer did not open fire till they were all formed and marching into the town. The frigate also came down, with a strong breeze, in time to deliver one ineffectual broadside. And before they could reload the guns, the new arrivals were safely inside the walled town of Marsala.
Strangely enough when they had half of Garibaldi’s force trapped on a grounded vessel and the other half poorly armed sitting on the docks of Marsala harbour the two Neapolitan warships didn’t manage to capture, wound or kill a single invader.

---

[1] In an uncertain, undetermined place and time

Italian cognitive dissonance (apie vieną gurmanų klubą Vilniuje)

Est ardalionum quaedam Vilniuje natio, trepide concursans, occupata in otio, gratis anhelans, multa agendo nil agens
(Phaedrus)

Užupis, a district of Vilnius - the so-called Republic of Artists. There is a restaurant right there, in the centre of the little central square – a magnificent place, very close to the bridge that you incontrovertibly must cross arriving from Onos Bažnyčia.
This restaurant is well known in the Italian community of Vilnius, famous for illustrious gourmands. Big bellies, bad breath, satisfied faces, bright and vivid eyes yearning for food. They have the most elaborated possible philosophies regarding their stand with regard to traditional recipes, each of one consisting in a different universe: pasta alla puttanesca, carbonara, spaghetti alla amatriciana (one of the most vexed question: which is the original way to prepare the real pasta alla amatriciana? Eternally unsolved question, since are many heretical positions about it). Which wine with which course? How the right pesto alla genovese has to be done? They are ruthlessly fighting, opposing one dogma to another dogma. No jokes. Those are real problems, where no minimal oversight is allowed.
There is also a famous Facebook group, called Italian Gourmets in Vilnius, where scholarly talks and discussions about the above-mentioned themes are regularly held.
The tone of philosophical discussions is very high. One of the most recent debates in the posts of the group was “Does free will exists in elaborating recipes or is there any compatibilism?”

A detached observer (is it, anyway, possible a detached observer?) who randomly were sitting under the obelisk adjacent to the restaurant entrance should have the chance to watch them swarming back and forth from and to the restaurant would probably be under the impression to see a swarm of obnoxious insects aligned with the hope of food when waiting, with benign smiles on their visage after leaving.
Once I had a chat with one of the members. I realized how impeded he was to distinguish the world around him (Vilnius) and the world he left behind many years ago (Italy). They lived in one world but they still thought to live in the one they used to live before.

- You know this is my dividend of being excluded from Italian life.

Those words reminded me of other words: "How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense?”
Inconsequential platitudes. Just inconsequential platitudes. That was the way those people were. Meaningless expression of platitudes.

I was a martial artist, I was not interested in food. Food for me was just a way of supplying my need for energy. I didn’t feel any particular pleasure when I ate.

But Italians in Vilnius, because of their persistence in their credo, reminded me of a philosophical distinction. The distinctions between hedgehog-thinkers and fox-thinkers.
Fox-thinkers without a unitary inner vision, hedgehog-thinkers with a unitary inner vision.
Italians were bearers of a single, universal message. They confined themselves to that exclusive activity. Eating.
They probably were foxes by nature but saw a better chance in being hedgehogs.

(To be continued...)

Viaggio in Toscana, per presentare "Amore, šaltibarščiai e pomodori rossi"

Mishima and Hagakure

Mishima was obsessed for his entire life (or almost) by the re-gaining the values (ideologies) of a valuable life that has to be lived under the tension of art reinforced by the erotism of death.
The vision of his contemporary Japan was devastating to him. A land deserted by real values, whose DEATH undoubtedly was the highest (and probably unique) value (ideology) for Male-kind.

an age in which everything is based on the premise that it is best to live as long as possible. The average life span has become the longest in history, and a monotonous plan for humanity unfolds before us.


He cannot shun art as he cannot shun death since the life of an artist is subdued to death.

The occupation of the Samurai is death...death is the Samurai’s supreme motivation, and if a Samurai should fear or shun death, in that instant he would cease to be a Samurai.

Life doesn't allow to be caught off-guard. It doesn't allow laxity, because this would mean to resign his claim on the Perpetual Threat of Death, which offers to the Samurai/writer (Mishima) to defend his honour and his morale by constant anticipation. This will enable the Samurai/writer to be towards a-not-an-introspective-morality but towards a morality concentrating on external reflection.
This is the male samurai writer completely dismantled of laxity and of any feminisation, which is the antithesis of the samurai writer.
For these many reasons the samurai writer cannot be in peace with himself but he is devoted to a never-ceasing fight in name of superior value, that is always aimed beyond the current situation:

One who in wartime employs rough and manly words appropriate to an age of war and in time of peace words appropriate to peacetime is not a Samurai. It is essential for a Samurai to maintain logical consistency, and if one must show valour in one’s action during times of chaos, then one must demonstrate equal valour in words during a peaceful age.