I am Italian, an Italian who is now heading towards the termination of his life. I loved Italy until the end of the Seventies. Then Italy, that Italy in which I was born and that I had deeply loved, began to be dismantled. In large part, the job of dismantling Italy was the prerogative of a brainwasher of great ability: Silvio Berlusconi. He arrived with his private TV channels and wiped out all the virtues of my folks. He changed the DNA of my people. He made it unrecognisable.
The disappointment I feel seeing what is now left of my beautiful country, Italy, is infinite, especially now that I live far from the country where I was born grew up and in which I would never want to live again.
But another profound connoisseur of the Italian spirit had been strongly disappointed long before me. Because his country had lost its virtue, courage and martial souls to become a land without glory and without courage.
And I'm talking about Giacomo Leopardi.
O patria mia, vedo le mura e gli archi
E le colonne e i simulacri e l’erme
Torri degli avi nostri,
Ma la gloria non vedo,
O my country, I see the walls, arches
columns, statues, lone
towers of our ancestors,
but I do not see the glory [1]
An Italy without a warlike spirit, and even cowardly
Non vedo il lauro e il ferro ond’eran carchi
I nostri padri antichi. Or fatta inerme,
I do not see the iron and the laurel in which
our forefathers were clasped. Now, defenceless,
So I ask myself: did I love that Italy, the Italy that Leopardi is accusing? Probably. Or was what came after the Seventies ( the Italy I loved but the commiserated Italy of Leopardi though) even worse than the Italy I loved and Leopardi accused?
This last hypothesis is probably true.
As Leopardi says:
"La storia dell'uomo non presenta altro che un passaggio continuo da un grado di civiltà ad un altro, poi all'eccesso di civiltà, e finalmente alla barbarie, e poi da capo".
"The history of humanity presents nothing but a continuous passage from one stage of civilization to another, then to the excess of civilization, and finally to barbarism, and then all over again".
The disappointment I feel seeing what is now left of my beautiful country, Italy, is infinite, especially now that I live far from the country where I was born grew up and in which I would never want to live again.
But another profound connoisseur of the Italian spirit had been strongly disappointed long before me. Because his country had lost its virtue, courage and martial souls to become a land without glory and without courage.
And I'm talking about Giacomo Leopardi.
O patria mia, vedo le mura e gli archi
E le colonne e i simulacri e l’erme
Torri degli avi nostri,
Ma la gloria non vedo,
O my country, I see the walls, arches
columns, statues, lone
towers of our ancestors,
but I do not see the glory [1]
An Italy without a warlike spirit, and even cowardly
Non vedo il lauro e il ferro ond’eran carchi
I nostri padri antichi. Or fatta inerme,
I do not see the iron and the laurel in which
our forefathers were clasped. Now, defenceless,
So I ask myself: did I love that Italy, the Italy that Leopardi is accusing? Probably. Or was what came after the Seventies ( the Italy I loved but the commiserated Italy of Leopardi though) even worse than the Italy I loved and Leopardi accused?
This last hypothesis is probably true.
As Leopardi says:
"La storia dell'uomo non presenta altro che un passaggio continuo da un grado di civiltà ad un altro, poi all'eccesso di civiltà, e finalmente alla barbarie, e poi da capo".
"The history of humanity presents nothing but a continuous passage from one stage of civilization to another, then to the excess of civilization, and finally to barbarism, and then all over again".
What came out of the Italy I loved was the Italy of barbarism, as Leopardi underlines. And now we have to wait for the end of this stage to start all over again.
But now is different: now the entire world has to start all over again.
[1] From the poem All'Italia
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