"Long live Italy". Strange words, are you? It seems that nobody can tell you seriously. It is reasonable that a "cry" that kind of rhetoric now seems antiquated, embarrassing. There can be expressed in a more sober with equal conviction. But it is the conviction that is missing. More often it is said so bleakly ironic, bitterly disappointed.
Self-criticism is a resource smart. But self-injury, widespread in our culture, is another matter. Do not look at our flaws to try to correct them. Nor is there pride with arrogance, as they do (sometimes with bad grace) the countries most proud of. We are content to grumble and complain as if we were doomed to a loss irreparable and the only resource was to try to "make do" in the folds of an inexorable decline.
seems that "Italian feel" is one thing to bring up only when it comes to a football game or some other sporting event.
We are not nationalists - and this is a quality. We are not xenophobic, if not when a wave of immigration, not stupidly planned and managed so bad, it pop a racism which we believed to be immune. But let's not forget that Italy, from the beginning, has always been a mixture of ethnicities and cultures - and this is not a problem, is a resource.
I'm Italian? I do not know. I had the good fortune of being born into an environment open to diversity. Since childhood, I understood and spoke more than one language, I lived among shelves of books from various sources, I tried to learn from everyone and everything that was. I've never been recognized in the "prototype of Italian" as intended for the schematics and clichés. I always feel more alien to what seems to be "Italy and one that expresses the (pseudo) culture more widespread and more visible.
But they are not foreign. There are things and people, in all regions, for which I love, respect and sympathy. Even when (and with the current bad habit is often the case) I find it hard to feel Italian, are also a sincere friend of Italy. It makes me sick to see her suffer, humiliated, intontita.Molti paesi cercano di coltivare un’apparenza migliore della loro realtà. L’Italia fa il contrario. E lo squallore del suo apparire inquina e corrode il suo essere.
Si sta cominciando a parlare del centocinquantesimo anniversario dell’unità d’Italia. Si stanno già moltiplicando i dissensi, i distinguo, le delusioni. Con l’aria che tira, sarà difficile che sia una festa. Comunque ci vuol altro che qualche effimera celebrazione per ritrovare il senso di che cosa sia l’Italia e che cosa voglia dire essere italiani.
Questa immagine non è un capolavoro, né estetico né concettuale. Ma almeno è comprensibile – e meno squallida di altre . Il problema is that there is a serious lack of perspective.
The history of Italy - and its identity - did not start with the Risorgimento (which in fact meant to re-arise, not to be born for the first time).
Italy does not have 150 years. It has more than 2500.Un 'historical exegesis would be lengthy and complex, but the fact is that there were territories and cultures called Italy before the founding of Rome. Already two millennia ago, at the time of Caesar, a large part of the peninsula was metropolitan area - which soon spread even further north of the Rubicon. It was not a colony, its inhabitants were cives. There is no doubt that Italy was called, It has always been in all the centuries that followed.
Latin was not only the language of Rome. Along with the greek was the common heritage of all the empire and the international language of reference - as it has been longer and more widely, than any other, irrespective of political or military control of the territory. In part it is still (for example, but not only, in the language of science).
torn apart by wars and invasions, fragmented in common, ladies and foreign domination, however, Italy was always, unmistakably, Italy.
It was never just a "geographical expression", even if the particular its location and structure of "natural" today, as always, one of the elements of its identity.
Let's look at a globe, a world map or a photograph satellitare.Pochi countries around the world, are so clearly and easily distinguibilicome this beautiful peninsula in the middle of the Mediterranean.
At the time that was born the "vernacular literature" there was no doubt that there was Italy - and that was in distress.
So said Dante Alighieri (Purgatorio, canto VI, 76-78).
servile Italy, grief's hostelry ship without a pilot in a great storm, not a woman of Provinces, but brothel.
This complaint is an insidious, disturbing news.
and Francesco Petrarch (Canzoniere, CXXVIII).
my Italy, although the speech is indarnoa the mortal wound in your beautiful body so often I see ...
With a heartfelt plea to the mother in benign loves beauty, nature, art, history and culture. Almo country in which the beloved (though "immigrant" in France) is acknowledged - but he sees torn by war, violence, feuds and conspiracies.
today are not (or not) so the bloody "mortal wounds, but it is difficult to avoid the perception that Italy is sick with an insidious mix of old and new syndromes.
Yet the suffering in the Renaissance Italy was maturing. A unique, fertile mixing of the rediscovery of the ancient with the invention of the modern.
That cycle repeated itself in other ways, even in later times. And that is the best, if not the only one to leave the swamp in which we are mired.
We are not condemned to an irreversible decline. We are not that bleak Italy described the twenty Giacomo Leopardi, echoing il Petrarca, nel 1818.
O patria mia, vedo le mura e gli archie le colonne e i simulacri e l’ermetorri degli avi nostri,ma la gloria non vedo...
Quando i moti carbonari erano minuscoli e clandestini,l’unità politica non era neppure un’ipotesi,il più scettico e “pessimista” dei nostri poeti dell’Ottocentosu una cosa non aveva dubbi: l’invocata “patria” era l’Italiae doveva ritrovare la sua identità.
Non abbiamo bisogno di malinconiche rimembranze. Non serve versare lacrime sul destino della alma terra natia o formosissima donna ridotta a una larva del suo passato, che “nuda e inerme” siede in terra negletta e sconsolata. Per quanto sia confusa, ottusa e degradante, oggi non è quella la nostra condizione.
Capire la nostra storia non vuol dire rimpiangerla. Ma senza la forza delle nostre radici saremmo molto più deboli nel guardare al futuro.
Le “glorie” sono tutte del passato, da mettere nel polveroso armadio della nostalgia? Non è vero.
Sono passati poco più di cinquant’anni da quando un paese povero, intontito da una stupida dittatura, afflitto da un esteso analfabetismo, massacrato da un’orribile guerra, ha trovato la forza di reagire, con quello che il mondo sorpreso chiamava “il miracolo italiano” (e non si trattava solo di economia).
Ancora oggi ci sono persone, organizzazioni e imprese che (lontane dalle cronache del peggio e anche, in generale, dalle luci della ribalta) stanno facendo cose, e producendo risultati, di cui (se ci badassimo) potremmo essere orgogliosi.
Il mondo pensa che in Italia ci sia molta corruzione. Purtroppo è vero. Non si tratta solo della piaga del crimine organizzato (che non è limitato ad alcune regioni, invade tutto il paese). O della rete di intrallazzi e consorterie che nessun tentativo di “pulizia” riesce a sradicare. C’è un’acquiescenza, un rassegnato “così va il mondo”, che costringe anche le persone più oneste e corrette ad accettare di essere circondate da un’equivoca atmosfera di “tolleranza”.
La corruzione è dovunque. In parecchie parti del mondo è peggio che da noi. Ciò che ci distingue non è il fatto di esserne contagiati, ma la diffusa percezione che sia un male inguaribile – o addirittura una cosa “normale”.
Il mondo pensa che gli italiani siano superficiali. Non è vero. Ma molti che “ci rappresentano” sono ostinatamente impegnati a farlo sembrare.
Siamo sommersi nel culto del futile e dell’inutile. Succede in ogni parte del pianeta. Ma da noi è diventato lo stile dominante, il prototipo culturale.
Quasi tutte le persone che conosco (e anche molte che incontro case) are polite, courteous, friendly - are also aware and careful. But since they can withstand the humanity and good taste to the daily performance of the vulgarity, the rudeness, the superficiality, the stupid arrogance?
Italy is a country of extraordinary beauty. For natural landscapes and artistic treasures. But when we call the "Bel Paese" we do it with some disdain, identifying it with a mild cheese industry that is not bad, but it is a trivial matter in comparison to the extraordinary richness and variety of our cuisine - which is not only the pleasure of eating , but also the testimony of a cultural heritage.
is not true that we exceeded rincitrulliti condemned to decline. But our "dominant culture" (I can not stop to think and speak ill of worse) fails to take revenge on his masochistic degradation.
Although there is little to Jubilee, so be a "jubilee" in the now near 2011 - if (something which, unfortunately, we doubt) will be an opportunity to think about who we are and where we are going. But
hundred and fifty years is too short.
With all due respect to the Risorgimento, which is neither the stale myth of the sacred writers, or that little thing just now we feel, the immense reservoir of our culture has much deeper roots - in two millennia of troubled, but illuminating story.
If the deterioration continues, each individual could survive, going abroad or "arranged" in a few short-sighted parochial refuge. While the values \u200b\u200bof our culture could be grown (as has already happened) from others in their own way, in several countries.
But it's better (for us and the world) who finds his identity - that Italy is alive, with no exclamation mark, but with all the commitment and the respect it deserves. In fact, not in the invocations. In culture and do not in retorica.
C’è bisogno di un risveglio, di un Rinascimento (con la R maiuscola). Nonostante le deprimenti apparenze contrarie, ne siamo capaci, come lo eravamo secoli fa – in condizioni spesso più difficili e travagliate di quelle di oggi.
Se aspettiamo che qualche soluzione (chissà quale) venga “dall’alto”, possiamo piangere per altri mille anni. Mentre i più attivi o fortunati se ne vanno in Svizzera o in Australia – e chi resta si ingegna a fare il servitore di qualche califfo.
Ma mille formiche possono fare di più di un disorientato e torpido pachiderma. Cominciando con l’aprire qualche piccola breccia nell’esasperante rubber wall of the mannerisms, of servility, habits and misinformation.
You may find nourishment in the trivial and ephemeral rhetoric of proclamations and celebrations. But we try to get out of the quagmire? Certainly no one will give us a miracle, but finding the light of reason could produce surprising results.
I got caught by a crisis of optimism?
No, not so stupido.Sto just trying to say (to myself before anyone else) who is not complaining, depressed and sad and unnecessary, be sighted, it is humiliating to resign, to obey is weak, not just let off steam in gossip and in some lampoon.
is better to roll up their sleeves and try to do something.
Giancarlo Livraghi
