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Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year
It was to Lucania, a desolate land in southern Italy, that Carlo Levi―a doctor, painter, philosopher, and man of letters―was confined as a political prisoner because of his opposition to Italy's Fascist government at the start of the Ethiopian war in 1935. While there, Levi reflected on the harsh landscape and its inhabitants, peasants who lived the same lives their ancestors had, constantly fearing black magic and the near presence of death. In so doing, Levi offered a starkly beautiful and moving account of a place and a people living outside the boundaries of progress and time.
275 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1945
About the author
Carlo Levi
61 books136 followersCarlo Levi was an Italian-Jewish painter, writer, activist, anti-fascist, and doctor.
He is best known for his book, "Cristo si è fermato a Eboli" (Christ Stopped at Eboli), published in 1945; a memoir of his time spent in exile in Lucania, Italy, after being arrested in connection with his political activism. In 1979, the book became the basis of a movie of the same name, directed by Francesco Rosi. Lucania, now called Basilicata, is historically one of the poorest and most backward regions of the impoverished Italian south. Levi's lucid, non-ideological and sympathetic description of the daily hardships experienced by the local peasants helped to propel the "Problem of the South" into national discourse after the end of the World War II.
He is best known for his book, "Cristo si è fermato a Eboli" (Christ Stopped at Eboli), published in 1945; a memoir of his time spent in exile in Lucania, Italy, after being arrested in connection with his political activism. In 1979, the book became the basis of a movie of the same name, directed by Francesco Rosi. Lucania, now called Basilicata, is historically one of the poorest and most backward regions of the impoverished Italian south. Levi's lucid, non-ideological and sympathetic description of the daily hardships experienced by the local peasants helped to propel the "Problem of the South" into national discourse after the end of the World War II.
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February 17, 2021
UN ANNO DI VITA SOTTERRANEA
Sono passati molti anni, pieni di guerre, e di quello che si usa chiamare la Storia. Spinto qua e là alla ventura, non ho potuto finora mantenere la promessa fatta, lasciandoli, ai miei contadini, di tornare fra loro, e non so davvero se e quando potrò mai mantenerla. Ma, chiuso in una stanza, e in un mondo chiuso, mi è grato riandare con la memoria a quell’altro mondo, serrato nel dolore e negli usi, negato alla Storia e allo Stato, eternamente paziente; a quella mia terra senza conforto e dolcezza, dove il contadino vive, nella miseria e nella lontananza, la sua immobile civiltà, su un suolo arido, nella presenza della morte..
Gian Maria Volonté è Carlo Levi, qui insieme al cane Barone.
Romanzo autobiografico, memoir, diario, e a tratti saggio tra lo storico l’etnologico, l’antropologico e il sociologico, Carlo Levi lo scrisse una decina di anni dopo l’esperienza che racconta e, tra i tanti aspetti, mi ha colpito la lucidità di memoria, non tanto nella cronologia – ché sembra ricordare gli avvenimenti di ogni giorno come se fossero appena accaduti – quanto nel vigore di dettagli e particolari.
Mi ha colpito anche come la pena del confino, almeno nel suo caso, si sia dimostrata ‘morbida’, non esageratamente punitiva e restrittiva, come verrebbe d’aspettarsi: l’esperienza che Levi racconta è per molti versi “felice”, senz’altro positiva. Anche se forse questo aspetto deve molto al carattere di Levi che sembra dotato di una predisposizione particolarmente “buona”, aperta, curiosa, accogliente.
Altro elemento da rilevare è come le spese di questo soggiorno obbligato fossero a carico del confinato, che doveva non solo provvedere di tasca propria, ma anche adoperarsi a trovare l’alloggio.
Irene Papas è Giulia, la donna che si occupa della casa e dei pasti del dottore.
Cristo si è davvero fermato a Eboli, dove la strada e il treno abbandonano la costa di Salerno e il mare, e si addentrano nelle desolate terre di Lucania.
Le desolate terre di Lucania, oggi Basilicata, dove una possibile etimologia di Lucania è dal latino ‘lucus’ ovvero bosco sacro: ma dei boschi non v’è rimasta traccia, né oggi, né ottantasei anni fa quando Levi era lì.
Laureato in medicina, Levi non aveva mai esercitato prima di arrivare ad Aliano/Gagliano.
Però, mi colpisce sopra ogni altro aspetto come io sia potuto arrivare solo ora a leggere questo libro così celebre, così bello struggente affascinante e importante, questo incantevole incontro di due civiltà molto diverse. Su questo mi interrogo e qualche piccola risposta ho trovato, ma non ancora abbastanza convincente.
Tanti i momenti narrati che varrebbe la pena ricordare, introducendo ciascuno con un “su tutti…”. Ma come si fa? Come si fa a trovare più pregnante Giulia che la sera non mette fuori la spazzatura per non irritare gli angeli più del sanaporcelle, o il prefetto don Luigino più dei due medici curaciucci del paese, il mondo magico più di quello stregonesco, il cane Barone o la masnada di cuccioli d’uomo che lo segue nell’escursioni pittoriche?
Lea Massari interpreta la sorella Luisa che arriva per una breve visita.
Anche perché Levi racconta tutto con un afflato che abbraccia e conquista, con una tavolozza di toni e colori pastosi e struggenti
Qualcuno può trovare difficile credere che nel 1935 esistesse un’Italia come quella descritta da Levi perché appare così arretrata e primordiale. Ma di questione meridionale si comincia a parlare in un periodo della storia italiana molto antecedente a quello descritto da Levi.
Non so se la sua “cura” sia quella giusta, ho qualche dubbio che il “comune rurale autonomo” fosse (sia?) la soluzione. Ma ho meno dubbi che su quella antica problematica questo libro sia una pietra miliare.
Un po’ perché la guerra in Africa sembrava arridere all’Italia fascista, e l’Impero era salito sui colli di Roma, un po’ per buona condotta, la condanna al confino di Carlo Levi fu abbreviata, e dopo un anno di vita sotterranea il nostro tornò a riveder le stelle.
Il film di Franco Rosi, pur non appartenendo più al suo periodo di maggior potenza – e penso a I magliari, al Salvatore Giuliano, a Mani sulla città, è comunque bello e interessante, e se ha un qualche senso, rispettoso e fedele, illuminato dalla magistrale interpretazione di Gian Maria Volonté, s’accende ancor di più quando, purtroppo per poche scene, sullo schermo compare anche Lea Massari.
Sono passati molti anni, pieni di guerre, e di quello che si usa chiamare la Storia. Spinto qua e là alla ventura, non ho potuto finora mantenere la promessa fatta, lasciandoli, ai miei contadini, di tornare fra loro, e non so davvero se e quando potrò mai mantenerla. Ma, chiuso in una stanza, e in un mondo chiuso, mi è grato riandare con la memoria a quell’altro mondo, serrato nel dolore e negli usi, negato alla Storia e allo Stato, eternamente paziente; a quella mia terra senza conforto e dolcezza, dove il contadino vive, nella miseria e nella lontananza, la sua immobile civiltà, su un suolo arido, nella presenza della morte..
Gian Maria Volonté è Carlo Levi, qui insieme al cane Barone.
Romanzo autobiografico, memoir, diario, e a tratti saggio tra lo storico l’etnologico, l’antropologico e il sociologico, Carlo Levi lo scrisse una decina di anni dopo l’esperienza che racconta e, tra i tanti aspetti, mi ha colpito la lucidità di memoria, non tanto nella cronologia – ché sembra ricordare gli avvenimenti di ogni giorno come se fossero appena accaduti – quanto nel vigore di dettagli e particolari.
Mi ha colpito anche come la pena del confino, almeno nel suo caso, si sia dimostrata ‘morbida’, non esageratamente punitiva e restrittiva, come verrebbe d’aspettarsi: l’esperienza che Levi racconta è per molti versi “felice”, senz’altro positiva. Anche se forse questo aspetto deve molto al carattere di Levi che sembra dotato di una predisposizione particolarmente “buona”, aperta, curiosa, accogliente.
Altro elemento da rilevare è come le spese di questo soggiorno obbligato fossero a carico del confinato, che doveva non solo provvedere di tasca propria, ma anche adoperarsi a trovare l’alloggio.
Irene Papas è Giulia, la donna che si occupa della casa e dei pasti del dottore.
Cristo si è davvero fermato a Eboli, dove la strada e il treno abbandonano la costa di Salerno e il mare, e si addentrano nelle desolate terre di Lucania.
Le desolate terre di Lucania, oggi Basilicata, dove una possibile etimologia di Lucania è dal latino ‘lucus’ ovvero bosco sacro: ma dei boschi non v’è rimasta traccia, né oggi, né ottantasei anni fa quando Levi era lì.
Laureato in medicina, Levi non aveva mai esercitato prima di arrivare ad Aliano/Gagliano.
Però, mi colpisce sopra ogni altro aspetto come io sia potuto arrivare solo ora a leggere questo libro così celebre, così bello struggente affascinante e importante, questo incantevole incontro di due civiltà molto diverse. Su questo mi interrogo e qualche piccola risposta ho trovato, ma non ancora abbastanza convincente.
Tanti i momenti narrati che varrebbe la pena ricordare, introducendo ciascuno con un “su tutti…”. Ma come si fa? Come si fa a trovare più pregnante Giulia che la sera non mette fuori la spazzatura per non irritare gli angeli più del sanaporcelle, o il prefetto don Luigino più dei due medici curaciucci del paese, il mondo magico più di quello stregonesco, il cane Barone o la masnada di cuccioli d’uomo che lo segue nell’escursioni pittoriche?
Lea Massari interpreta la sorella Luisa che arriva per una breve visita.
Anche perché Levi racconta tutto con un afflato che abbraccia e conquista, con una tavolozza di toni e colori pastosi e struggenti
Qualcuno può trovare difficile credere che nel 1935 esistesse un’Italia come quella descritta da Levi perché appare così arretrata e primordiale. Ma di questione meridionale si comincia a parlare in un periodo della storia italiana molto antecedente a quello descritto da Levi.
Non so se la sua “cura” sia quella giusta, ho qualche dubbio che il “comune rurale autonomo” fosse (sia?) la soluzione. Ma ho meno dubbi che su quella antica problematica questo libro sia una pietra miliare.
Un po’ perché la guerra in Africa sembrava arridere all’Italia fascista, e l’Impero era salito sui colli di Roma, un po’ per buona condotta, la condanna al confino di Carlo Levi fu abbreviata, e dopo un anno di vita sotterranea il nostro tornò a riveder le stelle.
Il film di Franco Rosi, pur non appartenendo più al suo periodo di maggior potenza – e penso a I magliari, al Salvatore Giuliano, a Mani sulla città, è comunque bello e interessante, e se ha un qualche senso, rispettoso e fedele, illuminato dalla magistrale interpretazione di Gian Maria Volonté, s’accende ancor di più quando, purtroppo per poche scene, sullo schermo compare anche Lea Massari.
May 14, 2021
In Mussolini's Italy it was usual to exile political dissidents to remote impoverished villages in the south. This was the fate of Carlo Levi, a Jewish intellectual who had trained to be a doctor but wanted to be a painter. The irony is, what was supposed to be a punishment turned out to be the gift which has made him known to the world.
Levi was exiled to Aliano (named Gagliano in the book) in Basilicata. He had three advantages where winning over the peasants was concerned: he was a trained doctor in a town where the two doctors were corrupt and inept, he painted outdoors which provided some theatre to the residents, especially the children and he had a charismatic dog. Although he had decided never to practice medicine very soon he was inundated with medical requests from the residents. Clearly, Levi was a very kind and generous man and he answered every call. Thus he was quickly trusted and admired by the peasants.
Living in a village you see a society in its entirety; the entire power structure from the top to bottom. (It occurred to me what a boon it would be to live in such an eloquent microcosm of society for a novelist.) Thus Levi was quickly able to identify how corrupt and inept was virtually every state official. The land is arid, hostile to farming, and malaria is rampant. These people have no prospects whatsoever. The state nevertheless collects crippling taxes from them - in the form of a laughably absurd "goat tax". More or less every representative of the state is corrupt and adopts the superior airs of conqueror as if the village is an occupied colony inhabited by an inferior race.
It's Levi's empathy with the poorest residents that makes this such a compelling book. He is interested in their stories and lives. He accepts all their superstitions, their belief in witchcraft and magical creatures. And he describes their rituals and hardships with lucid prose which brings the town vividly and memorably to life. This could be a tiresome political polemic in lesser hands but what it ends up being is a moving testament to the beauty of the human spirit. At the end I felt his deep stirring sad reluctance to leave the town and the people with whom he had shared such a thought provoking intimacy.
Levi was exiled to Aliano (named Gagliano in the book) in Basilicata. He had three advantages where winning over the peasants was concerned: he was a trained doctor in a town where the two doctors were corrupt and inept, he painted outdoors which provided some theatre to the residents, especially the children and he had a charismatic dog. Although he had decided never to practice medicine very soon he was inundated with medical requests from the residents. Clearly, Levi was a very kind and generous man and he answered every call. Thus he was quickly trusted and admired by the peasants.
Living in a village you see a society in its entirety; the entire power structure from the top to bottom. (It occurred to me what a boon it would be to live in such an eloquent microcosm of society for a novelist.) Thus Levi was quickly able to identify how corrupt and inept was virtually every state official. The land is arid, hostile to farming, and malaria is rampant. These people have no prospects whatsoever. The state nevertheless collects crippling taxes from them - in the form of a laughably absurd "goat tax". More or less every representative of the state is corrupt and adopts the superior airs of conqueror as if the village is an occupied colony inhabited by an inferior race.
It's Levi's empathy with the poorest residents that makes this such a compelling book. He is interested in their stories and lives. He accepts all their superstitions, their belief in witchcraft and magical creatures. And he describes their rituals and hardships with lucid prose which brings the town vividly and memorably to life. This could be a tiresome political polemic in lesser hands but what it ends up being is a moving testament to the beauty of the human spirit. At the end I felt his deep stirring sad reluctance to leave the town and the people with whom he had shared such a thought provoking intimacy.
July 15, 2024
'In spite of my work and all that I had to do about the house, the days went by with the most dismal monotony, in this deathlike existence, where there was neither time, nor love, nor liberty'
Utterly fascinating and starkly beautiful memoir (which has elements of fiction, ethnography and travelogue) that looks at a forgotten hinterlands region of southern Italy during the fascist 30s. This book is rife with poverty. Period. To be honest, there were times when I thought I was reading a book about medieval times. Some things didn't surprise me, like the barren and desolate landscapes 'infinate wastes of white clay with no signs of human life shimmered in the sunlight as far as the eye could see', malaria-ridden hovels, superstitious peasants, half-naked children trying to ride goats like they were horses, whilst witches 'she was exactly the sort one might expect to see fly away on a broomstick at any moment', love potions, hidden treasure, and a public toilet block built like a monument I wasn't expecting 'what strange circumstances, what magician or fairy had borne this marvelous object through the air from the faraway North and let it fall like a meteorite directly in the middle of this village square'
Whilst Carlo Levi shares a lot in common with Cesare Pavese (both lived in Turin, both banished to the south for anti-facist activities), the writer this reminded me the of most was fellow Italian Curzio Malaparte, in regards to the stunning descriptive writing and the innovative way of using fact with fiction. Some of the passages simply took my breath away. So much I could touch on here, especially the peasant women and their philters, so I might expand on things later.
A truly great work in my eyes. 5/5
July 28, 2021
When Life Gives You Lemons…
The Arum Lily sends up its menacing red ‘Lords and Lilies’ flowers only after all its leaves have died. The more delicate Ithuriel’s Spear does the same with its pale blue Mogen David’s. Some things appear dead when they are most alive. Perhaps because I read Christ Stopped at Eboli in my garden, I find a similar pattern in its subtle structure.
When Levi arrives in the village of Gagliano (Aliano), after having been incarcerated and then judicially exiled in another remote Southern Italian place, he is understandably depressed. The sharply eroded slopes and ravines of white clay support little vegetation. The village is crushingly poor, the only real connection to the rest of the world (aside from the barracks of the fascist-led carabinieri) is the post office. The place it seems survives solely on the intensity of the universal hatred of each of the inhabitants for every other. “Here they had hated each other for centuries and would go on hating, among the same houses, before the same white stones of the Basento Valley and the same caves of Irsina.”
The prospect of spending three years in such desolation is harrowing. To escape the unremitting sun reflected off the white clay and the equally unremitting sight of the squalor and emotional force of the enmity, Levi takes refuge in a newly dug grave in which he can read and rest in relative comfort. It is here in the story, and through his conversations with the ancient gravedigger, that the tone of his writing shifts. He has an epiphany about these country people, these pagani, that is touching but unsentimental:
Levi has found something more than a physical and cultural wasteland in Gagliano. And something more than an example of repressive 1930’s fascism. The national politics and violence (the war in Ethiopia had just begun) that had been his main concerns are relativised amidst these people. He does not romanticise their suffering but he does understand what it takes to endure it. They, the pagans, don’t have the capacity to articulate what they experience; he does.
Looking at the village via Google Earth today, it seems a rather pleasant place. Not as prosperous as a hilltop village the South of France but certainly quaint and somewhat charming. One has to conclude that the populace is significantly better off than their forebears were eight decades ago. The leaves, like everything else then, were certainly desiccated and brown, much like my Arums and Spears. But now, if not particularly flowery, the place seems at least habitable. Perhaps Levi anticipated that kind of transformation as he became aware of these people as fellow human beings.
As I mentioned, my garden does exercise a substantial influence on my life - for better and worse. All fanciful judgments are mine, however, not the plants’.
The Arum Lily sends up its menacing red ‘Lords and Lilies’ flowers only after all its leaves have died. The more delicate Ithuriel’s Spear does the same with its pale blue Mogen David’s. Some things appear dead when they are most alive. Perhaps because I read Christ Stopped at Eboli in my garden, I find a similar pattern in its subtle structure.
When Levi arrives in the village of Gagliano (Aliano), after having been incarcerated and then judicially exiled in another remote Southern Italian place, he is understandably depressed. The sharply eroded slopes and ravines of white clay support little vegetation. The village is crushingly poor, the only real connection to the rest of the world (aside from the barracks of the fascist-led carabinieri) is the post office. The place it seems survives solely on the intensity of the universal hatred of each of the inhabitants for every other. “Here they had hated each other for centuries and would go on hating, among the same houses, before the same white stones of the Basento Valley and the same caves of Irsina.”
The prospect of spending three years in such desolation is harrowing. To escape the unremitting sun reflected off the white clay and the equally unremitting sight of the squalor and emotional force of the enmity, Levi takes refuge in a newly dug grave in which he can read and rest in relative comfort. It is here in the story, and through his conversations with the ancient gravedigger, that the tone of his writing shifts. He has an epiphany about these country people, these pagani, that is touching but unsentimental:
“They can not have even an awareness of themselves as individuals, here where all things are held together by acting upon one another and each one is a power unto itself, working imperceptibly, where there is no barrier that can not be broken down by magic. They live submerged in a world that rolls on independent of their will, where man is in no way separate from his sun, his beast, his malaria, where there can be neither happiness, as literary devotees of the land conceive it, nor hope, because these two are adjuncts of personality and here there is only the grim passivity of a sorrowful Nature. But they have a lively human feeling for the common fate of mankind and its common acceptance. This is strictly a feeling rather than an act of will; they do not express it in words but they carry it with them at every moment and in every motion of their lives, through all the unbroken days that pass over these wastes.”
Levi has found something more than a physical and cultural wasteland in Gagliano. And something more than an example of repressive 1930’s fascism. The national politics and violence (the war in Ethiopia had just begun) that had been his main concerns are relativised amidst these people. He does not romanticise their suffering but he does understand what it takes to endure it. They, the pagans, don’t have the capacity to articulate what they experience; he does.
Looking at the village via Google Earth today, it seems a rather pleasant place. Not as prosperous as a hilltop village the South of France but certainly quaint and somewhat charming. One has to conclude that the populace is significantly better off than their forebears were eight decades ago. The leaves, like everything else then, were certainly desiccated and brown, much like my Arums and Spears. But now, if not particularly flowery, the place seems at least habitable. Perhaps Levi anticipated that kind of transformation as he became aware of these people as fellow human beings.
As I mentioned, my garden does exercise a substantial influence on my life - for better and worse. All fanciful judgments are mine, however, not the plants’.
July 14, 2023
Christ stopped at Eboli but I stopped at page 97. It was sooooo boring.
Goodreads is great for finding like-minded grouches willing to trash an adored work of world literature such as this, and I resorted to reading two & one star reviews. This stiffened my resolve to jack in all this tiresome moaning and groaning from this so superior gentleman exiled to the back of beyond in Southern Italy in the mid 1930s to live with filthy toothless peasants. But not before I skipped forward and read chapter 16. Ah, chapter 16. Check this out – this guy is a doctor and in his spare time he does some painting, like they used to do. His housekeeper (even exiles get a house and a housekeeper) is a woman named Giulia and he thinks she will be an excellent subject for a portrait but she won’t pose for him. She thinks if he makes an image of her he will by magic gain power over her and be able to cast spells on her.
I realised that in order to overcome her scruples I should have to make use of a magic even stronger than fear, an irresistible power, namely violence. I threatened, therefore to beat her and made as if to do so; in fact I actually started… as soon as she saw my raised hand and felt the first blow, Giulia’s face filled with joy and she smiled beatifically…just as I imagined, she knew no greater happiness than that of being dominated
So he has no trouble from her after that. This might be a useful tip for all you amateur painters.
Stuff this book.
Goodreads is great for finding like-minded grouches willing to trash an adored work of world literature such as this, and I resorted to reading two & one star reviews. This stiffened my resolve to jack in all this tiresome moaning and groaning from this so superior gentleman exiled to the back of beyond in Southern Italy in the mid 1930s to live with filthy toothless peasants. But not before I skipped forward and read chapter 16. Ah, chapter 16. Check this out – this guy is a doctor and in his spare time he does some painting, like they used to do. His housekeeper (even exiles get a house and a housekeeper) is a woman named Giulia and he thinks she will be an excellent subject for a portrait but she won’t pose for him. She thinks if he makes an image of her he will by magic gain power over her and be able to cast spells on her.
I realised that in order to overcome her scruples I should have to make use of a magic even stronger than fear, an irresistible power, namely violence. I threatened, therefore to beat her and made as if to do so; in fact I actually started… as soon as she saw my raised hand and felt the first blow, Giulia’s face filled with joy and she smiled beatifically…just as I imagined, she knew no greater happiness than that of being dominated
So he has no trouble from her after that. This might be a useful tip for all you amateur painters.
Stuff this book.
April 4, 2019
Provarono a farmi leggere questo libro a scuola, poco più che adolescente, a me figlia di lucani emigrati e dal cuore lucano io stessa.
Non ci riuscirono per il semplice motivo che quei luoghi erano così vicini alla mia realtà di allora che pensavo niente potesse aggiungersi ad essa: era mia, punto.
Ricordavo bene le albe delle partenze, le stazioncine deserte, lo sferragliare delle rotaie, le littorine, i monti, le gallerie le panche nude, i fagotti di mia madre, i fratelli, l'odore di fumo e me che fantasticavo guardando fuori dal finestrino. Conoscevo già le persone di cui il libro parlava, i loro volti avvizziti e affaticati, gli sguardi scuri, le streghe e le 'case del vino' dove accompagnavo papà invalido a giocare e bere. Conoscevo tutto il contenuto del libro, pensavo. Non era vero.
Solo, ero semplice e giovane e della 'questione meridionale' non potevo sapere, anche se la vivevo già sulla mia pelle di figlia di coloro che quella 'questione' l'avevano sofferta.
E dunque leggo il libro, grazie al mio GdL di riferimento...ed è stato bellissimo, voltarmi indietro e ritrovare tutto.
Il protagonista, Carlo Levi, ha il volto di Gian Maria Volontè.
Volontè ha reso benissimo la pacatezza, la remissività solo fisica, la condizione di confinato, la capacità di aprirsi alla nuova realtà lucana (che, vi assicuro, non è facile oggi figurarsi negli anni '30) di chi il libro lo ha 'vissuto'.
Il suo sguardo mi riporta i luoghi, me li pennella così come sono: crudi, aspri e violenti nella loro immutabilità anche se i contorni sono teneri e comprensivi.
Lui, Carlo Levi, osserva e comprende. Noi lucani così chiusi, così ignoranti, così diffidenti, così rassegnati alla vita stessa!
Ci sono pagine memorabili secondo me, da rileggere, perché di tutto ha scritto: del prete, del podestà, dei luoghi certo, ma soprattutto delle donne, degli uomini, dei bambini e del loro 'sentire', del loro quotidiano e del proprio, del loro aver accolto lui, esiliato e non 'amato da Roma' , 'Roma' detentrice del potere, entità vessatrice e astratta.
E in queste pagine soprattutto v'è Carlo-uomo: antifascista, medico, pittore, stregone, storico e sociologo, figlio provvisorio di una madre dura, la terra lucana insegnante e a volte carnefice.
Non ci riuscirono per il semplice motivo che quei luoghi erano così vicini alla mia realtà di allora che pensavo niente potesse aggiungersi ad essa: era mia, punto.
Ricordavo bene le albe delle partenze, le stazioncine deserte, lo sferragliare delle rotaie, le littorine, i monti, le gallerie le panche nude, i fagotti di mia madre, i fratelli, l'odore di fumo e me che fantasticavo guardando fuori dal finestrino. Conoscevo già le persone di cui il libro parlava, i loro volti avvizziti e affaticati, gli sguardi scuri, le streghe e le 'case del vino' dove accompagnavo papà invalido a giocare e bere. Conoscevo tutto il contenuto del libro, pensavo. Non era vero.
Solo, ero semplice e giovane e della 'questione meridionale' non potevo sapere, anche se la vivevo già sulla mia pelle di figlia di coloro che quella 'questione' l'avevano sofferta.
E dunque leggo il libro, grazie al mio GdL di riferimento...ed è stato bellissimo, voltarmi indietro e ritrovare tutto.
Il protagonista, Carlo Levi, ha il volto di Gian Maria Volontè.
Volontè ha reso benissimo la pacatezza, la remissività solo fisica, la condizione di confinato, la capacità di aprirsi alla nuova realtà lucana (che, vi assicuro, non è facile oggi figurarsi negli anni '30) di chi il libro lo ha 'vissuto'.
Il suo sguardo mi riporta i luoghi, me li pennella così come sono: crudi, aspri e violenti nella loro immutabilità anche se i contorni sono teneri e comprensivi.
Lui, Carlo Levi, osserva e comprende. Noi lucani così chiusi, così ignoranti, così diffidenti, così rassegnati alla vita stessa!
Ci sono pagine memorabili secondo me, da rileggere, perché di tutto ha scritto: del prete, del podestà, dei luoghi certo, ma soprattutto delle donne, degli uomini, dei bambini e del loro 'sentire', del loro quotidiano e del proprio, del loro aver accolto lui, esiliato e non 'amato da Roma' , 'Roma' detentrice del potere, entità vessatrice e astratta.
E in queste pagine soprattutto v'è Carlo-uomo: antifascista, medico, pittore, stregone, storico e sociologo, figlio provvisorio di una madre dura, la terra lucana insegnante e a volte carnefice.
January 16, 2008
You know how once in a while you run into a book that's so good you don't want it to end, so you draw read it very slowly, drawing it out? For me, this was one of those books.
Christ Stopped at Eboli is the story of Levi's year living in Basilicata, in the south of Italy, where Mussolini exiled him for anti-Fascist activities. Levi, who was a doctor by training but a painter by trade, lived among a population mostly composed of peasants, along with a few run-of-the-mill bureaucrats. The book is a bit hard to classify -- it's part memoir, part political tract, part character study, but it's exquisitely written, especially when Levi is describing the peasants among whose company he spent a year. One passage, describing his housekeeper, Giulia:
"Giulia was a tall and shapely woman with a waist as slender as that of an amphora between her well-developed chest and hips. In her youth she must have had a solemn and barbaric beauty. Her face was wrinkled with age and yellowed by malaria, but there were traces of former charm in its sharp, straight lines, like those of a classical temple which has lost the marbles that adorned it but kept its shape and proportions. A small head, in the shape of a lengthened oval, covered with a veil, rose above her impressively large and erect body, which breathed an animal vigor . . . . Her face as a whole had a strongly archaic character, not classical in the Greek or Roman sense, but stemming from an antiquity more mysterious and more cruel which had sprung always from the same ground, and which was unrelated to man, but linked with the soil and its everlasting animal deities. There were mingled in it cold sensuality, hidden irony, natural cruelty, impenetrable ill-humor and an immense passive power, all these bound together in a stern, intelligent and malicious expression."
(Tip of the hat, of course, to the translator, Frances Frenaye.)
The book has been criticized by some for portraying the peasants as ignorant, pitiable simpletons. I don't agree with the characterization at all. Levi doesn't romanticize or patronize them, certainly, but I saw nothing arrogant or condescending in his portrayal.
I usually avoid books in translation -- a friend of mine once likened reading translations to having sex with a condom -- but I'm going out to buy this one tomorrow so I can read it again (mine was a library copy).
Christ Stopped at Eboli is the story of Levi's year living in Basilicata, in the south of Italy, where Mussolini exiled him for anti-Fascist activities. Levi, who was a doctor by training but a painter by trade, lived among a population mostly composed of peasants, along with a few run-of-the-mill bureaucrats. The book is a bit hard to classify -- it's part memoir, part political tract, part character study, but it's exquisitely written, especially when Levi is describing the peasants among whose company he spent a year. One passage, describing his housekeeper, Giulia:
"Giulia was a tall and shapely woman with a waist as slender as that of an amphora between her well-developed chest and hips. In her youth she must have had a solemn and barbaric beauty. Her face was wrinkled with age and yellowed by malaria, but there were traces of former charm in its sharp, straight lines, like those of a classical temple which has lost the marbles that adorned it but kept its shape and proportions. A small head, in the shape of a lengthened oval, covered with a veil, rose above her impressively large and erect body, which breathed an animal vigor . . . . Her face as a whole had a strongly archaic character, not classical in the Greek or Roman sense, but stemming from an antiquity more mysterious and more cruel which had sprung always from the same ground, and which was unrelated to man, but linked with the soil and its everlasting animal deities. There were mingled in it cold sensuality, hidden irony, natural cruelty, impenetrable ill-humor and an immense passive power, all these bound together in a stern, intelligent and malicious expression."
(Tip of the hat, of course, to the translator, Frances Frenaye.)
The book has been criticized by some for portraying the peasants as ignorant, pitiable simpletons. I don't agree with the characterization at all. Levi doesn't romanticize or patronize them, certainly, but I saw nothing arrogant or condescending in his portrayal.
I usually avoid books in translation -- a friend of mine once likened reading translations to having sex with a condom -- but I'm going out to buy this one tomorrow so I can read it again (mine was a library copy).
June 10, 2018
569. Cristo si è fermato a Eboli = Christ Stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi
Christ Stopped at Eboli (Italian: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli) is a memoir by Carlo Levi, published in 1945, giving an account of his exile from 1935-1936 to Grassano and Aliano, remote towns in southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is known today as Basilicata. In the book he gives Aliano the invented name 'Gagliano'. The title of the book comes from an expression by the people of 'Gagliano' who say of themselves, 'Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli' which means, in effect, that they feel they have been bypassed by Christianity, by morality, by history itself—that they have somehow been excluded from the full human experience. Levi explained that Eboli, a location in the region of Campania to the west near the seacoast, is where the road and railway to Basilicata branched away from the coastal north-south routes. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: بیست و پنجم ماه دسامبر سال 2011 میلادی
عنوان: مسیح هرگز به اینجا نرسید؛ نویسنده: کارلو لوی (له وی)؛ مترجم: محمدحسین رمضان کیایی؛ تهران، شهر کتاب، هرمس؛ 1383؛ در 283 ص؛ شابک: ایکس - 964363020؛ چاپ دوم 1389؛ شابک: 9789643630201؛ موضوع: آداب و رسوم زندگی ایتالیائی - خاطرات کارلو لوی - از سال 1902 میلادی تا سال 1975 میلادی - سده 20 م
آنها میگویند: «ما مسیحی نیستم. مسیح در ابولی متوقف ماند.» مسیحی در زبان آنها یعنی آدمیزاد، و جمله ی ضرب المثل گونه ای را که بارها شنیده ام تکرار میکنند، که شاید چیزی بیش از بیان یک احساس ناامیدانه ی ناشی از حقارت نیست. «ما مسیحی نیستم، آدم نیستم، آدم به حساب نیامدیم، بلکه حیوان، حیوان بارکش، و حتی بدتر از حیواناتیم.» لوی در این کتاب، با زبانی روان، و گاه طنزآمیز، به شیوه خاطره نگاری، و با جهشهای زمانی، بدون تقدم و تاخر وقایع، داستان خود را به پیش میبرد، و فضای نه چندان بانشاط روستای عقب مانده را، به شیوایی و با جذابیت وصف میکند. از این اثر، اقتباس سینمایی معروفی نیز انجام گرفته، که در کشور ما با عنوان: «مسیح هرگز به ابولی نیامد»، یا «دیار فراموش شده»، به نمایش درآمد. داستان درباره ی اقامت یک پزشک تبعیدی، در روستایی دورافتاده، به نام «گالیانو»، در جنوب ایتالیا ست. «لوی»، پزشک و نقّاشی بوده، ساکن نواحی شمال ایتالیا، که در آن زمان، به دلایل سیاسی، به نواحی جنوبی تبعید میشود. نخست به روستایی به نام «گراسّانو»، و سپس به «گالیانو»، در همان حوالی روستایی به نام «ابولی»، که ساکنانش از ظلم و ستم و محرومیت، رنج میبرند، میرود. پزشک با ورود به این روستا، با ماجراهای مختلفی مواجه میشود. کتاب در واقع یکجور وقایع نگاری ست از دوران تبعید یک پزشک، بین سالهای 1937 میلادی تا سال 1935 میلادی، در جنوب ایتالیا، در روزهای حکومت موسولینی، و حاکمیت فاشیسم، میگذرد. ترجمه ی تخت اللفظی عنوان اصلی کتاب: «مسیح در ابولی متوقف ماند» است. و کتاب انگار با همین عنوان شناخته شده تر باشد. ا. شربیانی
Christ Stopped at Eboli (Italian: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli) is a memoir by Carlo Levi, published in 1945, giving an account of his exile from 1935-1936 to Grassano and Aliano, remote towns in southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is known today as Basilicata. In the book he gives Aliano the invented name 'Gagliano'. The title of the book comes from an expression by the people of 'Gagliano' who say of themselves, 'Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli' which means, in effect, that they feel they have been bypassed by Christianity, by morality, by history itself—that they have somehow been excluded from the full human experience. Levi explained that Eboli, a location in the region of Campania to the west near the seacoast, is where the road and railway to Basilicata branched away from the coastal north-south routes. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: بیست و پنجم ماه دسامبر سال 2011 میلادی
عنوان: مسیح هرگز به اینجا نرسید؛ نویسنده: کارلو لوی (له وی)؛ مترجم: محمدحسین رمضان کیایی؛ تهران، شهر کتاب، هرمس؛ 1383؛ در 283 ص؛ شابک: ایکس - 964363020؛ چاپ دوم 1389؛ شابک: 9789643630201؛ موضوع: آداب و رسوم زندگی ایتالیائی - خاطرات کارلو لوی - از سال 1902 میلادی تا سال 1975 میلادی - سده 20 م
آنها میگویند: «ما مسیحی نیستم. مسیح در ابولی متوقف ماند.» مسیحی در زبان آنها یعنی آدمیزاد، و جمله ی ضرب المثل گونه ای را که بارها شنیده ام تکرار میکنند، که شاید چیزی بیش از بیان یک احساس ناامیدانه ی ناشی از حقارت نیست. «ما مسیحی نیستم، آدم نیستم، آدم به حساب نیامدیم، بلکه حیوان، حیوان بارکش، و حتی بدتر از حیواناتیم.» لوی در این کتاب، با زبانی روان، و گاه طنزآمیز، به شیوه خاطره نگاری، و با جهشهای زمانی، بدون تقدم و تاخر وقایع، داستان خود را به پیش میبرد، و فضای نه چندان بانشاط روستای عقب مانده را، به شیوایی و با جذابیت وصف میکند. از این اثر، اقتباس سینمایی معروفی نیز انجام گرفته، که در کشور ما با عنوان: «مسیح هرگز به ابولی نیامد»، یا «دیار فراموش شده»، به نمایش درآمد. داستان درباره ی اقامت یک پزشک تبعیدی، در روستایی دورافتاده، به نام «گالیانو»، در جنوب ایتالیا ست. «لوی»، پزشک و نقّاشی بوده، ساکن نواحی شمال ایتالیا، که در آن زمان، به دلایل سیاسی، به نواحی جنوبی تبعید میشود. نخست به روستایی به نام «گراسّانو»، و سپس به «گالیانو»، در همان حوالی روستایی به نام «ابولی»، که ساکنانش از ظلم و ستم و محرومیت، رنج میبرند، میرود. پزشک با ورود به این روستا، با ماجراهای مختلفی مواجه میشود. کتاب در واقع یکجور وقایع نگاری ست از دوران تبعید یک پزشک، بین سالهای 1937 میلادی تا سال 1935 میلادی، در جنوب ایتالیا، در روزهای حکومت موسولینی، و حاکمیت فاشیسم، میگذرد. ترجمه ی تخت اللفظی عنوان اصلی کتاب: «مسیح در ابولی متوقف ماند» است. و کتاب انگار با همین عنوان شناخته شده تر باشد. ا. شربیانی
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April 7, 2021Christ stopped at Eboli, down on the coast, so up the in the hills the world remains pre-Christian. This is the author's account of life in one of those hill villages while in internal exile under the fascists.
Levi presents most of the villagers as being so isolated from the mainstream of Italian culture that they have a pre-christian or pagan mentality or weltanschauung. For example at Christmas the poor people give presents to the rich - unlike in the Bible story were the Kings give presents to the carpenter's son - hence the title of the book. In his view they respect violence - only after he strikes his servant does she consent to have her portrait painted, yet these isolated, ancient people are also modern world travellers some have been to America and returned.
He comes to see these people as the aboriginal inhabitants of Italy crushed down by the weight by a series of alien regimes from the Romans onwards to the modern Italian state who impose themselves upon the these farmers who live in material poverty, at the same time some villagers escape to America where, whenever they can they get together and go out to the countryside and round a quiet tree have a good shit just like they did at home. A curious book.
Levi presents most of the villagers as being so isolated from the mainstream of Italian culture that they have a pre-christian or pagan mentality or weltanschauung. For example at Christmas the poor people give presents to the rich - unlike in the Bible story were the Kings give presents to the carpenter's son - hence the title of the book. In his view they respect violence - only after he strikes his servant does she consent to have her portrait painted, yet these isolated, ancient people are also modern world travellers some have been to America and returned.
He comes to see these people as the aboriginal inhabitants of Italy crushed down by the weight by a series of alien regimes from the Romans onwards to the modern Italian state who impose themselves upon the these farmers who live in material poverty, at the same time some villagers escape to America where, whenever they can they get together and go out to the countryside and round a quiet tree have a good shit just like they did at home. A curious book.
November 20, 2020
You can find sone more thoughts and comments on my youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Se...
Carlo Levi was sent in exile to a Southern Italian village (current name Aliano) in the mid 1930's as a political prisoner because of his anti-fascism. This book is his recollection of one of the three years he spent there.
The village is very small, isolated, and was ridden with misery and illness.
What could have been a dreadfully boring memoir becomes a beautiful, poetic work of art under the artistic sensitivity of Mr Levi's pen.
What gives the book a true soul, and really elevates it, is the deep, heartfelt sense of longing and love that Levi has for the people he lived with in this village, and in particular for the farmers.
He focuses on the misery of the farmers' condition, their fatalistic and pessimistic worldview, their stubborness, their eternal patience, their living untouched by history's grand schemes, and uncared for by the state, by anyone.
These farmers live in one-room houses, with their animals under their bed, and their infants hanging over their bed, in cribs. On the walls, each of them have two images: a black Holy Mary, and, fascinating fact, President Roosevelt. That's because "America", for many southern Italians in those times, was something like paradise. Some came back from America, only to live the rest of their lives in regret.
Being Italian, I'm amazed at having missed this book until now. Even at school, they didn't try to shove it down my throat as they often do in Italian schools (the BEST way to make you want to burn a book and go kill its author with your bare hands is to teach it at school. This trick really works wonders if delivered with a nasal voice, an under-average sensitivity, and a massive dose of stupidity).
Christianity had a very diluted flavor in these lands, that's why the farmers live with ancient pagan traditions that have nothing to do with christian religion, like magic potions, legends, in a world where people, animals and imagination are just one thing, and nothing is too complicated or dramatic, including death.
What Levi keeps hammering on is a sense of inevitable defeat of the farmer as a citizen of the state. He sees good people being exploited by whoever has money and power, and he says that the state should be a state for the farmers as well. All very well, although he often comes across as idealistic, too theoretical and naive, especially in his political reflections, articulated at the end of the book. Or perhaps he wasn't naive at all, and he was just painting himself as the man who loves the humble and defensless, since by the time he wrote this book he had already joined the Italian communist party, and he was later elected in the Senate. But my bet is, he was a rather idealistic man.
Now, what I REALLY saw through this book, I have to admit, was a priviledged member of the Italian society of the '30s (Levi's family was very wealthy), a good, well educated man with an artistic sensitivity, spending 3 years as the revered "smartest guy in the village", doing nothing but painting and reading, in sunny southern Italy. How's that for an alternative to prison? Where do I sign up?
On a more serious note, Levi's book is perhaps the only autobiographical book I've read where the author doesn't talk much about himself at all. Sure, a wise approach for a young politician, but also a breath of fresh air.
Recommended for readers who want to immerse themselves in the silence of a primitive, ancient reality that is light years from our neurotic lives of today, but at the same time feels more deeply authentic. For those farmers, and I guess for most farmers, life has always been stripped bare, to the bone. A white, shining bone that we 21st century soft and plump westerners often forget.
A hard-core experience to live through the eyes of an artistic outsider.
Carlo Levi was sent in exile to a Southern Italian village (current name Aliano) in the mid 1930's as a political prisoner because of his anti-fascism. This book is his recollection of one of the three years he spent there.
The village is very small, isolated, and was ridden with misery and illness.
What could have been a dreadfully boring memoir becomes a beautiful, poetic work of art under the artistic sensitivity of Mr Levi's pen.
What gives the book a true soul, and really elevates it, is the deep, heartfelt sense of longing and love that Levi has for the people he lived with in this village, and in particular for the farmers.
He focuses on the misery of the farmers' condition, their fatalistic and pessimistic worldview, their stubborness, their eternal patience, their living untouched by history's grand schemes, and uncared for by the state, by anyone.
These farmers live in one-room houses, with their animals under their bed, and their infants hanging over their bed, in cribs. On the walls, each of them have two images: a black Holy Mary, and, fascinating fact, President Roosevelt. That's because "America", for many southern Italians in those times, was something like paradise. Some came back from America, only to live the rest of their lives in regret.
Being Italian, I'm amazed at having missed this book until now. Even at school, they didn't try to shove it down my throat as they often do in Italian schools (the BEST way to make you want to burn a book and go kill its author with your bare hands is to teach it at school. This trick really works wonders if delivered with a nasal voice, an under-average sensitivity, and a massive dose of stupidity).
Christianity had a very diluted flavor in these lands, that's why the farmers live with ancient pagan traditions that have nothing to do with christian religion, like magic potions, legends, in a world where people, animals and imagination are just one thing, and nothing is too complicated or dramatic, including death.
What Levi keeps hammering on is a sense of inevitable defeat of the farmer as a citizen of the state. He sees good people being exploited by whoever has money and power, and he says that the state should be a state for the farmers as well. All very well, although he often comes across as idealistic, too theoretical and naive, especially in his political reflections, articulated at the end of the book. Or perhaps he wasn't naive at all, and he was just painting himself as the man who loves the humble and defensless, since by the time he wrote this book he had already joined the Italian communist party, and he was later elected in the Senate. But my bet is, he was a rather idealistic man.
Now, what I REALLY saw through this book, I have to admit, was a priviledged member of the Italian society of the '30s (Levi's family was very wealthy), a good, well educated man with an artistic sensitivity, spending 3 years as the revered "smartest guy in the village", doing nothing but painting and reading, in sunny southern Italy. How's that for an alternative to prison? Where do I sign up?
On a more serious note, Levi's book is perhaps the only autobiographical book I've read where the author doesn't talk much about himself at all. Sure, a wise approach for a young politician, but also a breath of fresh air.
Recommended for readers who want to immerse themselves in the silence of a primitive, ancient reality that is light years from our neurotic lives of today, but at the same time feels more deeply authentic. For those farmers, and I guess for most farmers, life has always been stripped bare, to the bone. A white, shining bone that we 21st century soft and plump westerners often forget.
A hard-core experience to live through the eyes of an artistic outsider.
November 4, 2017
I would have liked to meet Carlo Levi.
Despite being held a political prisoner in the blooming Fascism days of the mid-thirties Italy, he did not turn sour. At least not in his rendering of one year in one of the most rural areas of Italy.
Not that he in any way withheld his stand against Fascism and how the new “state religion” left its mark on the country, but he made a point of meeting friend and foe with an open mind.
Eboli, where once the train tracks parted, never to reach into the rural areas of the Catania region was the signal post, the sign that from there you are, more or less, on your own. Rome officials may be able to burden your life with taxation and regulations, but chances that they will turn up are slim.
Any development, except ill adapted agricultural plans, stop here. Time stands still and has done so since the Napoleonic Wars, with very few exceptions. The society is dependent on small scale business and goats, the soil so meagre it can hardly support any crops or cattle.
When taxes are due, there is no money and the taxman will have to make do with a goat or two.
Nevertheless, people are fatalistically happy. Like any village Gagliano has fractions, the poor, the really poor and the more well off.
Generations´ old wrongdoings and family feuds are kept alive, as are the beliefs of old, handily wrought into Catholicism.
This is the kind of place Carlo Levi is thrown into.
A village that welcomes the doctor/painter from the north, not paying much attention to his sentence, only remarking that “Someone in Rome must have it in for you”.
Carlo Levi describes the village and the villagers with much affection, seeing for himself how Rome has abandoned the south of Italy, deeming the people there primitive and inferior.
On a broader scale, there is no political influence to be gained, the area will stay underdeveloped, malaria ridden and only suitable for producing cannon fodder for the Abyssinian War – a war the southerners did not care much for anyway.
It is the day to day struggle that matters, and this is what Carlo Levi portrays in such a tender way.
I recommend this for a glimpse into an Italy not so long ago. It does not go into the atrocities of the Fascist regime under Mussolini, and it is not the intention of the book. It is a love letter to someone you deep down know you will never see again.
Despite being held a political prisoner in the blooming Fascism days of the mid-thirties Italy, he did not turn sour. At least not in his rendering of one year in one of the most rural areas of Italy.
Not that he in any way withheld his stand against Fascism and how the new “state religion” left its mark on the country, but he made a point of meeting friend and foe with an open mind.
Eboli, where once the train tracks parted, never to reach into the rural areas of the Catania region was the signal post, the sign that from there you are, more or less, on your own. Rome officials may be able to burden your life with taxation and regulations, but chances that they will turn up are slim.
Any development, except ill adapted agricultural plans, stop here. Time stands still and has done so since the Napoleonic Wars, with very few exceptions. The society is dependent on small scale business and goats, the soil so meagre it can hardly support any crops or cattle.
When taxes are due, there is no money and the taxman will have to make do with a goat or two.
Nevertheless, people are fatalistically happy. Like any village Gagliano has fractions, the poor, the really poor and the more well off.
Generations´ old wrongdoings and family feuds are kept alive, as are the beliefs of old, handily wrought into Catholicism.
This is the kind of place Carlo Levi is thrown into.
A village that welcomes the doctor/painter from the north, not paying much attention to his sentence, only remarking that “Someone in Rome must have it in for you”.
Carlo Levi describes the village and the villagers with much affection, seeing for himself how Rome has abandoned the south of Italy, deeming the people there primitive and inferior.
On a broader scale, there is no political influence to be gained, the area will stay underdeveloped, malaria ridden and only suitable for producing cannon fodder for the Abyssinian War – a war the southerners did not care much for anyway.
It is the day to day struggle that matters, and this is what Carlo Levi portrays in such a tender way.
I recommend this for a glimpse into an Italy not so long ago. It does not go into the atrocities of the Fascist regime under Mussolini, and it is not the intention of the book. It is a love letter to someone you deep down know you will never see again.
November 24, 2018
Πρόκειται για μία απομνημονευτική εμπειρία του Κάρλο Λέβι, όταν στα μέσα της δεκατίας του 1930 σε ένα απομακρυσμένο χωριό, στη Λουκανία της νότιας Ιταλίας, βρίσκεται εκτοπισμένος απο τη φασιστική κυβέρνηση, για απροσδιόριστα πολιτικά αδικήματα.
Το ξεχασμένο απο θεούς και ανθρώπους χωριό της εξορίας χαρακτηρίζεται απο ανυπέρβλητη φτώχεια, εξαθλίωση, άθλιες συνθήκες διαβίωσης, σκληρή αγροτική εργασία με μηδαμινό κέρδος, αρρώστειες και μια παθητική αίσθηση του «τίποτα» και του «ποτέ» να πλήττει παθολογικά τους κατοίκους.
Άνθρωποι και ζώα σε έναν απίστευτο συνδυασμό γείωσης ως καταβόθρα φορτίων με τη φύση και τη χέρσα έκταση της άνυδρης αντίστασης τους, βίωναν τους θεσμούς του κράτους ή της εκάστοτε κυβέρνησης με μια συνδυαστική κατάσταση:
Παθητικότητα, παραίτηση, απόλυτη αδιαφορία και εχθρότητα, όλα σε πλήρη και ισότιμη βάση.
Ο Χριστιανισμός ως θρησκεία δεν είχε διεισδύσει ακόμη στον μακρινό νότο της Ιταλίας.
Με απλά λόγια ο Χριστός σταμάτησε στο Έμπολι, μια πόλη βορειότερα και δεν προχώρησε παρακάτω. Επομένως, οι αγρότες του νότου ήταν ειδωλολάτρες με μια μοιραία δεσμευτική σχέση με τη δύναμη της φύσης παρά με τη θρησκεία.
Περιγραφή με πολλές επαναλήψεις και συγκεχυμένη καλλιτεχνική μεταφορά των τοπίων, των ανθρώπων, των συνθηκών και των προβλημάτων της ανθρωπότητας.
Έντονη απεικόνιση σχεδόν μνημειακή των αντιθέσεων ανάμεσα στον διάσημο ιστορικά, αναπτυγμένο, πλούσιο και απαθέστατο, χριστιανικό Βορρά και της παραμελημένης οπίσθιας όψης του.
Ήταν η άλλη πλευρά της Ιταλίας, η κατώτερη, η νότια.
Μια αφελής σαλάτα απο μαγεία, πνεύματα, θεοσοφία, πρωτόγονο χριστιανισμό, μυστικισμό, επιστήμη, ονειροκρίτες και προϊστορικά μέντιουμ, σε συνάρτηση με μία γραφή κάπως πεζή και ελαφρώς χονδροειδή, επέφερε την αναγνωστική κούραση και μια μικρή απογοήτευση ως προς
τον πεζογραφικό ρυθμό και την σθεναρή - άτυχη προσπάθεια να με ταξιδέψει στις μαύρες λίμνες της λογοτεχνίας.
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.
Το ξεχασμένο απο θεούς και ανθρώπους χωριό της εξορίας χαρακτηρίζεται απο ανυπέρβλητη φτώχεια, εξαθλίωση, άθλιες συνθήκες διαβίωσης, σκληρή αγροτική εργασία με μηδαμινό κέρδος, αρρώστειες και μια παθητική αίσθηση του «τίποτα» και του «ποτέ» να πλήττει παθολογικά τους κατοίκους.
Άνθρωποι και ζώα σε έναν απίστευτο συνδυασμό γείωσης ως καταβόθρα φορτίων με τη φύση και τη χέρσα έκταση της άνυδρης αντίστασης τους, βίωναν τους θεσμούς του κράτους ή της εκάστοτε κυβέρνησης με μια συνδυαστική κατάσταση:
Παθητικότητα, παραίτηση, απόλυτη αδιαφορία και εχθρότητα, όλα σε πλήρη και ισότιμη βάση.
Ο Χριστιανισμός ως θρησκεία δεν είχε διεισδύσει ακόμη στον μακρινό νότο της Ιταλίας.
Με απλά λόγια ο Χριστός σταμάτησε στο Έμπολι, μια πόλη βορειότερα και δεν προχώρησε παρακάτω. Επομένως, οι αγρότες του νότου ήταν ειδωλολάτρες με μια μοιραία δεσμευτική σχέση με τη δύναμη της φύσης παρά με τη θρησκεία.
Περιγραφή με πολλές επαναλήψεις και συγκεχυμένη καλλιτεχνική μεταφορά των τοπίων, των ανθρώπων, των συνθηκών και των προβλημάτων της ανθρωπότητας.
Έντονη απεικόνιση σχεδόν μνημειακή των αντιθέσεων ανάμεσα στον διάσημο ιστορικά, αναπτυγμένο, πλούσιο και απαθέστατο, χριστιανικό Βορρά και της παραμελημένης οπίσθιας όψης του.
Ήταν η άλλη πλευρά της Ιταλίας, η κατώτερη, η νότια.
Μια αφελής σαλάτα απο μαγεία, πνεύματα, θεοσοφία, πρωτόγονο χριστιανισμό, μυστικισμό, επιστήμη, ονειροκρίτες και προϊστορικά μέντιουμ, σε συνάρτηση με μία γραφή κάπως πεζή και ελαφρώς χονδροειδή, επέφερε την αναγνωστική κούραση και μια μικρή απογοήτευση ως προς
τον πεζογραφικό ρυθμό και την σθεναρή - άτυχη προσπάθεια να με ταξιδέψει στις μαύρες λίμνες της λογοτεχνίας.
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.
July 7, 2020
«Il futuro ha un cuore antico»
«I classici sono libri che quanto più si crede di conoscere per sentito dire, tanto più si trovano nuovi e inaspettati quando si leggono davvero.»
Italo Calvino
(Quasi cinque)
«I classici sono libri che quanto più si crede di conoscere per sentito dire, tanto più si trovano nuovi e inaspettati quando si leggono davvero.»
Italo Calvino
(Quasi cinque)
June 14, 2024
.........but he didn't stop the poverty
In a pre-Marley world, a young Italian doctor and artist with socialist ideas was exiled for three years to a remote southern Italian village by Mussolini's Fascist party. While it's not entirely clear where his money came from, he was allowed to keep a dog, have visitors and talk with the villagers freely. Because the two local doctors amounted to little more than antiquated quacks, Carlo Levi was pushed into practicing medicine. The sentence required that he not leave the village and that he find his own quarters. A dozen other exiles lived in the village, but contact among them was limited as well. That's how a liberal Jewish intellectual from Turino came to live among the peasants, petit bourgeoisie, and envy-wracked country gentry of Gagliano village in the mountains of what is today Italy's Basilicata region. Villages here, in the 1930s, lived a life far from any government assistance. Even Christ stopped (it was said) at Eboli, a town at the northern edge of the poverty-stricken region.
Levi writes brilliantly of life in the remote village---the discouraged priest, the Fascist mayor (who, though strict with the exiles, wants Levi's approval as a "man of culture"), the mayor's manipulative sister, the peasant women maids who worked for him---and the difficult lives they had, without any aid from the outside world. Levi paints a picture of a place tied to its past, with 19th century struggles between bandits (peasants) and the landowners only the last of the struggles. Outside occupiers had marched in and out for centuries, but for the most part, the peasants kept their heads down and worked in their malarial fields in the valley below. CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI evokes above all the world of the forgotten people of Italy, taxed, drafted into armies for wars they never understood, and then ignored. Rome gave them nothing, only sent tax collectors and imposed mayors who called useless meetings and gave fatuous speeches. But don't think that the peasants were unaware of the outside world. It was just that their ties with the wider world did not lie in Rome, but in the big city slums of America. A huge percent of the village men went off to America to labor, sent money and goods, and often never returned, leaving an equal number of women alone. The men who returned mostly plunged back into village life. When their foreign funds dried up, they became part of traditional life once more, not having changed dramatically in their foreign sojourn.
Levi writes of all this and a lot more. He created it on the basis of one year's stay, because he received an amnesty when Addis Ababa fell to Mussolini's army. You would have to use the word "lyrical" to describe the style. The inhabitants of Gagliano and surrounding villages are drawn vividly, the connections of peasants, village, nature, the saints, the church, the magical spirits, social class, and politics so well-knit that you absorb a "village study" better than most professional anthropologists' before you know it. This is a masterpiece. One of the best books I had read in a long time.
In a pre-Marley world, a young Italian doctor and artist with socialist ideas was exiled for three years to a remote southern Italian village by Mussolini's Fascist party. While it's not entirely clear where his money came from, he was allowed to keep a dog, have visitors and talk with the villagers freely. Because the two local doctors amounted to little more than antiquated quacks, Carlo Levi was pushed into practicing medicine. The sentence required that he not leave the village and that he find his own quarters. A dozen other exiles lived in the village, but contact among them was limited as well. That's how a liberal Jewish intellectual from Turino came to live among the peasants, petit bourgeoisie, and envy-wracked country gentry of Gagliano village in the mountains of what is today Italy's Basilicata region. Villages here, in the 1930s, lived a life far from any government assistance. Even Christ stopped (it was said) at Eboli, a town at the northern edge of the poverty-stricken region.
Levi writes brilliantly of life in the remote village---the discouraged priest, the Fascist mayor (who, though strict with the exiles, wants Levi's approval as a "man of culture"), the mayor's manipulative sister, the peasant women maids who worked for him---and the difficult lives they had, without any aid from the outside world. Levi paints a picture of a place tied to its past, with 19th century struggles between bandits (peasants) and the landowners only the last of the struggles. Outside occupiers had marched in and out for centuries, but for the most part, the peasants kept their heads down and worked in their malarial fields in the valley below. CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI evokes above all the world of the forgotten people of Italy, taxed, drafted into armies for wars they never understood, and then ignored. Rome gave them nothing, only sent tax collectors and imposed mayors who called useless meetings and gave fatuous speeches. But don't think that the peasants were unaware of the outside world. It was just that their ties with the wider world did not lie in Rome, but in the big city slums of America. A huge percent of the village men went off to America to labor, sent money and goods, and often never returned, leaving an equal number of women alone. The men who returned mostly plunged back into village life. When their foreign funds dried up, they became part of traditional life once more, not having changed dramatically in their foreign sojourn.
Levi writes of all this and a lot more. He created it on the basis of one year's stay, because he received an amnesty when Addis Ababa fell to Mussolini's army. You would have to use the word "lyrical" to describe the style. The inhabitants of Gagliano and surrounding villages are drawn vividly, the connections of peasants, village, nature, the saints, the church, the magical spirits, social class, and politics so well-knit that you absorb a "village study" better than most professional anthropologists' before you know it. This is a masterpiece. One of the best books I had read in a long time.
March 9, 2019
Letto, riletto e ancora riletto. Accidenti che libro! Ne fui letteralmente innamorato la prima volta che lo lessi, nel lontano 1977. Mi affascinò tantissimo il racconto nel ricordo popolare della "guerra dei briganti": Carmine Crocco, Ninco Nanco, etc, gli eroi "contadini", l'epopea della Lucania sorta in piedi che si ribellava per una volta ai conquistatori. Le desolate terre di Lucania... Che infinita malinconia traspariva dalla narrativa dolente di Levi. Il tempo perduto, per sempre... raggiungibile solo nel mito
April 25, 2020
Una testimonianza potente e illuminata sulla condizione dell'estremo sud italiano poco meno di un secolo fa.
Mandato in confino a Gagliano, la sua prima impressione con la sua nuova e forzata residenza è impietosa: povertà, malvagità, meschinità, ignoranza, bestialità.
Il paese vive in estrema povertà di ciò che una terra arida e dura elargisce ai contadini, gente ignorante e brutta, di poche parole e governata da signorotti persi nelle loro faide di paese.
Ma col tempo Levi arriva a capire meglio questa gente, e poco a poco diventa amico della popolazione, dei contadini. La donna che si occupa della sua casa è una strega, che gli insegna le usanze e le magie della povera gente. I contadini sono felici di avere un vero medico, finalmente, e lo trattano con una riverenza che sfiora l'adorazione. I bambini lo circondano di continuo, stupendolo con la loro intelligenza che però già si avverte come condannata dalla miseria e dall'ignoranza a perdersi nella cupa rassegnazione a una vita di fatiche e di povertà, di ingiustizie e di dolore.
E con la comprensione della gente, arriva la comprensione della popolazione complessiva, di quella parte d'Italia che già allora era etichettata frettolosamente come il problema meridionale.
La realizzazione di trovarsi in mezzo a gente che di italiano aveva solo il nome, una cultura differente da quella di Roma e con essa incompatibile. Una lunga storia di invasioni e di rivolte, l'ultima delle quali era stata il brigantaggio represso in tempi allora recenti ma che viveva ancora nelle menti dei contadini.
Contadini abituati ai colpi della vita, indifferenti allo Stato e alla religione, consapevoli della loro differenza rispetto agli altri:
-Noi non siamo cristiani, - essi dicono, - Cristo si è fermato a Eboli - . Cristiano vuol dire, nel loro linguaggio, uomo... [...] Noi non siamo cristiani, non siamo uomini, non siamo considerati come uomini, ma bestie, bestie da soma...
Una mite rassegnazione, sotto la quale però covano risentimenti secolari sempre pronti a esplodere in un incendio furioso, per poi venire soppressi tornando alla condizione di prima, come quando arriva la notizia del divieto fatto a Levi di esercitare la medicina, e il confinato si ritrova costretto a sedare una potenziale rivolta popolare a base di forche e fucili.
Un libro che fa effetto per molteplici motivi: certe descrizioni della popolazione e dei bambini dell'estemo sud degli anni '30, oggi fa pensare più ai reportage sulle popolazioni povere dell'Africa; certi usi e costumi che vengono descritti sono quanto di più lontano si possa immaginare oggi dalle usanze meridionali; la commistione quasi tribale dei concetti di magia e di medicina.
E pur tuttavia, si ritrova nascosto sotto tutto questo l'ospitalità tipicamente meridionale, l'enorme accoglienza che un estraneo riceve una volta divenuto amico, il carattere tendenzialmente chiuso e schivo che siamo soliti associare anche adesso a certe zone del sud.
E soprattutto, la lucida analisi della questione meridionale, dell'inefficacia delle soluzioni proposte dai governi e pure dai letterati amici di Levi, troppo distanti in ogni aspetto da quella realtà meridionale per poterla realmente comprendere e modificare.
Ecco, erano gli anni '30 del novecento. La questione meridionale era già sentita, dibattuta, analizzata. Si tiravano fuori soluzioni, ipotesi, teorie.
Quasi un secolo dopo, non mi pare si siano fatti grandi passi avanti, malgrado siano cambiate forme di governo, governi, colori. Magari ci aveva visto giusto Levi nella sua disanima, e quindi chissà se mai se ne uscirà, e come.
E in tutto questo, del fascismo che lo aveva spedito laggiù Levi non parla mai.
Compare sullo sfondo quando si ha a che fare con l'autorità, quando si ha un permesso per tornare a casa per un lutto, quando si parla della guerra in Abissinia. Ma resta là, un'ombra lontana: perché per il sud nel quale Levi si trova, il fascismo è solo questo. Un'ombra che fa cambiare le divise, che fa altri proclami, che manda magari dei confinati in questi paesini. Per i contadini però non cambia niente, loro mica sono cittadini italiani, non vengono considerati dai fascisti come non venivano considerati prima, e continuano a dover pagare tributi odiati a quella Roma lontana e insensibile ai loro bisogni.
Tutto viene messo in prospettiva, dalla rozza e spiccia filosofia contadina.
Tremendamente attuale ancora oggi.
Mandato in confino a Gagliano, la sua prima impressione con la sua nuova e forzata residenza è impietosa: povertà, malvagità, meschinità, ignoranza, bestialità.
Il paese vive in estrema povertà di ciò che una terra arida e dura elargisce ai contadini, gente ignorante e brutta, di poche parole e governata da signorotti persi nelle loro faide di paese.
Ma col tempo Levi arriva a capire meglio questa gente, e poco a poco diventa amico della popolazione, dei contadini. La donna che si occupa della sua casa è una strega, che gli insegna le usanze e le magie della povera gente. I contadini sono felici di avere un vero medico, finalmente, e lo trattano con una riverenza che sfiora l'adorazione. I bambini lo circondano di continuo, stupendolo con la loro intelligenza che però già si avverte come condannata dalla miseria e dall'ignoranza a perdersi nella cupa rassegnazione a una vita di fatiche e di povertà, di ingiustizie e di dolore.
E con la comprensione della gente, arriva la comprensione della popolazione complessiva, di quella parte d'Italia che già allora era etichettata frettolosamente come il problema meridionale.
La realizzazione di trovarsi in mezzo a gente che di italiano aveva solo il nome, una cultura differente da quella di Roma e con essa incompatibile. Una lunga storia di invasioni e di rivolte, l'ultima delle quali era stata il brigantaggio represso in tempi allora recenti ma che viveva ancora nelle menti dei contadini.
Contadini abituati ai colpi della vita, indifferenti allo Stato e alla religione, consapevoli della loro differenza rispetto agli altri:
-Noi non siamo cristiani, - essi dicono, - Cristo si è fermato a Eboli - . Cristiano vuol dire, nel loro linguaggio, uomo... [...] Noi non siamo cristiani, non siamo uomini, non siamo considerati come uomini, ma bestie, bestie da soma...
Una mite rassegnazione, sotto la quale però covano risentimenti secolari sempre pronti a esplodere in un incendio furioso, per poi venire soppressi tornando alla condizione di prima, come quando arriva la notizia del divieto fatto a Levi di esercitare la medicina, e il confinato si ritrova costretto a sedare una potenziale rivolta popolare a base di forche e fucili.
Un libro che fa effetto per molteplici motivi: certe descrizioni della popolazione e dei bambini dell'estemo sud degli anni '30, oggi fa pensare più ai reportage sulle popolazioni povere dell'Africa; certi usi e costumi che vengono descritti sono quanto di più lontano si possa immaginare oggi dalle usanze meridionali; la commistione quasi tribale dei concetti di magia e di medicina.
E pur tuttavia, si ritrova nascosto sotto tutto questo l'ospitalità tipicamente meridionale, l'enorme accoglienza che un estraneo riceve una volta divenuto amico, il carattere tendenzialmente chiuso e schivo che siamo soliti associare anche adesso a certe zone del sud.
E soprattutto, la lucida analisi della questione meridionale, dell'inefficacia delle soluzioni proposte dai governi e pure dai letterati amici di Levi, troppo distanti in ogni aspetto da quella realtà meridionale per poterla realmente comprendere e modificare.
Ecco, erano gli anni '30 del novecento. La questione meridionale era già sentita, dibattuta, analizzata. Si tiravano fuori soluzioni, ipotesi, teorie.
Quasi un secolo dopo, non mi pare si siano fatti grandi passi avanti, malgrado siano cambiate forme di governo, governi, colori. Magari ci aveva visto giusto Levi nella sua disanima, e quindi chissà se mai se ne uscirà, e come.
E in tutto questo, del fascismo che lo aveva spedito laggiù Levi non parla mai.
Compare sullo sfondo quando si ha a che fare con l'autorità, quando si ha un permesso per tornare a casa per un lutto, quando si parla della guerra in Abissinia. Ma resta là, un'ombra lontana: perché per il sud nel quale Levi si trova, il fascismo è solo questo. Un'ombra che fa cambiare le divise, che fa altri proclami, che manda magari dei confinati in questi paesini. Per i contadini però non cambia niente, loro mica sono cittadini italiani, non vengono considerati dai fascisti come non venivano considerati prima, e continuano a dover pagare tributi odiati a quella Roma lontana e insensibile ai loro bisogni.
Tutto viene messo in prospettiva, dalla rozza e spiccia filosofia contadina.
Tremendamente attuale ancora oggi.
June 19, 2021
این کتاب خاطرات یک پزشک تبعید شده به روستایی در جنوب ایتالیا است که مردمش فقیر ، اکثراً بیمذهب و خرافاتی و حتی اهل جادو هستند. یک سوم ابتدایی کتاب کمی برام کسلکننده بود اما تقریباً از نیمههای کتاب با ماجراهای مختلف و ذکرِ افسانهها، باورها و آداب و رسومِ مردم جذاب شد.
February 26, 2017
"Nothing had ever come [from Rome] but the tax collector and speeches over the radio."
In Christ Stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi describes a place that time forgot as beautifully as one could possibly describe such a place; a place so misbegotten and forlorn and godless that Christ himself, so the legend went, stopped at another town and came no further. Levi is the nominal protagonist of the book, since this is his memoir of one-year in 1935-1936 in Aliano, Italy, (renamed Gagliano in the book) as an exiled prisoner of Mussolini's fascists, but the real protagonist is the town and the state of being in which it perpetually finds itself. That state of being is manifest in the collective resignation of the downtrodden peasant residents who inhabit the dirt-poor, bleak, isolated Southern Italian hilltop town, built literally on the bones of the dead; a place so dreary and backward that the one-day annual parade at Lent, led by an image of a blackened papier-mache Madonna and a modest fireworks display that cost the peasants six months of earnings, is the highlight of their lives.
Levi wrote this memoir in 1943-1944 as Italy's fascist government was crumbling and in it he recounts his forced exile in Gagliano a decade before; a sentence pronounced as the result of his anti-fascist sympathies. Though life there was austere and hard and he was not allowed to leave the village, Levi was treated like a king by the residents (it was not like a stay in Siberia). Levi, who was a writer, painter and doctor, found himself to be a novelty among the peasantry and appreciated for his willingness to mix and to grasp their plight and also to render much-needed medical care. Even though he was not a practicing doctor at that point, his medical education was superior to that of the two official town doctors, who either from senility or incompetence actually proved to be dangerous to their patients. The professional jealousies among the doctors are only the tip of the iceberg, Levi learns, in a place filled with class and tribal hatreds.
In Gagliano as in most Southern Italian towns at that time, malaria was a persistent scourge, often untreated and scarring a peasantry already beset by malnutrition, back-breaking labor, crushing debt and the constant fear of elite authority, particularly the tax collector. Levi meticulously chronicles the world of the Italian peasant, the timelessness of his plight and the apathy that comes from centuries of exploitation and high-minded governments that come and go without offering solutions. As this book takes place, Mussolini's barbaric Ethiopian campaign of conquest is under way (a prelude to World War II), and the residents face conscription with barely a care. They will either live as dogs where they are or die like dogs in Africa. World War I had already hit the town disproportionately hard (50 of its sons lost from a population of barely more than 1,000 residents), yet the prospect of another war barely fazes them. War is just another of the perpetually expected misfortunes over which they have no control. Heaven, as Levi writes, is closer to the peasants than Rome. The gnomes and devils that the peasants believe live in the caves and wells and hollows of the town are more real to them than Il Duce.
My thoughts at the outset of reading this book centered around how ever-so-slightly dull I thought it was, with its ample descriptions of flora and fauna and mundane village activities. But over the course of the book I realized that this was the book's strength, and that my patience was rewarded. Some readers may feel as I did that Levi sometimes comes off as a kind of inadvertent colonialist because of the air of intellectual superiority he seems to exude when describing the peasants. Levi reflects the attitudes of his time, but his broad-ranging understanding of the historical, political and social dimensions that created and maintained the peasant class and the system that exploited them reveal his understanding and balanced perspective. You'd be hard-pressed to find a book that more vividly presents a sense of life in a poor Italian village.
What I also like about the book is its unsentimental tone. Levi seems as detached as he is caring. I think this is to his credit. He understands that the peasants are part of their own problem, and that like all humans they operate out of a complex set of motivations. Levi does not simplify them or condone their ignorance; he neither condemns them nor praises them, just tries to understand them and to help as best he can.
Along the way we learn about the rampant sexuality endemic to village life, including among the priests with their many sire scattered across the landscape, and the peasants' customs, myths, habits and religious practices. The description of the visiting animal surgeon's castration and ovary removal operations on the village's pigs is painful to comprehend, and so is the fate of residents with burst appendixes and other maladies who can't get the treatment they need. Some of the funniest incidents in the book relate to the pompous fascist mayor's attempts to interest the peasants in the radio speeches of Il Duce, to their collective boredom.
The book at different points brought to mind other great books and films with similar themes. The venality of small-town life reminded me of Sinclair Lewis' Main Street. The sense of village customs and the intercession of the outsider brought to mind the book and film of Zorba the Greek. The crushing poverty in a bleak landscape reminded me of the Luis Bunuel film, Land Without Bread and the vivid descriptions of Italian peasant lifestyles reminded me of the 1978 Ermanno Olmi Italian movie, The Tree of Wooden Clogs. It should also be noted here that director Francesco Rosi adapted this memoir into an excellent film in 1979 with the same title.
Levi's book is an exquisitely rendered portrait of isolation, of being isolated in an isolated place, and of being in a place that seems isolated from time itself. It's hard to imagine such a book being better written.
-----
(KR@KY, posted originally in 2011 and re-posted with minor edit/addenda in 2017.)
In Christ Stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi describes a place that time forgot as beautifully as one could possibly describe such a place; a place so misbegotten and forlorn and godless that Christ himself, so the legend went, stopped at another town and came no further. Levi is the nominal protagonist of the book, since this is his memoir of one-year in 1935-1936 in Aliano, Italy, (renamed Gagliano in the book) as an exiled prisoner of Mussolini's fascists, but the real protagonist is the town and the state of being in which it perpetually finds itself. That state of being is manifest in the collective resignation of the downtrodden peasant residents who inhabit the dirt-poor, bleak, isolated Southern Italian hilltop town, built literally on the bones of the dead; a place so dreary and backward that the one-day annual parade at Lent, led by an image of a blackened papier-mache Madonna and a modest fireworks display that cost the peasants six months of earnings, is the highlight of their lives.
Levi wrote this memoir in 1943-1944 as Italy's fascist government was crumbling and in it he recounts his forced exile in Gagliano a decade before; a sentence pronounced as the result of his anti-fascist sympathies. Though life there was austere and hard and he was not allowed to leave the village, Levi was treated like a king by the residents (it was not like a stay in Siberia). Levi, who was a writer, painter and doctor, found himself to be a novelty among the peasantry and appreciated for his willingness to mix and to grasp their plight and also to render much-needed medical care. Even though he was not a practicing doctor at that point, his medical education was superior to that of the two official town doctors, who either from senility or incompetence actually proved to be dangerous to their patients. The professional jealousies among the doctors are only the tip of the iceberg, Levi learns, in a place filled with class and tribal hatreds.
In Gagliano as in most Southern Italian towns at that time, malaria was a persistent scourge, often untreated and scarring a peasantry already beset by malnutrition, back-breaking labor, crushing debt and the constant fear of elite authority, particularly the tax collector. Levi meticulously chronicles the world of the Italian peasant, the timelessness of his plight and the apathy that comes from centuries of exploitation and high-minded governments that come and go without offering solutions. As this book takes place, Mussolini's barbaric Ethiopian campaign of conquest is under way (a prelude to World War II), and the residents face conscription with barely a care. They will either live as dogs where they are or die like dogs in Africa. World War I had already hit the town disproportionately hard (50 of its sons lost from a population of barely more than 1,000 residents), yet the prospect of another war barely fazes them. War is just another of the perpetually expected misfortunes over which they have no control. Heaven, as Levi writes, is closer to the peasants than Rome. The gnomes and devils that the peasants believe live in the caves and wells and hollows of the town are more real to them than Il Duce.
My thoughts at the outset of reading this book centered around how ever-so-slightly dull I thought it was, with its ample descriptions of flora and fauna and mundane village activities. But over the course of the book I realized that this was the book's strength, and that my patience was rewarded. Some readers may feel as I did that Levi sometimes comes off as a kind of inadvertent colonialist because of the air of intellectual superiority he seems to exude when describing the peasants. Levi reflects the attitudes of his time, but his broad-ranging understanding of the historical, political and social dimensions that created and maintained the peasant class and the system that exploited them reveal his understanding and balanced perspective. You'd be hard-pressed to find a book that more vividly presents a sense of life in a poor Italian village.
What I also like about the book is its unsentimental tone. Levi seems as detached as he is caring. I think this is to his credit. He understands that the peasants are part of their own problem, and that like all humans they operate out of a complex set of motivations. Levi does not simplify them or condone their ignorance; he neither condemns them nor praises them, just tries to understand them and to help as best he can.
Along the way we learn about the rampant sexuality endemic to village life, including among the priests with their many sire scattered across the landscape, and the peasants' customs, myths, habits and religious practices. The description of the visiting animal surgeon's castration and ovary removal operations on the village's pigs is painful to comprehend, and so is the fate of residents with burst appendixes and other maladies who can't get the treatment they need. Some of the funniest incidents in the book relate to the pompous fascist mayor's attempts to interest the peasants in the radio speeches of Il Duce, to their collective boredom.
The book at different points brought to mind other great books and films with similar themes. The venality of small-town life reminded me of Sinclair Lewis' Main Street. The sense of village customs and the intercession of the outsider brought to mind the book and film of Zorba the Greek. The crushing poverty in a bleak landscape reminded me of the Luis Bunuel film, Land Without Bread and the vivid descriptions of Italian peasant lifestyles reminded me of the 1978 Ermanno Olmi Italian movie, The Tree of Wooden Clogs. It should also be noted here that director Francesco Rosi adapted this memoir into an excellent film in 1979 with the same title.
Levi's book is an exquisitely rendered portrait of isolation, of being isolated in an isolated place, and of being in a place that seems isolated from time itself. It's hard to imagine such a book being better written.
-----
(KR@KY, posted originally in 2011 and re-posted with minor edit/addenda in 2017.)
September 9, 2019
L’opera nacque materialmente da un atto di scrittura che si colloca fra il Natale del 1943 e la fine di luglio del ’44 quando l’autore viveva clandestino a Firenze , nel momento più drammatico della guerra, e sentiva più accesa la comunanza emotiva con l’esperienza del confino in Lucania che lo aveva costretto a isolamento e presunta solitudine fra il 1935 e il 1936. Lo scritto in realtà si colloca nel solco delle esperienze precedenti dello scrittore: la nascita da famiglia borghese ebrea, i natali torinesi, la laurea in medicina, l’esordio artistico in qualità di pittore, la militanza politica antifascista convogliata poi nel movimento “Giustizia e libertà” ma già bisogno impellente fra i banchi del liceo e per finire l’esperienza reiterata del carcere. Apparve dopo la Liberazione , nel 1945, ma fu preceduto nel ’39 dallo scritto “Paura della libertà”, l’opera più importante dello scrittore, custode del suo pensiero, pubblicata solo nel ’46 e fortemente osteggiata dalla cultura militante dell’epoca. Fu preceduta anche dalla espressione pittorica rintracciabile nei numerosi quadri che Levi dipinse in Lucania, primo fermo immagine delle forti impressioni che la realtà contadina, a lui fino ad allora sconosciuta, impresse nel suo universo culturale da principio attraverso gli occhi per andare a depositarsi poi nel cuore, residenza eletta dell’universo emotivo. Il libro che scrisse nacque dunque da questo substrato, dall’esperienza diretta, dalla necessità di dare voce a una realtà prima che dimenticata, sconosciuta. La Lucania, una terra estranea e straniera in patria, sentita da principio dall’autore come lontana e incomprensibile quanto inaccessibili gli risultano i due paesi nei quali è costretto a dimora: Stigliano e Gagliano (Aliano, in realtà). Una terra ostile che si arrocca raggiungendo picchi dimenticati da Dio dove l’uomo vive in misere case circondate da calanchi. Un paesaggio aspro, suggestivo e variegato come l’umanità che lo popola. Una terra che lo accoglie e che lui impara a conoscere, apprezzare e amare.
È un’opera ibrida, né romanzo, né saggio, né memoriale; parte certo dal racconto di un’esperienza personale ma si colloca fra poesia, documento, saggio etnografico, racconto, pamphlet politico. La posizione di Levi è ben chiara: questo mondo arcaico e ancestrale è stato capace di preservare “il senso umano di un comune destino” perché si fonda su una “fraternità passiva”, su un “patire insieme”, su una “secolare pazienza”, l’immergersi in esso determina arricchimento umano e ulteriore allontanamento dalla barbarie del presente. Da leggere in ogni epoca.
È un’opera ibrida, né romanzo, né saggio, né memoriale; parte certo dal racconto di un’esperienza personale ma si colloca fra poesia, documento, saggio etnografico, racconto, pamphlet politico. La posizione di Levi è ben chiara: questo mondo arcaico e ancestrale è stato capace di preservare “il senso umano di un comune destino” perché si fonda su una “fraternità passiva”, su un “patire insieme”, su una “secolare pazienza”, l’immergersi in esso determina arricchimento umano e ulteriore allontanamento dalla barbarie del presente. Da leggere in ogni epoca.
January 26, 2022
L'intellettuale torinese Carlo Levi, convinto antifascista, viene messo al confino in Lucania. Siamo nel 1935. Qui, nel paese di Aliano, scoprirà l'umanità contadina del mezzogiorno, vivrà con una popolazione da sempre vissuta ai margini della storia, dimenticata e rimasta sepolta per millenni sotto il peso dell'ingiustizia sociale e dell'indifferenza politica.
Questo libro racconta, come in un viaggio al principio del tempo, la scoperta di una diversa civiltà. E' quella dei contadini del Mezzogiorno: fuori della Storia e della Ragione progressiva, antichissima sapienza e paziente dolore. Vi si esprime una visione complessa, nella quale gli infiniti punti di vista sono legati assieme, riuniti nel consenso delle cose. Il lettore può trovarvi insieme una ragione di poesia, un modo di linguaggio, uno specchio dell'anima, e la chiave di problemi storici, economici, politici e sociali altrimenti incomprensibili. Un libro che tocca il cuore, che ci fa comprendere la reale percezione delle cose, dei rapporti umani, dello scorrere del tempo.
Capolavoro di umanità. Ecco come definirei in poche parole questa straordinaria opera autobiografica di Carlo Levi. Nel 1935 Levi, medico, pittore e intellettuale, viene mandato al confino in Lucania, prima a Grassano, poi a Gagliano. Vi rimarrà per circa un anno. Il libro, pubblicato nel 1945, è il poetico resoconto di questo periodo della sua vita e rappresenta una delle più importanti e coinvolgenti testimonianze sulle condizioni del Meridione nella prima metà del Novecento. Levi narra i suoi casi e l'incontro con questa "gente mite, rassegnata e passiva, impenetrabile alle ragioni della politica e alle teorie dei partiti", usando la prima persona. Lo fa col distacco scientifico di un competente etnologo che ci descriva in maniera esauriente gli usi e costumi di una popolazione ignota e le necessarie partecipazione e simpatia emotive del narratore e dell'uomo di cultura. La fanno da padrone miseria, arretratezza, diffidenza verso lo straniero, solitudine. Gagliano, Grassano, la Lucania appare agli occhi dei lettori come una terra dimenticata, remota, sconosciuta.
Cristo si è fermato a Eboli ebbe subito un grande successo conseguendo fama in tutto il mondo. Nel 1979 Francesco Rosi diresse l’omonimo film interpretato da Gian Maria Volontè, Irene Papas, Alan Cuny, Lea Massari e Paolo Bonacelli. La terra lucana di confine e l’antica civiltà contadina fu affidata alla fotografia del Premio Oscar Pasqualino De Santis. Secondo le sue ultime volontà Carlo Levi riposa nel cimitero di Aliano, lo stesso nel quale durante il periodo del confino si vedeva dipingere in compagnia del cavalletto e dei colori.
"- Noi non siamo cristiani, - essi dicono, - Cristo si è fermato a Eboli - . Cristiano vuol dire, nel loro linguaggio, uomo... [...] Noi non siamo cristiani, non siamo uomini, non siamo considerati come uomini, ma bestie, bestie da soma..."
Questo libro racconta, come in un viaggio al principio del tempo, la scoperta di una diversa civiltà. E' quella dei contadini del Mezzogiorno: fuori della Storia e della Ragione progressiva, antichissima sapienza e paziente dolore. Vi si esprime una visione complessa, nella quale gli infiniti punti di vista sono legati assieme, riuniti nel consenso delle cose. Il lettore può trovarvi insieme una ragione di poesia, un modo di linguaggio, uno specchio dell'anima, e la chiave di problemi storici, economici, politici e sociali altrimenti incomprensibili. Un libro che tocca il cuore, che ci fa comprendere la reale percezione delle cose, dei rapporti umani, dello scorrere del tempo.
Capolavoro di umanità. Ecco come definirei in poche parole questa straordinaria opera autobiografica di Carlo Levi. Nel 1935 Levi, medico, pittore e intellettuale, viene mandato al confino in Lucania, prima a Grassano, poi a Gagliano. Vi rimarrà per circa un anno. Il libro, pubblicato nel 1945, è il poetico resoconto di questo periodo della sua vita e rappresenta una delle più importanti e coinvolgenti testimonianze sulle condizioni del Meridione nella prima metà del Novecento. Levi narra i suoi casi e l'incontro con questa "gente mite, rassegnata e passiva, impenetrabile alle ragioni della politica e alle teorie dei partiti", usando la prima persona. Lo fa col distacco scientifico di un competente etnologo che ci descriva in maniera esauriente gli usi e costumi di una popolazione ignota e le necessarie partecipazione e simpatia emotive del narratore e dell'uomo di cultura. La fanno da padrone miseria, arretratezza, diffidenza verso lo straniero, solitudine. Gagliano, Grassano, la Lucania appare agli occhi dei lettori come una terra dimenticata, remota, sconosciuta.
Cristo si è fermato a Eboli ebbe subito un grande successo conseguendo fama in tutto il mondo. Nel 1979 Francesco Rosi diresse l’omonimo film interpretato da Gian Maria Volontè, Irene Papas, Alan Cuny, Lea Massari e Paolo Bonacelli. La terra lucana di confine e l’antica civiltà contadina fu affidata alla fotografia del Premio Oscar Pasqualino De Santis. Secondo le sue ultime volontà Carlo Levi riposa nel cimitero di Aliano, lo stesso nel quale durante il periodo del confino si vedeva dipingere in compagnia del cavalletto e dei colori.
“Sono passati molti anni, pieni di guerra, e di quello che si usa chiamare la Storia. Spinto qua e là alla ventura, non ho potuto finora mantenere la promessa fatta, lasciandoli, ai miei contadini, tornare fra loro, e non so davvero se e quando potrò mai mantenerla”.
![Profile Image for Anna [Floanne].](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1566911038i/4459724._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg)
July 24, 2017
Una scrittura fuori dal tempo, la cui bellezza non invecchia mai.
April 18, 2023
Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped At Eboli represents an act of memory-recovery, a reflection on a particular kind of exile during the period leading up to WWII in Italy, at that point under the thumb of Mussolini & the Fascists.
In fact, the tale of Levi's exile, begins by detailing his transit in handcuffs by carbinieri from a prison in Rome, together with his dog "Barone" to distant Aliano (called Gagliano in the book) in the midst of southern Italy's Calabrian Mountains, the result of his strident opposition to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia & to Fascism.
Christ Stopped At Eboli, although based on a personal journal, seems at times rather like an anthropological field study, focused on a place that time forgot but beyond that, time never had any recollection of. For...
However, oddly enough, when suspicions about his background & motives begin to vanish, he is eventually seen not only as a member in good standing within the town & nearby area but as a "Christian" as well, that word standing for much more than a religious affiliation.
Gagliano/Aliano is a town where many reside in marginal dwellings & cave-like shelters, where there is only one indoor toilet (which doesn't flush) & a single car, brought back from the U.S. by a man who worked in New York City for a decade, returned to the area of his birth for a visit & became stranded.
There are no meaningful shops & no hotel, causing Carlo to live with a widow initially, prior to finding a small space of his own with a patio offering views of the valley below. The town's newest resident begins to explore the town, commenting that "like Dante, I too began to go down circle by circle by mule path to the very bottom."
There are many colorful characters detailed in Carlo Levi's book, including an alcoholic priest named Fr. Don Trajella who has fathered a child or two & calls the people "cursed heathens", threatening to excommunicate them; a town mayor, Don Luigi, with a sense of grandeur but little power, a man who despises the priest & sees the people as "good but primitive"; and also a woman named Giulia who serves as Levi's housekeeper at times but with her duties extending to the "conjugal" & who, as a functioning "witch", teaches Carlo all sorts of spells & incantations, in addition to applying the "inspiration of love".
In attempting to heal those in need of medical attention, the author explores the interior of countless homes of the town's poor residents, noticing that...
Carlo Levi came to feel that whether the government was Fascist, Socialist, Communist or Liberal, there would always be an abyss between the peasants in places like Aliano, the middle class and Rome. The divide represents...
I found Christ Stopped At Eboli a very compelling case study, peopled by some rather quirky but memorable characters. This is hardly a "mainstream" book & yet rather remarkably 14 readers who are listed as my Goodreads friends have either read the book or list it as a book they intend to read.
*Within my review, the 1st image is of Carlo Levi; the 2nd a contemporary view of the village of Aliano; the 3rd, a painting by author Carlo Levi of some of the peasants he encountered in the area where he spent his period of exile.
**There is an excellent 1979 film version of Christ Stopped at Eboli, directed by Francesco Rosi & featuring Gian Maria Volante (as Carlo Levi) and Irene Pappas.
In fact, the tale of Levi's exile, begins by detailing his transit in handcuffs by carbinieri from a prison in Rome, together with his dog "Barone" to distant Aliano (called Gagliano in the book) in the midst of southern Italy's Calabrian Mountains, the result of his strident opposition to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia & to Fascism.
Christ Stopped At Eboli, although based on a personal journal, seems at times rather like an anthropological field study, focused on a place that time forgot but beyond that, time never had any recollection of. For...
Christ stopped short of Lucania (at Eboli), and so did hope & history. No one came to this land except as enemy or conqueror. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans came. And because Christ stopped short, so did civilization. Its population is not even thought of as Christian but simply beasts of burden, even less than beasts, mere creatures of the wild.Into this milieu, Carlo Levi appears in 1935 as a doctor, though he hasn't practiced medicine in quite some time. In spite of that, he becomes a kind of conscience of the town & surrounding province, in part because though he is an outsider & Jewish as well, he is always approachable, in a place where "life involves a continuous renewal of old resentments, a closed world with deep & often violent secrets".
However, oddly enough, when suspicions about his background & motives begin to vanish, he is eventually seen not only as a member in good standing within the town & nearby area but as a "Christian" as well, that word standing for much more than a religious affiliation.
Gagliano/Aliano is a town where many reside in marginal dwellings & cave-like shelters, where there is only one indoor toilet (which doesn't flush) & a single car, brought back from the U.S. by a man who worked in New York City for a decade, returned to the area of his birth for a visit & became stranded.
There are no meaningful shops & no hotel, causing Carlo to live with a widow initially, prior to finding a small space of his own with a patio offering views of the valley below. The town's newest resident begins to explore the town, commenting that "like Dante, I too began to go down circle by circle by mule path to the very bottom."
There are many colorful characters detailed in Carlo Levi's book, including an alcoholic priest named Fr. Don Trajella who has fathered a child or two & calls the people "cursed heathens", threatening to excommunicate them; a town mayor, Don Luigi, with a sense of grandeur but little power, a man who despises the priest & sees the people as "good but primitive"; and also a woman named Giulia who serves as Levi's housekeeper at times but with her duties extending to the "conjugal" & who, as a functioning "witch", teaches Carlo all sorts of spells & incantations, in addition to applying the "inspiration of love".
In attempting to heal those in need of medical attention, the author explores the interior of countless homes of the town's poor residents, noticing that...
In almost every house were the inseparable guardian angels that looked at me from the walls. On one side was the black scowling face of the Madonna of Viggiano, while on the other a colored print with sparkling eyes behind gleaming glasses & the hearty grin of Franklin Roosevelt. No other images were present--not Garibaldi, not Il Duce, not the Italian king or any saints.To Dr. Levi, the church ceremonies seemed like pagan rites celebrating innumerable earthly divinities of the village. And yet, at one point, he offers to add a musical compliment by playing the harmonium at a church service. Always, there seems an odd merger of the semi-sacred & the profane, even a sense of prevailing "black magic".
The Black Madonna appeared to be a fierce, pitiless, mysterious, ancient earth mother, the Saturnian mistress of the world, while FDR appeared as an all-powerful Zeus, the benevolent & smiling master of a higher sphere.
Carlo Levi came to feel that whether the government was Fascist, Socialist, Communist or Liberal, there would always be an abyss between the peasants in places like Aliano, the middle class and Rome. The divide represents...
two different civilizations, neither of which can absorb the other. Country & city, a pre-Christian civilization & one that is no longer Christian stand face to face. As long as one imposes the deification of the state on the other, there will be conflict, with places like Aliano lawless & despairing and Rome despairing & tyrannical.During his year in Aliano, Carlo Levi spent a considerable amount of time writing & painting, exercising skills that served to define him then, in the days following his exile in Southern Italy & after WWII. In spite of the poverty & lack of hope, Levi came to form a deep bond with the people of Aliano. It is said that after he died, he chose to be buried there.
I found Christ Stopped At Eboli a very compelling case study, peopled by some rather quirky but memorable characters. This is hardly a "mainstream" book & yet rather remarkably 14 readers who are listed as my Goodreads friends have either read the book or list it as a book they intend to read.
*Within my review, the 1st image is of Carlo Levi; the 2nd a contemporary view of the village of Aliano; the 3rd, a painting by author Carlo Levi of some of the peasants he encountered in the area where he spent his period of exile.
**There is an excellent 1979 film version of Christ Stopped at Eboli, directed by Francesco Rosi & featuring Gian Maria Volante (as Carlo Levi) and Irene Pappas.
March 25, 2011
A wonderfully written book about the sorry condition in Southern Italy before the onset of WWII by an anti-fascist Italian writer, journalist, artist and doctor, Carlo Levi (1902-1975). This is the type of book that you tend to hold on to each word because the writing is so beautiful that you would not want the story to end. Adding to this is the fact that this novel or memoir was actually written as a protest to Benito "Il Duce" Mussolini's (1883-1945) government.
The title refers to the what the peasants in Southern Italy say about themselves and the grimly poverty that they are experiencing. We're not Christians," they say. "Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli,"...We're not Christians, we're not human beings; we're not thought of as men but simply as beasts, beasts of burden, or even less than beasts, mere creatures of the wild."
Maybe a decade ago, I used to think that everything is beautiful in Italy and all of its people are devout Catholics. What with the Vatican being there and practically every Catholic around the world would like to, sometime in his/her life, be able to visit the place. What with the beautiful tourist spots like Florence, the birthplace of Renaissance, Venice, while riding the gondolas through the canals, or Verona and see the tomb of Juliet. Then I met Italian colleagues in the company where I currently work and they said that they are Catholics but not practicing. Although they are proud of their country, they were the ones who told me the things that they were unhappy about their government and some parts of their history that they rather want to forget.
Just like the Roman poet, Ovid, exiled by Emperor Augustus in Tomis (subject of David Malouf's An Imaginary Life) or Dr. Jose Rizal exiled by Spanish colonial government in Dapitan or Ninoy Aquino exiled by Marcos in Laur, Carlo Levi was also thrown by Mussolini to live in a year in Lucania at the start of Abyssinian (now called Ethiopian) War (1935). While confined in this impoverished place, Levi took up his pen and wrote this starkly beautiful account of a place beyond hope and a people abandoned by history.
Beautiful account because of the glorious writing. Levi took time to describe the details of the place or the scene that reminds me of Ondaatje's The English Patient or Running In the Family. But of course, Italian Levi wrote his novel first compared to these works by this Sri Lankan-Canadian author that is one of my favorite novelists. The irony in Levi's writing was that what he described beautifully was the sad state of that poor barren malarial town: where exiles like him were thrown, where many women died during childbirth because there were not competent doctors, where people leave to America for seek for better life never to return, and so where some of the peasants think that they are not Christians but beasts.
The title refers to the what the peasants in Southern Italy say about themselves and the grimly poverty that they are experiencing. We're not Christians," they say. "Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli,"...We're not Christians, we're not human beings; we're not thought of as men but simply as beasts, beasts of burden, or even less than beasts, mere creatures of the wild."
Maybe a decade ago, I used to think that everything is beautiful in Italy and all of its people are devout Catholics. What with the Vatican being there and practically every Catholic around the world would like to, sometime in his/her life, be able to visit the place. What with the beautiful tourist spots like Florence, the birthplace of Renaissance, Venice, while riding the gondolas through the canals, or Verona and see the tomb of Juliet. Then I met Italian colleagues in the company where I currently work and they said that they are Catholics but not practicing. Although they are proud of their country, they were the ones who told me the things that they were unhappy about their government and some parts of their history that they rather want to forget.
Just like the Roman poet, Ovid, exiled by Emperor Augustus in Tomis (subject of David Malouf's An Imaginary Life) or Dr. Jose Rizal exiled by Spanish colonial government in Dapitan or Ninoy Aquino exiled by Marcos in Laur, Carlo Levi was also thrown by Mussolini to live in a year in Lucania at the start of Abyssinian (now called Ethiopian) War (1935). While confined in this impoverished place, Levi took up his pen and wrote this starkly beautiful account of a place beyond hope and a people abandoned by history.
Beautiful account because of the glorious writing. Levi took time to describe the details of the place or the scene that reminds me of Ondaatje's The English Patient or Running In the Family. But of course, Italian Levi wrote his novel first compared to these works by this Sri Lankan-Canadian author that is one of my favorite novelists. The irony in Levi's writing was that what he described beautifully was the sad state of that poor barren malarial town: where exiles like him were thrown, where many women died during childbirth because there were not competent doctors, where people leave to America for seek for better life never to return, and so where some of the peasants think that they are not Christians but beasts.
Read
November 28, 2017The same sonorous, self-effacing style, along with a startling profundity and wisdom, is imbued in the works of Carlos Levi as with his illustrious namesake, Primo. 'Christ Stopped at Eboli' follows the exile of Carlo Levi to the remote villages of 'Grassano' and 'Gagliano' in the Italian south.
Carlo captures the wretched, hopeless cadence of the peasant's lives, discarded by government, disregarded by society, their existence is punctuated by a deep sense of desolation. Not only is the book fascinating from a sociological perspective, but it is also intriguing anthropologically; the peasants are relics of a pre-Christian, pagan society and the reader can identify the various ways in which Catholicism was able to assimilate and utilse pagan rites and symbolism to spread Christianity-in many ways Christianity is just another facet of the superstitions which dominate the lives of the peasants, with its rich allegories and metaphors appealing to the peasant' superstitious and pietistic natures.
Levi doesn't seek to fetishize the peasants, or portray them as simple, wholesome beings in the way that, for example, Tolstoy did; instead they are individual with their own distinct personalities and views, weighed down by their unwitting ignorance and by the hand which life has dealt them, their problems exacerbated by the parochially minded bureaucrats and state officials who lord it over them-however, for Levi, the true subjugators were the smug and self-satisfied middle-classes, whose worship of the state and provincial nationalism, cloaked under a superficial sense of intellectual superiority, was the root cause of the rise of fascism. As well as the selfishness, ignorance and violence demonstrated by some of the peasants, Levi also brings out their every-day kindness, their unpretentious wisdom and sense of honour, painting them with sympathy, but without any sense of condescension, their lives punctuated by all to brief moments of beauty and bathos;
"But the olive trees gave no shade; the sun pierced their delicate foliage as if it were lacework...as I sat on the ground, the dazzling reflection of light from the clay disappeared behind the wall; the two cypresses swayed in the breeze and a cluster of roses bloomed among the graves, a strange sight in this flowerless land."
That the only time the peasants would ever be close to flowers was when they died was perhaps symbolic of their place in the world. Levi was a painter and the dry, bleak and desolate surroundings are often transmogrified into something ethereal and beautiful; nights where the countryside is bathed in moon-light, everything eerie and fantastical or the little patches of green exposed by the sunlight hidden amongst the arid expanse of clay which dominated the landscape, Levi renders the lives of the peasants with the subtle, delicate touch of a calligrapher, rather than with the pompous brush of an intellectual; his motivation is to humanise the peasants, rather than mock them and to depict the misery which life tried to enforce on them but which they largely, tried their best not to fight and reject.
Carlo captures the wretched, hopeless cadence of the peasant's lives, discarded by government, disregarded by society, their existence is punctuated by a deep sense of desolation. Not only is the book fascinating from a sociological perspective, but it is also intriguing anthropologically; the peasants are relics of a pre-Christian, pagan society and the reader can identify the various ways in which Catholicism was able to assimilate and utilse pagan rites and symbolism to spread Christianity-in many ways Christianity is just another facet of the superstitions which dominate the lives of the peasants, with its rich allegories and metaphors appealing to the peasant' superstitious and pietistic natures.
Levi doesn't seek to fetishize the peasants, or portray them as simple, wholesome beings in the way that, for example, Tolstoy did; instead they are individual with their own distinct personalities and views, weighed down by their unwitting ignorance and by the hand which life has dealt them, their problems exacerbated by the parochially minded bureaucrats and state officials who lord it over them-however, for Levi, the true subjugators were the smug and self-satisfied middle-classes, whose worship of the state and provincial nationalism, cloaked under a superficial sense of intellectual superiority, was the root cause of the rise of fascism. As well as the selfishness, ignorance and violence demonstrated by some of the peasants, Levi also brings out their every-day kindness, their unpretentious wisdom and sense of honour, painting them with sympathy, but without any sense of condescension, their lives punctuated by all to brief moments of beauty and bathos;
"But the olive trees gave no shade; the sun pierced their delicate foliage as if it were lacework...as I sat on the ground, the dazzling reflection of light from the clay disappeared behind the wall; the two cypresses swayed in the breeze and a cluster of roses bloomed among the graves, a strange sight in this flowerless land."
That the only time the peasants would ever be close to flowers was when they died was perhaps symbolic of their place in the world. Levi was a painter and the dry, bleak and desolate surroundings are often transmogrified into something ethereal and beautiful; nights where the countryside is bathed in moon-light, everything eerie and fantastical or the little patches of green exposed by the sunlight hidden amongst the arid expanse of clay which dominated the landscape, Levi renders the lives of the peasants with the subtle, delicate touch of a calligrapher, rather than with the pompous brush of an intellectual; his motivation is to humanise the peasants, rather than mock them and to depict the misery which life tried to enforce on them but which they largely, tried their best not to fight and reject.
March 31, 2022
4 stars
کارلو لوی، نویسنده، پزشک، نقاش و فعال سیاسی متولد ۱۹۰۲ در دوره دیکتاتوری حزب فاشیست درایتالیای دوره موسولینی است که به خاطر فعالیت های سیاسی که داشت بعد از زندان در سال ۱۹۳۵ تا ۱۹۳۷ به جنوب ایتالیا تبعید شد
این رمان بیانگر خاطرات و یادآور دوران تبعید کارلو لوی در روستاهای جنوب ایتالیاست که در دوران حاکمیت موسولینی و حزب فاشبست در فقر و بدبختی غوطه ور بودند
کارکرد این حزب در سالهای قبل از جنگ جهانی دوم و وضعیت مردم ایتالیا و روستاهای جنوبی آن در این رمان به خوبی ترسیم شده است.... آنچه که حزب فاشیست در آن موفق عمل کرده بود صرفا عضویابی و پیدا کردن هوادار برای خود در اقصی نقاط ایتالیا بود ولی در ارائه کمک به مردم در مقابل بیماری مالاریا عاجز بود و این هم مشخصه بارز حکومت های دیکتاتوریست که تمام اقداماتشان معطوف به بقای آنهاست و هر عملی که مرتبط با زیست فیزیکی آنها نباشد در اولویت نیست... بقای حاکمیت در همه حال اولویت دارد به مردم و زندگی آنها
حکومت فاشیستی برای ادامه حیاتش به جای اینکه وضعیت بهداشتی و زندگی اولیه مردم را ارتقاء دهد به دنبال جنگ در آفریقا و تصرف اتیوپی است در حالیکه مردم همان کشور نان برای خوردن و خانه برای آرمیدن ندارند و با حیوانات خود در یکجا زندکی می کنند
کارلو لوی، بعد از دوسال تبعید حکم آزادیش را دریافت می کند و با دلی اندوهگین محل تبعیدش و مردمی که به آنها خو گرفته بود را ترک می کند
کارلو لوی، نویسنده، پزشک، نقاش و فعال سیاسی متولد ۱۹۰۲ در دوره دیکتاتوری حزب فاشیست درایتالیای دوره موسولینی است که به خاطر فعالیت های سیاسی که داشت بعد از زندان در سال ۱۹۳۵ تا ۱۹۳۷ به جنوب ایتالیا تبعید شد
این رمان بیانگر خاطرات و یادآور دوران تبعید کارلو لوی در روستاهای جنوب ایتالیاست که در دوران حاکمیت موسولینی و حزب فاشبست در فقر و بدبختی غوطه ور بودند
کارکرد این حزب در سالهای قبل از جنگ جهانی دوم و وضعیت مردم ایتالیا و روستاهای جنوبی آن در این رمان به خوبی ترسیم شده است.... آنچه که حزب فاشیست در آن موفق عمل کرده بود صرفا عضویابی و پیدا کردن هوادار برای خود در اقصی نقاط ایتالیا بود ولی در ارائه کمک به مردم در مقابل بیماری مالاریا عاجز بود و این هم مشخصه بارز حکومت های دیکتاتوریست که تمام اقداماتشان معطوف به بقای آنهاست و هر عملی که مرتبط با زیست فیزیکی آنها نباشد در اولویت نیست... بقای حاکمیت در همه حال اولویت دارد به مردم و زندگی آنها
حکومت فاشیستی برای ادامه حیاتش به جای اینکه وضعیت بهداشتی و زندگی اولیه مردم را ارتقاء دهد به دنبال جنگ در آفریقا و تصرف اتیوپی است در حالیکه مردم همان کشور نان برای خوردن و خانه برای آرمیدن ندارند و با حیوانات خود در یکجا زندکی می کنند
کارلو لوی، بعد از دوسال تبعید حکم آزادیش را دریافت می کند و با دلی اندوهگین محل تبعیدش و مردمی که به آنها خو گرفته بود را ترک می کند
January 28, 2021
فوق العاده بود..یک اثر بسیار قوی..نگاهی به زندگی مردمانی که تاریخ بی انکه لمسشان کرده باشد از فراز سرشان گذشته است..قلم نویسنده قدرتمند بود و صحنه پردازی و شخصیت پردازی داستان فوق العاده..ماجرای یک تبعیدی که در یک روستای دور افتاده با مردم فراموش شده جنوب ایتالیا زندگی میکند و این بار زندگی را از دریچه نگاه آنان میبیند..فوق العاده بود.
June 1, 2019
Trovo incredibile la poesia con cui Levi abbia descritto la vita dei contadini del sud-Italia, quello dimenticato da Dio, quello dove Cristo non è mai arrivato, da cui il titolo.
È proprio tale poesia che rende meraviglioso un romanzo che sembrerebbe semplicemente tragico a chi non la coglie.
È una vicenda autobiografica; le condizioni di vita presentate, e la cosa allucinante è che stiamo parlando di meno di cento anni fa,
sono agghiaccianti, ma quello che colpisce è l'identificazione del protagonista, l'autore stesso, con quelle condizioni lì, con quelle vite lì.
La scena che più mi è rimasta impressa è la descrizione dantesca dei Sassi, che vengono paragonati ai gironi infernali; qualche lacrima leggendo quelle pagine scappa per forza.
Sono altresì contento di aver letto un'ulteriore testimonianza scritta "in diretta" dell'orrore/errore che il fascismo fu.
La "questione meridionale", spesso vista come un problema distante, viene qui vissuta sulla pelle, e da nativo del Mezzogiorno sento già che Cristo si è fermato a Eboli ha scavato un posto nel mio cuore.
E ora mi è venuta un'incredibile voglia di visitare Matera.
È proprio tale poesia che rende meraviglioso un romanzo che sembrerebbe semplicemente tragico a chi non la coglie.
È una vicenda autobiografica; le condizioni di vita presentate, e la cosa allucinante è che stiamo parlando di meno di cento anni fa,
sono agghiaccianti, ma quello che colpisce è l'identificazione del protagonista, l'autore stesso, con quelle condizioni lì, con quelle vite lì.
La scena che più mi è rimasta impressa è la descrizione dantesca dei Sassi, che vengono paragonati ai gironi infernali; qualche lacrima leggendo quelle pagine scappa per forza.
Sono altresì contento di aver letto un'ulteriore testimonianza scritta "in diretta" dell'orrore/errore che il fascismo fu.
La "questione meridionale", spesso vista come un problema distante, viene qui vissuta sulla pelle, e da nativo del Mezzogiorno sento già che Cristo si è fermato a Eboli ha scavato un posto nel mio cuore.
E ora mi è venuta un'incredibile voglia di visitare Matera.
January 11, 2018
A wonderful, evocative read. The description of the peasant society Levi, as a political prisoner, was exiled to live in. It can be read as a shocking reflection on poverty, exploitation and politics. But mostly it is a beautiful memoire of a culture and a people.
What makes it so good is Levi never judges or belittles local beliefs. He just states them as the ways things were. He generally avoids judgement or solution apart from one short analysis towards the end of the book and his general tone towards the gentry and those in power.
This is not a book that mythologises poverty, it shows it in its full awfulness - and yet at the same time one is left poignant for this society.
The idea of exile is alien nowadays, and with modern technology and communications meaningless. It’s amazing to reflect that this was about 20th century Italy, not some distant medieval kingdom.
What makes it so good is Levi never judges or belittles local beliefs. He just states them as the ways things were. He generally avoids judgement or solution apart from one short analysis towards the end of the book and his general tone towards the gentry and those in power.
This is not a book that mythologises poverty, it shows it in its full awfulness - and yet at the same time one is left poignant for this society.
The idea of exile is alien nowadays, and with modern technology and communications meaningless. It’s amazing to reflect that this was about 20th century Italy, not some distant medieval kingdom.
July 14, 2023
This is kind of a cult book, I know, but it didn't really resonate with me. I had a hard time following his representation of the people in some villages in the south of Italy as 'backward', as if they were kind of primitive tribe that not had had any contact with 'civilization'. Perhaps this seems attractive from a Romantic point of view, but I find it hard to believe this, because this is Italy, not the Amazone or Siberia. Though Levi presents his book as an antropological study with literary merit, perhaps it reflects a kind of bias by a frustrated intellectual, "banned from civilization" during the Mussolini-period. And even more, that it makes sense to look at this book as a reckoning with modernity, of which the fascist regime was a striking representative.
November 26, 2014
keşke Carlo Levi nin daha çok kitabı olsa Türkçe de... Uzun zamandır bu kadar gerçekçi olup da bu kadar masalsı anlatan bir yazar ile karşilaşmamıştım.. İtalya. . bize ne kadar çok benziyorsun...
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