ABSTRACT: The author indicates bitter surprise about the critic P.P. Tropmeo's judgement of the Sicilian writer Giuseppe Antonio Borgese. He evokes the life of this writer who emigrated to America when threatened by the Fascists. Borgese wrote in English in 1938 »Goliath, The March Of Fascism which explains better than many other books what happened in Italy between 1919 and 1943.

Apropos of the evening organised by Mondadori (1) in honour of Borgese and which had provoked Trompeo's negative reaction, Sciascia affirms that it was a "melancholy idea" to have organised it: what did they have to say to each other, the man who saw events prove him right and those literary men who were all, or almost all, compromised with Fascism? Unfortunately a real aversion or at least antipathy seems to surround the Sicilians, the Southerners. When Quasimodo (2) won the Nobel Prize, literary Italy reacted very badly, almost as if it were an offence. The antipathy against Sicilians seems to have cropped up again even at the time when "two Sicilian judges", overcoming that feeling of Sicilian solidarity "which imbeciles think exists", have issued arrest warrants for other judges suspected of "Mafia connections".

(CORRIERE DELLA SERA, September 2, 1984)

"We Sicilians", Lucio Piccolo used to say when he got worked up over some Northern critic who did not understand his poetry or did not consider it worthy of attention, "are not likeable". He did not seek the reasons for this, and I think he thought there were none if not in reverse, against all reason. And furthermore there are never any reasons for antipathy. His was by now an almost painless observation, one was so used to it, resigned, accepting. In a certain sense it is enjoyable, because speculative men, let us call them, have the capacity to extract a certain happiness, a subtle kind of merriness, from an unhappy fact.

In recent days this affirmation of his has been insistently going through my mind (with his voice, his expression in saying it, his avid sucking on a cigarette before and after saying it). And this is not so much because of the polemics surrounding the Sicilian judges - there are people who want to extract them from the endemic Mafia situation by transferring them to other parts of Italy - but more because of a short letter that a friend sent me in photocopy written by Pietro Paolo Trompeo to Arrigo Cajumi on October 23, 1952.

Let me begin by saying that I have always sought out and loved the writings of Trompeo, and in particular his words about Stendhal which are incomparably passionate and exquisite. I have also had the pleasure of knowing him personally: a man of such mildness, tolerance, and kindness as one rarely did meet before or very rarely does meet today. Consequently for me to run into his letter to Cajumi with its hard and obtuse judgement on a man, a writer, who - however unpleasant his behaviour - did and does merit respect and attention, but in effect a judgement on all of Sicily, on all Sicilians, is for me a most disappointing and bitter experience. I shall continue to read and to love Trompeo (and in fact I am presently reading his »Rilegature gianseniste ), but now bearing this little thorn of his intolerant and unintelligent judgement on Giuseppe Antonio Borgese and the Sicilians. And here it is: "The other evening I had the melancholy idea of accepting an invitation from Mondadori to the Excelsior in hon

our of Borgese. The hostess, and a most gracious one, was Alba de Cespedes, and there were many dear friends: but he, Peppantonio, (3) what a presumptuous vulgarian! America and old age have made him more Sicilian than ever."

An explanation is necessary because few Italians know anything of Borgese, his life, his work - the prestigious literary critic, and of those to have appeared in the pages of this newspaper, perhaps the most authoritative; the author of restless and perturbing fiction; dramatist, poet - he emigrated to the United States at the beginning of the Thirties. At the University of Milan, where he taught, Fascist violence and the spying of his colleagues made life impossible for him, and then it was announced that all university professors would have to swear fidelity to Fascism. Not more than a dozen professors in all Italy rejected this obligation and so lost their teaching posts. Borgese was among them. He was not active in politics, but political was his vision of Italian affairs past and present, and they were so intelligent and just as to make them naturally adverse to Fascism. So when the occasion presented itself and he was invited to teach in an American university, he left Italy determined not to retu

rn unless Fascism had gone.

In 1938 Longanesi (4) noted in one of his diaries: "In twenty years no one will be able to imagine in what times we are living. Future historians will read newspapers, books, will consult documents of all sorts, but no one will understand what has happened to us." But just around the same time Borgese published his book, written in English, which still today, more than many which were written later, narrates and explains what happened to the Italians between 1919 and 1943 - what is still happening to Italians with other names or no names under other guises: »Goliath, The March of Fascism (it appeared in Italian translation in 1946). Nor should one forget that Borgese dedicated the last years of his life (he died at Fiesole in December of 1952) to the cause of world peace. This is a fact which today ought to call great and cordial attention to him.

And one can just imagine that evening in Borgese's honour. If even the mild Trompeo was irritated, just imagine the others. What a "melancholy idea" of Mondadori's to celebrate Borgese's return (and here one must add to Mondadori's honour that perhaps he and Attilio Momigliano were the only ones to keep the Italians from forgetting the exiled and anti-Fascist Borgese: the "Biblioteca Romantica" (5) continued to bear the heading "directed by G.A. Borgese" and Momigliano's (6) history of Italian literature, widely used in the schools, gave one the appetite to look for those books of Borgese's which were becoming hard to find). The encounter could not have been easy with a man who had so very high an opinion of himself, but more naively than arrogantly, and who after almost twenty years had returned having been proved right about everything and with nothing to blame himself for. All, or almost all, the others had been wrong; all or almost all had something to blame themselves for. The least that they had a

ll, or almost all, done during the two decades of Fascism was to take the university pledge or the article on the Duce's prose, or approving the abolition of "Lei" and the handshake. (7) The least. Anything that Borgese might have said on that evening was bound to touch sore spots and memories that they were trying to suppress. A "presumptuous vulgarian", then. A Sicilian whom America and old age had made more Sicilian than ever. Because

there are no limits to being Sicilian as there are not to the worst and inasmuch as it is the worst. Even for the mild, tolerant, kind Trompeo.

I have dwelt at length upon this example of the antipathy Sicilians must bear as Sicilians. I could adduce many others, remaining in the field of literature, and that of Quasimodo would not be the last either with regard to relevance or to chronology. Quasimodo always felt himself surrounded by aversion, almost persecution ("Man of the North who want me minimised or dead for your peace"). And it was considered a kind of mania. But in 1959 when he won the Nobel Prize one had the proof that there was nothing lunatic about his sense of being surrounded by hostility. I believe no country has ever reacted as literary Italy did to the awarding of a Nobel Prize to Quasimodo. Almost as if to an offence. Juan Ramon Jiménez was abroad, in exile, when he got the Nobel. But even Franco's Spain was happy about it. Nor can one say Quasimodo was below the level of the average Noble winner. Just have a look at the list from 1901 until today.

Now, if this happens, as it does happen, on the level of "perfected civilisation", it is not to be wondered at that such an antipathy, deteriorating, and degrading itself, into certain plagues of collective stupidity, should end by invoking Etna to vomit lava in order to bury Sicily whole with all the Sicilians. Just as from time to time the idea comes up of transferring all Sicilians to other regions, or only those who occupy the highest ranks, who work in the government administration, and particularly in the sphere of justice.

Curiously this idea, this proposal, has recently cropped up again - and in relation to the judges - just at the time when the facts ought to have taught the opposite lesson: when two Sicilian judges, overcoming the feeling of Sicilian solidarity that imbeciles believe exists, and the professional solidarity which indubitably does exist, reaching the point - and issuing an arrest warrant - of admitting that truth which only Don Pietro Ulloa, the king's procurator in 1838 had the courage to put into black and white: which is the "impenetrable shield" with which certain judges protected the Mafia.

I don't know if Dr. Costa, assistant district attorney of the Republic in Trapani until yesterday, while today in custody for having Mafia connections, is guilty or innocent: I am waiting for the hearings to establish it. But I know that protectors or accessories after the fact necessarily have to exist in all government administrations, and in the justice departments as well. Otherwise one could not explain the "impenetrable shield" which the Mafia has enjoyed since the time of Don Pietro Ulloa until our times. And I would not say it was because they were Sicilians that they protected the Mafia (and do protect it) and were (and are) accessories to its crimes. And furthermore the most eminent and perfect examples of "feeling like Mafia" which we have known in recent years are two who were born in the North of the Gothic Line and came to Sicily at a mature age. I say "feeling like Mafia" even if one of the two still is at large and wanted (or is he not anymore?).

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Mondadori - One of Italy's biggest publishing houses.

2) Quasimodo, Salvatore - (Modica 1901 - Naples 1968) - Sicilian poet, winner of the Nobel Prize for poetry in 1959.

3) Peppantonio - A diminutive of Borgese's first names Giuseppe Antonio, here used with a slightly contemptuous familiarity.

4) Longanesi, Leo - (1905 -1957) Writer, painter and publisher, he founded the well-known publishing house that bears his name and various important periodicals.

5) Biblioteca Romantica - A popular series of literary publications.

6) Momigliano, Attilio - (1883 -1952) - Literary critic and historian.

7) Among the impositions of Fascism on the intellectuals was to require them to praise Mussolini's prose. The other Fascist regulations imposed on all Italians referred to here was the abolition of the handshake in favour of the Fascist salute when greeting anyone, and purifying the language of "Lei", the formal way of saying "you" which was considered a Spanish influence, and using instead the more originally Italian "Voi".