A Place to Live Page 14
In light of my irritation I reread Birdie Tic Tic and didn’t find it at all sweet. The moral of Birdie Tic Tic is that by feeding wolves you render them harmless. This is not true. Whoever wrote it thought it would be a good idea to demystify a child’s concept of a wolf. And yet wolves do exist. However much you appease their hunger, they are still wolves and they still eat people. Besides actual wolves, there are people who resemble wolves; the world is full of them. I don’t see what benefit there is for children in thinking that wolves become tame if you feed them. Nor do I see any benefit in children’s not fearing wolves. It’s a mistake to think fear is something bad. Fear is something one must endure and learn to tolerate.
Furthermore, wolves do not eat onions. A wolf that eats onions and old shoes is no less remote from reality than a witch or a fairy. Therefore I would like to know why this collection has banished witches and fairies as obsolete and reactionary, fit only for older generations that quenched their thirst on fantasy and illusion, and has meanwhile spread the welcome mat for this onion-eating wolf.
In light of my irritation I reread all four books in the series and concluded that while each one in itself was fine, the prospect of others in the same vein was suffocating. Everything was predictable and foreordained. Children’s books should be as full of adventure and surprise as a forest. These were more like wooden scaffoldings.
I can’t work up any genuine irritation towards Bruno Munari, the editor of the series, since I don’t know him. But Giulio Einaudi, the publisher, is a friend, and a very dear one. I can never be indifferent to anything he does or thinks. So all my irritation is really directed at him. Some years ago he published the most wonderful children’s book ever written in our time: Italian Folktales, by Italo Calvino. This is a marvelous book, filled with fairies, magicians, splendid princes and magnificent castles. Also peasants and fishermen. Reading it, you breathe the free air of fantasy as well as the harsh, free air of reality. It contains no moral lessons other than those implicit ones that real life offers every day. It has no pedagogical intentions whatsoever. It is written in a limpid, linear, concrete prose, an exemplary prose that illustrates how one should write for children, prose without a single superfluous word. I challenge anyone to find a single superfluous word. I challenge anyone to find even a single affected word. Surely Calvino had no educational motive in mind, but in truth nothing is more educational than style when it is clear, swift, and concrete. The Italian Folktales are authentic fairy tales, generously created for the joy of his fellow readers, which is how children’s fairy tales must be conceived and created—purely for pleasure. It is true that Calvino didn’t make these stories up himself; he gathered them from Italian tradition and rewrote them, but by rewriting them in his swift, limpid prose he made them his own. Children of all ages were and still are enraptured by the Italian Folktales. The publisher, Giulio Einaudi, sold mountains of them. He hasn’t forgotten, either, for he keeps them continuously in print. Did Giulio Einaudi realize that he had published an essential book in the field of children’s literature? Does he know or doesn’t he? If he knows, how could he ever come up with this latest phrase, “no fairies and no wizards”? It’s like saying, “We’re going to serve you an excellent cake made with no flour, no sugar, and no butter.”
Instead, the publisher and editor of this series should have frankly stated: “Writing for children is extremely difficult these days. Few writers are up to the task. We are putting together the handful of successful examples. There are unfortunately no new stories with fairies and magicians. Sad but true. Calvino’s Italian Folktales is a masterpiece, a miracle, but masterpieces and miracles are rare in the nature of things. So we’ll do the best we can and you’ll have to make do with what’s available.”
This might not be a very good advertising slogan. So what? If I were publishing or editing a series of children’s books, I would have these words printed in big letters on every volume.
Among the countless reasons why writing for children is so difficult these days, certainly one is our current notion that everything is harmful to children. Imagination terrifies us because it is daring, unpredictable, and powerful. We possess little enough as it is, and what little we have we dole out sparingly and fastidiously. The top priority in writing or publishing children’s books is barring the doors and windows. No sad stories because sadness is bad for children. No stories about poverty because they’re tearjerkers. No tears. No emotion. No cruelty. No villains because children don’t need to know about villainy. No good people because goodness is sentimental. No blood because it’s too shocking. No magnificent castles because they’re escapist. No fairies because they don’t exist. Children are fragile, so we’ll nourish them only on what has been scrubbed and disinfected. We’ll teach them the facts of life, but first we’ll sterilize those facts and filter out anything that gleams or glitters. We’ll nourish them on sand, carefully strained and germfree. We’ll nourish them on baking soda and talcum powder and blotting paper.
Some may object that children like baking soda. It may well be that they like it when they have nothing else. But the issue is not whether or not children like it. The issue is rather what this kind of diet will make of them.
In Calvino’s Italian Folktales, which I can never tire of alluding to, there are severed heads, corpses, bandits, thieves, ogres, cruelty and horrors. All of this children relish, for genuine and beautiful fairy tales are in fact harmless. Their setting is the one place in the universe where there is no harm or danger, and that is the realm of the imagination. Whatever fear they may inspire is the imagination’s healthy and liberating fear, a fear the spirit craves and reaches out to, as to a warming flame. Children hunger and thirst for the life of the imagination. Fairies and wizards exist in their fantasies, and the fact that they don’t exist in reality is quite rightly irrelevant to them, since everything in the realm of the imagination is by its very nature invisible and intangible. In the realm of the imagination, even the most horrible images can bring joy. We all know that joy may include even fear and anguish. Suppressing fear and anguish means suppressing joy as well.
I should add that what I detest in the words “no fairies and no witches…for a new generation of free spirits, uninhibited, assertive, and fully aware of their own strength,” is the rhetoric and optimism in regard to future generations. By all means let us hope that the coming generations are made up of free spirits. However, we really don’t have any idea what they will be like. We don’t even know for sure if it’s good to grow up without inhibitions. One of these days we might discover that those very inhibitions people nowadays take such pride in having cast off—along with their individual struggles to overcome them or live with them—were the bread and salt of the spirit.
April, 1972
an invisible government
I’ve always found it rather strange that after an election, nearly all the party newspapers proclaim victory even if they’ve been defeated. If I were a party leader, I would proclaim the truth in big red letters. If we had suffered a major defeat, the headline in my paper would read: “Major Defeat For Our Party.” I can’t see why every party newspaper instead finds it necessary to display exultant, triumphant headlines after each election. The few exceptions after the recent elections were remarkable indeed.
It will be pointed out that this is unimportant, since people read the voting returns and learn how things turned out in any case. It will also be pointed out that newspapers, whether partisan or nonpartisan, carry far more murky and lethal lies. That is true. The triumphant headlines have become a convention, like the conventional hellos and good-byes of a social call. People expect them and pay no attention. True enough. But if I were a party chief and my party had lost, I would go around shouting it from the rooftops. For in politics as elsewhere, the truth is salutary and invigorating.
It has been explained to me many times that the rules and procedures of politics are totally different from those of ordinary human life. It’s b
een explained that political power operates by delicate, subtle mechanisms that are highly sensitive, and comprehensible maybe only to those who control them and can peer into their depths. The desire for truth, indeed any customary expectation of the human mind, has about as much weight on the machinery of political power as a swarm of gnats.
There are people who understand nothing of politics. I am one of them. There aren’t many such people, in fact there may be very few, since almost everyone manages to master a handful of essential notions that permit them to understand the terms and structures of politics. Certain people, however, not only understand nothing of politics but are incapable of thinking politically. They are even less able to express themselves in political terms. I am one of those.
The people who do understand politics cannot begin to conceive of what we, the ones who understand nothing, are all about. So I want to explain, since after all, I know.
Thinking and expressing oneself politically means thinking and expressing oneself with a specific purpose in mind. Such a purpose might be aboveboard or corrupt; its ultimate goal might serve justice or oppression. Those who understand nothing of politics, on the other hand, think and express themselves without any goal whatsoever. It may be that their only goal is to explore and express their genuine thoughts. To the politically-minded, such a goal seems pointless. And at times it seems utterly pointless to those who understand nothing of politics too, which makes them despair. However, speaking their minds is the single thing in the world that they know how to do. At other times, they hope that what they say may strike a responsive chord in others. This is nothing like a specific goal, merely a stray hope.
When those who understand nothing about politics venture to speak of it, they either lapse into confusion and abstraction or talk nonsense. So it is more than likely that what I’m writing here is a string of nonsense. Still, I must confess that despite understanding nothing of politics, I nonetheless often feel an overpowering temptation to speak of it.
Beyond politics, there are countless other things about which I know and understand nothing, such as economics, or chemistry, or the natural sciences, or the exact sciences. But my lack of understanding of those subjects doesn’t disturb me. I get along fine without them. They proceed far from my life and almost never cross my mind. Understanding nothing of politics, on the contrary, feels like a serious disability. It pains and embarrasses me. People I’ve confided in tell me it’s simply laziness and resistance on my part. I am aware of being very lazy, and yet I have the sense that my utter failure to understand politics is not a question of laziness so much as a real disability.
When I was young, I thought that some time or other I would read books in order to gain some understanding and background in politics. After a while I noted that whenever I opened those books, my mind would dart away like a hare. And so I have never read a single line of them. I also noted, after a while, that all the novels and other books I had ever read were read without any fixed purpose.
Even though I understand nothing of politics, political events do occasionally arouse my hatred or indignation or approval and passion. But these events don’t strike me as part of any coherent, lucid, and harmonious pattern; they always seem like fragments or splinters or bits of driftwood I’m clinging to like someone left floundering in a river at flood tide.
One of the very few political ideas within my grasp, perhaps the only one, I acquired when I was seven years old. It was explained to me what socialism was, that is, I was told it meant equal distribution of goods and equal rights for all. It struck me as something that had to be achieved right away. I found it strange that it hadn’t already been achieved. I remember the exact time and place when I heard these words, which were self-evident and crucial. To this day they still have the power to kindle a kind of flame in me. To this day I marvel that that state of affairs, namely, equal distribution of goods and equal rights, has not been achieved, and is apparently so complex and difficult to achieve.
When I have to vote, I follow emotional impulses; my inclinations are entirely of an emotional nature, as if I had to shake hands with a political party or kiss it on both cheeks. This is definitely not the proper way to vote. I know that. Each time, I’m given instructions, and each time, I cast them to the winds and instinctively follow only irrational affections and affinities. I find myself unable to vote for any party with resignation; I have to love the party I’m voting for. When I go to vote, that single rudimentary political idea that I possess, equal distribution of goods and equal rights for all people, flares up. I want to find out with absolute certainty who supports that, but since the explanations I get are conflicting and garbled, I end up voting blindly and emotionally.
People I know and trust have often told me that if equal rights and equal distribution of goods were attained, I would lose a part of my freedom, I wouldn’t write anymore, and I would be terribly unhappy. This is because equal rights and equal distribution of goods don’t fall like manna from heaven but require a number of strategic and terrifying protections. In fact I too think that if I couldn’t write anymore I would be very unhappy and might throw myself under a train. But I also think that our personal happiness or unhappiness should not determine our political choices. What works quite well for us personally may not work at all well for others. We want a better world, but it could be that this better world has no place for us. And yet, it is conceivable to regard our own personal destiny with some detachment. I don’t know if this kind of reasoning is political, that is, the kind of reasoning political people would accept. It is the reasoning of those who are desperate. I don’t know if there is a place in politics for the desperate. I imagine not.
Then again, maybe governments never run smoothly. Some, at any rate, are overthrown. The government I myself would want would be totally bland, insubstantial, invisible, a government so airy and invisible that we could forget all about it, not even notice that it exists. Under such a government, everyone would live well, everyone would have his rightful place and role and his rightful share of benefits and freedom. Granted, a government of this kind doesn’t exist in nature; nowhere are there any visible traces of it. In every existing government we find clamor, abuses of power, newspapers with triumphant, lying headlines, lies of every kind in public life. This being the case, someone like me, who understands nothing of politics, is compelled to think about politics in despair of ever understanding it, and is likewise compelled to envision something entirely different.
In truth, the airy, light, insubstantial and invisible government I conjure up might be a weak government, and in politics, weakness apparently has no chance at all of survival. It would be a weak government, because in politics strength is noisy, intrusive, huge, and bloodthirsty. It would be a government without money or weapons, founded solely on a few values that are precious to the spirit, such as justice, truth, and liberty. But the word “truth” is seldom used in politics, and the justification offered for its absence is the nature of those very delicate, fragile, and sensitive mechanisms at the core of political life, which demand the most specialized and highly refined precautions. As for liberty and justice, we are told that for the time being they must be protected by weapons, police, and prisons; we are told it is essential to protect them by force, and meanwhile we have this irrepressible craving for weakness.
We are told that in the distant future, maybe after centuries of weapons and prisons, all will be well at last; there will be enough space and liberty for everyone. At last, we’ll no longer need to think in terms of nation-states, of masses of people and of governments, but only of our distinctive and solitary condition as human beings. But no one believes in the future anymore. Years ago, we could believe in it; the music of tomorrow, authentic and intoxicating, rang in our ears. Then all at once the future collapsed before our very eyes. So while we long for a better world, we can’t project our longings to centuries from now. We don’t have centuries to wait anymore, and even if we did, we have lost the
will and the imagination to grasp what shape they might take. Right now we stubbornly love the present; we find ourselves lashed by bonds of love to a time that gives no sign of loving us in return.
June, 1972
summer
I hate the summer. I hate the month of August up to the fifteenth, the Feast of the Assumption.9 Once that’s past, I feel like I’m emerging from a nightmare. Everything gradually improves. The autumn rains begin. I love autumn; in autumn I usually write something. In summer I very rarely manage to write.
I don’t hate summer because of the heat. I don’t notice the heat; it doesn’t affect me in the least. I am reminded that it’s hot only when others talk about it. To tell the truth, I have often tried to figure out why I hate the summer so much.
In childhood I liked summer; it was my favorite season. I delighted in the heat and the first cherries. Turin had lots of horse-drawn carriages back then, and in summer the coachmen would put net hoods over the horses’ heads to keep the flies away. I used to say the horses were “wearing fairy hats,” and I was overjoyed at the first sight of the horses in their “fairy hats.”
Summer meant going away on vacation. Our enormous, ancient trunks with their rusty iron plates would appear in the hall, looking like dinosaurs. My mother panted and sighed as she packed them. Neither she nor my brothers liked going on vacation: they found it boring. I had a good time. We spent four months in the mountains, the place and the house determined by my father. In my mother’s view, the houses were invariably uncomfortable and the places boring, with never a soul to say two words to. I participated in the packing rituals with enthusiasm, my joy only slightly dimmed by my mother’s ill humor.