ITALY AND ITALIANS BY COUNT CARLO SFORZA TRANSLATED BY EDWARD MUTTON E. P. DUTTON COMPANY, INC New York, 1949 Copyright, 1949, by E. P. utton Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the TJ. S. A. FIRST JEJDIXJOKT 11 2Vo part of this hook may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in con nection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper or radio broadcast. CONTENTS PREFACE page vii I. HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE ITALIANS I II. WHY THEIR HISTORY HAS BROUGHT THEM INTER NATIONALIST DISCONTENT 6 III. WHY THIS DISCONTENT BRINGS FORTH OUR GREATEST DEFECT . RHETORICAL EMPHASIS 12 IV. ITALIANS AND THEIR LITERATURE 1 8 V. ARCADIA AND MUSIC 28 VI. ITALIAN ROMANTICISM 36 VII. UNITY THOUGHT AND ACTION 42 VIII. ITALIANS AND THEIR DIALECTS JO IX. ITALIANS AND THEIR ROOTS IN THE SOIL 56 X. ITALIANS AND THE FAMILY 65 XI. ITALIANS AND RELIGION 69 XII. ITALIANS AND POLITICS 79 XIII. HEIGHTS AND DEPRESSIONS OF CULTURED 88 XIV. NORTH AND SOUTH 93 XV. ITALY AND FOREIGN WRITERS AND VISITORS IOO XVI. WE AND OUR NEIGHBOURS THE FRENCH Io6 XVII. WE AND OUR NEIGHBOURS THE SWISS 124 XVIII. WE AND OUR NEIGHBOURS THE GERMANS 127 XIX. WE AND OUR NEIGHBOURS THE SLAVS 131 XX. WE AND OUR NEIGHBOURS THE ENGLISH 139 XXI. ITALIANS IN THE UNITED STATES 144 xxii. CONCLUSION 155 INDEX 1 6 1 JUN 2 3 1949 PREFACE IN the summer of 1942 I received In New York a letter from the President of the University of California, to which I must now refer because it shows the origin of the present book. The consequence perhaps matters little but the letter is important, as I think it explains, even to one who is still suffering fromthe poison of nationalistic propaganda, what far-sighted nobility of mind reigns in America, where no one even thought of praising the decision of the President, so natural did it appear. I reproduce the letter, only suppressing a couple of phrases too courteous to myself. We have in our University a Chair of Italian Culture that was founded with the purpose that every year there should come here from Italy some scientific or literary person of distinction who would give for a half-year a course of lectures on some Italian subject chosen by himself. Against our will we are now at war with your country and it is therefore impossible for us to apply to Rome but just because we are at war we want to preserve, so far as possible, our intellectual relations with Italy for it must not be taken that there is war between our two peoples. Would you come and give the next course in Italian culture If you will, the merit will be yours that a tradition we value has not been interrupted. I replied at once that as an Italian I was touched and grateful but I feared they had been mistaken in applying to me and I named certain learned Italians who were in America. The University insisted and I ended by accepting. The title of the forty lectures was Contemporary Italy and its Intellectual and Moral Origins . I carried my hearers from the Counter-Reformation to the French Revolution and then on to the Ris orgimento, to United Italy, to the War of 1914-18, and to the high hopes then permissible to an Italy that might have been the herald of European solidarity, instead of rushing down into Fascism. The public was so much interested in these studies that I had to prolong them, as is sometimes done there, insittings and discussions at which Professors and students together we evoked, free from the ceremony of the University Chair, Italy herself, and for my part I tried to show them what Italy is, Italy which it is so difficult to find vii PREFACE in books and so difficult to discover in ones travels above all, I tried to make sympathy and admiration spring from facts, and never from my comments or from my pathos …
