Hollywood has romanticized Italy in
countless films. But Beppe Severgnini,
author of La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the
Italian Mind, wants you to know that his country isn't
as perfect as you might imagine. Here's
an excerpt:
Day One: From Malpensa
to Milan
The airport, where we discover that
Italians prefer exceptions to rules
Being Italian is a full-time job. We never
forget who we are, and we have fun confusing anyone who is looking on.
Don't
trust the quick smiles, bright eyes, and elegance of many Italians. Be wary of
everyone's poise. Italy is sexy.
It offers instant attention and solace. But don't
take Italy
at face value. Or, rather, take it at face value if you want to, but don't complain later.
One American traveler wrote, "Italy is the
land of human nature." If this is true and it certainly sounds convincing exploring Italy is an adventure. You're going to need a map.
So you'll
be staying for ten days? Here's the
deal: We'll take a look at three
locations on each day of your trip. They'll
be classics, the sort of places that get talked about a lot, perhaps because
they are so little known. We'll
start with an airport, since we're
here. Then I'll try to explain the
rules of the road, the anarchy of the office, why people talk on trains, and
the theatrical nature of hotel life. We'll
sit in judgment at a restaurant and feel the sensory reassurance of a church.
We'll visit Italy's televisual zoo and
appreciate how important the beach is. We'll
experience the solitude of the soccer stadium, and realize how crowded the
bedroom feels. We'll note the
vertical fixations of the apartment building, and the transverse democracy of
the living room or, rather, the
eat-in kitchen.
Ten days, thirty places. We've got to start somewhere if we want to find our
way into the Italian mind.
***
First of all, let's
get one thing straight. Your Italy
and our Italia are not the same thing. Italy is a soft
drug peddled in predictable packages, such as hills in the sunset, olive
groves, lemon trees, white wine, and raven-haired girls. Italia, on the other
hand, is a maze. It's alluring, but
complicated. In Italia, you can go round and round in circles for years. Which of course is great fun.
As they struggle to find a way out, many
newcomers fall back on the views of past visitors. People like Goethe,
Stendhal, Byron, and Twain always had an opinion about
Italians, and couldn't wait to get
home and write it down. Those authors are still quoted today, as if nothing had
changed. This is not true. Some things have changed in our Italy. The
problem is finding out what.
Almost all modern accounts of the country
fall into one of two categories: chronicles of a love affair, or diaries of a
disappointment. The former have an inferiority complex toward Italian home life,
and usually feature one chapter on the importance of the family, and another on
the excellence of Italian cooking. The diaries take a supercilious attitude
toward Italian public life. Inevitably, there is censure of Italian corruption,
and a section on the Mafia.
By and large, the chronicles of love affairs
are penned by American women, who display love without interest in their
descriptions of a seasonal Eden,
where the weather is good and the locals are charming. The diaries of
disappointment tend to be produced by British men, who show interest without
love. They describe a disturbing country populated by unreliable individuals
and governed by a public administration from hell.
Yet Italy is far from hellish. It's got too much style. Neither is it heaven, of
course, because it's too unruly. Let's just say that Italy is an offbeat purgatory, full
of proud, tormented souls each of whom is convinced he
or she has a hotline to the boss. It's
the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a
hundred meters, or the course of ten minutes. Italy is the only workshop in the
world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis. People who live in Italy say they want to get out, but
those who do escape all want to come back.
As you will understand, this is not the sort
of country that is easy to explain. Particularly when you pack a few fantasies
in your baggage, and Customs lets them through.
***
Take this airport, for example. Whoever wrote
that airports are nonplaces never visited Milan's Malpensa or Linate, or Rome's Fiumicino. Or, if they did pay a call, they must have been too busy
avoiding people shouting into cell phones and not looking where they were
going.
An airport in Italy is violently Italian. It's a zoo with air conditioning, where the animals
don't bite and only the odd comment
is likely to be poisonous. You have to know how to interpret the sounds and
signals. Italy
is a place where things are always about to happen. Generally, those things are
unpredictable. For us, normality is an exception. Do you remember The Terminal?
If the film had been set in Malpensa Airport,
Tom Hanks wouldn't just have fallen
in love with Catherine Zeta-Jones. He'd
have founded a political party, promoted a referendum, opened a restaurant, and
organized a farmers' market.
Look at the childlike joy on the faces of the
people as they stroll into the shops. Note how inventive they are at thinking
up ways to pass the time. Observe the deference to uniforms (any uniform, from
passing pilots to cleaning staff). Authority has been making Italians uneasy
for centuries, so we have developed an arsenal of countermeasures, from
flattery to indifference, familiarity, complicity, apparent hostility, and
feigned admiration. Study the emerging faces as the automatic doors of
international arrivals open. They reveal an almost imperceptible hint of relief
at getting past Customs. Obviously, almost all the arriving passengers have
nothing to hide. It doesn't matter.
There was a uniform, and now it's
gone.
Note the relief giving way to affection as
they retrieve their suitcases from the carousel. At the check-in desk, they
weren't sure they would ever see
their suitcases again, and did all they could to pass them off as hand luggage.
Listen to the couples quarreling, their accusations lent extra ferocity by the
embarrassment of performing in public ("Mario! You said you had the
passports!"). Admire the rituals of the families coming back from holiday.
These spoken exchanges Mom wants to
know where their son is; Dad shouts to the son; the son answers Dad; Dad tells
Mom, who has disappeared in the meantime are the same ones that echo in a New York hotel or a street market in London.
Malpensa encapsulates the nation. Only a naive observer would
mistake this for confusion. Actually, it's
performance art. It's improvisation
by gifted actors. No one believes for one minute he or she is an extra.
Everyone's a star, no matter how
modest the part. Federico Fellini would have made a good prime minister, if he'd wanted the job. It takes an outstanding director
to govern the Italians.
***
What else can you find out at an Italian
airport? Well, Italians' signature
quality our passion for beauty is in danger of becoming our number-one
defect. All too often, it prevents us from choosing what is good.
Look at the cell-phone displays and the
saleswomen perched on their stools. Many of them can't
tell a cell phone from a remote control, but all are indisputably attractive.
Do you know why the phone companies hire them instead of using skilled staff? Because that's what the
public wants. People prefer good looks to good answers.
Think about it. There is a lesson to be
learned. We are prepared to give up a lot for the sake of beauty, even when it
doesn't come in a miniskirt.
"Never judge a book by its cover" sounds like an oversimplification
in Italian. We judge books by their covers, politicians by their smiles,
professionals by their offices, secretaries by their posture, table lamps by
their design, cars by their styling, and people by their title. It's no coincidence that one Italian in four is
president of something. Look at the ads here in the airport. They're for cars, bags, and cosmetics. They don't say how good the products are. They tell us how
irresistible we'll be if we buy
them. As if we Italians needed that kind of reassurance.
***
If this passion for beauty stopped at
saleswomen, clothes, table lamps, and automobiles, it would be no big deal.
Sadly, it spills over into morality and, I repeat, induces us to confuse what
is beautiful with what is good. Only in Italian does there exist
an expression like fare bella figura. Think about that. It's
an aesthetic judgment it means
"to make a good figure" which is not quite the same thing as
making "a good impression."
There's
an elderly French lady in trouble over there. She's
just collected two huge suitcases and can't
find a baggage cart. If I went over and offered to help her, she'd probably accept. At that point, something curious
would happen. I would split into two. While Beppe was
being a Good Samaritan, Severgnini would observe the
scene and offer congratulations. Beppe would then
acknowledge his own compliment, and retire satisfied.
Ours is a sophisticated exhibitionism that
has no need of an audience. Italians are psychologically self-sufficient. What's the problem? Well, we like nice gestures so much
we prefer them to good behavior. Gestures gratify, but behaving takes an
effort. Still, the sum of ten good deeds does not make a person good, just as
ten sins do not necessarily add up to a sinner. Theologians distinguish between
actum and habitus:
a single incident is not as serious as a "habit," or
"practice."
In other words, if you want to understand Italy, forget
the guidebooks. Study theology.
***
An aesthetic sense that
sweeps ethics aside. A formidable instinct for beauty. That's
the first of our weak points. But there are others, for we are also
exceptional, intelligent, sociable, flexible, and sensitive. Offsetting these
are our good qualities. We are hypercritical, stay-at-homes, so conciliatory
and peace-loving we seem cowardly, and so generous we look naove.
Do you see why Italians are so disconcerting? What everyone else thinks of as
virtues are our weaknesses, and vice versa.
As I was saying, we are exceptional, and that's not necessarily a good thing. Surprised? Listen
to this. Two hours ago, you were on an Alitalia
airbus. On other occasions, you've
flown American Airlines or British Airways. Did you notice how the cabin staff
behaved?
The Italian flight attendant sometimes takes
her job title literally the plane
flies, she just attends. But she's
always pleasant, elegant, and ladylike, so much so that she can appear
intimidating. I remember one flight from Milan
to New York.
The Alitalia attendant, an attractive brunette from Naples, was strutting up
and down like a model on a catwalk thirty thousand feet above the ground. The
man sitting next to me glanced at her and asked me, "Do you think I might
be able to get another coffee?" "Why ask me? Ask her," I
replied, nodding in the direction of the flight attendant. "How can I ask
Sophia Loren for a coffee?" he whimpered. He was right. The good-looking
attendant was putting on a fashion show in the sky, and no one dared to
interrupt.
But then take a British flight attendant. You
wouldn't mistake her for a model.
She'll have very little makeup, and
no jewelry. Often she is robustly built, and until recently would be sporting
one of those little round hats that you only see on British cabin staff and New
Jersey ice-cream vendors. Her heels are low, and her shoes are
"sensible," as they say in New
York. Alitalia crews wear
emerald green. British Airways has improbable combinations of red, white, and
blue, or a mayonnaise-cum-apricot shade that nature felt no need to invent. The
British woman is attentive, though. She comes back again and again, smiling all
the time. She waits until your mouth is full, swoops on you from behind, and
beams "Is everything all right?"
Then something happens. Let's say you spill your coffee on your pants. At that
point, the two personalities undergo an abrupt transformation that you've
guessed it sums up the respective
national characters.
The British attendant stiffens. You have
deviated from the pattern; you have done something you shouldn't have. All of a sudden, her inner nanny emerges.
She doesn't say she's annoyed, but she lets you know.
The attractive Italian also undergoes a
change. In an emergency, her detachment disappears. At times of crisis, what emerges is her inner mom, sister, confidante, friend, and
lover. She takes off her jacket and actually helps you. Weak at, if not openly
irritated by, routine administration, she comes into her own in exceptional
circumstances that allow her to bring her personal skills to bear. Where did
the ice goddess go? She melted. In her place is a smiling woman who is trying
to be helpful.
Do you think some people might be tempted to
spill their coffee on purpose the next time they fly Alitalia?
Could be. A gorgeous Italian is worth a minor
scalding.
***
OK, let's
go. Are you ready for the Italian jungle?
The highway, or
the psychopathology of the stoplight
People say we're
intelligent. It's true. The problem
is that we want to be intelligent all the time. Foreigners' jaws drop at the incessant brainwaves, the
constant flow of imagination, and the alternate bursts of perception and
perfectionism. They are stunned by the fireworks display that is the Italian
mind. Now, you can astound the English once an hour, the Americans every thirty
minutes, and the French on the quarter-hour, but you can't
amaze everyone every three minutes it's
upsetting for them. That's why in Italy rules are
not obeyed as they are elsewhere. We think it's
an insult to our intelligence to comply with a regulation. Obedience is boring.
We want to think about it. We want to decide whether a particular law applies
to our specific case. In that place, at that time.
Do you see that red light? It looks the same
as any other red light anywhere in the world, but it's
an Italian invention. It's not an
order, as you might naively think. Nor is it a warning, as a superficial glance
might suggest. It's actually an
opportunity to reflect, and that reflection is hardly ever silly. Pointless, perhaps, but not silly.
When many Italians see a stoplight, their
brain perceives no prohibition (Red! Stop! Do not pass!). Instead, they see a
stimulus. OK, then. What kind of red is it? A pedestrian red?
But it's seven in the morning. There
are no pedestrians about this early. That means it's
a negotiable red; it's a
"not-quite-red." So we can go. Or is it a red at an intersection?
What kind of intersection? You can see what's
coming here, and the road is clear. So it's
not a red, it's an "almost
red," a "relative red." What do we do? We think about it for a
bit, then we go.
And what if it's
a red at a dangerous intersection with traffic you can't
see arriving at high speed? What kind of question is that? We stop, of course,
and wait for the green light. In Florence,
where we'll be going, they have an
expression: rosso pieno
(full red). Rosso (red) is a bureaucratic
formula, and pieno (full) is a personal
comment.
Excerpted from La
Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind
by Beppe Severgnini. Copyright ) 2006 Excerpted
by permission of Broadway Books,
an imprint of Random House. All rights reserved.
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14366142/