Sunday, October 01, 2006

La Bella Figura: Learning Italian Easy; Learning to BE Italian is Impossible.

The ANNOTICO Report

So long ago the Italians learned what Americans still do not understand: "Image is TOO Often more Important than Reality"

To explain: If I have No Power, But I Give the Appearance of Power, You will THINK I have Power, and You will treat me with More Respect than I might otherwise Deserve.     .... Think about it.

 

ITALIANS : GO FIGURE 

La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind

By Beppe Severgnini: Broadway Books,   217 pages, $31.95

The Globe and Mail

Julie Enfield

September 30, 2006

 

The first question everyone asks me when I tell them I lived in Italy for 12 years: Did you convert? The truth is, learning to speak Italian was relatively easy. Learning to be  Italian was impossible. For one thing, I was guilty of sipping cappuccinos in the afternoon, something only a turista  would do. In Italy, it is immoral, if not illegal, to order a cappuccino after 10 a.m. It is almost as diclassi as eating pizza in the middle of the day. Not a single restaurant owner in Italy would permit such a travesty. It's just not done.

Epicurean obsession is one of the many nuggets that journalist Beppe Severgnini offers in La Bella Figura, his ironic and insightful examination of the Italian mind. "The restaurant is where high-flying bankers come to meet A-list celebs, who come to rub shoulders with leading fashion designers, who want to bump into big names in the media, who come to look down their noses at everyone else, only to beam in contentment when they are recognized," the author of Ciao, America!  writes, carving up, this time around, our idealized notions of Italian culture. "Be wary of everyone's poise," he warns in his first chapter. "Don't trust the quick smiles, bright eyes, and elegance of many Italians."

This may sound more like Dante's Inferno, but as Severgnini points out, "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 in the course of ten minutes."

Despite what such writers as Byron, Goethe and Stendhal had to say about the country, our Italy is not the same as Severgnini's. Ours is the dolce vita  postcard of olive groves, lemon trees, rolling Tuscan hills and embracing neighbours. His Italia spills over with an aesthetic sense that washes ethics aside. It is unpredictable. Complicated. Sexy. "What everyone else thinks of as virtues are our weaknesses, and vice versa," he writes.

And only in Italy is there an expression like fare bella figura, which means "to make a good figure." It is an aesthetic judgment, we are told, which we should not confuse with "to make a good impression." For Italians, it's better to look good than be good.

Anyone in doubt as to the power of this passion for beauty need only head to Milan's Malpensa Airport for correction. Here, "everyone's a star, no matter how modest the part," Severgnini writes. In order to gain admission to his land of the bella figura, a cell phone is absolutely compulsory. Who cares if most of the saleswomen at the airport of Malpensa's cell phone displays "can't tell a cell phone from a remote control."

Severgnini explains that his compatriots' weakness for surface appeal extends beyond miniskirts. "We judge books by their covers, politicians by their smiles, professionals by their offices, and cars by their styling," he writes. As a result, many Italians often confuse what is beautiful with what is good. Small wonder that "one in four Italians is president of something."

Severgnini, a columnist for the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, says Italy's talent for theatrics also applies to beaches and piazzas, but particularly hotels. "We may be occasional clients of a perfectly ordinary establishment, but we are convinced that in some celestial hotel register -- kept by the gods, not the authorities -- a trace of our passage will remain." The concept wouldn't fly here.

Severgnini's attention then moves to the psychopathology of the stop light. Here, we learn that a red traffic light denotes a variety of interpretations. For example, a seven-in-the-morning red light, with no sign of pedestrians, is a "negotiable red," a "not-quite-red" that invites drivers to reflect. A red light in Florence is called rosso pieno when there is traffic, and simply rosso with no cars around. This reasoning applies to almost every aspect of Italian life, from taxes to personal behaviour.

From there, Severgnini goes on to look at the anarchy of the workplace, the sensory calm of the church and the busy Italian bedroom. His whirlwind 10-day excursion -- partially conceptual, partially geographic -- takes us to such legendary cities as Milan, Rome and Naples, and scenic hot spots such as Sardinia. Packed with wonderful anecdotes and native wit, Severgnini's entertaining book illuminates what turns out to be a little-understood place and its people.

Severgnini's observations about Italians are surprisingly objective; as well, they have the authority of an insider. Consider trains. Like restaurants, restrooms and churches, trains are places of "group confession and collective absolution." Or television. We learn that TV "is as exotic as an airport, as unruly as a city street, as hypnotic as a hotel, as perturbing as a store, as ever-changing as a restaurant, as noisy as a train, as deceiving as the countryside, as instructive as a piazza and as ubiquitous as churches."

When it comes to office crime in Italy, Severgnini tells us, "there's an air of absurdity." He explains that the supreme court ruled that anyone who habitually phones home from the office is guilty of an offence. Ditto for people who shop during office hours, chit-chat too much or snooze on the job, which the court calls "malicious abandonment of the workplace."

While clearly illegal, lying about one's income at tax time is considered normal. "Obedience is boring," Severgnini writes. "We think it's an insult to our intelligence to comply with a regulation. We want to decide whether a particular law applies to our specific case. In that time and place."

Ultimately, La Bella Figura is a snapshot of Italy today, its complexities, its indulgences and its paradoxes. "Italy is the only workshop in the world that can turn out both Botticellis and Berlusconis," Severgnini writes in his erudite fashion. This marvellously witty and perceptive book proves that understanding the minds of third-millennium Italians can be tricky. "If Italy doesn't leave you bewildered, it has conned you."

Julie Enfield is the author of Kiss and Tell: An Intimate History of Kissing. She lives in Toronto and Italy.

 

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