Viva L'Italia

Who knows what Garibaldi would say of today’s Italy. He conquered a kingdom but instead of bringing Caravaggio’s paintings and the gold of the Bourbon dynasty with him to Caprera, he packed fava beans and a box of preserved codfish. What would the Great War’s volunteers say, those who wrote home to their mothers: “Maybe you can’t understand why I chose to die in these battlefields, but believe me that it’s a thousand times sweeter for me to die in front of my birth place, for my Country. Goodbye beloved Mother; goodbye dear Sister; goodbye Father. If I die, I die with my love for you on my lips, near our wild Mount Carso.” What would Piedmont’s General Perotti say? After the tribunal of Salò condemned him to death, the General’s men attempted to save his life in court by taking on his blame and responsibility. In response to their efforts he shouted, “Officers, to your feet: viva l’Italia!”

Today the phrase “Viva l’Italia” is said only jokingly. And yet, for many of the Italians who took part in the Resurgence and the Resistance, that very phrase was the last one they spoke. The Resistance has fallen out of fashion and is considered a “thing of the Left.” One forgets the self-sacrifice of priests like don Ferrante Bagiardi, who chose to die with his parishioners, telling them, “I’ll accompany you in front of God.” One forgets about military men like Colonel Montezemolo; the nazi-fascists extracted his teeth and nails, but never the names of his comrades. One forgets that the partisans weren’t blood-thirsty avengers, forgets that they were actually hunted down, tortured, hanged, their bodies put on public display to terrorize civilians. One forgets that the defeated “Youth of Salò” – those young supporters of Mussolini during the Salò Republic when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was headquartered in the small town of Salò on Lake Garda – held the knife for twenty months and used it.

Even our Resurgence is currently considered unfashionable, a “thing for Liberals.” We’ve forgotten that in 1848 all of Italy rose up as one. Today in this moment of the Lega and the neo-Bourbons, the prevailing desire is to either divide the peninsula or to reduce it to nothing more than a Belpaese: Italy isn’t a nation, but merely a place in which one doesn’t live too badly, after all is said and done. The reality, however, is that Italy is a serious country much more ancient than its 150 years; it was born in the verses of Dante and Petrach, in the paintings of Piero della Francesca and Titian. And it became a nation thanks to heroes that are often forgotten. Aldo Cazzullo tells the story. He rejects Lega ideals and Belpaese rhetoric. He prefigures the birth of a “nation party.” And he puts forth a hypothesis: deep down, Italians are more closely tied to Italy than they think.

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