The Others Suffer Silently And Often Die, Forgotten, In Their
Cells.
And yet - how seriously we take this nation!
Almost as seriously as we
take ourselves. The reason is that most of us come to Italy too
undiscerning, too reverent; in the pre-critical and pre-humorous stages.
We arrive here, stuffed with Renaissance ideals or classical lore, and
viewing the present through coloured spectacles. We arrive here, above
all things, too young; for youth loves to lean on tradition and to draw
inspiration from what has gone before; youth finds nothing more
difficult than to follow Goethe's advice about grasping that living life
which shifts and fluctuates about us. Few writers are sufficiently
detached to laugh at these people as they, together with ourselves, so
often and so richly deserve. I spoke of the buffoonery of Italian law; I
might have called it a burlesque. The trial of the ex-minister Nasi:
here was a cause celebre conducted by the highest tribunal of the
land; and if it was not a burlesque - why, we must coin a new word for
what is.
XXXIV
MALARIA
A black snake of alarming dimensions, one of the monsters that still
infest the Calabrian lowlands, glided across the roadway while I was
waiting for the post carriage to drive me to Caulonia from its
railway-station. Auspicious omen! It carried my thoughts from old
Aesculapius to his modern representatives - to that school of wise and
disinterested healers who are ridding these regions of their curse, and
with whom I was soon to have some nearer acquaintance.
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