Seasons in Basilicata Page 8

  On he went, this true Matero-phile, demolishing so many of my impressions and cutting to the core of fact with such precision that I felt it was time to forget all about his resemblance to my grandfather and start to challenge some of his professorial authoritativeness…delicately, of course. The Professor not only was a gracious man but he also had a mischievous glint in his eye that seemed to invite spirited, but scrupulously polite, debate.

  “I understood that Carlo Levi was so incensed by the inhuman living conditions of the Materani down in the Sassi that he triggered a whole new attitude toward the problems of the Mezzogiorno,” I said as forcefully as I could. “They even say he managed to have much of the area closed and public housing built for the impoverished population. Good housing—well planned, with lots of air and open space.”

  The Professor smiled, stroked my arm affectionately, gave one of those odd “devil’s horns” (corno) gestures (a closed fist with index and pinkie fingers extended and wiggled as a protection against “the evil eye”), and said, “Aha! An admirer of Levi, I see. Well, in that case I have something to show you in my center.” He pointed down the street to the elegant façade of Palazzo Lanfranchi, a mid–seventeenth-century seminary, part of which was now being used as Matera’s Carlo Levi Center.

  “Ah, yes, I’ve been there before, but it’s always closed for restoration.”

  “Ah, yes, the restoration. Of course. A long process.”

  “How much longer, do you think?”

  He leaned forward conspiratorially, gave another one of his wiggling corno signs, looked around to make sure there were no eavesdroppers, rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in the universal “it’s all about money” gesture, and whispered, “Who can say? You know what I mean? Who can say, eh?” He ended by tapping a finger on his cheek just below his left eye (the popular Italian furbizia gesture indicating conspiratorial insights).

  But this time, despite the “ongoing restoration,” I was able to enter the modest rooms of the center and its small conference hall and library. “And now, the best room of all,” said the Professor, leading me by the arm across half-completed flooring into a large cryptlike space and pointing at an enormous series of ten-foot-high painted panels extending over sixty feet along one of the walls.

  “So, tell me what you think of this!” he gushed, his eyes twinkling.

  And there it was: Carlo Levi’s most notorious and skillful artwork, his Lucania ’61, painted for the Turin “Italia ’61” Exposition—a centenary celebration of Italian unity—and regarded by many as one of his most blatantly strident and socially condemning of all his works.

  Its impact was overwhelming, so great in fact that I couldn’t absorb it all at once. I had to study it segment by segment, guided by the loquacious Professor, whose enthusiasm for this huge masterwork knew no bounds. Many of the finer subtleties and graphic jibes at local politicians and the omnipresent “Luiginis” (Levi’s term for “middle-class petty power parasites”) were lost on me. However, its ultrarealistic depiction of the appalling living conditions of the terroni in Matera and the surrounding hill villages, the furor of outrage and protest by such writer-philosopher-orators as Rocco Scotellaro, one of Levi’s closest friends, and the fear and trepidation on the faces of the regional powerbrokers at the possibility of revolution and retribution, all burst from the canvas like riotous explosions. And Levi’s choice of colors—from the dark hovels filled with even darker coteries of black-clad widows to the glaring scorch of the summer sun on the bodies of bone-weary peasants to the vibrant hues of the angry crowds—reflected perfectly the range of moods and powerful actions he intended to portray.

  Great art speaks, and this masterwork spoke volumes of almost biblical length and import. I left the room dizzied by the scope and power of the work.

  “Coffee, I think,” the Professor suggested as we strolled out from the ancient palazzo to a nearby coffee bar and enjoyed espresso and grappa corretto. Well, that’s not exactly true. The Professor limited himself to a fruit juice; I was the one with the corretto. (I always have to be careful when ordering not to confuse a corretto with a cornetto, which is only a sweet croissant and has far less immediate impact upon the system.) But I felt I needed it. The vividness and horror of Levi’s painting—a vicarious journey into Basilicata’s heart of darkness—had left me emotionally limp.

  “I think you were impressed, eh?” the Professor said, as the corretto worked its restorative magic.

  “Yes, indeed. But you know, I’m still curious, and the more I listen to people here the more curious I become. As founder and director of the center, what do you feel was Levi’s real legacy to this region? What was the true impact of his book, his art, and his later role as a senator in the national government?”

  The Professor had obviously been asked the same question many times before but seemed willing to give it a full response. “Why don’t we walk in the sunshine? I’ll tell you some things that may interest you.”

  FOR THE NEXT HOUR or so he displayed his full wisdom and insights, and although I’m sure I missed many of the finer points of his rhetoric, some key ideas filtered through that helped me better understand the context and impact of Levi and his beliefs.

  Perhaps our greatest problem nowadays, the Professor suggested, is that we have forgotten what a wild, idea-filled ethos existed in the world during the early and middle part of the twentieth century. Great revolutions—in France, Russia, Spain, Italy, and other countries—revealed new societal possibilities, structures, and power, particularly the enormous power of “the masses,” destitute downtrodden peasants, serfs and mass-production factory workers. The two terrible world wars were direct manifestations of the great conflicting “isms” of the day: socialism, communism, nationalism, fascism, and capitalism.

  Levi’s first, and for many his most powerfully strident, book, Of Fear and Freedom (Paura della Libertà, 1939), can be truly understood only in the context of this turmoil-filled time of political schisms, revolutions, and wars whose scale of horror and devastation had never been known before.

  “Levi saw such battles as conflicts for the very soul of man,” the Professor explained. “How to save mankind from the tyranny of petty-power oppression, unending exploitation of the underclasses, revisionist historical manipulation, and the utter corruption that entrenched power brings. He was particularly convinced that the little power men, the middle-class village tyrants, were the worst offenders, prohibiting all kinds of freedom and eliminating the possibilities for the lower classes, the peasants, to lead a civilized existence. He was very adamant when he wrote: ‘These tyrants are a physically and ethically degenerated class, incapable of carrying out their functions and living on small robberies of a debased feudal rights tradition.’ And Levi was also very critical of the power of the church. He said, ‘Man is wandering through an eternal forest, in search of an eternal certainty: a certainty whose price is servitude and death. In such a drying up and shriveling of the soul, every self mutilation is thought to be holy…the sacred history of the world is a history of willing servitude.’”

  “The church must have considered this outright blasphemy,” I said. “Just like the state. Wasn’t he equally critical of the overwhelming power of the state?”

  “Oh, indeed yes,” the Professor said. “He wrote, ‘the state requires total slavery—and it commands to believe, to obey. Every individual autonomy, ever act of personal creation is, by its very nature, outside this law, inimical to the state—a sacrilege!’”

  “Yes, I remember those words. So, his idea for returning power to the peasants—was that a kind of communism, as many claimed?”

  “No, no, it was more complicated than that. Levi was returning to something far more basic—as he said, to ‘a history outside the framework of time.’ In the terroni of Aliano and other parts of the South he saw an ancient peasant civilization (that necropolis they discovered recently near Aliano suggests that this civilization goes back to at least 7000 B.C.,
beyond the Neolithic Age) suffering ‘patient pain and nurtured by very ancient wisdom, outside of history, beyond even progressive reason.’ And paradoxically, despite the centuries-long pounding down of these people by malicious pyramidal power structures, he perceived a young world that is still dawning, in which a new type of man was being, or could be, formed. An ancient world and yet one also potentially alive and present in an enlightened new world, the adolescence of centuries ready finally to emerge and play, like butterflies from their cocoons, like new shoots under the bark of trees. Levi saw, ‘The Lucania in each one of us—a vital force ready to become fresh form, life, fresh intuitions fighting the entrenched paternal, landowner institutions in this claim for a new reality—new men making an entirely new history. All the Lucanias of the earth meeting the challenges of the future together and “giving a fresh start to history”.’”

  The Professor’s explanations touched a chord. “I remember reading a wonderful passage Levi wrote about his enlightenment in Aliano,” I said. “But I’m sure your memory is better than mine.”

  He smiled, his jowls wobbling with delight. “Yes, yes! He wrote: ‘I suddenly realized I loved the peasants and a great feeling of peace entered me. I felt detached from every earthly thing and place, lost in a place far from time and reality. I listened to the silence of the night and felt as if I had all of a sudden penetrated the very heart of the universe. An immense happiness, such as I had never known, swept over me with a flow of understanding and fulfillment.’”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s the quote. It read almost like St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.”

  “Yes, a beautiful revelation, beautiful. And Levi gave his life to this vision. All his life.”

  WHEN WE FINALLY said good-bye (I almost said, “Goodbye, Grandpa” but managed to catch myself just in time), I expressed sincere gratitude for the Professor’s insights and opinions before giving his hand a farewell shake.

  His smile was still my grandfather’s smile, beatific and Buddha-like, and his handshake was firm and unusually long. He looked at me and into me in such a warm and intimate way that I wondered if he sensed a little of my earlier emotional confusion. Then he winked. A definite conspiratorial wink, followed by one of his now-familiar corno gestures.

  Moments of Introspection

  After all these professorial revelations of the Mezzogiorno’s plight and Levi’s role in attempting to stimulate the emergence of new men making an entirely new history from the downtrodden terroni masses, I knew it was now time to head for the source of Levi’s visionary insights: Aliano itself. No more of these moth-circling-the-flame meanderings, although I was tempted to journey a little farther to the northeast, into Apulia and the strange land of the trulli. These unique, beehive-shaped houses and farms fill the high limestone plateau of le Murge around the town of Alberobello, presenting an almost fairy-tale picture of life in a very bizarre corner of Italy. But such a journey I knew would inevitably lead to a longer exploration of nearby Lecce, whose center is a gorgeous golden-hued city-shrine to Italian baroque at its most extravagant. Too much, I told myself. Focus!

  From my map I guessed that Aliano was only a two, maybe three hour drive south from Matera, across a topography that appeared to be a lot less tortuous and tangled than the mountain wilderness I’d faced on my drive from Sapri to Castelmezzano.

  So, bidding farewell for a while to the intriguing complexities and strange beauty of the Sassi, I left Matera and headed toward the place I hoped would become my—our—new home.

  Sweeping down again into the broad Basento Valley and then up the other side into a rounded series of ridges and hollows, I felt a sudden surge of utter freedom. Time, I realized once again, was all mine to do with what I would.

  And apparently it was time for a little epiphany. My body tingled with excitement, and the car began to meander erratically on the winding road so I pulled off to the side and parked on the edge of a steep bluff with grand vistas in all directions. And I just sat, still tingling, watching hawks cresting the thermals and sensing the softness of the breezes, like doves’ wings against my face. I let my mind wander where it wanted to go, spooling through my life and adventures, relishing the subtle threads that seemed to link all my experiences and that had combined to bring me here, into the heart of Basilicata, perched on the cusp of something wondrous.

  I always carry a notebook with me, full of the most enticing quotations from the learned, famous, and celebrated (and others less so) on the raison d’être for travel, the driving force behind (in my case at least) the dementia of endless journeys of discovery. And I find the sheer over-the-top honesty of Mrs. William Beckman in her book Backsheesh (1900) irresistible: “In the spirit I shall never revisit lands my eager, willing feet once trod. Travel has ever been…a passion so great it seems to me life beyond the grave will not be full or complete unless it be that Eternity means wandering from one fair world to another.”

  What a blissful idea (and blissfully stated)—that heaven might be a continuum of the joys of travel! Unfortunately, although known by my closest friends for my unbounded optimism, I have never quite been able to convince myself that this might come to pass. It may well be, of course, in which case my wanderings will continue undaunted after my passing into Mrs. Beckman’s “fairer worlds.” But I’ve always erred on the side of spiritual caution (not pessimism, I tell myself, but merely a sensible rationale) and have tried to cram into this immediate life, as much randoming, wandering, and peripatetic perambulating—whatever you wish to call the way I satisfy my constantly restless nature—as possible. This sense of urgency had been exacerbated by a number of near-death events that, in hindsight, seemed to be regular and necessary reminders of the constant fragility of mortality. So, I didn’t waste time. I made no exaggerated assumptions about my longevity and certainly none in terms of afterlife adventures.

  Here’s another favorite quote from my notebook that set the seal on all my “road less traveled” explorations. And who better to express the idea than the irascible, irresistible Mark Twain: “Your road is everything that a road ought to be…and yet you will not stay on it, for the reason that little, seductive, mysterious roads are always branching out from it, and as these curve and hide what is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your road and explore them.”

  Ah yes. Those “temptations to desert” still guide most of my journeys, which continue to invite “small epiphanies” (another lovely notebook phrase I picked up somewhere), celebrate serendipity, and generate wonder at whatever marvels may be revealed around the next curve, and all the other ones after that.

  And indeed they have done throughout my traveling life, which began at the ripe age of thirty with what was supposed to have been a short sabbatical from a career as an urban planner. I’d intended it merely as an intriguing interlude with Anne of a few months’ duration to try to satiate a hunger for adventure and exploration that had been niggling and nudging us both for years.

  Now, after thirty years “on the road,” I realize that I was obviously seeking far more than satiation, far more than a calming of my restless nature, which would, I thought, allow my original career to continue and flourish, niggle-less. Apparently what I had embarked upon all those years ago was both a yearning for and a celebration of the possibilities of self-exploration, on a “soul-voyage” that continues to this day. I no longer seek satiation of that spirit and the forces that drive it. That spirit will not accept satiation, so I allow it to lead me where it knows it must go.

  In hindsight, those three decades now seem so remarkably ordered and logical. Very early on in my sabbatical I realized that it was not merely travel I wanted but rather to share my journeys in as many ways as possible with others through articles, books, illustrations, photography, lectures, interviews, etc. I also found that I had little interest in exploring the more famous haunts of tourist and travelers. I chose instead the hidden, the secretive, the elusive places, which gave rise to bo
oks with such titles as Backroad Journeys, Nooks and Crannies, Hidden Corners, and, later, as I found myself taking on the whole globe and writing much longer works, The World’s Secret Places, The Back of Beyond, and Lost Worlds.

  My new life as a “world-wandering earth gypsy”—a title bestowed upon me by a reviewer of an early book (for herself Anne preferred the more modest “travel-mate”)—also began to open up deeper ideas and themes related to travel. Exploration and adventure had obviously become (possibly they always had been) a metaphor for inner exploration and the search for the driving spirit that lurks within each of us. The spirit that nudges us all toward a closer relationship with and celebration of the breadth and multitudinous possibilities of our own protean natures. Walt Whitman insisted that “I contain multitudes” and James Hillman suggests our souls are “a community of many interior persons and each needs nurturing.”

  I also sensed a need to change the scope of my explorations and add a little more depth to my travels. Rather than giving myself the gift of the whole world and visiting up to twenty “lost worlds” for each book, I realized that I was becoming increasingly intrigued by the wealth of riches to be found in a single place.

  I particularly agreed with the writings of Thomas Moore, who suggested:

  Today many people live the external life exclusively, and when the inner world erupts or stirs, they rush to a therapist or druggist for help. They try to explain profound mythic developments in the language of behavior and experiences. Often they have no idea what is happening to them, because they have been so cut off from the deep self. Their own soul is so alien to them that they are unaware of what is going on outside the known realm of fact.