The Southern Shores of the Mediterranean

The Greek-Roman soul is intimately tied to Egypt and North Africa. We are all Mediterranean. Food, plants and plenty of traditions are similar. On a long-period perspective we belong to the same historical stream, to the same sea from which some of the first civilizations have germinated in this side of the planet. Of course there are differences, but we are not so dissimilar as someone might (or likes to) think and our religions themselves, apparently dividing us, are in reality related to the same God.

It is not by chance that these north-African regions are considered diverse and almost European by Sub-Saharan black people. They are in fact very different from Sub-Saharan Africa. Another interesting point is that during the whole Middle Ages north Africans were the most powerful, civilised and wealthy among all Mediterranean (and European) folks.

Wealth has now moved to the north. The northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean tend to exchange their roles. Tunisia conquered Sicily for 400 years. Today it looks at Sicily (and Italy) as a beloved guiding light and its greatest inspiring model (“les Italiens pur nous sont comme des dieux”, “Italians are like gods to us”, a Tunisian manager once told me), and we, in our narrow-mindedness, do not much notice it. Italians (especially those who travel little) do not know how much they are loved within the entire Mediterranean area. Even when we landed on its islands as occupants, together with the Nazis, we were accepted with affection by the local populations because they felt us as close relatives. How many memories, traditions and bonds we do share with them.

Many villages in southern Italy (or in so many Greek islands, not to mention Spain, who was under Arabic rule for so long) look Arabic or belonging in any case to the deep southern Mediterranean: take Ostuni, in Apulia, or Sperlonga, in the south of Latium; then look at Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia (see picture above). They are almost identical, belonging to a very similar culture, whether we like it or not, because during the Middle Ages the winning model came from the southern Mediterranean coasts, where civilization (and power) lay. Needless to say, when a Roman - and even more a Neapolitan (not to mention a Sicilian) - hears an Arabic melody he feels hidden strings vibrating deep in his soul.

Going further back in time let us remember the mortal war between Rome and Carthage (we are returning then to immortal Tunisia), whose legendary origin - narrated by Virgil’s classical (and beautiful) poem Aeneid - sprung from Dido’s desperate love for Aeneas, our Trojan ancestor of Rome. This Carthage’s queen (thence Tunisian), forsaken by the Trojan hero, stabbed herself after predicting eternal hate between Rome and Carthage. So from love sprang hate, and from hate a tremendous war (thus says the legend): a moment of history – this war, historical of course, not legendary - that decided whether the Mediterranean was to be dominated by its northern or its southern shores. The North (and Rome) won, by a hair’s breadth though, we have to say.

I was in Tunisia for work and in La Goulette coffee houses - La Goulette is a picturesque district in Tunis, close to the harbour, where incidentally beautiful Italian-Tunisian actress Claudia Cardinale was born - people still discuss the battles of Roman Scipio and of Carthaginian Hannibal, and they line up beans on tables thus drawing up troops of both armies in order to celebrate Hannibal’s brilliant victories over the Romans, still trying also to understand where Hannibal went wrong in the last fatal battle of Zama. One of the guys I met there had worked with several Italian movie directors in the innumerable films the Italians shot in Tunisia.

I clearly felt they were all kind and warm to this Italian person who showed interest in them. Since we were drinking beer together I asked them: “Isn’t alcohol forbidden by the Koran?”. One of them replied: “Eh bien, nous on fait tout, mais en cachette”, “well, we do everything, though in secret”. And my mind went to Sicily, where doing things en chachette is typical and well ingrained.

Getting back to Egypt, let us consider Alexander the Great and his relationship with Egypt and the city of Alexandria, which he founded. And let us consider Cleopatra, descendant of one of Alexander’s generals, as well as her love affair with Julius Caesar, first, and with Mark Anthony, Caesar’s relative, later. Caesar and Anthony, united both by kinship and their love for Egypt’s splendid civilization. Was Caesar’s love for Egypt sincere, or was it the result of mere political calculations? We do not know, but we are almost sure Anthony’s interest towards Egypt was not only political.

The conflict between Anthony and Octavian was again a moment in history that decided whether the Mediterranean had to be dominated by its northern or south-eastern shores, this time. Again Rome (and the North) won but later, after the fall of the Roman empire, the South and Near East took their revenge, with triumphant Islam and the survival of Greek Constantinople.

As a conclusion, the eternal Roman and Mediterranean soul vibrates when in contact with relatives to whom it is tied by both common history and traditions. Who better than Naghib Mahfuz, the great Egyptian writer (and our future virtual guest), can guide us and help us to understand? In our next post dedicated to the southern shores of the Mediterranean we will in fact listen to the love words of young Kamal, the main character from the second volume of Mahfuz’s Cairo trilogy.

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Italian version

Isn’t the British Trojan Horse a Short-Sighted Animal?

Let us consider two articles, one appeared in Newsweek (last Feb 4), another in the Financial Times (March 19, 2007).

I. Newsweek (original article):

The American economy is slowing down (I am summarizing here and there) and while the United States are sneezing, the rest of the world won’t probably catch a cold. In other words, and for the first time, “the rest of the world will cushion America’s slide (…) . The fastest growing big economies in the world – China, India, Brazil – appear set to continue their robust growth – argues influential American columnist Fareed Zakaria – (…) and this will help the United States” also because of the U.S. dollar’s decline which makes American exports cheaper and investments and tourism in America more attractive.
[That is to say, while first the Americans were helping the world in moments of crisis still buying foreign goods thus helping foreign economoies, now the contrary is true, this being the first time such a thing happens; Man of Roma's note].

These and other trends represent a great change in the global economic order. “Power is moving away from the traditional centres of the global economy – the Western nations – to the emerging markets. To put it more bluntly: the United States is in the beginning of a period of relative decline. It may not be steep or dramatic, but the fact that it’s happening is clear. Even if one assumes a slowdown - Fareed Zakaria continues -, the other big economies will still grow at two and three times the pace of the West. Over time they will take up a larger share of the global economy – and the United States and Western Europe will have thinner slices. This is not defeatism. It is math.”

II. Financial Times (whose unsigned comment sheds light on the situation, and relative economic weight, of the European Union; original article):

If the European Union weren’t there “there would be less trade among the nations of Europe, more macroeconomic instability; Spain and Ireland would probably not have achieved their spectacular economic transformation (…) one of the most striking images of European integration is the sight of motorways full of trucks from countries such as Romania and Lithuania. Air travel liberalisation has perhaps contributed more than any other policy to bring the people of Europe closer (…) The EU is currently the world’s largest economy, a position it is certain to lose over the next 50 years due to the rise of China and India. Size in this instance does not really matter. But what would matter hugely is if the EU became so lacking in ambition and purpose that it lapsed into genteel decline.”

The article provides some advices on how to better face future challenges: more economic integration, more globalisation and aperture to emerging markets etc. Strangely enough, a tighter political union – which would seem ideal to get over this pernicious (according to FT) “lacking in ambition and purpose” - is one of the advices not offered (and unsaid) by FT to the Continent … .

Now my question is: in the context of this overall foreseen decline of the West and of these huge transformations ahead of us (India and China alone are maybe 40% of the entire world population), is this divide et impera policy (or divide et vive, divide and survive) towards mainland Europe - traditional in UK and much understandable until a few years ago – still valid today, still forward thinking? I mean, this subtle (not too subtle sometimes) action of hindering at all costs the making of one big European nation, is it still corresponding to the British (and American) interests themselves?

Aren’t the British (and the French) lost in an opiate dream that they can still play a world role of some importance (America being different, of course) and does this dream justify the demolition (or even just the delay) of a European nation? Tending to condone the French – I told you I’m unassuming - not only out of sentimental weakness (they have been a lot pro Europe together with the Germans, after all), and given for granted that the guys at the British Foreign Office are more intelligent than Man of Roma, could anyone then help me to understand why this British Trojan horse isn’t a short-sighted animal?

Italian version of this post

A Novel in the Hands of the Killers

Before getting to the killers let us be patient and consider the concept of literary improvisation. I know I am terribly boring but I promise a lot of blood blood blood in this post - plus the relationship between literature and social life being complex we’ll have to wander a bit before we finally dive into base butchery .

Literary improvisation is not far from musical improvisation, a topic we have talked about in a previous post. We will not define the concept, being it self-explanatory.

(Can James Joyce’s stream of consciousness be in some way related to what we have said above - literary improvisation, not base butchery, in case you don’t get it wrong ? Hard to say. I don’t believe it to be very far from it. It is to be noted though that writers at times cleverly build what seems spontaneous, and in literature what counts is the final result: things do work or they do not).

Connecting literary improvisation with digression we will mention again that nice passage by J. D. Salinger where Holden, the adolescent protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye, narrates how he had to undergo the oral expression lesson which consisted in letting a student speak of any topic, and each time the student didn’t stick to the point all the boys in class had to yell “Digression!!” at him (you can read this passage in a previous post of ours). Holden instead liked speeches full of digressions and the novel itself, if not very similar in its structure to the above said stream of consciousness, is nonetheless so rich with digressions, facts within facts, ideas within ideas, that it creates an overall effect of chaotic freshness memorably depicting an adolescent mind definitely undisciplined and even disturbed (Holden is disturbed in some way) although so vivacious and sparkling.

(Here again everything seems spontaneous and improvised but I am sure Salinger’s text resulted from a good mixture of intuition and clever construction).

Salinger’s novel has been a classic not only of the American literature (and his language is present in most dictionaries of US slang) but it has inspired the beat generation as well as numerous drop-outs who joined the utopian movements of the 1960s up to the present day.

Personally I read it by mere chance when I was 18 (I had it in inheritance from a boy who was leaving an apartment we shared in Ireland) and I was deeply impressed by it. Coming just out of adolescence I probably recognized in there plenty of the insecurities I was living in those days. But young Holden went beyond, to the extent of almost hating all the surrounding world and it was a bit worrying for people (like me), who enjoyed the book so much, to read on newspapers that David Chapman, the person “who assassinated John Lennon, was carrying the book when he was arrested immediately after the murder and referred to it in his statement to police shortly thereafter.” Also “John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was also reported to have been obsessed with the book.” (From Wikipedia: The Catcher in the Rye).

Well, that doesn’t mean that the novel is murder inspiring though certainly by effectively describing the difficulties of a tormented adolescence it is not illogical that some disturbed individual identified himself with the Holden character, finding comfort and inspiration in it and thus feeding his vision against everything and everybody (and refusing to stick to the point naturally becomes a symbol of anarchic revolt against order and self-discipline).

However, also the non psychopath teenager identified himself/herself with Salinger’s character. So the novel became a classic for an entire generation, whether protesting against order and law or not, since adolescence is a more or less difficult period for everyone.

There is, we repeat, a subtle link between digression and the previously mentioned themes of utopia & musical improvisation. Digression as well, going against rationality, can in fact lead to inconclusiveness, i.e. to nowhere, thus unstructuring the logic of discourse - utopia is a Greek word made of ‘ou’(= no) and ‘τόπος’ (= place), so its meaning is actually ‘in no place’.

Summarizing, improvisation is the thin link among the present post and these earlier ones, Digression vs Sticking to the Point and Why Musical Improvisation is Utopian.

Improvisation has been a myth of the counterculture of my generation and of the generations who followed. The idea of improvisation in art (music, literature, theatre etc.) is somewhat connected to social behaviours appeared in the counterculture of the last 50 years. A relationship, in fact, between mental and social anarchy cannot in my view be denied (like I guess it cannot be denied that there is some relationship between the crystalline clarity of Julius Caesar’s writings and his rational conduct and self-control, of which you can read something in this post of ours as well).

It is simple, after all. Facts (and history) are created by people. And people have a mind. Thence there are connections between what we think, read, write and do, whether in our social environment or in art.

(We are not anarchic and we do not belong to the counterculture - although for a couple of years we did, but that was a very long time ago. It can somehow be proven by the fact that we try to get inspiration from our ancient philosophies, which exalted wisdom, rationality and self control. Only ….

Things are not in black and white,
the hues of grey (and colours)
being infinite …

Forgive my silly English poems, it is one of my manias).

Italian version of this post