123 School Work

Levi's Confino

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  Levi's Confino
  
       Carlo Levi's memoir of his political confinement to a southern Italian rural hamlet, Christ Stopped at Eboli, is a moving piece of memory and anthropology which not only addresses the afflictions of the southern Italian peasant, but also displays the disparity between the Fascist party rhetoric coming from Rome and the lack of fervor or ideological interest in the country side. Levi paints a vivid picture of cracked gray and clay landscapes of suffering, death, and, above all, resignation to the tide of nature and state events which are perceived to be beyond the control of anyone--especially a lower class southern Italian.
       The life of the southern Italian peasant, as depicted by Levi, is a bleak one. Over the town in which Levi spends three years of his life, a pervading presence of death seems to continually hover. Indeed, on the day of Levi's arrival to the village a man dies and black flags abound on all of the town's structures as symbols of mourning(10). These black flags remain perpetually hanging until their color is bleached by the sun; only then is a mourning period satisfied. Mourning is a lifestyle in the backcountry. Women who lose fathers may not go out of doors for one certain number of years, while if they lose a brother or husband there is a traditional mourning period of another number of years. While the modern reader may find these traditions of unceasing mourning to be tiresome, or just down right depressing, it seems as if death is a pleasure to the residents of Levi's temporary home. To be sure, they cry and wail and mourn with gusto...