Mother Tongue by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi

Author:Wallis Wilde-Menozzi [Wilde-Menozzi, Wallis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2020-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

A year ago. Even a month ago. Italy is changing and nothing can mend it or describe the reality of these stressful feelings. Time traces an undoing which leaves us, like our own middle age, on an incline. Yet we cherish these new illusions. Far more than all the heaviness, we feel jittery, giddy, and finally hopeful. Clare feels that the political changes are interesting. For the first time she burrows through the newspaper, calling out her disgust at most of the politicians. She starts looking at judiciary systems comparatively. She is trying to define her part. The changes in the Italian constitution will break open a continuity and crack a mirror. The practical problem will be to shift from a parliamentary system, in which the parliament is directly elected. There the executive branch, consisting of a Prime Minister and a cabinet that he or she appoints, acts as an expression of that parliament. It then produces a program for parliament to work on and approve. Now the choice is moving toward a presidential system—like either the French or the American one. As the myths shatter, as the new laws come in, we must find a way to improve this all too corruptible political class.

Writing a new constitution is complex at every level, including a psychological one. Italy’s constitution is one of the most advanced in the world. Certainly, in America, after two hundred years, there would be issues that would be drafted differently. But opening the sacred premises and fussing with their absolute fundamentals always runs the danger of disturbing an equilibrium which then cannot be reestablished. Like Humpty-Dumpty, something that worked, once broken into pieces, cannot be psychologically put back together. And if the work of writing the constitution is not done with the highest, most disinterested concerns, laws can be written which then slowly can be put into practice in antidemocratic ways.

Political, economic, and perhaps personal change will rush through this staggering revision in Italy. It must come. What appears difficult is to convince people how we are part of it, person after person. If it comes, it may take another generation or two to understand what it really means. The challenge to present authority, however, will in some way be embodied and enacted now as we exit from the limbo between one republic and the next. The day will arrive when we’ll finally vote on an outcome. Although that date comes and goes, even as a threat, it’s not yet a reality. The center is still looking for a leader.

Last night Paolo had an altercation with the rector. A year ago, Paolo would never have lifted his voice to a man who represented the entire university. He would have formally granted him superior qualities and knowledge. Paolo would not have insisted on their great differences.

Confronted with the rector’s conveniently closed mind, Paolo, instead, admitted to himself and expressed out loud his own greater experience and commitment. This seems so simple and yet it is very new. Loyalty, hierarchy, political parties have nearly a religious meaning here.

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