Destiny by Tim Parks

Author:Tim Parks [Tim Parks]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448104871
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2000-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

VII

IT HAD BEEN necessary to re-read I promessi sposi to establish the continuity of an Italian gallery of types, a kinship between the saints and tricksters of the Inferno and the Decameron right through to those of D’Annunzio, Pasolini and even Fellini. Not that any one figure or quality could be considered superlatively Italian, or even as holding the kernel of Italian national character, for one can no more be Italian or English on one’s own, than one could be human, or indeed inhuman, on one’s own, or a son without a mother. But that there was a constellation of types who made each other what they were, who became more and more obviously type figures when seen in relation to each other, and above all in action, in reaction, with and to each other. A sort of Italian dynamic, if you like. A complementary community of minds. A particular way of twining stories together, imagining available spheres of action, and thus of defining each other, of becoming oneself. To establish the existence, I had thought, I had long thought, of such a dynamic, to savour its extension and evolution, its openness to nuance and resistance to change, would be to discover new continents of predictability. To go deeper, in short. That was my goal. Far deeper than my journalism had ever gone. Andreotti was predictable, I thought, in so far as he moved in the world of Italian politics, defined by and defining those around him. Including the corpse on the pavement that decisive spring morning in Palermo. Brought up in Lytham or Lisbon, Andreotti would have behaved entirely differently. I myself would have behaved entirely differently, I felt – no, I was sure – in London or Los Angeles, or with an English wife in Rome. Or a Tibetan wife. In Rome. Thus, in re-reading Manzoni, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to show what perfectly recognisable and even contemporary figures Don Abbondio and Lucia and the Avvocato Azzeccagarbugli and Don Rodrigo are, to name but four, but how they are so in relation to each other. And indeed to many others before and after them, real and imaginary. Destiny is a thing we do together, I thought.

Such, in any event, was the idea I was seeking support for on reading, re-reading, among a score of other books – it seemed no more than my duty given the task I had set myself – I promessi sposi, when I came across the story of the Nun of Monza – I hadn’t thought of it for years – and above all I came across that chapter opening where Manzoni says: There are moments when the minds of the young are so inclined that any request for a gesture of seeming goodness or sacrifice is met with immediate compliance: like a freshly opened flower the young mind settles softly on its fragile stem, ready to grant its fragrance to the first breeze that blows. Such moments, Manzoni goes on

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