FANNY LEWALD (1811-1889)
GONDOLA! GONDOLIERE! CHE INCANTO SPIRA DA QUESTE PAROLE!” “GONDOLA! GONDOLIERE! WHAT CHARM BY THESE WORDS!”
Looking back at the past is not merely an idle exercise made by learned people: doing it is necessary to understand the future. People of the 18th century used to tell that you watch the world by standing on the shoulders of giants: that is to say, on the past. This is all the more true nowadays, when Europe is a small reality; however, for three centuries, our continent has been the centre of the world with Italy as its peak. The Grand Tour was an institution that led the richest and learned European civilization to italy: has Italy changed after that? Of course, because we are no more the centre of civilization, nor that of Europe. Italy was a “geographical expression” – as told by Metternich at the Congress of Vienna (1815) – and a patchwork of small quarrelsome states. Rome, the caput mundi, dotted with wonders, seat of Christianity, held an unchallenged record; then, the British slowly discovered Venice and made it their adoptive country starting from the 17th century. During the Age of Enlightenment, the Germans, but also people from Northern Europe and the Russians started passing by Rome and discovered Naples, the largest and most populous city of Italy, but especially the scene of an environment where the nature exercised a great charm: Vesuvius was spitting fire and the Phlegraean Fields were trembling. The history of Earth was throbbing reality. Only at the end of the 18th century came the discovery of Sicily, with its impressive Doric temples and baroque towns such as Catania and Palermo. Goethe wrote that you could not claim to know Italy without having been to Sicily. The tour was going to take shape: Milan, Turin, Bologna, Siena and, later, Florence, where Goethe stopped only three days. Arts, music, literature, ancient history and the pleasure of well-living were the seeds that started growing in the cities, along the coasts and in the mountains. Our country has changed, but it would be self-defeating to say that it has no importance for the civilization of today’s globalized world: we have been bad guardians of this secular tradition, but it has been enriched by a wide creativity. Let’s think of how cinema – one of the most popular forms of communication in the world – has had resounding success over the last decade, not only in terms of audience. I mean, the flame is still burning: we must be able to blow on it to keep the fire of creativity burning. Will the leaders of our immediate future succeed in doing this? Only the Sibyl, who used to give her cryptic answers in a den at Cumae, knows this.