Spectator's Journal/Remembering Luigi Barzini

...When it came, it came via a phone interview with Luigi Barzini in Rome...

...They quarrelled with U.S...

...In his monumental History of Italy, the first major historical work of modern times, Guicciardini indignantly deplored the stupidity of Italian politics at the beginning of the sixteenth century...

...They explained the evolution by saying that bringing efficiency to Italy was in itself a form of revolution...

...SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL REMEMBERING LUIGI BARZINI by Manfredi Piccolomini In 1977, when the body of Italian politician Aldo Moro was found several weeks after his abduction by the Red Brigades, the world received the news with bewilderment and grief...

...In New York he could often be seen in the best restaurants, but only to watch the beautiful people-especially the well-dressed American women he liked so well-for he could not stand the "phony" Italian food he had to eat in America...

...The leftist intellectuals started trying to free themselves from the public's equation of Marxist theory with terrorist action...

...His writings on Italy, his descriptions of its many weaknesses and defects, are to be read as a prophetic indication of what lies in store for all nations that fail to live up to their traditions and their past...

...Indeed it was the heyday of terrorism that brought about one of the great Italian con gar-bo political transformations that Barzini had so cleverly described...

...Professional historians and sociologists said it was not sufficiently academic or scholarly-an easy accusation to make in a country where scholarship is too often synonymous with obfuscation...

...Power and strength, and the resolve to use them when the national integrity is threatened, are not simply the traits of imperialism...

...There is no room for indignation and self-analysis in modern Italy...

...It is now well known that in Italy and possibly in other European countries the greatest admirers of the U.S...

...mafias" that have frustrated any enlightened attempt to achieve an effective national government...

...Rather he saw the incident as the fulfillment of Italian destiny...

...He did find the strength, though, to remark that it was superb...

...Very often this closet pro-Americanism and overt anti-Americanism are two sides of the same coin and two souls of the same person...

...They simply started coming to the United States in search of freedom from past allegiances and possibly better paying "intellectual" jobs...

...I will never forget his interpretation of what happened: He was full of deep pessimism...

...Not a political scientist like Aron, he was nevertheless one of the most acute observers of the political events of his time...

...He saw no hope for solution, no opportunity for betterment...

...Indeed, as Barzini knew, they are the only ways a country can preserve its liberties and control its future, once other means have failed...

...But his commentary on the Moro tragedy was the product of the other Barzini, the political realist...

...Throughout his life he pursued the good life with the same ardor he pursued excellence in his profession...

...It is considered in Italy the attitude of old-fashioned conservatives who refuse to learn I'arte dell'arrangiarsi, the art of getting by...

...It is a comfortable, albeit cynical, way of keeping things as they are at home, while at the same time leaving the door open to new experiences in th^coun-try which the Europeans have reluctantly come to recognize as the world's cultural center...

...it was the philosophical reaction of a man convinced that Italian history was destined, to repeat itself forever, and that the Red, Brigades were just another, more modern version of the many "families," "groups," "parties," and Manfredi Piccolomini is assistant professor of Italian at Lehman College of the City University of New York...

...As Barzini had perceived more than ten years before, truth in Italy has few followers: It is to be embellished, covered with baroque and obscure metaphors...

...With his intelligence, intuition, humor, and, most of all, with his disenchanted view of human nature, he was able not only to analyze but to predict...

...as he spoke his voice was breaking...

...Exports are increasing...

...The problems are there, but the easy way around them is there also, maybe more than ever...

...Illusion takes its place...

...Despite all his famous observations on the histrionic nature of the Italian character, Barzini did not regard the Moro affair simply as a hide-and-seek comedy played by the Red Brigades to spite the government and win the applause of the masses...

...Italian businessmen are enjoying the benefits deriving from this improved image of the country...

...Unpleasant truth is not soothing to the ear...

...On the radio he spoke apocalyptically, foreseeing the end of what was left of Italian civilization, the Italians to be scattered around the world, contributing, like the Jews in the past, to the greatness of other civilizations, but having no hope for their own...

...They would be made subjects of stronger foreign powers, and only the appearances of past greatness, self-satisfying as they might be, would remain...

...One evening a year ago this month, he asked for a souffle au frontage but ate very little of it...

...In Rome, of course, the story was different...

...General readers claimed they disliked it because it was an americanata, something derived and concocted from the most basic American ingredients, simply as a lure to the consumer...

...This fact in itself should be enough of a prediction of what Barzini's legacy will be...

...they also attest to a way of life supposedly more relaxed and civilized...

...Of course many other Italian intellectuals privately expressed the same views in those days, but none dared to make them public...

...He was the first one to formulate the widely accepted idea that the Italians would be the principal victims of their complacency, of their unwillingness to fight for their freedom...

...An enlightened conservative, a believer in the forces of reason, progress, and civilization, he refused to accept the romantic idea that man does not learn from the past...

...He enjoyed most of all the meals prepared for him by his Senegalese cook, who had been trained, paradoxically, by his American friend Vivi Crespi...

...All of this of course is The Italians come true...

...They suddenly became efficientisti- in favor of efficiency-which was in those days an implicit way of saying pro-American...

...In other words, a book written only to fatten the pocket-book...

...in fact, the economy has become totally dependent on them...

...The outspoken Barzini was a far more popular writer in the United States than in Italy...

...It was his last meal, the last in a long series of superb meals...

...Himself an Italian who had grown up in the United States, a country he admired more than his own, and loved as much, he wanted his writings to serve as an admonition, and not a belated one like Guicciardini's...

...As an Italian living in America, I listened eagerly to the radio for further word of the crime...

...The "Italophile" has grown out of its romantic connotations to become, like the "Anglophile," an embodiment of modern man's love for identifying with ancient and established images...

...Consuls in Italy who denied them visas because of their Communist pasts, and complained that what one has been is not what one is, and that anyhow one's political ties are una questione privata, a private matter...

...The country still attracts visitors from all over the world and some of them, as Barzini himself pointed out, fall in love with its mysterious charm and never leave...

...A Gucci purse or an Armani suit do not only define status...

...are the leftist and Communist intellectuals, the same ones who in the classroom and in their articles speak of America as the great imperialist and capitalist beast...

...Barzini's indignation was similar to that of another great Italian, the Florentine Renaissance historian Francesco Guicciardini, whom he often quoted...

...Shortly after Barzini's death, at a meeting of Midge Decter's Committee for the Free World, the four hundred in attendance-among them Sidney Hook, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Norman Podhoretz-observed a moment of silence in memory of Raymond Aron and Luigi Barzini...

...For him the murder went beyond even the recurrent pattern of absurdity in Italian history...

...The Italians, his most popular book, was bitterly attacked from many sides in his homeland...

...There has been none since the end of the Renaissance, when the Italians gave up the hope of achieving national greatness...

...He decried the constant infighting among the small Italian principalities while new and powerful nations were preparing to take over the country and deprive it of its liberties...

...indignation is an aristocratic luxury...

...Why shouldn't it have been...

...Wine, especially the light Italian wine of the north, is quickly supplanting gin and whiskey at the happy hour and at the dinner table...

...This mood was in sharp contrast to Barzini's proverbial good humor and optimism...

...In fact the reasons for the negative reaction are quite different and can be summed up in the old Latin saying, Nemo propheta in patria, no one is a prophet in his own country...

...In such an atmosphere, then, why expose Italian weaknesses to the foreigner, as Barzini did, if the foreigner is also a tourist and a buyer, someone whose hard currency is badly needed...

...Everyone close to him remembers his impeccable clothes, the London-tailored riding outfits, his love of good food...

...Each people has the government it deserves" is at the core of Guic-ciardini's, as well as Barzini's, message to posterity...

...National pride is not chauvinism when a people enjoys civility, freedom, prosperity, and the opportunity for self-fulfillment...

...With a view of human affairs reminiscent of Tacitus, Guicciardini attributed the historical events he witnessed to the very character, the inclination and disposition, of his people...

...Barzini's poignant analysis of the many defects of the Italian character and its refusal to confront national problems- choosing instead to take the easy way around them-was too harsh for Italians to accept...

...After all, despite its shortcomings and national tragedies, life in Italy is still very pleasant...

...Doctors and dieticians are discovering that the "Mediterranean diet," composed mainly of pasta and vegetables, with little red meat and few desserts, is not only the food of a poor people, but tastier and better for one's health...

...They did not openly become pro-American-that would have been impossible...