Italian Journey
Almedingen, E. M.
638 THE COMMONWEAL October 23, 1929 the labor of all the workers. The other half are on the park bench. But as an alternative, all can continue to work for half as many hours in the day. Or...
...Must find out just why it had all baflied me...
...This explained nothing...
...But there is so much unreality, you can't see the wood for the trees...
...I at once busied myself over the all but laid aside details of my trip planned for him...
...He made no mention whatever of the host...
...My letters about the housemyou mean ? Oh yes--the house and the grounds are marvelous, but other thingsmthey rather made me wonder...
...Well, I had been there...
...I asked him tentatively...
...Wordshy as he had been over the real outcome of his Carnacco visit, the boy shrank from writing me about the Franciscan reality he had found--and that in all fulhess--for himself in Umbria...
...The youngster flushed...
...That sense of wonder in him was allied to some innate ruthless demand for logic at all costs...
...Instead, hours have fallen a little, output has increased considerably, but the present financial control neither releases sufficient purchasing power to enlarge output as far as the machine is readily capable of enlarging it unhindered, nor promotes the kind of output which necessarily makes for the good life...
...Carnacco became the one all-pervadlng theme of discussions from now on...
...I left him to it...
...He waxed poetic over the flowers and the rare bindings in the library...
...Anyway, the boy's madly cherished objective promised achievement...
...He had obviously found plenty of poetic appeal, but it left him dissatisfied and so far as I could see, the habit and the girdle had most to do with his hurt bewilderment...
...He made straight for it...
...And because of this I would tell him nothing...
...Yes, I did so hopemfor isn't there some occasionally furtive proselytism in most of us...
...Twenty-two and golden-haired and blue-eyed and six feet two at that l Yale--or was it Harvard ?--a decent old family background, an unbounded enthusiasm for all he saw and heard, some highly poetical acquaintance with the renaissance, particularly where the latter touched Italy and a dreamy Della Robbia-esque longing after art-ecclesiastical art at that...
...And a rather venturesome one, too...
...Of course he meant to go to Carnacco...
...You just can't be prosaic if you're a Catholic, can you ?" he flung at me, bending that golden head of his over some engravings of the cathedral he had just bought...
...In a way I did not feel sorry for him...
...I fancied that the boy's qualities would not be misspent among these, that he would carry there his amazingly humble sense of wonder...
...I guess it's foolish to think so--but--it does take away from his art...
...You see, he loved letters as much as painting...
...Oh that," he gestured...
...Yet, all the same, I wondered about the possible results of his visit...
...And why a habit and a girdle and crucifixes and an oratory...
...His copy had infinite value...
...felt slightly disappointed...
...Some boldness suggestive of a Phoenician sailor, he intimately conversant with stellar ways...
...It seemed almost a pity the boy had gone out hero-worshiping and not "journalizing...
...There's too much sheer beauty in it...
...Hero-worship is apt to be a sand-built qualitymon occasions...
...I demanded a little abruptly...
...He would talk of Carnacco...
...The most reassuring and the most significant truths that emerge from an objective study of American conditions today are these: In the United States, at least, the prosperity of the industrial system is consistent with and dependent upon the welfare of the toiling masses...
...He was not looking forward to it from any "later-to-be-madepracticable" angle...
...Certainly I had never before read such illuminating accounts of Carnacco...
...He wanted a spell of leisurely quiet to readjust his Carnacco impressions...
...Pictured him in among that undoubtedly attractive environment of slippery epigram and not always clean wit and wondered whether the hopeless incongruity Carnacco stands for would not be too much even for his own limitless sense of wonder...
...He waxed eloquent in his hopes...
...His enthusiasm reached its summit when a misleadingly kind English friend in Milan went the surprising length of getting an interview for the boy...
...The postmark did not astonish me, though I had not marked Assisi on my itinerary for him...
...There came other equally colorful letters, each dealing with some striking detail of the house or the garden...
...It seemed to me somehow unfair to Italy...
...638 THE COMMONWEAL October 23, 1929 the labor of all the workers...
...640 THE COMMONWEAL October 23, 1929 "But you wrote me sheer poems about it," I reminded him...
...But as an alternative, all can continue to work for half as many hours in the day...
...But he isn't a friaruis he...
...Unreached by human word And dreaming her own weather, The next news that we heard Concerned birds of a feather...
...Came a letter from him...
...Of course he talked a lot of delightful nonsense...
...And all those pictures l He can't share all that sort of thing, can he ? Then why should he pretend he does ? Awfully stupid of me, but it takes something away from his art, you know...
...Having personally never been to America, I fell in love with her people after about twenty minutes' talk with this youth...
...The following paragraph expresses the views of the senators themselves who conducted the hearings: It may as well be remembered that society is going to provide an opportunity for man to sustain himself, or is going to have to sustain man...
...But, somehow, I let none of my own recollections intrude into our talks...
...Read much of him ?" I asked casually, only to find that the boy was well-nigh d'Annunzionized...
...His was a clear-cut objective...
...I feel all muddled about it somehow...
...Talked to me about the aesthetic appeal of the Church as he found it in the Latin South...
...And--" "Well, he talked rather a lot, not that I understood any of it...
...The second note was such a scribble I despaired over it...
...So he had--and most surprisingly--by leaving Milan in a few days and without as much as saying a brief goodby...
...Don't you think that you get the sense of a country through its representative writer...
...He went and quite involuntarily I followed his journey in my thoughts, secretly hoping that I might yet be successful in persuading him to give some consideration to the trip I had planned for him...
...Oh, I want to go straight back to Paris," he replied...
...I folded the letter away, waiting for more...
...His eager eye had duly observed the marvelous carvings in the oratory...
...Yet he did not come to Italy to wander in and out of churches...
...That was where I met him, that delightful American youth, who seemed perfect sartorially and lured you with some as yet indefinite promise of widely spanned achievements in his maturer years...
...But I did tell him I wondered about it all...
...A great fellow he," and so on...
...But while he talked about Carnacco, I began (mentally, of course) planning an Italian trip for him, October 23 , 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 639 making him go and drink his fill at the least-known and probably most wholesome wells, imagining his sober wonder at such miracles as the tiny Abruzzi townships, the grave and easily understood appeal of Verona and Padua, the turreted monastic strongholds in the northern mountains, spire, shrine and relief seldom touched upon in guide-books, still less frequently appraised by a tourist's eye...
...I just did not want him to leave Italy immediately after Carnacco...
...Wasn't at all what I had expected," he admitted...
...And so on--enrapturedly, ecstatically--from which I could gather that his idea of the Church would hardly ever shift from the highly colored conception of Ghirlandajo frescoes and Della Robbia plaques...
...I did not quite gather what his creed was, but a remark or two enlightened me as to the fact that his father was Episcopalian and his mother a rather indifferent Baptist, neither of which creeds seemed to make any appeal to the son...
...Or whether he had misinterpreted my own silences and resolved to keep all the delights to himself, convinced that I might sit in mocking judgment on his enthusiasm...
...I mean--he's too great for it, isn't he ?" But I merely repeated: "You'd better ask him...
...God's grace has nothing to do with geographical boundaries, and so, in a direct way, it has no bearing on the boy's stay at Assisi...
...ITALIAN JOURNEY By E. M. ALMEDINGEN HE real story began at Milan...
...So I tried to picture him at Carnacco, going about its hilly gardens, side by side with the short brown-habited figure, going all over the really exquisite house, inhaling its atmosphere of almost stagey extravagance, its farcical oratory--furnished to answer the various moods of the writer...
...You see, to me, all Italy is just d'Annunzio, just like all Russia is nothing but Tolstoy," and he added hurriedly, "and perhaps Dostoievsky, too...
...I began to wonder whether his boundless hero-worship sealed into silence whatever discoveries he may have come across...
...Well, I said he had cheated me about that trip...
...From Assisi I heard a word...
...Society is going to provide opportunity for man to pay his own way or is going to pay for him...
...Whoever had suggested the European trip to the boy doubtless rendered worthy service to his country, and need one say more than that...
...He wrote daily, sometimes twice a day...
...Carnacco drew him on...
...But Assisi was an excellent antidote to Carnacco...
...GRACE HAZARD CONKLING...
...iss StepAany She had an ancient shawl Embroidered with wild rice Whereon the white birds all Followed their own device: And on her parasol A bird of paradise...
...Could not very well help it...
...The very morning before he went, a detail occurred to him : "Is it true that d'Annunzio goes about clad in the Franciscan habit ?" "It is," I agreed...
...Big details had jarred on him at Carnacco and he could not explain just why they had so hurt him...
...Then why does he do it...
...On the very eve of return he wrote saying that he had changed his plans about going straight to Paris and would stay in Italy a little longer...
...And not one of his letters carried as much as a brief reference to his host...
...One or another day She counted little worth Without a promenade To give her birds the sun...
...She and her paradise bird Were gone together...
...Did you ask him about these things...
...I sensed that on his return home there would be no cheap parading, no vulgarly journalese reminiscences, none of that intolerable head-liney self-aggrandizement~with a studiedly careless preracer"Oh yes--went over to see d'Annunzio when I was in Europe...
...This would end hard work and poverty forever...
...The boy had gone wondering everywhere...
...A quaking northern May Might meet her going forth, But she had found a way To circumvent the north...
...I agreed as to the principle...
...What was meant to come did come--surprisingly and quickly...
...To establish universal living wages and to abolish all excessive labor, as regards persons, quality and hours, would be the most direct, prompt and effective means of meeting the menace of chronic unemployment and of ensuring prosperity for our industries...
...Must find out just why it had all bared me," he said...
...Although the Report of the Unemployment in the United States provides no adequate guidance along this line for either industrialists or statesmen, it contains one paragraph which gives full recognition to the urgency of the problem and the obligation of society to solve the problem...
...I got quite absorbed in it l And to think that he cheated me of its fulfilment, after all l I made up my mind not to pester him with questions on his return...
...The doctrine of the living wage and all the other humane doctrines taught by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical, On the Condition of Labor, can no longer be stigmatized as visionary by any intelligent student of our industrial achievements and potentialities...
...In all he spent five days at La Garda...
...And again I had to admit that even in this, his enthusiasm over the approaching interview, there was quite a lot to admire...
...The gardens were mentioned and the house...
...His sense of wonder ran along nearly parallel lines with a sometimes embarrassing frankness...
...And, somehow, the conversation driveled...
...Or all can combine to work a full day and produce twice as much...
...I confess to a secret hope that he would come with a slightly changed outlook on the Church as being merely a haven for all poets and dreamers in the world...
...He wrote me no extravagant poems about his subsequent reception into the Church...
...He quoted an odd fragment of a poem...
...But the ultimate sequel can't easily be denied the very quintessence of poetry--not that he personally put it into any such terms...
...None of them fit there, you see...
...Certainly not...
...To Carnacco he would go...
...Reverence and shyness there were about him and in plenty, and something else, too, which utterly escaped a downright definition...
...It can't be a mere pose, can it ?" the youth insisted...
...Industrial well-being and the principles of justice can be practically harmonized...
...I had thought that all art must be genuine, mustn't it...
...He listened eagerly enough and expressed his gratitude...
...I suppose all great writers nurse some kind of sentimental indulgent weakness for the young and unknown lovers of theirs...
...Not knowing she was old, The radiance in her mind Would keep away the cold: And on a day unkind She saw the sun in gold That no one else could find...
...And suddenly he looked up: "I know why you wouldn't talk about it l It's all a pose, nothing but a pose ?" He was hurt to an extent I couldn't gauge and hurt by things which, in his case, anyhow, ought not to have hurt him at all...
...In fact his language became lame and halting in places...
...I wrote him back a few congratulatory words on his choice of route and heard no more for months and months to come...
...The kind of thing misused at Carnacco, the habit and the girdle, need they have touched an indifferent youngster like him, who soberly prided himself on having an open mind "wide enough to shelter prejudice and scepticism...
...The other half are on the park bench...
...And there was no need to do it either...
...Society may as well make every effort to do the job constructively because no society can be strong in which its members are encouraged or forced to adopt the position or place of those seeking charity...
...How could I? He was my host...
...A breathless, gratefully unhackneyed description of La Garda, his sunrise breakfast and his expectation of the great event to come...
...Nothing but a pose," he repeated...
...I don't suppose anybody really knows...
...The note rang with very little enthusiasm, in fact, some sentences sounded almost too dry for the writer as I knew him...
...And no excuse she made Nor felt she needed one: Pattering unafraid Her little feet would run...
...Yes, he'd be right glad to start--in a few days' time...
...And not from him did I hear about it either...
...That unreality, seen at Carnacco, had planted another obective in his way...
...So I planned out that trip--would have lald it before him, but he cheated me out of it...
...So many young people are...
...The first of quite a series to follow...
...You'd better ask him," seemed the only reply I could give...
...A touch of a Greek disc-thrower, glad of the sun and of his supple limbs...
...So many of these can be found in Italy...
...He spoke of d'Annunzio with a neophyte's bated breath, referred to him as "master," the blue eyes dreamier than ever...
...None of these clean-cut alternatives has of course been taken...
...And after...
...I started entertaining him with the details of the trip I had planned for him...
...The thing can be accomplished if only the masters of industry and of politics will devote to the problem a small part of the energies that they habitually spend in making and selling goods and in pursuing profits...
...I should have been had he sped straight on to Paris, but the Carnacco unreality had stayed his way...
...Called it the refuge for all poets and dreamers in the world--this immediately after his return from the Duorno, which, so far as I could gather, had come to him in terms of a white-winged eagle...
...The ideal result would be something in the nature of hours reduced a third, and output of sound necessities and comforts increased two-thirds...
...Unreality," he jerked out with some obvious effort, "Unreality is apt to jar, isn't it...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 25
