Old World Wisdom

...Old World Wisdom The Europeans By Luigi Barzini Simon & Schuster 267pp $14 95 Reviewed by Isa Kapp There is a conspicuous difference between the dominant style of political commentary in America and Europe With a few stalwart exceptions (Walter Laqueur's knowledge and clarity, George Will's verbal resilience, Henry Kissinger's gravelly-voiced focus on detail), we have grown accustomed in this country to journalism that is harnessed to the latest event and indifferent to historical context issues are simplified, postures are ingenuously righteous, and the tone brightens only when the commentator is on the scent of some engrossing disaster In contrast, the European tradition assumes cognizance of history and its complications, a greater physical familiarity with many countries (and languages), and frequently some actual involvement in politics Continental journalism tends to cultivate the attributes of astringency, analytical ability, and curiosity about the background of a situation And the combination of these with his own special, highly seasoned wit has made Luigi Barzini one of its most distinguished practitioners Born in Milan in 1908, he came to America when he was 17, studied at Columbia University, then went back to Italy and became a correspondent for Milan's Corneredelta Sera He was also a Liberal (in Italy that means conservative) deputy to Parliament for 14 years In the United States Barzini is best known tor his enormouslv popular The Italians (1964), probablv the most equivocally infectious portrait of a country ever painted by one of its native sons Warning us of the Italian genms for showmanship, for hiding problems and poverty behind a grand spectacle of color, abundance and animation, he conjures up a pitiless (though remarkably just) profile of the magnetic, duplicitous II Duce He cautions us not to judge his countrymen by their words but by their expressions He contemplates ironically the annual parade of enchanted hippies, middle-aged couples and old aristocrats who come to Italy to fill some inexpressible gap in their lives Yet his supple, often gorgeous prose confirms, without admitting it, that the extraordinary light, the art, the beauty and eagerness of the Italians, and their visible pleasure in living have been more than enough reason to lure Swedish kings, New England writers, famous financiers, and mundane travelers The Europeans, written in Barzini's 74th year, though still dazzling, is a more sober and sophisticated book Since its concern is international politics, the author has to be more exact in his attribution of praise and blame, his distinctions between illusion and reality In his customary piston of historical anecdote, aphorism, verbatim conversations with leading figures, and shrewd characterological judgment, he gives us a rundown of the policies of the major European countries during the last 50 years, throwing in the United States as a bonus From the adjectives he has chosen—the "imperturbable" British, "quarrelsome" French, "mutable" Germans, "flexible" Italians and "careful" Dutch—it is obvious we won't have to worry about his naivete or gullibility Luigi Barzini is, in fact, a evnic, which is to say that he is not slow to apprehend a national (or personal) \ ice or weakness when it appears But he is an Italian cvnic, a warm-hearted variety?not one eaten by gall at the depredations of his fellowmen, like the French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celine in Journey to the End of the Night His purpose is not so much to demolish his subjects as to exhort them to precision and responsibility, though he does succumb once in a while to the simple joy of derision Describing the universal admiration for the 19th-century British because of the inexplicable success of their motley Empire, he cannot help adding tartly that there was a "tacit admission of British supremacy in almost all fields with the exception of abstract philosophy, music, cuisine and love-making " Lest the reader regard this as a lethal blow, it should be mentioned that the author has given the British full credit for being brave, pragmatic, industrious, inventive, disciplined, libertarian, excellent seamen, merchants, bankers —and much more This sardonic journalist is scrupulously fair, faithful to his own concrete observations even when they undermine his generalizations With the British, for example, he is amusingly quizzical, mocking the widespread imitation of British models in sports terminology, old country homes, imperialist ambitions (Mussolini felt compelled to invade Ethiopia) and dress (An Italian count in London sends his servant into the streets to see what the natives are wearing The servant comes back perplexed "Signor Conte, there's nobody in London dressed like an Englishman except you and me ") Barzini pretends he has spent hours speculating how the British achieved their uncanny harmony, and finds it was not a matter of exorbitant intelligence "The dull and the acute somehow knew how to act bravely, splendidly and usually successfully in critical and difficult circumstances, as if they had been intelligent " He concludes that the British are encumbered by only a very few principles (stoicism, courage, honesty, fair play) and act upon them wherever they are without question In the case of the French the author is much more dyspeptic, ridiculing their conviction that they are paragons of chivalry and courage From the 16th century on, when a French poet addressed his country as the "pearl of Europe," to Charles de Gaulle's vainglorious declaration that "France is the light of the world," the French have been, like the Gascons of their literature, D'Artagnan of The Three Musketeers and Cyrano de Bergerac, defenders of bygone splendor and incomparable braggarts To boot, they are incorrigibly xenophobic, fending off all foreign influences (and, where possible, competing foreign products) "The obdurate, suspicious French," as Barzini calls them, stubbornly mispronounce the names of English dishes, "rosbif, biftek, boudin de Yorkshire," and impertinently appropnate other nations' specialties, dubbing ravioli "a la nicoise," and sauerkraut "choucroute d la alsacienne Beneath his cynicism, Barzini is a closet idealist, indeed, the structure and substance of The Europeans are built around the author's passionate aspirations for a genuinely united Europe, with "one voice, one will and one currency " Musing on graces that are commonly shared by Europeans, he writes lyrically "We recognize our fatherland everywhere, in busy village streets the tidy bourgeois households with polished floors and shining window panes, the swinging walk of the girls, the majestic flow of all our big rivers between weeded banks Europe is the penumbra in candlelit little churches, white and gold opera theaters lit by sparkling chandeliers in all our cities, large or small, the little lake boat, as white and pompous as a swan the small inns Above all, I think, we recognize it in our wines " Barzmi's one serious irritation with England is for its refusal to participate in the early Common Market meetings arranged by the Italian foreign minister in 1954 "When they finally joined the European Common Market, disastrously, too late, too expensively, at the wrong moment, they did so reluctantly and somewhat squeamishly, though politely concealing their feelings, like decayed aristocrats obliged by adverse circumstances to eat in a soup kitchen for the needy " Always appreciative of British virtues, Barzini nevertheless indulges himself in an uncharitable quote from Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks "An Englishman's mind works best when it is almost too late " Again, irked as he is by French opposition to European unity and by de Gaulle's exalted notion of his nation and himself ("I am Jeanne d'Arc1"), Barzini is balanced enough to remind us that practically all European nations today owe their foundations to the ideas of the French Revolution He observes, too, that the French language "is a prodigious vestment to clothe precise thoughts, nebulous concepts, or subtle sentiments with clarity and elegance " The countries Barzini is most mde-fatigably critical of are the two he is closest to, for whom his feelings are the strongest—Italy and the Umted States In O America, published a few years ago, he offered a nostalgic recollection of his student years in the United States during the late 1920s, long before he acquired the cynicism and sophistication of the current volume He wrote there that he liked the lack of arrogance of the rich and the lack of servility of the poor, the unpretentious and commodious wooden houses, the Americans' shirt-sleeve hospitality, glass in hand, on the back porches In The Europeans Barzini has compiled a meticulous glossary of American defects We are too self-confident and have little respect for theexpenence of Europeans—why did we not turn to France for advice on Vietnam9 We have an excessive sense of mission, a drive to lm-prove the world, and are more reluctant than most to admit to our own shoddy behavior We suffer from a troubling contradiction between idealism and pragmatism, isolation and intervention, keeping the rest of the world in a state of wary insecurity But what really frightens Europeans most, according to Barzini, is our impatience, the belief "that the very existence of problems is intolerable," and that all achievements must be completely accomplished within a person's lifetime In the Old World, each man knew that he was merely a link in the chain between ancestors and descendants In a sense, Barzmi's strict accounts, the relentless pitting of strength against weakness (he acknowledges that the United States occasionally acts in keeping with its role as a great nation), make it a bit hard for him to arrive at a clean-cut judgment between good and bad, an honest mistake and a calloused ploy He is so astute that we wish he would be less Olympian, so that wecouldpinhim down Should we intervene in Lebanon or do we have a lot of nerve7 Should we help fight the Leftist insurgents in El Salvador...

...One feels that no matter what policy we adopted, it would seem consistent and just a little foolhardy to this skeptical observer Barzini does, of course, profit from theOld World wisdoms Perhapsthatis why in an age of bitter ideological conflict, his tone is rarely one of polemical virulence, and he doesn't argue from an adversary point of view While he insists that the United States and others were wrong to support the Center-Left (Christian Democratic and Socialist) coalition in Italy in the 1960s because it led to social and economic disaster, he recognizes that this support came from the best of motives—from the desire, albeit unrealized, to liberalize Italian democracy, check corruption and isolate the Communists Barzini is very exact as well, and the opposite of doctrinaire, in discriminating between the irresponsible pro-Soviet Socialists of that period and the moderate party of today that more closely resembles the German Social Democrats Even when he describes the recent chaotic period in Italy that was marked by savage terrorism and the murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro, he manages to avoid rancor or bigotry He knows that there has always been a Left and a Right, that errors are endemic in political life The denouement is a cheerful one, proving his thesis that the Italians are eminently unpredictable Just as everyone was giving them up politically and financially, they rehabilitated their small industries and piecework crafts and made a success al exporting their couture, Olivettis and films Five million gloves were sent out of Naples despite the absence of a single factory, and the Italian shoe industry began to dominate the world The Communist vote, furthermore, has been dwindling since 1976 One of the most fascinating sections of The Europeans describes the necessary dichotomy in Italy between private truths and public lies Ruled by foreigners since the fall of the Roman Empire, forced into prosperity and modernization for all their attachment to pleasant traditional habits, tyrannized by Mussolini, the Italians have learned to adapt outwardly and yet go their own way, turning inward to the family as a bulwark against a hostile society Ironically, this device has deprived them of a motive for choosing skilled, reliable statesmen, and postponed indefinitely their age-old goal of Buongo-verno—good government But it has imbued them, more than other nationalities, with the handy trait of infinite flexibility In the best sense, Luigi Barzini is himself a flexible Italian His prose is pliant, his frame of reference wide He is inquisitive and many-sided, convinced that in politics (as perhaps in private life) responding on one level, from one perspective, is never enough for a full grasp of reality He has time for jokes and for amorous reminiscence, and his book is full of odd intriguing bits of factual information (Mexico and Brazil are divided into states in imitation of the United States, Konrad Adenauer was elected Chancellor of Germany by one vote his own) like nuts and raisins in a rich intellectual pastry He lives in a lovely old house off the Via Cassia, Rome's teeming highway to the North There, close to the heart of Italian traffic, he reads in a comfortable and serene library with a lemon tree outside the window "I write in the morning," he told an interviewer "Then I lunch, take a nap, walk in the country for about an hour, and then wait for dinner while reading There's nothing more relaxing than sitting m this armchair, knowing there are no engagements on mv agenda, that I can read until darkness comes and somebody knocks on the door and says dinner is ready Now that relaxes my mind, and I read very well, with pleasure...