Sicilian lives Book

"How are things in Corleone ?"

The answer to that question, in the 1950s, ranged from "not very good" to "awful". Sicily was illiterate, poor, corrupt, and violent. Many people despaired of ever changing the situation. Though in 2007 I had no knowledge of contemporary conditions, I assumed that Italian membership in the EEC brought some long-needed benefits to all of its regions, including Sicily. Whether Palermo can ever be Turino is another question. Danilo Dolci, a famous peaceful-revolutionary or radical reformer on the lines of Paulo Freire in Brazil, worked in Sicily for several decades, meeting with people from all walks of life, all classes. In this book--yet another of the beautiful Pantheon Village series [see my reviews of "Akenfield", "Amoskeag" and "Longtime Californ'"]--Dolci presents a picture of mid-20th century Sicily through a series of interviews with many Sicilians. They speak entirely on their own. His questions and observations are omitted, with only a couple short sentences at the beginning of each interview to define the speaker. The fishermen, farmers, housewives, shepherds, unemployed gatherers of wild greens and snails, union organizers, former pickpockets, bureaucrats, members of the old nobility, politicians and even Mafiosi speak openly, often poetically, of the injustices and family problems in Sicily, of the ways they devised to survive or maintain their position. Most of the interviews seem to have been done in the Fifties, but some do come from as late as the Seventies. We hear of the terrible conditions--disease, filth, murders, revenge killings---and the feudal injustices inflicted on the poor, and wonder how it was possible that Sicily did not undergo a violent revolution as did so many parts of the world after World War II.

While this sort of book does not spoonfeed readers---you have to consider for yourself what the implications of the statements are, as Dolci offers no lecture, no guiding commentary--what you do get is a wonderful picture of Sicilian society at that time, and a sense that even though people may be uneducated and unsophisticated, given a chance, they can express their thoughts about their lives as well as anyone amd perhaps more poetically than many. You also realize that in a society where nobody trusts anyone else, building institutions which would help lift the people out of their misery is extremely difficult. A gangster-ridden society may take generations to clean itself up. Sill, this is an interesting, beautifully-written book for anyone interested in Italy, Sicily, or the human condition in general.