GREAT ITALIANS AND HUMBLE IMMIGRANTS

From time to time I stumble upon a list of associations started by Italian immigrants in this country. As I read them I find them moving and at the same time I smile at their innocent naïveté.

It’s a repeat of the same impression I felt when I first arrived here, when, during the colonial banquets, someone would recite a list of names of Great Old Italians mixed together in a random fantasia as if they had been pulled from a hat by the hand of a child, like bingo numbers; and mixed together with no apparent logic. My impression was that those names were like a shield and a consolation; the same way for a thousand years the name of Rome (the imperial Rome of Caesar[1] and Scipio[2]) was a shield and a consolation for Italians after so many lost wars and so many tragedies of foreign invasions and subjugation. As happens to impoverished aristocratic families that still keep alive the memories of powerful and rich ancestors when money gets tight and the daughter must marry a vulgar nouveau riche, the names of forefathers serve a special purpose. However, after attending many colonial banquets I realized that the immigrant clubs were not named only after Dante Alighieri, Cristoforo Colombo, Leonardo da Vinci, Giuseppe Verdi[3] and Arturo Toscanini[4] (kneading in the same batch creators and performers). Many of these associations’ names are also defensive, but in a different sense. They document the culture and ideals of the immigrants of the old days, and as such, they are a text worthy of study.

I wrote to the “Supreme Recording Secretary” (equivalent to chief archivist) of the largest national organization, the Sons of Italy (in English: Order of the Sons of Italy. This name gives a better sense of the concept of brotherhood than the Italian word associazione.) Mr. Joseph Errigo, a lawyer from Wilmington, Delaware, was very courteous and helpful. In a few days my office desk was buried under lists of names of lodges. (One should not worry that those lodges may be similar to what in Italy are the Masonic lodges. [5])  In addition to those lists, I made sure I also researched the minutes of meetings of various associations in the Tri-state Area (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut) published over the course of an entire year in one of the Italian-language newspapers. This is not a comprehensive inventory covering the whole country, obviously. I have no idea what associations exist in the Midwest, in Oregon, in the Northwest, in California or in the southwest. Nor do I know their names. However, I think this is a fairly representative sample. One could presume that, since Italian immigrants came from the same regions of Italy and encountered similar situations, they must have manifested resistance to the new environment more or less in the same way.

The overall impression one derives from this picture is that all the organizations of Italians in the United States were conceived with the purpose of preservation.

An orange wedge taken from the fruit and left in the open almost instantly develops a rind to preserve the internal moisture. Similarly, the wedges of Italian immigration’s waves, after they had been separated from the mother country—about which they knew nothing or close to nothing—formed a defensive shield. The associations were all created for preservation, each one of them in a distinct form, for each one had something different to preserve in its own environment. Some associations were named after the location in which they were founded. Here, nostalgia for Italy was kept at bay. Springfield, Roslindale, Medford, Roxbury… Was it indifference or fear that made them ignore Italy? Was the need not to appear foreigner so strong in those immigrants? In the associations that chose an Italian name the preservation motive is quite apparent. Naturally, many were named after Columbus. It’s understandable. When Americans badmouth Italy, Italians respond: “Without Christopher Columbus you wouldn’t even exist…” After Columbus, Dante Alighieri is rather popular, although, for sure most of the members know the name and nothing else. And then, Francesco Petrarca,[6] Torquato Tasso[7] and, curiously, even Beatrice Portinari,[8] maybe for a women’s lodge that wanted to be connected with the Divino Poeta.[9] I did not find Laura,[10] and I am quite happy about that.

 The Risorgimento sector is rather well represented with Risorgimento Italico (a term that gives it an 1880 flavor, or maybe a D’Annunzio[11] flavor.) I found a club dedicated to the Four Heroes[12] (of course we know who they are, but if I asked the members, wouldn’t it be a bit mischievous?) Then I found the Bandiera brothers,[13] many Garibaldi,[14] a few Mazzini[15] (and this proportion is natural for Italians). Among the other names there is Anita Garibaldi[16] (it is easy to understand Italians’ attraction for the personage of a woman who dies for her man); and even Adelaide Cairoli[17] (and this is very, very anti-conformist);, but also Massimo D’Azeglio[18] (I really cannot understand how his name ended up here. Maybe it was some Piedmontese immigrant who chose it. It sorts of bothers me that a hypocrite like him should be honored and remembered here.) [In the footnote: “This comment caused quite a surprise in some readers, even educated ones, who had never considered the contradictions between D’Azeglio’s moralistic principles about marriage in his book I miei ricordi (1899) and his libertine conduct in two marriages.”]

In addition to the early Risorgimento period, the final phase of the movement is also remembered with several lodges founded after 1918 and named after Guglielmo Oberdan[19], Nazario Sauro[20] and Cesare Battisti.[21]

One of these associations is named after Francesco De Sanctis.[22] I happen to know some of the members of this club: they are very good people. They chose that name because the famous literary critic was the most illustrious son of the town where they also were born. They chose him because he was a paesano, but they could not care less about helping a student of mine who was working on a dissertation on his work. Wreaths, gala, dinners and speeches? Yes. Books and dissertations? Never.

Just imagine now what these names mean in America. What does an American think when he hears those names? To him they are sounds and nothing else. Yet, to the immigrants they have a meaning, though not the same meaning they have in Italy. They are myths, like the names of saints, symbols of a vague greatness needed to compete with the greatness of America.

New York, May 4, 1961