YES TO PARTIES, NO TO CULTURE

When I was appointed director of Columbia University’s Casa Italiana in 1930, I tried to develop several initiatives for the Italian American community of New York City. It was a complete fiasco. A cursory review of my columns may give an idea of the cultural level and close-mindedness of Italians in the new homeland.

One of my first proposals was to pool together the financial resources of the many Italian American associations. I had noticed that every year these associations would compete with banquets, socials, balls and other events to attract donations from people of Italian descent whose collective wealth has increased significantly over the years. My idea was not a novelty in New York: the Jewish community was doing something similar, reflecting both its wealthier status and a much more modern mindset. They have long understood that it is pointless to waste energy in too many initiatives; thus, they created a committee to select a few but very relevant events worthy of support. The Italian consul agreed with my concept but nothing came of it. From the very beginning I noticed that my proposal of working together never drew any open opposition. However, it was received coolly and with a silent deliberation not to cooperate. In another case, I reached out to the local Italian language press proposing the creation of a collection of archival materials on immigration. There was no answer. Nobody was keeping mementos of personal immigration stories or those of their relatives. If anything, they were trying to forget.

Left to my own devices, I concentrated my efforts on an initiative that I cared about personally, namely the creation of scholarships for students of Italian in advanced college courses. [1] My logic was that it made sense to invest in them because any effort to improve the cultural and linguistic level of potential future teachers would be more effective than the encouragement given to high school students. A good teacher who had the opportunity to live in Italy for a few months, in the future would be able to affect hundreds of students. I was not interested in helping children of Italian American parents pass a generic language test. I wanted to help the diffusion of Italian among non-Italian students. Indeed, to tell the truth, I thought it was more important to recruit students from other ethnic backgrounds. My ideas about this issue were not welcome: the local newspapers didn’t even consider my proposals and continued to publicize the usual banquets and fundraisers to endow scholarships reserved for Italian American students. The only time I succeeded in gaining the support of Italian Americans was when I proposed the creation of a scholarship fund to send Columbia University students to Italy to improve their language skills. I organized a ball on one of the transatlantic ships of an Italian cruise line, generously made available free of charge by the owners. I charged much less than the customary ticket in order to make it possible for all members of the Italian American associations to participate; shoemakers and barbers included, not just the well-offs. It seemed that this time I hit the right note: more than four hundred associations joined and we collected 6,000 dollars.[2] The money was deposited in a special account where it is accruing interest until it reaches the 100,000 dollar mark. To honor the participants I called the account Italian American Associations Fund. I also suggested that these associations continue their contribution with a five percent surcharge on the tickets they sell for the lavish and endless colonial banquets they keep organizing. But nobody listened. Not only: the following year, when I proposed repeating the initiative, nobody joined me. I thus concluded that the so-called Italian American community lacks a sense of commitment and continuity. Most likely, the first time they were attracted by the novel concept of a low-cost ball organized on a ship, not by the goal of the initiative.

For several years I also dedicated my energies to the publication of a giornalino[3] destined for the schools where Italian is taught. At that time there were similar publications in French, German and even Latin; in addition to several ones in Spanish. The number of students of Italian in high school and college was high enough to support that kind of initiative. With the help of publisher Vanni,[4] I started working on this project but I soon realized that the teachers of Italian origin were very cold. The only ones who showed some enthusiasm were usually non-Italian. The two associations of teachers I contacted, one of teachers of Italian, the other of teachers of Italian origin, didn’t want to have anything to do with it. One of my best students, who had in turn become a teacher, finally explained with great honesty: “Your Italian is too good for us.” A few years later, the publisher and I decided to give up.

I also tried to experiment with music, to see if I could awake some interest in my fellow countrymen who, as legend has it, are musically inclined and have great musical taste. Together with Mrs. Perera, a well known and highly respected organizer of fundraising events, I tried to organize a concertino of Italian classical music. As long as the events were free, people showed up; but the moment we mentioned charging a small fee, nobody was interested anymore. Better luck had a choir, organized by Maestro Benelli, the brother of poet Sem Benelli.[5] The choir, dressed in traditional costumes, specialized in old Italian folk songs. In that occasion I noticed how far Italians have fallen from their traditions. Despite my efforts, I could not find even a single elderly Italian woman who had preserved a dress from the Old Country. We had to resort to photos in folklore books in order to have them recreated by a tailor. The only times the auditorium of Casa Italiana filled up (only 300 seats) was when we had performances by opera singers. Opera is the only artistic passion of the Italian American population.

Immediately after the end of World War II, when I was no longer director of Casa Italiana, in agreement with the new director and with publisher Vanni, I tried a bigger initiative, namely the publication of a special series of classical Italian texts with front translation. I was under the illusion that I would find support from a large Italian American association with many chapters all over the United States that every year organizes major gala events and very nutritious banquets. One of the top leaders, a banker that I thought was a very serious person, made lots of promises. In order to develop the series, all the publisher needed were commitments for five hundred copies. The person who made the promises disappeared: his interests remained alive only the time to satisfy his vanity and be introduced to Eisenhower, who at that time was president of Columbia University. In the end we could not find one single Italian American family willing to purchase a series of twenty volumes of Italian classics with English translation. When I developed the project, I submitted it for revision and suggestions to five of the most important professors of Italian in the United States. Two of them, both Anglo-Saxon, approved it and promised they would help. The remaining three, Italian American, didn’t even bother to answer. The publisher decided to try anyway.[6] He thought that once the volumes had been printed, the public would buy them. He published a new translation of the Divina Commedia in three volumes;[7] the Ricordi[8] by Francesco Guicciardini;[9] the Odi Barbare[10] by Giosuè Carducci[11] and even the first complete translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s[12] Orlando Furioso.[13] The majority of those volumes is still languishing in a storage room in some dark basement.

My most recent experience with Italian Americans goes back a couple of years. By now Americans of Italian origin are almost completely absorbed into the mixture of races in the United States. Some families have been here for four generations. Starting with the second generation the dominant language has been English and, with the disappearance of Italian, other surviving remnants of Italian culture are also being wiped out. I thought it was time to examine the outcomes of our immigration and compile a list of names and addresses of prominent people of Italian descent. I drafted the project of a Who’s Who of Italian Americans, based on an impartial and rational approach. There are already two similar publications but they contain very few names, mostly chosen with sloppy criteria or for reasons of friendship and personal connections. We don’t have yet any compilation with brief biographies of the names of, let’s say, all the doctors; pharmacists; judges; members of prestigious orchestras; priests and so forth; of Italian origin. My idea was to publish a catalog with at least 10,000 names, with regular updates. The concept was received with favor by Ambassador Manlio Brosio who supported it to the extent possible with the Italian American Chamber of Commerce [sic].[14] Several functionaries of the Istituto commercio estero (ICE)[15] and several Italian consuls in America also liked the idea a lot. However, not a single Italian American I presented my project to showed any interest. I mentioned that mine was not some kind of self-promotional effort, and in fact I was willing to do it without any compensation. Nevertheless, the Italian American Chamber of Commerce did not even want to talk to me—literally. This organization, which mostly comprises Italian American business people from New York City, regularly buys expensive advertisements in periodicals that nobody reads; and spends tons of money for social events that have nothing to do with commerce and trade. The leaders of the group didn’t even think they should at least listen to my presentation before rejecting it. I remember that, later, one of the authorities who had supported my project asked me if I was disappointed that nothing had come of it. “To the contrary,” I answered. “You see, I have the impression I made that proposal in hope they would say no.” “What do you mean?” “Well, most of all I wanted final proof that Italian Americans, even the rich ones who are so full of themselves and their success, have not reached the American level. This is already evident in newspapers, books and speeches where they demonstrate an inability to come to terms with a wider and more modern perspective. With a few exceptions, they are close-minded, backward and provincial. They are like a self-enveloped cyst, closed to the most modern country in the world. They have climbed the ladder of wealth but not that of thought. They have risen because America has risen and the rise has brought them up, the same way a ship carries around the world the barnacles attached to her keel. And, by the way, this image is not mine: it comes from banker Giannini, one of the few who could actually say it because he was one of them.”

The only initiative that has achieved a measure of success is the poetry festival. Every year New York public schools students of Italian recite Italian poems chosen by them or, unfortunately, by their teachers; and for their efforts they receive small gifts consisting of books, boxes of chocolates and cakes. This initiative costs nothing, doesn’t bother anyone and only tickles the ambition and curiosity of those kids and their teachers. Probably this is the reason it’s still going on. However, in the next pages you will be able to read my observations about this as well.