HE PREFERRED HAPPY ITALIAN DRINKERS

TO THE LONELY NEW YORK DRUNK

In 1891 Giuseppe Giacosa[1] wrote La Dame de Challant[2] for Sarah Bernhardt’s[3] upcoming debut in North America. For the occasion he traveled to the United States where he resided for few months during which he took notes for what would later become a volume titled Impressioni d’America.[4] Seventy years after its publication I doubt it would be worth publishing a new edition; but at least it is a book worth reading. Giacosa’s testimony is more relevant than his theories; just the same way as his eyes are more valuable than his brain. In his prose, I sense quite clearly the intention to emulate Edmondo De Amicis. At least, the literary model that inspired this book is better than the models he followed in his production as a playwright. The choice of materials, the framing of the scenes, the rhythm of time, the moderate tone, the lexicon taken from everyday’s language; they all take us back to that respect for the public that later D’Annunzio-inspired journalism would eventually discard and ignore, with the excuse of ennobling the columns of periodicals. This book contains a message that the author wants to communicate; thus, in order to help his readers, he writes in a way that makes sure they will understand; with his own ego kept under tight control. He also avoids the facile parochialism of exalting our co-nationals and putting down foreigners. The light of the author’s intelligence and culture are focused on understanding and interpreting with impartiality; to the point that I would call this one of the most honest products of bourgeois literature of the period. Literally, Giacosa resists the temptation to write about Niagara Falls or the abattoirs in Chicago; the topics of beautiful prose that in those days, for foreign correspondents in America, were the equivalent of [Niccolò] Paganini’s sonatas[5]. He was saved from the typical traps where many others, with more talent but a larger ego, would fall; probably because he was already accomplished and also knew how far he could stretch the strings of his violin. His tone is never too high and this allows him to avoid playing out of tune.

There is an aspect that should and could attract the attention of today’s readers, namely the comparison between America then and America today. This is not what the author planned, obviously, but it has the positive effects of giving us contrasting snapshots. We can find this contrast even in the lexicon, with words like moro[6] [Moor] instead of negro; or viale instead of avenue. This latter one is a word we don’t translate anymore knowing full well that, in Italian, viale stands for a tree-lined double-wide street, while American avenues rarely have trees. The snapshot quality of his observations also appears in the description of things he saw and that are now obsolete. It is sort of pleasurable reading about them; the same way it is pleasurable to look at a fifty year old photograph.

The chapter on bars is definitely the most successful in the entire book. Giacosa caught immediately the difference between Italian-style drunkenness and the American version.

In Italy drinkers reveal their vice even in the moments when they are trying to control themselves. The moment he pours the only drink he will allow himself; and the moment he brings the glass to the lips; his eyes shine full of anticipation. It is a glance like a caress, full of tenderness, ready for joy; a bit constrained and contained by the heroic resolution not to exceed. When he puts back on the table the empty glass after a few delicious sips, one understands that temptation and resistance hang on the wire of his willpower in an unstable balance. He dodges the glances of the bartender to avoid the temptation of sin. He places the little chalice on the edge of the counter without pulling back his hand, as if hesitant about the decision. Nobody can guess whether he wants a refill or if he is putting it down, satiated. He leaves it up to the intuition of the bartender or to the supreme god of all drinkers and gamblers: chance.

In comparison, American drinkers are gloomy and dominated by the will to drink.

If one enters a bar around ten in the evening he will find more or less the same crowd that was there in the afternoon… Same men, tall, lanky, elegant and royally posturing. Yet, to a keen observer it will be obvious that their composure is due to an effort of volition rather than natural grace. They are no longer straight but rigid and stiff, their faces with a violent expression. One would guess that they are drinking with disgust, as if they were forced; for most of the time they stand there in a state of inertia; surrounded by a crowd; in total loneliness; unaware of what surrounds them. Nobody talks with the person next to him, not even in a whisper. Those brightly lit places, full of taciturn people, are more sinister

than our dives.

Beautiful description, isn’t it? And just as valid today, despite the fact that New Yorkers were different back then. The kind of Anglo-Saxons Giacosa met in those places in those days, today are aristocratic exceptions hidden behind the doors of exclusive clubs. However, as often happens with Giacosa, he didn’t dig deeper into the subject. He had the right intuition but he missed that Italian drunks in general drink wine, while Americans drink whisky. There is a huge difference in terms of time, quantity, quality, measure and character in these two kinds of drunkenness. Generally, wine drunkenness is slower and convivial. With whisky, it’s quicker and lonely. Should we say that whisky is Protestant and wine Catholic? The Irish would complain…

A couple of chapters in Giacosa’s volume (a total of 285 pages in small format) are dedicated to Italians. Giacosa’s testimony here is even more valuable. He could access direct sources of information since he knew both languages, Italian and English. He immediately understood the difference between the Italian immigrants who had the foresight, or the good luck, to settle in the countryside and those who got stuck in the cities without professional skills.

In Texas, Italians are held in great esteem, contrary to what happens in the rest of the United States; possibly with the exception of California (...)

The most serious issue Americans raise with Italian immigrants is the sordid, degrading and incurable passivity and resignation to the worst activities, to the lowest and worst-paying jobs. The Italian plebes in New York and Chicago give a spectacle of supine resignation to poverty and cynical indifference to the pleasures of life. This shows in their dresses, their abodes and their food. The only ones who are in worse shape

perhaps are the Chinese.

 

Giacosa’s initial conclusion was that hostility toward Italians was caused by the fact that Italians were content with low-level lifestyle; but then he examined other possible reasons for the alleged antipathy. A co-national explained to him that “Yankees resent the money that Italians send back to Italy.” Another, an educated American, enamored of Italy, found a reason in the fact that, of all foreigners, Italians were the slowest to become Americanized. Giacosa concluded by blaming the American ruling class that taught Italian immigrants that “votes are merchandise that can be traded”; and that by trading them they could improve their station in society, get higher salaries, obtain expedite and righteous justice. I wonder: in Giacosa’s times, weren’t votes also bought and sold in elections in Italy? Anyway, I don’t believe anyone left a better description of the debasement of Italian immigrants than the page he devoted to Italian women working in the garbage industry in Chicago.

As far as I know Chicago does not have neighborhoods that are exclusively Italian. Therefore, the spectacle of our miserable condition can be found everywhere and in particular in activities in the lowest industries where only our co-nationals end up working. The most common is rummaging through the garbage accumulated near huge grain depots, leather-tanning shops, railroad stations and piers. This is the activity of old women from southern Italy who came to America with a husband and children. While the men tend to their professions or jobs, the women spend the whole day with garbage, in any kind of weather: rain, snow or wind. If they are lucky at the end of the day they bring home a few cents. Paper, leather waste, rags, nails, metal sheets, rivets, and metal wires: these are the final discards, the vilest refuse of the wasteful industrial-mechanical civilization. They pick everything and put it in sacks. A pair of slippers; a ripped blouse; a small bottle with the remains of some unknown medication: to their eyes these are true treasures. Who can draw the line between the usable and the unusable? They will probably put on those slippers and wear that blouse. The eternal feminine in them has no fashion

demands. Aren’t they also nourished by the dumpsters?

 

Giacosa also saw American filthiness. When he visited the world-famous Chicago slaughterhouses, he protested against their reputation for cleanliness and order.

Blood vapors impregnate all the pores of walls and ceilings. Sprays and rivulets of blood infiltrate troughs, barrels, counters, columns and floor boards where they are converted into brownish, evil-smelling mud, slimy and sticky, that frequent washes cannot dissolve and cannot sweep away; and instead push even further into wood fibers until it penetrates them completely. The rooms are low-ceiling and crammed, thus the workers always bump into each other and visitors must suffer stomach-churning contacts. There are few windows. A faint light comes from them onto the dark walls obscured by the vapors exhaled from water-boiling cauldrons and pulsating cuts of meat. In this environment hundreds of workers move around; each assigned to a particular function and forced by the mechanical rhythm of the operations to a furious pace without pause. Those unfortunate don’t have faces and bodies of men. The faces are congested into an expression of overwhelming disgust by a determined stiffness of will; and by the bloody inebriation that bites them. Their eyes are constantly forced open by the greasy and shiny redness that birdlimes forehead and cheeks; by the coagulated blood that hardens beard and hair; in the visual effort to discern in the shadow the precise point where to land the hatchet’s blow. All this gives them appearances that have nothing to do with those of human beings; that are below the very ferine animality they butcher in such formidable carnage.

We are not yet where Upton Sinclair[7] would take us in 1906 but we are pretty close. Giacosa in these circumstances isn’t the romantic poet or the pathetic realist who portrays the joys and sorrows of northern Italian bourgeoisie. He is a good reporter. He left us a testimony of America in those days that has only one defect: it’s short, quick and without the foundation of historical culture. His opinions, in general, drift toward the adoration for the United States, almost in anticipation of what will soon become the general tone of reportages by Europeans in that period (for instance Albert Houtin’s[8]); and that will reach a peak after World War I (Amica America by Jean Giraudoux,[9] 1918).

In Giacosa, for instance, we can see the beginning of the idealization of American women. “American women, the young ones, are more full-of-life than ours. They are in better health, taller, skinnier. From their brisk stride and diffused cheerfulness transpires a joie de vivre that pervades the face and the entire body.” At that time Europe had not yet discovered the mammismo and piovrismo[10] of American women (or, to be fair, of many American women.) This discovery, moreover, will be made by Americans, not European writers.

New York, August 1, 1960