|
A Theme of Deracination “Deracination” is the
term that most lucidly expresses the unnatural and violent act of emigration.
The two adjectives—unnatural and violent—need here an explanation lest the
noun they modify should seem to be prompted by arbitrariness or inexactitude.
According to the typically Italian concept of casa degli avi (ancestral home), which prolongs and derives from
that of the Latin Lares (household
gods), the place of one’s birth was also, or should have been, that of one’s
death—beginning and termination of life being the two most awesome
credentials for its venerability and sacrality. We need but remember
Michelangelo’s concern over his servant Urbino’s future to understand how, at
the end of the Italian Renaissance, the very thought of one’s dying in a
public hospital—and not in his own native place—was tantamount to
consternation. One, so to speak, died a “natural” death only if fortunate
enough to leave this earth from the very place of his birth, surrounded by
dear and familiar faces. On the other hand, death in a foreign, unknown
country—that is, far from one’s beloved hearth—meant, as Ugo Foscolo so
passionately sang in his masterpiece De’
Sepolcri, the tragic interruption of what he called “corrispondenza
d’amorosi sensi” (the interchange of love remembering) because of which the
living and the dead still form an unsunderable bond of affection and
immortality beyond death itself. Violence, therefore, occurs whenever
unforeseen circumstances or vicissitudes compel an unfortunate creature to
die far from his native habitat. Emigration, consequently, is the ultimate
centrifugal force to which fate itself must helplessly bow. We are thus linked to
the Southern Italy of Giovanni Verga’s world—the world of the “Vanquished.”
Southern Italians, such as they are portrayed in I Malavoglia and Mastro Don
Gesualdo, are indeed vanquished by fate—that is, by hereditary and
therefore unavoidable and unalterable poverty. The tabula rasa or clean slate that we associate today with the birth
of a child was unthinkable in Verga’s days as far as southern Italians were
concerned. If a father was indigent, so had to be his son all his life; and
if, on the contrary, a father was wealthy, so had to be and remain all of his
children. Obviously inspired by
such a world of despair and fatality, the poet’s image of the “ethnic star”
even goes beyond it. Just as the Pleiades in Edwin Markham’s “The Man with
the Hoe” are an ethereal, inaccessible luxury to the bent laborer of the sod,
in “Song of the Bicentennial,” which significantly opens Gente Mia and Other Poems, the splendor of the distant and
numberless stars is of no concern to the emigrant. Their shape, instead, is
all that matters. The shape of a remote, hardly visible star maybe does not
even interest an astronomer, but it is of vital importance to the vision of a
poet convinced that he—every man who emigrates, that is—was born under the
sign and influence of a star bearing the shape of an ocean liner: The
shape—let me be wondering about the shape
of stars that glow, for
something tells me that I too was born under the
sign of one formed
like an ocean liner going far, crowded
with silent men called emigrants— my ethnic
star. Now let us see how from
this atmosphere of sadness emerges a poem of hope and affirmation, a poem in
which heaven and earth mingle as if in one bond of brotherhood, a poem in
which humor envelops dream and reality, fiction and history, Italian and
Irish immigrants, San Gennaro and Sant’Antonio. I will first read “Letter to San Gennaro” from Gente Mia and other Poems, and then
show how a single theme of deracination can become, through a poet’s vision
and feeling, a synthesis of life. Letter to San Gennaro Dear San
Gennaro, if in Paradise, as I am
sure, no weed of envy grows, you must
be clapping your ethereal hands as I my
mortal ones, now that—look there!— Saint
Anthony is being borne aloft, this
pallid Portuguese who left his land and, with
his Infant Jesus in his arms and a
perennial lily in his hand, conquered
us so completely that he can, after so
many centuries, still pass for one of
us, and who has even come with
Christopher Columbus to this shore, waiting
for us poor immigrants to found our Little
Italy and little dream. There he
is passing, blissful in the freshness of his
Franciscan wool, from street to street, reminding
every one he’s part of us, one who,
in other words, like all of us began
somewhere and ended somewhere else. This is
the reason why we love him so, although
we never met him. And there is, dear San
Gennaro, something else we should be
pardoned for in loving him so much: because he
was an immigrant, he saw the
thirteen things we shall forever need each
single day of this our earthly life. Your
miracle is mighty: twice a year your
blood, as if revived by rain or breeze, bubbles
vermilion like a timeless rose— the symbol
of our lost Vesuvian glow— a most
enchanting sight that can transform coagulated
darkness into dawn. But, of
his thirteen miracles a day, most had
to do with bread and butter—things we need, O
holy Bishop, more and more. So there
he goes, the owner and the omen of all the
Little Italys on earth, blessing
and blest, adoring and adored. Children,
brown-cowled as little Anthonys, before the
statue in a double row advance as
solemn as sweet imps can be, most
unaware of representing, each and all of
them, their parents’ grateful vows. Behind the
Saint, whose plaited tunic glows with
dollar bills that make our pastor gloat (may his
parochial school be paid for soon), a chanting
like a most unruly tide heaves
high and low while clarinets and drums easily vie
with every parish bell. Onions and
peppers, sausages around, and roller
coasters frantic in the air . . . O San
Gennaro, if the blessed nostrils of all you
Saints are tempted by this earth, and if the
Cherubs of the firmament envy man’s
children as I think they do, I beg you
not to tell our Lord on us or He will
think us wealthy for all time. Saint
Anthony will tell you what we are— still
poor, still much in need of daily bread, still
immigrants. But once a year (well, twice: do not
forget September’s on its way, and wait
and see what is in store for you) we like to
dream of what we would have been had we
been born in wealth, had we remained in the
fair land where wealth was of the few. So we are
dreaming, immigrants no more, of being
God’s true children growing up in God’s
true land—not Fate’s eternal pawn. There, we
are there: so let us dream some more, dear San
Gennaro, until late tonight. Tonight,
when our Saint Anthony returns, happily
weary from his feast, to sleep in the
Italian section of the sky, he too
will dream of what he saw on earth. He’ll
whisper all about it in your ear tomorrow
morning when you stand on line to pay new
homage to the King of kings. Not far
behind you, all the Irish Saints, visibly
hurt and envious, will say, “Hush!”
Hush!” But, quite amused upon His throne, God, I am
sure, will understand and smile. What’s in a name, or, rather what’s in a poem? In his Molise Molise,
Giose Rimanelli describes the obvious nucleus of this lyric in the following
sensitive terms: “Saint Anthony is the saint of every day. The immigrant has
welcomed him as a brother and fellow worker in his fight for a better life;
indeed, is not Saint Anthony the one who performs thirteen miracles a day?
San Gennaro, instead, is the saint of but two days a year. A bishop, solemnly
garbed in his episcopal robe, gives the poor working man the possibility of
playing the role of a wealthy gentleman twice a year. The spectacular parade
of splendor and riches can, however, be misleading; the immigrant, therefore,
is quick to pray: ‘I beg you not to tell our Lord on us / or He will think us
wealthy for all time.’ ” The poet, as you may have noticed, dispenses with the awesome
accouterments of theology in addressing one who partakes of God’s beatific
vision. Seeing death as a prolongation of life, he, also, sees God’s
firmament as a prolongation of man’s earth. This is why, apparently on the
verge of sacrilege, not only does he behold innumerable blessed spirits,
caught, so to speak, in the fleshly act of watching a procession down below;
he, also, envisions them still capable of being tempted by sins of gluttony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
if the blessed nostrils of all you
Saints are tempted by this earth . . . “Look there,” says the
poet to San Gennaro, and so we have a classical beginning in medias res—in our case, the
procession in honor of Saint Anthony. Here again, as there seems to be no
difference between heaven and earth, we can very well imagine how San Gennaro
must feel when told that not he—an Italian saint—but a fellow saint from
Portugal is being honored in a Little Italy of America. Ah, this is what the
poet needed to bring the immigrant’s plight to the attention of divinity
itself. With a clever yet very simple ruse of captatio benevolentiae he reassures the holy Bishop of Naples by
making him feel as important among his faithful Neapolitans as he was one day
on earth. He even reminds him of the miracle of the thawing of his blood (as
if San Gennaro were not the one to perform it). What else can he tell him to
make him hear and understand what comes next? Next, as Giose Rimanelli has keenly
observed, comes the real issue: the Italian immigrant loves Saint Anthony
more for two important reasons: first, because having left his native land,
the pallid Portuguese knows the pangs of deracination, and second, because he
is the Saint of thirteen miracles a day—the first of which is bread. San
Gennaro represents a myth of grandeur; Saint Anthony symbolizes reality. But there is an ingenuous, pious error here. Anthony of Padua
had not “migrated” to Italy. An Augustinian monk, he had joined Saint Francis
and his Franciscans in Assisi, had taught theology at Bologna, Toulouse,
Montpellier, and Padua, and had written, in Latin, sermons and a mystical
commentary on the Bible. To be sure, he had not left his homeland in search
of work and daily bread. But the Italian immigrant ignores historical
accuracy and adds legend to legend. To him Saint Anthony is one who knows
what it is to leave the most beloved things behind (tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta) and face a new land, a new sky, a
new morrow far from the dear, familiar faces. And, more importantly, he is
the Saint of all the miracles the immigrant needs in order to survive on the
unfamiliar shore. But who has told the Italian immigrant about Saint Anthony’s
thirteen miracles a day? Certainly not the liturgical hymn Si quaeris miracula (if miracles you
seek, go to Anthony), written in the wake of an already sweeping legend. Who,
then? His grandmother, of course. It was she who told him that every Saint
has a novena, only Saint Anthony a tredicina. Grandmother did not know
that Saint Anthony had died on June 13, 1231, nor did she associate that date
with the magical number of her faith in his power. She knew, though, that
Saint Anthony had preached to the fish of the sea, as Saint Francis to the
birds of the sky. To understand more about the delicate fabric of this poem, let
me read another, appropriately called “Thirteen Each Day,” from my first book
of verse, Rind and All. Thirteen Each Day (To Saint Anthony of
Padua) I should
not talk to you, since there is nothing in me that
you might call a virtue’s bloom; but, after
all, it was my land that gave you a home, a
happy early tomb, with all those
little things which you made great and yours. I
remember, Saint Anthony, it was my grandma
(she is now in heaven with you) who
introduced me to your miracles,— thirteen
of them each day. I was but three, and
wondered at your power. God, I knew, made earth
and heaven—miracles indeed, but only
two of them, eleven less. You must
have smiled, I guess, at her and me, kneeling
before your statue many a time and hardly
looking at the Blessed Host: oh, it was
not a crime—we did not know then of
such things as latria and dulia grandma
and I: we only knew you were a saint of
thirteen miracles a day, and we
needed them all. The first was bread. O dear
Saint Anthony, you must recall those
burning and eternal tears of hers: “Ddu
figghie mia lu raccumann ’a tte.” She was so
sure that, with your mercy, you would have
gathered a hundred bits of flesh
from the battlefield, and given back to her her
son, alive and handsome once again,—a
little thing for you to do! For twenty
years she wept and then she stopped. Her son,
and you, I know, met her half mile before she
reached the gate of heaven, and told her to smile,
to smile at last, for God was near. Well—years
have gone, Saint Anthony. I know now why
your hand has a lily, and why they
sculpt you with a Child within your arms. But I wish
I knew less and could believe much more,
just as I did when I was three,— when in my
little mountain church I knelt before you
thirteen times and then went home, convinced
that I would find, that day, my bread. Now back to our “Letter” and to our poor San Gennaro, who has
just been told that he cannot do what Saint Anthony can. The holy Bishop of
Naples is no fool. He knows philosophy and theology, maybe not so well as
Anthony of Padua, but enough to be able to understand an innuendo that, were
he not in the glory of heaven, would hurt him terribly. He has just been
subtly accused of ostentation and vanity on account of his one miracle that
in no way helps those who starve: Your
blood, as if revived by rain or breeze, bubbles
vermilion like a timeless rose— a most
enchanting sight that can transform coagulated
darkness into dawn. The accusation is grave
indeed: he, San Gennaro, is even held responsible for making the immigrant
brood on the causes of his emigration: we like to
dream of what we would have been had we
been born in wealth, had we remained in the
fair land where wealth was of the few. So we are
dreaming, immigrants no more, of being
God’s true children growing up in God’s
true land—not Fate’s eternal pawn. Oh, but they did not
mean to hurt San Gennaro’s feelings. On the contrary, they are grateful to
him for that one dream of riches and opulence in the midst of their cares and
troubles. So, they hasten to distract the Saint they have unintentionally
offended with the promise of a bigger and more lavish procession in his
honor: September’s on its
way, and wait
and see what is in store for you! In the meantime, Saint
Anthony will tell him how a saint feels, treading the streets of the earth
again, “blessing and blest.” But at this point a sudden new breath of freshness revives the
poem and elevates its vision. The statue you have seen, with that plaited
tunic glowing “with dollar bills that make our pastor gloat,” was no statue
at all: it was Saint Anthony himself descended from heaven, from “the Italian
section of the sky.” Did you know about this “Little Italy” in Paradise? Our
poet himself was not aware of its existence until inspiration made him see
it. And did you know that, every morning, there in heaven, all Saints
assemble to say Good Morning to God, and that, not entirely cleansed of their
earthly sins, the Irish saints resent the Italians’ success? You smile, I
see; even God does. Tonight,
when our Saint Anthony returns, happily
weary from his feast, to sleep in the
Italian section of the sky, he too
will dream of what he saw on earth. He’ll
whisper all about it in your ear tomorrow
morning when you stand on line to pay new
homage to the King of kings. Not far
behind you, all the Irish Saints, visibly
hurt and envious, will say, “Hush!
Hush!” But, quite amused upon His throne, God, I am
sure, will understand and smile. Joseph Tusiani Professor
Emeritus, CUNY, Lehman College |