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Essays on India
With his typically perceptive insights, Levi writes evocatively on his experiences in India, including his interview with Pandit Nehru, his tour of a tent city at a political convention, and his meeting with a Hindu nationalist party. This only available edition of a fascinating account of his impressions of the subcontinent is a valuable addition to the tradition of Western writing on India, made all the more fascinating by the influence that Levi’s famous memoir of exile Christ Stopped at Eboli has had on many Indian intellectuals. Published in 1945, that account of his time spent in exile in Italy after being arrested in connection with his political activism introduced the trend toward social realism in post-war Italian literature.
124 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2008
About the author
Carlo Levi
84 books145 followersCarlo Levi was an Italian-Jewish painter, writer, activist, anti-fascist, and doctor.
He is best known for his book, "Cristo si è fermato a Eboli" (Christ Stopped at Eboli), published in 1945; a memoir of his time spent in exile in Lucania, Italy, after being arrested in connection with his political activism. In 1979, the book became the basis of a movie of the same name, directed by Francesco Rosi. Lucania, now called Basilicata, is historically one of the poorest and most backward regions of the impoverished Italian south. Levi's lucid, non-ideological and sympathetic description of the daily hardships experienced by the local peasants helped to propel the "Problem of the South" into national discourse after the end of the World War II.
He is best known for his book, "Cristo si è fermato a Eboli" (Christ Stopped at Eboli), published in 1945; a memoir of his time spent in exile in Lucania, Italy, after being arrested in connection with his political activism. In 1979, the book became the basis of a movie of the same name, directed by Francesco Rosi. Lucania, now called Basilicata, is historically one of the poorest and most backward regions of the impoverished Italian south. Levi's lucid, non-ideological and sympathetic description of the daily hardships experienced by the local peasants helped to propel the "Problem of the South" into national discourse after the end of the World War II.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 18, 2025
These are simple journalistic pieces written by the Italian Journalist/Writer Carlo Levi for the Italian Newspaper La Stampa.
After a decade of India's Independence, Carlo Levi was sent to India to make his observations.
Levi's focus had been mostly in the North (the area surrounding Delhi). There are also essays on Varanasi and a essay each on Calcutta and Bombay. He writes simple descriptive passages that might have looked exotic for his Italian readers.
He makes his own observations here and there. And they are superb. For instance, his observation on the emerging Indian middle class already in 1957 stands revealing today.
He writes in one of his essays thus:
I would have loved such reflective passages more rather than the descriptive passages. But then, Levi's readers were Italians who needed exciting information on the exotic spiritual India.
The language is also journalistic Italian of the 1950s. It was the style then of long sentences. And the translator has kept to the original. The long sentences initially made the reading tiring. But once you continue reading, it pulls you in. In that sense, the translator has done a great job.
After a decade of India's Independence, Carlo Levi was sent to India to make his observations.
Levi's focus had been mostly in the North (the area surrounding Delhi). There are also essays on Varanasi and a essay each on Calcutta and Bombay. He writes simple descriptive passages that might have looked exotic for his Italian readers.
He makes his own observations here and there. And they are superb. For instance, his observation on the emerging Indian middle class already in 1957 stands revealing today.
He writes in one of his essays thus:
"The wonder, the ancient beauty of India lies in its overwhelming disparity and variety: these qualities may be the product of an absence of the state: an absence that obliges each individual to an individual, never ending self-fulfilment (hence the need for an infinite series of reincarnations). State-imposed uniformity, and the middle class that it produces, tends to abolish these vital diversities (and render useless the eternal transmigration."
I would have loved such reflective passages more rather than the descriptive passages. But then, Levi's readers were Italians who needed exciting information on the exotic spiritual India.
The language is also journalistic Italian of the 1950s. It was the style then of long sentences. And the translator has kept to the original. The long sentences initially made the reading tiring. But once you continue reading, it pulls you in. In that sense, the translator has done a great job.
February 15, 2011
I feel cleverer for having read this!
April 3, 2023
3.5 rounded up
September 19, 2014
Reading these essays by Carlo Levi was like listening to an authoritative tour guide telling his readers on his stay and travels in India around January-August,1957, nearly sixty year ago; I think the number of her population did not exceed 400 million at that time(the figure I read somewhere and remembered in early 70's. Having reached 1 billion mark in 2000, in 2011 the country had 1.21 billion people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demograp...).
April 23, 2022
"[I]t is not a foreign country or a distant time, enclosed in forms, measures, rituals, in words with different roots and histories, rather it is our world, our history; it is us, ourselves, in all our antiquity and all our modernity. Like a giant mirror where, reflected in hundreds of millions of images, we find our own image, and India appears open to us -- not in the form of ideas, fantasies, or feelings, but rather as living realities, faces, figures, and persons -- the spectacle of our own centuries-old story. And it is only because we stand before a mirror and suddenly glimpse ourselves in that unimaginable wealth and that naked poverty -- for that reason alone do we feel a sense of dismay. We behold our fathers, our fathers' fathers, our great grandfathers, our earliest forebears: those pilgrims with long beards and dust-covered aubergine skin were us, long ago, in another time that once belonged to us; and countless gods teeming in every corner of the landscape, rendering sacred every act and deed, every creature, every gesture -- they too were us in another time." (5)
"Perhaps all of these poems, in the living ancient languages of India or the Orient, would mean little or nothing to us if we understood their words: or perhaps they are beautiful: but certainly, whether they are lovely or mediocre, they belong to a time in which language preserves its value as a magical incantation, and ritual repetition scatters that incantation like common drinking water, like the infinite and proliferating voice of the infinite gods and goddesses of they countryside and the villages." (30)
"Perhaps all of these poems, in the living ancient languages of India or the Orient, would mean little or nothing to us if we understood their words: or perhaps they are beautiful: but certainly, whether they are lovely or mediocre, they belong to a time in which language preserves its value as a magical incantation, and ritual repetition scatters that incantation like common drinking water, like the infinite and proliferating voice of the infinite gods and goddesses of they countryside and the villages." (30)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews