Christ Stopped at Eboli Quotes

“The greatest travelers have not gone beyond the limits of their own world; they have trodden the paths of their own souls, of good and evil, of morality and redemption.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“But the autonomy or self-government of the community cannot exist without the autonomy of the factory, the school, and the city, of every form of social life.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“L'altra parola, che ritorna sempre nei discorsi è crai, il cras latino, domani. Tutto quello che si aspetta, che deve arrivare, che deve essere fatto o mutato, è crai.
Ma crai significa mai.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“The sky was a mixture of rose, green, and violet, the enchanting colors of malaria country, and it seemed far, far away.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“My life had no base but was hung ridiculously in the air, and the sound of my own voice startled me.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“He was, of course, only a dog, an animal like all the rest, but at the same time he had a dual and mysterious nature. I too loved him for his combination of simplicity and variety. Now he is dead, like my father to whom I gave him, and he lies buried under an almond tree overlooking the sea, in Liguria, that land of mine where I can no longer set foot, because those in power, in their fear of all that is sacred, seem to have discovered that I too have a dual nature and am, like my dog, half baron and half lion.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“They were all unconscious worshippers of the State. Whether the State they worshipped was the Fascist State or the incarnation of quite another dream, they thought of it as something that transcended both its citizens and their lives. Whether it was tyrannical or paternalistic, dictatorial or democratic, it remained to them monolithic, centralized, and remote. This was why the political leaders and my peasants could never understand one another. The politicians oversimplified things, even while they clothed them in philosophical expressions. Their solutions were abstract and far removed from reality; they were schematic halfway measures, which were already out of date. Fifteen years of Fascism had erased the problem of the South from their minds and if now they thought of it again they saw it only as a part of some other difficulty, through the fictitious generalities of party and class and even race...All of them agreed that the State should be something about it, something concretely useful, and beneficent, and miraculous, and they were shocked when I told them that the State, as they conceived it, was the greatest obstacle to the accomplishment of anything...We can bridge the abyss only when we succeed in creating a government in which the peasants feel they have some share...Plans laid by a central government, however much good they may do, still leave two hostile Italys on either side of the abyss. The difficulties we were discussing, I explained to them, were far more complex than they realized...First of all, we are faced with two very different civilizations, neither of which can absorb the other...The second aspect of the trouble is economic, the dilemma of poverty. The land has been gradually impoverished: the forests have been cut down, the rivers have been reduced to mountain streams that often run dry, and livestock has become scarce. Instead of cultivating trees and pasture lands there has been an unfortunate attempt to raise wheat in soil that does not favor it. There is no capital, no industry, no savings, no schools; emigration is no longer possible, taxes are unduly heavy, and malaria is everywhere. All this is in large part due to the ill-advised intentions and efforts of the State, a State in which the peasants cannot feel they have a share, and which has brought them only poverty and deserts...We must make ourselves capable of inventing a new form of government, neither Fascist, nor Communist, nor even Liberal, for all three of these are forms of the religion of the State. We must rebuild the foundations of our concept of the State with the concept of the individual, which is its basis...The individual is not a separate unit, but a link, a meeting place of relationships of every kind...The name of this way out is autonomy. The State can only be a group of autonomies, an organic federation, The unit or cell through which the peasants can take part in the complex life of the nation must be the autonomous or self-governing rural community. This is the only form of government which can solve in our time the three interdependent aspects of the problem of the South; which can allow the co-existence of two different civilizations, without one lording it over the other or weighing the other down; which can furnish a good chance for escape from poverty...But the autonomy or self-government of the community cannot exist without the autonomy of the factory, the school, and the city, of every form of social life. This is what I learned from a year of life underground.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“My visit was a melancholy one, quite apart from its mournful motive. I had expected tremendous enjoyment from seeing the city again, talking with my old friends, and taking part, if for only a moment, in the busy and complex life with which I was once so familiar. But when I got there I felt isolated, faraway, and unable to adapt myself to the places and persons I had longed to see...Part of me seemed by now foreign to their interests, ambitions, activities, and hopes; their life was no longer mine and it no longer touched me. After a few days, which passed in a flash, I set out again, with no regret...I thought of my feeling of strangeness, and of the complete lack of understanding among those of my friends who concerned themselves with political questions, of the country to which I was now hurrying back...But although they listened with apparent interest, very few of them seemed really to follow what I was saying. They were men of various temperaments and shades of opinion, from stiff-necked conservatives to fiery radicals.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“In spite of my work and all that I had to do about the house, the days went by with the most dismal monotony, in this deathlike existence, where there was neither time, nor love, nor liberty. One living presence would have been more real to me than the company of infinite numbers of bodiless spirits, constantly staring at me and following me about: the continual magic of animals and things weighed upon me with a funereal enchantment, but the only way to be free of them was to possess a magic even stronger.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“If they have money enough for a war, why don't they repair the bridge across the Agri which has been down for four years without anyone moving a finger to fix it? They might make a dam or provide us with more fountains, or plant young trees instead of cutting down the few that are left. We've plenty of land right here, but nothing to go with it.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“Giulia was a mistress of the art of making philters...she knew herbs and the power of talismans; she could even bring about the death of anyone she chose by uttering terrible incantations.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“They live submerged in a world that rolls on independent of their will, where man is in no way separate from his sun, his beast, his malaria, where there can be neither happiness, as literary devotees of the land conceive it, nor hope, because these two are adjuncts of personality and here there is only the grim passivity of a sorrowful Nature. But they have a lively human feeling for the common fate of mankind and its common acceptance. This is strictly a feeling rather than an act of will; they do not express it in words but they carry it with them at every moment and in every motion of their lives, through all the unbroken days that pass over these wastes.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“It was sad to see the peasants' ingratitude. And their superstitions. And their stubbornness. And so on, and so on...a dust-covered and uninteresting skein of self-interest, low-grade passion, boredom, greedy impotence, and poverty.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“It was sad to see the peasants' ingratitude. And their superstitions. And their stubborness. And so on, and so on.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“A fresh breeze was blowing from Dalmatia, making tiny whitecaps on the smooth surface of the waves. Vague notions floated through my head: the life of this sea was like man's fate, cast for all eternity in a series of equal waves, moving through time without change. I thought with affectionate sorrow of the motionless time and the dark civilization which I had left behind me.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“Sono passati molti anni, pieni di guerra, e di quello che si usa chiamare la Storia. Spinto qua e là alla ventura, non ho potuto finora mantenere la promessa fatta, lasciandoli, ai miei contadini, di tornare fra loro, e non so davvero se e quando potrò mai mantenerla. Ma, chiuso in una stanza, e in un mondo chiuso, mi è grato riandare con la memoria a quell'altro mondo, serrato nel dolore e negli usi, negato alla Storia e allo Stato, eternamente paziente; a quella mia terra senza conforto e dolcezza, dove il contadino vive, nella miseria e nella lontananza, la sua immobile civiltà, su un suolo arido, nella presenza della morte.
– Noi non siamo cristiani, – essi dicono, – Cristo si è fermato a Eboli –. Cristiano vuol dire, nel loro linguaggio, uomo: e la frase proverbiale che ho sentito tante volte ripetere, nelle loro bocche non è forse nulla piú che l'espressione di uno sconsolato complesso di inferiorità. Noi non siamo cristiani, non siamo uomini, non siamo considerati come uomini, ma bestie, bestie da soma, e ancora meno che le bestie, i fruschi, i frusculicchi, che vivono la loro libera vita diabolica o angelica, perché noi dobbiamo invece subire il mondo dei cristiani, che sono di là dall'orizzonte, e sopportarne il peso e il confronto. Ma la frase ha un senso molto piú profondo, che, come sempre, nei modi simbolici, è quello letterale. Cristo si è davvero fermato a Eboli, dove la strada e il treno abbandonano la costa di Salerno e il mare, e si addentrano nelle desolate terre di Lucania. Cristo non è mai arrivato qui, né vi è arrivato il tempo, né l'anima individuale, né la speranza, né il legame tra le cause e gli effetti, la ragione e la Storia. Cristo non è arrivato, come non erano arrivati i romani, che presidiavano le grandi strade e non entravano fra i monti e nelle foreste, né i greci, che fiorivano sul mare di Metaponto e di Sibari: nessuno degli arditi uomini di occidente ha portato quaggiú il suo senso del tempo che si muove, né la sua teocrazia statale, né la sua perenne attività che cresce su se stessa. Nessuno ha toccato questa terra se non come un conquistatore o un nemico o un visitatore incomprensivo. Le stagioni scorrono sulla fatica contadina, oggi come tremila anni prima di Cristo: nessun messaggio umano o divino si è rivolto a questa povertà refrattaria. Parliamo un diverso linguaggio: la nostra lingua è qui incomprensibile. I grandi viaggiatori non sono andati di là dai confini del proprio mondo; e hanno percorso i sentieri della propria anima e quelli del bene e del male, della moralità e della redenzione. Cristo è sceso nell'inferno sotterraneo del moralismo ebraico per romperne le porte nel tempo e sigillarle nell'eternità. Ma in questa terra oscura, senza peccato e senza redenzione, dove il male non è morale, ma è un dolore terrestre, che sta per sempre nelle cose, Cristo non è disceso. Cristo si è fermato a Eboli.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“Tutti i giovani di qualche valore, e quelli appena capaci di fare la propria strada, lasciano il paese. I più avventurati vanno in America, come i cafoni; gli altri a Napoli o a Roma; e in paese non tornano più. In paese ci restano invece gli scarti, coloro che non sanno far nulla, i difettosi nel corpo, gli inetti, gli oziosi: la noia e l’avidità li rendono malvagi. Questa classe degenerata deve, per vivere (i piccoli poderi non rendono quasi nulla), poter dominare i contadini, e assicurarsi, in paese, i posti remunerati di maestro, di farmacista, di prete, di maresciallo dei carabinieri, e così via. È dunque questione di vita o di morte avere personalmente in mano il potere; essere noi o i nostri parenti o compari ai posti di comando. Di qui la lotta continua per arraffare il potere tanto necessario e desiderato, e toglierlo agli altri; lotta che la ristrettezza dell'ambiente, l'ozio, l'associarsi di motivi privati o politici rende continua e feroce.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“se c’è un modo di essere materno, dove non traspare nessun sentimentalismo, questo era il suo:”
― Carlo Levi, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli

“La vita è triste, tra quei grattacieli, con tutte quelle straordinarie comodità, e gli ascensori, le porte girevoli, la metropolitana, e sempre case e palazzi e strade, e mai un po’ di terra. Viene la malinconia.”
― Carlo Levi, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli

“Ma cosa importava se non era autorizzato? Le faceva benissimo: ma doveva agire di nascosto, perché l'Italia è il paese dei diplomi, delle lauree, della cultura ridotta soltanto al procacciamento e alla spasmodica difesa dell'impiego.”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year

“Was this classical form the reminiscence of an ancient art, descended to a popular level, or was it an original and spontaneous re-creation in a language natural to this land, where the whole of life is a tragedy without a stage?”
― Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year