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Available
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Publication
Penguin Books Ltd (1990), Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 256 pages
Description
It was to Lucania, a desolate land in southern Italy, that Carlo Levi--a doctor, painter, philosopher, and man of letters--was confined as a political prisoner because of his opposition to Italy's Fascist government at the start of the Ethiopian war in 1935. While there, Levi reflected on the harsh landscape and its inhabitants, peasants who lived the same lives their ancestors had, constantly fearing black magic and the near presence of death. In so doing, Levi offered a starkly beautiful and moving account of a place and a people living outside the boundaries of progress and time.
User reviews
LibraryThing member gbill
Because of his open opposition to fascism, in 1935-36 Carlo Levi was banished to small villages in the Lucania region of Italy (present-day Basilicata and southern Salerno). The conditions he found there were primitive, with peasants living in other-worldly isolation and squalor. The learned Levi,
The book certainly transports one to a rural world of superstitions among the peasants and pettiness among the local politicians. The customs are at times fascinating: girls needing be shut up for three years after the death of her father, and one for that of a brother; the two images in almost every house being the black, scowling Madonna of Viggiano and President Roosevelt from America; and the belief that a man and woman alone together would inevitably have sex, therefore always requiring a chaperone. As Levi tells it, the flirtatiousness of the women and the large number of babies born out of wedlock bore credence to that last one. The peasants live in ignorance, and yet wisely mistrust flags of any color and wars, including Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in those years. The book also helps you understand the difference between the North and South in Italy, and the dynamic and local feelings for the brigands who surfaced after unification 75 years earlier.
Unfortunately, Levi is bored by the monotony, and eventually this seeps into the reader’s experience. There are times when small daily events seem profound, such as when Levi lays in the cool pit of an open grave to beat the heat, watches the clouds pass overhead, and then later talks to a gnarled old gravedigger. There are other times when the book just gets a bit dense and dry, even if it is well written. It will help you understand the culture and history of rural southern Italy, but if you’re looking for action and a plot-driven book, skip this one. I confess I was also a little disappointed that the conditions in Matera, of particular interest, were only mentioned on a page or two, and from Levi’s sister having visited there on her way down to see him.
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a doctor by training, painter, and writer, was appalled, and in 1943-44 chronicled his stay in ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’. The title refers to the peasants not believing they were Christians, or even humans, for Christ had not visited them, he had stopped in Eboli, to the north. They simply lived as one with the beasts in the harsh climate, while far-away political activities in Rome washed over them. The book certainly transports one to a rural world of superstitions among the peasants and pettiness among the local politicians. The customs are at times fascinating: girls needing be shut up for three years after the death of her father, and one for that of a brother; the two images in almost every house being the black, scowling Madonna of Viggiano and President Roosevelt from America; and the belief that a man and woman alone together would inevitably have sex, therefore always requiring a chaperone. As Levi tells it, the flirtatiousness of the women and the large number of babies born out of wedlock bore credence to that last one. The peasants live in ignorance, and yet wisely mistrust flags of any color and wars, including Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in those years. The book also helps you understand the difference between the North and South in Italy, and the dynamic and local feelings for the brigands who surfaced after unification 75 years earlier.
Unfortunately, Levi is bored by the monotony, and eventually this seeps into the reader’s experience. There are times when small daily events seem profound, such as when Levi lays in the cool pit of an open grave to beat the heat, watches the clouds pass overhead, and then later talks to a gnarled old gravedigger. There are other times when the book just gets a bit dense and dry, even if it is well written. It will help you understand the culture and history of rural southern Italy, but if you’re looking for action and a plot-driven book, skip this one. I confess I was also a little disappointed that the conditions in Matera, of particular interest, were only mentioned on a page or two, and from Levi’s sister having visited there on her way down to see him.
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LibraryThing member kant1066
This book was recommended to me probably eight years ago by a delightful old woman who worked with me by the name of Eleanor Jordan. I’d never heard of the book before, and didn’t think much of it for several years. One day, I saw it while browsing, picked it up, and just recently decided to
There are heavily autobiographical elements in the book, so it’s difficult to tell where the memories begin and the actual history ends. Levi was an Italian doctor who wrote against Mussolini in the thirties and was exiled because of it, in the little town Gagliano (not its real name), for about a year in 1935; the next year, he and several other political prisoners were freed under general amnesty. The events in this book take place during that year, and but were only written down several years later, 1943-1944, when he was writing for an Underground resistance paper called “La Nazione del Popolo” in Florence.
The title ironically undercuts the entire book. The people of Gagliano say that “Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli” which means that the people of the town have not grown accustomed to human and humane things: Christian civilization, morality, any kind of historical progress. Levi’s carefully attentive documentation of their life challenges his self-perceived isolation; their life is as full of all the sadness, beauty, and joy that anyone else’s is. Gagliano isn’t the blessed paradise that we hear about from Peace Corps volunteers; it has just as many brigands, self-satisfied bureaucrats, and generation-long family rivalries as any other village where presumably “Christ did stop.”
Eventually, Levi is released as a political prisoner and therefore no longer obliged to stay there – but he finds it difficult to leave, even further testament to the humanity and likeability of its inhabitants. He returns to Florence to work with the Resistance, but never forgets his year-long stay at Gagliano. Like the American writer William Kennedy’s Albany cycle of novels, this book belongs to a rather small class in which a gifted writer goes to some small corner of the world, though his fictive craft makes it magical and wondrous, and then invites the entire world to come and see.
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read it, intermittently thinking of Eleanor. The title combined with the brief content summary she provided me prompted me to ask, “What is it? Fiction? A travel guide?” She just answered with her usual candor. “Just read it!” she would say. So I finally did.There are heavily autobiographical elements in the book, so it’s difficult to tell where the memories begin and the actual history ends. Levi was an Italian doctor who wrote against Mussolini in the thirties and was exiled because of it, in the little town Gagliano (not its real name), for about a year in 1935; the next year, he and several other political prisoners were freed under general amnesty. The events in this book take place during that year, and but were only written down several years later, 1943-1944, when he was writing for an Underground resistance paper called “La Nazione del Popolo” in Florence.
The title ironically undercuts the entire book. The people of Gagliano say that “Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli” which means that the people of the town have not grown accustomed to human and humane things: Christian civilization, morality, any kind of historical progress. Levi’s carefully attentive documentation of their life challenges his self-perceived isolation; their life is as full of all the sadness, beauty, and joy that anyone else’s is. Gagliano isn’t the blessed paradise that we hear about from Peace Corps volunteers; it has just as many brigands, self-satisfied bureaucrats, and generation-long family rivalries as any other village where presumably “Christ did stop.”
Eventually, Levi is released as a political prisoner and therefore no longer obliged to stay there – but he finds it difficult to leave, even further testament to the humanity and likeability of its inhabitants. He returns to Florence to work with the Resistance, but never forgets his year-long stay at Gagliano. Like the American writer William Kennedy’s Albany cycle of novels, this book belongs to a rather small class in which a gifted writer goes to some small corner of the world, though his fictive craft makes it magical and wondrous, and then invites the entire world to come and see.
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LibraryThing member patrickgarson
Christ Stopped at Eboli is a slightish, but high-quality work. Levi is a consummate writer, equally deft at capturing a scene, or analysing what produced it. The book provides an excellent protrait - not just intentionally of pre-war rural Italy, but also unintentionally of the intellectual and
Idealistic painter and one-time medical student, Carlo Levi, is packed off to exile in the barrens of Southern Italy for his anti-fascist leanings. The year he spends in Gagliano (in actuality the village Aliano) gives the somewhat privileged northerner a view into the teeming south he would otherwise not have had.
This is not a novel - there is no narrative as such and even Levi himself does not grow and change overmuch through the book's course. Chapters take place chronologically, but could mostly stand-alone as sharply-observed vignettes, detailing the foibles, hopes, superstitions and happenings in the small village. This languid pace and the effort Levi goes to show the changeless ritual of life in the village was a little bit of a struggle for me at times (caveat: I have a four month old baby; my tolerances are not what they usually are!), however the writing is so fine it's not really a chore.
Levi writes - mostly - with a kind of detached, gentle and affectionate tone. His characterisations seem torn almost from the pages of a commedia del arte, or The Decameron. The scheming spinster, doddering doctor, wanton housekeeper etc. But Levi largely refrains from judging his cast too harshly, and their own stories, rendered quickly and with a marksman's accuracy, add a pleasant variety to doings.
This is juxtaposed with his sharp social critique and analysis. The gentle tone quickly evaporates when confronted with the grinding poverty and pervasive malaria of the region. With a sociologist's eye, Levi quickly teases out the individual threads that make up the tapestry of the south, and his analysis is often impassioned, angry, also political, ambitious and emotional. This contrast provides the book with some much needed light and shade, and also its most intriguing aspects.
For all his solidarity with his comrades in the South, Levi cannot escape his essential "northern-ness", and it informs his opinions and impressions much more than he's aware. Students of Italian history will recognise this fundamental dichotomy in the nation's character and demographics, but it was very interesting for me to see it play out in a primary source.
Levi's characterisations of the peasants, though compassionate, are frequently well-rendered Northern stereotypes. The peasants - far more so than the gentry he largely despises - are most often a plurality or mass. They are superstitious, venal, atavistic, naive, despairing and - it's somewhat implied - incapable of better. They have adopted the characteristics of their environment: fierce, hot, harsh, barren, short-lived etc.
Levi cannot escape this, but at the same time, he also recognises peasants as individuals, and maintains that they're incapable of better in the current Italy, because they exist outside and beyond it - or beyond its conception and rule by the country's Northerners. These twinning strands give the book a fascinating undercurrent of tension and anyone interested in Italy will probably feel the same.
So whilst in some respect, Christ Stopped At Eboli is a simple book that offers simple pleasures, there's more to be had in its limpid prose and dry, almost-jovial anecdotes.
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cultural underpinnings colouring said portrait. It's nice finding a cultural artefact so pleasant to digest. Idealistic painter and one-time medical student, Carlo Levi, is packed off to exile in the barrens of Southern Italy for his anti-fascist leanings. The year he spends in Gagliano (in actuality the village Aliano) gives the somewhat privileged northerner a view into the teeming south he would otherwise not have had.
This is not a novel - there is no narrative as such and even Levi himself does not grow and change overmuch through the book's course. Chapters take place chronologically, but could mostly stand-alone as sharply-observed vignettes, detailing the foibles, hopes, superstitions and happenings in the small village. This languid pace and the effort Levi goes to show the changeless ritual of life in the village was a little bit of a struggle for me at times (caveat: I have a four month old baby; my tolerances are not what they usually are!), however the writing is so fine it's not really a chore.
Levi writes - mostly - with a kind of detached, gentle and affectionate tone. His characterisations seem torn almost from the pages of a commedia del arte, or The Decameron. The scheming spinster, doddering doctor, wanton housekeeper etc. But Levi largely refrains from judging his cast too harshly, and their own stories, rendered quickly and with a marksman's accuracy, add a pleasant variety to doings.
This is juxtaposed with his sharp social critique and analysis. The gentle tone quickly evaporates when confronted with the grinding poverty and pervasive malaria of the region. With a sociologist's eye, Levi quickly teases out the individual threads that make up the tapestry of the south, and his analysis is often impassioned, angry, also political, ambitious and emotional. This contrast provides the book with some much needed light and shade, and also its most intriguing aspects.
For all his solidarity with his comrades in the South, Levi cannot escape his essential "northern-ness", and it informs his opinions and impressions much more than he's aware. Students of Italian history will recognise this fundamental dichotomy in the nation's character and demographics, but it was very interesting for me to see it play out in a primary source.
Levi's characterisations of the peasants, though compassionate, are frequently well-rendered Northern stereotypes. The peasants - far more so than the gentry he largely despises - are most often a plurality or mass. They are superstitious, venal, atavistic, naive, despairing and - it's somewhat implied - incapable of better. They have adopted the characteristics of their environment: fierce, hot, harsh, barren, short-lived etc.
Levi cannot escape this, but at the same time, he also recognises peasants as individuals, and maintains that they're incapable of better in the current Italy, because they exist outside and beyond it - or beyond its conception and rule by the country's Northerners. These twinning strands give the book a fascinating undercurrent of tension and anyone interested in Italy will probably feel the same.
So whilst in some respect, Christ Stopped At Eboli is a simple book that offers simple pleasures, there's more to be had in its limpid prose and dry, almost-jovial anecdotes.
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LibraryThing member janerawoof
The anti-Fascist author's memoir of his exile by the Fascist government to a poverty-stricken Lucanian village located in the toe of Italy. Gifted writing. Each chapter is a vignette of the villagers, their customs, their hardscrabble life and how the author, a doctor and painter interacts with
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them. A good but depressing picture of life in southern Italy in the 1930s, focusing mostly on the population from gentry to peasants, rather than on Levi himself. "Christ" in this context is the peasants' word signifying "civilization"; to the peasants, civilization didn't extend below Eboli, a town just south of Naples. Show Less
LibraryThing member tabascofromgudreads
Carlo Levi was sent in exile to a Southern Italian village (current name Aliano) in the mid 1930's as a political prisoner because of his anti-fascism. This book is his recollection of one of the three years he spent there.
The village is very small, isolated, and ridden with misery and illness.
What gives the book a true soul, and really elevates it, is the deep, heartfelt sense of longing and love that Levi has for the people he lived with in this village, and, in particular, for the farmers.
He focuses on the misery of the farmers' condition, their fatalistic and pessimistic worldview, their stubborness, their eternal patience, their living untouched by history's grand schemes, and uncared for by the state, by anyone.
These farmers live in one-room houses, with their animals under their bed, and their infants hanging over their bed, in cribs. On the walls, each of them have two images: a black Holy Mary, and, fascinating fact, President Roosevelt. That's because "America", for many southern Italians in those times, was something like paradise. Some came back from America, only to live the rest of their lives in regret.
Being Italian, I'm amazed at having missed this book until now. Even at school, they didn't try to shove it down my throat as they often do in Italian schools (the BEST way to make you want to burn a book and go kill its author with your bare hands is to teach it at school. This trick really works wonders if delivered with a nasal voice, an under-average sensitivity, and a massive dose of stupidity).
Christianity had a very diluted flavor in these lands, that's why the farmers live with ancient pagan traditions that have nothing to do with christian religion, like magic potions, legends, in a world where people, animals and imagination are just one thing, and nothing is too complicated or dramatic, including death.
What Levi keeps hammering on is a sense of inevitable defeat of the farmer as a citizen of the state. He sees good people being exploited by whoever has money and power, and he says that the state should be a state for the farmers as well. All very well, although he often comes across as idealistic, too theoretical and naive, especially in his political reflections, articulated at the end of the book. Or perhaps he wasn't naive at all, and he was just painting himself as the man who loves the humble and defensless, since by the time he wrote this book he had already joined the Italian communist party, and he was later elected in the Senate. But my bet is, he was a rather idealistic man.
Now, what I really saw through this book was a priviledged member of the Italian society of the '30s (Levi's family was very wealthy), a good, well educated man with an artistic sensitivity, spending 3 years as the revered "smartest guy in the village", doing nothing but painting and reading, in sunny southern Italy. How's that for an alternative to prison? Where do I sign up?
On a more serious note, Levi's book is perhaps the only autobiographical book I've read where the author doesn't talk much about himself at all. Sure, a wise approach for a young politician, but also a breath of fresh air.
Recommended for readers who want to immerse themselves in the silence of a primitive, ancient reality that is light years from our neurotic lives of today, but at the same time feels more deeply authentic. For those farmers, and I guess for most farmers, life has always been stripped bare, to the bone. A white, shining bone that we 21st century soft westerners often forget.
A hard-core experience to live through the eyes of an artistic outsider.
The village is very small, isolated, and ridden with misery and illness.
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What could have been a dreadfully boring memoir becomes a beautiful, poetic work of art under the artistic sensitivity of Mr Levi's pen. What gives the book a true soul, and really elevates it, is the deep, heartfelt sense of longing and love that Levi has for the people he lived with in this village, and, in particular, for the farmers.
He focuses on the misery of the farmers' condition, their fatalistic and pessimistic worldview, their stubborness, their eternal patience, their living untouched by history's grand schemes, and uncared for by the state, by anyone.
These farmers live in one-room houses, with their animals under their bed, and their infants hanging over their bed, in cribs. On the walls, each of them have two images: a black Holy Mary, and, fascinating fact, President Roosevelt. That's because "America", for many southern Italians in those times, was something like paradise. Some came back from America, only to live the rest of their lives in regret.
Being Italian, I'm amazed at having missed this book until now. Even at school, they didn't try to shove it down my throat as they often do in Italian schools (the BEST way to make you want to burn a book and go kill its author with your bare hands is to teach it at school. This trick really works wonders if delivered with a nasal voice, an under-average sensitivity, and a massive dose of stupidity).
Christianity had a very diluted flavor in these lands, that's why the farmers live with ancient pagan traditions that have nothing to do with christian religion, like magic potions, legends, in a world where people, animals and imagination are just one thing, and nothing is too complicated or dramatic, including death.
What Levi keeps hammering on is a sense of inevitable defeat of the farmer as a citizen of the state. He sees good people being exploited by whoever has money and power, and he says that the state should be a state for the farmers as well. All very well, although he often comes across as idealistic, too theoretical and naive, especially in his political reflections, articulated at the end of the book. Or perhaps he wasn't naive at all, and he was just painting himself as the man who loves the humble and defensless, since by the time he wrote this book he had already joined the Italian communist party, and he was later elected in the Senate. But my bet is, he was a rather idealistic man.
Now, what I really saw through this book was a priviledged member of the Italian society of the '30s (Levi's family was very wealthy), a good, well educated man with an artistic sensitivity, spending 3 years as the revered "smartest guy in the village", doing nothing but painting and reading, in sunny southern Italy. How's that for an alternative to prison? Where do I sign up?
On a more serious note, Levi's book is perhaps the only autobiographical book I've read where the author doesn't talk much about himself at all. Sure, a wise approach for a young politician, but also a breath of fresh air.
Recommended for readers who want to immerse themselves in the silence of a primitive, ancient reality that is light years from our neurotic lives of today, but at the same time feels more deeply authentic. For those farmers, and I guess for most farmers, life has always been stripped bare, to the bone. A white, shining bone that we 21st century soft westerners often forget.
A hard-core experience to live through the eyes of an artistic outsider.
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LibraryThing member saliero
I love this book; it is one of my favourite of all times.
LibraryThing member LisaCurcio
Carlo Levi, a young anti-fascist with a medical degree who chose to paint, write and oppose Mussolini rather than to practice medicine, was exiled in the 1930s to what was then called Lucania and is now known as Basilicata. The area was and is one of the poorest regions of Italy. The people of the
Levi, a native of Turin, could hardly have been sent to a more remote area or one more different from his city in northern Italy. Yet, he thoughtfully and affectionately tells the story of the superstitions, political maneuvering,love, hope, despair and unending hard work of the locals. The people and the place take on life through Levi's descriptions. As was Levi's departure, coming to the end of the book is bittersweet.
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village in the mountains in which he spent most of a year said that they were so isolated that even Christianity stopped before it reached them.Levi, a native of Turin, could hardly have been sent to a more remote area or one more different from his city in northern Italy. Yet, he thoughtfully and affectionately tells the story of the superstitions, political maneuvering,love, hope, despair and unending hard work of the locals. The people and the place take on life through Levi's descriptions. As was Levi's departure, coming to the end of the book is bittersweet.
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LibraryThing member ToniApicelli
Christ Stopped at Eboli is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. His descriptions of the world he is exiled to give a sympathetic and moving portrait of the people he encounters and the life they live.
LibraryThing member commsecretary
This is an account of Levi's year in the south of Italy exiled there by the Fascists.
LibraryThing member tabascofromgudreads
Carlo Levi was sent in exile to a Southern Italian village (current name Aliano) in the mid 1930's as a political prisoner because of his anti-fascism. This book is his recollection of one of the three years he spent there.
The village is very small, isolated, and ridden with misery and illness.
What gives the book a true soul, and really elevates it, is the deep, heartfelt sense of longing and love that Levi has for the people he lived with in this village, and, in particular, for the farmers.
He focuses on the misery of the farmers' condition, their fatalistic and pessimistic worldview, their stubborness, their eternal patience, their living untouched by history's grand schemes, and uncared for by the state, by anyone.
These farmers live in one-room houses, with their animals under their bed, and their infants hanging over their bed, in cribs. On the walls, each of them have two images: a black Holy Mary, and, fascinating fact, President Roosevelt. That's because "America", for many southern Italians in those times, was something like paradise. Some came back from America, only to live the rest of their lives in regret.
Being Italian, I'm amazed at having missed this book until now. Even at school, they didn't try to shove it down my throat as they often do in Italian schools (the BEST way to make you want to burn a book and go kill its author with your bare hands is to teach it at school. This trick really works wonders if delivered with a nasal voice, an under-average sensitivity, and a massive dose of stupidity).
Christianity had a very diluted flavor in these lands, that's why the farmers live with ancient pagan traditions that have nothing to do with christian religion, like magic potions, legends, in a world where people, animals and imagination are just one thing, and nothing is too complicated or dramatic, including death.
What Levi keeps hammering on is a sense of inevitable defeat of the farmer as a citizen of the state. He sees good people being exploited by whoever has money and power, and he says that the state should be a state for the farmers as well. All very well, although he often comes across as idealistic, too theoretical and naive, especially in his political reflections, articulated at the end of the book. Or perhaps he wasn't naive at all, and he was just painting himself as the man who loves the humble and defensless, since by the time he wrote this book he had already joined the Italian communist party, and he was later elected in the Senate. But my bet is, he was a rather idealistic man.
Now, what I really saw through this book was a priviledged member of the Italian society of the '30s (Levi's family was very wealthy), a good, well educated man with an artistic sensitivity, spending 3 years as the revered "smartest guy in the village", doing nothing but painting and reading, in sunny southern Italy. How's that for an alternative to prison? Where do I sign up?
On a more serious note, Levi's book is perhaps the only autobiographical book I've read where the author doesn't talk much about himself at all. Sure, a wise approach for a young politician, but also a breath of fresh air.
Recommended for readers who want to immerse themselves in the silence of a primitive, ancient reality that is light years from our neurotic lives of today, but at the same time feels more deeply authentic. For those farmers, and I guess for most farmers, life has always been stripped bare, to the bone. A white, shining bone that we 21st century soft westerners often forget.
A hard-core experience to live through the eyes of an artistic outsider.
The village is very small, isolated, and ridden with misery and illness.
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What could have been a dreadfully boring memoir becomes a beautiful, poetic work of art under the artistic sensitivity of Mr Levi's pen. What gives the book a true soul, and really elevates it, is the deep, heartfelt sense of longing and love that Levi has for the people he lived with in this village, and, in particular, for the farmers.
He focuses on the misery of the farmers' condition, their fatalistic and pessimistic worldview, their stubborness, their eternal patience, their living untouched by history's grand schemes, and uncared for by the state, by anyone.
These farmers live in one-room houses, with their animals under their bed, and their infants hanging over their bed, in cribs. On the walls, each of them have two images: a black Holy Mary, and, fascinating fact, President Roosevelt. That's because "America", for many southern Italians in those times, was something like paradise. Some came back from America, only to live the rest of their lives in regret.
Being Italian, I'm amazed at having missed this book until now. Even at school, they didn't try to shove it down my throat as they often do in Italian schools (the BEST way to make you want to burn a book and go kill its author with your bare hands is to teach it at school. This trick really works wonders if delivered with a nasal voice, an under-average sensitivity, and a massive dose of stupidity).
Christianity had a very diluted flavor in these lands, that's why the farmers live with ancient pagan traditions that have nothing to do with christian religion, like magic potions, legends, in a world where people, animals and imagination are just one thing, and nothing is too complicated or dramatic, including death.
What Levi keeps hammering on is a sense of inevitable defeat of the farmer as a citizen of the state. He sees good people being exploited by whoever has money and power, and he says that the state should be a state for the farmers as well. All very well, although he often comes across as idealistic, too theoretical and naive, especially in his political reflections, articulated at the end of the book. Or perhaps he wasn't naive at all, and he was just painting himself as the man who loves the humble and defensless, since by the time he wrote this book he had already joined the Italian communist party, and he was later elected in the Senate. But my bet is, he was a rather idealistic man.
Now, what I really saw through this book was a priviledged member of the Italian society of the '30s (Levi's family was very wealthy), a good, well educated man with an artistic sensitivity, spending 3 years as the revered "smartest guy in the village", doing nothing but painting and reading, in sunny southern Italy. How's that for an alternative to prison? Where do I sign up?
On a more serious note, Levi's book is perhaps the only autobiographical book I've read where the author doesn't talk much about himself at all. Sure, a wise approach for a young politician, but also a breath of fresh air.
Recommended for readers who want to immerse themselves in the silence of a primitive, ancient reality that is light years from our neurotic lives of today, but at the same time feels more deeply authentic. For those farmers, and I guess for most farmers, life has always been stripped bare, to the bone. A white, shining bone that we 21st century soft westerners often forget.
A hard-core experience to live through the eyes of an artistic outsider.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ben_a
I still have 100 pages to go, but it's hard to believe anything beyond a 30 page battle between a sloth and a penguin will change my assessment of this book. In the early 40s, Levi, an anti-fascist, is sent in internal exile to two small villages in the South of Italy. His record of this time
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chronicles a society that no longer exists, a rural Europe unconnected by mass media, and still steeped in essentially pre-modern thinking. Another world appears in this book, and if the translation is a guide, Levi was a beautiful stylist. Meandering, but highly recommended Show Less
LibraryThing member wandering_star
This is a famous piece of reportage, about poverty in the village in the instep of Southern Italy to which Carlo Levi was exiled as a political prisoner. It's much less angry than I was expecting (at least the first half) - indeed, some of it is almost comic, although the comedy evaporates when you
If the book had a flaw, it was that the language was almost too poetic - even when Levi is trying to convey the bleak, barren landscape.
(I only managed to read half this book, while I was staying in the house of its owner).
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think that it's real lives that are marred by the incompetent doctor, the venal policeman or the alcoholic schoolmaster. Levi portrays the villagers as disconnected from both history and politics, both of which appear to the villagers as the workings of uncaring fate (being sent to war; having to slaughter your goats to pay your taxes).If the book had a flaw, it was that the language was almost too poetic - even when Levi is trying to convey the bleak, barren landscape.
(I only managed to read half this book, while I was staying in the house of its owner).
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LibraryThing member V.V.Harding
The Italian Fascist rulers punished political prisoners by sending them into internal exile among rural villagers, a practice which inflicts another sort of punishment on those villagers, who thereby understand how terrible their lives are compared to others of their fellow citizens. This wholly
Everything from the meaning of the title on is not what one expects; it's as good as fiction. But it's Carlo Levi's account of his year among people who describe themselves, with what overtones the reader must supply, as not Christian and not even really human, but peasant work animals. The world it describes is far away in time also now, yet the meeting of very different people of the same country is still an arresting story.
In a lecture the UK art historian T.J. Clark described this as a wise book, and its title has been familiar to me for decades. The translation is invisible and I'd like to think it reflects Levi's style, which was praised at the time of publication. I suspect this first book is his best one.
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surprising book tells its story in a calm and unsentimental but deeply observant and sympathetic manner, with no suggestion of optimism for better things to come. Everything from the meaning of the title on is not what one expects; it's as good as fiction. But it's Carlo Levi's account of his year among people who describe themselves, with what overtones the reader must supply, as not Christian and not even really human, but peasant work animals. The world it describes is far away in time also now, yet the meeting of very different people of the same country is still an arresting story.
In a lecture the UK art historian T.J. Clark described this as a wise book, and its title has been familiar to me for decades. The translation is invisible and I'd like to think it reflects Levi's style, which was praised at the time of publication. I suspect this first book is his best one.
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LibraryThing member DarthDeverell
Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year documents Levi's exile to the Calabria region of Southern Italy during Mussolini's Fascist rule. The title references a saying among the peasant people that Christ, and most of history, has visited other towns while passing them by, leaving
The people of the town believe in a combination of all the religions that have visited their corner of Italy, from pagan magic to Christianity to Fascism and the power of the State. Remarking on what he's learned from the people and how it's shaped his view of the State, Levi wrote, "This reversal of the concept of political life, which is gradually and unconsciously ripening among us, is implicit in the peasant civilization. And it is the only path which will lead us out of the vicious circle of Fascism and anti-Fascism. 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" (p. 253-254).
Though he wrote years after his exile, Levi's views show a great deal of compassion for his fellow Italians, either from the countryside or the Fascist officers assigned to him when he traveled to other towns. The war itself feels like a distant conflict with the true struggle being for the soul of Italy and a people who want to preserve their way of life.
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their land much the same as it has always been. Levi's portrait of the town is one of a man who comes to love a foreign land with the effect that Christ Stopped at Eboli reads like a travelogue.The people of the town believe in a combination of all the religions that have visited their corner of Italy, from pagan magic to Christianity to Fascism and the power of the State. Remarking on what he's learned from the people and how it's shaped his view of the State, Levi wrote, "This reversal of the concept of political life, which is gradually and unconsciously ripening among us, is implicit in the peasant civilization. And it is the only path which will lead us out of the vicious circle of Fascism and anti-Fascism. 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" (p. 253-254).
Though he wrote years after his exile, Levi's views show a great deal of compassion for his fellow Italians, either from the countryside or the Fascist officers assigned to him when he traveled to other towns. The war itself feels like a distant conflict with the true struggle being for the soul of Italy and a people who want to preserve their way of life.
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LibraryThing member starbox
While on a recent trip to Matera, in the 'heel' of Italy, this book was mentioned, so got it on my return.
This is the memoir of artist, writer and doctor Carlo Levi: an opponent of Facism, he was sent in 1935 from Turin to the impoverished south as a political prisoner.
Beautiful and evocative
"Before me, like a great wave on the surface of the earth, rose the solid bare mountain of Grassano, and, poised upon its peak like a mirage, was the village. It seemed even more airy and unreal than when I had last seen it, for during my absence all the houses had been whitewashed and now they looked like a herd of timorous sheep huddled together on the yellowish-grey crest of the mountain."
While Matera, with its cave dwellings, was once "the shame of Italy", it is perhaps difficult to grasp for the 2019 visitor to what is now a Heritage Site. Now, the caves are rendered into charming houses. While Levi himself has little to do with it, his sister describes a visit en route to pay her brother a visit:
"I have never in all my life seen such a picture of poverty....children sitting on the doorsteps, in the dirt, while the sun beat down on them, their eyes half-closed and their eyelids red and swollen; flies crawled across the lids...and they seemed not even to feel them. They had trachoma." Lice, starvation, malaria and dysentery abound..."as if I were in a city stricken with the plague". Children shout out to her, not for sweets but quinine.
The title of the book comes from the peasants' belief that they are beyond the pales of Christianity... Christ stopped short at the more favoured town of Eboli. "We're not Christians, we're not human beings; we're not thought of as men but simply as beasts, beasts of burden, or even less than beasts, mere creatures of the wild."
Glad I read it.
This is the memoir of artist, writer and doctor Carlo Levi: an opponent of Facism, he was sent in 1935 from Turin to the impoverished south as a political prisoner.
Beautiful and evocative
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writing, as Levi describes the scenery and people in the village of 'Gagliano' ( Agliano). The peasants are preyed upon by the State, the Church and the incompetent and self-seeking 'professionals'. Levi is soon called upon to use his rusty medical training (much to the disgruntlement of the local medics.) He- and his trusty dog- range as far as permitted within the enforced boundaries. There is death, humour, superstition all relayed in fabulous writing."Before me, like a great wave on the surface of the earth, rose the solid bare mountain of Grassano, and, poised upon its peak like a mirage, was the village. It seemed even more airy and unreal than when I had last seen it, for during my absence all the houses had been whitewashed and now they looked like a herd of timorous sheep huddled together on the yellowish-grey crest of the mountain."
While Matera, with its cave dwellings, was once "the shame of Italy", it is perhaps difficult to grasp for the 2019 visitor to what is now a Heritage Site. Now, the caves are rendered into charming houses. While Levi himself has little to do with it, his sister describes a visit en route to pay her brother a visit:
"I have never in all my life seen such a picture of poverty....children sitting on the doorsteps, in the dirt, while the sun beat down on them, their eyes half-closed and their eyelids red and swollen; flies crawled across the lids...and they seemed not even to feel them. They had trachoma." Lice, starvation, malaria and dysentery abound..."as if I were in a city stricken with the plague". Children shout out to her, not for sweets but quinine.
The title of the book comes from the peasants' belief that they are beyond the pales of Christianity... Christ stopped short at the more favoured town of Eboli. "We're not Christians, we're not human beings; we're not thought of as men but simply as beasts, beasts of burden, or even less than beasts, mere creatures of the wild."
Glad I read it.
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LibraryThing member thorold
The painter Carlo Levi was one of the thousands of anti-fascists subjected to a period of confino — a kind of preventive internal exile in a remote village or island — under Mussolini. He was sent to the barren southern region of Lucania (Basilicata) early in 1935 and spent a year living in the
The slightly puzzling title turns out to be a characteristic local saying, implying that civilisation never reached their region, and Levi sets out to show us the truth behind that hyperbole. The peasants he meets live in appallingly bad conditions: there's nowhere near enough good land to feed them, deforestation and malaria make working the land difficult and unproductive, and the economy runs largely on the savings of those American emigrants who return home and buy a piece of barren desert. The peasants have no interest in the State, and the State seems to have no interest in them except when collecting taxes; everything is run by and for the "signori", the rump of dim-witted self-serving priests, teachers, lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers and public officials who were not bright and ambitious enough to get away to America or to the cities. Fascism is largely irrelevant: in that part of Italy the people who took it up are mostly the ones who were already running things anyway.
Levi writes with love, humour and affection about the peasants and their traditions and the things they have to put up with; he doesn't do much to hide his contempt for people like the schoolteacher and Fascist mayor Don Luigino, who spends his days smoking and gossiping on the school balcony and lets the children leave the school as illiterate as they came into it. He tells us very clearly that in his view the "problem of the south" is not one to be solved from Rome, or even from Naples, but by giving the people at the rough end of that problem a proper voice in saying what they need.
The villagers are excited about Levi's arrival, not because he's a well-known painter, but because he's a doctor, and the two doctors practicing in the village are both considered incompetent, one of them clearly senile. This is embarrassing for Levi, as he's never practiced since leaving medical school, and he doesn't want to make trouble in the village, but the need is evidently so pressing that he can't avoid the queue of sick people outside his door. Fortunately, he's able to get permission for his sister (also a doctor) to bring down a trunk full of medical gear and books on malaria.
As with George Orwell's books about England in the thirties, I had to keep stopping and reminding myself that this is someone of the same generation as my grandparents, writing about Europe in a time that's still just about within living memory. And that he's addressing people living a short train-ride away from the places he's talking about who clearly haven't got a clue how "the other half lives" in their own country.
A painful book, but also a very beautifully observed one.
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villages of Grassano and Aliano (disguised as "Gagliano" in the book) before being released in a general amnesty in summer 1936. Later on, during the war, he wrote this account of his experiences in the south, and it was published to huge acclaim shortly after the liberation in 1945. The slightly puzzling title turns out to be a characteristic local saying, implying that civilisation never reached their region, and Levi sets out to show us the truth behind that hyperbole. The peasants he meets live in appallingly bad conditions: there's nowhere near enough good land to feed them, deforestation and malaria make working the land difficult and unproductive, and the economy runs largely on the savings of those American emigrants who return home and buy a piece of barren desert. The peasants have no interest in the State, and the State seems to have no interest in them except when collecting taxes; everything is run by and for the "signori", the rump of dim-witted self-serving priests, teachers, lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers and public officials who were not bright and ambitious enough to get away to America or to the cities. Fascism is largely irrelevant: in that part of Italy the people who took it up are mostly the ones who were already running things anyway.
Levi writes with love, humour and affection about the peasants and their traditions and the things they have to put up with; he doesn't do much to hide his contempt for people like the schoolteacher and Fascist mayor Don Luigino, who spends his days smoking and gossiping on the school balcony and lets the children leave the school as illiterate as they came into it. He tells us very clearly that in his view the "problem of the south" is not one to be solved from Rome, or even from Naples, but by giving the people at the rough end of that problem a proper voice in saying what they need.
The villagers are excited about Levi's arrival, not because he's a well-known painter, but because he's a doctor, and the two doctors practicing in the village are both considered incompetent, one of them clearly senile. This is embarrassing for Levi, as he's never practiced since leaving medical school, and he doesn't want to make trouble in the village, but the need is evidently so pressing that he can't avoid the queue of sick people outside his door. Fortunately, he's able to get permission for his sister (also a doctor) to bring down a trunk full of medical gear and books on malaria.
As with George Orwell's books about England in the thirties, I had to keep stopping and reminding myself that this is someone of the same generation as my grandparents, writing about Europe in a time that's still just about within living memory. And that he's addressing people living a short train-ride away from the places he's talking about who clearly haven't got a clue how "the other half lives" in their own country.
A painful book, but also a very beautifully observed one.
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LibraryThing member autumnesf
Life in an Italian villiage. Found it boring.
LibraryThing member ItalCulturalCenter
It seems that the people of Gagliano do not have a burning hatred for fascism or even a tone of resentment towards it. Rather, they seem to be indifferent to, and accepting of, the conditions under which they live. Fascism to them is just another in a string of ideologies that Rome has embraced and
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that, in the long run, will likely not have much of an effect on their lives. In fact, the author points out that the people of the region have had similar reactions to all of the political systems that have been forced upon them at various times. The State as an institution is foreign to the citizens of Gagliano, explains Levi, who himself is an anarchist. The people feel forgotten but are accepting of that fate. They have never been a part of history, so they look at themselves as being excluded from the history of mankind. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1945
Physical description
256 p.; 7.8 inches
ISBN
0140183116 / 9780140183115