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Book Reviews

Gianfranco Cresciani (2003). The Italians in Australia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 192 pages
ISBN 0 521 53778 9
Reviewed by Francesca Bouvet (Flinders University)

With a new publisher, a new title, a new look and updated text, The Italians in Australia is the revised edition of Gianfranco Cresciani’s The Italians, first published in 1985 by ABC Enterprises as an accompaniment to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s television documentary of the same name. The Italians in Australia differs from the original work in that minor textual and pictorial changes have been made throughout, and the last two chapters, on post-WW2 Italian migration and political and socio-economic changes in Italy, have been expanded.

The author is well known for other extensively researched publications on Italian migration to Australia such as the in-depth study Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia 1922-1945 (1980) and the collection of profiles and documents Migrants or Mates – Italian Life in Australia (1988). He has also contributed to various publications and has been editor of works such as Australia, The Australians and the Italian Migration (1983) and Giuliano-dalmati in Australia: contributi e testimonianze per una storia (1999).

The Italians in Australia begins with a concise description of the social, political and economic landscapes in Italy in the mid 1800s and the related contemporary events that led to the Risorgimento and the unification of the disparate regions of Italy into a nation-state in 1861, under the newly created Italian monarchy. Cresciani outlines the flaws, the short-sightedness, the negligence and the weaknesses of policy and administration that characterised the country’s new political authorities who did little to improve the lot of the majority of the population. Italians continued to suffer from endemic poverty and its related diseases and from labour practices that at best barely kept them alive. Those in government also failed in their attempts to address pressing concerns such as the lack of a uniform national infrastructure, lack of a common language, lack of basic public education, and lack of access to new technological advancements.

Cresciani explains that the unification of Italy was “an event thrust upon most Italians despite their wishes” (p.16), an event that would not facilitate adequate social progress or social justice for all. Rather, it was an event driven by the self-interests of the European powers of the time (Vienna, Paris, London) and a small group of men belonging to the Piedmontese upper classes, concerned with the promotion of their own, and their region’s, political power. The author also points to this time, after the Piedmontese ruling élite had assumed control, as the beginning of the animosity of northern Italians towards southern Italians. (Over the course of the following century, this bias would see the north progressively prosper and modernise while the neglected south would witness an ever-increasing exodus of its population, an exodus that would peak in the post-WW2 years).

The beginnings of Italian mass migration (from many regions across the peninsula) were therefore triggered by the socio-economic woes of the late 1800s, aided and abetted by the propaganda of the newly flourishing steamship lines eager to capitalise on transit voyages to the Americas. Emigration was further encouraged by Italy’s politicians, who saw it as a ‘safety valve’ that would reduce social and political unrest and as a means to build up the nation’s coffers with foreign capital, in the form of remittances sent back by emigrants to their families.

Italians also emigrated to Australia. In Chapter 2 Cresciani traces the first Italians in the country from 1788, settlers who were mainly individual adventurers, sailors, researchers, tradesmen and entrepreneurs. The first small communities were founded in the 1800s by religious clergymen and missionaries, gold prospectors and miners. The author describes how the first organised small groups of Italian migrants began to arrive after 1861, some later establishing small enclaves, such as the ‘New Italy’ settlement in NSW, and the sugar cane-field workers in North Queensland who replaced the Melanesian ‘slave labour’ force.

From 1900 until 1940 Italian migration to Australia would slowly continue, despite the implementation of official restrictions regarding ‘foreign’ immigration. Most Italians in rural areas were employed in agriculture, building or mining; and in urban areas were employed as tradesmen, labourers, food importers and manufacturers or in the service industry. The great majority were poor, mainly illiterate people who had known great deprivation and oppression and who sought a better future for their families through their labour in Australia. In Chapter 3 the author details how the Anglo-Australian community, including government, often reacted with resentment and tension to such a visible ‘foreign’ presence of aliens who they felt could not be trusted to ‘assimilate’. Italians were frequently the target of xenophobia, vicious propaganda, racism and occasionally violence, which stemmed from ignorance, envy of their economic successes, hatred of non-British people and fear that they were ‘stealing our jobs’—sentiments exacerbated by the Great Depression.

Cresciani talks of the estrangement from the Australian community that many Italians consequently felt due to these conflicts and how, by the 1930s, the new Fascist consuls in Australia with their strong pro-Italian propaganda and migrant welfare policies were able to obtain the support of many in that decade. Chapter 4 covers the rise of Mussolini in Italy and describes how Fascism was, until the mid 1930s, very well received and admired as an ideology by many right-wing conservatives internationally, as well as by the Australian Establishment. The author also explains how left-wing political exiles who had fled Fascist Italy and had settled in Australia actively challenged Fascism and right-wing politics, thereby fuelling the pervasive fear of communists and anarchists in Australian society.

Cresciani states that when, however, Fascist Italy entered the war against the Allied Powers in 1940, “unwittingly and tragically for them, [Mussolini]…also declared war on the Italian migrants in Australia, both Fascist and anti-Fascist” (p. 96). The direct result of Mussolini’s stand was the widespread internment of many men of Italian origin, who were considered security risks (charges that were all unfounded). While the author covers well the reasons and machinations behind the internment policy, he devotes most of Chapter 5 to the experiences of the Italian POWs who were sent to Australia for internment and who, ironically, contributed so much to the Australian economy and the war effort. Very little, by contrast, is written on the experiences of the civilian Italian-Australians who were removed from their families and livelihoods to be interned amidst the mounting public hysteria of possible invasion. Many faced financial ruin or hardship and suffered emotionally from the experience long after their release. Hardly anything is written on the experiences of the wives and children, at their most vulnerable, who endured very great stress and public hostility and who were left to support themselves however they could.

In Chapter 6 Cresciani briefly covers the major legacies of the Second World War: trauma, loss and displacement of individuals and communities, destruction and the beginning of the Cold War, and, in this context, he comprehensively presents the range of the Italian experience of post-war mass migration to Australia that continued for almost thirty years. The updated text includes the achievements of some high-profile men of Italian origin involved in business or civic roles, and the chapter benefits from updated statistical data, which gives a more accurate picture of the demographics of the Italian diaspora in Australia at the end of the twentieth century. The author also interprets this data to give what he believes is a more realistic assessment of the extent of the ‘Italian migrant success story’, and the impact that Italians and their culture have had on Australian society. He believes that Italian migrant success is a “complex reality” (p. 143), that is tempered by the significant negative experiences of emigration, and he reasons that despite the many achievements of the Italians in Australia “…it would be difficult to maintain that Italian influence has made significant inroads into the prevailing Anglo-American public culture of Australia” (p 148).

The final chapter, also updated, entitled “Full Circle”, concentrates on explaining clearly the intricate and complex events of the past thirty years that have forged today’s Italy: a modern, wealthy, powerful nation that is now seen as a ‘receiving country’ for immigrants.

The Italians in Australia is an informative, straightforward and concise overview of the complicated history of Italian migration, written in an uncomplicated, easy-flowing style. Cresciani’s book covers all the major stages of Italian migration to Australia over the past two centuries, with frequent reference to the background triggers in Italy of that migration, thereby providing a more complete, although basic, understanding of this human drama, which is, in essence, not just Italian migration history but also Australian history.

Erri De Luca (2001). Montedidio.
Milano: Feltrinelli. 142 pages
ISBN 88-07-01600-1

Reviewed by Dr Diana Glenn (Flinders University)

In 2001, the appearance of two luminous novels about boyhood rites of passage and the loss of innocence caught the imagination of the Italian reading public. Although Niccolò Ammaniti’s Io non ho paura and Erri De Luca’s Montedidio were very different in their narrative approach and techniques (Ammaniti’s text had originally been developed for cinema), their sensitive exploration of human relationships from a child’s perspective assured them prize-winning success in the highly competitive literary market.¹ However, while Ammaniti’s protagonist, Michele, spends his free time pedalling through a wide open, rural landscape, the unnamed boy in Montedidio must grow his adult wings amidst the crush of a sprawling urban metropolis: the ancient city of Naples, a city that never sleeps.

Erri De Luca was born in Naples in 1950, and his deeply-rooted feelings for the city lend the story a particular intensity. The author has led a chequered life comprising both political engagement (as a young member of “Lotta continua” in 1968 and later as a columnist for “Il Manifesto”) and manual labour, with the latter taking place during his travels through Europe and the African continent. His first work of fiction, Non ora, non qui, appeared in 1989.² The novel recalls, in autobiographical mode, his childhood years in Naples, in an environment in which the family members deliberately shunned the use of Neapolitan dialect (in favour of standard Italian) as a defence-mechanism for survival: “I genitori si difendevano dalla povertà e dall’ambiente con l’italiano” (pp. 7-8). The young Erri suffers from a stutter and, in his boyhood imaginings, he explains his condition as having been brought on by a guardian angel who, at the moment of his birth, touched his newborn lips with too much force. This leads the little boy to experience night-frets, during which he dreams of an angel tapping at his mouth while he, lying helplessly in bed, is unable to open his mouth to utter a greeting. He recalls how, after such dreams, he would lay in the dark, weeping: “nel buio restavano le sue piume e le mie lacrime” (p. 9). The confined space of the family dwelling also denies the child the possibility of owning a dog and so he has to content himself with a yellow rubber ball that is hurled precariously about indoors, much to his mother’s dismay.

The themes of crowded urban spaces and shadowy angelic presences from his first novel are revisited in Montedidio. The first-person narrator is a thirteen-year-old boy on the threshold of manhood, “non ancora uomo”, whose voice is tremulously breaking: “a me servirebbe qualche toccata alla gola per farmi resuscitare la voce, quella di prima è morta e quella nuova sta chiusa” (p. 117). The reader is never told his name, nor that of his father or mother. He is an only child, born and raised in Montedidio (literally “Mountain of God”), a clutch of ancient streets and alleyways in the poorest part of Naples. Here the economically-disadvantaged, the disenfranchised and the destitute eke out an existence and the novel conveys the daily struggle of life in a densely-packed urban setting, where people’s lives are closely bound up and everyone knows everyone else’s business: “sopra questo quartiere di vicoli che si chiama Montedidio se vuoi sputare in terra non trovi posto libero tra i piedi” (p. 8).

The boy is so confined by a shortage of open space that he is forced to exercise on a roof-top. The impression of lack of space and close human contact are a focus, again and again as the reader is taken into the streets, “a Napoli ... uno può passare la giornata solo a salutare e poi si va a coricare stanco solo per quello” (p. 25), listens in on the street-talk, “Simme assaie, nuie simme tropp’ assaie” (p. 101) and enters the humble dwellings where individuals, like the Jewish cobbler Don Rafaniello, sleep in a converted closet with no amenities or electricity. Rafaniello’s poverty is so acute that he can only afford to eat bread and onion by candlelight. At the same time, the human density provides warmth and sustenance. When all of Naples is in the street, observes the boy, you don’t feel the cold, because the heat and proximity of the crowd, where couples and families walk together arm in arm, keep you warmer than an overcoat (p. 101).

The novel is set in 1960. John F. Kennedy is the young, newly-elected president of the United States, the space race is on and Italy is recovering from the ravages of war. The residents of Montedidio remember the struggle to oust the German invader, the bombings, the evacuations, the tide of refugees who flowed through the port, the rebuilding and reconstruction. From the rooftop of the apartment block where he lives, the highest vantage point in Montedidio, the boy surveys the sprawling metropolis below, the streets and buildings leading to the bustling port where his father is employed. The vibrant sights, sounds, colours and smells of the port city are richly drawn, as is its street argot. Although the protagonist reads and writes in Italian, it is a language that he does not speak or use in daily life. Rather, he views Italian as a communication tool for rendering order out of chaos; a quiet language that lacks saliva, and lacks the lifeblood of Neapolitan, which is associated with chaos, entropy, movement, passion, furtiveness and survival skills. Neapolitan resembles the boy’s left eye that is sly, fast and understands things in a heartbeat, whereas Italian is associated with quiet and stillness: “Scrivo in italiano perché è zitto e ci posso mettere i fatti del giorno, riposati dal chiasso del napoletano” (p. 7).

The narrator has just spent his last springtime season as a child and in the summer, he leaves his formal schooling and finds a job as an apprentice to experienced cabinet-maker, Mast’Errico. It is a time for leaving behind childish thoughts and actions: “In primavera ero ancora bambino e adesso sto in mezzo alle cose serie che neanche capisco” (p. 111). Although the boy is half-blind in his right eye, he is determined to prove himself, work hard for his new employer and thus help to support the family’s meagre earnings. His formal education, frequently interrupted by illness, has been up to primary level five, a little better than most of his peers. His father, for whom the extra years of schooling represented better opportunities for his son in the future, was himself illiterate and is now receiving instruction in reading and writing Italian through his work cooperative.

Central to the narrative are two gifts that the narrator receives. One is an Australian boomerang made of acacia and given to him by his father, who in turn received it from a sailor at the docks where he works. The other is a large roll of blank paper given to him by the local printer, Don Liborio, who is notorious for being very liberal with his hands in the presence of pre-pubescent boys. With the arrival of the gifts comes the narrator’s growing perception of new beginnings, of new possibilities opening up, all of which he decides to record on the scroll of paper that he folds and unfolds every evening: “Oggi scrivo la prima notizia per tenere conto dei nuovi giorni” (p. 7). In all, the novel contains 132 diary entries, self-enclosed vignettes about the narrator’s daily experiences and his need to bear witness to the many changes going on inside him and in his immediate environment. The remaining three seasons of the year, in which the story unfolds and the scroll is filled, record his adapting to a work environment and earning his pay, his growing isolation and solitude during the period of his mother’s illness and subsequent death, his father’s grief, the fragmentation of his family life, his relationship with his employer, Mast’ Errico, his friendship with Don Rafaniello who shares a workbench in Mast’ Errico’s workshop and his sexual awakening through his involvement with Maria, a mature thirteen-year-old girl who lives in the same apartment block but whose life experiences have been more brutal.

Maria’s exploitation by her uncaring gambling family means that she has been forced to grant sexual favours to the greedy and lecherous landlord in order that the family not be evicted. Her situation mirrors the experience of Don Ciccio the caretaker’s beautiful young sister whose innocence was also sacrificed to the same landlord so that his family did not starve during the war: “era tempo di guerra, si mangiava poco, mia sorella più piccola saliva a quel tale appartamento di questo palazzo e portava il pane a casa” (p. 110). Don Ciccio observes that in Naples one has to grow up quickly: “da noi a Napoli si cresce in fretta” (p. 109). Maria and the narrator share a closeness and intimacy that resembles the marriage of his parents who, until his mother’s death, were inseparable. Upon realizing that they can no longer exploit their daughter, Maria’s family disappears, thus abandoning her to her fate. However, the young girl’s fierce will to survive and be self-reliant imbues the narrator with a similar positive energy: “L’ammore nostro è un’alleanza, una forza di combattimento” (p. 92). For him, there are many unforgettable milestones, for example, the tender and delicate awakening of his feelings for Maria, the exploration of his sexuality, his physical strengthening brought about both by his labours in the carpentry workshop and his training sessions on the roof-top with the boomerang, his growing self-knowledge, the sharing of stories and wisdom with the two men in the workshop and, as his parents become more distant during his mother’s illness, the cherishing of happy memories that he holds dear and that sustain him. One of these memories is of walking arm in arm with his tall parents on the Sunday promenade along the marina: “Non ci può essere stato bambino più fiero di me sulla marina. Pure davanti ai circoli marini dove vanno i signori che hanno le ricchezze, io sotto i miei due giganti mi sentivo una fortuna addosso che non si poteva pareggiare” (p. 60).

In the novel, images of flight are a recurring motif. The boomerang, which the narrator carries with him everywhere and which he uses to strengthen his musculature, is a metaphor for his rite of passage into manhood. He trains with it every night in order to launch it eventually into the starry sky over Naples on New Year’s Eve. He tells us that it is made of wood that was grown to fly, just as he, too, begins to grow wings that will loosen him forever from childhood and launch him into the wide adult world. At the same time, the guardian angel of the hunchback Rafaniello has told him that he will fly to Jerusalem on wings. This will occur because Rafaniello’s hump is concealing a pair of wings with which he will make his final journey to the Holy City: a metaphor for a return of the soul to its final resting place. Rafaniello (Rav Daniel) bears the scars of the Holocaust and has come from a place where the children have all disappeared. In 1945 he stayed on in Naples to mend the worn-out shoes of the poorest residents who could not afford to pay him. In the figure of the refugee Rafaniello, De Luca examines the plight of the disenfranchised and the culturally dislocated but does so with dignity and warmth: “Tengono una gratitudine i puverielli che nessun re ha mai sentito, e gli danno la spinta per Gerusalemme” (p. 55).

On New Year’s Eve, Rafaniello takes flight for the Holy City of Jerusalem, the heavenly city on earth. He follows the trajectory of the boomerang, an ancient weapon from the antipodes, “l’arnese di un popolo antico”, launched by the boy from Montedidio’s highest roof-top. As the residents jettison their unwanted goods onto the streets below, the boy not only hurls his beloved boomerang but, having begun to recognise and react to the evil-doings of human beings, also exorcises the dark shadow of the rapacious landlord who has been stalking Maria. In the end, the nightmare dramas of the real-life Erri who could not answer the angel’s call find their powerful release in the unnamed protagonist of Montedidio whose trapped adult voice bursts forth, its strength and vigour exploding onto the page with dramatic force: “Tutto vola da sopra Montedidio, noi due no, noi due abbracciati sotto la coperta di Rafaniello, Maria trema, io sputo fuori un grumo caldo d’aria dalla gola, è voce, è la mia voce, un raglio d’asino che mi strappa i polmoni, io grido e per il mio grido non c’è posto sopra il rotolo e sopra Montedidio” (142).

¹ Ammaniti’s novel won the Viareggio-Repaci Prize in 2001 and De Luca’s work was awarded Le prix Femina Etranger in 2002. Montedidio is available in English translation: Erri De Luca (2002). God’s Mountain. Translation by Michael Moore. Melbourne: Text Publishing. 155 pages, ISBN 1-877008-61-3. See also review of Io non ho paura in FULGOR, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 2003.

² Other fictional works by Erri De Luca include: Una nuvola come tappeto (1991), Aceto, arcobaleno (1992), In alto a sinistra (1994), Alzaia (1997), Tu, mio (1998), Tre cavalli (1999), Altre prove di risposta (2000), Un papavero rosso (2000), Opera sull’acqua e altre poesie (2002), L’ultimo viaggio di Sinbad (2003).

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