What
Makes a Sicilian
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By Gaetano Cipolla
L'italia senza a Sicilia nenti cunta, a Sicilia senza l'Italia nun si scanta.
(Italy without Sicily counts for nothing. Sicily without Italy is not afraid.)
Dittu sicilianu pupulari. Popular Sicilian saying.
It is ironic that the majority of Americans recognize the name of Sicily, in spite of the fact that it is a small island, barely one fourth the size of Cuba, whereas they probably would have difficulty locating even larger countries on a globe. So perhaps the first thing we can say about Sicily is that it occupies a place of renown in modem American and European consciousness that is not commensurate with its present economic or political importance. This apparent disproportion, however, rather than being an unusual feature, is the norm for the island. Both for what it has contributed to the world and in people's perceptions of it, there seems to be an element of hyperbole and exaggeration that colors everything Sicilian. Sicily, as Ben Morreale said in a recent article, has been a talisman for the powerful: the domination of the Mediterranean has always been tied to the possession of the island. Inversely, the loss of Sicily has marked the decline of empires.
When Sicily was lost to the invading Vandal hordes, Rome declined; the Byzantines lost their dominance in Italy when Sicily fell to the Arabs; the Bourbons lost the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies when they lost Sicily to Garibaldi. Sicily has been the gateway to Italy and Europe. No wonder that the Allies chose it to begin their assault on Europe in 1943. Its geographical position has guaranteed for it a place of prominence far beyond what one would expect from its size, something it shares with Italy. People have come to Sicily to fight their wars on its soil, to plunder its wealth, to leap from it into Europe. From the beginning of recorded history, it has been the point of contact between the various civilizations that have left their mark on the lands of the Mediterranean sea, the meeting point between East and West, between Africa and Europe.
A map of Sicily
The beauties of the island attracted the seafaring Phoenicians who founded Palermo; the mysterious and elusive Elymians established a cult of Venus, the goddess of love, high on Mount Erice; the Carthaginians controlled much of the western half of the island; the Greeks considered the island a promised land and once they established themselves as Sicilians they outdid their brothers in the grandeur of their achievements; Rome grew into the most powerful empire in the world after its conquest of Sicily; the Arabs transformed it into the Garden of Allah; the Norman warriors made of it the most advanced state in Europe; and Frederick II, the great emperor who was born eight centuries ago last year, made it the most important center of learning in Europe. But Sicily and Sicilians do not enjoy a good reputation. In the United States, or in any other part of the world for that matter, when people hear the name of Sicily, images of mayhem and violence are inevitably displayed before their mind's eye and knife-wielding villains with dark hair stand ready to do mischief against law and order. The media has portrayed Sicilians so exclusively as belonging to the Mafia that the two nouns go together linguistically like "bread and butter".
The mafioso's modus operandi has been extended to all Sicilians and they are seen as greedy and ruthless individuals. Many actually believe that Sicilians carry the seeds of criminality and lawlessness in their blood. The gulf between real Sicilians and the image concocted by the media is very wide indeed and growing wider, judging by pictures like True Romance by Quentin Tarantino which characterizes Sicilians as degenerate liars and goes so far as to question even their belonging to the Caucasian race. In the following pages, I'm going to try to present a more balanced picture of the Sicilian contribution to western civilization. I will attempt to give you a personal appreciation of Sicilians and of Sicily, for inevitably the history of a place is the history of the people who inhabit it. Who are the Sicilians, what values do they share, what makes them tick? What makes a Sicilian? I'd like to begin by saying that the reputation Sicily and Sicilians enjoy has little to do with first-hand experiences. The overwhelming majority of those who have been to Sicily have expressed their great admiration for its beauty and for the warmth of its people.
The many travelers who have written about the island, beginning from the account of Ibn Giubair, an Arab traveler in the 12th century to that of Roger Peyrefitte, a contemporary writer, have described it, with a few exceptions, as a kind of earthly paradise. Nor were works of literature responsible for the negative characterization of Sicilians! Many foreign writers and poets, especially in the late 19th century, visited Sicily and left interesting diaries of their reactions. From Shelley to Byron, from Goethe to De Maupassant, from von Platen to Wagner, from Matthew Arnold to Holderlin, from Renan to Gide, Sicily has been represented as a land of rebirth. For many of these writers, Sicily was a place endowed with different qualities. It was not that things on the island were unique, but that there was more to them than elsewhere: the sun was hotter, the wine was stronger, the contrasts harsher, the beauty wilder, the passions more searing, the landscape more breathtaking! In Andre Gide's Immoraliste Sicily is a metaphor for the life force.
The main character of the novel, Michel, is transformed from an "old man" into a new youthful figure when he comes into contact with the Sicilian spring. In the midst of the glorious vegetation, Michel feels reborn into a new being "Et je courais sur la route escarpee qui joint Taormine a Mola criant, pour 1'appeler en moi: Un nouvel Etre! Un nouvel etre!" (And I kept running on the steep road that joins Taormina to Mola yelling, in order to evoke him in myself: a new being! A new being!). This sense of being reborn in Sicily was echoed by D.H. Lawrence who spoke of the island as "the dawn place". He too felt he had come into contact with his inner being in the primeval island "the wonderful coast of Sicily, like the dawn of our day, the wonderful morning of our epoch". The Romantic notion of Sicily as an earthly paradise is difficult to accept when you have felt the blasts of the bone-chilling tramontana blowing down from Mount Etna, or gasped for air in the 105-degree temperature of Catania in August. No, Sicily is not an earthly paradise socially either, when you think of the poverty of some of its people, when you know that unemployment is consistently the highest in Italy. Socially and historically, it's more like "a trampled paradise," as Connie Mandracchia DeCaro declared in the title other recent book.
It's obvious that generalities do not paint an accurate portrait of a people, but painting with broad strokes, and avoiding the commonplace, I would like now to identify a few Sicilian traits and the socio-historical forces that have played a part in shaping them. Let me say that the overwhelming quality of Sicilians is not mildness, as has been underscored by many foreign observers. No doubt geographic-climactic factors have had an effect on Sicilians. For as it is true that Esquimoes are conditioned by their frigid weather and the ever-present snow, affecting their language and their forma mentis (mind set), it is also equally true that the wondrous contrasts present in the Sicilian landscape, the brilliant colors of the vegetation, the intoxicating fragrance of its flowers, the pitiless Summer sun that parches the countryside for six months a year, the deep blue of its surrounding sea and sky, are deeply embedded in their forma mentis. The natural excesses of geography and weather are reflected in the character of the Sicilian people. Like their landscape, whose tonal qualities are never the "sfumato," (smoky) (see the contrast between the luxuriant vegetation on the eastern coast and the barren, lunar scape of the interior near Enna), they are extreme in their emotions. The "chiaroscuro" predominates.
They are "ardenti amici e pessimi inimici" (the best friends and the worst enemies), as Giovanni Maria Cecchi said in the 16th century. In describing Sicilians, superlatives seemed to be the order of the day for him. They are, in Cecchi's words, "avidissimi nel mangiare... e vivono in gran gelosia delle loro donne che le tengono molto ristrette e fanno acerbissime vendette sopra a chi hanno in sospezione," (They are extremely greedy in eating... and they live with such great jealousy of their women that they will exact extremely harsh vengeance on those they suspect). Scipio Di Castro, speaking in the same period, considered Sicilians "sommammente timidi" (extremely timid) when it came to spending their own fortune and "sommamente temerari!" (extremely foolhardy) when it came to spending public money. One of the first character traits that is most evident to outsiders is the great pride that Sicilians have in themselves and in their homeland. It is significant that Sicilians, especially those who live in a foreign country, will go out of their way to tell you how proud they are of being Sicilian. I have never heard a Venetian or a Bolognese say that they are especially proud of being Venetian or Bolognese. Although the special pride Sicilians profess before the world is certainly genuine, it may be also a defense mechanism prompted by the stigma that has accompanied Sicilians through the ages.
Centuries of abuse and of being told that they do not measure up to the rest of the world have taken their toll on the Sicilians' sense of themselves. Ultimately, the pride they project may be nothing more than an attempt at camouflaging a deep sense of inferiority that has been drummed into them. It is a way of protesting the world's unfair and untrue judgment of them. Pride, defined as a sense of one's one personal worth vis a vis the world, seems to be a common trait among Sicilians of today as well as of previous eras. Sicilians, in general, consider themselves superior to their neighbors, to the people from the neighboring towns, to the people from other provinces and from other regions. Needless to say Sicilians traditionally have flaunted their own qualities and denigrated the qualities of their neighbors in poetry and songs. The people from the next town are always inferior in everything.
The dummies are always from beyond the horizon. Reading a few anecdotes from Mimi siciliani, an interesting book written by Francesco Lanza, which has become a classic, you can see how Sicilians view their neighbors. A case in point is a tale of a foolish man from neighboring Burgio, who, worried about his wife's fear of the dark and other spending the night alone in their large bed, did not hesitate in asking his obliging compare, while he was out of town, to take his place "so that nothing could happen to her." The differences among Sicilians are probably not easily recognized by outsiders, but the difference between Sicilians as a group and other Italians are immediately evident to perceptive travelers. French writer Guy de Maupassant who visited Sicily late in 1885, made the following comparison between Neapolitans and Sicilians:
"No one is less like a Neapolitan than a Sicilian. In the Neapolitan of the lower classes one always finds three quarters of Punch. He gesticulates, gets agitated, is fired without cause, expresses himself with gestures as much as with words, mimes everything he says, always shows himself to be amiable in order to get what he wants, is gracious by ruse as much as by nature, and answers unpleasant compliments politely. But in the Sicilian one already finds much of the Arab. He has the Arab's gravity of gait, though he has the great liveliness of wit of the Italian. His native pride, his love for titles, the nature of his haughtiness and even the physiognomy of his face also make him more similar to the Spaniard than the Italian. But what unceasingly gives you the impression of being in the Orient, as soon as you set foot in Sicily, is the timbre of the voice, the nasal intonation of the street cries."
If Sicilians are chauvinistic among themselves and will not give way to any other Sicilian, local animosities are soon forgotten when the terms of comparison include foreigners, that is, non-Sicilians. A popular octave often heard after the island's annexation to Piedmont in 1861 claimed that a single Sicilian peasant was worth more than all the "piramuddisi" (an intentional corruption of "Piemontesi") put together. I'd like to begin by saying that the reputation Sicily and Sicilians enjoy has little to do with first-hand experiences. The overwhelming majority of those who have been to Sicily have expressed their great admiration for its beauty and for the warmth of its people.
The many travelers who have written about the island, beginning from the account of Ibn Giubair, an Arab traveler in the 12th century to that of Roger Peyrefitte, a contemporary writer, have described it, with a few exceptions, as a kind of earthly paradise. Nor were works of literature responsible for the negative characterization of Sicilians! Many foreign writers and poets, especially in the late 19th century, visited Sicily and left interesting diaries of their reactions. From Shelley to Byron, from Goethe to De Maupassant, from von Platen to Wagner, from Matthew Arnold to Holderlin, from Renan to Gide, Sicily has been represented as a land of rebirth. For many of these writers, Sicily was a place endowed with different qualities. It was not that things on the island were unique, but that there was more to them than elsewhere: the sun was hotter, the wine was stronger, the contrasts harsher, the beauty wilder, the passions more searing, the landscape more breathtaking! In Andre Gide's Immoraliste Sicily is a metaphor for the life force.
The main character of the novel, Michel, is transformed from an "old man" into a new youthful figure when he comes into contact with the Sicilian spring. In the midst of the glorious vegetation, Michel feels reborn into a new being "Et je courais sur la route escarpee qui joint Taormine a Mola criant, pour 1'appeler en moi: Un nouvel Etre! Un nouvel etre!" (And I kept running on the steep road that joins Taormina to Mola yelling, in order to evoke him in myself: a new being! A new being!). This sense of being reborn in Sicily was echoed by D.H. Lawrence who spoke of the island as "the dawn place". He too felt he had come into contact with his inner being in the primeval island "the wonderful coast of Sicily, like the dawn of our day, the wonderful morning of our epoch". The Romantic notion of Sicily as an earthly paradise is difficult to accept when you have felt the blasts of the bone-chilling tramontana blowing down from Mount Etna, or gasped for air in the 105-degree temperature of Catania in August. No, Sicily is not an earthly paradise socially either, when you think of the poverty of some of its people, when you know that unemployment is consistently the highest in Italy. Socially and historically, it's more like "a trampled paradise," as Connie Mandracchia DeCaro declared in the title other recent book.
It's obvious that generalities do not paint an accurate portrait of a people, but painting with broad strokes, and avoiding the commonplace, I would like now to identify a few Sicilian traits and the socio-historical forces that have played a part in shaping them. Let me say that the overwhelming quality of Sicilians is not mildness, as has been underscored by many foreign observers. No doubt geographic-climactic factors have had an effect on Sicilians. For as it is true that Esquimoes are conditioned by their frigid weather and the ever-present snow, affecting their language and their forma mentis (mind set), it is also equally true that the wondrous contrasts present in the Sicilian landscape, the brilliant colors of the vegetation, the intoxicating fragrance of its flowers, the pitiless Summer sun that parches the countryside for six months a year, the deep blue of its surrounding sea and sky, are deeply embedded in their forma mentis. The natural excesses of geography and weather are reflected in the character of the Sicilian people. Like their landscape, whose tonal qualities are never the "sfumato," (smoky) (see the contrast between the luxuriant vegetation on the eastern coast and the barren, lunar scape of the interior near Enna), they are extreme in their emotions. The "chiaroscuro" predominates.
They are "ardenti amici e pessimi inimici" (the best friends and the worst enemies), as Giovanni Maria Cecchi said in the 16th century. In describing Sicilians, superlatives seemed to be the order of the day for him. They are, in Cecchi's words, "avidissimi nel mangiare... e vivono in gran gelosia delle loro donne che le tengono molto ristrette e fanno acerbissime vendette sopra a chi hanno in sospezione," (They are extremely greedy in eating... and they live with such great jealousy of their women that they will exact extremely harsh vengeance on those they suspect). Scipio Di Castro, speaking in the same period, considered Sicilians "sommammente timidi" (extremely timid) when it came to spending their own fortune and "sommamente temerari!" (extremely foolhardy) when it came to spending public money. One of the first character traits that is most evident to outsiders is the great pride that Sicilians have in themselves and in their homeland. It is significant that Sicilians, especially those who live in a foreign country, will go out of their way to tell you how proud they are of being Sicilian. I have never heard a Venetian or a Bolognese say that they are especially proud of being Venetian or Bolognese. Although the special pride Sicilians profess before the world is certainly genuine, it may be also a defense mechanism prompted by the stigma that has accompanied Sicilians through the ages.
Centuries of abuse and of being told that they do not measure up to the rest of the world have taken their toll on the Sicilians' sense of themselves. Ultimately, the pride they project may be nothing more than an attempt at camouflaging a deep sense of inferiority that has been drummed into them. It is a way of protesting the world's unfair and untrue judgment of them. Pride, defined as a sense of one's one personal worth vis a vis the world, seems to be a common trait among Sicilians of today as well as of previous eras. Sicilians, in general, consider themselves superior to their neighbors, to the people from the neighboring towns, to the people from other provinces and from other regions. Needless to say Sicilians traditionally have flaunted their own qualities and denigrated the qualities of their neighbors in poetry and songs. The people from the next town are always inferior in everything.
The dummies are always from beyond the horizon. Reading a few anecdotes from Mimi siciliani, an interesting book written by Francesco Lanza, which has become a classic, you can see how Sicilians view their neighbors. A case in point is a tale of a foolish man from neighboring Burgio, who, worried about his wife's fear of the dark and other spending the night alone in their large bed, did not hesitate in asking his obliging compare, while he was out of town, to take his place "so that nothing could happen to her." The differences among Sicilians are probably not easily recognized by outsiders, but the difference between Sicilians as a group and other Italians are immediately evident to perceptive travelers. French writer Guy de Maupassant who visited Sicily late in 1885, made the following comparison between Neapolitans and Sicilians:
"No one is less like a Neapolitan than a Sicilian. In the Neapolitan of the lower classes one always finds three quarters of Punch. He gesticulates, gets agitated, is fired without cause, expresses himself with gestures as much as with words, mimes everything he says, always shows himself to be amiable in order to get what he wants, is gracious by ruse as much as by nature, and answers unpleasant compliments politely. But in the Sicilian one already finds much of the Arab. He has the Arab's gravity of gait, though he has the great liveliness of wit of the Italian. His native pride, his love for titles, the nature of his haughtiness and even the physiognomy of his face also make him more similar to the Spaniard than the Italian. But what unceasingly gives you the impression of being in the Orient, as soon as you set foot in Sicily, is the timbre of the voice, the nasal intonation of the street cries."
If Sicilians are chauvinistic among themselves and will not give way to any other Sicilian, local animosities are soon forgotten when the terms of comparison include foreigners, that is, non-Sicilians. A popular octave often heard after the island's annexation to Piedmont in 1861 claimed that a single Sicilian peasant was worth more than all the "piramuddisi" (an intentional corruption of "Piemontesi") put together.
The Temple of Segesta
The hyperbolic expression of pride in the virtue of Sicilians may be interpreted as a lingering manifestation of what British historian Denis Mack Smith who wrote a two-volume history of Sicily, calls Sicilian megalomania. He believed that the ancient Sicilian Greeks all suffered from megalomania, characterized by their excessive, indeed, pathological need for aggrandizing their accomplishments. This trait is evident in the monuments that have remained on the Island. The Greeks who colonized Sicily, and their descendants, not unlike the people who colonized the US, manifested this need of theirs in building their temples with a obvious penchant for grandeur. Not only are the Greek temples you find in Sicily designed to surpass in size and decoration the ancient models found in Greece, but they are also strategically placed to make an everlasting impression upon the visitor. Nowhere is the Sicilians' desire to astonish more evident than in the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento. There, on a rocky ledge that forms a stage to be seen from above and from below, they built not one, for that would not have satisfied their pride, but five temples, one mile apart from one another.
Guy de Maupassant was not the first nor the last visitor to marvel at the drama that Sicilian temples can evoke. Thinking of the lone and magnificent Doric temple of Segesta, he wrote: "The master decorators who taught humanity art, show, above all in Sicily, that profound and refined science that they had of effect and staging. (The temple) of Segesta seems to have been placed at the foot of this mountain by a man of genius to whom had been revealed the only place where it was to be raised up. All by itself it animates the whole landscape; it makes it living and divinely beautiful." Sicilians inherited their sense of drama, along with their liveliness, their sense of hospitality, their gift for reasoning, their diffidence and even their physical demeanors, from the Greeks. Sicilians are much closer to Greeks in looks and attitudes than they are to Venetians or Florentines. If you were to identify those peoples with whom Sicilians have an affinity you'd have to rank the Greeks in first place, followed closely by the Arabs, the Normans and then by Spaniards.
The Arabs who lived on the island from 827 AD to about 1050 had a lasting effect on Sicilians' outlook on life. It may be said that their sense of fatalism, their persistence and their acceptance and resignation to a harsh life was inherited from the Arabs. The Sicilians' thoughtfulness and melancholy, their deep sense of nostalgia and bouts of depression are also Arabic in nature. They also have many traits in common with the Spaniards who were masters of the island for over five centuries. The Spaniards' sense of grandeur and preoccupation with how things look, their love for pomp and ceremony, for decorations and external elegance touch responsive chords in the psyche of Sicilians. Yet even though they show many similarities with Greeks, Sicilians are not Greeks, nor are they Arabs or Spaniards. Sicilians like pomp and ceremony, but they don't have the same fascination with spectacles, death and ritual; they don't take themselves as seriously as the Spaniards. Bull fighting for example, never had much success in Sicily and it did not survive the test of time.
In spite of the fact that Sicily is the most southern point of Europe, Sicilians don't display the happy-go-lucky attitudes, the exuberant and quick-witted superficiality people sometimes attribute to southerners. They show in their daily behavior traits such as perseverance, determination, persistence, precision, hard work and absolute reliance on empirical reality that one associates with the northern temperament. But they are not immune to dreaming! If I were to choose someone who best epitomizes the Sicilian spirit I would single out Giovanni Meli without hesitation.
Don Chisciotti and Sanciu Panza, illustration by B. Vesco
The greatest Sicilian poet of all time, Meli may be considered an emblem of the Sicilian soul, always struggling between idealism and realism, between pessimism and optimism. The internal struggle that raged in Meli is embodied in the figures of Don Chisciotti and Sanciu Panza - the heroes of his long mock epic poem, written not as imitation of Cervantes, but to show where the Spaniard had gone wrong. Don Chisciotti represents the poet's idealistic desires to ameliorate the lives of the poor Sicilian peasants, and Sanciu Panza represents Meli's own skeptical attitudes toward Don Chisciotti's deliriums. The battle between idealism and empiricism was eventually won by Sanciu Panza, the man who believed only what he could touch with his own hands. Poor Don Chisciotti - whom Sanciu defined as un omu ca non sapia cunzari na nsalata e pritinnia di cunzari lu munnu (a man who could not fix a salad and pretended that he could fix the world) - died a humoristic death (in the Pirandellian sense) that would have been unthinkable to the Spaniard Cervantes. He died "a most unchivalric death," caused by a rupture. And Sanciu remarked, "Who ever heard of an Errant Knight dying of hernia?"
In Sicilians, the battle between optimism and pessimism is usually won by pessimism. Skepticism, pragmatism, realism often obtain more credence with the people, without, however, excluding their counterparts. Leonardo Sciascia once noted that Sicilians are so pessimistic about the future that in their language the future tense does not exist. Sicilians will say "Dumani vaiu a Catania." (Tomorrow I go to Catania.) But many other languages lack the future tense. Neapolitan, for example, has no future. Yet we would not say that the Neapolitans are particularly pessimistic in their outlook. The Sicilians' outlook must be seen as a continuous, losing struggle between progressive, idealistic tendencies against a more entrenched conservative and realistic philosophy. This explains the stagnation that is characteristic of Sicilian society. Had there been more visionaries, more dreamers, more Don Chisciottis, the course of Sicilian history would certainly have been different.
Other peoples have played on the Sicilian stage but they too have always been considered more or less foreign to the islanders. Sicilians did not get along with the Romans, the Byzantines, the French, the Austrians and the Piedmontese and they were either hated or tolerated commensurately with the extent to which they interfered with the Sicilians' way of life. Rome was never much interested in Sicily other than as a source of cheap labor and wheat. Under the Byzantines Sicily was looted of what little remained after the Romans left. The French for their greed brought upon themselves the wrath of the Sicilian Vespers. And the Piedmontese who came following Garibaldi's invasion of the island, instead of resolving the deep-seated problems faced by Sicily, made them worse, causing the greatest mass emigration in the island's history. They were disliked for many reasons, but particularly for imposing on the traditionally antimilitaristic Sicilians (a Sicilian proverb says "megghiu porcu ca surdatu," [better to be a swine than a soldier]) an onerous eight-year long military draft.
The Sicilian man-made landscape speaks eloquently about the civilizations that were congenial with the Sicilian spirit and it reflects what I have been saying. The most impressive achievements of man's creativity you see there are the Punic and Greek temples scattered throughout the island, the Arab-Norman castles, the Norman cathedrals of Cefalù and Monreale and the Spanish-Sicilian Baroque.
"The Family" by Beppe Vesco
Allow me to add a few more pieces to the puzzle of the Sicilian soul:
The family occupies the most prominent place in the lives of Sicilians. The family is the single most important institution around which revolve the social behaviors of Sicilians. It's a symbol of the unity of the Sicilian people as a nation, and it is a means of defense against outsiders. For Sicilians one could really say the family is all. Each member of the family unit has precise responsibilities and duties from the father as the head, the mother as the emotional center and the children owing allegiance to their parents and their siblings. This is evident in the love that adults bestow on children. They are protective of them to obsessive measures. The mother is at the center of the familial relationships. She holds the family together with all the powers that she possesses, she makes sure that the members behave in accepted ways. The mother is the family's emotional universe. "Casa mia, matri mia!" (My home, my mother). There is something sacred about her. While it is true that Sicilian society is eminently patriarchal, it is also eminently clear that the mother is the glue that holds a family together. The mother's role, shaped by thousands of years of history, continues to our day almost unchanged.
She nurtures physically and psychologically, she performs social duties in observance of time-worn formulas, she sacrifices her whole life to her family, denying herself in the process and becoming a victim of her own dedication to others. Her devotion to her family is so complete that as a Sicilian proverb has it "La matri senti li guai di lu mutu" (The mother hears the troubles of those who are mute.) Inevitably, however, in the battle between children's desire for freedom and the mothers' desire to maintain the status quo -for this reason, Leonardo Sciascia considered Sicilian mothers a cause of the stagnation in Sicilian society -- conflicts emerge and mothers begin to consider themselves victims, adopting what may be called a martyr's syndrome. In an article published in Arba Sicula (Vol XIII, 1993), Angelo Costanzo suggested that Sicilian women everywhere eventually end up conforming with the image of the matri addulurata, that is, the sorrowful mother who grieves for the loss of her son. It is not a coincidence that in Sicily, out of all the possible scenes of the madonna's life, the most pervasive is certainly that of the grieving mother. Nor is it coincidental that women witnessing an accident immediately cry out "Bedda Matri!"
Incidentally, the images of Christ that pervade the Sicilian psyche are restricted typically to those of the suffering Christ and of the Child Christ, that is suffering and innocence, an innocent victim slaughtered by powerful enemies in which one can see the suffering of the innocent Sicilian people projected unto the background of external domination and abuse. The honor of the family must be defended at all costs. Appearances become very important in this connection. "Fari na bedda fiura" (to put one's best foot forward) is a must. Everything is really subordinate to the main interest of the family. The sense of pride that attaches to the individual comes into play as well for his family. The loss of face of one member cannot fail to have some effect on the pride of the family as a unit. The Sicilian proverb "Cui perdi la bona fama, perdi tuttu!" (He who loses his good reputation, loses everything!) embodies a universally accepted sentiment on the island.
A Sicilian who perceives that his honor is being attacked directly will react with astonishing fury. On the other hand, he may display unusual coolness if the attack is presented in an oblique and indirect manner. This, of course, does not mean that the offense will go unpunished or unnoticed, for Sicilians, as a general rule, have long memories, like elephants, and they will at the right time repay in kind for the insult. They are not given to forgetting or forgiving. The great respect that Sicilians have for their dead ancestors is but an extension of the same reverence for the family. No Sicilian is ever likely to curse the dead. In fact, no curse exists in Sicilian such as the Romanesque "A li mortacci tui!" (A curse on your ancestors!). In keeping with this sense of respect for the dead, children receive gifts on the Day of All Saints, which in Sicily is known as "u jornu di morti" (the day of the dead).
The Trinacria, an ancient symbol of Sicily
The dead ancestors are said to leave presents for children, not Santa Claus. Respect for the elderly is an expression of the same reverence. The Sicilians' feeling for hospitality is also an aspect of the same mystique. While it is not easy to win approval and enter the close circle of friendships in Sicily, once you are admitted, Sicilians will go to extraordinary steps to make you feel at home. They are very generous with their time and money as regards guests. Hospitality is sacred. Cicero identified three traits that accurately described the Sicilians of his day nearly two thousand years ago. He said they were "an intelligent race, but suspicious and endowed with a wonderful sense of humor." I want to expand these three traits and test them against today's reality. That Sicilians are an intelligent people I don't think has ever been questioned, except perhaps by some pseudo-scientific reports published in the 1920's in popular American magazines. I do not know any "Sicilian" jokes as there are - without offense to the Poles -"Polish" jokes, for example. Jokes about Sicilians usually deal with other aspects of their perceived personalities.
At any rate, intelligence is not a quality Sicilians lack. The proverb "Avanti cummattiri cu centu mariola, ca c'un babbu!" (It's better to struggle with one hundred con artists than with a single stupid man!) testifies to the confidence they have in their own capacity to thwart the machinations of keen minds, but they declare themselves helpless before stupidity. It is interesting to point out that Sicilians dislike stupidity so much that they do not allow their universally acknowledged fool, Giufà, to be entirely stupid. In fact, Giufà who is something of the village idiot, often doubles as a wise and just man who solves the problems of his compatriots. He is both a fool and a wise man, sharp and obtuse, depending on the tale of which he is the protagonist. He is the fellow who when his mother told him "don't forget to pull the door after you" proceeded to pull it off its hinges and carry it on his back. But he is also the man who exposes the foolishness of others.
There is a rather singular visual quality to Sicilian intelligence, I think. For Sicilians, you can truly say that the eyes are the mirrors of the soul. This is hardly a scientific fact, but I can tell you from experience that Sicilians carry out entire conversation with their eyes without ever moving their lips. The Greeks had a verb for this: ananouein. I recall how at dinner my father had simply to look in the direction of an object on the table and my mother would immediately realize that he wanted a glass of water or the bread. The request was never made, a simple quick glance, a twitching of a finger, an imperceptible nod was all that was needed for effective communication. I have no explanation for this, except to say that Sicilians have had long experience in being spectators of history, trying to minimize their future woes from reading into people's eyes.
But while the Sicilians' intelligence is not in dispute it is probably the cause of some of their difficulties. Sicilians, in their perception of their worth as individuals, tend to exaggerate, to inflate their importance. Every Sicilian believes that he is the brightest, the best at everything. In his Gattopardo, G. Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote that Sicilians considered themselves demigods, perfect human beings who wanted to be left alone. This overvaluation of individual prowess which may have been inherited from the Greeks whose greatest sin, you may recall, was hubris, leads to haughtiness and arrogance, to jealousy and envy. Sicilians despise those who give themselves airs they cannot stand for one of their peers to climb above them in terms of social or economic power, and will not accept the idea that the man who has achieved greatness has done so out of the sheer superiority of his natural gifts. It is much more comforting for them to think that luck, special circumstances, or fraud played a substantial part in catapulting that man to success. Concomitantly, Sicilians greatly admire a powerful or successful man who does not flaunt his good fortunes.
In a country where titles are important and sometimes inflated a doctor-professor who introduces himself with his first name is much admired. Giovanni Maria Cecchi, whom we quoted before, was not off the mark when he said that in their haughtiness "Sicilians do not give way to anyone, unless the difference in social status is overwhelming on the side of one or the other." A Sicilian saying conveys the sense of shame that accompanies a loss of face resulting from an act of prevarication by peers: "Amaru a cui si fa supraniari! Lustru di paradisu nun nni vidi." (Woe to him who lets himself be stepped upon. He will never see the light of paradise.) The failure or inability to defend one's dignity before society results in the loss of paradise. It is no wonder that in Sicily collective enterprises do not succeed very well as a whole. The "Sicilian Vespers" of 1282, which may be deemed the first popular and national revolution in the history of the modem world, is perhaps an exception to the rule.
Let me address the second point made by Cicero: the Sicilians' "suspicious" nature. I probably would have substituted "cautious" to "suspicious". At any rate, it cannot be denied that Sicilians as a matter of course are not known for jumping into things. History has taught them to be wary. While Sicilians like to eat, they prize sobriety greatly (they are the most sober people in Italy according to a 1991 statistics, consuming only two liters of wine per capita per month) and they frown on frivolity. Their dislike of drinking is due to their fear of losing control of themselves or of a situation. A man who has a habit of appearing in public in an intoxicated state is looked upon with disdain ("omu di vinu, nun vali un carlinu!" (A man who loves wine too much is not worth a sou); the image of a woman who is inebriated evokes much stronger criticism. Their "caution" may be an extension of their fear of committing themselves to a course of action which could become difficult to control. Their stoicism before suffering may well be another manifestation of the same need to present a "manly" or "defensive" posture before the world.
Pirandello used to say that Sicilians "have an instinctive fear of life, that's why they close themselves in, being content with little, as long as it gives them a sense of security ...It is the sea that isolates them, that cuts them off from the world and makes them alone, and everyone is and makes himself an island." The sea is responsible for giving Sicilians their proverbial insularity of spirit, it is the medium through which a thousand disasters have reached their shores. Unlike England, which used the sea to extend the vital force of the nation outwardly, Sicily has seen the sea as the medium that brought upon its shores hungry barbarians looking for the sun. Sixteen foreign dominations have left their mark on the Sicilians' soul. Cautious? Suspicious? Yes indeed! No one has come to Sicily with gifts. They have all come to take something. They have come for its wealth, its breathtaking beauty, the fertility of its valleys, and its enviable climate. Is it any wonder that Sicilians are wary of strangers? Behind each foreign face, there lurks the fierceness of the Mameluks, the memory of the Algerian pirates who scoured the Sicilian shores to plunder and pillage, the haughtiness of the barons in Charles d'Anjou's retinue and the adventurers of all races who have come and gone.
In spite of the oppression that has been their lot, or perhaps because of it, Sicilians have developed a keen sense of humor, which has been recognized by the likes of Cicero and others. But their sense of humor is always tempered with a sense of fatalism. Sicilian humor is of the Pirandellian kind. Its emblem is the Erma Bifronte, the Janus double face that cries and laughs at the same time. And no one embodies this aspect of the Sicilian psyche better than Giovanni Meli. In a poem entitled "Lo specchio del disinganno, o sia cugghiuniata" that Pirandello himself recognized as embodying his own brand of humor "his sentimento del contrario," Meli shows that all of man's deeds are nothing but delusions, "cugghiuniati." Every octave which describes all the objects of man's desire ends with the word "cugghiuniata," which expresses his profound disillusionment with life. Love, wealth, fame, and sex - everything man prizes highly - are shown to be illusory prizes, a "mockery," or to use the words of a popular song "is that all there is?" One octave will suffice to show what I mean:
Oh chi bedda picciotta! Oh ch'e sciacquata!
Oh chi sangu! Oh chi vezzi! Oh chi attrattiva!
Ah! mi la vogghiu teniri abbrazzata,
ah! lu so alitu stissu mi ravviva:
mettiti bona, figghia nzuccarata,
proi ssu labbru...apri ssi cosci...oh viva!
Moviti, stringi... oh estasi biata!
Ticchi, ticchi, finiu... Cugghiuniata!
0 what a pretty lass! What prodigy!
What spirit and what charm! What winning ways!
0 how her very breath rekindles me!
0 how I want her in my arms to stay!
0 sugar-coated child do lie with me.
Give me your lips...your thighs expose...hurray!
Strive now...hold tight, o wondrous ecstasy!
In-out...in-out...It's over! Mockery!
But you don't have to quote Meli to realize that Sicilian humor is generally ironic, inward turning, self-directed. As Vitaliano Brancati pointed out, Sicilian proverbs are not malicious or sly as Tuscan proverbs are. Consider the following: "Scappari non e virgogna, quacchi vota e sarvamentu di vita!" Running counter to the accepted mode of behavior (in Sicily, to run away from a fight is generally deemed a shameful act. You must stand your ground!), this proverb says that Sicilians are pragmatists with a sense of humor, after all. But the proverb that speaks volumes of the Sicilians' inward-turning humor is, "ringraziamu a Diu pi chiddu chi nni duna, e a lu re pi chiddu chi nni lassa!" (We thank God for all he gives us and the King for all he leaves us!), in which the Sicilians express their profound resignation to being subjects to forces beyond their control while continuing unperturbed their journeys through life.
Sicilian poet Giovanni Meli (1740-1815)
Jane Vessels' recent article on Sicily published in National Geographic (Aug. 1995) offers us another example of Sicilian humor. Describing the creativity of Sicilian epithets heard in Palermo's congested streets, Vessels painted this delightful vignette: "Why are you honking?" a man yelled from another car. "I love the music," she replied. "I'm going to break your husband's horns," the man shouted. She retorted, "I can put them back on!" In threatening to break her husband's horns, the man is accusing the woman of being an adulteress. Not only is the woman unrepentant about her presumed adultery, but to have the last word, she brazenly asserts her intentions to engage in another extramarital affair, thus regaling her husband with another pair of horns. Hence the inward-turning quality of her retort. If the anecdote is not true, it is certainly "bien trouve!"
Why Sicilian humor should be inward-turning is inevitably something of a contradiction, difficult to understand. Sicily is a solar and luminous island, where brilliant colors dazzle the eye, where the sun is most generous (Catania boasts the highest number of hours of sunshine in Europe), yet it's inhabited by people who cannot laugh in total abandon, people who do not know the value of a guffaw. Is it folly or wisdom? I do not know! Paolo Arena, author of La Sicilia nella sua storia e nei suoi problem! (Palermo: F. Agate Ed. 1949), the most passionate book on Sicily I've ever read, observes that "every Sicilian artist, every philosopher, every writer is a tragic figure, an introspective madman, a singer of melancholia and desolations which constrict the heart in a vice of crying, he is a heartless investigator, a man who tears himself and others apart, harsh to such a degree that the strange brotherhood of heart, spirit and temperament between our people and Dostoyevsky's Russia becomes manifest..." Sicily has produced great writers, thinkers, and poets, but not a single smile from the Roman era forward."
Is Sicilian humor schizophrenic because it embodies the rupture between how things should be and how they really are, between the longing for justice and the evident injustice, between the desire for freedom and independence and its perennial frustration? One last point remains. Historically Sicilians have shared the following attitudes and feelings: a general dislike for the police and for the system of justice; a cautious disregard for laws; a deep mistrust of governmental institutions and politicians; a fiercely individualistic nature; allegiance to a code of behavior known as omertà, which today is understood as a see-nothing-hear-nothing attitude before investigating authorities, but which in the original formulation meant manliness, behaving as a man should. Omertà's etymology is omu (man) and according to Cesare Mori (The Last Struggle with the Mafia, London: Putnam 1933, p. 224), meant "complete self-confidence, a high sense of honor, duty and personal dignity, a gallant heart, a balanced judgment and self control."
In his view it was a form of aristocracy of character. Sicilians universally and openly acknowledge maxims according to which it is better to cheat than to be cheated, better to outsmart an enemy than to be outsmarted, better to say less than more, better to be secretive about family matters, better to exclude rather than to include people into the inner circle of family and friends. Sicilians have always looked with contempt on the police who traditionally have enforced the laws of the rich and guaranteed the oppression of the poor, and it has always been a point of honor for them not to cooperate. Being a spy was in fact the most damning act a Sicilian could commit. But this also means that historically Sicilians found it difficult to go to the police to report that they have been victims of a crime, preferring, if they could, to right the wrongs themselves. These modes of behavior, developed through many centuries of experiences as the least harmful method of coping with external and hostile forces, can be espoused by the majority of Sicilians. They must be considered defense mechanisms developed by all societies that have known freedom only in flashes soon to be obscured by the most abject submission to external forces. They represent strategies of survival for a people that has known oppression, neglect and abuse at the hands of many foreigners.
As it happens, the traits I've briefly described are similar to the general codes of behavior under which the Mafia operated until recently. The term mafiusu actually meant good-looking, manly, handsome, impressive in Sicilian. It described a man who through the use of violence or a network of influences at his disposal was able to obtain respect and protect what he perceived to be his rights. Ultimately, I think that the mafia was spawned by an overvaluation of individual worth combined with the arrogance of power: a case of intelligence that does not hesitate to use violence at the service of greed. The mafia, like other secret societies, such as the Bead Paoli which was an effective and feared Sicilian organization, may have been perceived in the past as representing a form of justice where there was no justice, a way of righting wrongs that otherwise would have gone unpunished. But Sicilians are the first victims of the mafia. Indeed, they are doubly victimized by it, in their reputation and in their pockets.
But now Sicilians are saying "basta!" with increasing loudness and resolve. There has been a dramatic change, both as regards the relationship of Sicilians vis a vis the police and the mafia, especially after the murders of Judges Falcone and Borsellino, and as regards the codes of behavior under which the organization itself operates. The number of pentiti, mafia members who are offering to cooperate with the police, is increasing, as is the number of Sicilians, private citizens, political and religious leaders who are willing to challenge the mafia publicly. The fact that many Sicilians share a substratum of values which has spawned such a dreadful organization, however, should not be used as an indictment of the vast majority of Sicilians who are an energetic, talented and industrious people whose positive personal values far outweigh the negative. The mafia, if you were to assign a value to it in the large picture of Sicilian contributions to Western civilization, would be no more than a perversion, a wayward path that issues out of the main lane, a deviation at a crossroads. As such it should not be allowed to stand as a stigma, as an all-encompassing blot that defines everything else Sicilian.
Sicilians have contributed a great deal to Western civilization in every field. A great number of important tools, inventions and products were introduced into Sicily and were exported eventually into Europe. The sun dial, Arabic numbers, silk, different citrus fruits, sugar cane, cotton, rice, and ice cream, to mention a few things, found their way to Europe through Sicily. They have excelled in poetry so much so that a popular Sicilian saying declares to the world "Cu voli puisia vegna in Sicilia, ca teni la bannera da vittoria" (Whoever wants poetry, let him come to Sicily which holds the banner of victory). Stesicorus of Imera (VI c. B.C.), who is regarded by the ancients as the first poet to treat mythological and epic tales in a lyrical way, was Sicilian. Critics consider him a lyrical Homer, the creator of poetic language. Virgil based his myth of Aeneas's landing in Italy and thus his founding of Rome on an account by Stesicorus. Another Sicilian from Siracusa, Theocritus (III c. B.C.), invented bucolic poetry.
The following were Sicilian too: Giacomo da Lentini who invented the sonnet. The Sicilian School to which he belonged was responsible for inventing a new literary language that launched Italian letters; Giovanni Aurispa from Noto, a 14th century humanist and book merchant who collected 578 Greek manuscripts, including Homer's Iliad, greatly contributing to the Italian Renaissance; Antonio Veneziano, "the Sicilian Petrarch" who wrote in Sicilian "because he did not want to be a parrot and speak somebody else's tongue." Veneziano's poetry was deemed worthy of paradise by Cervantes, who was held by pirates in the same Algerian cell; Giovanni Meli (1740-1815), who was known as the new Anacreon and was responsible for bringing the Sicilian language to its greatest heights; Meli's contemporary and rival, the legendary Micio Tempio, whose reputations has suffered because of the unabashed eroticism of his poetry, and in our century, Salvatore Quasimodo, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1959.
In philosophy, because of the special aptitude of Sicilians for arguing, Cicero believed that rhetoric was born in Sicily. Gorgias of Lentini, one of the founders of Greek philosophical thought, often traveled to Greece to lecture on the art of rhetoric; Empedocles, whom Bertrand Russell considered the father of philosophy in the West, was so gifted in everything that he was regarded as a god by the people of Agrigento. Empedocles fascinated Matthew Arnold who wrote a poetic drama on him, Empedocles on Etna, and Frederick Horderlin, who wrote Der Tod des Empedocles, in which he imagined that the philosopher chose death by jumping into the crater of Mount Etna. In science, Archimedes of Siracusa was probably the greatest mind of the ancient world: he calculated the power of Pi, devised a way to burn Roman ships in the harbor by directing the sun's rays on them with huge metal reflectors. He is the scientist who while taking a bath realized the principle of water displacement by a solid body and started running naked through the streets of Siracusa, shouting "Eureka! Eureka!" (I've found it!). The legend says he was so engrossed in his calculations that he did not even see the Roman soldier who slew him.
In law, Caronda from Catania was one of the greatest lawgivers of the ancients. He practically put an end to the practice of sycophants, false accusers, by requiring those who swore false testimony to wear a wreath so people would know their crime. Caronda also promoted the idea of public education for those who could not afford it. Caronda had promulgated a law according to which no one could carry arms into the council chambers, under pain of death. One day he had been called to put down a rebellion and on the way back from the battle he entered the council chambers without realizing that he was armed. When someone pointed out his crime, he drew his sword and killed himself. It's true Sicilians have a highly developed sense of honor, but by modem standards, that's carrying the notion a bit too far!
Antonello da Messina's "Annunziata" in Palermo.
In politics and government, the Normans created the first centralized and absolute government in Europe, and Frederick II, "stupor mundi" strove to make his beloved Sicily a model for all other parts of his empire to imitate; he wanted Sicily to be a mirror for the world. In art, Antonello da Messina introduced oil painting into the Italian Renaissance. Sicily has produced many world class painters, sculptors and architects. Pietro Novelli, known as "the Monrealese," was the greatest Sicilian painter after Antonello, Giacomo Serpotta was a master stucco sculptor and Filippo Juvara, the architect who built the Superga Basilica in Turin. Who does not know the rapturous music of Vincenzo Bellini, the "swan from Catania," whose name is practically synonymous with "bel canto" or the music of Alessandro Scarlatti?
Nino Martoglio, Rosso di San Secondo, and Luigi Pirandello, (Nobel Prize for 1934) occupy important places in the theater. In fact, it's hard to imagine modern theater without the revolutionary work of Pirandello. And if we wanted to go back two thousand years, we could add that comic theater was perfected by another Sicili.an named Epicarmus. Guido Piovene was correct when he said that Sicily had given Italy the largest number of poets and writers in the last 150 years. Beginning with the 19th century Verist writers Giovanni Verga, Luigi Capuana, and Federico de Roberta who developed a new mode of representing the world in a more scientific and objective way, Sicilian writers have dominated Italian narrative with highly original works: Elio Vittorini, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Leonardo Sciascia, Stefano Arrigo, Gesualdo Bufalino, Vincenzo Console, Dacia Maraini etc...
A view of Etna from Taormina
Sicilians have also been on the forefront of political movements. The Christian Democratic party which governed Italy for over 40 years was founded by don Luigi Sturzo, a priest from Regalbuto. Many Sicilian statesmen such as Ruggero Settimo, Francesco Crispi and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, have played a national role in Italy. Sicilians have been first at many things, as we learn from Santi Correnti, a professor at Catania University: Archestrato from Gela wrote The Sweet Taste, the first cookbook in the fourth century b.C. establishing a great reputation for Sicilian cooking. Empedocles was the first volcanologist. The first solar clock in Europe was set up in Catania in 263 b.C. The first modern state was established by King Roger II in Palermo in the 12th century. The first map of the world was created for King Roger II by a Sicilian Arab named Al Edrisi. Ice cream was invented by a man named Procopio from Acireale. His nephew opened up Le Procope in Paris, an establishment much frequented by Voltaire and his friends. The first census in history was taken in Sicily in the 16th century.
The first European sinologists and orientalists were Sicilians; Prospero Intorcetta from Piazza Armerina was the first to translate the works of Confucius. Branca Minuti, a surgeon from Catania, invented the "art of reconstructing noses" in the 15th century. The first labor union, the "Fasci Siciliani dei lavoratori," which brought together farmers and artisans, was born in Sicily in the last decade of the 19th century. And the first truly modem psychiatric hospital which abandoned the medieval methods of treating schizophrenia was founded by Pietro Pisani in Palermo in 1816. The manual for the treatment of patients written by Baron Pisani is truly an amazing document of humanity and caring. I've barely scratched the surface on this complex subject. But at least, if you've read this far, you know there is more to Sicily than people realize. I hope you will make it your goal to fill the remaining gaps. It would be so much more rewarding, and so much closer to the truth, if instead of thinking of Sicily as a mafia-infested island, you thought of it as the place where the bougainvillea bloom the year round, where the smell of orange blossom is an aphrodisiac, where the scent of jasmine is strong and fills the nights.
Think of it as a place that gave Europe a taste for "sanguinelli," - the blood oranges that grow only there - a place that made things sweet when the Arabs began to cultivate sugar cane on its soil, that made it possible for Europeans to wrap their bodies in the luxurious feel of silk. Think of Sicily as the place where spring is born when Pluto releases Persephone from her infernal captivity! Think of it as the German Romantic poet Wolfgang Goethe did, who wrote in his diary: "Italy without Sicily leaves no trace upon the soul. Sicily is the key to everything."
This booklet has been published by Prof. G. Cipolla through "ARBA SICULA" a non profit organization, and can be had with a donation of $3.00 U.S. plus $1.00 S&H, by writing to: Prof. G. Cipolla, Modern Foreign Languages, St. John's University, 8000 Utopia Pkway. Jamaica, NY 11439. Tel.
