A man laughs and another man cries ...
"...
Un uomo ride e un altro uomo piange. Tutti e due sono uomini; anche quello che ride è stato malato, è malato, eppure egli ride 'perché' l' altro piange. Egli può massacrare, perseguitare, e uno che, nella non speranza, lo vede che ride sui suoi giornali e manifesti di giornali (allusione alle dittature europee del '900 -n.d.r.) , non va con lui che ride ma semmai piange, in the quiet, with 'nothing but crying. Not every man is a man, then. One pursued, and one is persecuted, and mankind is not the whole human race, but that only the persecuted. Kill a man and he will be more human. And so it is a sick man, a hungry, it is more the human race the human race of the dead of hunger.
I asked my mother: "What do you think?"
"What?" My mother said.
And I: "Of all those to whom you make the 'injection'.
And my mother: "I think maybe they can not pay me."
"Go well, "I said." And every day go the same from them, do them the 'injection, and hope it will instead pay you in some way. But what do you think of them? What do you think I am? "
" I hope not, "said my mother." I know that someone can pay me and some do not. I hope not. "
Pure go to everyone," I said. "But what do you think of them?"
"Oh," my mother said. "If I go to one I can go for another "he said." does not cost me anything "
" But what do you think of them? What do you think I am? "I said.
My mother stopped in the middle of the street where we were and I gave him a 'look slightly cross-eyed. He smiled, too, and said: "What strange questions you! What do I think I am? Are poor people with a little 'consumptive and with a little' of malaria ..."
I shook my head. I was doing some strange questions, my mother could see this, yet it gave me strange answers .. I asked,
"Have you ever seen a Chinese person?".
"Sure," my mother said. "I've seen ... They spend two or three necklaces to sell."
"Well," I said, "When you're in front of a Chinese look and see and, in the cold, which has no coat, and the tattered clothes and broken shoes, what do you think of him?"
"Oh, nothing special," my mother replied, "I see many others here, who have no coat for the cold and have her dress torn and broken shoes ..."
"Well," I said. "But he is a Chinese, does not know our language and can not talk to anyone, can not laugh at anyone, it travels in our midst with his necklaces and ties, with its belts, and no bread, no money, and does not sell anything, no hope ... What do you think of him when you see that is so hopeless a poor Chinese? "
"Oh!" My mother answered. "Many others are so I can see that over here ... Poor Sicilian hopeless."
"I know," I said. "But he is Chinese. His face is yellow, has slanted eyes, flat nose, prominent cheekbones and perhaps it stinks. More than all the others he is hopeless. You can not have anything. What do you think of him? "
"Oh!" my mother said. "Many others who are not poor Chinese have the yellow face, a flat nose and maybe they stink. I'm not poor Chinese are poor Sicilians, but they can not have anything."
"But you see," I said. "He is a poor Chinese is located in Sicily, not in China, and can not even talk about the weather with a woman. A poor Sicilian, however, can ...".
"Why can not a poor Chinese?" my mother asked.
"Well," I said. "I imagine that a woman would not give anything to a poor traveler who had a Chinese instead of a Sicilian."
My mother frowned.
"I do not know," he said.
"See?" I exclaimed. "A poor China is poorer than all others. What do you think of him?"
My mother was angry.
"To hell with the Chinese," he said.
And I cried: "Look, He is the poorest of the poor and you lo mandi al diavolo. E quando lo hai mandato al diavolo, non ti sembra che sia più uomo, più genere umano di tutti?"
Mia madre mi guardò sempre stizzita.
"Il cinese?" chiese.
"Il cinese", dissi io. "O anche il povero siciliano che è malato in un letto come questi ai quali fai l' iniezione. Non è più uomo e genere umano, lui?"
"Lui?" disse mia madre.
"Lui", dissi io.
E mia madre chiese: "Più di chi?"
Risposi io: "Più degli altri. Lui che è malato... Soffre".
"Need?" exclaimed my mother. "It 's disease."
"Only?" I said.
"Take away the disease and it is all over," said my mother. "It's nothing ... It 's disease."
Then I asked:
"And when he's hungry and suffering, what is it?".
"Well, it's hungry," my mother said.
"Only?" I said.
"Why not?" said my mother. "From food and everything is gone. And 'hunger."
I shook my head. I could not have strange responses from my mother, I asked yet again:
"And the Chinese?".
My mother, now, did not give me answer, nor strange, strange or not, and shrugged his shoulders. It was right of course: remove the patient's disease, and there will be no more pain, all you feed 'hungry, and there will be pain. But the 'man in what disease? And what is hunger?
not, the 'man hunger, more human? It is no longer the human race? And the Chinese? ... "
(Elio Vittorini, Conversazione in Sicilia, Milano, Simon and Schuster, 1941)
Intellectuals such as those of the Second World War, I think, and elevated the feeling of 'Italian: I feel proud to reread them, and they are grateful. Mentally, I thank you d 'to remember and to have been-through-their pages, that my country, even in the plays and sorrow of the time, housed spirits and similar items. Men. A little 'writers (Vittorini was self-taught, a worker on a construction site and then the printer.
By Montale and Pavese, by '34 he earned his living by translation of Anglo-Saxon writers, contributing to the spread of contemporary American literature: Hemingway, Faulkner , Fitzgerald, Saroyan, ed altri) , capaci di riflessioni filosofiche, sociologiche, politiche.
Parole simili erano, in quel momento storico, coraggiose e censurate dalla dittatura fascista.
La stessa alienazione spirituale del cinese diseredato di allora, è quella dei disgraziati che sbarcano e sbarcheranno sulle nostre coste; la loro essenza è ancora quella che Vittorini vedeva: un surplus di umanità; la meditazione che viene solleticata è affine: aldilà della soluzione dei problemi pratici e sociali (dare lavoro, sostegno, cure a chi soffre di più) resta, oggi come allora e come sempre, sospesa nell' ignoranza la ragione della fatalità del dolore -legge primordiale dell' esistenza- e, con essa, la totale comprensione dei motivi del nostro esistere.
