Tim Parks - An Italian Education

But they can be teachers. And the irony surrounding Operaia e massaia is that very soon it would be the girls who had the most obvious and immediate role model in the classroom, la maestra herself. Schools, particularly at the lower levels, are now an almost exclusively female domain. Having missed Gino d’Arezzo at the scuola elementare , my son will probably reach adolescence without ever being in class with a male teacher.

But having become teachers, what kind of model do these women offer? A little girl’s exercise book from 1970 is open at the following composition:

MY SIGNORINA HAS GONE!

Today, 25 March 1970, was the last day that our maestra , Signora Argentina Zanoll will take our lessons. Some children, even when the lessons had only just begun, threw rice over her to celebrate her promotion. For us it was a rather sad morning because we knew that after three years of lessons with this maestra we would have to leave her. The saddest moment was when the bell rang to go home. The Signorina gave each one of us a kiss, almost all the girls were crying and the Signorina with tears in her eyes tried to console them. She said she would always remember all of us and that she will often come to say hello and that the new maestra would love us just as much as she did. Having left the classroom, we set off home with happy memories of our good maestra , who, for all this time, has been just like a mamma to us.

Just like a mamma … Why is it that Italians, men and women alike, find it so difficult to think about a woman without that word popping up. For all its championing the female right to education, Operaia e massaia is no exception in seeing woman as a nurturer of protagonists, rather than a protagonist herself.

You future Italian mothers, future educators of a new generation, encourage with calm and mild words the tendency towards peace among nations, inspire in all the hearts that surround you the horror of war that makes men crueller than beasts. But should your brothers and fathers and husbands one day have to run to defend the sacred borders of our land, then kiss them with smiles of love and hope. It is your fine and holy mission, oh Women, to preach peace, peace in the family, peace in the state, peace among nations. But it is also your duty, and a no less holy duty, to rouse spirits when men must fight in the name of independence and liberty, and to give your praise to valour, but valour demonstrated in a legitimate struggle.

Is this an exercise in having your cake and eating it? The Italians have a lovely expression for getting things both ways, they talk about having ‘your wife drunk and the barrel full’; i.e. she’s off your back and you can drink to your heart’s content. Or, you’ve made your wife happy without even spending anything… The funny thing is hearing women use this irretrievably sexist expression.

A six-year-old’s exercise book, lying on one of the old school desks, gives the child’s (guided) reaction to this heady mixture of patriotism and feminine sweetness. We’re in 1926 now:

Page one: a cut-out photo of the king.

Page two: (in huge handwriting) ‘Mamma I love you lots and lots, I promise I will be good.’

Page three: a cut-out photo of Il Duce.

Page four: ‘December 8th, I love and worship Maria.’

Page five: ‘December 13th, Santa Lucia has brought me a pram with a pretty doll.’ (Santa Lucia is the Veronese children’s Father Christmas, of which more anon.)

Page six: ‘Dear Baby Jesus please help me to be good.’

Page seven: ‘January 6th, the three kings brought Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh.’

Page eight: ‘Long live the Queen and Empress, Elena of Savoy.’

Beside it, another notebook of an older child lists the main events of the same year:

26 January: Agreements between Italy and Great Britain on the repayment of the national debt.

18 August: Second attempt in Rome on the life of President Benito Mussolini, carried out by the British subject Violet Albina Gibson. The president is lightly wounded in the nose.

11 September: Pesaro agreement, vital for the stabilisation of the Lira.

[date missing]: Third attempt in Rome on President Benito Mussolini’s life, carried out by political exile and anarchist Gino Luccetti; his bomb hits the presidential car but only explodes after rebounding on the ground.

31 October: Fourth attempt in Bologna on the life of President Benito Mussolini, carried out by Anteo Zamboni, immediately lynched by the outraged crowd. The leader of the Black Shirts is grazed by the bullet but unhurt.

Was this a particularly bad year for Benito? And what did the children make of the bizarre behaviour of British women, their attraction to the Italian male nose? But if this led to any confusion as to the nature of male and female roles, it would soon be cleared up. The peace mission of the ‘future mothers of Italy’ does not play a prominent role in this reading for the fourth-year elementary class of 1938, though it’s amusing that while men are at the centre of all the action, Italy itself always gets feminine pronouns:

From 3 October 1935 to 5 May 1936 fascist Italy conquered the Abyssinian Empire. In seven months the Italian legionnaires conquered the vast Abyssinian army and occupied a country four times the size of Italy. Fifty-two nations opposed this campaign and fascist Italy alone took on and conquered all her enemies.

How did she conquer them? First and foremost by faith, faith in the justice of her cause, faith in the king, faith in Il Duce. Then with the strength and valour of her race; the strength and valour of her legionnaires, who with constant heroism overcame the most arduous tasks; the strength and valour of all Italian men and all Italian women who accepted any and every sacrifice, even donating their wedding rings to the cause of the Italian motherland. They won with their valour and their genius, the achievements of the legionnaires being supported by powerful weapons of war used on a grand scale for the first time in the Ethiopian campaign: aeroplanes, tanks, radio. These mighty and modern instruments of war, precious in peace and terrible in conflict, were the product of Italian genius. The aeroplane was conceived by the Italian Leonardo da Vinci; this great inventor likewise studied the possibility of the propeller, but the application of the propeller to a flying machine was made possible only after the invention of the internal combustion engine, first constructed by the Italian Eugenio Barsanti. The tank was also conceived and designed by Leonardo da Vinci. The tank is neither more nor less than a small automobile armoured with steel, the automobile moving by virtue of Barsanti’s internal combustion engine. Then came the radio, through which news can fly at the speed of lightning. The radio, too, is an exclusively Italian invention, conceived by Guglielmo Marconi. Thus, Italy truly did everything alone; she conquered her Empire not only with her heroism, but also with her genius. Entrusted to the marvellous talents of the Italian race, this is the Empire of justice, of genius, of work, the empire of civilisation…

The text must have made heavy reading indeed on the smoky winter benches of the Cesare Betteloni school in Montecchio. But then the compositions couldn’t have been much fun either. ‘You are looking at a portrait of Il Duce,’ suggests another textbook of the time. ‘Record your feelings (of pride and admiration).’

The parenthetical prompt is less out of date than one would imagine. Perhaps it is part of the language’s rhetorical vocation, I don’t know, but so much schooling in Italy seems to depend on encouraging children to have orthodox ideas and then express them in extravagant tones. It’s remarkable, after all, how much of the basic emotional gesturing is the same in the woman’s textbook of 1915, the eulogy to fascist enterprise in 1938 and Gino d’Arezzo’s 1994 poem on the construction of the New Man. There’s a confidence, an exhortatory pride, a radical piety which admits of no contradiction, or even indifference. A textbook entitled Pagine gaie (Gay Pages), published not in 1930 but in 1960, has a reading that begins as follows.