Le chant des couleurs

Félix Ziem, Envol de flamants roses, étang de Vaccarès, 1895

This is an original poem written by Bora Mici using French-language expressions that relate to colors. The poem makes creative use of these idiomatic expressions and sometimes reinterprets them to insert an aesthetic background and an atmosphere as a setting for the juxtaposition of the colors, the singular character they describe and his concerns about nature and animals and the planet. Parts of it are inspired by lyrics from Belgian singer Stromae's songs, such as Carmen and Alors on danse, as well as Charles Aznavour's Ca vient sans qu'on y pense. As is now usual in my verbal creations, the poem includes a critique of modern technologies and their empire on nature and society and a message of peace inspired by my grandmother who used to say in Albanian "Truri bën hatanë, truri bën kalanë," echoed in the last line of the poem.     

Le chant des couleurs by Bora Mici

C’est un blanc-bec de rouge-gorge

très haut en couleur d’ailleurs
Il est mais vraiment fleur bleue
On dirait un merle blanc
Qui fait un rire jaune
Auprès des regards noirs
Il lui font une mine blanchâtre
Blême et pâle comme un linge
Et une peur bleue
Il ne sait jamais s’il est dans le vert ou dans le rouge
Où s’il a juste la côte
Comme le oiseau bleu de Twitter
Désormais un terte X
Qui fait grise mine aux utilisateurs
S’ils ne sont pas verts de rage
Les boutons d’or sont tellement mieux
Il porte des lunettes couleur rose
Mais il ne voit pas toujours la vie en rose
Parfois il broie du noir
Il se met au vert pour prendre de l’air
Pur comme des cristaux de neige et de ciel
Sous les rayons jaune d'oeuf du soleil qui coule
Il veut juste que le monde lui montre patte blanche
Il sait que c’est un jeu truqué, perdu d’avance
Malgré tout il avance
Il a compris que la vie est une danse
Et rien n’est vraiment perdu d’avance
Allez, haut les couleurs
On danse avec les flamants roses
ou les éléphants qu’on voit parfois
Qui n’ont pas une mémoire de poisson rouge, hein
On devrait carrément leur rouler le Tapis Rouge
Et les inviter à la Maison Blanche
Pour des pourparlers grisâtres
Sous la pluie
Ils peuvent faire part de leur avis
Qui tombe bien comme une couleur ravie du ciel gris
Sur l’achéminement de l’aide à la planète bleue
et ses régions sableuses, arides, couleur de paille et de poussière
Parfois verts comme des près
Mais qu’est-ce qu’un éléphant?
Il veut juste vivre dans son environnement
Comme tout les gens sensés
Qui savent que l’imagination est très colorée
Et qu’on lui doit la guerre et la paix.

A Contemporary Sermon on the Mount

Peter Paul Rubens, The Fall of the Damned, 1621

This is a reflection by Bora Mici on René Girard's mimetic desire and rivalry based on the original text by Girard, the French-language philosophy podcast Le précepteur by Charles Robin as well as the author's own experience. It is written in French and English, and the last part in English navigates all the questions surrounding the topic of why we all like to imitate each other and how this animates a cycle of violence that came to me as I was thinking through and writing about this topic. The last part is written in very plain English, has not been edited but represents my original train of thought and choice of words, and should be accessible to anyone who is willing to read with an open mind. 

Une courte réflexion sur ma vie pour commencer avant de rentrer dans le vif du sujet

I was thinking about how my life has become and I just think life is so lonely and alienating these days. Life may have been harsher before but at least everyone belonged. At least that’s what Fellini’s Amarcord shows. Now there are so many interlopers and lonely people and screen addicts and self-addicts of all sorts. Everyone is just looking in the mirror more than ever before, whether they want to look like the stars or be an influencer or simply spend all their time online. It’s just you and your projection of yourself in there, especially when the algorithm never bursts your bubble. But in order to really understand the world and not be afraid of it you have to experience it firsthand. That’s the only way to know what is possible and what is not and to understand human nature and behaviour.

J’ai eu envie de revenir sur le sujet du désir mimétique de René Girard qu’il expose dans son livre Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque. J’ai déjà lu une bonne partie de ce texte et je viens d’écouter un podcast de vulgarisation philosophique là-dessus, à savoir, le podcast La philosophie pour tous du Précepteur Charles Robin, que je vous recommande vivement. L’idée principale du désir mimétique c’est qu’en tant qu’êtres sociaux et aussi vaniteux, épris par le souci de mouler notre image de nous-mêmes sur un modèle extérieur, on est toujours à la recherche d’une autre personne qu’on est susceptible d’admirer et d’imiter. J’ai déjà discuté dans un autre article d’Arttists Speak d’où mène notre tendance à nous retrouver dans le regard d’autrui, c’est-à-dire une ruée conformiste irréfléchie et une existence inauthentique. Ici on va examiner plus en détail le problème des engouements de masse et leur antipode, la diversité sociale, à l’aune du désir mimétique et ses retombées logiques, ou parfois irrationnelles en l’occurrence.

Pour commencer on se focalisera sur la structure triangulaire du désir mimétique que relève Girard. À titre d’exemple, la médiation débute par le sujet qui souhaite posséder un objet ou une qualité dont fait preuve déjà l’être spécial pour lui. Pour reprendre les mots du titre de l’ouvrage de Girard, le mensonge romantique relève de la fiction que notre désir nous apparteint et qu’il est foncièrement original comme le croyaient les écrivains romantiques du 19è siècle. On les associait à une existence solitaire, houleuse au niveau des émotions et animée par une sorte de génie créatif porteur d’une sensibilité éperdument religieuse et passionnée. Cependant la vérité romanesque vient démentir l’apanage singulier de ces esprits libres de se projetter dans des élans inouis. La littérature et la fiction nous apprennent la vérité profonde qu’on dissimule à nous-mêmes, à savoir qu’on est toujours dans un procédé d’imitation issu de notre vanité, de notre désir de faire nôtre une identité favorable à l’image sociale qu’on se fait de nous-mêmes et que les autres admireront à leur tour.

Alors moi j’y ai réfléchi et je me suis dite que cette théorie est pertinente au niveau de nos agissements psychologiques et symboliques mais qu’elle perd un peu de sa puissance si on considère les choix qu’on fait tous pareils et les démarches qu’on execute tous de la même manière parce que c’est plus efficace d’agir ainsi au niveau de l’existence physique. À titre d’exemple, si un appareil electrodomestique est moins polluant, moins gourmand en énergie et abordable de prix par comparaison aux autres sur le marché, ne serait-il pas vraisemblable qu’on le préférerait tous et que cela ne reléverait pas juste du désir mimétique mais bien du pragmatisme rationnel? En plus, qu’est-ce qui se passerait si on se rendait compte de ce méchanisme caché? En réalité, je ne sais pas si on peut complètement échapper à sa prise parce que parfois nos désirs se révèlent insondables, mais on peut s’habituer à se poser la question-justement pourquoi je brigue ce que je souhaite pour moi et pour les autres-et en prendre conscience de manière plus active. Ça pourrait mener à une plus grande diversité et une meilleure ouverture d’esprit et on ne se comporterait plus comme des moutons de Panurge à une telle échelle qu’on pourrait effectivement être susceptibles de suivre les tendances et de créer des bulles économiques qui après se retournent contre nous. Selon Charles Robin on veut incarner quelqu’un d’autre parce on vit dans le manque d’une essence de l’ordre de l’existentiel, et la médiation triangulaire selon laquelle on accède à l’identité d’autrui par le biais d’un objet dont on a la possibilité de s’accaparer, se renverse et on commence à s’approprier l’identité même de l’être admiré pour finalement posséder les mêmes objets que la personne dont on voulait imiter le mode de vie tout au début de ce cycle qui se répète à l’infini. C’est à la suite de ce procédé de homologation qu’on devient tous semblables. C’est pourquoi la publicité nous vend des modes de vie et non pas des objets forcément utiles. L’engouement c’est un phénomène d’imitation de masse et on peut dire de même pour les petits groupes d’élite qui puisent leur prestige dans l’exclusivité. La distinction n’est jamais originale selon l’analyse de Robin du texte de Girard. Elle cache toujours un désir d’imitation et de la “supplantation existentielle” par quelqu’un qui semble avoir plus que nous ou une meilleure vie, même si le choix de notre objet d’admiration peut être subjectif dans une certaine mesure. C’est cette subjectivité qu’il faut encourager et décliner de la manière la plus variée possible. On nous dit que la diversité génétique est propice à la survie d’une espèce. Mais on nous dit également que l’unité fait la puissance. Donc voilà une petite contradiction logique qui défie l’intuition. Qu’est-ce que vous seriez plus enclins à croire, la première affirmation ou la deuxième? L’intuition est censé nous permettre de dépasser la contradiction en nous permettant de puiser dans l’ensemble de notre expérience vécue. Par exemple, comme l’explique Charles Robin dans un épisode sur le philosophe Henri Bergson, si on considère de façon mathématique qu’une flèche parcourt une certaine distance par moitiés successives, elle n’atteindra jamais sa destination, parce qu’après avoir parcouru une moitié du trajet on peut s’imaginer qu’elle ait toujours la moitié de la moitié restante à traverser. Mais notre expérience vécue nous montre qu’une flèche part d’un endroit précis et arrive toujours à un autre endroit précis un peu plus loin. Donc notre intuition, en s’appuyant sur notre observation passée, nous dit que dans le cas de la flèche, elle arrive toujours à destination, avec un minuscule décalage peut-être. Pourtant le calcul infinitessimal est bel et bien applicable sur des distances plus grandes, et à ce point-là notre intuition défaillit. Donc est-ce que vous pensez que c’est mieux de se faire nombreux et conformistes ou différents et un peu moins soudés, un peu plus en proie au processus de la découverte de nos différences, peut-être? Que signifie la vraie solidarité selon vous?

Questions and Answers about Rivalité mimétique

I don’t get why we want to imitate the desire of others. That’s the crux of the question. According to the analysis of Le précepteur if our mediator becomes internal rather than external, distant and unattainable, we become their rival. And we want to immitate their desire and participate in a competition for an arbitrary object, that might or might not be valuable or useful. We just want it for its symbolic value or for its symbolic capital in Bourdieu’s words. But why? Why can’t we want something else, not what someone else wants? The cycle he paints is love, loss, jealousy, violence, and when the violence becomes too widespread, a scapegoat. I don’t really understand it yet. Why does the scapegoat appease everyone temporarily? Desire is a feeling that subsists only through the delay or impossibility of its fulfillment. Is that true? When I get what I want and I enjoy it, I want it again. Why? Was there something unfulfilling about it or did I just get what I wanted and it was good and not perversely denied in the end, and the satisfaction I felt made me want to repeat the experience so I would feel not like I was lacking. We always respond to lack by seeking a way to fill the emptiness. If we don’t know something we go looking for the answer. But are there things we cannot have that would lead us to jealousy and violence? Kids who all want to play with the same toy, there’s always an exception. Even if there is no scarcity, do people still compete? Is it because they want to impress their friends? But surely there is a constructive way to do this, by sharing for example and by not instrumentalizing objects or people symbolically. Do people only care about the symbolic value something has? What if they just focused on utility and cooperation? What if they were taught not to cede to their vanity? What does my vanity instruct me to do? I am trying to understand this cycle in order to break it. I don’t need a scapegoat. Is coveting what your neighbor has sin? Desire is supposed to be an illusion because according to some it can never be fulfilled. But desire is what keeps us alive. We just need a less hungry relationship to it. In order to relate to other people we need to take their point of view. Is this possible? I hope there are other people who think like me. I am using my vanity to break the cycle of violence based on need. Is vanity what we need in order to relate to other people? My image of myself affects my interactions with others. And at the point where I am, if I think I have no self, then I think it’s pointless to exist or do anything, even though I still write and try to make sense of this non-dual contradiction. I guess I have to use my sense of self to deconstruct the problem of the self, because if it leads to violence and suffering based on a perceived scarcity or rarity, which is a cognitive bias, according to that theory, then it needs to be solved so our lives can be enjoyable, unless people enjoy violence, but I don’t think they do. Everyone shirks at the idea of enduring violence or suffering and I have empirical proof of this, noticing how everyone avoids it. That’s a good basis to start on. No one likes violence or suffering done upon them or anything or anyone they love. So why do they assume anyone else does? Why do they always like to transfer the violence which arises from a sense of rivalry that is not even real, that is purely an instinct of some kind that we need to identify and release? What is release? For me release is when I can externalize some internal question or strife or energy? Well we need to find non-destructive, non-violent ways to direct this conundrum. How do we do that? We go for a walk, we let our thoughts and our feelings subside, and we write or make art or talk to someone in a thoughtful purposeful manner. We become less reactive. We can probably rechannel the energy within our own bodies without doing harm. Where is this energy coming from anyways? An external stimulus or our own internal disorder? I suppose both are possible. But how does wanting what someone else has relate to our self-regulation? Do we need competition for the same resources or the same markets and consumers or can we all try to invent something that is different and of our own stamp? I think organizing ourselves in small collaborative entities that produce a similar commodity that is somehow useful is a good idea. The smaller the groups the smaller the egos and the ability to do harm based on competition and the desire to lead or conquer. The more variety there is the less impetus for sameness and competition over the same objects or positions. If we value diversity over sameness and we don’t become defensive or say that we are somehow in competition with each other then we are happier and everyone belongs. I think it’s part of our vanity to say we are different and therefore deserving of more or less than another, but if we say we are different but all worth of the same dignity and esteem then we all win because we are all accepted, not more not less. No one is more worthy than another. If we understand this then we end all wars and discord and our egos become smaller and more tranquil. So who likes their ego? Does your ego give you pleasure? I think it does or you would not insist on being better than everyone else. Well think about your ego and what you want it to be doing? And then decide. And think about the consequences. Will they aggrandize your ego and your lack? The two are often proportionally related? The more you seek the more you feed the hungry wolf in your consciousness. But killing your ego does not work either if you want to participate in being alive. So learn to moderate it and always keep in mind that violence comes from lack and giving that lack power over your actions. Often the lack is not real. It’s just you comparing yourself to others. That’s why you should learn to be yourself and not step on anyone else’s toes unless you come in friendship and love. What is love and friendship? It’s when you respect someone for their differences and accept that they are just as worthy as you are. Stop instrumentalizing life symbolically.

What is being good or doing a good action or speaking well or engaging in a beneficial activity? It is doing something that can feel good but also that benefits someone else without hurting anyone. The good subscribes to Kant’s definition of the categorical imperative. Whatever you will to be true ought to be a universalizable concept that everyone would accept to be done onto them and to all those they love. First we are born, then we see someone do something, then we mimic their behavior without really being able to judge its quality or utility or goodness/beneficiality for ourselves because we lack the experience of it. And we also lack the experience of greater things around it or around us. Our world is small and we are thus born into prejudice. Prejudice means judging something before hand, before we can really judge it for itself. We merely copy another person whom we trust or to whom we are entrusted. And this person presumably has more experience than we do but that experience is important in quality and quantity and in all the bias and prejudice it carries with it. Prejudice is also related to doing harm etymologically. If we judge something based on our vanity, which is formed progressively through mimicry and social expectations as we grow up and become integrated into the social fabric of symbolic prejudice running amok, then we are doing harm because we are putting ourselves above others. We think we are in a competition but this is a socially constructed illusion. What are we competing for? We are competing for who is the best. And what does that mean? Nothing if we judge for ourselves. If we judge for ourselves we will realize that symbolic value comes from peer pressure and rivalry, and not from intrinsic value. Everything is necessary to life, so everything has intrinsic value. And if we judge for ourselves we will create diversity and difference in equal worth for us all because we will realize that our self-worth does not depend on what others think. And thinking you are better than someone else means being prejudiced and doing harm and not thinking for yourself or being beneficial to yourself and others. I need to think about the material implications of this worldview, but therein lies the difference between things of equal moral worth we must respect while helping each other live a fulfilling life not defined by symbolic lack or unlivable material lack and therefore emphasizing that we recognize everyone’s worth and right to exist in non-violence.

Fragments from a Woman's Life, Part 1

James Rosenquist, Flowers and Females, 1984

Fragments from a Woman's Life is an original short story by Bora Mici written in Italian language. It follows the model of The Man Who Wore the News, which was published in July 2025, and uses unknown vocabulary words gleaned from various sources, including didactical texts, podcasts in Italian and Italian-language literature from authors such as Jhumpa Lahiri and Italo Calvino. This particular story is still in the making and will be published in installments as it evolves in the guise of a 19th-century roman feuilleton. However it will be a short story and not a novel. Just like for The Man Who Wore the News, this story centering on a woman's daily life and memories, is woven around a list of vocabulary words that were either new to me or that I wanted to record for the sake of better remembering them, and I followed the list in order as I had created it spontaneously, without any particular attention to themes or an underlying logic. In that sense this story is dependent on that invisible order, which gives it an unexpected dynamic and forces me to creatively integrate words I might not have otherwise chosen into the fabric of the narrative. This first installment is subject to minor modifications in the event that the subsequent one necessitates it. But I will notify you if I make any changes. As always if you are a native Italian speaker reading this, you may pick up a small mistake here and there because I have not had it edited, and I am still learning Italian. However, you might be pleasantly surprised by the complexity of the story.          

Fragments from a Woman's Life, Part 1, by Bora Mici

Si aggiustò i capelli grinzando un po’ le labbra mentre si guardava nello specchio. Stava appena albeggiando. Doveva mandare un email con il suo lavoro svolto la sera prima in allegato. Non se ne aspettava di ricevere una risposta prima del indomani. Il suo datore di lavoro le aveva comunicato che l’assegno era già stato imbucato da una settimana. Rideva sotto i baffi mentre pensava al suo sforzo frenetico ma finto per non consegnare il dossier in ritardo. In realtà avrebbe voluto spassarsela senza prendere il compito troppo sul serio. Si era veramente dimenata benché sapesse che tutto si sarebbe stato arrangiato ed avrebbe fatto un lavoro più che sufficiente. Adesso si sentiva benino mentre sognava un caffè ristretto. La bontà degli esseri umani le appariva un’evidenza schiacciante come gli uccellini che cantano sui rami senza averne coscienza. Si recò alla buca delle lettere ancora una volta per verificare che non fosse arrivato e rientrò in casa. Decise che quel giorno avrebbe messo entrambi le calze ed i calzini, ma niente calzoni, solo una gonna di lana per celebrare il freddo invernale insediatosi di recente nell’aria secca. La camicetta poi l’avrebbe messa soltanto per andare in ufficio perché altrimenti si sarebbe bagnata di sudore mentre passeggiava sotto i raggi abbaglianti del sole mattutino.

Avrebbe fatto il suo solito tragitto da una casella postale all’altra, da una cassetta delle lettere davanti a una casa che somigliava proprio alla prossima, tutte allineate sulla stessa riga scorrendo parallelamente al vicolo dove abitava. Avrebbe salutato il cassiere che stava per recarsi al supermercato, immaginandolo bonario e celibe, che inscatolava le ciliegie appena arrivate da chissà che paese lontano. Si infilò la cinghia di cuoio nero con la fibbia di metallo giallastro e gettò uno sguardo attraverso la finestra chiusa allo riverberare della luce bianca e liquida sul cofano della sua macchina rossa parcheggiata nel camino affiancando la casa. Siccome aveva delle inclinazioni ambientaliste, lo aveva fatto pavimentare di mattoni incastrati nel suolo a capofitto e spaziati tra di loro. In quelle crepe cresceva l’erba, piccola e dritta, che si era ormai ingiallita dal freddo.

Nel silenzio si rammentò il colloquio con il giornalista che le aveva chiesto come era stato di lavorare in negozio in tanto che commessa quando era giovane. Ricordava soltanto il modulo banale che doveva compilare senza nemmeno capire a cosa servisse, visto che una non chiede di diventare commessa se ha esperienze antecedenti di lavoro. Poi, d’improvviso, il suo pensiero rigalleggiò nel presente rivolgendosi ai contorni che aveva promesso di comprare per la festa di compleanno della sua migliore amica.

Due notti prima avevano fatto baldoria in una discoteca e lei le aveva lasciato sul cruscotto un foglio con l’indirizzo della festa, che purtroppo era stato bagnato nel diluvio notturno, mentre lei lo portava con sé nel corto tragitto dalla macchina in casa. Il domattina l’aveva trovato illeggibile.

Presto si sarebbe recata dalla fornaia e dalla fruttivendola ma prima doveva occuparsi della sua portiera guastata. Quando sarebbe arrivato l’assegno avrebbe impiegato un’oretta per incassarlo in banca. Non si era nemmeno resa conto di aver varcato la soglia della porta e di ritrovarsi nel giardino davanti a casa sua. Improvvisamente frugò nella buca delle lettere e vide che aveva dimenticato di recuperare una cartaccia coperta di inserzioni promettendo di fornire i prezzi più vantaggiosi per una interurbana. Doveva essere uno scherzo o una truffa! Chi ne avrebbe tratto un’utilità da un’offerta simile nell’epoca dei cellulari? In un lampo, sgualcì il foglio, ne fece una pallina, e con un sorriso lieto, pensò ad imbucarla nella cassetta del vicino così come era appallottolata. Invece si immagino che avesse davanti a sé un macellaio fiero di sé ed un monaco vegetariano e che ne uno ne l’altro avrebbe molto gradito questo suo modo di comportarsi come un monello maleducato, e che neppure stando al largo per fare loro strada, non gli avrebbe convinti che fosse un’adulta nubile che si sarebbe costituita una nuora degna di ogni onore. Le venne in mente che occorreva chiamare il padrone di casa per avvertirlo che il pagamento dell'affitto lo avrebbe consegnato quando avrebbe ricevuto il suo stipendio, e di sottecchi gettò uno sguardo alla parabrezza della macchina che era sporca, e pensò anche che doveva portarla a lavare tutta perché anche il paraurti ed il parafango erano coperti di chiazze di acqua infangata.

Aveva voglia di una pera che poi l’avrebbe anche aiutata a sciogliersi le budella, perciò rientrò in casa dal portone che era rimasto aperto, prese la sua pillola mattutina e si portò indietro quella pallottola di carta straccia e la buttò via insieme al prezzemolo marcio che trovò nel frigorifero. Qualora avesse avuto bisogno di altro ne avrebbe potuto comprare al supermercato a due passi da lì. Quantunque non le paresse necessario al momento, forse avrebbe fatto meglio a procurarselo subito per evitare ogni imprevisto. Dunque si recò a piedi al negozio del rione, sgualcì la ricevuta come aveva fatto con il foglio di inserzioni, e come un regista da film si vide salpare dietro l’orizzonte in una barca a vela sebbene le paresse seccante di essere stata interrotta nella sua fantasia dal pensiero del serbatoio quasi vuoto e della sottana di seta che doveva portare in biancheria e dopodiché averla aggiustata alla sua statura da grissino. Aprì la portiera della macchina rossa e mise il tergicristallo in moto per pulire un po’ la parabrezza. Tutt’a un tratto cominciò a tirare vento e si sentì un rintocco lontano di campana che segnalava le otto di mattina. Nel bagliore della luce del sole i suoi capelli sembravano che tornassero biondi come li aveva avuti da bambina. Sentì un tuono e si disse che da qualche parte c’era stata un’esplosione e poi si ricordò della vaglia che doveva mandare in raccomandata da subito.

Per ammazzare il tempo mentre guidava la sua macchina infangata nella direzione della posta si rammentava le vacanze presso il lago di Como dell’anno prima. Ci era andata con la sua amica, quella della festa, e dapprima erano scese alla sponda per bagnarsi i piedi e tastare l’acqua. Poi immergendosi fino alla vita, avevano accennato alcune bracciate, facendo finta di nuotare. Tuttavia, siccome non erano esperte gli sembrava di non avanzare del tutto, bensì di muoversi in tondo mentre le sagome dei pesci giravano intorno alla parte sommersa dei loro corpi bianchi come il gesso che oscilla nella luce del sole. La svolta si compì quando riuscirono a galleggiare ma al contempo sentivano un lieve disagio cagionatosi dallo sguardo svergognato di due bambini che non smettevano di fissarle. Finsero il distacco, ma questa menzogna destò un desiderio inappagato in loro di andare incontro ai bambini e di incalzarli di urli e di rimproveri duri. Tuttavia si accontentarono di percepire la luce nei loro occhi maliziosi come una forza naturale ignota che si sarebbe smussata con il calo del sole all’imbrunire. Non erano del tutto felici e si dimenavano nell’acqua a malapena addestrate, segnalando appunti mentali su come fargliela pagare a quei mocciosi scarni mentre stentavano tuttora a strapparsi dalla superficie ormai torbida che gli infastidiva. La loro riserva di pazienza era già strapiena e l’estro con cui si erano avviate nel lago dapprima era sprofondato sottacqua come una cartella pesante fradicia di dati ingombranti. Adesso i bambini si bagnavano a loro volta, i movimenti delle loro vite smunte lasciavano intravedere i passi premurosi e scorrevoli che compivano sulle sabbie moventi del fondo. Diversamente dalle amiche non sembravano affatto impacciati né avviliti dallo stento. Invece sorridevano quasi mansueti mentre lasciavano alle spalle il riparo della sponda. Si sprigionava un’energia bonaria e innocente dalle loro facce abbronzate e dalle loro membra esili e rilassate.

Mentre guidava passò accanto ad una panca di legno marcio sopra la quale avvertì uno scaffale di ottone brillante e sedutosi accanto un uomo spossato che la guardava in modo strambo come se le stesse chiedendo di fermarsi. Tutt'a un tratto lo vide sviare lo sguardo e porlo altrove, e decise che d’ora in poi non si sarebbe lasciata distrarre da persone che non conosceva neppure. I bambini del lago gli avevano davvero giocato un brutto scherzo quel giorno. Però la perizia nel barattare con se stessa rendeva il proposito un’impresa difficile da portare in porto. Non doveva darsela per scontata di poter far spargere così facilmente la foschia leggera ma sconfinata che si innalzava intorno a lei e dalla quale risaltava di nuovo il viso dello sconosciuto che la incalzava di azzardarsi a parlargli. Non si poteva permettersi di vagheggiare un tale incontro mentre guidava per spedire un’azione precisa che aveva una scadenza imminente. Invece la brama vaporosa traboccava dai confini della sua attenzione, rivolta alla strada, e che la portava sempre in avanti inesorabilmente per andare ad effettuare la spedizione del denaro. La foschia si radunava e si disfaceva a seconda delle sue emozioni che guizzavano, reggevano e poi si imbattevano abbattuti nella corsa selvatica della macchina verso l’ufficio postale. O stava andando in banca?

Si ricordò di non aver portato fuori la differenziata mentre cercava di attingere nei suoi ricordi più sepolti la ragione per cui quell'uomo sulla panca non le era sembrato una semplice inezia dell’azzardo. Era uno sforzo impegnativo e si rese conto che aveva schiacciato il pulsante sbagliato. Avrebbe dovuto acceso l’altro indicatore per segnalare che stava svoltando. Così, mentre progrediva a tentoni nella memoria annebbiata da una confusione travolgente, decise di schiarirsi le idee, tornare indietro e crivellare lo sconosciuto di domande inopportune. Aveva lavorato sodo il giorno prima, ed ulteriormente era di rado che le arrivasse di arrendersi a un impulso meno che sbrigativo. Sotto la sua corazza di impiegata infallibile c’era qualcosa di grezzo ed al contempo inafferrabile, come un graffio. Lei avrebbe dovuto spaccare in due il nodo per riuscire a svelarne il significato, dipanando così il filo che indicava la via d’uscita. Mentre rimuginava tutti questi pensieri storditi percepì un intralcio insuperabile in quanto scrittrice insofferente della mitezza con cui reagiva in realtà, malgrado la pioggia che le scrosciasse dentro.

Translation: Gianni Rodari on Humility

Today I was looking for some simple fun, but since I am incapable of having complete simple fun without a lesson to learn or to impart, I have translated two texts from The Book of Errors, Il libro degli errori in Italian, so this is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of The Best Man in the World and Who Is In Charge? by the famous Italian children's author Gianni Rodari. His texts often feature plays on words and little lessons in morality or grammar, or sometimes both, dispensed with great humor. Both of these stories spoke to me on this cloudy day at the end of October, the first truly chilly day, as the leaves turn bright reds and yellows, the colors of rust. I thought we could all take a moment to gather our thoughts and reflect on what truly matters in life.  

Oscar Kokoschka, Self-Portrait of a "Degenerate Artist" 1937

The Best Man in the World, L'uomo più bravo del Mondo in Italian language, translated by Bora Mici

I know the story of the best man in the world, but I don’t know if you will like it. Should I tell it to you anyways? I’ll tell it.

His name was First, and ever since he was little, he had decided, "First in name and in actuality. I will always be the first in everything."

And instead he was always last.

He was the last one to be afraid, the last one to run away, the last one to speak lies, the last one to do mean things. In fact, he was so behind everyone that he did not even do anything mean.

His friends all came in first at something. One of them was the best thief in the city, another one was the best at being arrogant, a third was the most inane on the block. He, on the other hand, was the last one to say silly things, and when it was his turn to say something senseless, he kept quiet.

He was the best man in the world, but he was the last one to get wind of it. He was so behind that he did not even know it at all.

Pablo Picasso, The Happy Family, 1917

Who Is In Charge? Chi commanda? in Italian language, translated by Bora Mici

I asked a little girl, “Who is in charge at home?”
She keeps quiet and looks at me.
“Come on, tell me, who is in charge at your house, mommy or daddy?”
The girl just looks at me and does not respond.
“So, will you tell me? Tell me who is the boss.”
Again, she looks at me perplexed.
“Don’t you know what it means to be in charge?”
Yes, she does know.
“Don’t you know what boss means?”
Yes, she does know.
“What’s the problem then?”

She looks at me and keeps quiet. Should I get angry? Or maybe she is mute, the poor thing. Now she runs away, indeed. She runs all the way to the top of the field, and from up there, she turns around, sticks her tongue out and shouts toward me, laughing, “No one is in charge because me love each other.”

Translation: Alberto Moravia, The Disobedience

The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymous Bosch, 1490-1500

This is Bora Mici's original Italian to English translation of an excerpt from Alberto Moravia's novella La disubbidienza, or The Disobedience in English. An adolescent boy goes through a crisis of metamorphosis that leads to a prolonged period of convalescence. Luca slowly rejects everything he has been given and taught by his parents and his teachers only to be reborn and to relearn to live through an acceptance and a newfound sense of belonging. His morose dejection and symbolic suicide, which he initially conceives as a game of progressive material renunciation, give way to a transformation in which he learns to trust and take pleasure in life. It's interesting to me that Moravia devotes the greatest part of his text to the unraveling of his character, describing it in great symbolic detail through his rejection of the rituals of the everyday life of a schoolboy, born into a well-to-do, loving, bourgeois family. The end of the novella, when the character finally begins to experience the joy of being alive, reads more as a resolution than as an important step in Luca's transformation journey, even though the author does stop to examine it over a few pages. I think it's important to describe what makes for a happy existence in just as much detail as what causes internal crises because both are significant and real parts of life. Is beautifully rendered suffering the only realm of great literature, leaving the rest to self-help books and religion? Or can literature reinvent itself to incorporate these other aspects of being in this world more than just symbolically or momentarily? 

Excerpt from The Disobedience by Alberto Moravia, translated from Italian into English by Bora Mici        

It was the beginning of December. One afternoon, Luca left home carrying all the money he had in his coat pockets, silver coins and small bills. The rain had stopped after many days. The sky was clean but dark, a smoky and even color, as if the usual blue had been replaced not by the shifting gray clouds that liquefy themselves into rain or are pushed away by the wind, but by another, more still, and gloomier hue that would last forever. There was that sense of depletion that follows storms in the fresh, windless air; but crows were flying low, seemingly warning with their aquatic caws, that it would rain again. Looking up a the sky and fiddling around with the money in his pocket, Luca headed toward the public garden, located not too far from his home. He knew that at that hour no one would be there and that he could carry out his plan without worrying about being observed. He went through the gate and started making his way into the garden. He knew where he was headed, a place which was tied to a kind of childhood obsession in his memory. It was a small plaza surrounded by tall leafy oak trees on three sides and, on the fourth, by an ornate wall with nooks, columns and and roman epitaphs. On the other side of the wall stretched out the zoo, and the roaring of the hungry beasts could often be heard. When he was a child, his governesses had frequently brought Luca to walk in that melancholy and lonely plaza, with white gravel framed by the dark fronds of the bronzy oak trees. While his governess sat on an overturned capital and read a book, Luca climbed all the way to the iron grille of the fake windows and tried to look down at the zoo. Otherwise, he thoroughly searched the wooded area at the margins of the plaza; it was very shady, with its blanket of many layers of dead leaves on the surface, shiny and wet underneath; here and there grew nettle bushes that seemed to nourish their light green color with all that rotting stuff, which filled Luca with a great disgust. One day, at his house, the governess and the maid had begun discussing a crime. A young man had been killed, and his body had not been found; but some bloody clothes and and the place where they had been located made people think that the dead body had been buried in one of the many gardens in the city. Luca had listened to the maid’s comments for a long time without saying anything, pretending to play, and finally had asked her: “Why did they kill him?” The woman had responded in a sententious and bitter tone: “Because he was nice and good…that’s why…because he was not made for this world.” And since this phrase had made an impression on him, Luca asked nothing further. But later, he could not tell why, he had gotten it into his head that the young man’s dead body had been buried in that same plaza where he went walking so often with his governess. This conclusion did not have any basis in reality, not even a far-fetched or tiny one; but maybe, it was precisely because of that that it seemed irrefutable. His mind fixated on this terrible but fascinating secret, and as he walked around the plaza, he liked being able to look at the precise place where the dead body was decomposing underground. It was a corner between the ornate wall and the woods at the foot of a tall oak tree; and Luca would often stop to look at that place, searching with his foot through the dead leaves or digging up the soft dirt with a stick. He knew that the dead man lay under there and would not have given up his conviction for anything. On the other hand, by turning it over in his mind, he had reconstructed the crime in his own fashion and had even imagined what the victim and the killers looked like. The former must have been a nice and good young man, just like the woman had said, but of a special kind of goodness and niceness, which were not at all ostentatious but secret, invisible to most; as for the latter, Luca saw them exactly in the same way he saw the people on the street, normal and anonymous pedestrians. Maybe they had killed him to steal his possessions, as the newspapers wrote; but in reality, according to what the woman had said, it had been because of his goodness and niceness, in order to remove him from this world, to which he did not belong. Thinking about the young man and his death, he felt a horrifying attraction and a great pity at the same time. Then, with the passage of time and nearly without realizing it, he had imagined that he was the victim and that the body buried under the oak tree was his own. This doubling, inspired by an unknown fantastical infatuation for the person and destiny of the victim, seemed natural to him and was not the first. At other moments, while reading adventure books, he had dreamed of being a heroic and fortunate character. What was exceptional was that this was the first time he had fallen in love with such a lugubrious fate; and he darkly sensed that, unlike in other similar doublings, this was due to deep reasons, to an obsession that expressed everything to which his life was devoted. As often happens, such an obsession had gradually become lighter over the years, just like the fog that dissipates in the sun, and had changed into a desolate memory that had finally vanished into forgetfulness.

But now, having gone back to the plaza, the obsession was coming back, though in a different way. He knew now that no one had ever been buried in the plaza; but sacralized in his imagination, the plaza still remained that place where something dead had to be buried. He would bury his money in the very place where he had once thought the victim lay; and in burying the money, in a certain way, he would also bury himself; or at least that part of himself that was attached to money. Also, memories of buried treasure in adventurous settings combined themselves vaguely with these more grave resolutions, echoes of the things he’d read in early adolescence.

He mainly had in mind The Gold-Bug by Poe. But as a kind of alibi, destined to remove any tragedy from the sacrifice, and keep it within the limits of the game. Besides the money, he had also brought with him a little blue glass bottle, inside of which he had placed a map with the directions for finding his small buried treasure. Not knowing much about cryptography, Luca had contented himself with writing the directions in academic jargon, adding an f to every syllable. Just like in the short story, he would hide this vial in the hollow of one of the oak trees that surrounded the plaza.

Looking ahead, he crossed a big square meadow. The oak trees in the wooded area swayed back and forth at the end of this opening, their dark trunks resembling a crowd about to go into a panic, undulating before dispersing. Beyond the oak trees, in the pale whiteness of the gravel coursed by the daylight, you could glimpse the plaza with the decorative wall. He entered the wooded area, enjoying walking on the upright layer of dead leaves. In the underwood’s silence, he heard a subtle bird’s call; and then, turning around, he saw the bird itself, big and black, jumping up and down on the ground and then taking flight to hide among the leaves. He even noticed that, while he was making his way through the woods, he felt a sense of liberty; and he thought that it was nice to be able to act, even if it meant destroying his own life; this is precisely what acting meant; doing things according to our ideas rather than out of necessity.

There was no one in the plaza. He walked up and down it for a while thinking about the time when he had been certain about the buried dead man, and it seemed to him that the lonely and slightly sinister atmosphere that had seduced him when he was a child was intact again. There was the decorative wall with its empty nooks, the broken epitaphs, the cornices that were coming apart. There were the large windows, with their alcoves, and the big iron bars. He climbed up to one of those windows and looked at the other side into the zoo. He saw the thick foliage of a bay leaf bush, but through the leaves, it seemed to him to glimpse the green and golden plumage of a large exotic bird. A faraway roar startled him; then, as always, the beasts were hungry. He climbed down from the window and approached the designated place. The same oak tree was still there, old, hollowed out with a gaping hole, with the main branch hanging out over the plaza and leaning onto a brick support wall, like the arm of a cripple leans on a crutch. The dead man lay under the oak tree. All of a sudden, the cruel and pathetic sentiment of having been buried himself came back to him, him, killed without any pity.

He went on his knees under the tree and started digging a hole with his pocketknife. Under the dead leaves, the ground was light and wet, full of rotting pieces of bark. He displaced the dirt and then removed it with his hand and put it to the side in a small hill. When he had finished digging the hole, he slowly removed the bills from his pocket and started tearing them one by one, letting the pieces fall to the bottom of the hole. He realized that he felt a deep hatred for that money, like you hate someone who has oppressed you, and against whom you have rebelled. The idea that his parents had so much respect for money and that, without knowing it, for so many years, he had prayed in front of a safe full of that money, also contributed to his resentment. He felt that he was vindicated for all those prayers in tearing up the money, making reparations. But money was sacred too; even if in an entirely different way from the sacred image it was hiding behind while he was praying. It was sacred because of those royal effigies and those symbols that guaranteed its value; and it was sacred because it could have meant happiness for so many people. For example, for the poor man on the street, who always extended his hand toward him when he was going to school in the morning. But giving it to a poor man would have ultimately meant respecting it, reaffirming its value. And instead, Luca really wanted to destroy it, not just in his own desires, but also in reality. Loathed idol, as he felt, nothing further was necessary beyond that degrading tearing up to desacralize it forever.

When he had finished ripping up the bills, he mixed up the pieces and then, he pulled an envelope full of silver coins out of his pocket and shoved it at the bottom of the hole on top of the bills. He carried out these actions with a sense of grave and aware rigor, even if tinged by a mortal sadness. The man who had been killed and buried came back to his mind and once again that strange pity for himself overcame him. In the meantime, he filled the hole with dirt. When he was finished, he evened out the ground and covered everything with the carpet of dead leaves.

He stood up, cleaning his wet and dirty knees, and then he remembered the turquoise glass bottle and Poe’s short story. But this time, he did not have the courage to carry out that part of the plan. He felt a lugubrious and enchanted sadness, and he could understand that, after all, it had not been a game. He was not the bloodthirsty and insensitive pirate at the end of a life of adventure and freedom; that plaza was not the deserted coastline of a savage land; ultimately, no one would have ever discovered his meagre treasure of torn up bills and coins with joy. His own mediocrity, that of the place and of the treasure, all of a sudden seemed to him like the best proof of the strenuous seriousness of what he was doing and of the impossibility to delude himself by attributing to it the value of a game. He took the little bottle out of his pocket, opened it, took out the piece of paper and tore it into tiny pieces. He crushed the bottle under his heel. As he was leaving, it seemed to him that he had acted like a madman, he was just unable to understand it out yet.

….

The train lunged forward, and this thrust seemed to him like a delightful contrast to his own inertia. What else was the train to him but that which had a direction, a goal, a will, just like the nurses’s passion and his parents’ concern? All of a sudden, he thought that it would have been nice to keep going like this for all of his life. Greater, if not more mysterious forces would have followed the train, the nurse, his parents, and he would have believed in them with the same trust and the same delight. He saw himself as a soldier in torn up clothes, wounded and hungry, part of an army, whose leaders and whose war, he knew nothing about, a beggar thrust into a poverty he was neither responsible for nor aware of; rich of a wealth of which he had not earned a single penny; elevated to a power he had not sought out; a priest in a church whose rites he did not know; dead in the end because of a catastrophe he had neither foreseen nor wanted to avoid. The noisy shifting of the train on the switches, the regular and fast beating of the wheels, the whistle that tore through the silence of the countryside, the very landscape fleeting backwards on the other side of the glass windows, stimulated the rhythm of his thoughts. Yes, now he had become part of a vast, whirling and powerful current in which he was just a blade of grass that could do nothing but allow itself to be dragged along, barely hoping to float all the way to the end. And he abandoned himself to it trustingly, with his eyes closed, like he had abandoned himself a few days ago into the nurse’s arms.
….

But the train, always following the slope, came out into an opening and, at the bottom of the gorge, above two smaller mountains completely covered by forests, Luca saw the towering summit of a mountain, snow white, that seemed very tall to him. The clouds had dissipated in the sky, and the sun was shining on that faraway snow making it glow. At that time, he did not even know why, at the sight of that intact whiteness, majestic and solitary, a sudden exaltation took over him. The idea of being transported and allowing himself to be transported trustingly toward an unknown destination came back to him; but this time, it was partially modified by the new sense of being transported and allowing himself to be transported toward that snow that was so high and so white. He started looking at the mountain with his eyes wide open; and the more he looked at it, the more he felt grow in him that trusting drunken exaltation. He understood that there was no objective reason to feel so happy just because he could see the snowcapped summit of a mountain; and yet, he could not help but realize that it was precisely that view that was putting into motion the mechanism of his deepest hope, which had been blocked for so long. Almost without intending, he turned to his mother and asked, “And the nurse?”
….

Luca closed his eyes. At that same instant, the train entered into a tunnel, letting out a long mournful whistle. When Luca reopened his eyes, he only saw darkness, while a wet wind blew into his face from the tenebrous walls, mixed with spraying water and vapor clouds. Echoing in the tunnel’s vault, the clanging of the wheels seemed to him like a monotonous and exalted voice that was always repeating the same words. It also seemed to him that he could make out these words. They were the same ones, full of hope, that had accompanied him day after day in his slow healing after he had woken up from his delirium; and he understood that, from now on, not just the bustling of a train in a tunnel or the whiteness of the snow on top of a mountain, but all things, would have a meaning for him and would speak to him in their mute language. Then, with another whistle, the train reemerged into the light of day.

Translation: Simone de Beauvoir, America Day by Day

A rainy evening in NYC, Marion Wolcott Post, 1939

This is Bora Mici’s original French to English translation of the end of Simone de Beauvoir’s travel journal America Day by Day, or L’Amérique au jour le jour in French. In 1947, Simone de Beauvoir spent four months travelling around the US, and she was most impressed by New York City, where she spent most of her time. She was struck by how intellectuals and artists in the US were so marginalized and so lonely. And American idealism is something she muses over, both praising it and criticizing it in this particular passage and throughout the book. In light of a philosophy podcast (Parole de philosophe) I recently listened to about George Orwell’s 1984 and the importance of Newspeak and thought crimes in explaining the current climate of irresolvable contradictions, in which the crises of individual privacy and the culture wars are slowly eroding factual reality and the reliability of science, I reflected on Simone de Beauvoir’s text and how American idealism has created a post-truth society where individuals are more and more disenfranchised by rising new technologies, social media and clickbait political messaging. In wanting to impose our will upon the facts, we have created a grand illusion of persistent denial and have lost our grasp on what is a shared reality. Are we all being brainwashed or can we think for ourselves? Do we still have a commitment to truth or do we think everything is relative and open to interpretation? How do we distinguish trends from what really matters? What kind of a world do we want to live in and what values do we want to impart to each other and to future generations?

L’Amérique au jour le jour, excerpt translated from French into English by Bora Mici

Columbus Circle, Broadway, Times Square. Four months have gone by. It’s the same crowds, the same taxis, cars, the streaming of the lights. The drug-stores and the high-rises have not lost any of their magic. I know why I love them. There is a fascinating mirage that takes shape through the conveniences and generous abundance of this civilization: that of an existence that is not consumed through its maintenance and that could be entirely used with the goal of surpassing it. Eating, commuting, clothing oneself, all this is done without any effort and without spending too much time: starting from there, anything could happen. My dizzying attraction to America, where the nearby memory of the pioneers still roams, is that it seems like the realm of transcendence; contracted in time, magnificently expansive across space, its history is that of the creation of a world. That’s what moves me in the high-rises: they shout out that man is not a stagnant being, but that he is momentum, expansiveness and conquest; and in the shameless profusion of the drug-stores, there is a poetry that is just as hopelessly passionate as in a baroque church; crude being has been caught in the trap of man’s desires; he affirms the power of his imagination upon matter. New York, Chicago reflect the existence of this demiurge with imperious dreams, and that is why they are the most human and exciting cities that I know. There is no room here for the gloomy wisdom of the petit-bourgeois in his slippers whose only project, as he expresses it for example in the famous sonnet on happiness “is to wait for death pleasantly at home.” Dedicating yourself to such a wait is already death. In this way, Americans are very much alive: they live with life in mind and not death; they are not satisfied with inertia; everyone is judged based on their actions; in order to be you have to do. The large metallic bridges, the buildings, Grand Central, Park Avenue, the airports, the roads, the mines are the confirmation of this faith.

It will be difficult for me to be separated from these great visions of hope; however, I also know their false attraction. Life is exhausted through its maintenance in this country too. “I have been out since 6 a.m.,” a taxi driver was telling me around 10 p.m. yesterday. “Imagine how badly I want to go home.” I remember the rush towards the New Jersey ferryboat. All of my friends have told me how difficult the workdays are in this city where the distances are so great; particularly women who have to keep up a job and a household and are worn out when evening comes; often I have seen them too exhausted to say yes to going out or to enjoy it. I have also understood that people don’t drink so much out of obsession; they need a pick-me-up at the end of the afternoon. And the most common cause of death in New York is heart disease.

That’s not all. One has the exciting feeling that anything could happen. But what happens in reality? What do people do with their time and the money they’ve earned? It goes without saying that I have not met any of the leading classes, those that study, invent, go into business, fight; but they only make up a small minority. Most Americans are similar to the ones with whom I have rubbed shoulders: they allow their life to go round in circles. They have neither the taste nor a feeling for collective life; they are not concerned about their individual fate either. That is where the sadness I have felt among them comes from: this world full of generous promise crushes them; and its splendor soon becomes sterile because there are no men to dominate it. All civilizations offer man the diversion of “the banality of daily life,” but what is specific here is the extent to which this diversion is systematically organized. Neither his education nor the social setting in which he grows exist in such a way as to enable the individual to discover his interiority. He becomes conscious of himself not only as a body made of flesh and blood but as an organism that protects and prolongs an arsenal of mechanical devices: he goes from one floor to another in an elevator, he commutes on the subway, speaks on the phone, writes with a typewriter, sweeps with a vacuum cleaner; canned food factories, refrigerators, electric stovetops come between his food and his stomach; between his sexual desires and their satisfaction, there’s a whole paraphernalia of moral principles and hygienic practices. Society gets a hold of him as soon as childhood. He learns to look outside of himself, in the other, as a model for his behaviors; that’s where what’s called American conformity comes from. In reality, individuals are just as different, just as separated from one another in the new as in the old world, but for the former, it is easier to find the means to escape their singularity and to avoid the sentiment of the “original abandonment;” or maybe they don’t find it, but they look for it more obstinately. Like everyone else, they experience boredom, dissatisfaction, doubt, but they try to rationalize their anxiety by setting out their “problems;” instead of relying on their solitude, trying to surpass it by deepening it, they cling resolutely to what’s given; they see the source of values and truth in things and not in themselves; their own presence is just a fluke to which they don’t want to attach any importance. That is why they are interested in the crude result, not in the mental process that begets it, just like professor T’s students who did not want the proof of a formula. In the same way, they think they can isolate the part from the whole, as shown by the investment in specialization that is prevalent in technology, science and culture. In Hegelian terms, we can say that the negation of the subject leads to the triumph of the understanding on the Spirit, that is to say the triumph of abstraction. And that is why in this country that seems so inclined toward the concrete, the word abstraction has so often been on my lips; the idolized object loses its human truth and becomes an abstract thing, for concrete reality is that which includes both an object and a subject. That is the paradox of all positivisms, of all pseudo-realisms that depart from man in order to affirm things; they miss the thing itself and only produce concepts.

What I have often felt in listening to their jazz, in talking with them, is that the time itself in which they live is abstract. They respect the past, but as an embalmed monument. The idea of a living past that is integrated in the present is foreign to them. They only want to know a present that is cut off from the flow of time; and the future in which they project themselves is one that can follow mechanically, not one in which a slow maturation or sudden explosion implies unpredictable risks; they believe in the future of a bridge, of an economic plan, but not in that of an art or a revolution. Their time is “the time of the physicist,” a pure exteriority that is coupled with that of space. And because they refuse duration, they also refuse quality; it’s not just for economic reasons that “artisanal arts” don’t exist in America; even during free time as part of domestic life, one does not seek a qualitative achievement; one cooks food and conserves fruits as quickly as possible; in all fields of life, you have to hurry up out of fear that the result is already out of date at the moment it has been attained. Cut off from the past and future, the present is without substance; there is nothing more foreign to Americans than the idea of seeing the moment as compounded time, a mirror of eternity, and of grasping it in order to understand eternal values or truths; the content of a moment seems precarious to them just like the moment itself. Because they do not accept that truths and values become, they also don’t know how to preserve them in the movement that surpasses them; they disown them. History is a great cemetery here; men, works and ideas die almost as soon as they are born. And every individual existence also tastes like death; from one minute to another, the present is just an honorary past; you have to constantly refill it in order to hide this curse upon it; that’s why Americans like speed, alcohol, thrillers, sensational news; they feverishly ask for one thing after another because they don’t rest on anything. But here, like everywhere else, life repeats itself day after day; so people have fun with gadgets, and because they lack real projects, they cultivate hobbies; through this obsession, they pretend to make daily habits their own by their own choice. Sports, movies, comics offer diversions. But ultimately one has to contend precisely with what one was trying to escape: the dry crux of American life is boredom.

Boredom: loneliness too. I’ve mentioned it a thousand times and it’s true: the people I rub shoulders with are alone. Because they are too afraid of and run away from their original solitude, because they run away from themselves, they do not really have a good grasp of themselves; so how could they give of themselves? How could they receive in return? They are, however, open and welcoming, they are capable of tenderness, passion, sentimentality, politeness; but it is rare for them to know how to build a deep love, a lasting friendship. They are far from being heartless, and yet, their relationships remain superficial and cold. They are far from lacking vitality, momentum, generosity, and yet, they still don’t know how to dive into the enterprise of their lives; it’s for the same reasons. Being Julien Sorel or Rastignac requires taking charge of oneself and not looking away from oneself; there are very few real ambitious people here; they idolize heroes, capriciously by the way, but when it comes to oneself, one does not wish to do more than rise one or two steps in the social hierarchy; at most, if a young man wishes to distinguish himself, it will be as a citizen and not as a man; he will not dream of standing out from the given world, a dream that is symbolized by the treetop on which Julien Sorel is perched, the summit from which Rastignac arrogantly looks down at Paris. These desires of grandeur are a source of many disappointments and often underscore petty faults, which Americans do not have; they possess the virtues that come from an indifference as to themselves; they are neither bitter, nor haunted, nor mean, nor jealous, nor egotistical. But they do not have an internal fire. As much as they have gotten lost in the object, they find themselves without an object. They experience the “original abandonment,” which their civilization pretends to mask, in a different way. It is even this contrast between their secret fragility and the things they’ve build with so much pride that makes them so pathetic.

It seems to me that it is because of the abstract atmosphere in which they live that money assumes such a disproportionate importance here. These people are neither miserly, nor petty; on the contrary, these are the faults for which they criticize the French; they do not desire money in order to accumulate it, they spend easily, and for the sake of others as much as for themselves; giving comes naturally to them; they are not materialists either; they do not go after great fortunes in order to satisfy extravagant appetites. If money is for many of them the only goal, it’s that all of the other values have been reduced to this common denominator; it has become the measure of all human accomplishment, when it is only an abstract sign of real wealth. It is because they do not know what makes up and affirms concrete values that Americans are satisfied by this empty symbol. In reality, they are not satisfied by it; excepting the high-flying capitalists, they are as burdened by their dollars as by their free time activities. I guess it’s one of the reasons why American women have come to stand in for idols: the dollar is too gloomy of a god. Man is not unhappy to justify his work and his earnings by dedicating them to another being of flesh and blood. But the cult of the woman, just like the cult of money, is nothing but a stand-in. The destiny of the American man would not be meaningful unless he were able to give a concrete content to the abstract entity that is his freedom. Here we have a vicious cycle because, in order to fill this empty freedom, it would be necessary for him to change the political and social conditions in which he lives and which are the ones that beget his inertia. Certainly, thousands of Americans work toward breaking this cycle. And of course there are also thousands of other Americans to whom my reflection here do not apply at all or only a little. But as long as we can allow for generalizations, most of them are victims of this machinery: running away from boredom and loneliness gets them stuck in boredom and loneliness; because they wanted to get lost in the world, they have lost their grasp upon it.

One of the characteristics that has most stood out to me is to what extent they refuse to question both the world and themselves. They need to believe that Good and Evil are clear-cut categories and that the Good will easily be achieved. I had sensed this from the beginning of my stay. But recently, I have had clear confirmations of it. Among other things, I caused a scandal among practically all of the students, without exception, at Columbia, Yale, Harvard, when I spoke to them about the dilemma presented in Rousset’s book, les Jours de notre mort. On what criteria should rely those who are in a position of responsibility for saving the lives of two or three of their friends who have been deported to a concentration camp? They stubbornly responded: “No one has the right to decide on the life of human beings” or “What right do they have to choose?” If one retorted that not choosing would have meant not saving anyone, that at any rate, the positive act of saving two lives was more valuable than a murderous abstention, they would shut down; I believe that, as for them, they would have preferred to let the whole group perish instead of taking up a difficult initiative. Or rather, they could not even imagine a situation where they would have had to admit evil, which, however, is the only way to fight it. One refuses, for example, even when one shows good will, to establish clearly the current conflict between justice and freedom and the need to come up with a compromise between these two ideas; one prefers to deny the existence of injustice and the lack of freedom. One does not want to admit that the complexity of the factors in action creates problems that go beyond all virtuous solutions. Evil is just a residue that we will be able to eliminate gradually through a more rigorous application of institutions which are healthy in themselves. That’s what so many idealistic souls believe; and if this optimism seems too easy, then we will choose to create an obsession that must be eradicated: the Soviet Union is Evil. All we have to do is destroy it, and we will find ourselves again within the realm of the Good. This is what explains that these very students, who were so respectful of human beings, quietly discuss nuking Russia.

If I have formulated so many criticisms while thinking again about all these things, why is it still so painful for me to leave? First of all, one could formulate the same criticisms about our European civilization, about the French civilization, which I will return to, other, different criticisms but equally depressing ones. We have other ways of being unhappy, inauthentic, that’s all: my judgements about Americans during this journey are not at all accompanied by a feeling of superiority. I see what they are lacking, I do not forget what we are lacking. And beyond what I love and what I hate about it, there is something fascinating about this country: it’s the innumerable chances and risks it runs after, and the world with it. All human problems are at play at a mind boggling scale: and it’s largely the solution that will be found here that will retrospectively shine a light of pathos upon them or drown them in the night of indifference. Yes, I believe that is what moves me so much just before my departure: here is one of the places in the world where the future of mankind is being played out. To like or not to like America: these worlds have no meaning. America is a battlefield, and we can only become passionate about the fight it wages within itself and its stakes would have us forego all measure.

Translation: Excerpt from Zeno's Conscience, Part 1

René Magritte, Le donateur heureux, 1966

This is Bora Mici's original translation from Italian into English of an excerpt from the 20th-century novel La Coscienza di Zeno, Zeno's Conscience, by Italo Svevo. The following are actually two excerpts published as one continuous reflection on life, whether it is fair or unfair, good or bad, and all the things in between. The main character, Zeno, is a person full of good resolve, who has lived his life in between the extremes he describes and who eventually comes to the conclusion that he has always lived according to love and that has saved him, despite his many vacillations, distractedness and little jealousies. The novel is a somewhat picaresque journey into Zeno's reflections as he finds himself in quirky and pathos-laden situations which he manages with improvised dexterity.

Excerpt from La Coscienza di Zeno, Part 1,  translated by Bora Mici   

The next day, the obstetrician who was taking care of Ada asked for the help of Dr. Paoli, who immediately pronounced the word that I had not been able to say: Morbus Basedowii. Guido told me about it, describing the illness in a learned fashion and sympathizing with Ada who was suffering a lot. Without any ill will, I thought his compassion and science were not great. He assumed a heartfelt look when he spoke of his wife, but when he dictated letters for Carmen, he displayed all the joy of living and imparting lessons; he also thought that the man that had lent his name to the illness was the Basedow who had been Goethe’s friend, while when I looked up that illness in the encyclopedia, I immediately figured out that it was someone else.

What a greatly important illness that of Basedow! For me it was most important to have learned about it. I studied it in various monographs and thought I had just discovered the secret of our organism. I think that in many people, just as with me, there are periods of time when certain ideas occupy and encumber the whole mind, shutting out other things. But the same thing happens to society too! First it lives on Darwin, after having lived on Robespierre and Napoleon, and then on Liebig or maybe Leopardi, when it’s not Bismarck that rules over the whole cosmos!

But I am the only one who lived on Basedow! It seemed to me that it had brought to the fore the roots of life, which is made in the following way: all organisms can be distributed on a line, on one end of which is the illness of Basedow, which implies the most ample, crazy consumption of the vital force at a precipitous pace, a rapid heartbeat, and at the other end are the organisms who are impoverished because of an organic avarice, destined to perish of an illness that would seem to be exhaustion but in fact is sedentariness. The right balance between the two illnesses is at the center and is improperly designated as good health, which is nothing but a stopover. And between the center and one extremity—that of Basedow—fall all of those who are exasperated and whose lives are consumed by great desires, ambitions, pleasures and work too, and on the other those who only put crumbs on their plate and save in preparation for that abject longevity that would seem a burden to society. It turns out that this burden is also necessary. Society goes forth because the Basedowans push it forward, and it does not fall because the others hold it in place. I am convinced that if we wanted to build a society, we could have done so in a much simpler way, but this is how it’s made, with the goiter at one of its ends and edema at the other, and there’s no fixing it. In the middle are those who are starting to develop either a goiter or an edema and along the whole line, for all of humanity, absolute good health is missing.

…………………………

“Life is hard and unfair!”

It seemed to me that I was not allowed to say a single word that might suggest any kind of judgement on my part about him and Ada. But it seemed to me that I still needed to say something. He had ended up speaking about life and had saddled it with two predicates that were not guilty of excessive originality. I was able to come up with something even better precisely because I had decided to criticize what he had said. So many times we say things following the sound of the words, as they relate to each other by chance. Then, as soon as you try to see if what was being said was worth the breath expended, sometimes you discover that the random association has given birth to an idea. I said, “Life is neither good or bad, but original!”

When I thought about it, it seemed to me like I had said something important. Labeled in such a way, life seemed so new that I began looking at it as if I had seen it for the first time with its gaseous bodies, fluids and solids. If I had described it to someone who was not used to it and therefore lacked our common sense, he would have been breathless before the enormous structure without a purpose. He would have asked me, “But how do you put up with it?” And having been informed about every single detail, from those celestial bodies hanging up there so that they can be seen but not touched all the way to the mystery of death, he would have certainly exclaimed: “Very original!”

“Life is original,” laughed Guido. “Where did you read that?”

I did not think it was important to reassure him that I had not read it anywhere because otherwise my words would have been less significant to him. But the more I thought about it, the more original I found life. And it was not even necessary to look at it from the outside to see that it was put together in such a bizarre way. It was enough to remember all the things us men expect of life in order to see it as so strange as to arrive to the conclusion that maybe man ended up inside of it by mistake and that does not belong there.

Without having colluded about the direction our walk would take, we came to the incline of via Belvedere just like before. Once he had found the short wall on which he had laid down that other night, Guido climbed on it and lay down just like before. He was singling softly, perhaps always oppressed by his thoughts, and he certainly meditated on the inexorable numbers of his accounting. As for me, I remembered that I had wanted to kill him in that very place, and comparing my feelings then with my current ones, I was admiring once again the incomparable originality of life. However, I suddenly remembered that just a little while ago, our of an ambitious whim, I had railed against the poor Guido, and on one of the worst days of his life. I dedicated myself to a search: without great pain I was witnessing the torture that my careful accounting was inflicting on Guido, and a curious doubt came over me after a curious memory. The doubt was whether I was good or bad. The memory was provoked suddenly by the doubt, which was not new: I saw myself as a child and I was dressed (I am certain) in short skirts, and I raised my face to ask my mother who was smiling: “And I good or bad?” At that time, the doubt must have been inspired in the child’s mind by many of those who had called him good and the many others whom, jokingly, had qualified him as bad. There was no reason to wonder why the child had been burdened by that dilemma. Oh, the incomparable originality of life! It was amazing that the doubt that had already been inflicted on the child in such a puerile way had not been resolved by the adult, who had already crossed into midlife.

In the foggy night, exactly in that place where I had wanted to kill him once, that doubt deeply anguished me. Certainly when the child had felt that doubt err in his mind, his head only recently liberated from the bonnet, he had not suffered much because children are told that one can be cured from being bad. In order to free myself from so much anguish, I wanted to believe it again, and I succeeded.

If I had not succeeded, I would have had to cry for Guido and for myself, and for our most sad life. The resolution renewed the illusion! The resolution was to stand by Guido’s side and to collaborate with him in the growth of his business, on which his life and the life of his family depended, and all this without any kind of profit for myself. I glimpsed the possibility of rushing, desiring and studying for him, and I accepted the possibility of becoming, in order to help him, a great, an enterprising, a brilliant negotiator. That’s what I thought on that foggy night of this very original life!

The Man Who Wore the News

Barbara Kruger, We don't need another hero, 1987

This is Bora Mici's original text, written in Italian, which may or may not contain a few minor mistakes, and which will be difficult to translate with an AI translator. It presents a parody of a person who does not exist in real life by employing vocabulary learned while listening to the news in Italian and to Italian-language podcasts. As a result, it might give you the impression that the character the story describes is modeled on real-life characters, since he embodies the spirit of the times, but I assure you he does not exist. The text began as a mere vocabulary-learning exercise and transformed into an endeavor of literary ambition. I had tried this kind of exercise once before using French vocabulary on a French test at the University of Maryland, and I found that it gave me a great amount of playful liberty with words. For this particular piece of writing, I just used the words in the order they appeared in my notes, which also represents a certain kind of underlying logical structure, since the sources I drew the unknown vocabulary from mostly discussed current events from around the world.  

Giovanni è una persona smaccatamente attendista. Il suo attendismo è inviso ai suoi amici che non vogliono più fare da sponda per lui. Hanno cercato di ricompattarsi come gruppo, ma in fin dei conti, Giovanni pensa soltanto a se stesso. Una volta ha fatto costruire uno striscione sul quale era scritto “Giovanni prima di tutti gli altri”, proprio come quei leader populisti che vogliono mettere in avanti la priorità del proprio partito e di conseguenza del proprio paese. Gli amici di Giovanni hanno deciso di fare un piccolo smistamento e provare di toglierlo dal gruppo. Hanno deciso di andare al mare con lui, di metterlo su un gommone col maglioncino giallo che gli aveva confezionato la nonna, molto amata da lui, di dargli alcune zucchine grigliate per poter nutrirsi durante lo smarrimento meritato, ma lui ha capito subito il tranello in cui lo cacciavano ed ha intimato che non fosse coerente con la loro amicizia disinteressata e che non valeva. E poi sarebbe stata una soluzione contingente. Invece di andare al mare, Giovanni ha intrapreso di leggere un testo ostico, ad alta voce, e farne una carrellata per gli amici e mandarli a quel paese perché potessero scovare dalla sabbia della sua coscienza un tesoro facoltoso di cui lui era già prettamente assuefatto. E doveroso menzionare che si rifaceva ai suoi maestri più colti di scienze umane, compresa la psicologia e la letteratura. I suoi amici avevano pensato di proporgli così un capestro da cui non poteva più slegarsi, ma lui si dimostrò propositivo, al netto, dobbiamo aggiungere, di voler sempre ribaltare le carte in tavola. Non si sapeva più dove lo avesse celato quel gruzzolo di sapienza che aveva acquisito col tempo adagio adagio, e forse sarebbe stato il caso di fare appello ad un umarell per dare le istruzioni che occorrevano ai ragazzi. Per forza, si trovavano costretti ad edificare il loro baluardo di avanguardia contro la sapienza faticosa e preponderante di Giovanni. Di recente, lo ritenevano piuttosto istrionico e non del tutto canonico, anche se Giovanni gli esortava di appuntare senza barare tutto ciò che cercasse di trasmettere a loro. Perorava che, dopo tutto, la resilienza vuol dire piegarsi senza spezzarsi, e Giovanni se ne intendeva di queste cose. Puntava la distensione e la riscossa del gruppetto, anche se era chiaro che allargava le maglie della giustizia a suo compiacimento. Era un furbo che faceva finta di andare alla volta dei suoi addetti, ma forse non se ne accorgeva nemmeno della sua duplicità. Al netto del suo atteggiamento protagonista, li considerava i suoi soci più cari e voleva plasmare la loro amicizia, adibirla, senza però millantare, mi raccomando, in un ateneo. Auspicava la loro adesione, e d’acchito, non sembrava troppo esigente. Purtroppo agiva sempre a scapito degli altri e intasava le loro vie d'uscita. Li faceva intrappolare nel suo gorgo ai prezzi stracciati, che campeggiavano in bella mostra su un affiche con una dicitura sgradevole annunciando la degenza, semmai non gli si fosse dato retta. Brandendo il cartellone dal balcone che dava su un piccolo spiazzo fuori casa sua, invocava i suoi discepoli, cercando come sempre di accreditarsi con loro, intercalando nei suoi discorsi gustosi ed espansivi questioni di atteggiamenti sindacabili da parte dei suoi rivali. Siamo lì, diceva, tutto fiero di sé, dobbiamo accendere un faro su queste velleità raffazzonate di quel tizio che sempre ordisce ai danni della buona giustizia, di cui noi stessi abbiamo fatto le lodi, pensando di aver imbroccato l’argomento anche se tutti sospettavano che non fosse altro che una macchietta bislacca e se la ridevano sotto i baffi. Aveva un’ossessione morbosa col delitto dell’appropriazione indebita, cercava sempre aggravanti, ma siccome non voleva essere percepito nemmeno come un foriero di verità indiscutibili, era chiaro o no, che si trattasse di un fifone che incollava la propria immagine di sé, come uomo da bene, sulla realtà poco gradevole. Così, si era ritagliato un posticino sicuro in mezzo al caos quotidiano della sua città e badava sempre ad appropriarsi una quota di mercato che andava sempre incrementando, accolta in sottintese scoppiettate di riso. Seppure la sua casa si trovasse vicino alla Borsa e potesse essere informato da subito di potenziali flessioni, lasciava intendere di collocarsi dall’altra parte della barricata per far sì che fosse caldeggiato da quelli che curiosavano nei suoi affari. Spesso con i suoi soci intavolava discorsi a far tremare i polsi, scattenandosi delirante come se fosse in procinto di vedersi costretto a firmare un accordo svantaggioso. Che stramboide, diceva la gente. Altri ammiravano il suo impeto dilagante e dicevano sottovoce, ma che figo, ammazza! La calca si faceva sempre più fitta quando saliva in cattedra anche se non gli riusciva mai di fare altro che scalfire la superficie dell’argomento prescelto, conseguendo così di trovarsi conciato male davanti alla ciurma, che comunque si beveva le sue parole come vino sfuso. Si era messo in testa di debellare la reputazione dei suoi nemici, inalberandosi e squadernandosi, spalancando le braccia per far intravedere le sue ascelle sfrangiate e sbiadite dal tanto sudore che ci metteva per confutare le menzogne sulla sua persona, tra cui si potevano annoverare quelle sul afflato fatiscente dei rivali. Perorava spesso della sua impresa, che beninteso, non mirasse il tornaconto, bensì si impegnasse a non lasciare le cose andare in tilt, che si desse per spacciato lo sforzo quotidiano della gente per edificare quel tempio alla sapienza. Dal suo leggio che fungeva da posto investito dell’autorità suprema, quasi quasi si potrebbe dire che avesse raggiunto il prestigio del papa quando professava la carità e l’umiltà dal balcone della San Pietro, rivolgendosi alle masse nel suo discorso famosissimo dell’urbi et orbi. Insomma, Giovanni non cercava di tirare le somme di quanto fossero divenuti colti i suoi coetanei, bensì raccomandava loro un cambio di marcia per ottenere quella margine risicata in più, che avrebbe permesso loro di bollarsi gente di cultura. A questo proposito faceva aleggiare una nube florida di speranza che somigliava, se esaminata da vicino, ad una spocchiosa avvampata che sbaciucchiava in aria, che col passare del tempo, sarebbe poi divenuta una rimbambita bitorzoluta che nessuno avrebbe più adorato, ma che tuttora sbottava di scatto i suoi rincari e sbuffava di non essere riconosciuta a pieno titolo come la guida suprema per antonomasia. Non si sapeva a chi dovesse questa sua convinzione, quale mutuato nascondesse nel cassone della sua macchina con una marcia in più. Tuttavia era calzante la sua passione senza fronzoli, come lui credesse, che riusciva comunque a gasare la folla. Però come ve lo potete immaginare, si diceva intorno, che fosse un bacchettone, che avesse un pallino per la mistificazione, che esercitava tramite grossolani strafalcioni sui propri pargoli, costringendoli a farsi il mazzo. Siccome nessuno voleva che si riprendesse dallo smacco cagionato dalla loro andatura a rilento, si stipulava il conclamato divieto di impicciarsi platealmente nei affari del capo, che tra l’atro, si deve riconoscere una volta per tutto, portava i vestiti nuovi del re. In ultima istanza siamo costretti anche a dargli retta, tirando un grandissimo fiatone di sollievo, perché il suo indole non era del tutto congeniale al coinvolgimento in malefatta. Si vedeva chiaramente che aveva soltanto bisogno di convincersi che poteva portare a termine le sue illusioni, frutto di un farneticare sfizioso, per poi defilarsi con un’umiltà sentitissima e dare spago allo stuolo ferale che gli pareva dignitoso e bonario, quando invece si trattava di arraffoni disillusi, che ormai si potevano perfino vantarsi di essere colti come lui.

Translation: Com'è profondo il mare by Lucio Dalla

Lucio Dalla, Com'è profondo il mare, Album Cover, 1977

This is Bora Mici's original Italian to English translation of the 1977 Italian song Com'è profondo il mare, How deep is the sea or The sea is so deep by the Italian signer-songwriter Lucio Dalla. This song tells the story of humankind from antiquity to nowadays evoking the sea as the immovable guardian of its secrets. You can listen to the original song here.

Com'è profondo il Mare, Lucio Dalla, translated by Bora Mici

It’s us, we are many beside

We hide at night
Afraid of the motorists, the journalists
We are the black cats, the pessimists
We are the dark cracks
And we have nothing to eat
The sea is so deep
The sea is so deep

Dad, you once were a great shot
Of quail and pheasant
Drive away these flies
They drive me mad
They won’t let me sleep
The sea is so deep
The sea is so deep

It’s useless, there’s no more quorum
There’s no more decorum
God or whoever in his name
Is trying to divide us
To hurt us, to make us sink deep
The sea is so deep
The sea is so deep

Through the power of a bribe
Man became someone
Brought the dead back alive, unlocked prisons
Blocked six trains with their wagons
Uplifted the poor man for a moment
To a role that was hard to maintain
Then he let himself fall again, shout and weep
Alone in the middle of the sea
The sea is so deep.

Then by itself the shout became a drumbeat
And the poor man like lightning in the sky ready to meet
Began a war to conquer
That joke of the land
That his great heart was going to till deep
The sea is so deep
The sea is so deep

But the land was taken away
Including that still on his britches
He was thrown into houses, into ditches
I don’t really remember
Then a story about manacled members, beatings
And experimental surgery
How deep is the sea
How deep is the sea

In the meantime a mystic, maybe an aviator
Invented sympathy
And everyone got along newly
The beautiful and the ugly
With some damage to ugly
Who on a piece of glass
Were given the opportunity
Themselves to see
How deep is the sea
How deep is the sea

In the meantime the fish
From whom we are all descended
Looked on with curiosity
At the collective drama of this world
Which undoubtedly seemed wicked to them
In their great sea
How deep is the sea
In their great sea
How deep is the sea

It’s obvious that thinking bothers some
Even if who thinks is mute like a fish
Actually a fish
As a fish is hard to seize
Because he is protected by the seas
How deep are the seas

Obviously those who command
Are not inclined to poetic distinctions
Thought like the ocean
Cannot be seized
It cannot be fenced with ease

So they are burning the seas
So they are killing the seas
So they are humiliating the seas
So they are bending the seas