By Giovanni di Napoli
"A seething witches' cauldron was South Italy; dark and passionate shapes emerge from the brew, clash their weapons or mutter a prayer, and again sink down." ~ Norman Douglas, Siren Land, Dodo Press, 2008, p. 191
While trolling the web for a new book to read I stumbled across an announcement for the coming release of Norman Douglas' Siren Land by Tauris Parke Paperbacks. First published in 1911, this latest manifestation is scheduled to be on bookshelves by August 3rd, 2010. I guess it's because of some legal or copyright issues that TPP would have to wait so long to publish a book that's already 99-years-old.
Considering the unsatisfactory quality of the 2008 edition published by Dodo Press I can understand the necessity for a revision. My copy is riddled with typos and misprints (many of the book's "e's" look like "c's"). Needless to say this was very distracting. Perhaps I'm nitpicking here, but in addition to the poor print job, Dodo didn't even have the courtesy of using an illustration depicting Southern Italy on the cover. Instead, they used a drawing of the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, the Condottiere from Bergamo, located in the Campo di san Zanipolo in Venice. Maybe I'm overreacting to this "insignificant" slight but if they had used one of the equestrian statues of the Bourbons in the Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples for a book about Venice, I’m sure the Venetians wouldn’t be pleased.
TPP's edition is subtitled "a celebration of life in Southern Italy," however Douglas' account reads more like a critique of Southern Italy that is often less than positive. It is replete with common prejudices typical of travelogues from that era. One is reminded of the famed "globe trotter" Burton Holmes and his book, Southern Italy, where he refers to Naples' scugnizzo (street urchins) as poor but happy street Arabs who speak a barbaric language: "The Neapolitans do not speak Italian, they speak Napoletano, a barbarous, scolding dialect that fearfully offends the true Italian ear." (Southern Italy by Burton Holmes, Chelsea House, 1998, pg. 56)
I have little reason to doubt that Mr. Douglas was telling the truth, as he saw it, about his experiences in Siren Land. I have plenty of my own unflattering stories about the places I visited (and I'm not just talking about Italy), but I do take umbrage with his opinions about the Neapolitan Bourbons and Southern Italian emigration. With his vast knowledge of history and folklore I find it a bit dubious that he would come to some of the conclusions that he did concerning Southern Italy's backwardness. Douglas clearly lays most of the region's problems at the feet of the Bourbons, completely playing down the fact that the Italy he was traveling through was brutally conquered 50 years earlier by Piedmont (1861) and still suffering from the aftermath.
"I rather think it was another kind of plague, the plague of a century of Bourbon-ism, which reduced these regions to a condition of misery whence they are now, thanks to a better government and to Argentina, slowly emerging. For ordinary pestilences and famines and earthquakes are mere amateurs in destruction whose effects are healed in briefest time: there may even be witnessed, after occasions when plough of affliction has violently disrupted the soil, a strange quickening in growth. But misrule strikes at the root of things, since humane strivings in a people, those of its elements that actively make for good, are so sporadic that their annihilation is wholly different from a haphazard calamity. And there was a sinister thoroughness in the Bourbon system which insured success." (Siren Land, p. 36)
Quick to admonish the Bourbons, Douglas completely ignores the "sinister thoroughness" of the House of Savoy following Italian unification. Nowhere in Siren Land is there mention of the Southern factories that were sacked or relocated up North. Not a word was said about the looting of Bourbon coffers to pay off Piedmont's debts to the bankers for financing their wars against Austria. Also absent is the fact that more people were killed in Southern Italy in the decade after unification, during the so-called "war against brigandage," than all the wars of the Risorgimento combined! Some estimates put the death toll as high as a million. Considering how ninety-nine percent of the plebiscite vote was in favor of unity it seems a little odd that the new Italian state needed 120,000 troops to suppress the pro-Bourbon rebellion.
Douglas continues:
"The effects of such a conscientious selection of badness must necessarily endure; it takes longer to rear up that which is humane than its opposite, seeing that there are a thousand wrongs for one right. 'There is no town and there is no country,' says a Neapolitan historian, 'which would not inevitably be impoverished by the loss of so many and such distinguished men.' It is this same elimination of progressive elements which has done so much harm to Spain and Russia, and which paved the way...for the fall of ancient Rome...Who shall estimate the vital strain of a century of terrorism?" (Siren Land, p. 36-37)
Douglas is of course alluding to the reprisals of the Bourbons against their political enemies—the liberal aristocracy and bourgeoisie—following their Restoration after Napoleon's downfall. In light of the atmosphere and accomplishments within The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies prior to the Risorgimento, his accusations appear spurious. The Bourbon reign was considered a Golden Age. Ferdinand IV established free schools in every town for both boys and girls, extensive roads were constructed and bridges repaired, academies and libraries were opened, observatories were built. Under Bourbon rule Naples was considered a cultural center that was a must-see on the celebrated “Grand Tour,” something well documented in literature and art throughout Europe. The so-called "Rascal King" also pardoned many people for their association with his enemies, something he did not have to do. Not everyone was granted a reprieve, and not everyone deserved one.
It is, at best, naive to believe that Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina were not justified in retaliating against the subversive fifth column who, not once but twice, collaborated with the invading French and forced the Bourbon court to retreat to Sicily. These traitors were responsible for terrible bloodshed in their homeland. Tens of thousands of Southerners were killed fighting against Napoleon's forces and many more were murdered in retribution.
In addition to the suffering of their subjects, the Bourbons endured their own hardships as well. Let us not forget that the royal couple lost one of their children, six-year-old Prince Carlo Alberto, who died during the first tumultuous journey to Sicily. It should also be remembered that the Queen's sister, Marie Antoinette, was murdered during the Great Revolution, more accurately described as The Terror.
Douglas himself recalls the atrocities committed in Southern Italy by French General Charles Antoine Manhès, in Old Calabria (his other Southern Italian travelogue):
"The men who gave the French so much trouble were political brigands, allies of Bourbonism... At the end of a few months' campaign, every single brigand, and all their friends and relations, were wiped off the face of the earth—together with a very considerable number of innocent persons. The high roads were lined with decapitated bandits, the town walls decked with their heads; some villages had to be abandoned, on account of the stench; the Crati river was swollen with corpses, and its banks whitened with bones. God alone knows the cruelties which were enacted." (Old Calabria, Indy Publish, 2008, p. 208-209)
Yet somehow Douglas believes these atrocities and those later committed by Piedmont did not have adverse effects on Southern Italy. Strangely, he seems to prefer the rule of his country’s nemesis to that of the Bourbons. Lamenting Britain's role in supporting the Bourbons against Napoleon, Douglas writes:
"Those Englishmen, therefore, who complain of certain unpleasant characteristics of modern Neapolitans, might do well to remember that the Bourbons had been incapacitated from further mischief when their saviours from over the sea appeared on the scene and allowed them to continue for another half-century that rule of brigands, monks, lazzari, and other vermin which was responsible for the deplorable state of affairs." (Siren Land, p. 37)
Did Mr. Douglas forget Britain's complicity during Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily? They more than made up for their support of the Bourbons during the Napoleonic Wars with their anti-Bourbon meddling during the Risorgimento. It should be pointed out that the only reason why Garibaldi's red shirted adventurers—the famed meli (thousand)—reached the shores of Marsala on May 11, 1860 was because they were escorted by British warships, "protecting British interests." They would do so again when Garibaldi's forces crossed the Straights of Messina into Calabria. It is also true that a British admiral negotiated the surrender of Palermo. Apparently the English rulers found the Bourbons good enough to fight against Napoleon, who threatened Britain, but thought nothing of stabbing them in the back after their common enemy was removed. To be fair, there is no shortage of bloodshed in European history, but I wouldn't compare the blood on the Bourbon's hands with that of Napoleon or the British Empire.
I understand that politically motivated material will follow any conquest, but what truly irks me is the one-sidedness of the books currently available. I can't imagine there being a great demand for Siren Land today. The book is dated and is of little use for the modern traveler, but yet it's readily available, as is his Old Calabria, which was republished by TPP in April 2010. Yet, no matter how hard I try I still can't find affordable copies of Lord Harold Acton's The Bourbons of Naples or it's sequel The Last Bourbons of Naples (1825-1861). This is not to say that Siren Land is useless, it remains a historical record of that period's bias against Southern Italy and the Bourbons.
There is no disputing that Mr. Douglas was a highly articulate and eloquent writer. I certainly won't begrudge him this honor. However, it is precisely his literary mastery that makes this book so damaging. Much like the original "Godfather" movie, which single-handedly propelled mafia genre films into the limelight with it's success and popularity, Siren Land (as well as Old Calabria) was, in it's day, highly influential in perpetuating negative stereotypes and misinformation about Southern Italians. While I agree with the book being preserved for historical purposes, what we need today are translations of new books like Antonio Ciano’s I Savoia e il Massacro del Sud and Pino Aprile’s Terroni, that not only reveal the tragedy behind the Risorgimento, it’s aftermath and true legacy, but also expose the fallacies of books like Siren Land.
