Brief Excerpt from "The Skin" by Curzio Malaparte

"For in Naples princes and paupers, the aristocracy and the poor, have all known one another for countless centuries, and their acquaintanceship has been handed down from generation to generation, from father to son. They know one another by name, they are all blood relations, in virtue of that family affection which has from time immemorial existed between the commonalty and the old nobility, between the hovels of Pallonetto and the palaces of the Monte di Dio. From time immemorial the aristocracy and the commonalty have lived together in the same streets, in the same palaces, the populace in their bassi, in those dark caves which open out on to the alleys, the aristocracy in the magnificent gilded halls of the piani nobili.* For countless centuries the great noble families have fed and protected the common people, huddled together in the alleys that surround their palaces, not, to be sure, in a spirit of feudalism, nor merely out of Christian charity, but in fulfillment, I would say, of the obligations of kinship. For many years the aristocracy too have been poor; and the populace almost seem to apologize because they cannot help them. Commonalty and nobility share the joy of births and marriages, the anxieties of sickness, the tears of mourning; and there is not a pauper who is not accompanied to the cemetery by the lord of his district, nor a lord whose bier is not followed by a weeping crowd of paupers. It is an old saying among the populace of Naples that men are equal not only in death, but in life.

"The traditional attitude of the Neapolitan nobility to death is different from that of the common people. They greet it not with tears but with smiles, almost gallantly, as one greets a beloved woman or a young bride. In Neapolitan painting, as in Spanish, weddings and funerals recur with a haunting regularity. The pictures have a macabre and at the same time a gallant character; they are the work of obscure painters who maintain even today the great tradition of El Greco and Spagnoletto, though in their hands it has lost its scrupulousness and its distinctive character. And it was an ancient custom, observed until a few years ago, that noblewomen should be buried with their white bridal veils about their heads."

* The "noble floors," i.e., the two floors immediately above the mezzanine. (Translator's note.)

Reprinted from The Skin by Curzio Malaparte, translated from the Italian by David Moore, New York Review Books, 2013, pp.238-238