In Rosebery's day European meant white. Now, trying to find a source for the quotation I find the Wikipedia entry for 'European Quarter' says,
A European Quarter (also: "European District", "EU Quarter" and other variations or by the French: Quartier européen) usually refers to an area of a city containing a concentration of pan-European institutions (notably, those of the European Union and Council of Europe). At present, there are three such quarters;
The European Quarter of Brussels, Belgium
The European Quarter of Strasbourg, France
The European Quarter of the city of Luxembourg, LuxembourgI find this dispiriting.
I know that Italians say that Africa begins at Naples. I am also reminded of a callow passage in a letter from the very young Ernest Hemingway to Edmund Wilson in 1921, in which he wrote, “The negroid streak creeps northward to defile the Nordic race. Already the Italians have the souls of blackamoors.”
Both those two were or became Marxists.
For many years I was only interested in visiting the post-Communist countries. Western countries seemed old hat. Then I asked myself if there was anywhere else that interested me and I remembered that Naples once seemed attractive, impossibly louche and wicked, so I went and loved it. But it was disappointingly Western, modern, spick and span.
European, in fact.
"God damn the continent of Europe. It is of merely antiquarian interest. Rome is only a few years behind Tyre and Babylon. The negroid streak creeps northward to defile the Nordic race. Already the Italians have the souls of blackamoors. Raise the bars of immigration and permit only Scandinavians, Teutons, Anglo-Saxons and Celts to enter. France made me sick. Its silly pose as the thing the world has to save. I think it's a shame that England and America didn't let Germany conquer Europe. It's the only thing that would have saved the fleet of tottering old wrecks."
ReplyDeleteBravo.. well said
DeleteI was, of course, quoting Fitzgerald and not approving what he said.
DeleteDispiriting indeed, that the EU elites have to see everything through their own myopic eyes. I suppose it's all part of "the project".
ReplyDeleteWhen we lived in Italy (Liguria), my father's Italian colleagues would say "South of Rome it is Africa".
Naples is world of its own, of course. So is Palermo. I love them both.
Me too - when I arrived in Palermo I was met by a man giving out flyers for a political party that wanted independence for Sicily. He was, of course, a soulmate and we talked animatedly about the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The South was prosperous before Garibaldi overthrew the Bourbons and opened an era of poverty.
DeleteAnd of course I should have added: "Forza Napoli!"
ReplyDeleteI am Italian and I find Mr Hemingway's remark slightly offensive.
ReplyDelete'In a particularly nasty 1921 letter to Edmund Wilson, he wrote, “The negroid streak creeps northward to defile the Nordic race. Already the Italians have the souls of blackamoors.” Although he later backpedaled, calling his reactions “philistine, anti-socialistic, provincial and racially snobbish,” he quickly segued into another preposterous stance: “I believe at last in the white man’s burden. We are as far above the modern Frenchman as he is above the Negro. Even in art!”' https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fitzgerald-and-the-jews
ReplyDeleteThe NYRB edition of Kaputt contains the interesting remark that Malaperte heavily revised his original drafts, in particular to make himself appear more skeptical of the Germans, and to make the Germans less sympathetic.
ReplyDeleteI would also add that Hitler was slightly embarrassed by somebody's--Goebbels's?--archeological enthusiasms, thinking that the Italians must be smirking at the news of primitive settlements around Berlin that were contemporary with great cities in classical Italy.
Naples has its faults - but it is a good city, for example the people there tend to have children (much of Italy, indeed Europe, is a sterile dead-end these days). As for the racist rantings of Hemingway and co - well Hemingway rebelled against Gentlemanly conduct, for example he got drunk and cursed in order to shock his mother. A rather pathetic man.
ReplyDeleteEdmund Wilson - the socialist literary critic who boasted that he sometimes did not read the books he, negatively, reviewed. For some reason President Kennedy (or rather his "advisers") gave Mr Wilson, a supporter of tyranny, the "Medal of Freedom". Freedom from what? Freedom from rational thought?
ReplyDeleteOn another subject, with your keen interest in Israel this might interest you. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/in-self-published-interview-former-pm-bennett-says-putin-assured-him-he-wouldnt-kill-zelensky/
DeleteLate to this party, but Naples is possibly my favourite city in Europe. Lively and spirited with endless things to discover. But certainly not spick and span! Palermo and Sicily are also magnificent. I visited Genoa for the first time last week, and it struck me as a miniature Naples.
ReplyDeleteTidy in2007 compared to Bucharest but Bucharest has been tidied up since. Are you the Karl I know from Rome.and London?
DeleteYes, sir.
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