Why IAWA? Episode Forty Six April 2002
My Grandmother?s Basil Plant and the Tragedies of Homework
Italian
American cultural artifacts (this category includes books) may be divided into
two kinds, the innocent and the experienced.
The Innocent,
or My Grandmother?s Basil Plant.? The day an artist or a
writer wakes up to the reality of being Italian American is a romantic day. She
is sitting at the computer. She has just finished a PowerPoint presentation for
a sales meeting. The sun is shining. She looks out the window and sees a leafy
plant with drops of water on it. It is not a basil plant, but it looks like
one. Suddenly the world is full of light. She can smell the basil in the
bubbling tomatoes of her nonna?s
kitchen. To that imagined aroma, she attaches the whole world of the
immigrants. Their gardens, their food, their songs, their customs, their
dialect, their embroidery, and their tragic histories.? This is my heritage, she thinks.
Or else, he is leafing through a magazine in the
proctologist?s waiting-room. The beautiful color photographs are all a little
wrinkled and oily. The pages lie weary and limp. The damp hands of too many
worried readers have softened them.? He
turns to an article on the museums of Rome. There is a string of brilliant photographs
of the Palazzo Barberini, its amazing collections,
the trompe l?oeil
ceiling in its grand salone,
Bernini?s monumental staircase.? He leans back in the waiting-room chair, not
even noticing how it creaks under the pressure. He draws a deep breath that
swells his chest. Leonardo, he sighs, Dante, Marconi, Puccini. This is my
heritage, he thinks.
These are the golden moments of innocence, when a
person, deeply immersed in the ordinariness of daily life in the United States,
turns and unexpectedly discovers, like a treasure chest in the upstairs closet
under the old neckties, some powerful piece of Italy or some radioactive relic
of old Little Italy.
Such an object ? it might be a dusty bottle of Brioschi or a painted plaster cast of San Rocco with his
dog ? is emotionally radiant.? It opens a
door to the sacred moments of childhood when one does not believe in God so much as see
God in the grandmother or the glass of yellow Galliano.? It gives a person strength to deal with the
tiresome and the diminishing realities of adult life in the so-called real
world.
The feelings are so powerful, the throb of divine
grace is so palpable, that one is tempted, sometimes irresistibly, to take
action. These are the moments when poems and cultural societies and seven-volume
autobiographies are conceived. Some of these beginnings produce wonderful
achievements. Others not. It is hard to write a work of epic scope based
entirely upon one?s feelings. The things one remembers from childhood do not,
all by themselves, constitute an effective heritage. Those who persist in
trying to realize their inspirations come to realize that innocence is not
enough. To claim a heritage, one requires not only feelings but knowledge as
well.
The Experienced, or the Tragedies of Homework. In
Italian America, an Italian heritage can mean a family, a neighborhood, a
dialect. It cannot mean a civilization. Italy and things Italian lead a
qualified existence here. A person who lays hand on heart and claims to be the
heir of Raffaelo or Giuseppe
Verdi is, often enough, an importer of shoes or macaroni. To claim an Italian
heritage in the United States means to outlive and abandon one?s innocent
raptures. It means to accept the tragic necessity of homework.? To claim an Italian American heritage
calls forth the same necessity.
We cannot inherit Italian anything,
but we can claim it, if we like, if we allow our passion to become the subject
of our studies. If we wish to speak of the migration, then we will not merely
remember our grandparents, but we will also learn something about other
people?s grandparents, Italians and others alike. We may wish to study the
mystery of the Risorgimento, the revolution that led to so much misery and
migration.? If we presume to speak about
Italian history, then we will want to know the names of Italy?s principal
cities and regions, of its heroes and villains in politics and in
folklore.? The main crops, exports,
imports, and industries all matter. If we presume to speak about Italian
American history, then we will want to know the economic and political
pressures that have formed it through the years, we will want to know the aims
and actions of Italian immigrants, of their organizations, of their leaders, of
their encounters with other peoples in the Americas. The lesson of experience
is that a person who claims a cultural heritage had better know a good deal
about that heritage. Otherwise, there is a great danger of error and of empty bloviation.
What are ?the tragedies of homework?? There are
three. First, we must put aside our raging impulse to speak until we have
spent some hard weeks and years mastering some aspects of the endless archive
of Italian history and culture. This may mean long spells at the library
table.? It can also help to learn the language,
a task that alone can take some little while.?
Second, we must come to realize that whatever our grandmother?s
basil plant has given us does not, all by itself, constitute a heritage. We
must make that heritage our own. This need not mean reading history or learning
Italian. It may mean learning to grow our own basil or do our own embroidery.
It may mean acquiring a familiarity with the paintings or operas of which we
would like to boast. Third, we must come to realize that
whatever we learn will only amount to a very small portion of a heritage that
we can come to call our own simply because experience has taught us that we can
never own it at all. This is the paradox that all study teaches us, sooner
or later. Those who believe that they love their Italian heritage will learn to
give it the respect of patience and humility. That is the lesson of experience.
IAWA suggests that Italian Americans particularly
honor writers who have taken this approach to their literary inheritance.?
