Finimondo

28 May 2019. Fifty days in Italy over the last two months — something that hadn’t happened to me in 16 years. I find myself in a plundered country, gnawed by impotence and rage, a cradle of feral children. More than a country in decline, it’s a country that has crashed, one that has turned its drama into a brutal and pathetic caricature.

And yet, if I step back and listen, I rediscover the beauty of its language, rich and playful. Briccone, andare a zonzo, finimondo, origliare, menare il can per l’aia, nullafacente, occhiolino, malmostoso, infuriato, battibecco, scavezzacollo. Every language is living history, fascinating and evocative; but this one, in the mouth of a people battered by history, now sounds like a distant echo, a language as foreign to its own people as it is to the conqueror or the algorithm.