INTELLIGENCE/ROGER COHEN


NEW YORK


The other day, I took the subway up to Columbia University, where I was to speak at a conference marking the centennial of the birth of Luigi Barzini, the greatest of 20th-century Italian journalists. Barzini spent part of his youth in the United States, attending Columbia, and I think this experience contributed to his outsider’s eye on his own country.

His book,“The Italians,”which I read in the 1980s before taking up an assignment in Rome, remains the quintessential guide to Italy; and his quintessential insight remains that the gorgeous style and theatricality of Italian life hide a fundamental realism, even pessimism.

Of his countrymen, he wrote:“They believe man’s ills cannot be cured, but only assuaged, catastrophes cannot be averted but only mitigated. They prefer to glide elegantly over the surface of life and leave the depths unplumbed.”Hence the fact that,“Everything must be made to sparkle, a simple meal, an ordinary transaction, a dreary speech, a cowardly capitulation must be embellished.”

Barzini’s insights did not earn him love in his homeland. His centennial has gone almost unnoticed in Italy. As for the pessimism of Italians, it seems justified as 2008 gives way to 2009 with Israeli bombs falling yet again on Gaza, providing another twist in the Holy Land’s gyre of hatred.

Still, a new year is no time to give way to despondency. My own journey from midtown Manhattan to Columbia suggested the unpredictability of life. I got on the wrong train and ended up in Harlem. So I set off westward on foot, thinking about Harlem’s lost menace, better race relations in the city, and wondering how a recession might impact that.

It was a bracing walk, ending with a climb through Morningside Park. But when I got to the university, I found I’d come on the wrong day.
I got back on the subway and fell into conversation with the woman next to me.

There was nothing extraordinary about the exchange, but it was a moment of New York civility. We talked about the pressures of city life, empty recession-hit stores, and her escapes to find peace on Martha’s Vineyard, where she grew up. If I hadn’t begun this accidental journey on the wrong day, I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of the talk.

This put me in mind of one of my favorite poems, Constantine Cavafy’s“Ithaca,”about a journey whose ultimate value proves to be the meandering course to it:

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

Without her you would have never set out on the road.

She has nothing more to give you.

The poem concludes: And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.

Wise as you have become, with so much experience,

You must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

As I thought about these lines, it seemed to me that Barzini and Cavafy were linked by the idea that, whatever life’s inevitable disappointments, beauty is to be found, and created, in the journey. That’s not a bad reflection to take into another year.

I went back to Columbia two days later. I got the subway right. My mistake had afforded me the pleasure of devoting more time to Barzini. The conference was a delightful occasion. It reminded me, as Barzini wrote, that,“Italy is the world’s timeless refuge, the river bank on which to withdraw from the rapidly-rushing stream.”