Sunday 2 June 2024
Conventional (non-liturgical) anniversary of Corpus Domini
LXXVIII anniversary of the proclamation of the Italian Republic
BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS
FEDERICO RAMPINI, The new Arab empire, Milan, Solferino-Il Corriere della Sera, 2024, pp. 268, 16 euros.
We confess our weakness for Federico Rampini: an intelligent, talented journalist, cultured despite some slip-ups, who we like not so much for his usual positions – which practically always find us on the opposite side – but for his clarity and timeliness. And of course for the beautiful suspenders, which are not a garment we favor.
Rampini, meanwhile, is not at all pro-American. He is truly American, although he has retained dual citizenship. We don’t expect any objectivity from him, but he doesn’t disappoint us on the issues he addresses, the core of the new things that come before him. He has in fact written agile, informed and very useful books – even if not entirely agreeable – on China and Africa, always characterized by a certain sympathy Sui generis also for things and people that he evidently considers contrary to his line: which is generally a good sign, although not even he is exempt from the basic defect of all “Westernists”: that is, always considering the West on the side of sense of history and reason.
It was obvious for him to consider Saudi Arabia with positive accents, although his judgment that it has “broken with the past” and “surrendered to the culture of envy” appears – in his words – to be more the result of a desire to muddy the waters than of misunderstanding. Saudi Arabia was able very soon – with first British and then American help – to maintain its role as “custodian of the Holy Places” of the Prophet and at the same time its character as representative of that sort of “Mormon” movement ” of the Islamic world that is Wahhabism, as a very skilled manager of the immense oil wealth that has placed it in a special condition compared to the rest of the Arab world, the Muslim world and the world since the 1920s and as a standard-bearer of his very special “traditionalism” open in his elites to the new, to the race for financial and technological hegemony, to far-sighted investments. Nothing strange that he sympathizes with Muhammad bin Salman (and with Matteo Renzi): nor will we reproach him for the fact that this implies the awareness that his favorites are among the main underminers of the prospects of independence of Palestine, suffocated by the “peace of Abraham” (a project that will survive the sad Netanyahu).
We also forgive Rampini the gaffes which from time to time commits on a properly historical level: as when, he, a Westerner and an Occidentalist, praises the Muslim world which in the past was “ahead” of ours, and celebrated with Omar Khayyam the freedom of wine and love while in the West there were the inquisition and the witch hunt: which is not true in the meantime because Islam has taught us much more (from mathematics to medicine to astronomy to university institutions) than Omar Khayyam, compared to whom we had already courtly love, Arthurian romance and playful poetry while witch hunts are not so much the stuff of the dark Middle Ages as of the bright Renaissance.
Where, if anything, the brilliant, friendly Rampini really disappoints us is in the pages that concern Iran: first, in that they perhaps unintentionally bring grist to the mill of misunderstanding (Iran has nothing to do with the Arab world, apart from some tiny minority); second, since the praise of the “modern” shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi – servant of the Americans and massacrer of his subjects – is completely out of place like the unremitting condemnation of the current regime, especially since the electoral consensus it enjoys it is reported as stuck at just over 40% of voters without taking into account the fact that in Europe and the USA abstentionism is even higher; as for the hopes in the young, brilliant Azizi, if they are roses they will bloom, but be careful because roses also have thorns.
FRANÇOIS PÉTIS DE LA CROIX, The true story of Turandot, Milan, Luni, 2020, pp. 94, 13 euros.
Unfortunately, for the moment, Puccini’s centenary in 2024 does not give us much hope: his native Lucca is dozing as it is, little new from Massaciuccoli, the Ministry appears tepidly interested: perhaps the boost will come with the Turandot Veronese dell’Arena, much awaited.
In the meantime, however, this Italian translation of an extract from the work is welcome Les Mille et Un Jours. Contes Persans published between 1710 and 1712 by the orientalist François Pétis de la Croix which was very successful: the most shining jewel of that series was the story of the beautiful, icy princess Turandot, of her deadly enigmas and of her love for a prince reduced by military defeat in the condition of a nomadic fortune seeker. A beautiful story, which also received the attention of the eighteenth-century playwright Carlo Gozzi, colleague and competitor of Goldoni: Gozzi told the story of Turandot in a pleasant theatrical work, faithful to the original despite some ideas taken from the “Commedia dell’Arte ”. Perhaps it will once again be above all the Chinese who appreciate Puccini’s notes, who have always done so.
