by Paolo Pagliaro
Technically Jewish by maternal descent, baptized and raised in a Catholic boarding school, essentially atheist. A beautiful mess that Corrado Augias fully evaluated only towards the end of his twenties, wondering what to do. He decided not to decide, rather he removed the problem by letting things slide towards a prudent accommodation, a tacit compromise with himself. Perhaps that non-choice is the seed of curiosity that accompanied Augias throughout his life as a public figure, journalist, writer, amiable conversationalist and which is now told in an Einaudi volume. The title is “Life is learned”, and is explained by the belief that existence is an apprenticeship, made up of friendships, affections, relationships, opportunities, choices, renunciations.
It was in his early years that Augias became a staunch Zionist. He had liked Theodor Herzl’s essay “The Jewish State” for its reference to the Italian Risorgimento taken almost as a model, for the secular and generous vision of the new organism that he proposed.
Augias recalls that the first pioneers went to Palestine to “make the desert flourish”, animated by progressive ideals, while now – he writes – we are witnessing with dismay the fact that this unique country is being emptied of the fundamental elements of its character and own uniqueness.
In the book several pages are dedicated to Italian current affairs. And here, having to propose a synthesis, Augias comes to the aid of Carducci’s invective against a country in which “men and parties have no ideas, or ideas are passed off as the affluence of small passions, clashes of small interests, glimmers of small advantages : where skill is exchanged for genius and something worse for skill”. It was 1882, so nothing personal.
(© 9Colonne – cite the source)
