Christ Stopped at Eboli (Penguin Modern Classics) Paperback – 25 May 2000

A masterpiece. Enjoy.

I bought this to read on a trip to Italy last week, which included a visit to Matera in (what is now called) the region of Basilicata. Levi writes about his 1935-6 exile in this region (called Lucania at the time), describing the bleak landscapes and the poor people he lived alongside. They had an expression - "We're not Christians. Christ stopped short of here, at Eboli" - which he used for the evocative title of his memoir. Eboli is a town to the northwest of Basilicata and here, 'Christian' meant 'human being', because they thought of themselves as being mere beasts, having been bypassed by morality, or civilisation.This view is made explicit in Levi's description of his housekeeper, who had a face "unrelated to man, but linked with the soil and its everlasting animal deities [with] cold sensuality, hidden irony [...] and an immense passive power" [p105]. The visceral link to the earth and the (other) beasts is exactly invoked in a passage describing the visit of "the pig doctor", who comes to castrate the young sows of the village (in order to make them fatter and more tender to eat). The operation is described with harrowing exactness ("blood spurted out over the surrounding mud and snow [...] yard upon yard of intestine emerged from the wound, rose, purple and grey" [p181]), and also the way in which the sows' owners (all women) were attached to their beasts, and trembled with fear for their animals.Elsewhere, he sees a lame man blowing into the body of a dead goat (in order to peel off the skin), and is struck by the sense of metamorphosis as the man's breath leaves his body and enters that of the animal, as if he was changing into a beast. His sister visits him from Turin via Matera and she describes that town as an embodiment of Dante's Inferno as she follows the path down past the caves populated by men, women, children and animals with "a few pieces of miserable furniture [...] and some ragged clothes hanging up to dry" [p87], never having seen such a picture of abject poverty in her life. Finally, he writes vividly of the poverty and despair shared between the peasants and the so-called gentry, whose life he describes as a "dust-covered and uninteresting skein of self-interest, low-grade passion, boredom, greedy impotence, and poverty" [p65].The description of Matera makes uncomfortable reading for a tourist visiting that town today - indeed, Levi's book (which includes a polemic on how to solve "the problems of the South") was instrumental in persuading the government to try and improve the lot of its inhabitants. The book tells a story about an unpleasant world, but the author's powers of description (which reminded me of those of Laurie Lee in his books about Spain in the mid-20th century) bring it to life in an elegant and memorable fashion. Recommended.

Desperate southern Italian poverty, stretching unchanged from medieval times, exposed by the compassionate observations of the Turinese narrator. (Carlo Levi was exiled by Mussolini for his anti-fascist activities to a remote Calabrian village during 1935-36.)So much is in this fascinating and fluently written book. There is the extraordinary, beaten fatalism of the peasantry, underscored by deep superstition, which Levi relays without comment or irony. For example, ‘a lost baby a few months old was found on top of one of two trees flanking Saint Anthony’s chapel… A devil had carried him there, and Saint Anthony took him under his protection.’ The peasants hide their amulets and incantations from the respected northern Doctor, but Levi gradually discovers them, and is respectful.Then there are memorable scenes of pig slaughter and harsh peasant attitudes, born of the desperate need to survive. Levi’s graphic descriptions render the sensual animality (to a 21st century urban mind) normal and acceptable.There is an unexpected moment of epiphany in Levi as a shepherd lies dying after an accident: ‘I loved these peasants and I was sad…Why, then, at the same time, did a great feeling of peace pervade me? … I was hidden, like a shoot under the bark of a tree, beyond the reach of man… I felt as if all of a sudden I had penetrated the very heart of the universe. An immense happiness, such as I had never known, swept over me with a flow of fulfilment.’The government, of course, is malignant and grasping: ‘These over-taxed peasants would make a day’s journey on foot from Senise to sell two lire worth of celery...’ A few, such as the police and some of the rich (a very relative term), worship the state.At the end, Levi gives his own thoughts on how to improve conditions, focused on devolving power, ‘suppressing’ the middle class (unclear what this means), reforestation and investment in small-scale agriculture. Somehow, ‘groups of autonomies’ would arise in this ‘peasant revolution’ in which there would be little need of a central state. Levi’s anarchic vision did not come to pass, though he did inspire some attempts to improve matters, which ran into the sands of entrenched opposition. Thus, the Mafia – who were at least their own kind - deepened its strangle-hold on the loyalties and economy of the ancient peasantry.Meanwhile, this experience in the far south helped Levi himself slowly to gain insight into life and human society, nurturing his own ‘poetic freedom’, though there he gives little sense of a deeper spiritual awareness.Note that Levi is not as good a story-teller as Norman Lewis, who wrote a remarkable description of his time in the later 1940s in a desolate Spanish fishing village, from a similar progressive, compassionate perspective (Voices of the Old Sea).

After having read Primo Levi heap glowing praise on Carlo Levi I thought it really was time to search out a good starting point for his works. As Christ Stopped at Eboli got such warm praise from the other readers here I thought I really should begin with this.This book is a fascinating, if at times slightly paternalistic, insight into peasant Italy under the Fascist dictatorship of Mussolini. It gives us a glimpse of an older Italy which no longer exists where the feudal classes were still in control and the influence of American expatriates had not brought about any change in Italy's social balance.One reader's comments about Anarcho Syndicalism drew me to compare it with Homage To Catalonia (peasants in Feudal Spain as opposed to peasants in Feudal Italy) but I found Orwell's descriptions to be far less sympathetic, far more patronising, and far more obviously from the perspective of an outsider.Carlo Levi's book is very enjoyable, beautifully written, and from the warmth of his warts and all descriptions; it is obvious that he became a part of the community in which he lived for the years of his political exile.A truly admirable book and an enjoyable read.

Considering the book is older than me - and I'm nigh on 80 - the book is in very good condition, albeit foxed here and there with rather flimsy pages.It was remarkably good value for money and will give me great pleasure.Thank you!