Herbert Kubly (1915–1996)

This "Life" introduction to the peninsula provides a bit of the history of the places with loosely identified photographs and helpful Index.

"In few places is history as palpable as in Italy." While that insight is brilliant and apt, the essays are spotty and woodenly free of exegetic nuance.

For example, Chapter 2 in particular looks to the Roman "Imperial Legacy". Ecce libretto!

One early Founder myth is that Rome was established on the Palatine Hill, roughly the center of Seven. The author notes the fratricidal parallel between the twin Founders, Romulus and Remus, with Cain and Abel. Then this echo is dropped. Archeo-literarily, this reverberating echo through Religion extends to today. Roman "Catholics" continue to worship Ieus(us) Christo in the Pantheon literally built by pagan universalists. Credit to Augustus and Admiral Aggripus.The Pantheon, or "Temple for all gods", is among the most beautiful ever built, and still stands. Sadly, neither pictured nor mentioned. Kubly does at least mention Hadrian, ruling the empire from 161-180, and remarkable champion of the middle class and poor.

After Diocletian divided the vast domains of the "crumbling Empire", Constantine rose to defeat his enemies during the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312, with his legions painting crosses on their shields. The author suggests that Constantine "changed the religion of the greatest empire in history", and so molded western civilization "more than any other single ruler". After Constantine's death, ancient Rome also died. "Christ had triumphed over Caesar, and the Fourth Century, which had begun with pagans persecuting Christians, ended with Christians persecuting pagans. Italy's second great period of history was over." [28] And "a long decline now began".

OK, this is very confusing, and is not really "history". The author notes that "relics of Christianity's early days lie beneath St. Peter's, such as "by tradition, the bones of the Apostle Peter himself." No evidence of any of this is actually shown. Indeed, a "Pagan sculpture of glowing beauty" found under St. Peter's Cathedral includes a "satyr carrying an infant Bacchus". {You remember, the resurrected son of Zeus who brought wine to humans.[35]}.

Few of the ruins of the Augustan-Flavian golden age are shown. While nodding to "influences" of classical Rome on civilization, Kubly dives into the more immediate wonders of Italy. He provides a rich political description of Garibaldi and Mazzini, and the triumphs of Italian designers and artists in subsequent chapters. All out of order and completely losing any further parallels.

In the final chapter --"Hopeful Road for an Enduring People"--the author begins with a detailed description of the terrible bands of small boys who prey upon tourists, "the scugnizzi". [146] He underlines the "need for fresh approaches to the social and educational problems that are the core of Italy's dilemma today". The country has inexhaustible "springs of vitality", but is plagued by an "immature and uninformed electorate" {148 a, b}. Really?… (más)

This book is merely one of thousands -- of which I have been cursed to sample, if not thoroughly read, hundreds -- in which an alienated intellectual writes about being -- surprise! -- an alienated intellectual. I suppose that one gets at-least partial credit for writing about what he (or she) knows best, but it takes more than that to sustain a reader's interest.
In this case, that additional element is the setting. This novel was written at, and about, the University of Illinois campus community in Urbana-Champaign, an environemnt in which I lived long enough to achieve something like Local Character status. As it happens, the U of I and environs have had a disproportionate number of novels written about them, for reasons which rank as one of the smaller Great Mysteries of Life. Indeed the well-known phrase "fraternity row" appeared first in fiction in one of the first of these. Anyway, as it also happens, I have read at-least half this curious sub-genre of literature. Suffice it to say, the home of Chief Illiniwek (hiss) and of Lorado Taft (hurrah) doesn't emerge in any of these books with, say, the mythical magic of Oxford in Max Beerbohm's ZULEIKA DOBSON or that same university in the griity Inspector Morse mysteries. In THE WHISTLING ZONE, the principal character wishes he was dead -- a longing in which the reader soon joins heartily -- but not, apparently, until he has fully understood the phenomenon of a certain place in Champaign-Urbana where there is, well, a mysterious whistling. Mind you, unlike Clifford Simak's GOBLIN RESERVATION, set on the University of Wisconsin campus, this isn't science fiction. But metaphysical distress can be weird enough -- and certainly is in this book.… (más)