album 'the ballad of Sacco e Vanzetti' and I will try to get a copy of it.
Giovanni Verga wrote that only artists can properly address social issues.
I don't know if that specific text was ever translated in english because it was in the prologue (refused) to the Malavoglia; I am copying and translating (on the fly, please excuse any mistake) a part of it below, hoping that you like it:
'The path humanity follows towards the pursuit of progress is great, seen from the distance. Restlessness, avidity, selfishness, passions, vices turned into virtues, all the weaknesses that help this huge activity, all contradictions from whose friction truth arises, all of these vanish in the glorious light of progress.
The result covers the petty private interests which produce it; it justifies them as if they were needed to push the individual that incounsciously cooperates for the benefit of all...only the artist, similarly swept away by the flood,
looking around, has the right to think of the weak ones that are lost in the way, the tired ones who let the wave come upon them to reach the end faster, the defeated ones that raise their desperate arms and bend their necks beneath the implacable foot of the overtakers: the winners of today, in a hurry as well, eager to succeed, that will be overtaken tomorrow."
Here is the original in Italian:
"Il cammino fatale, incessante, spesso faticoso e febbrile che segue l'umanità per raggiungere la conquista del progresso, è grandioso nel suo risultato, visto nell'insieme, da lontano. Nella luce gloriosa che l'accompagna dileguansi le irrequietudini, le avidità, l'egoismo, tutte le passioni, tutti i vizi che si trasformano in virtù, tutte le debolezze che aiutano l'immane lavoro, tutte le contraddizioni dal cui attrito sviluppasi la luce della verità. Il risultato umanitario copre quanto c'è di meschino negli interessi particolari che lo producono; li giustifica quasi come mezzi necessari a stimolare l'attività dell'individuo cooperante inconscio al beneficio di tutti...solo l'artista travolto anch'esso dalla fiumana, guardandosi intorno, ha il diritto d'interessarsi ai deboli che restano per via, ai fiacchi che si lasciano sorpassare dall'onda per finire più presto, ai vinti che levano le braccia disperate, e piegano il capo sotto il piede inesorabile dei sopravvegnenti, i vincitori d'oggi, frettolosi anch'essi, avidi anch'essi di arrivare, e che saranno sorpassati domani. "
Massimo
On 28/feb/05, at 02:39, Carrol Cox wrote:
Woody Guthrie, "The Flood and the Storm"
The year is nineteen and twenty, kind friends, And the great World's War we have won. Old Kaiser Bill, we've beat him once again In the smoke of the cannon and the gun.
Old von Hindenburg and his Royal German Army, They are tramps in tatters and in rags. Uncle Sammy has tied every nation in this world In his long old leather money bags.
Wilson caught a trip and a train into Paris, Meetin' Lloyd George and Mr. Clemenceau. They said to Mr. Wilson, "We've staked all of our claims, There is nothing else for you."
"I plowed more lands, I built bigger fact'ries, An' I stopped Hindenburg in his tracks. You thank the Yanks by claimin' all the lands, But you still owe your money to my bank."
"Keep sending your ships across these waters; We'll borrow all the money you can lend. We must buy new clothes, new plows, and fact'ries, And we need golden dollars for to spend."
Ever' dollar in the world, well, it rolled and it rolled, And it rolled into Uncle Sammy's door. A few got richer, and richer, and richer, But the poor folks kept but gettin' poor.
(Remainder at http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/flood.html
