In re Reply # 2491
PatH, Yes, I read Carlo Levi's Christ Stopped at Eboli in the original Italian, many years ago. It indirectly touched my own life, and I could never forget either. When the chance to post this title presented itself, I jumped at it.
Carlo Levi (1902-1975)was born and brought up in the Italian region of Piedmont (Piemonte - Capital Turin = Torino), in the north west of Italy bortdering France and Switzerland. He studied medicine and became a practising physician.
His interest in politics, or perhaps more his dissatisfaction with the fascist regime led him to cofound with two other men an antifascist group called (Giustizia e Libertà) = Justice and Liberty. In 1929 he was put in jail for two months and then sent to internal exile into one of the poorest, most desperate neglected areas in the Italian South. Though he was not allowed to "do anything", he felt compelled to minister to the sick and infirm among the residents and, after being ordered to stop - following the reports of the fascist mayor of the hamlet - continued in secrecy. Levi was pardoned in 1936 in a General Amnesty declared after Italian troops took Addis Ababa in the war with Italy's colony, Ethiopia. Levi left for France but eventually returned to Rome.
According to Dr. Levi's expressed wishes in his Last Will and Testament, he was put to rest in Aliano, in the former region of Lucania, now called Basilicata, Italy.
As I recall it, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli is a factual report in an essayistic form of evens and circumstances true to the time but deeply informed with compassion.
Please forgive me for going into these details.
