William Demby: An African-American Writer in Rome

Carl Van Vechten portrait of William Demby

William Demby could be seen as just another--and perhaps lesser--writer caught under the spell of Rome, like Ralph Ellison and John Cheever.  I think he's much more than that, and that his reputation deserves to be resuscitated.

In brief, he was an African-American, raised--importantly--in his early years in Clarksburg, West Virginia, who, after serving in World War II, returned to Italy.  He married an Italian and lived in Rome until the mid-1960s.  Demby returned to the US for the 1963 March on Washington and then brought his wife and their son to live in the US.  By 1967 they were all back in Rome, but from then on he divided his time between the US and Italy.

Demby (left), soldier, World War II

In 1950, Demby published a very non-Italian novel, Beetlecreek, described accurately as "the powerful and impassioned novel of coming of age in a southern [US] town."  More about that later, since it has nothing to do with Rome, or the author's Italian residence at the time.

Demby followed up Beetlecreek 15 years later with The Catacombs, usually described as an experimental novel, and, yes, set in Rome, and a novel (as the bookjacket announces), even though its main character is William Demby as himself.

Most of the time Demby was in Rome he was assisting on screenplays, translating scripts, and otherwise participating in the Cinecittà filmmaking scene.  He worked for all the prominent directors of the time: Rossellini, Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni.

Demby acting in an Italian movie.

In The Catacombs his character notes there are very few (as in fewer than a 5) mixed-race couples then living in Rome.  The alter-ego character of the novel is a young African-American actress, Doris, who in the novel is the daughter (I don't know if there is a real daughter) of a very real first serious girlfriend and then second wife of Demby's, Barbara Morris (an NAACP lawyer).  Doris spends most of the novel in conflict over her blackness.  Her first job in Rome is as handmaiden to Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra in the 1963 blockbuster film of that name.

From the perspective of 50 years later, The Catacombs doesn't seem so experimental.  Yes, it incorporates the author as himself; it blurs the line between autobiography and fiction; it uses newspaper headlines freely.  In fact, the character's use of those headlines to show the world falling apart seems even truer today.  But the book also has a straightforward narrative and characters who are in many ways traditional.  In other words, it's a very readable book.

And The Catacombs ranges over Rome.  So if you love Rome and everything that touches it, you'll appreciate The Catacombs for that alone.  The novel opens in a "country trattoria" across from catacombs on via Appia Antica--then a rather rustic area.  I rather like Doris's opening shot to her soon-to-be paramour, the married Count: "What I mean is--if you really had to take me sightseeing--and the good Lord knows I have enough sightseeing to my credit to have earned at least five Mortician degrees--why bring me to the Catacombs?  Isn't there anything else to see in Rome besides churches and tombs?"  She picks up  the same theme later, "This is one hell of a country!  If it's not catacombs, it's Etruscan tombs--"  And the novel ends with the catacombs.

Among The Catacombs' other locations: Rosati's café on Piazza del Popolo, where Demby (the character) waits "for P. the director"; Piazza San Silvestro; Circolo degli' Artisti; Portico d'Ottavia; the Protestant Cemetery (for a burial); Café Canova; Hotel Russie; via della Conciliazione; St. Peter's; Santa Maria della Pace; Campo de' Fiori (and specifically the Giordano Bruno statue); the Verano Cemetery; Piazza Mazzini; via Margutta; Piazza di Spagna; via San Teodoro; via Babuino; via Bissolati; Palazzo delle Esposizioni; and "my Piemonte-Mazzini-bureaucraticsaur quarter of Rome [sounds like Prati to me]."  About via Giulia, our main character says: "I have never liked this street, though architecturally it is one of the most stately in Rome.  Somehow it evokes in my mind all that was cruel and futilely pompous in papal Rome....Via Giulia is Rome at its cynical worst." And, the chapters that are set on the beach are in nearby Ladispoli.

Demby's son, James Gabriele Demby,
reading from The Catacombs.

Demby says in The Catacombs that he began his narration on March 5, 1962, and he has almost completed it on March 5, 1964.  Events of the period are crucial to the novel, including the death of Pope John XXIII on June 3, 1963.  Demby is in line to view the Pope's body in St. Peter's and describes it in part as follows:  "slowly, like boarders in some enormous pensione shuffling through a drafty corridor in bathrobe and slippers, we move with uneasy unaccustomed reverence through the deceptive time-space dimensions of this Chiesa which is Rome."

We of RST have a particular connection to the span of Demby's novel since we were in Italy for 6 months of that time, and in Rome in late January 1963, with snow underfoot in the Forum.  As Demby the character says:  "It hasn't been this cold in Italy for over a century....Like a whispered blessing, snow for the first time in years falls on Rome.  This is the last day of January, January 31."

Stanford-in-Italy students in the Roman
Forum, January 1963.

There are, of course, many other observations of Rome and Romans in The Catacombs.  But the novel is above all a black man's coming to terms with his expatriation, and what follows is his repatriation (but it isn't ever complete, in fact).

It's a fasinating novel, of its time and worth reading.

June 11, 2015 AAR Roundtable on William Demby.
Left, James Gabriele Demby. Center, art historian and critic
 Christian Caliandro. Right, Silvia Lucchesi, Co-Founder and Director,
“Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival” in Florence, who conducted
the 2004 interview with Demby shown at the roundtable.

We were first made aware of Demby and his writing only through a roundtable last June at the American Academy in Rome, which included the showing of a revealing video interview of him. Also at the roundtable was his son, James Gabriele Demby, who is a musician and teacher in Italy.  The roundtable, part of AAR's "Nero su Bianco" ("Black on White") exhibit in 2014, was one of the best we've experienced there.  An obituary (Demby died at 90 on May 23, 2013 in Sag Harbor, NY, one of his homes), excellent article, and another video are available online.

I particularly like this cover of
Beetlecreek.

And a postscript on Beetlecreek.  I found the novel gripping and fascinating.  In a 1967 paperback reprint, the Afterward by Herbert Hill damns it with faint praise:  "His [Demby's] limitation is that his ideas are not fully confronted.  In Beetlecreek he just misses making the leap into that place where great writing lies....[Demby] has written a unique tale with courage and honesty...[the]work of a neophyte writer...."  I think Beetlecreek is better than that.

Dianne

Shopping in Rome... RST finds the perfect gift

In the desperate search for reasonable holiday gifts, even as we were doing our shopping in June, we came across a nifty store in Trastevere.  "Polvere di Tempo" ("Sands of Time"*) specializes in gifts based on time pieces - watches, globes, hourglasses, meridians, sundials.

The hand-worked pieces, some of them using antiques, are creative.  The shop is lovely to look at and the gift packaging superb--including a wax seal with the initial of the person receiving the gift.

Nice Web page too.  Better in Italian, though there is an "English" button to click.

via del Moro, 59.  I'm not sure of the hours; likely the normal Roman ones (with a break mid-day and not open Sunday or Saturday afternoon or Monday morning, but, hey, it's Trastevere so maybe the hours are more generous).

Dianne

*The owner and craftsman, Adrian Rodriguez, translates "Polvere di Tempo" as the "Powder of Time."  A literal translation probably would be "Dust of Time," but I think "Sands of Time" makes more sense.

Rome artist Hitnes follows Audobon

Brown Pelican, August, Miami, FL

Hitnes, a Rome painter and public muralist, is reaching the end of an epic voyage - replicating John James Audobon's (1785-1851) travels along the U.S.'s East Coast, and painting his way on that voyage.  His trip ends in a few days (October 24).  I've always been entranced with Hitnes's gorgeous depictions of animals--real, imagined, and some of both.  We've even bought a small "acquaforte" (a type of etching) of our own to treasure.  Some of these small pieces, along with larger ones, are on his Web site.

One of the small etchings.

Working on the Brown Pelican.

Hitnes's current project is nothing short of astounding. He's been on a 20-city, self-financed, 3-month road trip, with a videographer, and sometimes also Jessica Stewart, the authority on all Roman street art. Hitnes is traveling along Audubon's exploratory voyages from the 1830s, as he describes it, "delving into the current state of the birds he [Audobon] documented."

A painting featuring the "Roseate Spoonbill,"
painted in September in St Petersburg, FL,
(I like the UHaul effect)

You can follow Hitnes on both "The Image Hunter" Web site--where there are many photographs and videos of the live birds, and his own site.

Hitnes describes himself as a painter, muralist, adventurer and fisherman.  He's a 33 year-old Roman whose work we've admired under one of the Ostiense bridges, and in the housing projects in Rome's suburban San Basilio, among many other places.

Hitnes's bloody-mouthed cat--who clearly got her mouse--
at one of the via Ostiense underpasses in Rome.

Don't miss the work of this impressive artist.

One of SIX building walls Hitnes painted in San Basilio, a Rome far-flung neighborhood that needed some decoration.  No, he doesn't always do cats.  I'm a bit cat-focused since our beloved Zelda, our 16 year-old "tortie" died recently.

Dianne

RST Makes History: 600th post!

It would nice to claim that we've been writing this blog longer than Jon Stewart hosted the Daily Show.  Unfortunately, it's not true.  Stewart's first show was January 1999, and RST didn't premier until February 17, 2009.  We're disappointed, to be sure.  But it's reassuring to know that we've been "on" almost as long as Hannity (no, we don't watch), and longer than Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Parks and Recreation, Castle, Glee, and The Good Wife.  2429 days.  

The occasion for all this self praise is our 600th post, an average of one every 4 days, roughly.  It has helped to have Rome as our subject city, rather than, say, Keokuk or Kankakee (in the words of an old song, no insult intended--we're from Buffalo, after all).  To paraphrase a Rome friend, whenever we wonder what to write about, or think we may have finally exhausted the city's possibilities, we just walk outside.

To celebrate our longevity and persistence, we thought we would offer our readers a few blasts from the past, links to posts they may not have seen when they first appeared, but have witnessed large numbers of page views over the years (in this context, "large" means more than, say, 500 hits--sometimes much more).  You could find these, we know, by using the site Search button, or through a Google search, but you probably didn't, or won't.  Besides, we've done some winnowing.

Here are 11 we think you'll enjoy.  And thanks for your support!  Now if Hannity would only get fired.

Making Limoncello

Rome's Modern Churches Are Worth the Trek

The Politics of an Anthem: Bella Ciao

Walking the (Aurelian) Wall: Wall Walk I of our series

Libya and Italian Colonialism

Garibaldi in Rome

Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, winning the 1960 marathon,
running barefoot

The 1960 Rome Olympics

The Building Wars: MAXXI vs MACRO

World War II at Home: Via Tasso

Gabbo: The Death and Life of Gabriele Sandri






Born Again in Piazza Fiume

la Rinascente, Piazze Fiume

Shaping the New Man: Alessio Ponzio's new book on youth training programs under Fascism and Nazism

Buildings of the Foro Italico (nee Mussolini).  At left, the pool building.  At right, behind the obelisk, the training academy. 

On the side of the obelisk, the words
Opera Balilla, Anno X [1932].
This--and the rest of Foro Italico--
is on an itinerary in Modern Rome: 4
Great Walks for the Curious Traveler

Romaphiles with an interest in the modern, 20th-century city will be familiar with the northern-Rome complex once known as Foro Mussolini, and now as Foro Italico (#5 on RST's Top 40): a 650-ton obelisk of Carrara marble, engraved with the words "MUSSOLINI DUX"; a small, harmonious sports stadium (The Marble Stadium), surrounded by sculptures glorifying the male body; an indoor swimming pool, decorated with mosaics in a nautical theme (the building also houses Il Duce's private gym, which we've visited); a entryway of stone, now enjoyed by skateboarders, with marble markers announcing the foreign conquests of the Fascist regime; and, centering these and other athletic facilities, and linked to the stadium, a massive building in Pompeian red. Mostly designed by architect Enrico del Debbio, the complex opened in 1932.

What is less well known is what happened inside the U-shaped red building.  As Alessio Ponzio explains in his recently published book, Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), that building housed the Fascist Academy of Physical Education of Rome, essentially an elaborate boarding school, with apartments for instructors and a dormitory for students, where the "political and pedagogical leaders" of the Fascist youth organization--then known as the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB)--were trained.

One of Fascism's summer "camps."  The ramps at left
made possible elaborately orchestrated presentations.

During a two-year program of coursework and athletic activities, the instructors were trained not only to teach sports and to organize summer camps (Colonie di Vacanze), displays, and parades, but to "give lectures about Italian history, the Fascist regime, and Fascist ideology" and to manage and mold groups of children and adolescents into believers in the Italian New Order. The case del Balilla (Balilla houses), where the graduates of the Academy engaged the country's young people, were educational (or ideological, or propagandistic) in the broadest sense.  While sports were important, minds too were trained--in libraries, theaters, reading rooms, radio rooms, lecture halls. The experience was intense.  "By now we all have the same character," wrote one student, "we all think in the same way."

Boys training at a Fascist summer camp

In 1937, the ONB was replaced by the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL).  Between 1937 and 1939, years that Ponzio describes as the "totalitarian acceleration," the new organization, now directly run by the PNF (National Fascist Party), devoted more attention to military training and endorsed the race laws of 1938; Jewish youth and leaders were expelled.  The case del Balilla (named after Giovan Battista Perasso, a hero of the Great War, whose moniker was Balilla) were renamed case della GIL.  The slogan of the GIL, taken from yet another Fascist-era youth organization, was "Credere, Obbedire, Combattere" (Believe, Obey, Fight).  In 1943 there were about 40 GIL institutes for the training of youth leaders, though the Academy at the Mussolini Forum continued to have a major role.  While the ONB had operated independently of the public schools, the GIL "invaded and conditioned the schools" by organizing a variety of
educational activities during school hours.  It also subsidized summer camps.  And the attack on Catholic youth organizations sharpened, so that in 1940 members of Catholic Action were forbidden to wear badges of that organization in public.

Architect Luigi Moretti's stunning GIL edifice, as it
looked in the 1930s.  It's still there, in Trastevere,
at Largo Ascianghi 5 (and is #10 on RST's Top 40 and
on one of the RST itineraries)

The Academy was important, but Fascism's efforts to produce a "New Man," to shape the bodies and minds of Italy's youth had begun a decade earlier and was given official, legislative sanction in 1926, with the creation of the ONB and approval of a measure that gave to the organization an "absolute monopoly over male education in all extracurricular and extrafamiliar activities.  With the exception of some Catholic youth associations, all other youth organizations, among them the Boy Scouts, the Republic Youth Federation, and the Socialist Youth Federation, were disbanded.  Pius XI resisted decrees that included Catholic groups, arguing that education belonged to family, church and state, and in May 1931 the Vatican broke diplomatic relations with Italy over these issues.

But Mussolini was insistent:  "The Fascist state," he had announced in 1929, "asserts at full its own ethics.  It is Catholic, but it is Fascist. Rather, it is above all, exclusively, essentially Fascist."  An accommodation, if one can call it that, was reached in 1933, with Catholic organizations allowed to exist if they desisted from participation in union, political, and even sports activities.  The spiritual realm was theirs, but that was all.

Foro Italico complex.  The statues circle the small stadium, behind the main buildings.  

It would be tempting to assume that youth education was of minor importance to the Italian Fascist state (and for Germany, too), but it would be wrong to do so.  According to Ponzio, both regimes, and both Hitler and Mussolini, believed "that if states wanted to have a complete control of their citizens, they had to monopolize the education of their future generations."  In addition, Mussolini's commitment to youth education was grounded in the belief that the adult generations had failed (in the Great War, especially), and that the creation of the New Man could only occur when malleable young people were taught a new set of values.

In the final pages of this rich, detailed, and thoroughly researched comparative history, Ponzio briefly assesses the memoirs and oral histories of students and teachers that participated in the ONB and GIL programs.  So "multifaceted" were these experiences, he concludes, so "diverse and various," that "it is not possible to find a common voice."  The results were "uneven," and "the idea of Italian and German youth being blindly mobilized by Mussolini's and Hitler's regimes is artificial."  That's a comforting perspective, but not, I think, one entirely consistent with, or supported by, the Ponzio's own powerful, underlying narrative.

Ponzio explains, too, how knowledge of Fascist programs of youth education--and the comparison with similar Nazi programs--can help in evaluating the idea of "italiani brava gente"--the "myth of the good Italian." Assembled in the postwar era, the myth had several components: compared to the horrific behavior of Nazi Germany, the Fascist regime seemed relatively benign--a pale imitation, really, of its wartime ally.  In addition, Italy's early withdrawal from the conflict was easily interpreted as a sign that Italians were ill-suited to combat and warfare--just too nice to fight.  Finally, the resistance movement--celebrated and revered to this day--allowed Italians to believe that opposition to the Mussolini dictatorship had been widespread, the norm.  

The Italian experience with youth education makes the myth of "italiani brava gente" hard to accept.
Italian Fascism was a pioneer in this area, and the program it created was, for much of a decade, the envy of the Nazis--and of many other European regimes.

Despite what the word implies, totalitarianism is never "total."  But Fascist efforts to reconstruct the bodies and belief systems of youth were, by Ponzio's own accounting, elaborate, invasive, and pervasive, and in Italy they were in place for a generation--long enough to create a substantial cadre of believers, of New Men. The "New Men" who survived the war must have had quite an adjustment.

Bill



Shaping the New Man was published September 29.  It is available for purchase through the University of Wisconsin Press and amazon.com.