European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Cappotto di legno

by de Gondi
Mon Apr 28th, 2008 at 07:31:33 PM EST

"If I must write, I must do it as if it were an emergency, where swearing is more sincere than prayers. And where the broken edges of reality are more likely to reveal truth. Rap in Europe seems light years ahead of literature in its capacity to make words part of the flesh of the present; Parisian rappers that go to stay in Naples to tell stories about the Mediterranean, people from the Philippines or Galarate that speak a common slang and codify new views, inventing new grammars for storytelling. And they speak of a world where everything is a mechanism of power, money, assertion, where politics is always betrayal, and where the word is the discriminating factor capable of narrating all this without denying it, without considering it inevitable, but feeling necessary the beauty of telling it and corroding it. With words and gastric juices. Much writing seems instead to dance Tarantellas around the central questions of our lives. In the end I'm not interested in helping the reader evade. I'm interested in invading him. And I'm interested in literature similar to a viper's bite rather than an aquarelle fantasy."

Roberto Saviano, 2007

The Neapolitan rapper Lucariello of the Almamegretta together with the contemporary composer Ezio Bosso have written a song about Roberto Saviano, the writer condemned to death by the Camorra for his book Gomorrah. Saviano has been living under escort for the past few years, which keeps him off the reporter's beat, a strange destiny for a young man who's hard hitting prose made him a sensation but hampered his career just at the outset. Of all the books written about the Camorra or the other mafias this one stands out as perhaps the first to cause a mafia fatwa.

There have been many reporters assassinated in Italy for their articles, their investigations or their charisma. Giuseppe Fava comes to mind, the director of I Siciliani in Catania who was not only assassinated because of his reporting but above all because he was a magnetic civic personality. He could tune in to the needs and the sentiments of the emarginated classes where the mafia reigns. A dangerous subversive.

So maybe that's what makes Saviano so dangerous. His prose and his personality are a menace to the established order. Last year he remarked that he would like to have been a rapper to tell the stories of the Campania. Lucariello has obliged with this song about him and he asked Saviano to collaborate with the lyrics.

It's a song about the murder of Roberto Saviano.

It's been on the web since the 24th in anteprima and will be played live on Tuesday evening, April 29th, at 22.00 on the program B-Side. Much of the song is in dialect so here's both the Italian translation and my English translation with a short explanation.

The title is Cappotto di legno, wooden coat, jargon for a coffin. It can also be understood as a death sentence or the sense of constriction a condemned person lives with before he is finally gunned down.

cappotto di legno prima delle botte in petto
wooden coat before he's shot in the chest

It reminded me of Tom Waits, "the wooden kimono was all ready to drop in San Francisco Bay." It's the story of his killer as he prepares himself for the job, narrated in the first or third person. There's also the voice of the father of the camorra boss Sandokan deriding Saviano as a pagliaccio, buffone, fitente. At one point there are three lines that stand apart, I'd say they're what Saviano would want as a legacy:

lettere bollenti come proiettili
che sfondano il silenzio
e sfondano il cervello di chi non pensa

Boiling letters like projectiles
That break through silence
And break through the brains of those who don't think

The line

"tardarielli" ma non "scordarelli"
"late doers" but not "forgetters"

comes from a deposition by a collaborator of justice in which he explains why a victim was killed eleven years after being sentenced to death by the clans. Killers can take all the time they want since they never forget the job to be done.

The last two lines remind me of the spontaneous demonstrations in Locri following the assassination of Fortugno (here and here) during the primaries for the Olive coalition in 2005. The youth of the Calabria carried banners written E adesso ammazzateci tutti. Go ahead, kill all of us.

E' l'una e lucido la pistola Tiro un'altra striscia al volo Butto dentro il caricatore Con la madonna sul cuore So che lei poi mi perdonerà Quando questa storia sarà finita I flash in testa ancora Su una fotografia a colori gli occhi di un bravo ragazzo i capi di casale dicono che sia un buffone dobbiamo creare paura ha mischiato "uomini" con gente di fognatura fumo fuoco e sangue intanto passa il tempo quando una calibro 45 ti dà un bacio in una tempia vento di vendetta otto botte in petto "tardarielli" ma non "scordarelli" a mettere proiettili incandescenti nelle budella quello che vedo sono un braccio senza nome faccio quello che vogliono e lo faccio bene devo guardarlo a terra fino a quando non muore...		It's one I'm polishin' the pistol I snort another line ram in the mag with the Madonna on my heart I know she'll pardon me when this story's over flashes in my head still of a color picture the eyes of a good kid the bosses of Casale say he's an asshole they gotta create fear he mixed "men" with sewer scum smoke fire and blood and time passes by when a calibre 45 kisses your temple winds of revenge eight rounds in his chest they take their time but they never forget to fire incandescent bullets in his guts I am what I see an arm with no name I do what they want and I do a good job I gotta watch him on the ground until he dies...
cappotto di legno prima delle botte in petto cappotto di legno prima delle botte in petto...		wooden coat before he's shot in the chest wooden coat before he's shot in the chest...
in testa il casco è nero lucido mentre dentro sei putrido ti guardi intorno ogni giorno e sai di non essere l'unico saluto i ragazzi giù al palazzo mentre il becchino sta abbassando un'altra cassa nel fosso per me la rabbia è come ossigeno nelle ossa lo sai chi sbaglia paga faccio sgommare la ruota stringo la mano sulla pistola di nuovo lettere bollenti come proiettili che sfondano il silenzio e sfondano il cervello di chi non pensa senza paura levo la sicura otto colpi al petto dalla schiena nel buio e anche se questo buffone avesse ragione in testa suona sempre la stessa canzone d'amore devo guardarlo a terra fino a quando non muove mentre lo guardo a terra fino a quando non muore		shiny black helmet on while inside you're rotten you look around everyday and you know you ain't the only one you wave to the guys down at the palace while the undertaker lowers another one in the grave for me anger is like oxygen in the bones you know that if you mess up you pay I leave skid marks and squeeze the pistol in my hand again boiling letters like projectiles that break through silence and break through the brains of those who don't think ain't got fear, switch off safe eight rounds through his back in the dark and even if this asshole was right in my head it's still the same old love song I gotta watch him on the ground `til he don't move while I look at him on the ground until he dies
cappotto di legno prima delle botte in petto cappotto di legno prima delle botte in petto...		wooden coat before he's shot in the chest wooden coat before he's shot in the chest...
sono di casale la capitale di una multinazionale criminale nulla si muove le strade asfaltate sono poche come tappeti rossi che portano alle ville dei boss mercedes lamborghini quante ne vuoi qui non sono macchine ma sangue e cemento... e se si alza una mano si alzano tutte e adesso sparateci tutti.		I'm from Casale capital of a multinational crime syndicate nothin' moves asphalted streets are few like red carpets that lead to the bosses' villas Mercedes lamborghinis all you want here there ain't no cars, only blood and cement... and if one hand is raised all the others go up too so now kill all of us.

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Cappotto di legno | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Cappotto di legno (4.00 / 11)

I first talked about Roberto Saviano in this diary.

Gomorrah has since been translated into several dozen languages. It's well worth the read.

Any help with my translation is welcome. My rap isn't all that good. Nor have I seen the Sopranos.

Buffone was difficult. Fool, asshole, jerk. mothafucka doesn't quite do it in this context.

by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Mon Apr 28th, 2008 at 07:43:57 PM EST

Re: Cappotto di legno (4.00 / 6)

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

by rg (leopold dot lepster at google mail dot com) on Mon Apr 28th, 2008 at 08:19:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Cappotto di legno (4.00 / 5)

Buffone, literally, buffoon.

But it might be best rendered by "wanker"?

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 01:48:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Gangster chic (none / 0)

Do Italian gangsters have the same sort of wide appeal to Italian youth that American gangsters have to many American youth?

How widely known is Saviano among young Italians (from high schoolers into 20s), and if he were murdered, what do you think would be the response among these youth, and the Italian people at large?

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 02:10:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Gangster chic (4.00 / 2)

Are American kids that seduced by the gangster mystic?

Saviano is well known among the young literate and the illiterate for different reasons. At the moment there is an ad personam campaign against him, accusing him of running after fame and glory. It's a well-known routine. The illiterate buy it acritically.

Seeing as the relative majority of the young voted left, it would suggest that he is well-perceived by most youth. His book continues to be an all time best-seller in Italy.

His murder would be lived as a national- as well as an international- outrage.

by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 05:27:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Gangster chic (none / 1)

Are American kids that seduced by the gangster mystic?

Yes, they are. A few moments spent with Google will show that the literacy of American youth is deteriorating fast.
No child left behind, the only real educational showpiece of the last decade, has proven a failure by every measure.
People who see their future in the bottom of a french fryer pan are well aware that they are powerless, hopeless. They are--dare I say it-- Bitter.

People who cannot see or understand the web of life, the net of process that enclose, support their lives are starved for understanding, and so reduced to soundbite thought, cartoon realities where the bank robber becomes the hero, and the dead teller is just nothing-- as they are nothing.

But they are easily controlled- anarchic yet servile, worshiping power yet despising the failed law.

The similarities with the Italy described here are sometimes striking, and grow more so, as I learn.
Yet the differences are enough to give me hope- for Italy.

Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Fri May 2nd, 2008 at 03:44:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Gangster chic (none / 1)

de Gondi: Are American kids that seduced by the gangster mystic?

It may have been too rash and/or simplistic a comparison to make, but there are some similarities, I think.

For example, here is Bill Cosby talking to a men only black audience:

Instead of waiting for handouts or outside help, Cosby argues, disadvantaged blacks should start by purging their own culture of noxious elements like gangsta rap, a favorite target. "What do record producers think when they churn out that gangsta rap with antisocial, women-hating messages?," Cosby and Poussaint ask in their book. "Do they think that black male youth won't act out what they have repeated since they were old enough to listen?" Cosby's rhetoric on culture echoes--and amplifies--a swelling strain of black opinion: last November's Pew study reported that 71 percent of blacks feel that rap is a bad influence.
This Is How We Lost to the White Man

Despite the title of that article, though, it is not just black American boys, but American boys of all races. Although -- and this is purely speculation -- middle-class white kids are probably far more likely to grow out of it [Eminem notwithstanding], disadvantaged kids with fewer social and economic options are more likely emulate the images and words in gangsta rap culture in their own lives.

But again, that is purely my personal impression and it may be way off.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Fri May 2nd, 2008 at 07:15:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

"more than virility and strut" (4.00 / 2)

marco: But again, that is purely my personal impression and it may be way off.

Yup. Should have read that article more carefully. Aside from the fact that the excerpt above was not from one of Cosby's talks but rather from his book, there is also this:

At times, Cosby seems willfully blind to the parallels between his arguments and those made in the presumably glorious past. Consider his problems with rap. How could an avowed jazz fanatic be oblivious to the similar plaints once sparked by the music of his youth? "The tired longshoreman, the porter, the housemaid and the poor elevator boy in search of recreation, seeking in jazz the tonic for weary nerves and muscles," wrote the lay historian J. A. Rogers, "are only too apt to find the bootlegger, the gambler and the demi-monde who have come there for victims and to escape the eyes of the police."
Beyond the apocryphal notion that black culture was once a fount of virtue, there's still the charge that culture is indeed the problem. But to reach that conclusion, you'd have to stand on some rickety legs. The hip-hop argument, again, is particularly creaky. Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard social scientist, has highlighted that an increase in hip-hop's popularity during the early 1990s corresponded with a declining amount of time spent reading among black kids. But gangsta rap can be correlated with other phenomena, too--many of them positive. During the 1990s, as gangsta rap exploded, teen pregnancy and the murder rate among black men declined. Should we give the blue ribbon in citizenship to Dr. Dre?

(I wonder if Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day may shed some light on this subject.)

But one senses a deep and sincere ambivalence in the author, who himself is black, as he alternates between praising Cosby and then critiquing (respectfully) what he says:

I wished, then, that my 7-year-old son could have seen Cosby there, to take in the same basic message that I endeavor to serve him every day--that manhood means more than virility and strut, that it calls for discipline and dutiful stewardship. <...>
I'd take my son to see Bill Cosby, to hear his message, to revel in its promise and optimism. But afterward, he and I would have a very long talk.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Fri May 2nd, 2008 at 07:45:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

celebrity as flak jacket (4.00 / 6)

I am left speechless by the courage of this guy. Some quick searching shows that in addition to the rap song, he is on plenty of videos on YouTube, and this book is being made into a film.

Given his apparent huge success, do you think the Camorra might not think twice about killing him?

Cappotto di legno: The line

"tardarielli" ma non "scordarelli"
"late doers" but not "forgetters"

If so, Saviano may be condemned to seek ever greater heights of popularity for the rest of his life as a deterrent against assassination. Unless, of course, the Camorra can be destroyed before that.

(Incidentally, the first chapter of the book in English is provided on the New York Times website.)

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Mon Apr 28th, 2008 at 08:22:14 PM EST

Re: celebrity as flak jacket (4.00 / 2)

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see billboards all over the city announcing the film.

by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 04:43:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Cappotto di legno (4.00 / 5)

I saw a TV piece over the week-end with an interview. His language struck me, the level to which he took the challenge. He was really pouring scorn on them, really calling them out.

He was pretty much saying: you have no choice but to kill me, because I'm messing your lives up, as long as I go on talking I'm giving you no peace.

It's a way of asserting the power of words to ridicule their silence, and of making his murder look like a weak man's response.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 01:59:30 AM EST

Re: Cappotto di legno (4.00 / 8)

Thanks rg, marco for the great links. All others welcome. There is also an episode of Saviano when he went back to Casale last year and held a conference in the main plaza with Bertinotti. Sandokan's father was present.

I don't think that Saviano's strategy is going to change the Camorra's decision. The mafias have another language and reality. Further, Saviano's primary scope is to write and to fight the mafias by exposing them to public scrutiny and ridicule and heightening awareness among the young. The death sentence works both ways. The more he is famous the more he will be targeted, especially when he reveals the connivance and complicity of politicians, judges, professionals, administrators, et al. His assassination would be a demonstration of power, that everything must remain as it is.

Saviano greatly regrets the damage his writing has caused to his family, for they could be targeted also. However, because of the actual play of forces it is unlikely that the Camorra will resort to "transversal revenge."

As for the world view of the mafias, Saviano has done something unpardonable, as the song says. He's mixed "men" with sewer scum. According to the mafia view, only members of the mafias are "men." Everyone else is of no account, a lower race so to say, to be exploited. By treating "men" as low life Saviano has signed his death sentence. He is an "infame."

by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 02:32:47 AM EST

Re: Cappotto di legno (none / 1)

wowoot, great translation, great man, something christic in his grave determination to give up his life if necessary, rather than cease calling others to face what they usually do not dare to even think about.

i must recommend the sopranos as great drama and una favola di morale.

i never was a fan of the spate of very successful mafia movies from hollywood, and when i saw how successful the sopranos was in the states, before it made it to europe, in my mind i sneered, thinking it was going to be more of the same, a kind of fetishism of criminality, honour among thieves etc.

however i gave it a shot, and was hooked immediately. it's much, much more than that...essential tv, in fact, to understand the organised crime 'mentality', and should be required viewing for italians.

Peace is not the absence of war -- peace is the absence of fear. Ursula Franklin

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 04:39:35 AM EST

Re: Cappotto di legno (4.00 / 2)

I think the word used by Sandokan's father is not pagliaccio (clown) but guagliaccio from guagliono with a negative suffix. Guagliono is slang for "guy" or "kid." E' un bravo guagliono: He's a good kid.

Guagliaccio would be something like "damned bastard" or "idiotic brat."

by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Tue Apr 29th, 2008 at 05:17:03 AM EST

Re: Cappotto di legno (4.00 / 3)

In the silence of the port's black hole, the molecular structure of merchandise seems to break down, only to recompose once it gets beyond the perimeter of the coast. Goods have to leave the port immediately. Everything happens so quickly that they disappear in the process, evaporate as if they'd never existed. As if nothing had happened, as if it had all been simply an act. An imaginary voyage, a false landing, a phantom ship, evanescent cargo. Goods need to arrive in the buyer's hands without leaving any drool to mark their route, they have to reach their warehouse quickly, right away, before time can even begin -- time that might allow for an inspection. Hundreds of pounds of merchandise move as if they were a package hand-delivered by the mailman. In the port of Naples -- 330 acres spread out along seven miles of coastline -- time undergoes unique expansions and contractions. Things that take an hour elsewhere seem to happen here in less than a minute. Here the proverbial slowness that makes the Neapolitan's every move molasses-like is quashed, confuted, negated. The ruthless swiftness of Chinese merchandise overruns the temporal dimension of customs inspections, killing time itself. A massacre of minutes, a slaughter of seconds stolen from the records, chased by trucks, hurried along by cranes, helped by forklifts that disembowel the containers.

My God, can he write!

Useful talking follows experience, the more experience the better. Talking that precedes experience is known as bullshit.

by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Fri May 2nd, 2008 at 04:03:54 AM EST

Re: Cappotto di legno (4.00 / 2)

His prose struck me hard from the very outset. I've asked friends out of curiousity if they've read him and often the response is of shock. Some people, perhaps because they are Italians or even Neapolitans, simply panic from reading him.

However, as a reporter on such cases as the waste emergency in Campania, he is just a plain, damned good reporter.

by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Fri May 2nd, 2008 at 08:14:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

"il ano del mare" (none / 1)

his prose ripples with metaphors ("The port of Naples is an open wound", "Ships enter the gulf and come to the dock like babies to the breast") and outright impossibilities that are nevertheless realistic ("These were the Chinese who never die. The eternal ones", "An immense construction that seems ... to invent [space]"), but there are also deeper, larger phantasms undulating beneath --

passes through here ...
open wound ...
end point for the interminable voyage ...
enter the gulf ...
hole in the earth out of which what's made in China comes ...
everything made in China is poured out here ...
Like a bucket of water dumped into a hole in the sand. The water eats the sand, and the hole gets bigger and deeper ...
in the silence of the port's black hole ...
unique expansions and contractions ...
disembowel the containers ...

-- until they rise up within view --

rumbling with heaving iron, the sheet metal and screws slowly penetrate the tiny Neapolitan opening

At this point, there is no need to name it, but after all that metaphorical teasing and foreplay, Saviano disposes with false modesty:

It is as if the anus of the sea were opening out, causing great pain to the sphincter muscles.

Gomorrah indeed. No wonder some people panic from reading him.

But his metaphors are not the only reason. The stark facts he enumerates are jarring as well:

According to the Italian Customs Agency, 60 percent of the goods arriving in Naples escape official customs inspection, 20 percent of the bills of entry go unchecked, and fifty thousand shipments are contraband, 99 percent of them from China -- all for an estimated 200 million euros in evaded taxes each semester. The containers that need to disappear before being inspected are in the first row. Every container is duly numbered, but the numbers on many of them are identical. So one inspected container baptizes all the illegal ones with the same number.

And then back to the metaphors...

The port is detached from the city. An infected appendix, never quite degenerating into peritonitis, always there in the abdomen of the coastline. ...
A grounded amphibian, a marine metamorphosis.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Fri May 2nd, 2008 at 09:17:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: "il ano del mare" (4.00 / 2)

Saviano finished the article I quoted above with an anecdote about Céline, another hard-hitting writer.

When Céline was asked what he thought about literature, he remarked that there were two kinds of literature. When pressed to elaborate, Céline replied that there are those who write literature and then there are those that construct needles to shove up flies' asses.

by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Fri May 2nd, 2008 at 10:48:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Cappotto di legno | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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