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Thursday, August 16, 2007

Mr. Ingarao
Part One


Philosophy Now takes note of it. So does the Chronicle of Higher Education. Nicola Ingarao, a Mafia chief who was shot and killed in Palermo a few weeks ago, turns out also to have been a serious student of philosophy, having just passed with a perfect score an advanced exam at the University of Palermo.


When an unknown assailant in Palermo, Sicily, fired five shots into Nicola Ingarao on June 13, he killed the reputed boss of the Porta Nuova gang, breaking a 10-month cease-fire among the city's Mafia bands and possibly setting off a new war among them.

The killer also deprived the University of Palermo of one of its most promising nontraditional students.

A day before his murder, Mr. Ingarao, 46, passed a final exam in the history of philosophy with a perfect grade of 30.

"He was a model student, very assiduous and attentive," says the course's professor, Pietro di Giovanni. "His tone was always very polite and distinguished."

Mr. Ingarao, who was facing trial for racketeering and extortion, had been in and out of prison since 1995 for various crimes, including murder, though that conviction was overturned on appeal. He began work toward a bachelor's degree in psychology while still behind bars, and was released from custody only four months before his death.

Mr. Di Giovanni, who is chairman of an interdisciplinary department at the university called Ethos, says that Mr. Ingarao introduced himself as a toy retailer. But the professor does not find it surprising that one of his best students had a more exotic occupation.

"It is quite common for people in their 40s to take a greater interest in culture," he says. "That this person had a private life, however you want to describe it, and yet wanted to learn more about these subjects, seems to me perfectly normal."


For some reason, this story reminded UD of an 1878 Robert Louis Stevenson essay, Aes Triplex (it's from Horace, and means 'triple brass'), which she's loved ever since she found it in an old copy of the Oxford Book of Essays. Times being what they are, the essay is right here, in its entirety, in a very pleasant typeface with a gray matte finish.

In a self-indulgent effort to figure out exactly why she so admires this essay, and to figure out why the death of Mr. Ingarao made her think of it, SOS will now consider Stevenson's writing very closely.



But before we get started -- Who more likely than a major Mafia player to be a philosopher? As Stevenson will note again and again in his essay, we all live under the threat of our own extinction, though we don't think much about it. Or at all about it. A person caught up in deadly turf wars, though, knows moment by moment the contingency of his life... He owes it to himself to get his thinking about it done, pronto...

Here's Stevenson's first paragraph, with SOS commentary along the way:


The changes wrought by death are in themselves so sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man’s experience, and has no parallel upon earth. [There's something almost comical about this sentence... Yes, death certainly does change things... But it's also refreshing to read a writer who leaps into the subject in this rather naive and direct way. Why not...] It outdoes all other accidents because it is the last of them. [See Phillip Larkin's great poem, Aubade: Most things may never happen: this one will,/ And realisation of it rages out/ In furnace fear when we are caught without/ People or drink.] Sometimes it leaps suddenly upon its victims, like a Thug; sometimes it lays a regular siege and creeps upon their citadel during a score of years. And when the business is done, there is sore havoc made in other people’s lives, and a pin knocked out by which many subsidiary friendships hung together. There are empty chairs, solitary walks, and single beds at night. [Rather florid stuff, but I like his rich images, the way he plays a figure out...] Again, in taking away our friends, death does not take them away utterly, but leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and soon intolerable residue, which must be hurriedly concealed. [Sure, he's breaking some SOS rules -- He's wordy, and he uses evil adverbs - hurriedly, utterly... But there is something in the alternation between long sentences, and then short ones with a certain classical composure -- empty chairs, solitary walks, and single beds at night -- that is charming to me.] Hence a whole chapter of sights and customs striking to the mind, from the pyramids of Egypt to the gibbets and dule trees of mediaeval Europe. [There's a richness in his examples, and a lilt in his phrases.] The poorest persons have a bit of pageant going towards the tomb; memorial stones are set up over the least memorable; and, in order to preserve some show of respect for what remains of our old loves and friendships, we must accompany it with much grimly ludicrous ceremonial, and the hired undertaker parades before the door. [Again, his prose turns out to be about intriguing mixes -- in the earlier sentence, both mocking and tragical; here, grimly and ludicrous, the undertaker who parades -- it seems a way of capturing the tragicomic aspect of our life and death, our efforts to hide death, make the dead go away...] All this, and much more of the same sort, accompanied by the eloquence of poets, has gone a great way to put humanity in error; [Ah. The argument approaches. Our ornate death ceremonials have in some way put us in error.] nay, in many philosophies the error has been embodied and laid down with every circumstance of logic; although in real life the bustle and swiftness, in leaving people little time to think, have not left them time enough to go dangerously wrong in practice. [Bit convoluted here, but he seems to be saying that our philosophers too misunderstand death and lead us astray about it. Fortunately, we don't do much thinking in the heat of human event, so we ritualize death - and live our lives, for that matter - pretty adequately.]



As a matter of fact, although few things are spoken of with more fearful whisperings than this prospect of death, few have less influence on conduct under healthy circumstances. [As long as life moves along normally, we don't think about our death.] We have all heard of cities in South America built upon the side of fiery mountains, and how, even in this tremendous neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more impressed by the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens in the greenest corner of England. [Again, few of us in this century would write so floridly, but there's an energy and wit here that's attractive.] There are serenades and suppers and much gallantry among the myrtles overhead; and meanwhile the foundation shudders underfoot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and at any moment living ruin may leap sky-high into the moonlight, and tumble man and his merry-making in the dust. [If you don't think Stevenson was aware of the delicious alliteration in all the M's in this sentence, think again. Great prose stylists are very self-conscious. And yes, I've highlighted said M's. Note the internal rhyme, too, in "bowels of the mountain growl."] In the eyes of very young people, and very dull old ones, there is something indescribably reckless and desperate in such a picture. It seems not credible that respectable married people, with umbrellas, should find appetite for a bit of supper within quite a long distance of a fiery mountain; ordinary life begins to smell of high-handed debauch when it is carried on so close to a catastrophe; and even cheese and salad, it seems, could hardly be relished in such circumstances without something like a defiance of the Creator. [Again, a very long sentence, but just lots of fun to be inside, no? The adorable absurdity of "with umbrellas," the freshness of "to smell of," the humble foods...] It should be a place for nobody but hermits dwelling in prayer and maceration, or mere born-devils drowning care in a perpetual carouse. [Maceration? Neither do I. But as SOS has said before on this blog, we go to great writers in part for new words, for the pleasant interior twist we feel when confronted with strange formulations... We go especially to the poet for this, but also to the great prose writer... So, I looked it up, and I think Stevenson means starving themselves.]


Let's take a break. More paragraphs to come in a bit.

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