Milli mála - 01.01.2013, Blaðsíða 159

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ing in Bremen, they find board and lodging and a bath to recover from
their long journeys to reach the city, while our emigrants sleep on the
pavements.26

On the one hand, the novel often indulges in racist representations
of emigrants as oafish and illiterate (another frequent stereotype
which characterises the emigrant genre). For the third class passen-
gers standing before the magnificence of the ocean, even the percep-
tion of beauty is denied: “Ignorance does not admire the sea”27; “I
remember I never heard an exclamation of admiration for the ocean
coming from those emigrants […] They are not able to feel curios-
ity or pleasure for any event, either because they do not believe it or
because they misunderstand it.”28 On the other hand, the mass
never ceases to awaken the sentimental paternalism of the author,
for example when the protagonist and narrator appeals to a group
of wealthy Argentines, whose country is going to receive all those
Italian emigrants:
Protect them from dodgy traffickers, do justice to them when they ask for
it and do not let these poor people feel like intruders barely tolerated
among you. Treat them kindly and lovingly. We will be so grateful to you
for this! We love them, we are of the same blood. You are a generous
people, we entrust them to you with all our soul!29
The supposed wildness of the motley crew of emigrants alternates
with a quite rational and logical characterisation of individual
members. In his controversial but complex portrait of the phenom-
enon, De Amicis is in fact one of the very few Italian authors who
expresses what Italian literature of emigration in general funda-
26 Ibid.: 55. “Mi trattenni dentro, osservandoli, ogni parola di rimprovero, poiché pensai agli emi-
granti tedeschi che trovano a Brema, prima d’imbarcarsi, vitto, ricovero e bagni, per rimettersi dal
viaggio di terra; mentre i nostri dormono sui marciapiedi.”
27 Ibid.: 126. “L’ignoranza non ammira il mare.”
28 Ibid.: 127. “Non ricordo d’aver mai inteso fra quegli emigranti un’esclamazione ammirativa per
l’oceano […] Quanto a provar curiosità e a pigliar piacere d’altre cose, non possono, o perché le
ignorano, o perché non ci credono o le fraintendono.”
29 Ibid.: 229. “Proteggeteli dai trafficanti disonesti, rendete loro giustizia quando la chiedono, e non
fate sentir loro, povera gente, che sono intrusi e tollerati in mezzo a voi. Trattateli con bontà e con
amorevolezza. Ve ne saremo tanto grati! Sono nostro sangue, li amiamo, siete una razza generosa,
ve li raccomandiamo con tutta l’anima nostra!”
STEFANO ROSATTI