Observations placeholder

Carlo Levi – from Christ Stopped at Eboli  (trans. F. Frenaye; London, 1948).

I lay in the high bed, which was like a theatre-box suspended in mid-air. Hung on the walls all around me were the bodies of newly killed foxes; I could smell their gamey odour and see their sharp muzzles outlined against the flickering red fames. I had only to stretch out my hands to touch the skin, which had something of woods and caves about them. Through the door I could hear the dying man's continuous wailing, like an endless litany of pain:

 'Jesus, help me; Doctor, help me; Jesus, help me; Doctor, help me," and the whispered prayers of the women. I looked at the dancing flames, the long, wavering shadows and the dark figures of the three hunters with their hats on their heads, motionless in front of the fire.

Death was in the house: I loved these peasants and I was sad and humiliated by my powerlessness against it.

Why, then, at the same time did a great feeling of peace pervade me? I felt detached from every earthly thing and place, lost in a no-man's land far from time and reality.

I was hidden, like a shoot under the bark of a tree, beyond the reach of man. I listened to the silence of the night and I felt as if I had all of a sudden penetrated the very heart of the universe. An immense happiness such as I had never known, swept over me with a flow of fulfilment.