Take a few minutes to look at this image. You probably won’t understand what historical episode it refers to, but true art can bypass the rational part of the mind and reach the part that has to do with feelings. What do you feel by looking at this image? Do you see the movement from light to darkness? Do you notice how the handcuffs of the central figure are sparkling with light, promising to dispel the shadows? All true art is universal, and the universe moves in cycles, from light to darkness and back. And this is what this painting masterfully depicts: the eternal cycle of light and darkness. But there is more to it, as I’ll describe in this post.
Recently, I was inspired by Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” to write a post about what creates empires and how much of the world’s history can be explained as a conflict between empires and nation-states. Then, by pure chance, I stumbled upon a painting that summarizes what I was trying to say about this matter.
Lionello Balestrieri is not a very well-known painter, even though he was reasonably fashionable about one century ago. Coming from a small town in Tuscany, Cetona, his paintings are scattered among collectors, but a few are kept in his hometown as a small museum dedicated to him. There, you can see the painting I reproduced at the beginning of this post. As far as I can tell, that painting was never reproduced anywhere; you can’t find it on the Web. It is strange that it was there, perhaps waiting for me to see it. But that’s the way the universe works.
So, what is the painting about? If you are Italian, you may be able to recognize the central figure: Cesare Battisti. He was an Austrian citizen, but ethnically he was Italian. So, when Italy declared war on Austria in 1915, he moved to Italy and enlisted in the Italian army. When he was captured by the Austrians in 1916, he was accused of treason, sentenced to death, and hanged. As you may imagine, Battisti is considered a hero in Italy, and Balestrieri shows him in his painting as marching toward his destiny, sad but firm in his conviction of having done his duty.
More than one hundred years later, what can we say about this story? Battisti’s death sentence is a necessary consequence of how military codes work all over the world. Even today, if an American citizen enlists in a foreign army and fights the United States, he is considered guilty of treason, and that may involve the death penalty. In 2002, John Lindh, an American Citizen, was captured in Afghanistan after having joined a Taliban fighter group. He never fought other Americans, but he was nevertheless condemned to 20 years in jail. Maybe he is regarded as a hero in Afghanistan, although surely that’s not the case in the US.
Italy was a nation-state, Austria was an old-style empire, and that explains, at least in part, a war that lasted more than three years and caused more than a million casualties, summing those of both sides. A bloody way to remark two different ways to manage the virtual entity we call a “state,” and to define the imaginary line that we call “border.” Yet, these ethereal elements existing only inside human brains were enough to cause a major war.
When Battisti joined the Italian army, he knew that he would be fighting against the state of which he was a citizen. What made him do that, knowing what he was risking? What did he see that was so enormous and overwhelming that it was bigger than his own life? Why do people do this kind of thing? Why do they throw their life away for abstract concepts that their descendants would hardly understand?
I started this post by mentioning Tolstoy, always a great source of ideas about people’s madness. Here is an excerpt from “War and Peace,” where he describes how a group of Polish Uhlans fell victim to a form of madness that led them to plunge into the Niemen River to show their devotion to Napoleon, who, however, didn’t seem to care so much about that.
… the old mustached officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted “Vivat!” and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse and galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which had grown restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading for the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some clinging to their horses' manes. They tried to make their way forward to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third of a mile away, were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this river under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not even looking at what they were doing. … For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. … Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were sent to their assistance.
If you think about that, these forty Uhlans behaved not unlike Cesare Battisti. They thought that their life was worth little in comparison to something that, to them, looked enormous, overwhelming; much bigger than their individual lives. Later, however, nobody seemed to consider their action worth being shown in a painting.
These events remind me of when Homeric heroes are overwhelmed by their thumos, their inner force, which leads them to a state of fury. In that state, they see and hear Gods and Goddesses telling them where and against whom to unleash their anger. Which Gods made the Polish Uhlans gallop straight into a rapidly flowing river? Which Gods made Cesare Battisti wear a uniform that identified him as a traitor in the eyes of Austrians? Maybe what’s happening right now in the world happens because some Chthonic Gods want it to happen, and they take people to this kind of madness. Maybe it is part of a cycle that’s taking us toward darkness. Perhaps we have to go through it if we want to see the light on the other side. But it will not be an easy journey.