APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200080001-6
The Incomplete Miracle
Postwar Italy experienced a creative flowering and a dramatic economic boom; in fact, Italy deserves, perhaps even more than West Germany, the word "miracle" for what it accomplished. The dynamic Italian people showed they could compete with anyone on the world market, and Italian exports penetrated every country. But since 1970 the boom has petered out, and the future rate of economic progress is uncertain. It remains clear, however, that Italian society has great vitality and also serious problems. The problems and defects that sidetracked the miracle have a long history, and their solution will take time and much wisdom; but, judging from their history, the Italians will scrape through. (u/ou)
One of the most important things to realize about Italy is that it is rich in people but poor in natural resources. Except for extensive resources of natural gas and smaller reserves of oil (which were discovered only after World War II), the country has scanty mineral resources. Mountains and hills cover about four-fifths of the land, only a small fraction is favorable for agriculture, and some of this is only beginning to be properly cultivated. One can get an idea of Italy's material limitations by making a comparison with France: the 54 million Italians live in about half the space occupied by the 52 million French people and have only about a fourth as much good crop land. (u/ou)
But Italy's most important resource has always been its people. Two thousand years ago their energy and organizing skill spread the great Roman Empire over North Africa, the Near East, and most of Europe; and out of the many cultures they encountered they fused something new, making Rome the center of Western civilization. Even after the sheer mass of barbarian invasions toppled the empire, Latin remained the language of European education, and Roman civilization its ideal, and when the German tribes settled down and began to organize themselves in the Middle Ages, they called themselves by the magic name, "Roman Empire." When educated Europeans eventually began to write seriously in their own vernacular as well as in Latin, their pioneer and inspiration was Dante Alighieri of Florence. (u/ou)
For the Western world, Italy has been a glowing hearth for hundreds of years: remembered during the turbulent Dark Ages as the vanished center of order and the good life; then dazzling scholars and artists with a burst of creativity combining old and new; and perpetually a source of inspiration to the devout. This sustained admiration and affection has created an Italy of its own, ever renewed by rediscovery by new generations of travelers, students, and devotees, and felt even by people untaught in Latin, unsympathetic to the Roman Catholic Church, and uninterested in art. Around and beyond the actual country and people lies the intangible Italy of the Western heritage. (u/ou)
Today's Western culture is in no small part a product of the Italian past, summed up in the ruins of the Forum and the glories of the Florentine galleries. The immense achievement of the Renaissance began in the city-states of north Italy after they won their independence from the German Holy Roman Emperors in the 13th century. For the next 250 years they were more or less self-governing, or subject only to local tyrants. Florence led the way in literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music, and soon the Renaissance had spread to other cities of north Italy and Western Europe. It flourished on the new freedom, the new prosperity, and a double inspiration: the Christian faith continued to be an active source, while the rediscovered classics were a lively new one. Both proved capable of responding to everything an artist could put into them, and to that enthusiastic age they were not irreconcilable modes of thought, but gave a common impulse to artists, scholars, and the wealthy. The many schools and patrons gave the artist alternative sources of instruction and support—in other words, freedom and prestige. (u/ou)
The Renaissance Man has become a byword for self-confident exploration in every field and for wide personal interests and accomplishments. The architect Alberti, for example, was also an outstanding athlete, a composer of music, an amateur of mathematics and physics, a gifted painter, and an able writer; he once said, "Men can do all things if they will." It was an age when merchants and rulers like the Medicis were
1
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200080001-6
