ABSTRACT
Why is writing, to say nothing of painting and music, dead in modem Italy ? Here is an instructive incident. In a recent number of La Voce, there appeared a letter from a Mr. Gustavo Botta accusing a journalist, Mr. Giuseppe Vannicola, of shameless plagiarism ; Mr. Vannicola was said to have signed his name to a number of articles on such subjects as Cubism and Debussy’s music which were nothing but translations and compilations clumsily made from the work of well-known French writers. The eye of M. André Gide, the novelist, critic and dramatist, who happened to be passing through Florence at the moment, was caught by this letter ; dipping his pen in the acid of that refined irony which has won him so many admirers all over Europe, he wrote to the editor of La Voce in deprecation of Mr. Botta’s outburst. What, he asked, was all this fuss about ? The artistic relations between France and Italy have ever been of the most cordial ; the Frenchmen from whom D’Annunzio deigns to borrow only feel themselves honoured ; recently a sketch of his own was adopted by Mr. F. M. Martini for the Roman stage without acknowledgment ; such incidents only foster international good-feeling. No doubt, he added, the writers pillaged by Mr. Vannicola would join, if they knew of it, in protesting indignantly against Mr. Botta’s attack. The letter, in short, was a model of discreet sarcasm. What followed is almost incredible. First Mr. Botta retorts with lofty morality, explaining at immense length that it is not a question of the more or less gratification of the plagiarised, since something higher, the principle of literary honesty, is at stake, and giving in parallel columns chapter and verse for Mr. Vannicola’s sins. At the same time appears a friend of the accused, a Mr. Giovanni Amendola, to thank M. Gide publicly for his spirited defence of Mr. Botta’s victim. Nor does the joke end here. Mr. Botta returns to the charge with a “ nothing can alter the facts ” ; Mr. Martini writes to say that M. Gide is no gentleman and that he himself 208is a gentleman—didn’t he, when his play was printed, give it a motto out of one of M. Gide’s works ? and finally Mr. Vannicola comes out with his defence, which is this : “ There are plagiarisms of the spirit far more immoral than any plagiarisms of the letter. … I love life, and, in spite of painful adventures, life has not ceased to love me. My literary work has, for me, the importance of the flower which I put in my buttonhole.”
