Christ Stopped at Eboli

Christ Stopped at Eboli (Italian: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli ) is the autobiographical account of Carlo Levi about the time of his banishment to Aliano in the southern Italian region of Lucania ( Lucania, Basilicata today ).

Personal experiences

The book, which came out in 1945 and in which he referred to Aliano with the invented name Gagliano, describes the situation in a place where the inhabitants have abandoned because all who trust something, leave the place to get something out of her life to make. "We are not Christians," they say, " Christ came only at Eboli. " Christ means human in their expression; [ ... ] " We are not regarded as human beings but as animals, [ ... ] because we have to submit our horizon beyond the world of Christians."

The only building which corresponds to a metropolitan standard, is a urinal that is only visited by pigs and children. A single man used it often to the purpose for which it was built, and that was me; and here I was, I must confess, not a need, but only of nostalgia driven.

While he seeks to evade the notables of the town, of which he is dependent ( rigid fixed exercise room, curfew and censorship ) and looking to move into it in their generations -old fights, he takes on the Peace cemetery in the heat of " malaria country " in a new precaution excavated grave. In this solitude and freedom, I spent whole hours.

Of history

The world of the peasant sees as Levi since pre-Roman times unchanged. The historical sense, which had entered with Aeneas in this world is alien to them. And even before Fernand Braudel of the Annales school his history of the Mediterranean from the perspective of the longue durée writes that he formulated: I thought you should write a history of this Italy if it is possible to write a story about something that not happening in time: the only story of what is eternal and immutable; a mythology.

Political Implications

Friends, to whom he told during a short stay in the home of his experience, take his opinion, the problem of the South too abstract. The world of farmers seems to him inconsistent with a State which is not the individual municipalities granted much more autonomy. As long as the will is not created, he sees the world the peasants lost in perpetual resignation, only occasionally desperate rebellions - such as those of the brigands in the second half of the 19th century - interrupted. "It can not be the state, which solves the problems of the South, I had led, for the simple reason that what we call the problem of the South, is nothing but the problem of the state itself. "

Film

Francesco Rosi directed a film of the same name, which was published in 1979. In the lead role of Carlo Levi Gian Maria Volonte is seen.

Bibliographic notice

• Christ Stopped at Eboli. Translator's Helly Hohenems - Steglich. Zurich Wien New York ( Europe Publishing ) 1947; 4.A. 1973
• Christ Stopped at Eboli. Translator's Helly Hohenems - Steglich. dtv, Munich 2003. ISBN 3-423-13039-3