The Great Island of Sicily
The Island of Sicily has been described by Borgese as less than a nation and more than a province. More than a province, because of the unparalleled number of strains in its people, which make it like a great nation uniting peoples of many races; less than a nation, because in spite of occasional periods of autonomy, it has been unable to maintain its independence. This recalls another penetrating remark by Borgese: that Sicily is an island which is not sufficiently an island. Open throughout its history to invasion from the east, west, north and south, it has always been the least insular of islands: it has rarely enjoyed the happy self-sufficiency which is the sunny side of insularity.
The Sicilians, as a whole, have been wanting in constancy, single-heartedness and fidelity to a common cause, although they have never lacked men of heroic fibre, capable of leading them, as in the war of the Vespers, to victory against the most powerful coalitions; but the efforts of such men have been frustrated again and again by the greedy and the half-hearted, who betrayed their country to serve their own miserable ends. This weakness, however, is by no means confined to Sicily. The general history of Italy, up to the Risorgimento, is full of it.
The greatness of Sicily lies in the wealth of sensibility, feeling and imagination contributed by many races and dominations, whose traces have persisted so clearly thanks to the tenacious conservatism of the people. Nor is the history of the island alone accountable for this emotional and imaginative abundance: the natural beauty and variety of the island are also reflected in it. But, as in Sicilian history the precious deposits of all the finest Mediterranean civilizations have been offset by the endless spoliations and frustrations that accompanied or followed them, so in the realm of nature the unsurpassed magnificence of the island has been paid for in the ever-renewed calamity of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. This has made the Sicilian spirit a very complex thing: full of highlights and dark shadows, passionate yet disillusioned, impulsive and at the same time cautious. Here is a mind that is ripe even when it is ignorant, for maturity in the deeper things of life belongs to the race rather than to the individual.
The much discussed fatalism of the Sicilian is but an aspect of his maturity. What philosophy other than that of Solomon can a man of his antecedents have? Yet the Sicilian is anything but effete, and the wonderful resources of his nature are tapped like those of a new spring as soon as he is taken out of the traditional rut and thrown into the strenuous atmosphere of a newer, more competitive and dynamic civilization. A great deal is then said about virgin nature, sons of the soil, etc., but few can discern the ancient ripeness in the new strenuousness. Those that can are better able to explain how the son of an illiterate Sicilian peasant can often become a judge or a university professor.