The Real Italy?
HIS kindly interest in humanity is largely the charm of Nina Murdoch’s books. You feel she has an all-embracing interest in people, even for the occasional ones who were unpleasant to meet, like the swaggering Italian officer in the train who closed all the carriage windows and filled the place with smoke, though a notice clearly forbade smoking; or the Fascist policeman on traffic duty who wouldn’t let her cross an empty street except at one particular place.
She relates this incident very amusingly, but with an underlying seriousness. It took place in the Southern Tyrol, which Italy acquired from Austria after the Great War, and where she found the Italians swaggering with the aggressiveness of conquerors. Was Miussolini’s ambition to "harden" the Italian temperament, she wondered, resulting in similar stupid aggressiveness all over Italy? But she comforted herself with her theory that you cannot change people from what they are You may wrench and warp them, but you cannot change them. And so perhaps, when Fascism has crashed, and the gay casualness of the Italian temperament has asserted itself once more, people will wander unmolested across empty streets at will-("Some Adventurous Women: Nina Murdoch." Margaret Johnston, 2YA, May 23.)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 155, 12 June 1942, Page 3
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203The Real Italy? New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 155, 12 June 1942, Page 3
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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