Good things don't die that easily

One thing I just love to bits about my country is our sense of humour. Long ago, I made a list that said something like: America is a principle. Britain is a personality. France is conflict. Germany is tragedy. Russia is a siege, as seen from inside the besieged camp. But though Italy is a struggle against overwhelming odds, it is one that is marked by Homeric bursts of laughter. The stern-faced titans of our long history - Dante, Michelangelo, Tiziano, Verdi - leave a misleading impression: the fact is that the country lives a lot more on our enormous tradition of humour and satire, from Boccaccio to Guareschi and Trilussa. It is typical of us that Italy should have had the only Nobel Prizewinnder for literature who was a comedian, and for that matter probably the only writer in history who ever made Communist beliefs funny - both are the same man, Dario Fo Italians regularly have to struggle against events, conditions and rivals,, but they cope - and make sense of the mess - by making fun of it, and most of all of themselves.

That is what I was afraid the Berlusconi years had lost. They have been bad years in many ways, but the worst would have been if we had been reduced to the splenetic and red-faced exchanges that had become typical of our public life then.Now I am no longer worried. Among universal applause and well-deserved laughter, the comedian Corrado Guzzanti has come up with an idea that belongs in the great tradition: the adventures of a very, very minor pagan river god - Aniene - as he tries to make sense of modern Italy and help it. What is great about this is not just that the idea is original and wonderfully executed, but that it is intended to tackle the whole of the country's plight - a wonderfully ambitious goal, and one I was afraid we had forgotten how to do do. Long may Aniene stay with us!

Not because anyone here is not likely to have read this...

...but for my own pleasure, and because it is one of the greatest pieces of poetry in the English language as well as the most magnificent assertion of the Christian faith I know:

KING ALFRED ANSWERS THE DANES

'When God put man in a garden
He girt him with a sword,
And sent him forth a free knight
That might betray his lord;

'He brake Him and betrayed Him,
And fast and far he fell,
Till you and I may stretch our necks
And burn our beards in hell.

'But though I lie on the floor of the world,
With the seven sins for rods,
I would rather fall with Adam
Than rise with all your gods.

'What have the strong gods given?
Where have the glad gods led?
When Guthrum sits on a hero's throne
And asks if he is dead?

'Sirs, I am but a nameless man,
A rhymester without home,
Yet since I come of the Wessex clay
And carry the cross of Rome,

'I will even answer the mighty earl
That asked of Wessex men
Why they be meek and monkish folk,
And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke;
What sign have we save blood and smoke?
Here is my answer then.

'That on you is fallen the shadow,
And not upon the Name;
That though we scatter and though we fly,
And you hang over us like the sky,
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.

'That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare on the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

'That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.

'Your lord sits high in the saddle,
A broken-hearted king,
But our king Alfred, lost from fame,
Fallen among foes or bonds of shame,
In I know not what mean trade or name,
Has still some song to sing;

'Our monks go robed in rain and snow,
But the heart of flame therein,
But you go clothed in feasts and flames,
When all is ice within;

'Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb
Men wondering ceaselessly,
If it be not better to fast for joy
Than feast for misery.

'Nor monkish order only
Slides down, as field to fen,
All things achieved and chosen pass,
As the White Horse fades in the grass,
No work of Christian men.

'Ere the sad gods that made your gods
Saw their sad sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale,
That you have left to darken and fail,
Was cut out of the grass.

'Therefore your end is on you,
Is on you and your kings,
Not for a fire in Ely fen,
Not that your gods are nine or ten,
But because it is only Christian men
Guard even heathen things.

'For our God hath blessed creation,
Calling it good. I know
What spirit with whom you blindly band
Hath blessed destruction with his hand;
Yet by God's death the stars shall stand
And the small apples grow.'