LIFE - SUPERSTITION - IL MALOCCHIO &c.

"IL MALOCCHIO" - THE EVIL EYE

Like many people Giorgio Quintini was superstitious. It was not an intrusive part of his life except in one aspect and that was his fixed and unwavering belief in the powers of the "Evil Eye". Friends remember that there were three names he would not allow to be pronounced in his presence: King Alfonso XIII of Spain; Pope Pius IX; and Professor Mario Praz. He subscribed to the belief that these people carried bad luck and that hearing, or much worse, speaking their names, would bring down upon those present all kinds of evil and misfortune.  Just as actors speak of "The Scottish Play" in order not to say Macbeth, he would use periphrasis for in his book they were jettatori - they cast the Evil Eye.

Perhaps the most famous in Rome, where Giorgio lived, was Mario Praz, whose house is now a museum. In the 1930s he had written on subjects which pious people considered scandalous and he was known as "L'Anglista" or "L'innominabile" to avoid his name being spoken. The Italian writer and critic, Beniamino Placido, who resembled Giorgio Quintini physically, much to Giorgio's disgust when he was sometimes taken for him, wrote an interesting article on Praz and the Evil Eye, which is available online:
http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/1993/06/17/professor-saturno.html

Giorgio, who remembered seeing Praz in Florence, where he was a friend of the celebrated director of the British Institute, Ian Greenlees (who appears in Giorgio's Florentine novel), had many stories of the power of his evil eye. Any incautious reference to him was accompanied by various time-honoured Italian, apotropaic gestures. 

King Alfonso XIII, an unlucky king who died young in exile, was believed to cast bad luck. The Italian dictator, Mussolini, believed this and refused to meet him. Giorgio was brought up in the Fascist period and will have been indoctrinated in the belief. His was another name never to be mentioned, whose image, if it appeared on the page of a magazine, would be quickly turned over, accompanied by suitable gesturing.

The third name he eschewed was that of Pope Pius IX, who had had a bad reputation in Rome since it was believed that disasters fell upon those places and people blessed by him. It was he who had been replaced in Rome by the troops of France when the Roman Republic fell in 1849 and he was the first Pope to retire into the Vatican, where he held himself to be a prisoner after the 1870 unification of Italy.  A friend of Giorgio's has a story of how in Perugia he was given an old silver medal showing Pius IX and he cast it out of his window.

There was one local superstition in which Giorgio believed fervently. That was "penne, pena!" (feathers mean trouble!). He was especially afraid of peacock feathers, which had come into fashion as gifts in the 1960s and occasionally people would give them to him. He threw them out of the house immediately, as he did with any greetings cards sporting feather designs.

However, Giorgio had a lifelong feeling of sympathy for fortune tellers and he often said that he would like to retire to the provinces and become a reader of cards himself. One of his friends for some years was a lady he met when she was telling horoscopes, Carla, whose friend and supporter he became. Here they are together in Rome.

Giorgio & Carla