There are three major characters in Guareschi's Little World: parish priest Don Camillo, Communist mayor Peppone, and the voice of Christ. To be sure, the stories are also peopled with all kinds of other "characters"-- colorful villagers belonging to one faction or the other, their particular problems serving to advance the plots of the various episodes (as well as to reinforce, whether intentionally on GG's part or not, certain benignly stereotypical views about Italians and rural Italy). But these secondary characters are just that, and they flit across the stage of the Little World, often interchangeable with one another, as the trio at the center claims our attention and affection. While I hope someday to find time to include here a few words about some of the Little World's minor characters (particularly the youthful group introduced in the final book, Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children), I'm going to start out with some reflections on those central figures:

1. Don Camillo: Don Camillo (if he has a surname, we never learn it) is the parish priest of an unnamed town in Italy's Po Valley, a region where, Guareschi would have us believe, the peasants have been made extra-tough and stubborn by the hot sun that constantly beats down on their heads. We don't know much about DC'sbackground, but we do have a clue as to his age: at the end of the story "The New Look," in Don Camillo Takes the Devil by the Tail, he and Peppone drink to the toast, "We ninety-niners!"-- a reference to "the conscripts born in 1899, iron men, one and all." From this, I take it that Don Camillo himself is supposed to have been born in '99, which means that when we meet him in the earliest of the stories, which are set in the immediate post-WWII period, he's in his prime and directing the full force of his energies (once aimed at Fascism) against the Communists who have just taken political control of the town.

And we learn, at the beginning the first story in The Little World of DC, that in Don Camillo the Reds have a formidable foe. No meek and mild servant of the Lord, this priest has "a constitutional preference for calling a spade a spade." And he has the strength to back up the Muscular Christianity he preaches, being a big man with "hands like shovels" [that has to be my favorite Guareschi metaphor] and a heavy foot whose aim is true. Yet he is also loving and caring, and capable of gentleness; he naturally shepherds even those who refuse to acknowledge themselves members of his flock (though he might have to knock them on the heads to get their attention first). Alberto and Carlotta Guareschi describe their father's creation in this way: "[he] has the spiritual cure of [the] people[; he] considers the communists as patients to take care of, but on the other hand communism as a disease to fight."

In spite of the almost cartoonish feats of super-strength that Guareschi has Don Camillo perform (tearing whole packs of cards in half at once, pushing a car down the street without assistance, etc.), he succeeds in making the Paul Bunyan-esque priest a "real" person.  I think it is the contrasts in his nature that make Don Camillo such an lively character, and these same contrasts allow him to function as a bit of an Everyman (because there's a little something of all of us in him). I've already mentioned his toughness, and the way that it is juxtaposed against his caring nature; there is also an interesting contrast between his fierce and pure devotion to God, on the one hand, and his very un-ascetic weaknesses for such "fleshly pleasures" as cigars and hunting, on the other. He is capable of both profound seriousness (he'll risk his life for the Truth) and rough-and-tumble humor (with Peppone as the favorite target of his practical joking). He is both proud (protective of the dignity of his office) and humble (always able to be corrected by the Lord). His goals are often in conflict with the means he would use to achieve them (a fact that the Lord is sometimes content to let him get away with, once He's pointed it out). And, like most of us, Don Camillo finds it easier to notice the speck in his brother's eye than to see the beam in his own. On the other hand, as the Guareschis' quote above indicates, he has little trouble distinguishing between a hated ideology and the human being who (however foolishly) subscribes to it.

A question: what other character in all of fiction can you think of who is equally gifted at both prayer and card sharping?

Note: In Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children, which seems to be set in 1966 or '67, we discover that DC apparently did come from a family (I know, most people do, but it would be almost as believable if Guareschi told us that the big priest had simply sprung up one day, fully formed, from the soil of Parma). Anyhow, in particular, Don Camillo had at least one sister, whose daughter, Elizabetta (aka Flora), shows up one day out of the blue and wreaks havoc on the parish. Now, Flora is supposed to be twenty years old in this book, so that sister of Don Camillo's must have been a considerably *younger* sister!

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2. Peppone: In Don Camillo's Little World, the town mechanic is also the leader of the local Communist party. To top it off, Giuseppe Botazzi, who goes by Peppone (I'd always thought GG invented the name, but I'm told it's actually a standard Italian nickname for any big guy named Giuseppe), is also Mayor of the town for most of the stories (he's been elected a Senator by the time of Comrade Don Camillo, but he's back into local politics for Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children). Like Don Camillo, he once fought in the Resistance (well, actually, it's not 100% clear whether DC fought or was just the chaplain); now, however, they're on opposite sides. But, despite his Communism, Peppone can't seem to shake his deep-down belief in God and his respect for God's local representative. And he often has misgivings about Party doings (indeed, this is when we like him best). He is a family man, married with a brood that is added to several times during the course of the stories (I can think of at least two such "blessed events": there's the child he tries to have baptized "Lenin" early on, and there's the foundling he and his wife later adopt). [Our heart goes out to Sra. Botazzi, still adding to her family in the late 1940's despite the fact that she is probably not much younger than her "ninety-niner" husband!!!] In DC Meets the Flower Children, we meet the youngest of the Botazzi bunch,Michele (aka Venom). Like DC's niece Flora, Venom is about twenty years old in that book. At first I thought he must be the little foundling, grown up, but then I went back and read that that child had been christened "Paolo." Plus, it seems that Michele is supposed to resemble Peppone physically (at least with respect to size and strength)...

Back to Peppone himself. As one commentator I read put it, it's amazing how Mayor Botazzi manages to be so thoroughly wrong-headed and so completely sympathetic at the same time. It's not that he's stupid, either; indeed, Peppone is also a kind of Everyman in these tales-- though perhaps to a lesser extent than Don Camillo, since we don't get to read as many of Peppone's thoughts or hear any of his prayers-- and we would be unable to identify with him were he lacking in all subtlety. So, who is he? Like Don Camillo, he is bold, brave, headstrong, and proud; just, tender-hearted toward children and animals, and concerned for the poor (this, we presume, is a big part of why he's a Communist); simple (in the best sense), capable of playfulness, and-- most importantly-- not beyond redemption. Is he a "good Communist"? Well, I think the author would prefer to say that insofar as he is good, he is less of a Communist (and vice-versa).

Interestingly, some of my very favorite "Don Camillo stories" are ones which feature Peppone as the point-of-view character. I think this is because, since Don Camillo is generally trying to do good, the plot twists in the stories in which he stars often involve some display of moral weakness. I.e., Don Camillo learns, and we learn from him, when he deals with his moral failures. But Peppone is less enlightened overall, so the big lessons for him often involve moments of particular and uncommon strength or goodness-- such as when he offers the visiting Liberal speaker his sacred red handkerchief after an overzealous Communist heckler lands a rotten tomato on him, or when he and Mrs. Botazzi spontaneously open their home to a foundling child, or (in perhaps my very favorite episode) when he finds he cannot bring himself to exact petty revenge on the former Army commandant whom Fate has put into his power.

Comments: The "other half" of Guareschi's dynamic duo is no less impressive a creation than Don Camillo. In fact, in many ways the Communist mayor has to have been the more difficult character to get "just right." Make him too much more bellicose or blindly loyal to the Party, and he loses our sympathy; but give him too much more self-doubt, or less commitment to his cause, and the central struggle of the books loses its edge. For the stories to work, we must love both Don Camillo and Peppone, and we must believe that they love each other, yet we must also feel that something is really at stake when they do battle.
     Americans reading this might remember a certain classic Warner Brothers' cartoon in which Wile E. Coyote and a large sheepdog do perpetual battle over the latter's flock of sheep. For most of the body of the cartoon, the two are seen as enemies, with the Coyote always coming out on the worse end of their skirmishing; but the real joke of the cartoon (and a more sophisticated one than all the slapstick that befalls the Coyote) comes at the beginning and end of the piece, in which the two characters are shown actually to be typical, cordial co-workers, arriving together at "the office" just to play their assigned roles, and only putting on their enmity after they've punched in their timecards. That weary, post-modern touch is clever and funny... and I've often wondered how much of that sensibility is operating in the Don Camillo- Peppone relationship.
     But my instinct is to answer, "not too much." For instance, when Don Camillo and Peppone paint the figures of the crèche together at the end of The Little World of Don Camillo, they probably shouldn't be seen as simply having punched out their timecards after a whole book's worth of merely playing at opposing one another. IMO, the Don Camillo- Peppone dynamic there is more like the one operating in that true story of the German and British soldiers in WWI who, on Christmas Eve of 1914, had a peaceful encounter in a "no man's land" at the front. Our heroes may come together under slightly less dramatic circumstances (though sometimes it is life and death), but the principle is the same. It's never that they don't think their differences matter, but Don Camillo and Peppone are able to meet on the common ground of their basic humanity.
     Now, the one place where I'm more willing to admit that there's a bit of the "Coyote-sheep dog" thing going on in Don Camillo Meets the Flower Children. By then, the two old campaigners occasionally do seem to be just going through the motions, and they as much as admit it in one passage. Anyone else care to comment?

Thanks to Hartmut Riehm for verifying the story of the German and British soldiers meeting peacefully in 1914. He recommends Rites of Spring. The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1989) as a source of further information.

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3. The Voice of Christ: One of the more audacious features (much more daring than the notion of a friendship between a priest and a Communist) of the Don Camillo stories has to be the fact that the Christ from the Cross answers Don Camillo's prayers in "real" words (well, they're audible only to DC, and I suppose one can try to get away with reading them as the voice of DC's conscience, but it's clear that, as far as the stories are concerned, they are intended to be "God's actual comments"). Moreover, while this Christ holds Don Camillo to appropriately high standards much of the time, He also appears willing to allow the occasional infraction-- indeed, in the first story in The Little World of DC, the Lord turns a blind eye while DC uses his foot to administer a little "blessing" to Peppone's backside! Reviews from the 1950's indicate that a few readers (including some conservative Catholics) were offended (although the two Popes who admitted to enjoying the stories were obviously not among them!). These folks also tended not to like the fact that some of Christ's words were rendered into slang-y English (presumably, the Italian originals were similar in flavor?), and they were also the people more likely to find GG too "soft" on Communism.

Guareschi, of course, knew that when you make the Lord one of your characters, you're writing in something of a minefield, and he attempted to diffuse it with his well-known comment in the Introduction to The Little World of Don Camillo: "If there is a priest anywhere who feels offended by my treatment of Don Camillo, he is welcome to break the biggest candle available over my head.  And if there is a Communist who feels offended by Peppone, he is welcome to break a hammer and sickle on my back. But if there is anyone who is offended by the conversations of Christ, I can't help it; for the one who speaks in this story is not Christ, but my Christ--that is, the voice of my conscience."

What can be read into that? A sort of supreme self-confidence on Guareschi's part (in that he admits that he chose to write himself into the story as God)? Or, conversely, an honest humility (which recognized that all portrayals of God are inevitably inadequate, revealing more about the speaker or writer than about the Almighty)? Is it an indication that the religion in the stories is merely a device (so that the stories, while they are anti-Communist, should not be seen as particularly pro-religion)? Or, a simple attempt by the author to cover his, er, back?

I asked Alberto and Carlotta Guareschi about their father and the Church. They said, "GG was a Christian who did believe. He loved the Gospel and the Mass in Latin. He was not a 'stakhanovite of the font,' * as he wrote in an open letter to Pope Pius XII. He didn't [customarily] go to Mass, but he lived always following the teachings of Christ, whom he deeply loved." [e-mail, 6 April 1998]

* essentially, a person who is in church every time the door is open

Does that shed any light on things? I will say that, even accepting at face value GG's statement that his Christ was not meant to be "the" Christ, I (for the record, an evangelical Protestant!) think he got an awful lot right in the portrayal. Guareschi's Christ is knowing, gentle-but-firm, merciful, and fair. And Don Camillo's relationship with Christ rather reminds me of the kind of rapport that some of the Hebrew patriarchs--say, Abraham, or Moses--had with the Lord. Remember Abraham's bold bargaining with God for the lives of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah? I can imagine Don Camillo doing that (though I can't really imagine GG's Christ threatening to destroy a city). And, like Don Camillo, the patriarchs often used methods that the Lord must have decried (such as getting out of tight spots by lying), yet they never lost their special relationship to God.

Comment: Just between you and me, among the occasional mis-steps in Guareschi's portrayal of Christ, I think, is the famous "cigar" passage in The Little World of Don Camillo. In it, Jesus justifies DC's theft of Peppone's cigar on the grounds that the Mayor is a Communist who doesn't believe in private property. It's funny, but really a bit of a cheap shot. IMO, the 1951 movie version improves on the original by having Don Camillo offer this bit of skewed logic to the Lord, by way of justifying the theft (which he's still allowed to get away with).

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4. GG in His Characters: So, which character represents the author in these stories? Do we simply take GG at his word, and say that we meet the author in the words of the Christ on the Cross? I think we have to do that, to a certain extent. But it's hard not to try to see GG in Don Camillo, as well. Christ's words may represent GG's ideals, but Don Camillo is the real man trying (for the most part) to live up to them. He is good-hearted, opinionated, and thoroughly committed to fighting for what he believes is right-- in this case, to keep his home from becoming part of a Soviet satellite. Surely all of that describes GG. And what of Peppone? He may be on the wrong side in this conflict, but he is a good-hearted family man, a bluff Parmese peasant in the best sense. Is there not surely a little of the author with the big mustachios (who once said he could only really be happy in Fontanelle) in him, as well?

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