Pietro Spina, the hero of Ignazio Silone’s classic story of disillusionment and return, faces an internal conflict with the most lasting and powerful institution in his native Italy: the church. A communist, Spina returns from exile abroad to the fascist Italy of Mussolini, a place fraught with danger for him and anyone who dissents from the official party line. Spina’s disillusionment is also with the communist movement, the reason for his banishment, but duality vis a vis the church is more profound because it speaks to the deeper truth of the soul, which transcends any ideology. Ultimately, Spina rebels from the idea that even the most pristinely beautiful beliefs, the teachings put forth by Christ, have been obscured and distorted by people who seek to turn them to their own personal use.
Silone’s story is suffused with a delightful irony, the fact that when Spina returns home to Italy, his identity must be hidden by the vestments of a Catholic priest, the trappings of that very institution he had long since turned from. That ironic disguise is meant to shield him from harm at the hands of the secular world. In an odd way, this turnabout allows him to see Christ and his church from the inside out, as it were, a new perspective that refreshes him. Thus, a world-weary protagonist benefits from a conflict that forces him to confront who he truly is, and away from the identity projected by a worldly political ideology. Conflict, then, proves potent enough to return Spina to the energizing idealism that men seek, and which makes life worthwhile. By donning the appearance of a priest, he undergoes a kind of rebirth, a reassurance that there are things that cannot be touched by the temporal ugliness of the physical world.
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"Conflict in Silone’s ‘Bread and Wine’".
- Silone, Ignazio. Bread and Wine. New York: Penguin, 1986.
