:02:06
''Those who have not lived the years
:02:08
before the revolution
:02:09
cannot understand
:02:11
the sweetness of life. ''Talleyrand
:02:16
A Sunday in April 1962,
:02:18
just before Easter, in Parma.
:02:22
And yet I came to you, Church.
:02:26
Pascal and the Greek Cantos
I held tight in my hand.
:02:30
''With new dreams
the Resistance brushed away
:02:33
the dream of the regions
federated in Christ
:02:36
and its burning
sweet nightingale...
:02:39
Damn those who do not know
:02:41
that this Christian faith
is bourgeois,
:02:44
in its every privilege,
:02:47
every surrender, every subjugation.
:02:50
That sin is nothing more
:02:52
than the crime of
disturbing daily certainties,
:02:55
hated for fear and aridity.
:02:59
That the Church
:03:01
is the ruthless heart of the State. ''
:03:05
As if in a dream I find myself
before the city's gates,
:03:09
the bastions, the toll gates,
:03:11
the bell towers like minarets,
:03:13
domes like hills of stone,
:03:15
the grey roofs, the open terraces,
:03:17
and below
:03:19
the streets, neighborhoods,
the squares,
:03:22
the Square,
:03:23
and through the middle
the river, the Parma,
:03:26
which divides the two cities,
the rich from the poor.
:03:30
And again the Square,
:03:32
so much in the city's center,
and yet so close to the fields,
:03:35
that on some nights
you can smell the hay.
:03:45
The square, which feels like
a walled arena when we're inside.
:03:55
There, I move amid figures
who are out of step, remote.
:03:59
Figures for whom only the
Church existed before,