The Pillars of Hercules

I had been here before and found it so moribund and spooky I wrote a short story about it (“Words Are Deeds”). That was on a brief visit to the island in 1977. In 1982 it became a university town and it was now a bustling place, filled with youthful students and cafes. Many Corsicans told me that after this university started there was a greater feeling of Corsican identity and more resistance. This was also a way of saying that the graffiti on the ancient walls of Corte was of a political character: Liberta pa i Patriotti! (Freedom for the patriots!), Speculatori Fora! (Out with Speculators!), Colon Fora! (Out with Colonists!), and so forth.

Corsican courtesy is deferential, a sort of shy dignity, and it is in great contrast to that sort of defiant graffiti scrawled in the Corsican language on most public walls. I had lunch at a cafe, sitting in the sunshine. The town I had thought of as forbidding had been rejuvenated by the presence of students. I talked to some of them at the cafe, and when I asked them about Corsican politics they suggested that I attend a lecture later that afternoon.

“Which sandwich did you choose?” one girl asked.

“It’s a Freud,” I said.

The sandwiches were named after great thinkers or writers, Pascal, Newton, Verlaine, Rimbaud. Rimbaud was ham and cheese, Freud was mozzarella, tomato, basil, olive oil.

I had no luck understanding the lecture, “The Clan Is the Cancer of Corsica,” which was given by a Corsican, Professor Sinoncelli. It was highly technical, it concerned the social structure, the family, and the relationship of politics to the Corsican activists, who had organized themselves into marauding gangs.

My problem was linguistic. I had no trouble chatting with people on trains or in casual encounters, but the intensity of an academic lecture, full of jargon and unfamiliar terms, was beyond me. It was clear, though, that a problem of identity was being debated, and that there were contradictions. Here was a large island, with a remote and mountainous interior, and a people whose culture meant everything to them. How to reconcile this with being a province of France? The Professor seemed to be suggesting that the nationalist movement had been subverted by a selfish and violent minority, who did not represent the Corsican people.

“This word ‘clan’?” I asked a student afterwards. “Does it have some special meaning in Corsica?”

“In Corsica as in France it is a word to describe any political group, not only of the Corsican nationalists,” he said. “But the underlying meaning is that the group is close-knit and militant.”

The girl with him said, “That is what we have made of democracy!”

Corsican pride ranges from ferocious nationalism to quiet dignity, and it has been remarked upon by every visitor since James Boswell, who got interested in the cause of Corsican independence and introduced Dr. Johnson to Paoli.

The most common generalization I had heard before I returned to Corsica after those seventeen years was that it had changed a great deal. The island had always been well-known for being dangerous—an unjustified reputation, partly based on some highly publicized bombings by the nationalist group Resistenza as well as the Corsican separatists’ proclivity for defacing signs. I had seen such signs in Spain, where they had been scribbled over in the Catalan language. Few acts of vandalism are more threatening to the visiting stranger than road signs that have been messed with, and they are usually the very ones you need to avoid being lost. Most signs in Corsica are either rewritten or, worse, obliterated.

There are many such signs on the road from Corte to the high village Evisa, through the Niolu Region and the towering Forest of Valdoniello. I had been told that this area is best experienced on a bicycle. I was lucky enough to be able to rent one in Corte for an excursion here.

Valdoniello is perhaps the only genuine forest in the Mediterranean. In the whole of my trip I did not see anything like it. It is a world of pines, but not just pines—it is valleys and rushing streams, snowy peaks and granite crags. The pines are gigantic and elegant, very tall and straight. While it was still a wilderness of primeval trees, this forest was first described and depicted in etchings by Edward Lear. Some of the earliest images of the Corsican landscape, especially its interior, are those of Lear.