Valentine’s Day

Following Antonietta and Loris’s first kiss in the shadows of the Italian Alps barely a year after the end of the Second World War, the couple’s courtship was separated by a distance far greater than could ever have been imagined. Throughout their transatlantic separation, the young lovers fervidly wrote each other until they were reunited in Canada in 1949. With Your Words in My Hands: The Letters of Antonietta Petris and Loris Palma, edited and translated by Sonia Cancian, tells a story about love and migration as written and read, idealized and imagined, through daily correspondence.

In honour of Valentine’s Day, we wanted to gift you all an excerpt from this remarkable book featuring one of the love letters that Loris sent Antonietta in 1948.

Listen to Sonia Cancian’s TEDx talk about the lost art of love letters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNUgznlcg6g

Antonietta and Loris, Montreal, summer 1950. Unless otherwise noted, photographs are in the private collection of Antonietta Petris.

Chapter 1: “That day an abyss opened under my feet” Mobility in the Immediate Postwar Era

When Antonietta Petris boarded the British European Airways flight with her mother at Rome’s Ciampino International Airport on 21 September 1948, she was among the 50,000 Italians arriving in Canada between 1947 and 1951.1 Canada and other countries, including Brazil, Argentina, the United States, and Australia, and those in northern Europe, welcomed Italian migrants for economic expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To Italian men and women emigrating after the end of the Second World War, L’America was a place in which the incorporation of foreigners symbolized what Gabaccia calls “the promise and accomplishments of American democracy.”2 Already in the first transoceanic letters between Antonietta and Loris, there is evidence of new work opportunities available. In one letter, for instance, Antonietta finds herself facing first-hand this new world of work for everyone, good wages, and abundance everywhere.

The myth of America dates back to at least the nineteenth century, following the visit of Europeans like Alexis de Tocqueville to the United States.3 The military presence of American and Canadian soldiers among the Allied Forces in Italy after the Italian armistice announced on 8 September 1943 brought L’America one step closer to Italians’ doorstep. As the Allied armies advanced on the peninsula liberating its people from Nazi occupation, the Allied tanks distributed to the crowds a mix of the necessary and the excessive – American chewing gum, chocolate bars, cigarettes, and canned meat. These food items (along with earlier screenings of Charlie Chaplin films and old Westerns) renewed contact between the old world and the new world of consumption.4 In Italian migrant households, this contact had already been in place with the return of Italian labour migrants, also known as i ritornati (returnees) in the decades before the war, and the missives exchanged between Italian kin who had migrated overseas and their family members who had remained behind, as in the case of Antonietta and her family.

The year 1948 brought significant changes to the worlds of Antonietta and Loris. In Italy, 18 April marked the general elections for the first Republican parliament with the Christian Democratic Party supported by the church and favoured by the United States in a fierce battle against the Democratic Popular Front.5 The turnout was impressive. Over 90 per cent of the eligible population had gone to the polls.6 With the Christian Democrats winning 48.7 per cent of the vote, they governed Italy for another decade and a half (until the 1960s) by forming centrist coalitions with the Republicans and Social Democrats.7 Barely two years earlier, on 2 June 1946, the first free general elections in over twenty years were held. This landmark election was significant not only because Italians needed to elect their representatives to the Constituent Assembly and decide by referendum between the monarchy and a republic, it marked the first time in Italian history in which women had the right to vote.8 Despite these political advancements that sought to secure equal representation for all Italians, the country remained in ruins, and famine continued to haunt millions of families. As Gabaccia remarks, the main challenge in these first postwar years was “to find enough to eat, not to puzzle over the future of the nation.”9 The long tradition of transnationalism became once again a way of life among Italian families.10 With the pent-up necessity to migrate reasserting itself at war’s end, seven million Italians became migrants in the next three decades.11

Mobility in the immediate postwar era signalled a return to normalcy for the millions of families who, like the family of Antonietta Petris, had witnessed loved ones migrating to other lands beginning in the 1880s until the start of the Second World War, when the numbers dwindled to just about zero.12 Kinship ties with family members who had emigrated in the decades before the war were reactivated shortly after the war was over. While this kind of migration involved a more central role on behalf of the state and its representatives in organizing and administering the migration of Italians, the number of migrants points to the war’s failure to break the pattern of migration of previous generations.13 Postwar migration did not occur in isolation. Rather, it was part of the reconstruction of deeper family patterns that involved mobility, as in the case of Vittorio Petris who travelled with his father to Germany and the former Czechoslovakia in search of work in the 1920s. As Vittorio’s migration exemplifies, extended absences were part of these preceding migrations. The wives who stayed behind became what Linda Reeder terms “white widows.”14

In contrast, migrations in the postwar period ushered in a period of greater contact and shorter absences. Advice about whether to immigrate, formal immigration procedures, and economic support coupled with the reassurance of family members who would help prospective migrants settle in abound in the letters exchanged between migrants and their loved ones at home. The devastation during and after the war, and the famine and precariousness that ensued reinforced the importance of the family and its well-being. Migration became a resource that many turned to in the mapping of new boundaries and new opportunities for family. Yet, leaving was far from an effortless venture. From many perspectives – familial, economic, political, and emotional – it came at a cost. It signalled leaving behind one’s patria (homeland), one’s childhood home, close friends and neighbours, immediate and extended family members, and one’s love, with no immediate date of return in sight. For many, like Loris and Antonietta, migration was often experienced as a profound loss that brought despair, grief, as well as a glimmer of hope.

Antonietta and Loris at the Lido, Venice, June 1947. Antonietta had travelled to Venice and stayed with a friend. During this period, the couple saw each other nearly every day.

Letter from Loris Palma, 23 September 1948.

— Venice 23-9-48 —

Indimenticabile mia Nietta,15

It was as though I had died and come back to life, and an unambig­uous joy inebriated me affecting me more than is humanly possible. While I compose these thoughts for you, I recall my transforma­tion once I learned of your safe and sound arrival. I appealed to our Protector for our happiness not from superstitious ideologies or chance but simply out of faith. I lit a candle a few hours after your de­parture, and there, I whispered the words of our credo. In all of this, I prayed for his Grace. My prayers were answered not for my sake, nor for my tribute to Him, but solely out of mercy. Nothing, not the ap­proval of a highly deserved victory, nor the forces of an extraordinary miracle could have transformed my comatose state into euphoria. By then, an atrocious anxiety had caused my senseless downfall. It’s not that I was pessimistic, for I can rationalize the moment, but I worried about unforeseen events that could have ensued from such a journey.

The silence after your departure and the arrival of the radiogram did not last 48 hours for me, it lasted the time of an entire existence, as is usually the case when anxiety tightens at our throats. I had mem­orized all the details of your trip, from your departure to your arrival, but I could not understand the reasons for any eventual delays or inci­dents. This is the reason I was waiting for your telegram from London, but I received none. Fortunately, I had a little bit of life left in me, and I was able to obtain information about your flight from the BEA airline’s offices at seven in the evening when I went to see them. With this news, I refrained from collapsing, and truth be told, I was pleased to see Signora E … in a good mood. She eagerly inquired about you, as she too was saddened by your departure. I certainly could not have endured travelling home on that same day, absolutely not. My distress would have only worsened. That day an abyss opened under my feet, and I had to pay careful attention not to plunge inside, yes, my spirit and my heart were not normal, my body had never before felt a similar fatigue, my legs failed to hold me steady, rather they were there to vacillate my body back and forth, every part of me experienced the symptoms of total exhaustion, and I remained standing more out of courage, than out of willpower and strength.

If the emotions and sorrow are clearly presented to you here – together with the torment of not knowing when we will see each other again (something I had already reflected on during our separa­tions) – you must know that the heaviest blow came in those final moments. There I was, trying to be strong, I wanted to give you the impression that I was a man of fortitude, but those moments proved to be too much for me, our powerful separation overwhelmed me, and I was crestfallen and devastatingly weakened by this condition of human frailty to which we are subject. I was already well aware of the sorrow I had felt many times before in our past separations, al­ready my heart swelled and my throat tightened from the tears that I tried hard to suppress. When I glanced at the tears in your eyes, many times I tried to distract you so you would stop, but this time, the wine in the chalice from which I drank overflowed with bit­terness. I am sorry about this, but we must recover so we don’t feel worse. To have you back after a long and hard separation will take enormous effort but that is the direction we must take. Were we not the ones to wish this upon ourselves? All of this will be the harbin­ger of a happy day, a joyful hour, the thought of our reunion must energize us with courage and strength, our joy will be so extraordi­nary on that day that all of our sadness will vanish into nothing.

No longer are we separated by a few hundred kilometres and a moun­tain chain. Now, nearly half a world stands between us, but our thoughts and our promises will be preserved, they will be delivered, renewed, and channelled into our hearts across the tides of an ocean that knows no boundaries for our willpower. We won’t be needing proof for our love to be nurtured, the most precious evidence will shine in our eyes, it already is there and sustains us. Our last kiss was the seal of our pledge which cannot be denied by the boundless lands and oceans. We are strong if we have the will. Everything is up to us, if we are sincere and pure, our every sacrifice will be rewarded. These promises will not be new to you, of course, on many occasions I called upon them to convince you that an opportunity would open for us, an opportunity that would not subvert our entire worlds, for this reason, my Tetina you acquiesced to my persistence and you nurtured the dream with me. Let Fate guide us, even if we must suffer to reach our objective, but for me, the thought of melding my ideal to yours one day, to possess your thoughts, your heart, and your person touches me with a happiness that is not only a pledge but a reality for us even though we are immersed in sorrow.

Yesterday on the 22nd of this month, I left Rome, alone, and I returned to my family in Venice, once again, I had completed my task in assisting you with your departure. Duty called on my return home and with much bitterness I left the Capital at 13:05, and with me, every memory of Rome, the city that witnessed us giddy with joy for several days, while now, I am steeped in sorrow. Signor D … and Signora D … who kindly hosted me on that last day stayed with me as they too empathized with my sadness, and through all of this, I left Rome in a highly emotional, bitter, disconsolate state, and in my heart, I revis­ited that street in which we walked together, and every corner, every detail was reignited in my memory. Overcome by bleak, disconsolate thoughts, I travelled across Italy to my home; I could never have imag­ined a more forlorn return: I extended your greetings to everything around me, they all reminded me of you, this is the reason why my return home was so bitter. My home, a place that on many occasions witnessed your presence and welcomed you, will not be able to em­brace you now, and my thoughts were lost as they envisioned you in all the moments that you were here in my home, a poor and simple home that brimmed with the affection that my family, I hope, has offered to you. This poor Italy misses you, your person – which is the tangible part – but you left me your heart and your affections; I will need to preserve them well, cherish them, and replenish them with your love, I will keep them in their beautiful state until I will be with you again.

Be strong, I will never abandon you, you can be certain of this; never will my memory fade of you, my heart is yours not out of self-interest but out of love, you who wept at our moment of separation, my heart is yours for your absolute faith and your enthusiasm. I eagerly wait for your next letter where you will describe your trip, your arrival, and your most vivid impressions of the country that is hosting you, and that hopefully will welcome me soon as well. Tell me about your father’s happiness, which I imagine to be immense, and the overall feeling of being in your new home. To you I leave the most beautiful description, only in this way will I be comforted.

If you will not have received my letter in the envelope of docu­ments that your mamma had stored in her leather purse, try to find it now and remember that it was the last letter that I wrote to you before your departure, it was written on the evening in which you came to see me in the kitchen. I hope it is a keepsake of me for all of you, as I will remember each of you every day of my life. That short letter contains all of my affections for all of you, this is why I ask you to cherish it, for you especially, the letter is inscribed with everything for you to remember that you are the most vital part of my heart. It is so you can remember me during your American days in the same way that you remembered me, with the same affection, when you lived in the small town of Ampezzo. On the 21st I wrote to D … and to your nonni [grandparents], advising them of your departure. I will now reply to Signora L … and to your dear ones. Did your papà receive the radiogram I sent you on the 21st? To close this first letter of mine that has crossed the oceans, I will allow all of my sentiments of love to fold inside, the love that sustained me until today while I was immersed in sorrow, the letter from which you will receive all of my most ardent kisses, just like the last kiss I gave to you while in anguish. your Loris

NOTES

1 De Clementi, Il Prezzo della ricostruzione, 84.

2 Gabaccia, “Is Everywhere Nowhere?” 1115.

3 Paul, “Expressive Individualism and the Myth of the Self-Made Man,” 367.

4 Isnenghi, Breve storia d’Italia, 117.

5 Reeder, Italy in the Modern World, 198.

6 Ibid., 198.

7 Ibid.

8 Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 98.

9 Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, 153.

10 Ibid., 153–4.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 134.

13 Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, 156–8; Linda Reeder, in personal conversation with the author, 13 March 2019.

14 See Reeder, Widows in White.

15 My unforgettable Nietta.

Sonia Cancian is a historian at McGill University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montreal.