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Rating: Second chapter of "Vino e Pane", "The Seed Beneath the Snow" is a beautiful book. I'll make it clear right away: it is not as consistent as the previous one (very beautiful, but perhaps lacking moments that are truly memorable), rather, it is quite fickle, in the sense that there are long chapters within it that are certainly well-written but not exceptional, interspersed with peaks of great literature. Just to give two examples: the final scene (which obviously I will not talk about...) and the description of the seed beneath the snow, which gives the title to the work.
The seed beneath the snow... a metaphor. A metaphor for what Italian society was like during the fascist regime: a landscape covered by a blanket of silence, lack of morality, fear, where, however, there are still those who resist, there are still sprouts growing underneath. And Pietro Spina is one of these and lives in close contact with one of these, with a seed of a plant that he sees grow and to which he becomes attached. It is the connection with the land, his own. He becomes attached to other seeds as well, sprouts in a metaphorical sense this time: Simone-the-weasel and the deaf-mute Infante. They are, and people like them are, the hope, the Resistance that hatches in secret. Among the eloquence of power, among the ignorant "cafoni," among the old noble houses that do not surrender to the end of their time, in a rural world so far from today's Italy.
The novel, even less action-packed than "Vino e Pane", focuses entirely, as its predecessor did, on the character of Pietro. A non-presence, evanescent, present, absent. Then he appears again... an extremely human and vivid figure, towering in the story precisely for his not being there and, if you will, for his smallness. Yes, the comparison with Christ comes almost spontaneously, and it is not blasphemous, since the Christian roots are one of the cornerstone elements of Ignazio Silone's work.
A novel that unfolds in the salons of the rulers, among social conventions, and at the same time in the fields, among the poor people, all connected by this religious reference to Catholicism, if possible even more present than in "Vino e Pane". But religion, as we know, is interpreted by everyone as they wish, and it turns out that, once again, the most Christian of all is precisely that communist Pietro Spina, who helps others out of the movement of the heart and not out of duty or circumstances. And in all this, there is the need to give up one's name and wealth, like Simone, or to be an outcast, like Infante, or to renounce the freedom of one's own body, as Pietro does, to be truly free.
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