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| Bread and Wine (Signet Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Ignazio Silone
Creators: Irving Howe, Eric Mosbacher
Publisher: Signet Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $6.95
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $6.94 (100%)
New (7) Used (76) Collectible (4) from $0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 602544
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0451525000
Dewey Decimal Number: 853.912
EAN: 9780451525000
ASIN: 0451525000
Publication Date: June 1, 1977
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 9 | | NEXT » |
 All Gods Muist Fail December 12, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the definitive account of one God that failed. It describes a man's loss of faith during the 1930s in the international Communist movement. Wanted as a terrorist, he slips back into southern Italy where he hides as a Catholic priest recovering from tuberculosis. Fascism is rampant and war with Ethiopia has given national purpose to Italians suffering from economic stagnation. His priestly duties involve offering forgiveness to Catholics saddled with a primitive and uncompromising faith. His contacts in the Comintern underground demand his obedience to party dogma from Moscow that he now sees as meaningless. While Silone offers no grand solution to the dilemna that loss of faith presents, the book presents an uncompromising and wonderfully written portrait of the strength and weakness of humanity in the Godless world of the 20th Century.
Excellent book June 24, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I had to read this book for an Italian history class and it was excellent. The book deals with different concepts, but is primarily related to the role of religion in fascist Italy. We follow the path of Pietro Spina and his persona as a priest, and we see how those regard him act and feel.
I highly recommend this book!
 Unity, truth and fraternity September 5, 2005
3 out of 16 found this review helpful
Silone's communist message is outdated.
More, he makes the cardinal error to believe that solidarity is a basic human characteristic: 'Bread is made of many grains of corn, wine is made of many grapes, so it means unity. Unity of similar, equal, useful things. Hence truth and fraternity are also things that go well together.'
But, man shows only solidarity if there is a 'personal' gain. Pure altruism is absolutely no option in the struggle for survival.
His picture of mankind is static, too rosy and naive. His belief in the proletariat is obsessive: 'the poor are uncontaminated by greed for property.' Hence, he proposes the abolishing of private ownership of land.
'Evil is only everything that prevents millions of people from becoming human.' For Silone, evil is not a basic and intrinsic part of the human character.
He doesn't understand that all proletarians want their children to become (not static) doctors, engineers, lawyers, economists ..., in other words 'bourgeois'.
In Stalin's Soviet Union, he sees only a fraternity of peasants and workers.
The political role of the Catholic Church nowadays is marginalized. In Italy, they even don't have a Christian Party anymore.
Of course, the main character poses certain questions: had that (communist) community not itself become a synagogue? abandoned the critical spirit? the risks of conspirational struggles?
His answer is no. He refutes that the communists aspire too to totalitarian power and orthodoxy and that a black inquisition will be followed by a red one. His return to his homeland 'had been basically an attempt to escape that professionalism', and he has the 'hope of one day playing a big role'.
Like a fanatically convinced Christian missionary, he tries desperately to sell his communist gospel to the poor cafoni. Unfortunately, they are terribly conservative ('it has always been so') and his message falls on deaf ears.
What is left in this book are the struggles against a totalitarian (here fascist) regime and against the butchery of war.
It is partly very melodramatic (e.g. the confession at the end) and its main symbolism (a marxist apostle disguised as a priest) irrealistic.
I prefer Silone's more direct and less apostolical 'Fontamara' and recommend highly his masterpiece 'Emergency Exit'.
 Subtle and masterful January 21, 2004
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
The first time I tried to read this book, I didn't get it. Perhaps I was too distracted or reading it too quicky or sporadically, but I kept waiting for something important to happen or somebody to say something worth underlining and quoting, and got impatient when nothing happened and nobody said anything. It has sat abandoned on my bookshelf for a couple of years.This time around, I had a little more time to read and a little more space to think. It made all the difference. I enjoyed the subtlety of Silone's characterization. He delights in small, subtle humor, in symbolism that doesn't scream itself aloud -- like the drunk peasant who falls off his donkey and then beats the donkey. It slips by you if you're not attuned to it. There are probably other valid interpretations, but to me, Pietro (or Don Paolo) really isn't the main character here. He is simply a placeholder for the reader, so that I can see and hear and experience rural Italy. Perhaps because I can so easily identify with him. (I, too, am an idealist, a revolutionary with romantic ideas about the poor and romantic hatred for Institution. I may not be an exile on the run, but I live in a more tolerant time and place. A demonstration in Italy in the 30's might have been viewed by the authorities as criminal activity; in 21st century America, it's considered entertainment. I don't know which is more frustrating.) I have experienced Pietro's (and Silone's) frustration with those he is trying to help -- that ironic feeling that you could do a lot of good for the poor, if the poor would just cooperate. The peasants of Italy, and the universal poor by extension, are the heroes of this book -- those people that most revolutionaries strive and die to empower and free from oppression, yet few revolutionaries actually take the time to understand and love. The gold in this book is Silone's gentle, compassionate, humorous rendering of these people -- what they care about, don't care about, how they make decisions, what they fear, what they think about and hope for. It is an exposition of a collective mind; a dangerous undertaking, bound to slip into stereotype at times, and one that Silone undertakes with great reverence. As I go among the poor in my own day and age, I remember Silone, and find that what he has to say rings true. Much too often, attempts to help, to organize, and to "empower" are ultimately patronizing and arrogant. It is much better simply to break bread with them, and learn to know and love them. After all, this is what Jesus did, the greatest and best riend of the poor, and the ultimate Saviour of all mankind. I would rather follow his model than Marx's.
An exiled priest March 6, 2000
27 out of 27 found this review helpful
The late Ignazio Silone, the author of "Bread and Wine," stated that he "would willingly pass [his] life writing and rewriting the same book -- that one book which every writer carries within him, the image of his own soul..." "Bread and Wine" is just that -- a beautiful reflection of a man's soul. Using humor, easy language and insights into the Italian fascist regime, Silone tells the story of all humanity's search for truth. In the figure of Pietro Spina, a Socialist political activist, the reader is lead to ask questions about politics, relationships, and faith. The irony is that Spina has just returned from exile and must remain incognito -- as a priest, of course. Through his experiences, he asks many difficult questions about his Socialist party, his church, and himself. In the end, he is left to bring together who he is as the "priest" Don Paolo and who he was as the anti-political activist Pietra Spina. He must learn to "let the inner and the outer man meet" (Plato).
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