DOI chapter:
Chapter III: Past and Present - Santa Lucia, etc.
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59000#0111
Naples
Via Lucia have arisen. Beyond the Pallonetta large
tenement houses are now seen, built nominally as
sanitary homes for the Lucians, but practically so far
above their heads in price that the best-off among them
could not pay a third of what is asked.
“ Yes ; Santa Lucia will have its new houses ; but
the Lucians will not change their manner of life. And,
what is worse, driven away from the sea, they will feel
yet more bitterly the suffering which is the destiny to
which the poor are born.”
That a strange pathos hangs about the destruction
of S. Lucia few will deny. In the gradual civilisation
of cities, progress has been slow, almost unfelt, in
piercing into the fetid hearts of overcrowded quarters
and leaving them pure and healthy. Time has gradu-
ally thrown down the useless and put in its place what
the life of the day requires. But in this case resolution
and action went hand in hand. The terrible epidemic
of cholera, the flight of all foreigners, and the utter
poverty which followed, awakened the whole country
to the truth that the condition of Naples had become a
question of national importance. No time could be
lost, and the demolishing of this among other crowded
centres of a remote past has been carried out within a
few years. But in the case of S. Lucia the pickaxe
had to be directed at human as well as stone foundations.
With the destruction of their homes, a whole race,
distinct and proud, has been undermined, for, as the
poet has truly said, the Lucians will not live else-
where.
50
Via Lucia have arisen. Beyond the Pallonetta large
tenement houses are now seen, built nominally as
sanitary homes for the Lucians, but practically so far
above their heads in price that the best-off among them
could not pay a third of what is asked.
“ Yes ; Santa Lucia will have its new houses ; but
the Lucians will not change their manner of life. And,
what is worse, driven away from the sea, they will feel
yet more bitterly the suffering which is the destiny to
which the poor are born.”
That a strange pathos hangs about the destruction
of S. Lucia few will deny. In the gradual civilisation
of cities, progress has been slow, almost unfelt, in
piercing into the fetid hearts of overcrowded quarters
and leaving them pure and healthy. Time has gradu-
ally thrown down the useless and put in its place what
the life of the day requires. But in this case resolution
and action went hand in hand. The terrible epidemic
of cholera, the flight of all foreigners, and the utter
poverty which followed, awakened the whole country
to the truth that the condition of Naples had become a
question of national importance. No time could be
lost, and the demolishing of this among other crowded
centres of a remote past has been carried out within a
few years. But in the case of S. Lucia the pickaxe
had to be directed at human as well as stone foundations.
With the destruction of their homes, a whole race,
distinct and proud, has been undermined, for, as the
poet has truly said, the Lucians will not live else-
where.
50