English
Although in reality big parties always have Eastern overtones, few places like ancient Rome conjure the best images. For centuries in the West we have been educated with the idea that the decline of the Roman Empire whose scent is still adhered to our skin, a nostalgia that continuous shaking in a strange and hidden ways our hearts had to do with a decadent life of abandonment to all the bodily pleasures which found its highest expression in these aristocratic parties covering the entire spectrum between death and sex through exotic and unpredictable amusements reaching all the imaginable pleasures . A perfect and exquisite grotesque carnival turffled with ocelots, white giraffes, shimmering elephants, Nubian dancers, contortionists, Amazon pygmies, human fireballs, drugs and the finest poisons…
Some great classics texts and a disturbed and a demented legion of Christian pamphlets created in the collective imagination an view of absolute debauchery of the most outrageous, wild, sexy parties the Roman world saw, those moments somehow survive today based on the Hollywood movies of the twentieth century who depicted those days of constant decadence
From this perspective, some would link the infamous conduct of Silvio Berlusconi and his scandalous private life, from which we learned more and more lurid details (including sexual scandals while bathing in the pools of international leaders which included the recruitment of young underage escorts as intimated company for guests), with the legendary tradition of Roman excesses, which would simply be a contemporary incarnation, perhaps infinitely more vulgar and tawdry, as befits the new rich and poor mobsters of zero artistic intellectual substance
To channel his anger and contempt against this new kind of parties that seem to characterize as a perfect metaphor during his years of its mandate, the time of the Berlusconi government, the Roman writer Niccolò Ammaniti, probably one of the most interesting contemporary Italian authors has written his last novel, the ruthless satire Let the party begin, where violent attacks against the image of an tacky , uneducated, paranoid, racist, unsupportive and heartless Italy in the last decade have projected Berlusconi cabinets in alliance with some of of the biggest names of the Italian far right political tendency
Despite the grotesque and extreme descriptions, which revolve around the organization of a party by an fictitious builder at his residence Villa Ada, located in the very heart of Rome, Ammaniti has said, not without sarcasm, to have behaved like a very realistic writer, despite the hilarious novel, he has suffered the consequences of writing comedy today in Italy, where in his own words, reality is much more fun than fiction.
Paul Oilzum
Let the party begin, as seems to confirm the result of the recent municipal elections in Italy, where Berlusconi and what he represents suffered a resounding defeat is a sign that the other beautiful, intelligent and inspiring Italy, is awakening. As you can witness when you rent apartments in Rome
Translated by: Marc
