Gianni Agnelli (March 12, 1921 - January 24, 2003)

Gianni Agnelli was the most important industrialist in Italian history ("Agnelli significa FIAT e FIAT significa Agnelli"). According to Wikipedia: "As the head of Fiat, he controlled 4.4% of Italy's GNP, 3.1% of its industrial workforce, and 16.5% of its industrial investment in research."

More importantly, his exquisite taste in style made him one of the best dressed men EVER (one of the top-five according to Esquire magazine). - He is Piemontese, after all...not surprising for one of them to become the epitome of style and panache.

All this is well known however.

I hereby post two rare pictures, scanned from an old italian course book of mine, aria d'italia (Edizioni Scolastiche Bruno Mondadori). The pictures from this book come from the photographic archives of the Edizioni Scolastiche Mondadori and from the Centro di Documentazione dell' Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and besides that, from the photographic agencies : Farabola di Milano, Fiore di Torino and Pubbli Aer Foto di Milano.

Gianni Agnelli (left) with the great Enzo Ferrari, over a racing Ferrari single seater.


"IL MANZO AUMENTA, mangeremo Agnelli" One of the most famous italian puns: "BEEF PRICES RISE, we will eat lambs (agnelli)". Obviously, L'Avvocato (The Lawyer) was not very popular with the working classes :-)

PS: In 1980, trade unions closed down the main FIAT installations at Mirafiori. ("The 35 days of FIAT").

Berlinguer addressing the workers during the strike at Mirafiori. (www.immaginidistoria.it)

It was a direct clash between the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and its secretary, Enrico Berlinguer, and Gianni Agnelli. It ended with a huge counter-march organised by Agnelli himself. During this period he set the tone against the "historical compromises" and Eurocommunism advocated by Berlinguer, with his statement:

«Fino ad oggi il Partito comunista è stato visto con due prospettive: quella della speranza e quella della paura. Dopo l'episodio di oggi credo che la prospettiva della speranza sia cancellata»

("Up to this day the communist Party was viewed with two perspectives: that of hope and that of fear. After today's events I believe the perspective of hope has been annulled")






















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MY way...

About three years ago, the Thespians of the Theatrical Group of the National Technical University of Athens decided to stage Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead". My involvement was incidental, since one of the directors was a fellow student in the Athens Medical School, and it grew, from my simple consultation regarding the translation, to cameo appearance in two scenes of the play.

During the long hours of idleness in dense cigarette smoke, there arose conversations of utmost surreal content.

One of them was about the song "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones. It is a song that outlines the Devil and his expressions and manifestations in us all in a most excellent way.
Which then would be the equivalent song for God?

We immediately ruled out classical and baroque music with a religious theme, since i) musically it would put the Stones to a great and unfair disadvantage and ii) most of those works were commissioned by the Church and the lyrics were from the Holy Scripture, so this music was self-serving (while we may all agree that neither Mick Jagger nor Keith Richards are - or claim to be the Devil...)

No answer was found that night. Much later I came accross the truth. And the answer was so obvious I could kick myself for not thinking of it at once. Of course, without the surrounding thespian decadence and idleness it became a moot point, but still... that song is the embodiment of EVERYTHING that a man's life should come to. In simple words. Without histrionics. And for reasons of grandiose style alone, the singer and the song would be what God would perform were He to show us the way as an entertainer.

Gentlemen, the one and only...:

MY WAY
(By Claude François, Jacques Revaux and Paul Anca)

And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.

I've lived a life that's full.
I travelled each and every highway
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, I've had a few
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway,
And more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall
And did it my way.

I've loved, I've laughed and cried.
I've had my fill, my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.


To think I did all that
And may I say - not in a shy way,
"Oh no, oh no not me,
I did it my way".

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way!

What is there that a man can add to this? To be able to say the words of this song in one's final moments will be the last moment of happiness that this short life of ours can give. And if there were a God, I am certain that this would be the way he made us to His likeness, and this would be the way He would appear, for Frank Sinatra was the epitome of natural grand style.


Now, apart from this song and a couple of others, I am not a huge fan of the Rat Pack. But they were all artists who made an impression being elegant and large, drawing the music industry and the media with them, and not the other way around, as is the case with today's puppet - "artists". Those were the times...Where there was Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Dean Martin, we now have Eminem, Snoop Dog, 50Cent, Justin Timberlake... With the old timers gone, popular entertainment has sunk to a woeful all-time low...Pathetic...



Why do I write this? Because yesterday it was Frank Sinatra's birthday, and were he still alive he would be 92 years old. The world misses you Frank...

Juletid pt. I : The Grand Feast of Consumerism

(Family Christmas shopping spreee 2007: First Blood - my loot)

Christmas holidays are fast approaching and faithful to the time-honoured tradition of consumerism fuelled by the traditional imagery of Yule cornucopia, my family (including me, of course) has set out to pillage the shops for the finer things in life. Why so early?

Because once the hordes of salarymen get their Christmas bonus and flood the streets in a spree of contagious oniomania for luxury they cannot really afford, shopping will become virtually impossible (exemplis gratis, the Kalogirou shoestore in Kifissia a week before Christmas and New Year's Eve).

It is this behaviour of the general public that sparks some thoughts.

Although to a great extent understandable during the festivities, conspicuous consumption is a particularly interesting modern plague of Greek society.

I have nothing against luxury. I live for luxury in a way, for Art has always been luxury - and sometimes, (even in modern times, as for example in Dolce & Gabbana ) luxury IS Art, but...

If you cannot afford it, do not buy it...

Banks, with their aggressive marketing of consumer credit products and the glittering lifestyle images promoted by the advertising media have created the illusion that everyone can (or should ) be equal in consumer status, creating thus a setting directly out of Thorstein Veblen's worst nightmares.

Huge debts massing and bankruptcies by the thousands are everyday phenomena and still, in a society where wages are way lower than the mean European Union equivalent, people are consuming like crazy.
One finds oneself reflecting with nostalgic wonder on the days of Cato the Elder and the Lex Oppia, when the Romans were forbidden excessive luxury and dining in order to support the war effort against Carthage. In the end, Roman frugality and discipline had Carthage destroyed, its ground salted and without a single stone left standing . ROMA INVICTA !

Worse still, the enemy is not tangible. It's just this simple everyday erosion of personality, humour, creativity, passion in the pursuit of paradoxical needs with paradoxical means.

Yet.... what would their lives be if they couldn't shop with the money they worked nights and weekends for?

The self-sustaining cycle of consumption and slavery keeps herding the masses onward...

Glad Jul ! (for the moment, at least...)