The “furbo”
One of two Italian archetypes, according to Tim Parks (discussed here). The “furbo,” or clever person, bends the rules, in contrast with the “pignolo,” who is law-abiding stickler. At a train station, for instance:
“When a “furbo” cuts in line, “there is a slow, simmering resentment, as if the people who have behaved properly are grimly pleased to get confirmation that good citizenship is always futile, a kind of martyrdom,” Mr. Parks writes. “This is an important Italian emotion: I am behaving well and suffering because of that.”
This “national dynamic” [in Italy], as Mr. Parks puts it, helps explain how former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi continues to have a public role, in spite of his legal woes and the economic decline that occurred on his watch. In “Italian Ways” Mr. Parks writes that Berlusconi’s smile is a combination of “comfortable self-congratulation” and “victimhood.”
But there is another factor at work: “In every aspect of Italian life, one of the key characteristics to get to grips with is that this is a nation at ease with the distance between ideal and real,” he writes. “They are beyond what we call hypocrisy. Quite simply they do not register the contradiction between rhetoric and behavior. It’s an enviable mind-set.”
