The Great Game: Why Italy was Created in the Crimean War

Image: Piedmontese "bersaglieri" soldiers engaged against Russian troops in Crimea, ca 1855. Of the 15,000 troops sent to Crimea from Piedmont, it is reported that only about 2500 returned to their homes. Painting by De Stefani, from Wikipedia

History sometimes repeats itself, often rhymes, always it is shaped by chains of events that sometimes have remote and little known origins. What led me to re-examine the history of the Crimean War of 1843-1845 was the attempt of understanding the reasons of the birth of Italy as a unified state, in 1860. As it nearly always happens, that led me to discover a number of events that history books often fail to report or to assess correctly. In particular, how the origins of the Italian state is the result of a concatenation of events whose origins lie with the "Great Game", the gigantic struggle that pitted Russia and Britain over the 19th century for the domination of the world. It is a thread that goes back to long ago, but that is still playing its role in our times. 

We may start this story with 1783; at the time of Catherine the Great, when the Russian Empire occupied the Crimean peninsula as part of a victorious campaign against the Ottoman Empire. It was a small event in itself, but one that would have great effects on the history of the world. In particular, it had an important reflection on events that took place in the Italian peninsula almost one century later, with the political unification of a region that had never been an independent state before.

The story stars from he late 18th century, when the world saw a phenomenon never seen before: the rise of coal-based empires; large structures that exploited their coal resources to industrialize and to boost their military power. The main ones were the British and the Russian empires that had the largest coal resources in the world. These two empires came in contact along a ragged ring of fire that started on the Baltic sea, in Northern Europe, all the way to the remote peninsula of Kamchatka in the North Pacific. Over this vast area, the "great game" was being played: a game that had world domination as its final reward. It was this struggle that inspired Rudyard Kipling's novel "Kim" (written in 1901), where you can't understand the story of the transformation of an independent and free Indian boy into a spy for Britain if you don't remember how important the Great Game was at that time.

In the West of Eurasia, the big prize was the Middle East, being encroached from the North by Russia and from the South by Britain. And so it was that, in the late 18th century, Crimea became a strategic asset in the great game. For the Russians, it was the door to both the Mediterranean and to the Middle East. There, they started creating a major military port to host their black sea fleet, founding the city of Sevastopol on the South-Western tip of Crimea.

Of course, the European powers didn't like the idea of sharing the Mediterranean with the Russians but, initially, they had to put up with the events. But, in 1853, the Russians and the Ottomans were again at war in the Balkans, with the Ottomans being defeated. That was too much and the Western Powers found an excuse to declare war on Russia. They assembled a large expeditionary force that included British, French and Ottoman troops that landed in Crimea in 1854. The objective was ambitious: take Sevastopol and kick the Russians out of the Black sea.

Today, we remember little of the Crimean war that, actually, didn't involve just Crimea but also the Baltic, the Caucasus, the White Sea, and even military operations in the remote Kamchatka peninsula. It was a major war that saw the engagement of nearly one million combatants on each side and some 400,000 casualties on the Russian side while those on the allied side were nearly 300,000. The Crimean war was not just large, but it involved elements that would reappear in later wars: propaganda, railroads for transporting troops, photographic reporting, amphibious warfare, and more. In many ways, the Crimean war prefigured the much larger world wars of the 20th century.

From a military viewpoint, the Crimean war was a defeat for the Russian Empire, forced to de-militarize Crimea. But it was also an example of the  "two rules of military engagement with Russia," already well established with Napoleon Bonaparte. They are: 1) The Russians seem to lose and 2) Eventually, they win. By 1877, Russia had reoccupied Crimea and was again at war with Turkey. This time, the Western European powers didn't intervene to help Turkey. Rather, Britain profited of the occasion to snatch Cyprus away from the Ottoman Empire.

At that time, in Italy, nobody seemed to be especially interested in the events taking place in the remote Crimea. But, with the war in full swing, France and England desperately needed all the allies they could find. And so, France asked (or perhaps ordered) the Kingdom of Piedmont (also known as Kingdom of Sardinia) to send an expeditionary force to fight with the allies in Crimea. Piedmont was not an empire but it had been able to industrialize using British coal and had built-up a considerable military force with the objective of subduing the plethora of statelets that existed in the Italian peninsula at that time. The Piedmontese intervention had only a modest effect on the balance of forces in Crimea, but it established the fact that Piedmont and France were allies. It also established that Piedmont had gained a certain degree of strategic credit that it was to redeem later in terms of military help from France.

A less known part of this story is the role of the Kingdom of Naples. The Kingdom had a long story of friendship with Russia and, some 50 years before, Russia had sent troops to Naples to help (unsuccessfully) the Kingdom to repel an attack from France. It seems that the Russians saw the Southern Italian kingdom as their gateway to the Western Mediterranean region and maintained good relations with it. At the time of the Crimean war, there was no formal alliance between the Kingdom of Naples and Russia, but when the British asked to the King of Naples to send troops to Crimea to join the Anti-Russia alliance.  The King refused, preferring to remain neutral and to maintain commercial exchanges with Russia. Even when it was clear that Russia was losing, the King of Naples refused to make the about-face that the Austrian empire did at the last moment. That turned the Kingdom of Naples into a pariah in the eyes of both the French and the British.

So, much of what happened in Italy after the Crimean War can be explained by these simple facts. The French and the British felt that the Kingdom of Piedmont was to be rewarded for its help, while the Kingdom of Naples was to be punished. For the Kingdom of Naples, already economically backward, it was a disaster: the defeat of Russia in Crimea had made it impossible for the Russians to send help to Naples and the kingdom found itself completely isolated against the more powerful Kingdom of Piedmont, well supported by Britain. There came the expedition of Garibaldi to Sicily in 1860, whose ships were protected by the British fleet. The Neapolitan army was defeated, the kingdom was invaded by the Piedmontese from the North and that was the end of the Kingdom of Naples and the birth of the Kingdom of Italy.

And that's the story as it went. It is curious how so many things are connected and how things could have gone differently if only some events had played out in a different way.  What if the Crimean war had gone in a different way? Would Italy still exist today? What if Napoleon III had realized that in helping Britain against Russia he was damaging the French interests in the Mediterranean? And what could have happened if France had refused to help Piedmont to conquer Italy? This is the fascination of history that sometimes repeats itself, often rhymes, and always surprises us. 

 

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Other posts by Ugo Bardi on the Crimean war and its consequences

 

Crimea: From World War 0 to World War III

 

Coal Wars, and Beautiful Women. 

 

The Tipping Points of History: Italy's Unification and the Countess of Castiglione 

 

The Ring of Fire Around Russia

Why Face Masks May be Here to Stay Forever

 

Wearing a mask may be a burden but, in some cases, also an advantage, especially for women in a patriarchal society. Traditionally, a mask allowed a certain anonymity and a chance for occasional sexual license. Could it be that the current diffusion of the habit of wearing face masks is a reaction to the more and more invasive "surveillance state" in the West? In this post, I explore this issue also in relation to the biblical story of Tamar and Judah 

(above, Tamar and Judah in a painting of the Rembrandt school)

 

 

The fashion of wearing face masks in the West is surprising, especially in view of the previous campaigns against the Islamic veil in the name of dignity. Yet, Westerners cling to their masks as if their life depended on them, even in conditions when they are not needed, as in the open air.

 

This fashion is all the more surprising if you consider that practically no known society in history has ever enforced wearing face masks or veils for everyone, except in areas where protection is needed against the cold or against sand blown by the wind. In the standard Western iconography, someone who wears a mask is a criminal or an outlaw. Who would need to hide his face if not for some evil purpose? True, sometimes a mask is worn by good characters in fiction, such as Batman, but there is always a dark side to the story.

The only exception to the rule is the veil worn by married women. It is sometimes said to be an Islamic tradition, but there is nothing specifically Islamic in it. In Southern Europe, up to less than one century ago it was common for married women to wear a veil in public and, even today, a Western bride sometimes wears a veil at her marriage. In general, it is typical for women to be veiled in public in patriarchal societies, as it is still the case in some Middle Eastern and Asian countries.

I would argue that the veil can be seen as a burden, but also as an advantage for women. Nothing exists if it doesn't have a reason to exist and, over history, women accepted to wear veils because it gave them some advantages. A certain degree of anonymity that allowed them to occasionally indulge in behaviors that were not allowed by their society. Indeed, wearing masks remains a characteristic of the Western carnival festivities, where a certain tradition of free sexual encounters remains alive to this day. 

So, could it be that the current explosion of face masks in the West is the result of the diffusion of the "surveillance state"? With more and more oppressive ways to control people being deployed, with face-recognition techniques, surveillance drones, spy cams, and all the rest, wearing a mask provides a certain advantage for the wearer. It is not a coincidence that the "anonymous" hackers are represented as wearing a mask. Anonymity is an advantage and there is safety in numbers.

If this is the case, then, that face masks are likely to become a stable feature of the Western society, independently of their usefulness as anti-virus barriers. They are uncomfortable, but if they can hide you from those pesky drones, well, it may be worth wearing them. Masks as a form of freedom from oppression? Maybe.

To understand more the meaning of wearing masks, let me discuss an ancient story where a face mask played a fundamental role: the biblical story of Tamar and Judah. I already discussed this story in a previous post, but here let me go into some more details.

 

Tamar and Judah: The Veil as a Life-Saving Tool

 by Ugo Bardi, Aug 2020

 

 

In the book of Genesis of the Bible, we read how Tamar prostituted herself in order to have children from her father-in-law, Judah. It is a fascinating story that tells us of remote times, but not so remote that we can't understand the plight of the people who lived and struggled in a world very different from ours. 

 

The story of Tamar is often commented for its moral and religious meaning, but let me retell it with a more down to earth purpose: understanding how the habit of married women to wear a veil affected ancient patriarchal societies and, occasionally, could be a definite advantage for women.

So, let's start with the protagonists. Judah was one of the patriarchs of the Israelites, the great-grandson of Abraham in person. He was endowed with a certain degree of wickedness and we are told of how he attempted to kill his brother, Joseph. Later on, he seemed to have gained some of respectability, he got married and had three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah.

 

Tamar enters the story when she marries Er, the oldest son of Judah. We are not told much about the origins of Tamar. Sources other than the Bible say she was a Canaanite, others that she was the daughter of a high priest. The Bible doesn't mention a dowry, but it is unthinkable that Tamar wouldn't have brought one to Er. Dowries are typical of patriarchal societies were men are considered more valuable than women. In these societies, a woman can gain access to a high rank man by paying for the privilege. 

 

So, Tamar marries Er and everything seems to be going well in the best of worlds, when Er suddenly dies. The Bible explains to us that God was angry at Er for some reasons, but the real issue is that Tamar is left as a childless widow. In this case, patriarchal societies had a tradition called the "Levirate" that favored, or even imposed, that the younger brother of a deceased man would marry the widow. The law applied when the widow was childless, as it was Tamar's case. 

 

The Levirate laws are grounded in financial matters, as most marriages were in antiquity, and still are. In a patriarchal society, a woman would gain access to a high-rank man by paying a dowry. But if the man died before having children, the woman would have paid for nothing, because being female she couldn't inherit the possessions of her deceased husband. The levirate law protected the widow, making sure that she would have a husband and a chance to have male heirs. It seems that the children sired by the brother of the deceased husband would be considered as sons and daughters of the first husband in regard to inheritance matters. 

So, we read that Judah's family followed the levirate customs and that Tamar's brother in law, Onan, married her. That might have settled all issues, but there is a new problem: Onan is not interested in having children from Tamar. We are told that he "spilled his seed on the ground," something we would call today "coitus interruptus." Why Onan did that is probably still related to the financial implications of the levirate. If Tamar had sired a male heir to Onan, his own inheritance would have been diminished because the son would have counted as Er's son. The story may have been much more complicated than this, anyway what happens is that Onan dies, too. Maybe he was smitten by God for his bad behavior, but the point is that Tamar finds herself a childless widow for the second time. 

At this point, things become really complicated. The levirate law says that Tamar should now marry Judah's remaining son, Shelah. But he is too young, and so Tamar finds herself betrothed to a child with the perspective that when he will be grown up enough, he will behave like Onan, for the same reasons. Then, after having buried two husbands, we may imagine that Tamar's reputation would be a bit tarnished, to say the least. Maybe she is a witch? Don't forget that the Bible says in the Exodus "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." About Shelah, he must not have been so thrilled at the perspective of having to marry a woman who may have been 10 years older than him. And Judah, what could he do? Maybe he could send Tamar back to her family, but then he would have had to pay back the dowry he had received -- not a perspective he would relish, of course. 

 

Thus being the situation, we seem to have a classic no-win situation. But then something happens that changes everything. Let's read the story from the book of Genesis

 

From the book of Genesis

¹³ And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father in law goeth up to Timnath to shear his sheep.

¹⁴ And she put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife.

¹⁵ When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face.

¹⁶ And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?

¹⁷ And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?

¹⁸ And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.

¹⁹ And she arose, and went away, and laid by her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.

²⁰ And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the woman's hand: but he found her not.

²¹ Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot, that was openly by the way side? And they said, There was no harlot in this place.

²² And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said, that there was no harlot in this place.

²³ And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.

²⁴ And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

²⁵ When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff.

²⁶ And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.

Now, this story has such big holes in it that you could pass a caravan of a hundred camels through them. Let's see to explain. 

First, the idea that a prostitute awaits for customers in "an open place by the way to Timnath" is already suspicious. Prostitutes tend to frequent busy places and for one of them to sit and wait for customers in an "open place" would be dangerous if they were to meet a rough customer. In ancient times, prostitutes operated mainly in temples as "hierodules." That gave origin to the legend that Tamar was a sacred prostitute of some cult. But hierodules were not sacred, they were just a service provided by the temple that also guaranteed their safety and that they were paid. I describe that in a previous post. This is mostly a detail, but one of the many weaknesses of the whole story. 

Second, we are told that Judah "thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face." This is totally absurd. In ancient times, prostitutes did not veil their face. That was a no-no. Period. Here is how I discuss this point in a previous post

According to Michael Astur (1966), a Babylonian hierodule was strictly forbidden from wearing a veil and harshly punished if she did. So, how could Judah mistake a veiled woman for a prostitute? Astour, here, goes through a truly acrobatic leap of logic, noting first that a woman could abandon her hierodule status and marry and, in this case, she was allowed to wear a veil. Then, assuming that Tamar had been a hierodule before marrying, her wearing a veil could be "a privilege evidently extended into widowhood." Even if we were to agree on this perilous chain of assumptions, the explanation still makes no sense. How could Judah know that the veiled woman he had met was a former prostitute when her aspect, instead, was that of a married woman?

Third, we are asked to believe that Judah has sex with his daughter-in-law who has been living in his family for at least a few years and that he doesn't recognize her because she wears a face veil. Now, this is reminding of how Lois Lane in our "Superman" stories is so dumb that she can't recognize that her fiancée Clark Kent and Superman are the same person, just because Kent wears glasses. Maybe Judah wasn't the sharpest pair of scissors in the shearer's toolbox, but the story that the Bible tells us is supposed to be a true story. And Judah cannot have been that dumb. According to some sources, he said he was drunk. Yeah, sure.

Finally, there is the story that the supposed "prostitute" asks Judah for a pledge in the form of "Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff." That's another no-no: from the earliest days of monetary history, prostitutes have been paid in cash. It is unthinkable that Judah would go to the market of Timnath without taking at least a little silver with him. He was there to shear his sheep, and what would he have paid the shearers with? That silver could also have been used to pay for whatever he would have needed while there, including the services of a prostitute. That the supposed prostitute, Tamar, had asked for such a degree of commitment from Judah as to leave something that made him recognizable was weird at least, even suspicious.

So, how do you explain this series of apparently unsolvable contradictions? Well, as Captain Kirk of the Starship "Enterprise" would to say, there are always ways to avoid to put oneself in a no-win situation. And that was what may have happened. 

Let's go back to the impasse: Judah doesn't want to give Tamar to Shelah but he doesn't want to send her back to her family, either. In the meantime Judah's wife dies and suddenly there appears an obvious solution for Judah: take Tamar as his own wife. A good idea that keeps the money at home and still gives Tamar a chance to bear a heir to Judah's family. Besides, it is not hard to imagine that that a woman in full flower, such as Tamar, would have been attractive for a widower, such as Judah. But for Judah to marry her is legally impossible: Tamar is betrothed to Shelah and for Judah that would be seen as adultery, a grave sin, punishable even with death. 

But let's imagine that Judah and Tamar have an affair well before the Timnath story. Then, let's imagine that Tamar gets pregnant. Ouch, big problem: now they are adulterers, sinners, and both punishable by law. Of course Judah could deny being the father of Tamar's child, but that would condemn Tamar to death as a harlot and bring upon Judah the wrath of Tamar's family.

Then, before Tamar's pregnancy becomes obvious, a theatrical performance is organized. Tamar doesn't even need to go to Timnath disguised as a prostitute. Judah just comes back from there without his signet, bracelets, and staff. Then he goes through the charade of sending a friend to Timnath with a goat, supposedly to pay for a prostitute, but well knowing that there has never been one there. When the scandal breaks up, Judah's staff and stuff miraculously reappear in Tamar's hands, lending substance to an otherwise unbelievable story.

See how things fit together? Tamar did misbehave, but her father in law cannot punish her because she carries his child (actually, children, twins will be born). Then Judah is not an adulterer because he didn't know he was having sex with his daughter in law (oh, yeah, he was drunk!!). Tamar's relatives, then, are happy because Tamar's children will inherit Judah's wealth. And everyone his happy to pay no attention to the many inconsistencies of the story. The only one who may not be so happy is Shelah, who has lost the privilege of being the oldest son to Judah because Tamar's children will be considered heirs to the deceased Er. But so is life and you can't have everything.

You see how many details click together in this fascinating story. It is so fascinating because it describes the plight of normal people who weren't so concerned about grand things such as the house of David, but about their own survival in a difficult moment. And we can understand them and their plight, even millennia afterwards. But the most fascinating detail of the story is the role played by the veil. Had there not been the use for women to wear a veil, Judah couldn't have convincingly argued that he didn't know whom he was having sex with. The veil literally saved Tamar's life and ensured that her children would become the founders of the Davidic line of the tribe of Judah. And, as I said at the beginning, for everything that exists, there is a reason for it to exist

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In this 1969 song by the Italian singer Lucio Battisti, we hear the story of a man who is told that his wife, Francesca, has been seen with another man. He says that it cannot be, that the woman they saw looked like Francesca, dressed in the same way and with the same hair color. But that cannot be because, he says, "Francesca lives for him." If veils had been worn by Italian married women in the 1960s, this song couldn't have existed.

Lucio Battisti - It's not Francesca (English translation)

you're wrong, who you saw is not
is not Francesca
she's always at home waiting for me
it's not Francesca
if there was a man, then
no, it can't be her
Francesca never asked for more
who's wrong, I'm sure, it's you
Francesca never asked for more
'cause she lives for me
like the other one, she's blond but
it's not Francesca
if she was dressed in red, I know
it's not Francesca
if she was hugging(him) then
no, it can't be her
Francesca never asked for more
who's wrong, I'm sure, it's you
Francesca never asked for more
'cause she lives for me
she lives for me
she lives for me

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Astour, Michael, Journal of Biblical Literature, 85,2 (1966) 185-196.

Gaia, the Return of the Earth Goddess

Temple worship in Ur, from Sumerian times. Note in the lower panel people are bringing all sort of goods to the temple represented as the abstract structure on the right. 

House founded by An, praised by Enlil, given an oracle by mother Nintud! A house, at its upper end a mountain, at its lower end a spring! A house, at its upper end threefold indeed. Whose well-founded storehouse is established as a household, whose terrace is supported by lahama deities; whose princely great wall, the shrine of Urim! (the Kesh temple hymn, ca. 2600 BCE)

Not long ago, I found myself involved in a debate on Gaian religion convened by Erik Assadourian. For me, it was a little strange. For the people of my generation, religion is supposed to be a relic of the past, opium of the people, a mishmash of superstitions, something for old women mumbling ejaculatory prayers, things like that. But, here, a group of people who weren't religious in the traditional sense of the word, and who included at least two professional researchers in physics, were seriously discussing about how to best worship the Goddess of Earth, the mighty, the powerful, the divine, the (sometimes) benevolent Gaia, She who keeps the Earth alive.

It was not just unsettling, it was a deep rethinking of many things I had been thinking. I had been building models of how Gaia could function in terms of the physics and the biology we know. But here, no, it was not Gaia the holobiont, not Gaia the superorganism, not Gaia the homeostatic system. It was Gaia the Goddess.

And here I am, trying to explain to myself why I found this matter worth discussing. And trying to explain it to you, readers. After all, this is being written in a blog titled "Chimeras" -- and the ancient Chimera was a myth about a creature that, once, must have been a sky goddess. And I have been keeping this blog for several years, see? There is something in religion that remains interesting even for us, moderns. But, then, what is it, exactly?

I mulled over the question for a while and I came to the conclusion that, yes, Erik Assadourian and the others are onto something: it may be time for religion to return in some form. And if religion returns, it may well be in the form of some kind of cult of the Goddess Gaia. But let me try to explain

What is this thing called "religion," anyway?

Just as many other things in history that go in cycles, religion does that too. It is because religion serves a purpose, otherwise it wouldn't have existed and been so common in the past. So what is religion? It is a long story but let me start from the beginning -- the very beginning, when, as the Sumerians used to say "Bread was baked for the first time in the ovens".

A constant of all ancient religions is that they tell us that whatever humans learned to do -- from fishing to having kings -- it was taught them by some God who took the trouble to land down from heaven (or from wherever Gods come from) just for that purpose. Think of when the Sumerian Sea-God called Aun (also Oannes in later times) emerged out of the Abzu (that today we call the abyss) to teach people all the arts of civilization. It was in those ancient times that the Gods taught humans the arts and the skills that the ancient Sumerians called "me,"  a bewildering variety of concepts, from "music" to "rejoicing of the heart." Or, in a more recent lore, how Prometheus defied the gods by stealing fire and gave it to humankind. This story has a twist of trickery, but it is the same concept: human civilization is a gift from the gods.

Now, surely our ancestors were not so naive that they believed in these silly legends, right? Did people really need a Fish-God to emerge out of the Persian Gulf to teach them how to make fish hooks and fishnets? But, as usual, what looks absurd hides the meaning of complex questions.

The people who described how the me came from the Gods were not naive, not at all. They had understood the essence of civilization, which is sharing. Nothing can be done without sharing something with others, not even rejoicing in your heart. Think of "music," one of the Sumerian me: can you play music by yourself and alone? Makes no sense, of course. Music is a skill that needs to be learned. You need teachers, you need people who can make instruments, you need a public to listen to you and appreciate your music. And the same is for fishing, one of the skills that Aun taught to humans. Of course, you could fish by yourself and for your family only. Sure, and, in this way, you ensure that you all will die of starvation as soon as you hit a bad period of low catches. Fishing provides abundant food in good times, but fish spoils easily and those who live by fishing can survive only if they share their catch with those who live by cultivating grains. You can't live of fish alone, it is something that I and my colleague Ilaria Perissi describe in our book, "The Empty Sea." Those who tried, such as the Vikings of Greenland during the Middle Ages, were mercilessly wiped out of history.

Sharing is the essence of civilization, but it is not trivial: who shares what with whom? How do you ensure that everyone gets a fair share? How do you take care of tricksters, thieves, and parasites? It is a fascinating story that goes back to the very beginning of civilization, those times that the Sumerians were fond to tell with the beautiful image of "when bread was baked for the first time in the ovens,"  This is where religion came in, with temples, priest, Gods, and all the related stuff.

Let's make a practical example: suppose you are on an errand, it is a hot day, and you want a mug of beer. Today, you go to a pub, pay a few dollars for your pint, you drink it, and that's it. Now, move yourself to Sumerian times. The Sumerians had plenty of beer, even a specific goddess related to it, called Ninkasi (which means, as you may guess, "the lady of the beer"). But there were no pubs selling beer for the simple reason that you couldn't pay for it. Money hadn't been invented, yet. Could you barter for it? With what? What could you carry around that would be worth just one beer? No, there was a much better solution: the temple of the local God or Goddess.

We have beautiful descriptions of the Sumerian temples in the works of the priestess Enheduanna, among other things the first named author in history. From her and from other sources, we can understand how in Sumerian times, and for millennia afterward, temples were large storehouses of goods. They were markets, schools, libraries, manufacturing center, and offered all sorts of services, including that of the hierodules (karkid in Sumerian), girls who were not especially holy, but who would engage in a very ancient profession that didn't always have the bad reputation it has today. If you were so inclined, you could also meet male prostitutes in the temple, probably called "kurgarra" in Sumerian. That's one task in whicb temples have been engaging for a long time, even though that looks a little weird to us. Incidentally, the Church of England still managed prostitution in Medieval times

So, you go to the temple and you make an offer to the local God or Goddess. We may assume that this offer would be proportional to both your needs and your means. It could be a goat that we know it was roughly proportional to the services of a high-rank hierodule. But, if all you wanted was a beer, then you could have limited your offer to something less valuable: depending on your job you could have offered fish, wheat, wool, metal, or whatever. Then, the God would be pleased and as a reward the alewives of the temple would give you all the beer you could drink. Seen as a restaurant, the temple worked on the basis of what we call today an "all you can eat" menu (or "the bottomless cup of coffee," as many refills as you want).

Note how the process of offering something to God was called sacrifice. The term  comes from "sacred" which means "separated." The sacrifice is about separation. You separate from something that you perceived as yours which then becomes an offer to the God or to the community -- most often the same thing. The offerings to the temple could be something very simple: as you see in the images we have from Sumerian times, it didn't always involve the formal procedure of killing a live animal. People were just bringing the goods they had to the temple. When animals were sacrificed to God(s) in the sense that they were ritually killed, they were normally eaten afterward. Only in rare cases (probably not in Sumeria) the sacrificed entity was burnt to ashes. It was the "burnt sacrifice called korban olah in the Jewish tradition. In that case, the sacrifice was shared with God alone -- but it was more of an exception than the rule.

In any case, God was the supreme arbiter who insured that your sacrifice was appreciated -- actually not all sacrifices were appreciated. Some people might try to trick by offering low quality goods, but God is not easy to fool. In some cases, he didn't appreciate someone's sacrifices at all: do you remember the story of Cain and Abel? God rejected Cain's sacrifice, although we are not told exactly why. In any case, the sacrifice was a way to attribute a certain "price" to the sacrificed goods.

This method of commerce is not very different than the one we use today, it is just not so exactly quantified as when we use money to attach a value to everything. The ancient method works more closely to the principle that the Marxists had unsuccessfully tried to implement "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." But don't think that the ancient Sumerian were communists, it is just that the lack of method of quantification of the commercial transaction generated a certain leeway that could allow to the needy access to the surplus available, when it was available. This idea is still embedded in modern religions, think of how the holy Quran commands the believers to share the water of their wells with the needy, once they have satisfied their needs and those of their animals. Or the importance that the Christian tradition gives to gleaning as a redistribution of the products of the fields. Do you remember the story of Ruth the Moabite in the Bible? That important, indeed.

But there is more. In the case of a burnt sacrifices, the value attributed to the goods was "infinite" -- the goods consumed by the flames just couldn't be used again by human beings. It is the concept of Taboo used in Pacific cultures for something that cannot be touched, eaten, or used. We have no equivalent thing in the "market," where we instead suppose that everything has a price.

And then, there came money (the triumph of evil)

The world of the temples of the first 2-3 millennia of human civilizations in the Near East was in some  ways alien to ours, and in others perfectly equivalent. But things keep changing and the temples were soon to face a competition in a new method of attributing value to goods: money. Coinage is a relatively modern invention, it goes back to mid 1st millennium BCE. But in very ancient times, people did exchange metals by weight -- mainly gold and silver. And these exchanges were normally carried out in temples -- the local God(s) ensured honest weighing. In more than one sense, in ancient times temples were banks and it is no coincidence that our modern banks look like temples. They are temples to a God called "money." By the way, you surely read in the Gospels how Jesus chased the money changers -- the trapezitai -- out of the temple of Jerusalem. Everyone knows that story, but what were the money changers doing in the temple? They were in the traditional place where they were expected to be, where they had been from when bread was baked in ovens for the first time. 

So, religion and money evolved in parallel -- sometimes complementing each other, sometimes in competition with each other. But, in the long run, the temples seem to have been the losers in the competition. As currency became more and more commonplace, people started thinking that they didn't really need the cumbersome apparatus of religion, with its temples, priests, and hierodules (the last ones were still appreciated, but now were paid in cash). A coin is a coin is a coin, it is guaranteed by the gold it is made of -- gold is gold is gold. And if you want a good beer, you don't need to make an offer to some weird God or Goddess. Just pay a few coppers for it, and that's done.

The Roman state was among the first in history to be based nearly 100% on money. With the Romans, temples and priests had mainly a decorative role, let's say that they had to find a new market for their services. Temples couldn't be anymore commercial centers, so they reinvented themselves as lofty place for the celebration of the greatness of the Roman empires. There remained also a diffuse kind of religion in the countryside that had to do with fertility rites, curing sickness, and occasional cursing on one's enemies. That was the "pagan" religion, with the name "pagan" meaning, basically, "peasant." 

 

Paganism would acquire a bad fame in Christian times, but already in Roman times peasant rites were seen with great suspicion. The Romans burned witches, oh, yes, they loved to burn witches -- they burned many more than would ever be burned in medieval times. And the victims were most likely countryside enchanters and enchantresses. They were considered dangerous because the real deity that the Romans worshiped was money. An evil deity, perhaps, but it surely brought mighty power to the Romans, but their doom as well, as it is traditional for evil deities. Roman money was in the form of precious metals and when they ran out of gold and silver from their mines, the state just couldn't exist anymore: it vanished. No gold, no empire. It was as simple as that.

The disappearance of the Roman state saw a return of religion, this time in the form of Christianity. It is a long story that would need a lot of space to be written. Let's just say that the Middle Ages in Europe saw the rise of monasteries to play a role similar to that of temples in Sumerian times. Monasteries were storehouses, manufacturing centers, schools, libraries, and more -- they even had something to do with hierodules. During certain periods, Christian nuns did seem to have played that role, although this is a controversial point. Commercial exchanging and sharing of goods again took a religious aspect, with the Catholic Church in Western Europe playing the role of a bank by guaranteeing that, for instance, ancient relics were authentic. In part, relics played the role that money had played during the Roman Empire, although they couldn't be exchanged for other kinds of goods. The miracle of the Middle Ages in Europe was that this arrangement worked, and worked very well. That is, until someone started excavating silver from mines in Eastern Europe and another imperial cycle started. It is not over to this date, although it is clearly declining.

So, where do we stand now? Religion has clearly abandoned the role it had during medieval times and has re-invented itself as a support for the national state, just as the pagan temples had done in Roman times. One of the most tragic events of Western history is when in 1914, for some mysterious reasons, young Europeans found themselves killing each other by the millions while staying in humid trenches. On both sides of the trenches, Christian priests were blessing the soldiers of "their" side, exhorting them to kill those of the other side. How Christianity could reduce itself to such a low level is one of the mysteries of the Universe, but there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. And it is here that we stand. Money rules the world and that's it.

The Problem With Money

Our society is perhaps the most monetized of history -- money pervades every aspect of life for everyone. The US is perhaps the most monetized society ever: for Europeans it is a shock to discover that many American families pay their children for doing household chores. For a European, it is like if your spouse were asking you to pay for his/her sexual services. But different epochs have different uses and surely it would be shocking for a Sumerian to see that we can get a beer at the pub by just giving the alewives a curious flat object, a "card," that they then give back to us. Surely that card is a powerful amulet from a high-ranking God. 

 

So, everything may be well in the best of worlds, notoriously represented by the Western version of liberal democracy. Powerful market forces, operated by the God (or perhaps Goddess) called Money or, sometimes, "the almighty dollar," ensure that exchanges are efficient, that scarce resources are optimally allocated, and that everyone has a chance in the search for maximizing his/her utility function.

Maybe. But it may also be that something is rotten in the Great Columned Temple of Washington D.C. What's rotten, exactly? Why can't this wonderful deity we call "money" work the way we would it like to, now that we even managed to decouple it from the precious metals it was made of in ancient times?

Well, there is a problem. A big problem. A gigantic problem. It is simply that money is evil. This is another complex story, but let's just say that the problem with evil and good is that evil knows no limits, while good does. In other words, evil is equivalent to chaos, good to order. It has something to do with the definition of "obscenity." There is nothing wrong in human sex, but an excess of sex in some forms becomes obscene. Money can become obscene for exactly this reason: too much of it overwhelms everything else. Nothing is so expensive that it cannot be bought; that's the result of the simple fact that you can attribute a price to everything.

Instead, God is good because She has limits: She is benevolent and merciful. You could see that as a limitation and theologians might discuss why a being that's all-powerful and all-encompassing cannot be also wicked and cruel. But there cannot be any good without an order of things. And order implies limits of some kind. God can do everything but He cannot do evil. That's a no-no. God cannot be evil. Period.

And here is why money is evil: it has no limits, it keeps accumulating. You know that accumulated money is called "capital," and it seems that many people realize that there is something wrong with that idea because "capitalism" is supposed to be something bad. Which may be but, really, capital is one of those polymorphic words that can describe many things, not all of them necessarily bad. In itself, capital is simply the accumulation of resources for future use -- and that has limits, of course. You can't accumulate more things than the things you have. But once you give a monetary value to this accumulated capital, things change. If money has no limits, capital doesn't, either.

Call it capital or call it money, it is shapeless, limitless, a blob that keeps growing and never shrinks. Especially nowadays that money has been decoupled from material goods (at least in part, you might argue that money is linked to crude oil). You could say that money is a disease: it affects everything. Everything can be associated with a number, and that makes that thing part of the entity we call market. If destroying that thing can raise that number, somewhere, that thing will be destroyed. Think of a tree: for a modern economist, it has no monetary value until it is felled and the wood sold on the market. And that accumulates more money, somewhere. Monetary capital actually destroys natural capital. You may have heard of "Natural Capitalism" that's supposed to solve the problem by giving a price to trees even before they are felled. It could be a good idea, but it is still based on money, so it may be the wrong tool to use even though for a good purpose..

The accumulation of money in the form of monetary capital has created something enormously different than something that was once supposed to help you get a good beer at a pub. Money is not evil just in a metaphysical sense. Money is destroying everything. It is destroying the very thing that makes humankind survive: the Earth's ecosystem. We call it "overexploitation," but it means simply killing and destroying everything as long as that can bring a monetary profit to someone.

Re-Sacralizing The Ecosystem (why some goods must have infinite prices)

There have been several proposals on how to reform the monetary system, from "local money" to "expiring money," and some have proposed to simply get rid of it. None of these schemes has worked, so far, and getting rid of money seems to be simply impossible in a society that's as complex as ours: how do you pay the hierodules if money does not exist? But from what I have been discussing so far, we could avoid the disaster that the evil deity calling money is bring to us simply by putting a limit to it. It is, after all, what the Almighty did with the devil: She didn't kill him, but confined him in a specific area that we call "Hell" -- maybe there is a need for hell to exist, we don't know. For sure, we don't want hell to grow and expand everywhere.

What does it mean a limit to money? It means that some things must be placed outside the monetary realm -- outside the market. If you want to use a metaphor based on economics, some goods must be declared to have an "infinite" monetary price -- nobody can buy them, not billionaires, not even trillionaires or any even more obscene levels of monetary accumulation. If you prefer, you may use the old Hawai'ian word: Taboo. Or, simply, you decide that some things are sacred, holy, they are beloved by the Goddess and even thinking of touching them is evil. 

 

Once something is sacred, it cannot be destroyed in the name of profit. That could mean setting aside some areas of the planet, declaring them not open for human exploitation. Or setting limits to the exploitation, not with the idea of maximizing the output of the system for human use, but with the idea to optimize the biodiversity of the area. These ideas are not farfetched. As an example, some areas of the sea have been declared "whale sanctuaries" -- places where whales cannot be hunted. That's not necessarily an all/zero choice. Some sanctuaries might allow human presence and a moderate exploitation of the resources of the system. The point is that as long as we monetize the exploitation, the we are back to monetary capitalism and the resource will be destroyed.

Do we need a religion to do that? Maybe there are other ways but, surely, we know that it is a task that religion is especially suitable for. Religion is a form of communication that uses rituals as speech. Rituals are all about sacralization: they define what's sacred by means of sacrifice. These concepts form the backbone of all religions, everything is neatly arranged under to concept of "sacredness" -- what's sacred is nobody's property. We know that it works. It has worked in the past. It still works today. You may be a trillionaire, but you are not allowed to do everything you want just because you can pay for it. You can't buy the right of killing people, for instance. Nor to destroy humankind's heritage. (So far, at least).

Then, do we need a new religion for that purpose? A Gaian religion?

Possibly yes, taking into account that Gaia is not "God" in the theological sense. Gaia is not all-powerful, she didn't create the world, she is mortal. She is akin to the Demiurgoi, the Daimonoi, the Djinn, and other similar figures that play a role in the Christian, Islamic and Indian mythologies. The point is that you don't necessarily need the intervention of the Almighty to sacralize something. Even just a lowly priest can do that, and surely it is possible for one of Her Daimonoi, and Gaia is one.

Supposing we could do something like that, then we would have the intellectual and cultural tools needed to re-sacralize the Earth. Then, whatever is declared sacred or taboo is spared by the destruction wrecked by the money based process: forests, lands, seas, creatures large and small. We could see this a as a new alliance between humans and Gaia: All the Earth is sacred to Gaia, and some parts of it are especially sacred and cannot be touched by money. And not just the Earth, the poor, the weak, and the dispossessed among humans, they are just as sacred and must be respected. 

 

All that is not just a question of "saving the Earth" -- it is a homage to the power of the Holy Creation that belongs to the Almighty, and to the power of maintenance of the Holy Creation that belongs to the Almighty's faithful servant, the holy Gaia, mistress of the ecosystem. And humans, as the ancient Sumerians had already understood, are left with the task of respecting, admiring and appreciating what God has created. We do not worship Gaia, that would silly, besides being blasphemous. But through her, we worship the higher power of God.  

Is it possible? If history tells us something is that money tends to beat religion when conflict arises. Gaia is powerful, sure, but can she slay the money dragon in single combat? Difficult, yes, but we should remember that some 2000 years ago in Europe, a group of madmen fought and won against an evil empire in the name of an idea that most thought not just subversive at that time, but even beyond the thinkable. And they believed so much in that idea that they accepted to die for it

In the end, there is more to religion than just fixing a broken economic system. There is a fundamental reason why people do what they do: sometimes we call it with the anodyne name of "communication," sometimes we use the more sophisticated term of "empathy," but when we really understand what we are talking about we may not afraid to use the world "love" which, according to our Medieval ancestors, was the ultimate force that moves the universe. And when we deal with Gaia the Goddess, we may have this feeling of communication, empathy, and love. She may be defined as a planetary homeostatic system, but she is way more than that: it is a power of love that has no equals on this planet. But there are things that mere words cannot express.

 

Not just friends, but brothers. How Russia helped Italy in a difficult moment

An image of the relief mission from Russia to Italy. The sign says "From Russia with Love" (Dalla Russia con Amore). As a name for the mission, maybe it wasn't such a great idea. It is the title of an old James Bond movie, where Russians are demonized as the evil guys of the plot. But, apart from the name, the relief mission was a success and it was appreciated both in Russia and in Italy. 

The arrival of a relief mission from Russia in Italy at the worst moment of the COVID epidemic was described with suspicion and suspect by the Western media. Yet, it was clearly seen with gratitude by most Italians, the propaganda effort to make it look like an invasion was a flop. That might be a little strange because Italians are subjected to a daily barrage of anti-Russian propaganda (although presently more focused against China). But, apparently, the efforts to turn Russians into evil monsters in the minds of Italians mostly failed.

If we think about reciprocal feelings, we may remember that Italian troops invaded the Russian territory at least three times in history. The first was with a contingent in Napoleon's army, the second as part of the Western coalition that invaded Crimea, the third as part of the Axis armies that invaded Russia in 1941. On their part, the Russians have never invaded Italy in recent times, although, if we really want to find a historical precedent, a Russian army fought the French in Northern Italy in 1799.

But, just as propaganda was ineffective, these ancient wars seem to have been forgotten. Right now, there is no detectable hostility in the way Italians and Russians see each other. Italians and Russians don't look very similar in terms of individual characters. Nevertheless, they seem to be able to get along together. So, the current epidemic is not the only case when the Russians intervened to help Italians. They did that more than a hundred years ago, after the great Earthquake of Messina, in 1908.

The Russian mission in Messina was a long time ago, but we can still read about how it went beyond a simple relief operation. It involved true heroism and abnegation; that was noted and it is still remembered to this day both in Italy and in Russia. This story is little known in English, so I thought it was worth translating here a post by Giuseppe Iannello written for the centennial of the earthquake. Hopefully, the Russian help with the COVID epidemics will be remembered in the same way.


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The Russian Sailors in Messina: Beyond the Myth

by Giuseppe Iannello - 25 Dicembre 2008
(translation by Ugo Bardi)

A Russian sailor from the ship "Slava" standing in front of the rubble of the Messina Earthquake of Dec 28th, 1908.

These were days of true glory in Messina. But organization and discipline are not enough to explain the undisputed fame of saviors and heroes of the Russian sailors 

Six days of glory. Real glory, glory able to challenge time and the judgments of the scholars in retrospect. A glory told to us by the press, but above all told by the people, by the people who saw with their eyes and heard with their ears. The Russian sailors entered the collective memory as heroes, as saviors, obscuring all the other rescuers. Why? A useless question if we ignore the narration of those six days and embark on historical and psychological analysis. Because the answer lies, in fact, in the deeds of those thousands of sailors who arrived on six ships of the Russian military fleet. 

There are many myths to dispel and "adjustments" to be made to avoid that the heroism of a people is identified with that of individual figures who, in reality, were only catalysts of needs that were born from a collective soul. We refer, for example, to generals and admirals. The command of the expedition of the Baltic Sea Fleet in the Mediterranean had been entrusted to Admiral Litvinov and while in the port of Augusta he received a request from the local authorities to provide assistance to the people of Messina. But it was not he who "decided" to move, he needed approval from his superiors, he needed an order; which would mean the loss of many hours waiting for that order. It was because his subordinates, officers, ensign, simple sailors, understood the situation and pressed to leave for the Strait of Messina. And so they did. In his memories ("The Imperial fleet of the Baltic between two wars, 1906-1914"), Garald Graf, then ensign on the Admiral Makarov, the first of the Russian ships to leave, tells us, "Litvinov was not a man who knew how to make up his mind," but in the end, he was persuaded. 

From the beginning, obedience and discipline do not explain the efficiency and the success of the Russian relief work. In "La terra trema" (the ground shakes) by Giorgio Boatti, it is even possible to talk about an "almost inhumane discipline". It is true that, during the hours of navigation from Augusta to Messina, the Russians had the time to organize themselves in teams, to prepare everything that could have been necessary for them. But the same could have been done by others. The merit of the Russians is not there. And it is not in the discipline nor in the organization, it is not in the method of their remarkable action. Michail Osorgin, a compatriot of those sailors, debunks the myth of the "method". And he does so immediately, just a month after the catastrophe, in a long correspondence from Rome for his newspaper, the "Vestnik Evropy".  The reputation of the Russian navy had been nearly destroyed by the defeat that it had suffered in the Japanese-Russian war (1905). The only idea that led the sailors was for Osorgin to save as many "souls" as possible, the difference with everyone else was this tremendous need to wrest as many people as possible from death. 

The organization was dictated by this need: the schedules, the shifts, everything was functional for this purpose, the sailors placed no value in themselves; people's lives came before the orders and the simple sailors were the ones convincing their superiors to reshape orders. On the other hand, it must have sounded really strange in the ears of a Russian to feel exalted by the organization of their army: what to say then - says the Russian journalist - about the organization and discipline of the Germans, who were also present at the place of the disaster? 

The Russian sailors became the catalyst of all the positive energies against the resignation, the discomfort, which often turned into apathy, in a sort of indifference that was often transmitted to rescuers. On the contrary, the action of the Russians was contagious and the cadets of the Sutley, the first British military ship to arrive, perhaps a few tens of minutes before the Makarov, felt it and understood how to distinguish themselves.

No stain therefore on the work of the Russians? That of the immediate shooting of the looters, thieves caught in the act: it is interesting to note how this particular is expressed only in journalistic reports and has been judged irrelevant by the collective memory, the oral and written memory handed down by the survivors from father to son, from generation to generation. The Russians did not actually deal directly with the hunting of the looters, but they used their weapons to defend themselves and defend a population totally exposed to the evil of the profiteers or to despair. The Russians (and the English) did not take care of the defense of property and property - as they did not bother to bury the dead - they took care of the people whom they heard whining under the rubble and to cure the wounds of the survivors.

We discuss this story with Tatiana Ostakhova, a researcher at the University of Messina, who lets us read something from her work in progress: the letters of Russian sailors published in Russian newspapers and other articles published in the weeks immediately following the earthquake. The letters are in part those already published by the Province of Messina in 2006, which however were based on an original edition in French. They are letters all characterized by common feelings: the inability to describe the indescribable, the horror of the scenario in which they operate, the madness of the survivors and the absurdity of which every hour are witnesses. The sailors are not exalted, they do not glorify, they only narrate and at times with amazement, they also take note of the immobility of the Italian forces. The comparisons will be made by the others, the correspondents, the other rescuers, and above all the people who will not forget the good received. And the news of those good deeds will run like the wind: in Naples, the first landing of the wounded by the Makarov turns into a sort of apotheosis for the Russian sailors, who are acclaimed. Wherever they went, they were recognized in the city, the Russian sailors could not escape warm manifestations of gratitude.

Michail Pervuchin in his article "The Russians and the Italians", translated by Ostakhova, sums up the difference between the Russians and everyone else. The people of other nations, offering their help, proved to be friends to the Italians, while the Russians turned out to be brothers. The correspondent affirms it on the basis of the testimonies gathered and of what was read in the Neapolitan newspapers: "the others certainly helped; but the Russians have not only helped, they gave everything they had to the refugees, including their spare shirts". "In Palermo and Naples - continues Pervuchin - women and children, refugees from the destroyed cities, still show off their jackets and their sailor's jackets, the officers' jackets. There are no German or English clothes on refugees. Russian clothes, yes ". Then another testimony: "all have given, but while others gave the superfluous, the surplus, the Russians, and we saw it, they gave us what was necessary to themselves, even the last thing they had. Yes, to the last thing they had. This is what struck us ".

However, good does not always begets more good. In January, the Russian sailors were told, "thank you but your help is no longer necessary". A Russian correspondent speaks of envy in this regard, Colonel C. Delmè-Radcliff, military attaché of the British Embassy in Rome, in a confidential report speaks of jealousy of the Italian authorities. The fact remains that only the Italian soldiers and a few other volunteers remained in the rubble: the gates were blocked for everyone else, including Italian civilians. The same refrain was repeated to all: there is no need for more help, because the army has taken control of the whole city. For many, many, still alive under the rubble, the fate was sealed.

Giuseppe Iannello

The red lips of the monster: how dreams die before the civilization that created them

I can understand that someone wanted to do a sequel of the 1951 movie, "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" -- it was a wonderful movie. Guillermo del Toro did that with "The Shape of Water" (2017), but what sense did it make to provide the new version of the creature with bright red lips? It truly escapes me. Did they think it made the amphibian man sexier? 

For some reason, it seems that civilizations on the brink of collapse lose the capability of interpreting the world around them. You could say that dreams die before the civilization that created them dies. And that seems to be what's happening to us. We don't seem to be able anymore to create believable narratives.

A good example is the recent movie "The Shape of Water" (2017) Guillermo del Toro. An interesting movie on several counts, but a narrative disaster. How is it that we can't create a decent plot anymore? It has to be something deep inside the belly of our civilization. But let me examine this movie in some detail.

The cycle of the humanoid aquatic monsters started with the first "The Creature of the Black Lagoon" (1951). It was a good movie, considering the kind of movies produced at that time. It had action, mystery, a breathtaking pace. And the story was fascinating, with the monster falling in love with a human woman. So I can see how Guillermo del Toro wanted to start from there to pursue a related idea: to explore the sexuality of people who are handicapped or marginalized -- even seen as monsters.

The new version of the story can be seen as successful in many respects, and indeed it has good points. Mainly, it is kept together by a truly stellar cast of actors, especially the character of Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins. But the film is an abject failure in narrative terms. It has credibility holes so large that an aircraft carrier could pass through them. 

Just as an example, there is this dangerous monster kept chained in a pool in a high-security government facility. The chain is not so short that the monster can't reach people with its arms, and we see that he snapped off two fingers from one of the characters of the movie. Nevertheless, the security of this place is so poor that it can't prevent a cleaning lady from entering the room to have her lunch while sitting on the edge of the pool and befriend the monster by offering him boiled eggs -- come on!

The real problem is not so much the credibility of the plot, it is its predictability. The evil guy is evil, the good girl is good, and about the pathetic Russian spy, you can see from the first scenes that he will be betrayed by his friends -- hey, Russians are supposed to be evil, aren't they? Given these elements, the movie plods along, as exciting as a Catholic mass.

Let me say something more about the main evil guy of the movie, the character named Strickland (a suitably evil name for an evil guy). Michael Shannon does an outstanding job playing him, but the result is disastrous nevertheless. The problem is the same: lack of subtlety, or, which is the same, predictability. As a character, Strickland is overdone from the first scene when he pees in a urinal in front of the cleaning ladies and boasts that he never washes his hands afterward. It is just embarrassing for everyone, including for the viewers.

I would say that the sin of the screenwriter was to be so nasty on Stickland who is so abused, physically and mentally, in the movie that he may generate some sympathy on the part of the viewer. People have a certain dignity that you shouldn't deny anyone, not even to a character in a movie. So, Strickland has two fingers bitten off by the creature and he suffers because of that throughout the movie. In the final scene, he is hit hard on the face by another character, and then killed by the monster. But what's truly bad is how his privacy is invaded: what sense does it make to show him to us while having sex with his wife? That's a totally gratuitous scene: it has nothing to do with the plot, nor with the fact that Strickland is evil. Again, even a movie character should be entitled with a minimum of personal privacy.

I would say that there exists a general role in literature: the mark of a bad writer lies in despising one's characters. Conversely, a good writer is someone who cares about his/her characters, no matter whether they are evil or bad. Think of the prototypical evil character of Western literature: Shakespeare's Iago in Othello. Shakespeare himself is somewhat baffled by Iago's evil behavior, but he never mocks him, nor enjoys having him suffer punishment. That's why Shakespeare is Shakespeare (and Del Toro is not Shakespeare).

An example of a writer who made the mistake I am mentioning is Gustave Flaubert when he describes the death of his heroine, Madame Bovary. Flaubert indulges in describing all sorts of gruesome details related to the death of the poor lady. In a sense, it is a retribution for the behavior of a person who, at her time, was considered evil. But, apart from that scene, Flaubert's novel is a masterpiece in the art of storytelling and the writer is clearly symphatetic to his character, although he judges her morally flawed. The Shape of Water instead, fails over and over in the mistake of belittling its characters. For this reason, it is only a shadow of something that could have been but wasn't. And probably never will be.