Suffering, Beauty and the Spirit of "Aggiornamento"

Recommended Citation

Miatello, Claudia. “Suffering, Beauty and the Spirit of Aggiornamento.” Bibliosofia e Arte: What an Extraordinary Life, Claudia Miatello, Toronto, ON, 2025. https://whatanextraordinarylife.com/blogs/bibliosofia-arte/suffering-beauty-and-the-spirit-of-aggiornamento/<paragraph number>

Getting to the heart of Italian Aggiornamento

[1] At the end of my essay “Aggiornamento in Italo Calvino and Jacques Tati”, I suggested that perhaps Italian aggiornamento is not about resolving the tension between the old and the new, but accepting it, without letting this tension overshadow the qualities that make life meaningful. 

[2] Since then, I’ve wondered: how did I come to understand aggiornamento in this way? Is this way of living within tension merely something I’ve perceived, or does it echo something deeper in Italian culture? Perhaps it is both. I’d like to begin with my own experience – how I’ve seen some Italians move through a changing world with grace – and then explore how this sensibility is echoed more broadly in Italian culture, from literature and cinema, to Renaissance humanism and even theology.

A Way of Being

[3] Through my experience with family and friends in Florence, I’ve sensed a quiet philosophical approach to life. When facing tensions with no clear solution, they don’t force resolution – they live within the tension itself: countering suffering with beauty (dolore with bellezza) and tragedy with comedy (tragedia with commedia). By letting these opposites coexist – even depend on one another –  they resist superficiality through suffering, and, by turning to beauty, they avoid despair. 

[4] For example, sometimes, the way they respond to hardship is so unexpectedly funny that it gently disarms you. Once when I was fraught with anxiety from worry, one of my aunts said to me, with warmth: «Oh, ma allora sei viva!» (“Oh, so you’re alive!”). Anxiety, too, is proof that life still moves through us. Another time, something sentimental in the house broke, and after expressing his disappointment, my uncle said with resignation and a bit of comedic irony: “Beh, vedi il lato positivo: adesso finalmente possiamo buttare quella schifezza.” (“Well, look on the bright side: now we can finally throw that junk out.”). 

[5] Discomfort can also be consoled with beauty. I remember one summer at Castiglione della Pescaia as a teenager, walking uphill from the beach to our apartment in the sweltering heat. Feeling hot and tired, I started to complain, and my cousin said in simple, yet wise terms, «Goditi il sole adesso, che tra due mesi starai camminando nella neve per andare a fare un compito di matematica.» (“Enjoy the sun now – in two months, you’ll be walking to school in the snow to write a math test.”) The heat was still unbearable, but my experience of the sun’s rays felt different. The beauty of today must be savoured, even if it is hot and I am tired. The future may be tough, but today it is sunny.

[6] A phrase I often heard, like a quiet motto in life, was: “Coraggio! Vedrai che passa.” (“Take heart! You’ll see – it will pass.”) In accepting life’s tensions instead of fleeing from them, my relatives in Italy appear to experience life more deeply.

[7] This poetic coexistence is also woven into Italian literature, cinema, and even in the everyday moments of life in Italy.*

Cultural Expressions: In Literature

[8] In literature, writers like Luigi Pirandello intertwine tragedies in life with humour, and Italo Calvino infuses his writing with magic realism, blurring reality with wonder and beauty. Suffering in Alberto Moravia’s Racconti Romani is portrayed as pain of the everyday: a bad marriage, being unemployed and powerless, disillusioned by lost opportunities. However, beauty is also found in the stubbornness and tenacity of his characters who keep trying, despite the odds against them. 

In Cinema

[9] In cinema, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves depicts the injustice and the struggle of the poor with tenderness, and Director Dino Risi contrasts the emptiness and melancholy, which accompanied the economic boom, with light comedy in Il Sorpasso. The coexistence of deep suffering with utmost tenderness is most vivid in Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful.

In Daily Life

[10] Even in everyday life in Italy, visual tension is everywhere: a Vespa is parked next to an ancient fountain; a modern cafe is built on an 18th-century marble floor; a minimalist kitchen is designed inside an apartment of an old, ornate palazzo. In language, Latin expressions still find their way into everyday Italian speech – phrases like "In vino veritas" and "Carpe diem" often slip into casual conversation. At the table, too, dishes created from humble origins, rooted in the Tuscan peasant tradition, like panzanella, are celebrated with the same respect as rich, festive food like bistecca alla fiorentina. 

The Cost of Modernization

[11] Of course, not everyone in Italy is able to live by this balance. In the context of modernization, aggiornamento can feel like something imposed rather than chosen and is often accompanied by the painful loss of tradition and identity. In these cases, there is no longer a tension to accept between the old and the new because traditions have been erased by modernity.  For example, Italian handmade (artigianale) products have often been replaced by mass-produced goods designed by a global culture. Suffering takes on a tone of finality that cannot simply be softened by beauty or lightened by comedy. 

[12] And yet, at other times, this tension between the past and present seems to reassert itself, often spontaneously. When a fresco was uncovered during a renovation in the walls of my great aunt’s apartment on Via della Pergola in downtown Florence, work halted. That delay became a moment of reverence. So, although the modern world often erases the past, there are still times when tradition humbles the modern world. 

Echoes of Renaissance Thought

[13] This way of accepting contradiction is also part of a deeper Italian tradition traced back to Renaissance humanism. The humanists respected both classical antiquity and Christian theology, the secular and the sacred – often holding opposing views together as a source of creative and spiritual insight. Petrarch, the father of humanism, lived with the tension between his love of classical antiquity and his commitment to Christian spirituality. His work, Secretum, was his attempt to balance his desire for temporal things and literary fame with his devotion to the eternal. 

Aggiornamento in Theology

[14] Finally, this cultural disposition to hold opposites together even seems to have shaped the Church’s own theological imagination, particularly during Vatican II. The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council, seems to not only echo the Italian cultural instinct I described, but to translate it into theological vision. In paragraph 4, the Council devotes itself to “scrutinizing the signs of the times and interpreting them in the light of the Gospel”. What emerges is an “imbalance rooted in the heart of [humankind]” (G&S 10) that reflects the paradox of the human condition: we exalt ourselves and also debase ourselves to the point of despair (12); we are called to grandeur and yet dwell in misery (13); we feel boundless, yet remain limited (9). Rather than resolving or eliminating these tensions, the Church through the Council embraced them. They gave them meaning, and offered to accompany humanity within this tension – helping people find meaning in contradiction, beauty in suffering, and a path forward that does not reject the past, but renews it from within. 

Finding Peace in the Space Between Opposites

[15] The heart of Italian aggiornamento seems to be less about resolving the tension between the old and the new, and more about accepting it. The basis for this seems to arise from their deep philosophy about balance in life: countering suffering with beauty and tragedy with comedy. This philosophy also seems to be reflected in their culture: in Italian literature, cinema, and everyday life in Italy, and seems to have shaped the Church’s own theological imagination, particularly during Vatican II. Ultimately, this way of living with tension – the painful and beautiful, alongside the tragic and the comic – helps us live a richer life, where suffering keeps us from becoming superficial, and beauty keeps us from slipping into despair.

[16] Perhaps above all, what I've come to believe is that the space between opposites is where you find inner peace. Inner peace doesn’t come from avoiding or eliminating contradictions – it arises from accepting them, it's found within them.

[17] Maybe this is what Augustine referred to in the City of God when he described peace as tranquillitas ordinis (the tranquility of order) – a state of wholeness, of being in accordance with all things in the created order. Or maybe it is similar to the ancient idea of “Via media” – meaning the “middle way” between extremes, not as compromise, but wisdom.

[18] Perhaps this peace found within tension is what embodies my poetic character, Fioravante. He does not try to resolve the tension he feels between the traditional and the modern, nor does he necessarily retreat from it. Instead, he moves gently through it – enjoying what is old, noticing what is new, and trying to understand how both can exist together.

[19] And in doing so, maybe what my friend, Paola, said of him is true: «[Fioravante] non è strano, non è lento, non è ingenuo – è in pace» (“[Fioravante] is not strange, slow, or naïve – he is at peace"). But this is, perhaps, a subject for a later article.

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*[20] Please note that I could not possibly capture or represent all of Italy. The country is richly diverse with differences between the North and South, urban and rural, and across different generations. Instead, I hope to share a certain sensibility I’ve observed in specific contexts and to describe a cultural pattern that, while not necessarily universally shared, still feels deeply Italian to me.

WORKS CITED

Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et spes [Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World]. December 7, 1965. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html