commentDanilo Dolce left North Italy for Sicily half a century ago, after abandoning his intended career as an architect, on the ground that it would have been (at that time and place) "the petrification of injustice", as he put it ("la pietrificazione dell'ingiustizia"). He suffered imprisonment and other adversities in trying to help rural Sicilian communities to improve their living conditions, and along the way he had to contend with the Mafia, the Church and the State.
He succeeded in establishing an irrigation scheme for farmers, by the construction of a dam which created a lake. One evening, on his way home, a peasant farmer greeted him on the path, and he replied politely, without having understood the peasant's words. At first, he put this down to his still inadequate knowledge of the local dialect. But a few steps later, what the peasant had said resolved itself in his mind: "Now the ducks stop".
This was because the new lake created by the dam meant that the birds flying to rest at night, instead of crossing a formerly rather barren area, now came down on the new lake, and it seemed to the farmer appropriate to make this comment as a greeting to the helpful outsider.
Dolce's comment on the peasant's greeting was : "If that is not culture, there is no such thing as culture". ("Se non è cultura, cultura non c'è".)
