[In the following review, White maintains that The Watch is a well-written and worthwhile book.]

Carlo Levi, the gifted author of Christ Stopped at Eboli, has written another book about Italy. Its obscure title, The Watch, refers to a graduation present from his father, symbolizing the unity of time and recurring as the subject of a curious dream.

The method used in the two books is similar: the meticulous recording of the author's impressions of scenes and events and the conversations and opinions of the people he meets. But within these similar frames the subject matter differs widely. For Eboli is a vivid picture of life in a remote and primitive town, and The Watch is a record of a few days among intellectuals in Rome during the confused times immediately following the liberation in the last war. There are a few reminiscences of the author's editorial activities in Florence and a description of his eventful trip to his uncle's deathbed in Naples.

Though not as powerful as the earlier book, The Watch is equally well written. The characters are alive, and the scenes are graphically described with the pen of a painter who knows how to write. The result is a glittering mosaic, highly polished but lacking a definite pattern. There is no plot: “senza storia,” to use his own words.

On the dust jacket of the Italian edition is a sonnet, reproduced in the author's handwriting, listing the strangely assorted contents of the book. It might be freely translated as follows:

The sound of lions roaring in the
          night,
striking at memory from the depths
          of time,
owls and Madonnas, symbols and
          events
disrupted and rejoined, without a
          plot;
jungles of tenements, caves, birds, and
          branches,
courtyards for rats, and glories over-
          thrown,
eyes, voices, gestures—gold as well
          as dross,
a green reburgeoning of evil
          days;
thieves in the woods, and adders at
          the breast,
kings true and false, and ministers,
          and beggars,
peasants at work, while worms are in
          the saddle,
the timeless wailing and the funeral
          speech;
courage and famine—patient suffering
          men,
and Rome, and Italy—such is “The
          Watch.”

The reader will find the above items, and many more, in the text. The book opens and closes with the roaring of the lions, a mysterious sound which Mr. Levi seems to hear at night in Rome but inaudible to your reviewer's less receptive ears, which were deafened by the more insistent sound of internal-combustion engines. The owl figures prominently in Mr. Levi's painting on the front of the Italian dust jacket. The Madonnas and rats are plentiful and so are the courtyards of decaying palaces. The author on his way to Naples in a dilapidated truck was nearly shot to death by a brigand ambushed in the woods; but he returned to Rome in style with a cabinet minister.

The snake at the breast is a macabre story of abject poverty in Rome. Although obscenities are not to be found in the text (a pleasant surprise in this day and age), Mr. Levi delights in the horrible and the grotesque. Thus, he describes a man whose nose had been split in two as follows: “The noses were composed of an intricate series of little valleys, cavities, and protuberances, like a mixture of varicose veins and bowels.” Strong language, but the reader won't forget it. And here is a telling but less revolting description of an Italian room on a hot day: “The shutters were closed on account of the heat, and only the reflection from the houses opposite filtered through in burning threads.”

The true king referred to in the sonnet is Victor Emmanuel III, then still technically on the throne but forgotten and disregarded by his people. The false king is Giuseppe Biscaglia of Poggioreale, who had become king by his wits—a fabulous character, “as rich as the sea,” with a throne-room and a real gold throne. Those who have read San Gennaro Never Says No, by Giuseppe Marotta, will recall a chapter devoted to him, where his last name is given as Novarra. He probably assumed the name of Biscaglia to further the amusing imposture, described by Mr. Levi, when he successfully masqueraded as the son of a wealthy Neapolitan shop-owner of that name in order to impress his prospective bride's parents. Whatever his name, he would be a scarcely credible character even in an extravagant comic opera.

The anonymous translator has successfully caught the author's mood. There are a few confusing slips, apparently due to what Belloc calls a “deceptive similarity of sound,” such as “avocation” for avvenimento, “varnish” for vernice, a literal translation but an unlikely material for painting political slogans on walls. On the other hand, the formidable paragraphs of the original have been broken up, so that the English version is easier to read than the Italian. And The Watch is well worth reading in either language.