Gustave Jourdan

“Not designed to inspire tourists, but Sardinia gives us a lot to think about. You can understand an oasis in the desert, but how can we understand barbarism within civilization, how can we explain the phenomenon of Sardinia? The east coast of the island is separated from Italy only by a channel several leagues wide; why does the Mediterranean fleet, which greets such opulent shores of Genoa, Livorno and Naples, meet only inhospitable shores in Newfoundland and Orosei?”
It is understandable why, given the premises, Filippo Vivanet felt compelled to write an entire book to refute these and many other insulting opinions that Gustave Jourdan expresses about Sardinia in a book published in Paris in 1861, entitled “L'île de Sardaigne”, to which he “keeps a lid on” to say it with the illustrious Sardinian scholar, Leone di Wailly, who in the French periodical “L'Illustration” also increases the dose: “What will we do with this barbaric island, where they reign what is said, the superstition, the ignorance, the contempt for human life and a desire to own the things of others? Sardinia has only one road that can be called such. Do not pity the Sardinians: they are the ones who do not want others.”
Jourdan lives on the island for about a year, comes there to cultivate the asphodel from which alcohol was obtained in those years, and he has time to say the wrong thing about anything: he stays in Tempio for a day and manages to collect and report malicious news about the recently deceased bishop; he denigrates the clergy in general, who he reproaches for customs that are not exactly moderate, accusing all the Sardinians of being violent, hostile and incapable of starting any industrial activity.
Using brilliant rhetoric, Vivanet redeems an entire intellectual class and the entire Sardinian people: “Is this the contempt of the despised man for the needlessly requested woman? Is that the exclamation of that certain fox who lived at the time of the fabulous Aesop, and found the grape to which it could not reach too unripe? Is it the premeditated plan to throw discredit on the island with full hands to ban it from common law; to call it inhabited by ugly people to look at it like a flock, and prevent Europe from denying it its sympathies, and being moved to see all the rights of a country defamed on four sides of the earth for barbarians and savages violated?” The controversial 'vis' behind the pages is inspired by politics: there were rumors of a transfer of the island to France, and it is likely that the Frenchman wrote the heated pamphlet to discourage his government from proceeding in this direction.

Update

25/6/2026 - 13:27