One of the most erroneous terms used in the current world health crisis is that of ‘social distancing’. If there ever was such a weird oxymoron then this must be it.

In case you weren’t quite sure what an oxymoron is then, simply put, it is a self-contradictory phrase. Most of us use oxymora without realising their inherent contradiction; for example, ‘civil war’, as if ever any war was civil, or ‘loving hate’. Great literary figures have used this figure of speech to describe the undescribable. Just think of Milton’s Satan in ‘Paradise Lost’ stuck in a hell with no light but only ‘darkness visible’.

One of the most famous examples of a whole string of oxymora is in Shakespeare’s play when Romeo declares:

Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.

The word ‘social’ can be interpreted in many ways. For example, ‘social’ used as a noun means any occasion where people come together and mix.  ‘Social’ used as an adjective signifies any person or place which attracts people. A ‘social person’ usually has many friends and a ‘social centre’ is a place where people who may suffer from loneliness come together and receive friendliness and community spirit.

So ‘social distancing’ is not just an absurd oxymoron: it is an impossibility. OK, we may have to stick two metres apart from each other in the current situation. (Why two metres instead of six and a half feet apart? Isn’t the UK now outside the EU and its citizens presumably free to buy two pounds of potatoes instead of 0,907185 kilos of them, for example, by returning to ‘imperial measurements??) Besides even if physically we are two metres apart that does not necessarily mean that we are ‘distancing’ our ‘social’ life. Our friends will still remain our friends whether they are two metres or two thousand miles or kilometres apart. Friendship knows no physical distance. It’s not just because of today’s communication technology such as WhatsApp but because friendship itself is a concept that is beyond such material limitations.

Italians have once more appropriated an English term, cut it in half (like ‘self’ instead of ‘self-service, or ‘night’ instead of ‘nightclub’). In this case the word ‘social’ in Italy is used to describe any social network, like Facebook, Twitter, indeed the whole world of internet communication and exchange.

No not ‘social distancing’– the word to use is ‘societal distancing’, a small but subtle difference.  If ‘social’ has to do with human relationships and groups of people within a society, ‘societal’ has to do with society as a whole. This means that you can still be ‘social’ without having to consider ‘distancing’ but also ‘societal’ in respecting that distancing.

Societal distancing has always been around ever since the dawn of mankind. All societies have various systems of stratification and some have developed them into highly complex hierarchical organizations. Just consider the Indian caste system, still going strong in many parts of the sub-continent, where one is born into a particular caste, marries within that caste and dies within that caste.

In western society such rigid societal schemes have largely vanished and mobility and integration are the flavour of the new millennia. However, just cast your eyes on the pages of any Victorian novel and you will find heroines dispossessed of their wealth by marriage to someone ‘below’ them or children who are the fruit of an extra-marital affair being made to suffer a life of privation (until they find their true love of course).

In Italy this state of societal affairs can still exist ranging to marrying someone from another village whose inhabitants are disapproved in some way. In our area this used to be the case, for example, between the denizens of Crasciana and Casabasciana. Within communities themselves friendships and marriages may be disapproved between families: historically most famously, of course, between those Montagues and those Capulets.

Is there societal distancing in Bagni di Lucca? Of course there is. It existed well before its new conversion into ‘social distancing’ during the current pandemic, and is likely to continue to exist even after the pandemic has finally died away. The standard English word for it is ‘to snub’ and its Italian equivalent is easily remembered for it is ‘snobbare’.

“Ignoring LinkedIn requests is the new ‘get lost’.”

Some of the best examples of snubbing occur in the wonderfully entertaining and sensitive novels of Jane Austen which I have enjoyed re-reading during this health crisis. In ‘Northanger Abbey’, for example, the heroine Catherine Moorland is hurt by the Tilney’s, who she thought were her friends, snubbing of her in the streets of Bath (although this avoidance of acknowledgment of each other’s presence really stemmed from a misunderstanding).

Societal distancing, or snubbing, in Bagni di Lucca has a very long history and reached its peak with the arrival of the emigrant English (euphemistically now called ‘ex-pats’).  Robert and Elizabeth Browning seemed to spend much of their time in Bagni di Lucca avoiding the English. They just could not take their country folks’ strange amalgam of self-important ‘superiority’ and their utter ignorance of Italian cultural values and life-style. It was almost like the stereotypical colonial administrator among the pagan savages.

With the arrival of a wider spectrum of inhabitants from the United Kingdom societal distancing became ever more entrenched in the English (or should I say British) .  My visitors from England have noted, after just a few days here, how many brits tend to avoid each other even to the extent of avoiding joining in certain events if they know that X is there.  One Brit resident even went to the extent of secretly moving out of Bagni by stealth because she could not take this truly ‘anti-social distancing’.

Bagni di Lucca is infused with brits who are constantly snubbing each other. They avoid certain bars (those of which are now still open that is) because Y goes there. And if they find Y there they make sure they are sitting at a table as distant as possible from Y. We too have been exposed to this ridiculous snubbing situation. Even during this pandemic crisis, when any sort of social encounter becomes a welcomed human interaction, we have been on a guided walk around the environs of this beautiful spa town completely ignored by someone (who had best remain nameless in the interests of propriety). So-called cultivated persons from middle England complain of the influx into Bagni di Lucca of northern Englanders who they consider an inferior species for some reason.

I could go on about this but it has ceased affecting me very much at all. I continue to remain amused, however, by the phrase ‘social distancing’ as if it had not existed before Covid-19. Social (or more properly ‘societal’ distancing’) has always been around and exists in particularly virulent form in places like Bagni di Lucca.

Fortunately, I have realised for some time any kind of friendship is highly fragile and as changeable as the clouds in the sky. If anyone is lucky in having five persons one can trust (apart from one’s spouse, of course), then one is truly blessed, especially in a place like Bagni di Lucca.

Perhaps when this pandemic has finally been defeated the traditional ‘societal distancers’ may finally discover that ‘social distancing’ is, in fact, anti-social’…