The English poet John Keats coined a term, “negative capability,” that aptly applies to the peculiarly Italian brand of genius we celebrate from cover to cover in this month’s special issue. This capacity for “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” perfectly encapsulates the Italian gift for accepting and embracing contradictory ideas and impulses—and nowhere is this national penchant for paradox more readily apparent than in the competing Italian affin…