TRANSCRIPT

1. Il Mulino Del Po Sceneggiato
2. Il Mulino Del Po

Riccardo Bacchelli was a member of the Royal Academy of Italy. He was awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Repub Riccardo Bacchelli was an Italian writer. His first novel was 'Il filo meraviglioso di Lodovico Clo’' (The wonderful thread of Lodovico Clo).

• The Cambridge Companion toModern Italian Culture

  This book provides a comprehensive account of the culture ofmodern Italy. Specially commissioned essays by leadingspecialists focus on a wide range of political, historical andcultural questions. The volume provides information andanalysis on such topics as regionalism, the growth of a nationallanguage, social and political cultures, the role of intellectuals,the Church, the left, Feminism, the separatist movements,organized crime, literature, art, design, fashion, the mass mediaand music. While offering a thorough history of Italian culturalmovements, political trends and literary texts over the lastcentury and a half, the volume also examines the cultural andpolitical situation in Italy today and suggests possible futuredirections in which the country might move. Each essay containssuggestions for further reading on the topics covered. TheCambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture is an invaluablesource of materials for courses on all aspects of modern Italy.

  Z y g m u n t G u i d o B a r a n s k i is Professor of Italian Studies atthe University of Reading. He has published extensively onDante, medieval poetics, modern Italian literature and culture,post-war Italian cinema and literary theory. He is the editor of theinterdisciplinary journal The Italianist and co-editor, withProfessor Laura Lepschy, of the book series Italian Perspectives(Northern Universities Press).

  R e b e c c a J. W e s t is Professor of Italian and Cinema/MediaStudies in the Department of Romance Languages andLiteratures at the University of Chicago. She is the author ofEugenio Montale: Poet on the Edge, which won the Howard MarraroPrize in 1982, and of Gianni Celati: The Craft of Everyday Storytelling,winner of the Scaglione Publication Prize in 1999. She is also co-editor, with Dino S. Cervigni, of Womens Voices in Italian Literatureand editor of Pagina, pellicola, pratica: studi sul cinema italiano. Shehas published extensively on modern and contemporary Italianliterature, culture, and film.

• Cambridge Companions to Culture

  The Cambridge Companion to Modern German CultureEdited by E v a K o l i n s k y and W i l f r i e d v a n d e r W i l l

  The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian CultureEdited by N i c h o l a s R z h e v s k y

  The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish CultureEdited by D a v i d T. G i e s

  The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian CultureEdited by Z y g m u n t G . B a r a n s k i and R e b e c c a J. W e s t

• The Cambridge Companion to

  Modern Italian Culture

  edited by

  Zygmunt G. Baranski and Rebecca J. West

• published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge

  The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

  cambridge university press

  The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 100114211, USA477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, AustraliaRuiz de Alarcn 13, 28014 Madrid, SpainDock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

  http://www.cambridge.org

  Cambridge University Press 2001

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

  First published 2001

  Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

  Typeface 9/13 pt Lexicon (The Ensched Font Foundry) System QuarkXPress [se]

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

  The Cambridge Companion to modern Italian culture / edited by Zygmunt G. Baranskiand Rebecca J. West

  p. cm. (Cambridge companions to culture)Includes bibliographical references and index.isbn 0 521 55034 3 isbn 0 521 55982 0 (pb.)1. ItalyCivilization20th century. 2. ItalyCivilization19th century. 3. ItalyIntellectual life20th century. 4. ItalyIntellectual life19th century.5. Arts, Modern20th centuryItaly. 6. Arts, Modern19th centuryItaly. i. Title: ModernItalian culture. ii. Baranski, Zygmunt G. iii. West, Rebecca, J., 1946 iv. Series.

  dg451.c35 2001945.08dc21 00-053014

  isbn 0 521 55034 3 hardbackisbn 0 521 55982 0 paperback

  Reprinted 2004

• In memory of our friendsGian-Paolo Biasin, Tom ONeill and John Waterhouse

• Contents

  List of illustrations ixContributors xiiAcknowledgments xvNote on translation xviChronology xvii

  Introducing modern Italian culture 1z y g m u n t g . b a r a n s k i

  1 The notion of Italy 17j o h n d i c k i e

  2 Social and political cultures in Italy from 1860 to the present day 35a n n a c e n t o b u l l

  3 Questions of language 63b r i a n r i c h a r d s o n

  4 Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy 81d a v i d w a r d

  5 Catholicism 97p e r c y a l l u m

  6 Socialism, Communism and other isms 113r o b e r t s . d o m b r o s k i

  7 Other voices: contesting the status quo 131s h a r o n w o o d and j o s e p h f a r r e l l

  8 Narratives of self and society 151g i a n - p a o l o b i a s i n

• 9 Searching for new languages: modern Italian poetry 173s h i r l e y w. v i n a l l and t o m o n e i l l

  10 Drama: realism, identity and reality on stage 197a n n l a u r a l e p s c h y

  11 Italian cinema 215p e t e r b o n d a n e l l a

  12 Art in modern Italy: from the Macchiaioli to theTransavanguardia 243e u g e n i a p a u l i c e l l i

  13 A modern identity for a new nation: design in Italy since 1860 265p e n n y s p a r k e

  14 Fashion: narration and nation 282e u g e n i a p a u l i c e l l i

  15 The media 293c h r i s t o p h e r w a g s t a f f

  16 Since Verdi: Italian serious music 18601995 311j o h n c . g . w a t e r h o u s e

  17 Folk music and popular song from the nineteenth century tothe 1990s 325a l e s s a n d r o c a r r e r a

  18 Epilogue: Italian culture or multiculture in the newmillennium? 337r e b e c c a j . w e s t

  Index 347

  viii Contents

• Illustrations

  Map 1. The unification of Italy. xxMap 2. Italy since 1919. xxi

  1. Giovanni Pastrones Cabiria (1914): Maciste (Bartolomeo Pagano) rescuesCabiria from sacrifice to the Carthaginian god Moloch. The Museum ofModern Art/Film Stills Archive. 216

  2. On the outskirts of Rome, Mussolini begins construction of the largestfilm studio in Europe, Cinecitt (Cinema City). Cinecitt Archives. 218

  3. Luchino Viscontis Ossessione (1942), an unauthorized Italian version ofJames Cains novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, is one of the filmsmade during the Fascist period that would lead to Italian Neorealiststyle. The Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive. 220

  4. Roberto Rossellinis Roma citt aperta (1945): partisan leader Manfredi(Marcello Pagliero), photographed as a crucified Christ, is torturedby the Gestapo. Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia PhotoArchives. 220

  5. Roberto Rossellinis Pais (1946): a black GI named Joe (Dots M. Johnson)meets a Neapolitan street urchin named Pasquale (Alfonsino Pasca).Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia Photo Archives. 221

  6. Vittorio De Sicas Ladri di biciclette (1948): Bruno (Enzo Staiola) deliversone of the greatest of all non-professional performances as a child whohelps his father locate a stolen bicycle. The Museum of ModernArt/Film Stills Archive. 222

  7. Luchino Viscontis La terra trema (1948): deep-focus photography adds tothe spatial realism of a Neorealist masterpiece. Centro Sperimentale diCinematografia Photo Archives. 223

  8. Roberto Rossellinis Viaggio in Italia (1953): the marriage of Katherine(Ingrid Bergman) and Alexander (George Sanders) falls apart amidst theruins of ancient Pompeii. Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia PhotoArchives. 225

• 9. Pietro Germis Divorzio allitaliana (1961): in the absence of a divorce law,Fef (Marcello Mastroianni) must trick his wife Rosalia (Daniela Rocca)into committing adultery with Carmelo (Leopoldo Trieste) so that hecan kill her and escape punishment. The Museum of Modern Art/FilmStills Archive. 227

  10. Sergio Leones The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966): the site of the climac-tic gunfight that concludes all of Leones spaghetti Westerns. TheMuseum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive. 229

  11. Michelangelo Antonionis Il deserto rosso (1964): the directors carefulcompositions within the frame underlie his abstract use of colour andform. The Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive. 230

  12. Federico Fellinis Otto e mezzo (1963): the exhausted director on the set ofan alternative ending for the film that was eventually rejected. TheMuseum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive. 231

  13. Francesco Rosis Salvatore Giuliano (1962): an overhead shot of the deadSicilian bandit opens Rosis semi-documentary account of his life. TheMuseum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive. 233

  14. Federico Fellinis Amarcord (1974): sexual immaturity, for Fellini, repre-sents one of the many ways provincial life under Fascism was shroudedin ignorance. The Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive. 235

  15. La notte di San Lorenzo by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1982): in recountinga story about the meeting of American soldiers and young Italians inwar-torn Tuscany, these post-war directors pay homage to RossellinisPais and their own Neorealist origins. The Museum of ModernArt/Film Stills Archive. 236

  16. Lina Wertmllers Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975): in order to survive inthe concentration camp, Pasqualino must seduce its hefty female com-mandant (Shirley Stroler). The Museum of Modern Art/Film StillsArchive. 238

  17. Bernardo Bertoluccis Lultimo imperatore (1987): Pu Yi (John Lone) isdriven out of the Forbidden City in an epic portrait of Chinas lastemperor that earned Oscars in nine categories. Bernardo Bertolucci andStudio Lucherini, Rome. 239

  18. Giovanni Fattori, Garibaldi a Palermo (Garibaldi in Palermo), 18602.Private collection, Montecatini Terme. 244

  19. Odoardo Borrani, Le cucitrici delle camicie rosse (The Seamstresses of theRed Shirts), 1863. Private collection, Montecatini. 245

  20. Odoardo Borrani, Il 26 Aprile 1859 (26 April 1859), 1861. Private collec-tion, Florence. 246

  21. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Il quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate), 1901.Reproduced by permission of Fratelli Alinari. 248

  22. Giacomo Balla, Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio (Dynamism of a Dogon a Leash), 1912. Reproduced from the collection of George F.

  x List of illustrations

• Goodyear and by permission of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo,NY. 250

  23. Giorgio De Chirico, Enigma di un giorno (The Enigma of a Day),1914. Reproduced by permission of the Museum of Modern Art, NewYork. 252

  24. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Venere degli stracci (Venus of the Rags), 1967.Installed at the Diego Aragona Pignatelli Museum, Naples. Reproducedby permission of the Galerie Tanit, Munich. 260

  25. Coup 1900. Photograph by Pinin Farina, 1953. 27426. Gio Ponti, Espresso coffee machine for La Pavoni, 1948. 27427. Soda water syphon, designed by Sergio Asti, 1956. 27628. Ettore Sottsass, Yantra Ceramici, 1970. 27829. Superstudio, The Continuous Movement, 1969. 27930. Achille Castiglioni, Boalum Lamp, 1970. 280

  List of illustrations xi

• Contributors

  p e r c y a l l u m is Professor of Political Science at the IstitutoUniversitario Orientale in Naples. He is the author of Politics andSociety in Postwar Naples (1973), Italy: Republic without Government?(1973) and State and Society in Western Europe (1995).

  z y g m u n t b a r a ns k i is Professor of Italian Studies at the University ofReading. He has published extensively on Dante, Dante receptionand modern Italian culture. He is editor of The Italianist.

  g i a n - p a o l o b i a s i n was, until his death in 1998, Professor of ItalianLiterature at the University of California, Berkeley. He was aleading authority on the literature and culture of nineteenth- andtwentieth-century Italy. His books include Montale, Debussy, andModernism (1989), The Flavors of Modernity: Food and the Novel (1993)and Le periferie della letteratura. Da Verga a Tabucchi (1997).

  p e t e r b o n d a n e l l a is Chairman of the Department of WestEuropean Studies and Distinguished Professor at IndianaUniversity. He has written or edited numerous books on Italiancinema and literature, including Dictionary of Italian Literature(1979; revised edition 1996), Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to thePresent (1983; revised edition 1990), The Cinema of Federico Fellini(1992) and Umberto Eco and the Open Text (1997).

  a n n a c e n t o b u l l is Professor of Italian at the University of Bath. Herresearch interests focus on socio-political cultures andsubcultures, as well as small-scale industrialization. She hasrecently published various studies on the Northern League. Abook on social identities and political culture in Italy isforthcoming.

  a l e s s a n d r o c a r r e r a teaches Italian literature at New YorkUniversity. He has published books on music, philosophy andliterature, as well as a collection of poetry, La sposa perfetta/The

• Perfect Bride (1997), and a work of fiction, A che punto il GiudizioUniversale? (1999). In his youth, he was a singersongwriter.

  j o h n d i c k i e is Lecturer in Italian at University College London andGeneral Editor of Modern Italy. His Darkest Italy: The Nation andStereotypes of the Mezzogiorno was published in 1999.

  r o b e r t d o m b r o s k i is Distinguished Professor and Director ofItalian Graduate Studies at the City University of New York. Hismost recent books are Properties of Writing: Ideological Discourse inModern Italian Fiction (1994) and Creative Entanglements: Gadda andthe Baroque (1999).

  j o s e p h f a r r e l l , Senior Lecturer in Italian at Strathclyde University,is the author of Leonardo Sciascia (1995) and editor of Understandingthe Mafia (1997) and of Carlo Goldoni and Eighteenth Century Theatre(1997).

  l a u r a l e p s c h y is Emeritus Professor of Italian at University CollegeLondon. Among her books is Narrativa e testo fra due secoli. Verga,Invernizio, Svevo, Pirandello (1984). She is one of the foundermembers of the Pirandello Society and has been the main editorof its journal, Pirandello Studies.

  t o m o n e i l l was, until his death in 2001, Emeritus Professor of Italianin the University of Melbourne and a Professorial Fellow in theUniversitys Department of French and Italian Studies. He haspublished extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-centurypoetry and on modern Sicilian narrative.

  e u g e n i a p a u l i c e l l i is Associate Professor in the Department ofEuropean Languages and Literatures at Queens College, CityUniversity of New York. She is the author of Parola e immagine.Sentieri della scrittura in Leonardo, Marino, Foscolo, Calvino (1996). Sheis currently completing a book on the aesthetic, social andpolitical functions of fashion.

  b r i a n r i c h a r d s o n is Professor of Italian Language at the Universityof Leeds. He has edited Machiavellis Il principe (1979) and Trattatisullortografia del volgare (1984), and is author of Print Culture inRenaissance Italy (1994) and Printing, Writers and Readers inRenaissance Italy (1999).

  p e n n y s p a r k e is a Professor at the Royal College of Art and CourseDirector of the Joint Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College ofArt History of Design Programme. Her principal publicationsinclude An Introduction to Design and Culture in the Twentieth Century(1986), Italian Design from 1860 to the Present (1989), As Long as Its Pink:The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995) and A Century of Design: DesignPioneers of the Twentieth Century (1998).

  Contributors xiii

• s h i r l e y v i n a l l is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the Universityof Reading and a co-editor of The Italianist. She has publishedespecially on the modern novel, the early twentieth-centuryavant-garde and the influences of French literature on Italianculture.

  c h r i s t o p h e r w a g s t a f f is Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at theUniversity of Reading, and has published articles on Italianliterature, media and cinema.

  d a v i d w a r d is Associate Professor in the Department of Italian,Wellesley College. He is the author of A Poetics of Resistance:Narrative and the Writings of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1995) and Antifascisms:Cultural Politics in Italy, 194346. Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, CarloLevi and the Actionists (1996).

  j o h n w a t e r h o u s e , until his death in 1998, taught at the Universityof Birmingham. He published widely on modern Italian music,and was the author of La musica di Gian Francesco Malipiero (1990).

  r e b e c c a j. w e s t is Professor of Italian and Cinema/Media Studies atthe University of Chicago. She has published widely on modernItalian narrative prose and verse, cultural studies, womensstudies and cinema.

  s h a r o n w o o d , Professor of Italian at Leicester University, is theauthor of Italian Womens Writing 18601990 (1995) and Woman asObject: Language and Gender in the Work of Alberto Moravia (1990), andeditor of Italian Women Writing (1993).

  xiv Contributors

• Acknowledgments

  This has been a difficult project, and we owe debts of gratitude to manypeople. Sarah Stanton, Kate Brett and Linda Bree, all of CambridgeUniversity Press, have given us sterling support and advice at differentstages of the books genesis. We have also received important assistancefrom the following colleagues: Bojan Bujic, Anna Cento Bull, JohnDickie, Christopher Duggan, Sarah Hill, Giulio Lepschy, Laura Lepschy,David Robey, Shirley Vinall and John Waterhouse.

  We should also like to express a special thanks to all the contributorsnot only for their excellent articles, but also, and more specifically, fortheir patience.

  We should like to dedicate this book to the memory of Gian-PaoloBiasin, Tom ONeill and John Waterhouse, friends and collaborators,who sadly died without seeing the Companion in print.

• Note on translation

  All quotations from Italian sources have been translated into English.Only in the chapter on poetry are texts given in both Italian and English.Unless otherwise stated, translations are by the author of the chapter orpart of the chapter in which they appear.

  The titles of books, paintings, films, etc., as well as the names of orga-nizations, political parties, etc., are given in Italian and English. Since itis far from unusual for the English titles of Italian books translated intoEnglish, and of Italian films distributed in English-speaking countries,to be misleading and inaccurate, we have decided to translate all titles asliterally as possible. We appreciate that this may create difficulties foranyone trying to find the English translation of many Italian books. Tohelp our readers in this task, we have placed the symbol after ourEnglish version of titles of books which, as far as we are aware, haveappeared in an English translation. For bibliographical information onEnglish translations of modern Italian literature see Robin Healey,Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation. An AnnotatedBibliography 19291997, Toronto, Buffalo and London: University ofToronto Press, 1998.

• Chronology

  17967 Napoleonic campaigns in Italy1797 Treaty of Campoformio (Venice to Austria)17989 Republic in Naples1799 French defeats. Collapse of Naples Republic1800 Second Napoleonic invasion of Italy1800 Napoleon defeats Austrians at Marengo1802 Proclamation of the Italian Republic1805 Proclamation of Kingdom of Italy under Napoleon1806 French occupy Naples1808 French occupy Rome1814 Austria regains Lombardy and Veneto1815 Congress of Vienna. Restoration of pre-Napoleonic Italy1820 Carbonari conspirators arrested in Milan18201 Insurrections in Naples and Turin183149 Carlo Alberto King of Savoy18314 Insurrections in Modena, Parma, Papal States, Piedmont,

  Genoa1839 First Italian railway opened: NaplesPortici1844 Insurrection in Calabria1846 Pius IX elected Pope18489 Insurrections and first War of Independence. Roman Republic

  established. Austrian intervention and repression1855 Piedmont joins France in Crimean War1857 Pisacanes insurrectionary landing near Salerno fails1859 Second War of Independence1860 Garibaldis expedition to Sicily (the Thousand)186178 Vittorio Emanuele II King of united Italy

• 1866 Third War of Independence: the Veneto joined to ItalianKingdom

  1870 Italian troops enter Rome1871 Rome proclaimed capital of Italy1874 Pius IXs denunciation of Italian state1882 The Triple Alliance (Italy, Germany, Austria)1885 Italian troops occupy Massawa (Eritrea)1890 Eritrea becomes Italian colony1892 Italian Workers Party founded (banned 1894)1895 Workers Party named Socialist Party (PSI)1899 FIAT founded1912 Italy occupies Libya, Rhodes and Dodecanese. Suffrage

  extended for literate male adults1913 Engineering workers right to organize recognized1915 Italy declares war on Austro-Hungarian Empire1917 October: Italians defeated at Caporetto1918 October: Italian offensive. Armistice1919 First fascio di combattimento founded in Milan.

  DAnnunzio occupies Fiume (1920)1920 Strikes and occupation of factories1921 Communist Party of Italy (PCI) formed as breakaway from PSI.

  Fascist National Party formed1922 October: Fascist march on Rome. Mussolini head of government1924 General elections. Social-Democrat Deputy Matteotti murdered1925 Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals issued1926 Opposition parties and non-Fascist unions suppressed1928 Gramsci sentenced to twenty years by Special Tribunal1929 Concordat between Church and State19356 Invasion of Ethiopia. Empire proclaimed. RomeBerlin Axis1937 Anti-Fascist Rosselli brothers assassinated in France1938 Racial Laws promulgated1939 Italy occupies Albania. Pact of Steel with Germany1940 Italy enters Second World War1943 25 July: Mussolini removed from power

  8 Sept.: Armistice declared. Committees of NationalLiberation (CLN) formed

  1123 Sept.: Mussolini, freed by Germans, creates the ItalianSocial Republic

  1944 4 June: Allied forces enter Rome

  xviii Chronology

• 1945 28 April: Mussolini executed by partisans20 June: Parri government with Committee of National

  Liberation10 Dec.: First De Gasperi Christian Democrat (DC)

  government1945 Womens suffrage granted1946 2 June: Referendum. Italy becomes a republic1947 De Gasperi evicts PCI and PSI from government1948 Constitution of Italian Republic comes into effect

  Attempted assassination of Togliatti, leader of PCI1949 Italy enters NATO. Church excommunicates Communists1950 Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Development Fund for the South)

  created1951 Fiscal reform1953 Electoral reform (legge truffa) approved

  Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) founded1955 Italy enters UNO1963 Moro heads centreleft government

  Compulsory schooling extended to fourteen-year-olds1968 Students occupation of universities1969 Terrorist attack in Piazza Fontana, Milan1974 Terrorist attacks in Brescia and on Italicus train. Referendum

  confirms divorce law of 19701976 Lockheed bribery scandal1978 Moro kidnapped and murdered by Red Brigades1980 Terrorist bombing of Bologna railway station1981 Masonic p2 Lodge uncovered. Abortion referendum. Abortion

  law passed1990 The Gladio arms-cache exposure1991 Communist Party dissolved and refounded as PDS

  (Democratic Party of the Left)1992 Tangentopoli bribery scandal begins. Collapse of DC at

  general election1993 Referendum leads to new electoral law1994 Parliamentary election won by coalition of Forza Italia and

  allies1996 Parliamentary election won, for the first time in the post-war

  period, by a centreleft coalition1999 Italy became part of the Euro zone

  Chronology xix

• Map 1. The unification of Italy.

• Map 2. Italy since 1919.

• z y g m u n t g . b a r a ns k i

  Introducing modern Italian culture

  A companion to modern Italian culture

  Putting together a collective volume that intends to provide an overviewon a complex issue such as the culture of a modern nation state is fraughtwith problems. Any overarching assessment cannot but be partial, sinceit is based on a process of selection and synthesis which offers the meansto arrive at a series of generalizing descriptions and evaluations whichcan form the key moments of a broad analytical narrative. This is truenot just as regards the editorial choices determining the basic make-upof the book, but also as regards the critical efforts of individual contribu-tors to whom the responsibility for granting substance to the editorialschema is delegated. In addition, the collaborative nature of the projectdoes not always make it easy for the volume to present a unified front.However, this is no bad thing. I am persuaded that, beyond all that mayunite its different parts, the success of a synthesis like the present com-panion is also to a large degree dependent on the fragmentation of itsvision. In order to prepare their narratives of their respective corners ofmodern Italy, the contributors have had to undertake a job of drasticpruning. Yet the impetus behind this operation is different in each case,conditioned as it is by divergent methodological sympathies, as well asby contrasting perceptions both of what Italy can signify and of thenature of its achievements. Hence, just as much as in the chapters pointsof contact, it is in the robust tensions that arise from the competingclaims of a panoply of different expert voices that a revelatory glimpse ofthe multifaceted complexity that is modern Italian culture can beespied.

  Our book thus attempts to strike a balance between congruence the

• hope that, through collaboration, it is possible to suggest a broad,largely unified, impression of Italy and difference the recognitionthat such an impression is constantly put into crisis, first by the variety ofevents and experiences that have marked the recent history of the penin-sula, and secondly by the differing reactions which these same eventsand experiences have elicited and continue to elicit. In order to avoidcompartmentalizing Italy into a series of self-contained units, we wouldencourage readers to approach our volume in an open and flexiblemanner. In particular, they should consider the ways in which the chap-ters can usefully interact; and, in this regard, so as to ensure that rap-prochements can be effected as freely as possible, we have not organizedgroups of chapters into separate sections. Bringing different chapterstogether cannot but expand understanding and break down barriers ofperception. Such a way of reading, especially with the help of the index,also provides fuller information on matters which are not specificallydiscussed in a single chapter but which are examined in various areas ofthe book, such as the reverberations of the divisions between the Northand South of the country.1 Equally, it helps to foreground many of thekey events, movements, institutions and figures of modern Italy: fromthe Risorgimento to Fascism and from the Resistance to Tangentopoli(Kickback City); from verismo to Futurism and from Neorealism to theNeo-avant-garde; from the Catholic Church to the Italian CommunistParty; and from Alessandro Manzoni to Benedetto Croce and fromAntonio Gramsci to Pier Paolo Pasolini. Finally, it offers a sense of howthe relative weight of any set of circumstances, even of a crucial phase ofItalian history such as Fascism which aimed to affect every sphere of life,changes depending on whether one considers this in terms of the devel-opment of architectural style, social policy or the film industry. Oursurvey has its limits; however, there are ways in which these can be notjust countered, but also turned to the books and the readers advantage.

  A fundamental consequence of recognizing the restrictions whichconstrain the present book is the need to justify as precisely as possiblethe criteria governing its make-up. To put it in a slightly different way, itis important to acknowledge not just what may be found in its pages, butalso what is missing. The problem of what is omitted is a crucial one; andcertainly our choices have in part been driven by what we deem to bevital about post-unification Italy, and, hence, are evaluative in nature.Although it is important for judgments of discrimination to be made,and all the contributors to this book reveal their studied preferences, I

  2 Zygmunt G. Baranski

• am aware of the relative character of our selections and appraisals. I amalso cognizant that it is easier to make evaluative assessments within asingle area of human enterprise than to do this between different typesof activity; just as I appreciate that distorted judgments can result fromapplying the measures belonging to one sphere to define the significanceand traits of another. Thus, on the one hand, it would not be difficult tomake a case for the intellectual, ethical and artistic superiority ofRossellinis cinematic uvre in relation to the productions of Berlusconisthree television channels, not least because Rossellinis ambitions areintellectual, ethical and artistic, while these attributes do not seem to bea priority as far as the television stations are concerned. On the otherhand, there is no doubt that Berlusconis brash programming strategiesand even brasher programmes have had a much more profound impacton post-war Italian society than Rossellinis films with their restrainedhumanism. In a book which attempts to provide an introduction tomodern Italian culture, both Rossellini the film-maker and Berlusconithe media entrepreneur have to be found a niche. The issue is notwhether Berlusconi is better than Rossellini, or whether the opposite istrue, but of ensuring that their respective, and different, importance isadequately highlighted. There is thus no grand, all-seeing juncture fromwhich modern Italy can be conveniently assessed; just as it is impossiblefor a companion such as ours to provide more than the faintest ofsketches of the country, its history and culture. At most, we can offer akind of rudimentary map that will allow interested readers to set out ona journey of discovery a journey during the course of which they canformulate their own preferences and increasingly recognize the limits ofthe image of Italy that we are presenting.

  How were these limits fixed? What conditioned the choices thatdetermined this drawing of boundaries?

  Our ambitions for this book have always been primarily practical. Tobegin with, The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture fills a notinsignificant gap in the literature on post-unification Italy. As far as weare aware, there is no single-volume study in English and we suspectthat the same is true as regards the Italian book market that attemptsto provide a general introduction to the cultural life of the peninsulasince 1860. Precisely because of this, we feel that the main stress of thecompanion has to be on providing information; and that for this infor-mation to be meaningful, it has to be both historically rooted and criti-cally assessed. In addition, given the books introductory character, we

  Introducing modern Italian culture 3

• hope that it will appeal to a wide audience, ranging from students atevery stage of their studies of Italy to the many people with an interest inthe country. However, we would like to think that Italian specialists, too,will find the book useful, especially as a first point of reference, whenseeking information on subjects outside their main areas of expertise. Inthe light of these aspirations, we decided that, in part, the book had tohave a traditional remit (hence the strong emphasis on history, litera-ture, history of art, and what John Waterhouse, somewhat provocatively,terms serious music), so that readers would find what many of themwould conventionally expect from a companion to a national culture.At the same time, we also believed that it was important that we call intoquestion some of these conventional assumptions, thereby encouragingreaders to begin to reassess their ideas both of Italy and of culture. JohnDickies deconstruction of The Notion of Italy plays a vital role in thisrespect, as should be clear from the prominent position we accord hischapter at the books opening. Equally, Anna Bulls historical survey,which follows Dickies presentation, with its emphasis on Social andPolitical Cultures, intends to underline how historical events andchanges in society are closely intertwined with peoples attitudes andvalues; and attitudes and values can usefully serve as one broad defini-tion of culture (others will be examined in due course). The discussionsof the mass media, film, design, fashion, popular music, political,worker and religious mass organizations, and Other Voices (thischapter focuses on groups and movements, such as the Catholic Church,organized crime, terrorism, the separatist regional Leagues, andFeminism, that, at one time or another, have questioned the legitimacyof the unified state) also intend to cast light on matters which are oftenignored when a restricted view of culture is embraced.

  Cultural studies and Italy

  As with so much of our book, its basic structure was influenced by ourdesire to find a balance which would permit readers to grasp somethingof the complexity of the issues that cohere around the concept of Italyand to become aware of the variety of ways in which these issues can beapproached. At the same time, however, our conviction that culturecannot be reduced to what traditionally has been described as highculture constitutes a clear expression of our own intellectual sympa-thies. This sense comes to us, as does our books strong emphasis on rela-

  4 Zygmunt G. Baranski

• tivism and on the need for interdisciplinarity, from the important workwhich for several decades has been done under the ever-broadeningumbrella of cultural studies.2 Despite the wealth of academic work thatis now included under this designation, what unites it is the belief thatdifferent forms of communication and of social practice should not beevaluated on the basis of critically untested value judgments. Instead,cultural studies advocates that attempts be made to recognize the sig-nificance of as wide an array of these forms as possible, while placingspecial emphasis on those subordinate discourses and groups which, tra-ditionally, have been marginalized in socio-political terms and in theacademies. As a result of the eclecticism of cultural studies and itsintent to undertake a process of cultural revaluation, the relationshipbetween it and longer-established academic disciplines has often beenquite difficult. Our book tries to avoid such polemicizing. Admittedly, attheir best, these academic disputes have succeeded in usefully redefiningscholarly concerns; and the impact of cultural studies on educationalcurricula in Britain and in North America has been profound.3 At thesame time, however, the reductionism of many other exchanges hasusually been clear to all but the entrenched combatants. Thus, whileacknowledging its debts to cultural studies,4The Cambridge Companion toModern Italian Culture also vigorously asserts the worth of traditionalhumanistic disciplines, as well as the value of the achievements of artistswho quite deliberately create their works for a narrow and intellectuallysophisticated audience, and who see themselves as contributing to anlite tradition. Our book, therefore, is not concerned to conform tospecific preferences of method. The emphasis is on breadth and open-ness, as regards both the information provided and the ways in whichthese facts can be interpreted. Where a particular approach can be ofbenefit to achieving these ends, I would hope that its influence is dis-cernible. In this respect, it is reassuring to note that our position is strik-ingly similar to the principles adopted by Dombroski and Cervigni, theeditors of the most recent collection on Italian Cultural Studies.

  Yet, for all our attempts at inclusiveness, there are significant areas ofmodern Italy for which we have failed to find room in the pages of ourbook. This is true as regards both topics which conventionally belongunder the rubric of high culture, such as architecture and education,and subjects which might be comprised under the marker of lowculture, such as sport and food. Equally, other important matters haveonly been included by being combined in a single generic category. This

  Introducing modern Italian culture 5

• is the case as regards the press, radio and television, which have beensubsumed under the catch-all heading the media. Finally, a furthergroup of topics is not treated systematically, though some understand-ing of them can be achieved by bringing together the relevant sections ofdifferent chapters. A noteworthy instance of this kind of fragmentarypresentation is the large amount of information about the developmentof Italian thought that can be gathered by amalgamating the chapters onleft-wing ideology, Church doctrine, intellectuals and other voices.

  The decision regarding what to include and what to exclude waslargely conditioned by what we think are the salient aspects of post-unification Italy. At the same time, we were helped in making our selec-tions by the knowledge that three other collaborative books were due toappear (all three have now been published) which intended to coversome of the same ground and appeal to a not dissimilar audience as ourcompanion. While providing a balanced assessment of Italian culture,therefore, we felt it would be an advantage if our book, whether method-ologically or as regards coverage, could, whenever possible, refrain fromintruding too much on to the spaces marked out for themselves by thesevolumes. Ideally, we consider The Cambridge Companion to Modern ItalianCulture to exist in a complementary relationship to these three works,and we would encourage readers to compare our treatment of particularissues with theirs.5 Equally, we would hope that readers of thesevolumes would turn to our book to find information on areas, such as lit-erature, music, art and political thought, where our coverage is generallyfuller than theirs, and to get a broad sense of post-unification Italy something which none of the three aims to offer, since their sights areoverwhelmingly fixed on the twentieth century and on quite particularways of looking at Italy. Similarly, Dombroski and Cervignis collection,though it ranges from the Renaissance to the present, also has a rela-tively narrow, as well as an unsystematic, focus: it concentrates on ana-lysing a disparate array of specific texts, figures and issues rather than onoffering a series of broad interrelated overviews.

  The three books are: Italian Cultural Studies. An Introduction, edited byDavid Forgacs and Robert Lumley (Oxford University Press, 1996); Lacultura italiana del Novecento, edited by Corrado Stajano (Rome and Bari:Laterza, 1996) and Revisioning Italy. National Identity and Global Culture,edited by Beverly Allen and Mary Russo (Minneapolis and London:University of Minnesota Press, 1997). The basic differences betweenthese volumes and our companion should be evident from their titles.

  6 Zygmunt G. Baranski

• Revisioning Italy is an overtly committed collection which cross[es] disci-plinary boundaries and explodes the category Italy from within its tra-ditional regional, peninsular, and European contexts and, from theoutside, through its multitudinous occurrences and transmissions inAfrica, Asia, and the Americas. Drawing on contemporary trends intransnational cultural studies,6 it explores issues such as Italys posi-tion in Europe and in the world, immigration, ethnicity and coloniza-tion that our book addresses in a much less emphatic manner. La culturaitaliana del Novecento, too, is a committed collection: the book wants to bea contribution to knowledge, a memory, a profile that can help [readers]face up to the year 2000; and, like the AllenRusso volume, it sets out todo this by assessing Italy against a global backcloth. However, unlikeboth Revisioning Italy and the present companion, the focus of Stajanosbook is crucially restricted by an lite sense of what is important about anational culture:

  What is [. . .] the condition of Italian culture within the framework of

  a world undergoing a great transformation? What is the condition of

  the arts, of the sciences, of the legal and economic disciplines [. . .]

  culture as history and as national life? [. . .] [The] 26 essays recount the

  past and the present of the fundamental disciplines which constitute

  the framework of twentieth-century culture [. . .]. Each essay [. . .] aims

  to offer a kaleidoscope of the ideas, opinions and figures that have

  characterized the century in its various moments.7

  And the twenty-six essays fulfil these aims rather well, offering excellentsyntheses of academic disciplines as diverse as medicine, archaeology,demography and psychology. Thus, La cultura italiana del Novecento prof-fers a fuller view of Italian intellectual life than our book intends toprovide. On the other hand, where our two volumes overlap, givenStajanos stress on ideas and on intellectuals, his book is often less ableto give an impression of the complexity of a problem than our less con-strained surveys. Similarly, its sense of the variety of Italian culture isconsiderably narrower than ours.

  The remit of Italian Cultural Studies, even though it concentratesexclusively on post-war Italy, is broad:

  Cultural studies is not so much a discipline as a cluster of disciplines.

  In Britain, where the term originated [. . .], these disciplines have

  come to include literature, social history, media studies, human

  geography, cultural anthropology, and the sociology of deviance [. . .].

  Introducing modern Italian culture 7

• Work in these diverse areas has been loosely unified by a common set

  of concerns: to deal with culture as a set of signifying practices and

  symbolic social forms; to look at a wide variety of cultural materials

  and avoid prior evaluative rankings of high and low; to bring new

  theoretical considerations to bear on the study of culture.

  The aim of cultural studies is to interrogate and deconstruct the dis-tinctions between high or lite culture and mass or popular culture,as well as their different forms.8 Forgacs and Lumleys book is especiallystrong in dealing both with the sociological and anthropological dimen-sion of culture and with low forms: it ranges widely between youth cul-tures and corruption, and between gender relations and film stars. It isless concerned, however, to deal with high culture and its implications.Of the three books under discussion, Italian Cultural Studies is the onewhich we see as having the closest complementary relationship with ourcompanion. Our broad historical perspective is countered by its moretightly focused chronological purview; our restricted treatment ofpopular and mass culture is balanced by its wide-ranging exposition ofthis topic; and our concern with high culture corrects its limited andsomewhat idiosyncratic treatment of this area.

  Culture, Italian, modern

  The title of our book, The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture,and especially the designation companion, indicate that its coverageintends to be wide. On account of the catholicity of our vision, each ofthe three key locutions constituting our title modern, Italian andculture, terms whose meaning is problematic whatever the context raises special problems, and hence needs to be explained and definedwith a modicum of care.

  The most amorphous and fluid of the terms is culture. This factshould already have been evident from the different values which so farhave been attached to it in this Introduction. For instance, the quotationfrom La cultura italiana del Novecento reveals that, as is typical of Italianusage, Stajano uses cultura to refer specifically to high culture, namely,to the intellectual and artistic achievements of a sophisticated lite. Inaddition, his view of this cultura is essentially optimistic: cultura is intrin-sically valuable; it can help improve life; it can offer a safe haven duringtimes of trouble. Stajanos faith in the benefits of high culture is notunusual; it is deeply embedded in Italian society, even among non-

  8 Zygmunt G. Baranski

• intellectuals. Indeed, the idea has often been canvassed that many ofItalys problems could be alleviated if more of its citizens could be madeto share in this cultura. Given the fairly restricted remit of what isdeemed worthy to be described as culture, this means that, in general,Italian cultura is not as volatile a term as English culture. Equally, thissame litist perception of culture can in part explain why culturalstudies as a distinct discipline has not managed to find acceptance in theItalian academic world though this does not mean that popularculture and the mass media are not studied. They are, but independentlyof each other, and, of course, independently of high culture.9 Yet it isalso clear on reading Stajano that there are meanings of cultura which arebroader and less precise than high culture. It is enough to think of hisallusion to culture as history and as national life. Furthermore, inItalian usage, cultura is coupled to the epithets popolare and di massa torefer, respectively, to activities developed by the people for their own use,and to mass-produced forms and their consumption.10

  It is the more extended notion of culture that, in recent years, hasplayed an active role in British and North American thinking aboutculture. The concept is associated with experience, consciousness,ideological configuration, values and attitudes (what the French havetermed mentalits) and with the symbolic forms through which thesestates are expressed. It is also utilized to allude to ways of life, forms oforganization the symbolic means and rituals to which differentgroups have recourse in order to establish their own identity, oftenthrough opposition to one another. This sense of culture, which poten-tially succeeds in embracing any type of intellectual, aesthetic or semi-otic behaviour, is not just extremely wide, but also challenges thedistinctions between high and low, lite and subordinate, mass andpopular, since it highlights the shifting nature of the particular area ofcultural activity covered by each of the terms. It also foregrounds therelationship between cultural practices and power; and, by extension,the relationship between academic discourse, cultural value andpower.11

  The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture subscribes to thisflexible view of culture. Indeed, at different points in the book, all theabove-mentioned aspects of culture are given prominence. At the sametime, however, by affording a notable amount of space to matters whichcommonly have been defined as belonging to high culture, it attemptsto redress what has become something of an imbalance in many of the

  Introducing modern Italian culture 9

• analyses that have been done in the field of cultural studies. If the boun-daries between different symbolic forms and practices are to be testedeffectively, and the specificities of each of these are to be recognized, thenkey areas cannot be downgraded. To do this simply mimics the exclusiveattitudes of the most haughty traditions of lite learning. Furthermore,as I clarify in the following paragraph, cultural studies, which not infre-quently has relied rather too heavily on grand yet transient theorizing,can learn useful lessons from the procedures of established disciplines.Although such methodological problems obviously lie beyond the remitof our companion, it can nonetheless be useful to remind readers oftheir existence.

  In contrasting Italian with British and American approaches to thestudy of culture, I should not like to create the impression that Italianscholarship is incapable of appreciating the implications of looking atculture from a mobile and interdisciplinary perspective. If anything, myimpression is that the Italian emphasis on context, history and respectfor the literal meaning of texts offers the best means to understandingthe complexity of any cultural expression. In particular, given Italysmillennial regional, political and linguistic fragmentation, questionsrelating to culture, albeit with high culture very much to the fore, havelong been posed by Italian scholars in a manner receptive to geographi-cal, historical, social and textual difference.12 Indeed, such work hashelped to establish that it is extremely difficult to make claims for astrong and overarching Italian national culture. This is true even asregards high literature, given that Italy is alone in the Western world inhaving two major, yet distinct, lite literary traditions one in Italian,the other in dialect. Although, since the Second World War, educationand the mass media have diminished social, linguistic and regional dif-ferences, the continuing lack of a clearly identifiable national culturecannot but pose grave questions about the nature of national identity inItaly whether today or in the past. Equally, this absence can offer a firstreason why, for centuries, Italy has found it far from difficult to assimi-late foreign influences.

  Naturally, this lack of an easily recognizable national cultural coreraises doubts about the value of the epithet Italian in the title of ourbook. At a very crude level, anything that occurs or is produced withinthe confines of the unitary Italian state can be termed Italian. However,such a premise creates confusion regarding the status of cultural mani-festations which appeared within those same confines before 1860, the

  10 Zygmunt G. Baranski

• year in which the country was largely unified. This is particularly so asregards pre-unification cultural forms which in some way make claimsto being Italian. It is misleading, and not just when thinking about Italy,to imagine that well-defined geographical and political boundaries willdetermine and guarantee national identity and belonging, and so elimi-nate difference. It is vital, therefore, to remember both the fragility anddeceptiveness of tags which are supposed to circumscribe a nationalarea, and the shifting wealth of experiences which such tags are sup-posed to embrace experiences that frequently are not even significantlyshaped within the frontiers of the country. However, as long as its limita-tions are kept in mind, the epithet Italian can, of course, serve a usefulpurpose. Bonds of geography, politics, history, religion and language dotie communities and cultures together (and all these elements do indeedunderlie our books use of Italian). The problem is the strength of theseties and their significance, as well as their relationship to all those otherforces, from regionalism to the artistic avant-gardes, whose thrust istowards separation rather than unity.

  Italy may very well be marked by fragmentation; however, that is ageneral condition which it shares with every nation-state. This is animportant fact. For too long, Italys perceived lack of strong and tangiblecentralizing features has led people, including many Italians, to con-sider the country as anomalous, even backward, in respect to otheradvanced Western capitalist countries. The effect of this viewpoint hasbeen to downplay Italys achievements, which, especially in the post-warperiod, both economically and socially have been noteworthy. At thesame time, it is undoubtedly the case that there are elements such asthe lack of linguistic unity, the inability of the state to gain legitimacyamong its citizens, and the reluctance of those same citizens to thinkand feel in national terms except when celebrating the achievements ofsome great figure of the pre-unification past or when shouting supportfor an athlete or team donning the countrys blue international shirt which create the impression that Italy is little more than a name, andeven that it is permanently on the verge of collapse. Ever since 1860,efforts have been made without too much success to counter suchimpressions by creating unifying national heroic myths such as that ofthe Risorgimento (the glorification of the unification process) or that ofthe anti-Fascist Resistance. More recently, as the idea of the country dis-integrating under the combined pressure of the separatist movements,organized crime, corruption and the collapse of the First Republic has

  Introducing modern Italian culture 11

• begun to seem to many a real possibility, various intellectuals haveargued that, despite the countrys recent unification and the failure ofthe state to bring its citizens together, a specific and definable identititaliana not only exists but has existed for centuries. Arguments infavour of this position have largely been based on highlighting the exis-tence of a tendentious cleavage between national identity and Italianidentity, namely the split separating the way in which the national statewas born and its mode of being from the historical past of the country,which has become its nature.13 Unfortunately, the arguments putforward to support such views are largely unpersuasive: they are heavilylaced with subjectivism and vagueness (what precisely does naturemean in the passage cited in the preceding sentence?). As thisIntroduction has attempted to argue, matters of (national) identity areextremely difficult to define. Indeed, a genius of the stature of DanteAlighieri, when trying to establish certain common Italian characteris-tics in the De vulgari eloquentia (On Vernacular Eloquence), lapsed intounexpected banality: in so far as we act as Italians [homines latini], wehave certain basic traits [simplicissima signa], of custom, clothing andspeech, which allow the actions of Italians to be weighed and measured(i, xvi, 3).

  As a consequence of the claims relating to Italys backwardness andanomalousness, it is not unusual to hear the argument that thecountrys contacts with and contribution to modernity have been essen-tially negative. Some commentators have actually gone so far as to damnItalys relationship to modernity, ascribing the countrys faults to thedifficulty Italian modernity has in creatively combining historical ma-terials and deposits of our identity, of adapting that which is peculiarlyItalian to its needs and vice versa. As a result Italian modernity becomeswith the greatest of ease corporativism, familism, tax evasion, mass ille-gality, and whatever else.14 Such assertions are plainly overwrought. Itis certainly true that Italys rapid transition from a primarily ruraleconomy at the time of unification to a successful neo-capitalisteconomy since the 1950s has been anything but straightforward: boththe successes and failures have been striking. It is equally true that Italyhas found it difficult to develop bureaucratic and state structures tocomplement the social, political and economic changes through whichthe country has passed since 1860. At the same time, it should not be for-gotten that, as our chapters on art, literature, music, the cinema, designand fashion illustrate, a far from negligible amount of what is perceived

  12 Zygmunt G. Baranski

• by people all over the world as characteristically modern in these areasis Italian in origin. As regards the use of the term in the title of our book,it is not meant to suggest that thanks to unification Italy somehowbecame part of the modern world. The transition to modernity thepassage from a traditional oligarchic, agrarian and mercantile society toone dominated by capitalist economic, political, social and culturalforms was irregular. In parts of Northern Italy, it had begun before1860, while for the bulk of the peninsula the change did not occur untilafter the Second World War. On the one hand, the epithet is useful as away of suggesting that, in general terms, the book covers the periodwhen the shift to modernity painfully, unevenly and gradually tookplace. On the other hand, modern is purely conventional: it is a clich ofmuch writing on Italy to consider the modern era as commencing withthe countrys unification.

  Despite its position as one of the leading industrialized nations,modern Italy plays a secondary role in the world. Its greatness liessquarely in its past: during the centuries-long spread of Roman civiliza-tion; during the later Middle Ages, when, in comparison to the rest ofEurope, it not only hosted the greatest thinkers (St Bonaventure andThomas Aquinas), the greatest artists (Cimabue and Giotto) and thegreatest writers (Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio), but was also the seat ofthe most important banking and trading interests; and, finally, duringthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when it spearheaded that revolu-tion in Western culture which we now remember as the Renaissance.Modern Italy suffers under the yoke of this history. Indeed, many ofthose who bemoan the countrys present condition do so by comparing itunfavourably to idealized versions of this illustrious past. Our book isnot affected by such critical nostalgia. Its inspiration, as I suggest above,is not polemical but practical; and no one is more aware than Rebeccaand I of our books provisionality. As I write, late in 1998, things arechanging. A new centreleft government, led scandalously by an ex-Communist, the leader of the Democratici di Sinistra (Democrats of theLeft, formerly the Partito Democratico della Sinistra, Democratic Partyof the Left), Massimo DAlema, has just come to power; major constitu-tional reform is being seriously discussed. For obvious reasons, suchmatters must perforce lie beyond the remit of our book. In any case, it isnot our intention to give an up-to-the-minute account of modern Italy,but to offer a spyhole onto nearly 150 years of Italian culture. And if, bydoing this, we can encourage some readers to recognize that, despite the

  Introducing modern Italian culture 13

• burden of its past, modern Italy, to use Gian-Paolo Biasins suggestivewords, is a tiny but all-important place in the world,15 then we will con-sider that our efforts have been more than worthwhile.

  notes

  1. See Robert Lumley and Jonathan Morris (eds.), The New History of the Italian South(Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997).2. See Simon During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1993);Lawrence Grossberg et al. (eds.), Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992); Fred Inglis,Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).3. See Robert S. Dombroski, Forward, in Robert S. Dombroski and Dino S. Cervigni(eds.), Italian Cultural Studies. Special issue of Annali di Italianistica 16 (1998), pp. 1114(pp. 1213); Ian Taylor et al. (eds.), Relocating Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1993);Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1990).4. For a succinct yet sympathetically incisive critique of the methods of culturalstudies, see Paolo Barlera, Toward a Genealogy and Methodology of Italian CulturalStudies, in Dombroski and Cervigni (eds.), Italian Cultural Studies, pp. 1529 (pp.289).5. For other studies dealing in general terms with modern Italy, see Further Reading.6. Beverly Allen and Mary Russo, Preface, in Allen and Russo (eds.), Revisioning Italy,pp. ixxi (pp. ixx).7. Corrado Stajano, Introduzione, in Stajano (ed.), La cultura italiana del Novecento, pp.viixviii (pp. xviii, xixii).8. David Forgacs and Robert Lumley, Introduction: Approaches to Culture in Italy, inForgacs and Lumley (eds.), Italian Cultural Studies, pp. 111 (pp. 12).9. Ibid., pp. 38.10. Zygmunt G. Baranski and Robert Lumley, Turbulent Transitions: AnIntroduction, in Baranski and Lumley (eds.), Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy(Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 117 (pp. 1012).11. John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).12. Baranski and Lumley, Turbulent Transitions, pp. 1115.13. Ernesto Galli della Loggia, Lidentit italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998), p. 65.14. Ibid., pp. 154, 148. Familism is the accentuation of exclusive family values andactions.15. See below p. 168.

  further reading

  Clark, Martin, Modern Italy 18711995. London and New York: Longman, 1996.De Grand, Alexander J., Italian Fascism. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska

  Press, 1982.Di Scala, Spencer M., Italy from Revolution to Republic: 1700 to the Present. Boulder and

  Oxford: Westview Press, 1998.Duggan, Christopher, A Concise History of Italy. Cambridge University Press, 1994.Ginsborg, Paul, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 19431988. London:

  Penguin Books, 1990.Levy, Carl (ed.), Italian Regionalism. Oxford and Washington: Berg, 1996.

  14 Zygmunt G. Baranski

• Locke, Richard M., Remaking the Italian Economy. Ithaca and London: Cornell UniversityPress, 1995.

  Mack Smith, Denis, The Making of Italy 17961866. London: Macmillan, 1988.Schneider, Jane (ed.) , Italys Southern Question. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998.Schiavone, Aldo, Italiani senza Italia. Storia e identit. Turin: Einaudi, 1998.Seton-Watson, Christopher, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism 18701925. London: Methuen,

  1967.Tannenbaum, E. R., Fascism in Italy. Society and Culture 19221945. London: Allen Lane,

  1973.

  Introducing modern Italian culture 15

• j o h n d i c k i e

  1

  The notion of Italy

  Introduction

  Of what is one writing when one writes a history of Italy? What, if any, isthe thread of continuity that allows us to mean the same thing when werefer to Italy at the fall of the Roman Empire, the death of Dante, theFrench invasions of 1494 or 1796, the Congress of Vienna, unification, theend of the First World War, the fall of Fascism, or the 1994 election? Thefirst aim of this essay is to argue that there is no single thread of continu-ity, no common plane of analysis of Italian history. When we examinetwo of the elements that might serve as that thread or plane, geographi-cal space and culture, what we find is that the historiographical utility ofthe concept of Italy has to be demonstrated rather than assumed. Italyhas to be constructed; it is not given to us directly by the historicalsources. My second aim is to show that the notion of Italy is an importantdimension of Italian history itself. Using examples from the post-unification era, I will suggest some of the ways in which varying notionsof Italy have informed and been influenced by the key problem ofnation- and state-formation.

  My argument can be better defined through a brief comparison witha well-known earlier critique of the unity of Italian history carried outin the 1930s by the idealist historian, philosopher and literary critic,Benedetto Croce. Croces principal target is a nationalistic historiogra-phy that either treats race as the factor of continuity in a nationshistory or, in Croces words, transforms the unity of Italian history intoan issue of public order by branding as unpatriotic all who fail to seeoneness in the peninsulas development. Against these positions, Crocebaldly asserts that the unity of Italian history begins only in 1860 with

• the foundation of the unified state, but has a prologue that stretchesback to the Enlightenment. Croce adds that, since terms such as France,England and Italy are primarily political concepts, his point applies topolitical history. But this is certainly not, he argues, because there is aunitary history of Italian culture; rather it is because moral, religious,scientific and artistic histories have universal rather than national con-cerns. Croce regards as absurd and sterile the search for unity at a factuallevel in national histories: there can be no such thing as a fact which gen-erates and gives unity to other facts.1

  Croces argument has many flaws. Perhaps the most telling is that hedoes not mention social history. If the subject of our analysis were, say,kinship or religion, the date 1860, although important, would obviouslynot be a neat dividing line. Moreover, in seeking to liberate the univer-sal concerns of philosophy and the arts from jingoism, Croce cuts themoff from the social contexts in which they were produced. We might alsobe reluctant to share the confidence with which Croce circumscribesItaly as a political concept. As Croce was well aware, that idea has had animportant place in the literary sphere, whence its influence has travelledinto politics and back at many different moments in Italian history.Another problem relates to the status Croce attributes to historiography:the historian seems to work on the plane of the universal, uncon-strained, at least potentially, by the concerns of the contemporary era.

  Nevertheless, it seems to me that Croces insistence on the lack ofunity in Italian history before 1860 remains basically valid. Indeed, Iwould go further than Croce in arguing that the disunity of Italianhistory, or better, its open-endedness and internal diversity, continue tothis day. Going further still, I would argue that, on the theoretical levelat which Croce is working in most of his article, the same lack of a factu-ally generated unity can be seen in any history whose subject matterand/or premise is the nation or one of the entities often hyphenated to it(-people, -state). The way we view histories and societies in nationalterms has tended to involve us in making the mistaken assumption thatthey are or should be unities, that underlying them there is some pro-found and exclusive connection. Thus, in stressing the artificiality ofItaly, I wish neither to imply that other national spaces are more objec-tive and genuine, nor to rain undifferentiated scepticism over the pos-sibility of identifying long-term continuities within some importantdimensions of Italian history before and after 1860. What I am arguing isthat not only the Italian nation, but also Italy itself, are not givens, and

  18 John Dickie

• can bring with them costs as well as benefits when they are used in his-torical analysis: Italy is an artificial, internally differentiated spacewhich is, and has always been, traversed by a variety of historical forces.In this respect, as in many others, it is not anomalous.

  The geographical space

  The notion of Italy as a natural geographical entity, a distinct part of theMediterranean area, dates back some twenty-two or twenty-three cen-turies. For almost as long, much has been made of the boundaries pro-vided for Italy by Nature: to the North, the chiostra alpina; to the West theMediterranean; to the East the Adriatic. However, in this section, I wantto identify three ways in which Italian geography is an unreliable criter-ion of historical analysis: first, because geographical features do notprovide a natural reason for the existence of a homogeneous social, cul-tural or economic field in Italy; secondly, because the space of Italy hasalways been both open-ended and internally varied and divided; andthirdly, because human interaction with geographical space is alwaysmediated by conceptions of geography. Ultimately, we cannot write ahistory of Italy without taking into account the historical force of thevarious imaginary Italies, of which the land providentially guarded bythe Alps and the sea is just one example.

  Many of Italys geographical characteristics have actually hinderedthe creation of a unified peninsula. To take just one example: much ofItaly lacks easily navigable rivers. The Apennines, the countrys moun-tainous backbone, impede the formation of large rivers. As one goesfurther south, sharper contrasts in relief, allied to problems of aridityand evaporation in summer, produce short rivers, with an irregular flow,some of which are torrents in winter and trickles in summer. The Po, at652 kilometres one of Europes major rivers, clearly gives a differentcharacter to the northern alluvial plain through which it meanders.Unstable soils, shifting bottoms and distributaries have meant that fiveor six centuries of human labour have been necessary to adapt the Povalley for agriculture, industry and transport. Indeed, across large partsof Italy, the instability of land forms and the uneven topography havealso made road and railway construction difficult. Italys physical geo-graphy has also helped to make it an open-ended space. The Alps, criss-crossed by trade routes since before Roman times, did not preventinvasion by Alarics Visigoths in 408 or Attilas Huns in 452. Before 1860,

  The notion of Italy 19

• when it became the first capital of Italy, Turin was the capital of theKingdom of Sardinia which straddled the Alps and included Genoa,Piedmont, Nice and Savoy. At the other end of the peninsula, for manycenturies after its invasion by the Vandals in 440, Sicily was conqueredby a long and varied succession of Mediterranean sea powers.

  Italy was the crossroads of European, African and Asian trade in thelater Middle Ages, when a period of relative political autonomy permit-ted the precarious emergence of many independent city republics in theNorth and Centre, and great economic growth and integration in someareas. As a result, the commercial revolution that began in the eleventhcentury has been used by some scholars as a starting-point for the historyof Italy. It has even been argued that in the twelfth century, for the firsttime since the end of the pax romana, Italy began to function as an eco-nomic unit inasmuch as cities such as Florence and Genoa became moredependent for their basic foodstuffs on the Kingdom of Sicily and onSardinia, whose trade they managed.2

  Nonetheless, the concept of Italy remains one of questionablevalue in this period.3 The northern communes also went as far afield asthe Crimea and Morocco in search of basic foodstuffs. Catalans as well asGenoese and Pisans were heavily involved in exports from Sicily andSardinia. Corsica too was colonized, as were Dalmatian towns by theVenetians. The limited utility of the notion of Italy in this contextbecomes all the more apparent if we move beyond the specific questionof the relations between the northern cities and the South. The politicaland social environment in which the merchants operated was certainlynot Italian in any very concrete sense. Rather it was based on the newlyexpanded towns and cities of the North and Centre. There was no com-parable growth of comuni in the South where the more centralized polit-ical situation placed a ceiling on the development of mercantileinterests. Each city republic was set in patterns of alliance and enmitywith its neighbours; and the external influence of the Empire was oftena factor in these conflicts. There were strong, even deadly rivalriesamong Italys maritime powers such as Amalfi, Pisa, Florence, Genoa andVenice. Moreover, it is clear that at no point during the later Middle Ageswere the economic spheres within which Italys cities operated cotermi-nous with the peninsula. In many cases their primary economic relationswere with the subject territory (contado) immediately around them. Thepeninsulas thalassocracies conducted trade with, between and beyondDalmatia, Crete, Constantinople, the Black Sea, Central Europe, Cyprus,

  20 John Dickie

• the Levant, Egypt, Tripoli, Tunis, Corsica, Southern France, the Balearicislands, Spain, and Northern European cities such as Rheims, Troyes andlater London and Antwerp.

  Clearly, it is misleading to think of the economic geography in theperiod of the autonomous city-states as being Italian. Thereafter, Italysplace, and the place of various parts of Italy, in Mediterranean, Europeanor global configurations of economic power has changed radically overtime. In the sixteenth century, for example, Europes economic centre ofgravity shifted to the North, leaving Italy marginalized.

  Even after unification, the nation-state must be treated with greatcaution as a frame of reference for economic analysis. Given any modernstates need to quantify, understand and promote economic activitieswithin its jurisdiction, it should not surprise us that such a nationalframe of reference became dominant in Italy: after 1860, there was, forexample, a rapid and massive accumulation of statistical informationpremised on the notion of Italy. For most of Italys history as an industri-alized country, the most powerful sectors of its economy have beenclosely linked to the state: this can only have fostered the tendency tothink economic problems in national terms. Yet, of course, after theestablishment of the united state, the peninsula continued to be markedby economic dislocation, diversity and imbalance, and to be intersectedby non-national economic forces.

  The Giolittian era, named after Giovanni Giolitti, the dominant poli-tician of the period from the turn of the century to the start of the FirstWorld War, saw the first wave of substantial industrial growth. But thatperiod also serves to illustrate my points about the non-national natureof many historical transformations. The gradual integration of the inter-nal market after unification, together with protectionist governmentpolicies and the role of the state itself as a customer for industry, cer-tainly contributed to this phase of rapid growth. But industrial develop-ment was heavily concentrated in the north-western industrial triangleof Milan, Turin and Genoa; the monopolization of investment by thisarea actually worsened the imbalance between North and South.Luciano Cafagna has argued that, in some respects, the process of indus-trialization of the three north-western regions of Italy was akin to that ofan autonomous small country.4 There was little complementaritybetween the economies of North and South: there was only limited pro-duction, by the latter for the former, of raw materials and foodstuffs.Cafagna also maintains that a purely national point of view has tended

  The notion of Italy 21

• to neglect the functional integration of north-western Italy into theindustrial economies of Europe. And of course, Italys dramatic growthwould have been unthinkable without the great worldwide accelerationin industrial production, and in the movement of goods, capital andlabour in the same period. Some aspects of protectionism were sociallydivisive: the costs were passed on to consumers, mostly the less well off;public intervention in the economy often meant private collusionbetween competing cliques of politicians, bankers and industrialists; inthe South, socially conservative grain interests were shielded, while themore dynamic sectors, such as the citrus-fruit growers and wine-makers,were denied full access to international markets. Italys first spurt ofindustrial growth was also greatly aided by the reorganization of thebanking system in the mid 1890s which was carried out with Germancapital and on the German model. The Giolittian era also saw a greatincrease in the mobility of labour across national boundaries.Emigration from Italy, overwhelmingly by peasants, peaked at 872,598in 1913: about half this number headed across the Atlantic.Approximately half of all emigrants in the period 18961914 came fromthe South, notably Calabria and Sicily. Paradoxically, the savings sentback by emigrants began to constitute one of the most important sourcesof the domestic capital invested in Italian industry.

  Even when frontiers are natural barriers or are given regulated, con-crete existence by modern nation-states, they are predominantly placesof exchange rather than of closure; the spatial promiscuity of commerce,capital, disease, warfare, people and ideas reveals them to be porous, arti-ficial and contingent. Nations as categories of historical study haveexactly the same qualities.

  Geography as a historical force is not only mediated by the wayshumans interact with each other and the environment; it is also medi-ated by thought and perception. The idea of space is greatly impover-ished as a historical instrument unless we take account of how peoplehave thought of and lived out their relations to geography. The notion ofItaly as a geographical given neglects the diverse perceptions of spaceand territory which have informed the lives of different social groups atdifferent times.

  Until well into the twentieth century, most Italians were peasants.One study of the Sicilian village of Milocca in the late 1920s showedthat its inhabitants had a complex set of spatial perceptions. TheMilocchese tended to feel a semi-serious rivalry with the towns in the

  22 John Dickie

• immediate vicinity and a pride in being Sicilian as opposed to Italian.Attitudes to Italy were vague and ambivalent. America, a place in whichalmost any oddity seemed possible, embraced much of the rest of theworld, and continental divisions were not recognized. Loyalties revolvedaround the family and the neighbourhood. Saints were the focus forlocal patriotism. The individuals familiarity with localities even withinthe village territory was strictly bounded by his or her economic andsocial relationships. Women were restricted in their knowledge of thevillage: only the midwife had been to every one of its scattered neigh-bourhoods. Water supplies were felt to belong to God, whereas landbelonging to the commune or the church was thought of as private.Some places in Milocca were said to be haunted by spirits, while otherswere deemed to conceal hidden treasure. Various biblical episodes werethought to have taken place in the village.5

  For much of the countrys history, the Italians have had world-pictures in which Italy was not the primary point of reference. Nor arethe peasantry the only group of which this is true. The Catholic Churchis the most obvious case: its geographical conception of its role hasalways had a strong global dimension. Many of Italys problems of polit-ical integration after the Second World War have been attributed to thepolitical subcultures of Catholicism and Communism, both regionallyrooted, and both to some extent internationally minded.

  The culture

  In a recent debate on national identity in the journal Passato e Presente,Jens Petersen argued that Italy had a national culture for a long timebefore it had a national state:

  Italy is only a young nation in terms of its construction as a state. As

  a people, as a culture, as a form of self-awareness, it begins in the

  fourteenth century at the latest. Dantes works remain the foundation

  of the collective consciousness. As the father of the Italian language

  he is also the father of the nation and the symbol of national

  greatness through the centuries. Metternichs notorious expression

  about Italy being merely a geographical concept was already wrong at

  the very moment he pronounced it.6

  Petersens identification of italianit with a cultural, predominantly lit-erary tradition dating back to Dante has a certain superficial force to it.

  The notion of Italy 23

• Dante certainly had a conception of Italy as a linguistic and geographicalarea, a conception galvanized by opposition to cultural and politicalinfluences from France. In the De vulgari eloquentia, he theorized the useof an Italian illustrious vernacular which, in opposition to the differentregional languages spoken in the Italian peninsula, could serve as thetransregional vehicle for the loftiest amorous, martial and ethicalthemes. Subsequently, in the Divine Comedy, Dante abandoned his idea ofan illustrious vernacular and demonstrated instead the effectiveness ofFlorentine as a literary medium capable of dealing with any subject andof reaching out beyond the intellectual lite. The influence of the DivineComedy on the development of Italian language and letters is undoubt-edly immense. However, those who hail Dante as the progenitor ofItalian national culture are courting anachronism. Dantes politics,based on a division of temporal and religious power between the HolyRoman Empire and the Church respectively, held no place for Italy as anykind of power container. His political and cultural concerns, moreover,were subordinate to his religious views: if Dantes Florentine mediumcan be seen, in retrospect, as Italian, his message is incompatible withany national culture that it might be claimed he founded.

  Nor does Italian literary culture become linear and unitary in Danteswake. For example, for approximately three hundred years after hisdeath, it was by no means obvious to intellectuals that the (Florentine)vernacular would or should win out over Latin as the tool of their trade.Some saw the vernacular as a threat to the national and internationalunity of scholars which was guaranteed by the language of ancientRome. Indeed, the questione della lingua, the question of what form Italianshould take, has exercised Italys intellectuals to this day. The notion ofItaly, and of Italian culture and language, has changed radically overtime. For Petrarch, who lived only a generation after Dante, the notion ofItaly was not even primarily a linguistic one, but involved an lite, schol-arly identification with classical antiquity. In literary history, as in othercontexts, one should not therefore think of one Italy, but rather ofvarious Italies that are often contrasted, as powerful ideas are needed tooppose other powerful ideas, dominant myths set against oppositionalmyths.7 The Italian literary tradition, like any other national culturaltradition, is not an unbroken line through time. The myth of sequence isconstructed retrospectively through the creative misreading of a set ofheterogeneous moments. The past is constantly revised on terms condi-tioned by each new intellectual and social conjuncture. Petersens own

  24 John Dickie

• idea of the Italian literary tradition is not new. It has its roots in theRomantic assumption that literary culture is or should be rooted in aspoken language, the spontaneous voice of a people through the ages.Its most famous formulations, including Francesco De Sanctiss Storiadella letteratura italiana (History of Italian Literature, 1870), belong to theperiod immediately after unification when literary history was beingrewritten as the history of an idea of Italy which began with Dante andwas destined to find its realization in the Savoyard state. Dantes ownpre-eminent place in the canon was only (re-)established in the eight-eenth century, and it is to the period following the French Revolutionthat we owe the growth of the cult of Dante as a living symbol of italian-it. Since Croce, Italian critics have expressed dissatisfaction with theDante cult and with De Sanctiss model of literary history. The unity andlinearity of Italian literary culture has been revealed as a teleologicalpatriotic myth.

  The near-identification of literature and culture in Petersensremarks is itself, of course, very problematic. It only holds together onthe basis of the implicit and very selective idea that Italy is best embod-ied in the high literary culture of a social stratum which was, at the veryleast until this century, an exiguous lite of people able to read and writeItalian. Few scholars have been bold enough to make claims for the long-term historical existence of cultural italianit at any other level: gamesand forms of social life, eating and drinking, particular religious prac-tices, for example. In the pre-industrial era, it is anachronistic to treatthese anthropological features as national. They are more appropriatelyunderstood on other planes, such as the locality or the Mediterraneanarea. To identify Italy with culture at this level is also to presume thatsuch features as diet and forms of social life do not change, and it risksundervaluing other long-term continuities which do not coincide withthe national framework, such as Catholicism.

  However, it is also difficult to point to a moment in the modern erawhen Italy might be thought of as having a popular national culture.The peasants of Milocca show us that parts of Italy continued to have alocalized, pre-national culture well into the twentieth century; whileindustrialization brings with it a globalization of the market for cultu-ral artefacts and trends. Indeed, David Forgacs has argued that, in thetwentieth century, the strong influence of imported books, films, televi-sion programmes, popular music and comics has been a striking charac-teristic of a country which has displayed an unusually high degree of

  The notion of Italy 25

• openness to non-national cultural goods, such as to throw into doubt theexistence of a cohesive national culture from the consumers point ofview.8

  As James Clifford has reminded us, we tend to see cultures, and par-ticularly national cultures, as isolated worlds. This is a conception whichharks back to an organicist nineteenth-century anthropology.9 Againstthis, he argues that we must learn to see cultures in relational terms: asClaude Lvi-Strauss has written, the idea of a culture existing on its ownmakes no sense.10 All cultures are ways of relating to other cultures: it ismisguided to analyse or judge them in the light of the expectation ofunity that nationalism generates. Italian culture, like Italian geography,is not exceptional in its openness and diversity. What Italian historyshows us is a great array of historically specific forms of openness anddiversity.

  Nation-building: the Italian state and the notion of Italy

  The existence of a national state is Croces basis for the unity of Italianhistory after 1860. Nonetheless, it is by now something of a historio-graphical commonplace that the central problem of Italian history sincethat date has been nation-building. There was no historical precedentfor the unified Italy which was established in 1860: the dominion ofancient Rome grew from city-state to empire without passing throughan intermediate stage that could be considered analogous to the modernnation-state. After the decline of the Western Empire, the peninsula wasfor centuries carved up between a host of powers, both internal andexternal. The establishment of a state and, within the space of a fewyears, of a national ruling cadre did not resolve the nationality question.The often-cited but still eloquent statistics on Italys very low proportionof literate, Italophone citizens at and after unification clearly demon-strate that the population over which the state held sway was not geo-graphically, socially or linguistically integrated.

  The nation-building problem is often seen as having two aspects. Thefirst is the cultural and social diversity within the peninsula, which canmake identification with an Italian nation problematic. Broadly speak-ing, following great internal migration, and the spread of the massmedia after the Second World War, this problem has largely been over-come. The second and more tenacious aspect of the problem of nation-building is that of political and institutional culture and of the

  26 John Dickie

• relationship between citizen and state. For a long time the Italian statestruggled to gain automatic acceptance of its legitimacy, not leastbecause the Catholic Church, deprived of its temporal power by the uni-fication of Italy, remained alienated from the state until 1929. With itsfrequently authoritarian and exclusionary response to the challenges ofa modern society, most notably during the two decades of Fascism, thestate itself has not helped the nation-building cause. Despite this,excluded groups such as Radicals, Catholics, Republicans, Socialists,Communists and post-Fascists have slowly, and often painfully, beenbrought within the boundaries of the political sphere. Yet the Italianstate has failed, and continues to fail, consistently to base its own work-ings and its relationship with society on the kind of criteria associatedwith the Enlightenment. Italy still lacks such things as an efficient,transparent, honest and impartial bureaucracy, or a political arenawhere there is a contest between parties who accept each others legiti-macy and base their appeal to the voter on clearly enunciated legislativeprogrammes. The problem of Italian political culture has many otherfacets which I can only allude to here: the way family ties and privatepatronclient networks often override the public interest within theinstitutions (familism and clientelism); the particularly close-knit ranksof the economic lite; collusion between organized crime and represen-tatives of the state. In this section, I want to use two specific instances toillustrate some of the ways in which the concept of Italy, and specificallyof Italy as nation, has been involved in the history of the Italian stateseen in terms of nation-building: first, the problem of political corrup-tion; second, the neo-absolutist political thought of Alfredo Rocco.

  In 1992 a web of corruption was revealed amongst the lites of Italyseconomic capital, Milan. The arrest, on 17 February, of Mario Chiesa, theSocialist president of a retirement home, led directly to the arrest ofthirty-six politicians, thirty-one business people and six civil servants.Over a longer period, what the newspapers dubbed the Tangentopoli(Kickback City) investigations proved fatal for the whole system ofclientelistic power based on the Christian Democrat and SocialistParties. The Milan cases in particular reveal how the system was centredon business politicians who operated in a strategic location betweenthree spheres: the administration of public resources and services overwhich the politicians had a de facto control; those parts of the privatesector seeking to do business with the state on privileged terms; and pol-itics, both local and national. These men (the role was a very masculine

  The notion of Italy 27

• one) would create rings of connivance between individuals in all threespheres, involving payments that ranged from huge international banktransfers to gifts of cash and watches. Building companies that wantedto secure work in the extension of the Milan underground, or evenfuneral parlours wanting to collect corpses, would pay a bribe to anadministrator, who in turn would channel a percentage of the funds onto the politicians of his own party who controlled his appointment, aswell as to politicians from other parties, in a formalized system of divid-ing up and sharing out of the spoils. By increasing the demand forfavours from him, and by increasing the state resources at his disposal,the business politician could increase his own influence at a nationallevel within the party structure.

  Practices like these are only the most recent, and most visible,example of problems that have beset the state and society since 1860,albeit with varying degrees of intensity in different periods and places.The selective distribution of privileges, rather than the generalizedadministration of rights, is an unstable basis for the construction ofpolitical consensus. For example, any reduction in the resources avail-able for distribution, or any injudicious monopolization of privileges,may upset the power balance between those who oppose the system ofprivileges, those excluded from it, those with access to it, and those whohang on in the hope of getting access to it. But even when they areworking well, the occult practices of corruption and clientelism inevita-bly undermine the credibility of what politicians say in public: corrup-tion fosters a closed value system amongst those involved, a realmoutside the ethical sphere created by identification with the nationalstate and the national interest; corrupt elements within parties have apositive interest in reducing moral and political discourse to empty for-mulae. Far from building a nation, people within the state and the greatbodies of collective representation (parties, unions) have often acted todiscredit the collective interest that the term nation encodes in politicaldiscourse, by acting through channels that, even when not actuallycorrupt or clientelistic, have often been familial or private. The value ofthe notion of Italy in political culture can only have been debased furtherby the patriotic rhetoric of many politicians involved in corrupt prac-tices: one thinks of the tricolour Socialism promoted by Bettino CraxisSocialist Party in the early 1980s.

  Corruption, familism, clientelism and patronage are recurrent fea-tures of modern Italian history. Yet we should be very careful not to treat

  28 John Dickie

• them as if they were invariable anthropological prime movers of Italysproblems of state-formation. One of the reasons why this warning needsto be given is that ahistorical or otherwise superficial understandings ofpatronage, familism and corruption have played a central part in whatcan be called a culture of denunciation. Italy is unusual in Europe in thedegree to which aggressive nationalism has been marginalized since thefall of Fascism. Yet a kind of inverted patriotism, a patriotism of pathosmarked by worry about the state of the nation and pessimism about thenational character, remains a striking feature of Italian culture. A recentexample, that almost reaches the point of self-parody, is a newspaperarticle by Eugenio Scalfari published on 15 January 1995. At the timeScalfari was the editor of Italys best-selling daily, La Repubblica. Thearticle was written soon after the start of the Lamberto Dini governmentthat followed the end of media magnate Silvio Berlusconis brief periodas Prime Minister. Scalfari gives a profile of the Italian national charac-ter: his countrymen are hard-working, individualistic, wily and deceit-ful; they are very attached to their mothers, and lack morality and aspirit of service. Like Mussolini before him, Berlusconi is a typicalItalian, the materialization of the nations characteristic elements,which is what makes him a dangerous person to govern the country. Bycontrast, all of Italys best leaders, from Cavour to De Gasperi, hadalmost nothing Italian about them.

  It would be tempting, in the absence of further proof, to attributehomespun theories of this kind to a chronic shortage of copy, were it notfor the fact that they chime with ideas present at many levels of Italianpublic and academic life in different historical periods. For example, lib-erals have long lamented that Italy is the corruption, distortion orparody of an idealized form of the modern national state, anEnlightenment or Anglo-Saxon polity. The tradition of denunciation,and the concomitant dream of making Italy into a normal or moderncountry, has been a powerful and often positive force. The magistrateswho, since the early 1990s, have challenged organized crime and politicalcorruption across Italy with some success could be seen as the latestmanifestation of this tradition. However, many less admirable figuresalso have their place in it (including Alfredo Rocco, about whom I havemore to say below). The tradition of denunciation has also frequentlytaken the form of a disgust with politics in general. For many peopleacross the political spectrum, Italy is deemed to be unique because of itsendlessly repeated failure to achieve putative standards of nationhood

  The notion of Italy 29

• and institutional maturity or modernity. A great deal of historical workremains to be done on the specific nature of the notions of Italy and ofpolitical normality which inform such laments.

  Given Italys perceived status as a failed nation in which the publicsphere is enervated by clientelism, the collective interest is an elusiveideal, and political homogeneity is undermined by cultural diversity, itis perhaps ironic that Italian history should offer so many instances ofpolitical projects and actions legitimated and motivated by reifiednotions of Italy. Even some of those who, like Vincenzo Gioberti in hisDel primato morale e civile degli Italiani (On the Moral and Civil Primacy ofthe Italians, 1844), have argued that the Italians as a unified people donot exist, have still managed to regard an abstract notion of Italy as areality. There is no limit to the range of political positions that can drawon reified concepts of Italy. The thought of Alfredo Rocco provides one ofthe clearest instances of the way the notion of Italy has actually informedItalys history, in his case through a project to construct an authoritarianstate. From 1914, Rocco, a law professor and leading ideologue of theAssociazione Nazionalista Italiana, set forth a body of ideas which hehimself, as Mussolinis Minister of Justice between January 1925 and July1932, was later to turn into laws that were the basis of Fascisms transfor-mation from government into rgime.

  Rocco saw the modern era in dualistic terms, as a long war betweenthe forces of social cohesion and anomie. Only the state could preventsocietys dissolving under the pressure of competing individual inter-ests. Democracy, Socialism and Feminism were all secret allies of thisindividualistic threat to society. The state, for Rocco, was an organicentity with rights which transcended those of individuals singly and, atany one point in time, of the people collectively. Because Italy was caughtup in a struggle for survival between societies, the state had to be in thehands of an lite able to intuit societys overriding aims. Any such lite inItaly faced a difficult task: the country had had only a few decades offitful state-building to counteract centuries of individualism; its terri-tory did not provide the raw materials it needed; mass emigration wasdraining away its life-blood. But the Italian race was fertile. If the statecould orchestrate the economic efforts of the masses and encourage themonopolistic trend in capitalism, Italy would be able to expand byincreasing production and wresting colonies from nations in decline.

  It is striking and instructive to note how vague and ambivalent Roccosnotion of the Italian nation reveals itself to be when examined closely,

  30 John Dickie

• especially in the light of his reputation for intellectual rigour. EmilioGentile points to an oscillation between different meanings in Roccosthought on the nation:11 at some moments he thinks of the nation as anorganic group or race; at others he maintains that nationality is a spiritualfact, not a physical phenomenon. While Gentiles critique is certainlyvalid, it does not exhaust Roccos contradictoriness, nor does it show howthe contradictions within Roccos thought are not so much flaws as rhetor-ical tactics. For example, reifying the nation as race or stock allows Roccoto transform it into the subject of Social Darwinist narratives of evolu-tionary struggle. Alternatively, treating the nation as something spiritualmakes it into a way of identifying and stigmatizing the un-Italian: theoffice workers holding the state to ransom, the politicking Socialists, andthe fanatical advocates of full bellies are not part of the nation. Nationalityis a spiritual fact, not a physical phenomenon.12 Consciously or not,Roccos nation changes radically according to the needs of his argument.

  But I would argue that it is not just Rocco and the other Nationalistswho use the term nation in a systematically vague way. The notion ofItaly as a nation is frequently the product of a shifting mosaic of mini-ature textual strategies whose common assumption is the constructionof the nation as a concrete fact, or group of people, or a single idea, exist-ing independently of the concepts people have of it. Paradoxically, thevagueness of the language of the nation, and the logical sleight of handwith which it is often used, both contribute to the production of themirage of a single, simple idea or thing. The very ambiguity of the termi-nology of nationhood allows Italy to be constructed in a variety offantasy scenarios, narratives, imperatives and arguments that help togive this notion its intellectual and emotional hold over us.

  Conclusion

  The name Italy has no single clear etymology, but its origins seem to beGreek. From the fifth to the third century BC, the Samnites of the Southof the peninsula adopted the Greek name for their own territory. Oncethe term was taken over by the Romans, the area it embraced spreadnorthwards as Roman hegemony spread. During the rapid expansion ofthe late fourth and early third centuries BC, Italy reached the Arno.However, only with Diocletians administrative reforms at the end of thethird century AD were the islands included. Gradually, over the same arcof time, the name came to have an ethnic as well as a geopolitical sense.

  The notion of Italy 31

• Of course etymology tells us only a limited amount about meaning.In its search for origins, moreover, it can nourish the illusion that, atsome point between the Middle Ages and 1870, the word Italy settledinto a single, stable modern meaning. The implication of what I haveargued above is that this is not the case. The advent of the nation-state,with what Croce called its preface in nineteenth-century Nationalism,has given Italy a concrete political referent. It has also become a neces-sary point of identification for the citizens of a state that presides overwhat is now one of the worlds most powerful economies. But by beingtied in with discourses of political and cultural nationhood in this way,the notion of Italy has become the stake and instrument in a great manyforms of antagonism and division: all Italians have a notion of Italy, butthey do not all agree on what that notion means, particularly in the polit-ical context. Italy is, as it has always been, a geographical expression (asMetternich famously remarked). It is an expression, as I have suggested,with a profusion of different meanings across time and space. Yet, for allits slipperiness, the word Italy can have real effects, as Metternichhimself was well aware, and as the case of Alfredo Rocco demonstrates.

  For Benedetto Croce, facts are to history as individual words are topoetry: between them lies the synthesizing work of the mind. It is in thedomain of ideas, rather than in the material realm, that the unity of ahistory is to be found; it resides in the historians morally driven mentalprocess. I would agree with Croce that, as a historiographical category,Italy is not authorized by any form of intrinsic unity in all that it denotes.However, there is more than the intellect of the historian holding it inplace. However selective, mythical, muddled or contested notions of Italycan be, some of them have come to form the discursive premises of a wholerange of national institutions institutions which, in their turn, author-ize the currency of the term. In their own small way, university depart-ments of Italian Studies are part of this process. As we have seen, notionsof Italy also shape the way citizens relate to those institutions, even whenthey are very critical of them. Italy does not objectively define a self-con-tained field of study. Yet it is still an immensely important plane of analy-sis for many reasons, not least because it legitimates and delimits theadministrative influence of a state.

  notes

  1. Benedetto Croce, Recenti controversie intorno allunit della storia dItalia, in Lastoria come pensiero e come azione, 2nd edn (Bari: Laterza, 1938), pp. 30720.

  32 John Dickie

• 2. David Abulafia, The Two Italies. Economic Relations between the Norman Kingdom of Sicilyand the Northern Communes (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 5.3. David Abulafia, Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia in the Medieval MediterraneanEconomy, in Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 11001500 (Aldershot:Variorum, 1993), pp. 132 (p. 8).4. Luciano Cafagna, Dualismo e sviluppo nella storia dItalia (Venice: Marsilio, 1989), p. 321.5. Charlotte Gower Chapman, Milocca. A Sicilian Village (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973).6. Simonetta Soldani (ed.), Nazione e Stato nazionale in Italia: crisi di una endiadiimperfetta, Passato e Presente 33 (1994), pp. 1330 (p. 12).7. Maria Serena Sapegno, Italia, Italiani , in A. Asor Rosa (ed.), Letteratura italiana.v: Le Questioni (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 169221 (p. 170).8. David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 18801980 (Manchester UniversityPress, 1990), p. 28.9. James Clifford, On Orientalism, in The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, Mass. andLondon: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 25576 (p. 273).10. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Race et histoire (Paris: Gonthier, 1961), pp. 1617.11. Emilio Gentile, Larchitetto dello stato nuovo: Alfredo Rocco, in Il mito dello statonuovo dallantigiolittismo al fascismo (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1982), pp. 167204 (p. 177).12. Alfredo Rocco, Lamnistia, il disgregamento dello Stato e gli stranieri dItalia(1915), in Scritti e discorsi politici (Milan: Giuffr, 1938), vol. I, pp. 23538 (p. 238).

  further reading

  Antonelli, Roberto, Storia e geografia, tempo e spazio nellindagine letteraria, inLetteratura italiana. Storia e geografia. i: Let medievale. Turin: Einaudi, 1987,pp. 526.

  Bethemont, Jacques and Pelletier, Jean, Italy. A Geographical Introduction. London:Longman, 1983.

  Bollati, Giulio, Litaliano, in R. Romano and C. Vivanti (eds.), Storia dItalia. i: I caratterioriginali, vol. ii. Turin: Einaudi, 1972, pp. 9491022.

  della Porta, Donatella, Milan: Immoral Capital, in S. Hellman and G. Pasquino (eds.),Italian Politics: A Review, vol. viii. London: Pinter, 1993, pp. 98115

  Dionisotti, Carlo, Varia fortuna di Dante, in Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana.Turin: Einaudi, 1967, pp. 20542.

  Regioni e letteratura, in R. Romano and C. Vivanti (eds.), Storia dItalia. v: I docu-menti, vol. ii. Turin: Einaudi, 1973, pp. 137395.

  Galasso, Giuseppe, Introduzione. LItalia come problema storiografico. Turin: UTET, 1979.Gambi, Lucio, I valori storici dei quadri ambientali, in R. Romano and C. Vivanti (eds.),

  Storia dItalia. i: I caratteri originali, vol. i. Turin: Einaudi, 1972, pp. 360.Pizzorno, Alessandro, Introduzione: La corruzione nel sistema politico, in Donatella

  della Porta, Lo scambio occulto. Casi di corruzione politica in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino,1992, pp. 1373.

  Tucci, Ugo, Credenze geografiche e cartografia, in R. Romano and C. Vivanti (eds.),Storia dItalia. v: I documenti, vol. i. Turin: Einaudi, 1973, pp. 4785.

  Waley, Daniel, The Italian City-Republics, 2nd edn. London: Longman, 1978.Zamagni, Vera, The Economic History of Italy 18601990. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.

  The notion of Italy 33

• A N N A C E N T O B U L L

  2

  Social and political cultures in Italy from 1860 tothe present day

  Introduction

  It is almost inevitable for historians to look back upon the past with aneye on the present, partly because they are influenced by later develop-ments, and partly because contemporary debates relating to culture,politics and society actively lead them to reconsider past events in anew light, bringing out analogies with and meanings for the present.The collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War have accen-tuated this tendency. This is not surprising, since the most pressingissues facing Italy today, namely, regional disparities, the need forelectoral and institutional change (the creation of a Second Republic),clientelism and corruption, and national unity itself, can be consid-ered as the resurfacing of unresolved problems. Now that the perioddominated by the Cold War can be encapsulated within a precise timespan, and the transition to a Second Republic is proving less smooththan might have been expected in the early 1990s, it is as if Italys polit-ical agenda is being directly linked to concerns which predate thatperiod and go back to the process of unification. One of these debatesfocuses on questions of nationhood and identity, questions whichItaly is asking together with the rest of Europe, since, almost inevita-bly, such matters become prominent at moments of great politicalchange. Nevertheless, in Italy these questions seem to revolve specifi-cally around the countrys failure to create a collective national iden-tity. According to the sociologist Roberto Cartocci, Italys present-daytask is still the one dAzeglio succinctly summarized after unificationin his famous saying: Italy is made; now the Italians must be made.1Closely related to this is the issue of clientelism and corruption, which

• also appears as a constant of Italian history since unification, andwhich is judged to stem from the poor degree of legitimacy of theItalian state.

  Current debates on nationhood, clientelism and familism are onceagain privileging a long-term view of historical change. As Putnamwrote, with reference to the uneven performance of the Italian regionalsystem: Institutional history moves very slowly. Time is measured indecades.2 This view of history has been successfully applied to otherfields, including political parties and party systems, social and politicalcultures and economic structures. The tendency of scholars of contem-porary Italy to look backwards has now met with a comparable ten-dency on the part of historians of nineteenth-century Italy to lookforward:

  The new research has begun to sketch out elements of continuity that

  link Liberal Italy not to Mussolinis Fascist state but to the Italian

  republic that took shape after 1947 [. . .] the new Italian historiography

  has established new perspectives that will widen the debate on the

  course of contemporary Italian history both synchronically and

  diachronically, opening the ways to broader comparative exploration

  and bringing into new focus the elements of continuity in the longer-

  term formation of the state and society in Italy.3

  Alongside this long-term view of history, recent studies of Italyalso seem dominated by a pre-eminence of culture over structure. Inparticular, the nature and functioning of the countrys economic andpolitical set-up are judged to depend on the prevailing collective orien-tations of its citizens. Interpersonal trust and co-operation underpinsuccessful socio-political institutions; conversely, distrust and particu-larism largely explain institutional malfunctioning. In a way thisapproach is not surprising, precisely because cultural values and beliefschange only gradually. Once established, these orientations have amomentum of their own, and may act as autonomous influences onpolitics and economics long after the events that gave rise to them.4Culture, however, at least in the form of a groups aspirations and col-lective will, is also seen as capable of imposing a rapid pace on politicalchange in the face of socio-economic continuity. What the two view-points have in common is the idea that socio-economic, political andcultural change need not be synchronized. On the contrary, there canbe serious dislocations between them. This can be seen clearly in the

  36 Anna Cento Bull

• case of Italy. The starting-point of a history of modern Italy is generallythe countrys unification, achieved in 1860 and completed in 1870 withthe conquest of Rome. These dates, which used to indicate the end ofone historical period and the beginning of another, are now consideredarbitrary. The drive towards unification, once interpreted as a cumula-tive and converging process involving economic, social and culturalchange, has now been redimensioned and largely reduced to the pow-erful attraction the myth of Nationalism and national identity exer-cised over a relatively small intellectual minority.5 Economically andsocially, but also culturally if we exclude the modernizing lites, therewas much continuity after 1860 with the pre-unification period. Thismeant continuity with the regional states which had previously madeup the peninsula, leading to the existence of significant divisionswithin the newly formed nation-state.

  Subnational divisions can have different origins and natures: theycan be class- or religion-based, or they may reflect the urban/ruraldichotomy. Such cleavages may play a significant role within a nation(one only has to think of an urban/liberal versus a rural/conservativesociety); however, typically, they tend to be fairly uniformly distributedacross the national territory. There can, however, be cases where relig-ious allegiances or the rural/urban dichotomy split a country into twoor more geographical divisions. There are also territorial/culturalcleavages, which are often related to internally cohesive local andregional communities, bent on defending their shared culture andidentity in opposition to the nation-building efforts of a new unitarystate. Class, religious and territorial cleavages are not neatly compart-mentalized but interact with and even reinforce each other in variousways. A nation will be the more successful at fostering a common senseof identity among its people, the more it defuses the danger posed bythe existence of its internal cleavages, in particular, by preventing themfrom developing into rigid politico-ideological divisions.

  The point I want to make is that, after unification, Italy can be char-acterized as a country where dramatic political change clashed withthe relative inertia of pre-existing regional processes of development,and where, therefore, territorial/cultural cleavages were especiallystrong. My analysis of the period 1860 to the present takes this view asits starting-point and looks at the complex interaction betweenculture and structure against a background of both continuity andchange.

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 37

• Socio-economic structures and political cultures afterunification

  Italian unification was achieved late compared to other European coun-tries. Once the process started, however, it developed fairly rapidly.Favourable international circumstances, especially in the decade185060, contributed to its successful outcome.It has even been claimedthat Italian Unification had little to do with Liberal or Nationalist plans[. . .] Unification was a product of French and Piedmontese territorialambition.6 This judgment is too harsh; however, the patriots wereundoubtedly a small minority, divided between the socially and politi-cally moderate Liberal current, headed by the Piedmontese Count ofCavour, and the democratic and Republican wing, led by Mazzini. Thepredominance of the northern-based moderate Liberals gave the move-ment a degree of cultural and ideological homogeneity, even thoughLiberalism itself had been put into practice only in Piedmont, in theyears preceding unification. The result was that a fairly homogeneoussubgroup found itself presiding over a non-homogeneous country.

  The primary task of Italys new Liberal rulers consisted in the con-struction of a sense of nationhood, a task made very difficult by the factthat only a small percentage of the population spoke Italian (as opposedto regional dialect), and could read or write. The lites were able to com-municate with each other and the process of Italian unification hadlargely been the result of their efforts, with some participation on thepart of the lower-middle class and the urban-based artisans, but onlysporadic and by no means welcome to the lites participation of therural masses, who formed the vast majority of the population. The cultu-ral distance between the lites and the masses was one factor militatingagainst nationhood. However, socio-economic structures also differedwidely within Italy and cut across both the lites and the masses,accounting for strong regional and subregional cultures. These regionaldifferences can be briefly described.

  In the hilly areas below the Alps and in central Italy share-croppingwas the dominant land-tenure system. Share-cropping families weregenerally extended ones, usually under the authority of a male head.Seasonal emigration abroad and employment in the textile sector forwomen and children complemented work done on the land. The maincultural trait associated with the peasantry in this type of structure isfamily-centred social stability. Relations between share-croppers and

  38 Anna Cento Bull

• landowners were largely characterized by a culture of paternalism,which often involved a third party: the Church and the parish priest. Inthe eyes of the landowners this was a highly desirable system, guarantee-ing both industrial (mainly textile) and rural production and, above all,social peace.

  In the Po Valley, share-cropping was also fairly widespread; however,a process of proletarianization of the share-croppers had already begun.This was the most fertile area of Italy, where the development of a systemof capitalist intensive farming with large tenant farmers employinglandless labourers was accompanied by innovative irrigation and drain-age schemes. Specific cultural traits developed among the regions peas-antry: collective strategies alongside family strategies, a potential for thecreation of stable workers organizations, but also greater social instabil-ity. As for the tenant farmers, they favoured change to a larger extentthan the landowners in the other regions. There was little trade-off inthis area between productivity and social peace. As a result, relationsbetween labourers and tenant farmers were characterized by direct con-frontation. Up to the 1880s it was Anarchism, based on the idea of spon-taneous rebellion against authority and the state, which dominated thepolitical culture of the local labourers and impoverished share-croppers.Later it was Socialism, with its emphasis on trade-union organizationand municipal government, which prevailed.

  In the South, the latifundia system, consisting of very large estatesextensively cultivated and absentee landowners, was the dominantsocio-economic model. The peasants were land hungry, rather thanlandless, since they often possessed a tiny plot of land, which was insuffi-cient to meet their needs. They were therefore employed on the latifun-dia on an irregular basis. This involved long-distance travel, the use ofrudimentary tools, and working in isolation. Associated with the lati-fundia system was a peasant culture of instability, fear and mutual dis-trust, where interpersonal contacts were often limited to the village, alarge agglomeration of houses lacking the most elementary forms ofhygiene and where humans mixed with animals. This culture is oftenreferred to as semi-feudal, a rather inappropriate term given thetransition of the latifundia system to a market-oriented economy.Nevertheless, the term does convey a sense of the social distance betweenlandowners and peasants, as well as an idea of the often destructive,short-lived, pre-modern violence of the peasants. Brigandage, amixture of social revolt and widespread banditry affecting the southern

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 39

• regions between 1861 and 1866, is the most famous example of this typeof violence. Far from expressing any specific social or political demands,the unrest showed a destructiveness which increased in brutality themore the peasants hopes for land redistribution following unificationwere thwarted.

  Clearly, regional differences in 1860 were considerable. We cannotspeak of one landowning class or of one peasant class. To the subnationalinter-class divisions, therefore, we need to add regionally and evenlocally based intra-class cultural differences. The Italian governmentsafter unification had to strive for the formation of a national identity bytrying to reconcile the masses to the lites (the paese reale, i.e., the vastmass of the population excluded from citizenship, to the paese legale, thelegal and institutional system devised for a small minority), but also thelites to themselves. That the masses too were composed of vastly differ-ent social groups mattered less in the early decades, since these cleavageshad not yet fed into political groups and/or demands. Potentially moredangerous was the split between Church and state, symbolized by theItalian troops entering Rome by force on 20 September 1870 and by thePope, Pius IX, declaring himself a prisoner of the Italian state. TheCatholic Church commanded support among all social groups and couldhave organized a political force in open conflict with the governingLiberals. Instead, the Pope forbade all Catholics to participate in thepolitical life of the new state, thus opting for a policy of isolationism. Onthe other hand, the Churchstate divide and the supranational nature ofthe Catholic Church deprived the ruling lites of a powerful unifyingnational culture, in contrast to those Protestant countries, such as Britainand Scandinavia, where the Church had been successfully integratedinto the nation-state.

  In this context, Italian Liberalism enjoyed a fragile but politicallyunchallenged existence in the first decades after unification. The suf-frage was extremely restricted, since only 2% of the population, or600,000 adult males, had the right to vote. Despite this, two politicalparties managed to emerge, the Right and the Left, which had their rootsin the pre-unification division between those who favoured a monarchi-cal and Liberal Italy, and those who supported Mazzinis ideals of aRepublican and democratic state. As was to be expected, given therestricted suffrage, the two parties did not differ substantially in termsof the social origins of their supporters. Rather, they reproduced the ter-ritorial divisions between the countrys lites.

  40 Anna Cento Bull

• The governments of the Historic Right (186176), led by PrimeMinisters of Piedmontese origins (such as Urbano Rattazzi andGiovanni Lanza), or from Tuscany and Emilia (such as Bettino Ricasoliand Marco Minghetti), represented primarily the landowning classes ofthe North and Centre. They believed in the rule of law, long-term educa-tion of the lower classes and, somewhat reluctantly, administrative cen-tralization. The last policy was largely embraced as a result of southernbrigandage and the grave danger of national disintegration that thisappeared to pose for the new state. The government was worried aboutbrigandage turning into an organized political revolt in favour of thedeposed southern monarchy, and decided to intervene with drasticmeasures, including the imposition of martial law. In other words, theabrupt awareness of deep territorial and social divisions and the fear thatthese could translate into centrifugal political forces convinced theruling lites that if harmonization was not to come as a spontaneousprocess of social and cultural bonding, then it had to be imposed fromabove. It is ironic, therefore, that when the governments of the HistoricRight fell, this was largely as a result of the continuing strength of sub-national boundaries, particularly of regional divisions within the lites.It was a split between the Piedmontese and the Tuscan members ofParliament that precipitated the fall in 1874, while the pressure exer-cised by the southern deputies to end their exclusion from governmentalso played a part.

  In 1876 the New Left (so-called to distinguish it from Mazzinis oldDemocrats) was securely in government, under the leadership ofAgostino Depretis, a Piedmontese who had taken part in the 1860Garibaldi expedition to Sicily. The Left had now moved a long way fromMazzinis ideas, and was mainly in favour of a loose, pragmatic, down-to-earth political programme, as opposed to Mazzinis idealistic andRomantic vision of a nation where the people were united and indivis-ible. The governments of the New Left (187687) took on board the inter-ests of the southern landowners and of the professional classes. Thelatter were numerous throughout Italy but were especially influential inthe South. Depretis was able to devise a specific solution to Italys socialand cultural divisions, namely, the parliamentary practice known as tras-formismo, which consisted of gaining a majority in Parliament on thebasis of private agreements with individual deputies or groups of depu-ties. Thus political Liberalism in Italy assumed a peculiarly distortedcharacter. There was no alternation of parties in power, only reshuffles

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 41

• within the established majority, with groups of deputies alternatelyjoining and leaving the majority. Trasformismo was heavily criticized atthe time as a source of corruption and political stagnation, but it wasobviously a direct consequence of the fragmented character of Italysruling and middle classes which required of its political leaders skills ofmediation and power-broking, rather than the ability of purposefulleadership stemming from a unitary vision of the state. This wasreflected in the social composition of Parliament and governments after1876, when landowners and members of the military lite were gradu-ally replaced by professional politicians, mainly lawyers and journalists,who were especially adept at persuading and mediating. Trasformismowas in this context a recognition that the new Italian state lacked legiti-macy in the eyes of the middle classes as well as in the eyes of the peasantmajority. The extension of the suffrage in 1882, enfranchising almost 7per cent of the population (slightly more than 2 million adult males),had, if anything, aggravated the situation. An increased electoratemeant increased demands on the state.

  From Crispi to Giolitti: old and new cleavages, 18871914

  With Francesco Crispi, Prime Minister from 1887 to 1891 and again from1893 to 1896, we enter a new period of Italian history, characterized by adetermined effort to forge a national culture based on patriotism andcolonialism. Political compromise and trasformismo faded into the back-ground, replaced by authoritarianism and militarism.

  Compared to his predecessors unifying projects, Crispis was lessproblematic in relation to the lites. The introduction of protectionisttariffs in 1887 was due largely to the perceived need to accelerate Italyseconomic development and promote industrialization. Nevertheless thetariffs also united the lites by favouring northern industrialists, thelandowners and tenant farmers of the Po Valley, and wheat producers(including the southern landowners, who were also given fiscal incen-tives to compensate for export losses). They all now had a financial stakein the Italian nation.

  In relation to the lower classes, however, Crispis political and cultu-ral vision was complicated both by economic crises and by the form-ation of two subnational political cultures, Socialism and politicalCatholicism. The Socialist subculture was strongest among the impover-ished share-croppers and landless labourers of the Po Valley, where it

  42 Anna Cento Bull

• started to absorb the Anarchist tradition, whereas the Catholic subcul-ture developed among the share-croppers of Lombardy and the Veneto.Each subculture put up a defence of the local/regional society against theprocesses of modernization, urbanization and proletarianization, seenas endorsed by the Liberal state. The Socialists offered their supportersthe protection of increasingly effective workers leagues and later devel-oped farming co-operatives. The Catholics guaranteed the continuationof paternalistic practices, promoting self-help measures, rural banks andcharity schemes among the northern share-croppers. The developmentof these two subcultures reinforced subnational boundaries in two ways.On the one hand, it led to the creation of two mutually exclusive ideolo-gies. Socialism was strongly anti-clerical, partly because it inherited theanti-clerical tradition of the regions which had historically been part ofthe Papal States, and partly because it developed almost as a religiousmovement. Catholicism was both anti-Socialist and anti-Liberal; indeed,Pope Pius IX had condemned both doctrines with the publication, in1864, of the Syllabus of Errors. On the other hand, while seemingly blur-ring the territorial conflict, the ideological conflict actually provided itwith clear-cut collective identities and symbols based upon an idea ofcommunity. Admittedly, the type of community constructed by univer-salistic ideologies such as Socialism and Catholicism is supposedlydevoid of a territorial context, but, in concrete historical terms, it hasoften coincided with a territorial community. Thus, for industrialworkers in urban areas, the Socialist community tended to equate withboth a class and a territorial unit (a factory, a neighbourhood, a suburb),while for agricultural workers in the Po Valley it became increasinglyequated with a region. It is not a coincidence that the Italian SocialistParty itself, founded in 1892, was born out of a fusion of distinctlyregional Socialist movements.

  Crispis attempted solution to these growing class (and regional) divi-sions was to appeal directly to the lower classes over the heads of theirpolitical representatives. Had the economy been on an upward trend,and had his expansionist and colonialist foreign policy been successful,his strategy might very well have proved workable. As it was, the defeatof the Italian army at Adua on 1 March 1896, during a military expeditionagainst Ethiopia intended to turn that country into an Italian protecto-rate, brought humiliation and embarrassment to the government, andforced Crispi to resign, thereby signalling the end of his vision of astrong unitary state.

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 43

• After Adua, there followed four years of uncertainty and instability,with direct class conflicts and disagreement within the lites as to whichpolitical strategy to implement. The state repeatedly resorted to rulingby force, as when the army opened fire upon demonstrators in Milan inMay 1898. However, it was unable to stop the opposition Socialists,Republicans and Radicals from increasing its votes at the general elec-tions of 1897 and 1900. Internal divisions became even more prominentwhen, on 28 July 1900, the king, Humbert I, was assassinated by anAnarchist. With the left-wing Liberal Giovanni Giolitti (Prime Minister,with only brief interruptions, between 1901 and 1914) the countryreturned to a renewed and refined system of trasformismo. The systemwas extended to political parties as well as to deputies and groups ofdeputies. Unlike Crispi, Giolitti accepted that political relations with thelower classes had to take place through the medium of their representa-tives: Socialist and Catholic trade-union and political organizations. Asfor the Socialist Party, Crispis iron rule and the states repeated use offorce at the turn of the century convinced many of its leaders, as well asits founder, Filippo Turati, of the need to collaborate with left-wingLiberals and settle for a minimalist programme of social and politicalreforms, including universal male suffrage, proportional representa-tion, civil liberties, nationalization of public utilities, and social and pro-tective measures for workers.

  What allowed trasformismo to resurface was economic growth.Between 1896 and 1913 Italy experienced her first industrial take-off.The economy grew at an annual rate of around 6 per cent between 1896and 1907, while new sectors, such as the engineering, chemical, metal-working and hydro-electric industries and the banking sector, rapidlyexpanded, leading to the development of the so-called industrial trian-gle of Turin, Genoa and Milan. Economic growth allowed Giolitti tomediate on a much larger scale than in the days of Depretis. His aim wasto modernize Italian society and narrow the wide gap between thevarious social groups within the general framework provided by protec-tionism. Giolitti was genuinely convinced that the state had to main-tain an impartial role in labour disputes, but also that it had to adopt amuch more proactive attitude towards the workers. To this end heestablished a Ministry for Labour in 1902, and encouraged prefects tothink of their function less in terms of law and order and more in termsof devising ways to alleviate and improve social and economic condi-tions. The Socialists were granted many of the economic and social

  44 Anna Cento Bull

• reforms they advocated. They were also rewarded with, and largelysettled for, concessions for their followers (such as farming co-operatives subsidized by the state and centrally funded public works),as well as local and regional political power. The Socialist Partys politi-cal constituency, in fact, was somewhat limited. The Party was caughtbetween its aspiration to represent the interests of all workers and itsfear that the southern peasant masses and women represented deeplyconservative groups, which were not ready for emancipation. Despite agrowing Feminist movement at the turn of the century, the SocialistParty refused to demand the vote for women or press for the introduc-tion of divorce. The Socialist Partys influence was limited largely tomale skilled workers, landless labourers and proletarianized share-croppers. Women textile workers, numbering more than one million inthe 1890s, were generally unorganized or had started to join Catholicorganizations. As for the Catholics, they were also offered, and accepted,concrete rewards for their followers, together with an understandingthat the government would not introduce anti-clerical legislation. Intheir northern strongholds the Liberal deputies began to be replaced byCatholic-approved ones.

  In the South, however, the governments alliance with the absenteelandowners meant that the state remained a guarantor of the existingsocial structure, with only minimal concessions to the lower classes.Here the disorganized character of the peasantry allowed Giolitti to relyupon the use of force. Mass emigration abroad also came to the rescue,representing an individualistic response embedded in the culture of iso-lation and insecurity of the southern peasantry (and to a lesser extent inthe family-centred culture of the share-cropping regions). Giolitti madefull use of the southern deputies, just as his predecessors had done,exploiting to his advantage the mutually exclusive nature of Italyssocio-political cultures. Thanks to his pivotal role and to the regionalentrenchment of his opponents, Liberalism continued to dominatenational politics.

  Towards the end of the Giolittian period, however, all three politicalcultures, namely, Liberalism, Catholicism and Socialism, had becomeregionalized, with a fourth, Nationalism, aspiring to become the new,truly national culture. Italian Nationalism started as a cultural and liter-ary movement, particularly around the Tuscan-based review Il Regno(The Kingdom, 19035), developing into a political association in 1910.Its ideology and aspirations, at first varied and confused, became

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 45

• increasingly well defined, with the aim of detaching the idea of thenation from its Liberal-democratic cradle. In particular, individual andpolitical liberty became subordinated to the need to turn the nation intoa powerful and cohesive body. Indeed the close link between Liberalismand Nationalism which had characterized the Risorgimento was turnedby the new movement into one of cynical expediency, no more than aclever tactic to achieve unification.

  Nationalisms aim was to overcome both territorial and class cleav-ages. To the subnational and supranational communities constructedby the Socialist and Catholic ideologies, it opposed an imagined com-munity which explicitly coincided with the nation. It strove to over-come the class divide born out of the industrialization process bydeveloping a national industrial culture and appealing directly toboth employers and employees with the vision of a corporatist and pro-ductivist state, as well as with the allure of colonial expansion. Thedesire on the part of the Nationalists to overcome class divisions shouldnot make us overlook the fact that their idea of the nation was deeplyclass-based and undemocratic, being conceived not as a community ofcitizens, but as providing the middle classes with a powerful politicalinstrument and cultural identity in an age increasingly dominated byclass conflicts.7 Around this core project the Nationalists wanted tocreate a new, conservative and openly anti-Socialist political alliance, towhich pro-national Liberals and Catholics would eventually turn.Within the envisaged nation of unequal citizens, the lower classes, par-ticularly industrial workers, were offered a politically subordinate,though materially advantageous, position. Industrial workers,however, did not appear very receptive to Nationalisms advances,remaining loyal to the Socialist and Catholic subcultures. In addition,Nationalism failed to take account of rural Italy. Nonetheless, the newmovement succeeded to a large extent in modifying the politicalclimate of the country.

  Changes in Italian society during the Giolittian period help us tounderstand the new cultural and political climate. At the turn of thecentury, Italy was predominantly a rural country. Manufacturing indus-try was relatively well developed in the North; however, it was predomi-nantly made up of textile production and only partially built aroundmodern mechanized plants. Protectionism encouraged the growth ofheavy industry, linked to the state and to the new German-style mixedbanks, which carried out the dual role of commercial and merchant

  46 Anna Cento Bull

• banks. A new, more aggressive and determined generation of industrial-ists emerged, who came to consider Giolittis mediating skills and non-interfering attitude in labour disputes as a hindrance to Italys economicdevelopment, particularly following the slowing down of industrialgrowth after the general depression of 19078. The hardening of theemployers attitude was paralleled in the Socialist camp by the domi-nance of the intransigent wing of the Socialist Party at the 1912 NationalCongress. Changes in the internal composition of the labour force, witha shift away from well-paid, highly trained skilled workers towards amore standardized, lower-paid unskilled workforce, contributed to aweakening of the reformist wing of the Socialist Party and Trade-UnionConfederation and the concomitant emergence of a revolutionarySyndicalist wing.

  The confrontational and increasingly anti-government stance ofboth employers and workers organizations marked the end of Giolittisversion of trasformismo. Giolitti turned to all his opponents for support.In 1911 he went to war with Turkey to conquer Libya, in an attempt toplacate the Nationalists. The war was both popular and successful, butit had the effect of strengthening the resolve of the Nationalists andalienating the Socialists. In 1912 a new electoral law was introduced,based on almost universal male suffrage, as a concession to theSocialists. The following year general elections took place and Giolittiresorted to an electoral pact with the Catholics. Thanks to this alliance,the Liberals remained in command of a comfortable majority. However,they had to rely increasingly on the South and its corrupt clientelisticcliques of deputies. They also lacked a wide network of supportersacross the country, something which the Nationalists, on the otherhand, were openly striving for, with some degree of success, particularlyin the North. The Liberal Party was a rather loose amalgam of differenttendencies and currents as well as individual personalities, and it alsoincluded a group of young Liberals who had strong sympathy for theNationalists.

  At the start of the new century, therefore, Italy was no nearer the for-mation of a national culture than it had been in 1860. Indeed, at thepolitical level there had been something of a setback. Whereas Italys sec-ularized middle classes had previously been represented by only oneparty, they were now split between the Liberal Party and the NationalistAssociation. Nor had class-based cleavages superseded territorial ones.This was to a certain extent inevitable, since industrialization only

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 47

• affected some areas of the country and regional rural structures per-sisted in others.

  The First World War provided Nationalism with an important plat-form. The Nationalists believed that participation in the conflictwould impose a sense of identity and a strong discipline upon allItalians, thereby justifying a return to an authoritarian style ofgovernment. To this end the Nationalists rallied around the interven-tionist cause against those who advocated neutrality. They managedto become the fulcrum of an alliance which included ex-Socialists likeMussolini, revolutionary Syndicalists, right-wing Liberals andCatholics and representatives of big business, as well as some demo-crats like Salvemini and reformist Socialists like Bissolati, whobelieved that the war represented a fight between democratic andauthoritarian nations. An alternative political alliance to Giolittiscoalition system was therefore in place in 191415, although it lacked amass following. When Giolitti resigned in 1914, his political systemcame to an end. He was replaced by the Liberal conservative AntonioSalandra, whose government engaged in secret negotiations with theTriple Entente in March 1915, leading to the Pact of London, whichguaranteed Italian intervention within three months. Thanks to theactivism of the Nationalists, who were able to stage a series of publicdemonstrations in favour of intervention in the war in May 1915, par-liamentary opposition was successfully neutralized. The Pact wasratified and Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915 and onGermany in August 1916.

  Just as Giolittis strategy had resembled, on a much larger scale,Depretiss trasformismo, so Nationalism recreated the political climatewhich had brought Crispi to power under the banner of a unifyingauthoritarian agenda. There was one crucial difference, however, fromCrispis arrival in government. This time it was not just trasformismothat was discredited, but Liberalism itself. By actively encouraging hispolitical opponents and even his own Liberal Party to becomeentrenched around sectoral/territorial interests, and by allowing theparliamentary system to become equated with cheap compromise, aweak executive and a lack of direction, Giolitti had revealedLiberalism, Socialism and Catholicism as incapable of putting forwarda national political programme. The seeds had been sown for a nation-alization of Italian political culture outside the Liberal-democraticframework.

  48 Anna Cento Bull

• Italian Fascism: the creation of a homogeneous nationalculture?

  Two opposing conceptions of the nature of the war and its implicationsfor Italys domestic as well as foreign politics continued to divide theinterventionist front during the conflict. According to people likeSalvemini and Bissolati, the war would strengthen the democratic move-ment and institutions, whereas the Nationalists saw the war purely inimperialistic terms, hoping that it would lead to a more authoritarianstate. Inevitably perhaps, given the need for a strong executive to directthe war effort, there was a trend towards the type of state envisaged bythe Nationalists. Thus committees made up of representatives of thepolitical, military and industrial establishment were empowered tomake decisions behind closed doors. The trend had appeared justified inthe face of military setbacks, and social and political unrest at home.

  After the First World War the most pressing political issue was how torevitalize Parliament and adjust the political system to the rapid trans-formation of the country into a mass society. In the South, traditionalpolitical alliances appeared shattered: thousands of peasants invadedlarge estates, asking the government to fulfil promises of land distribu-tion it had made during the war. In northern and central Italy the share-croppers showed increasing militancy, and strikes and other forms ofprotest became widespread. Trade-union membership soared. Thesewere not problems unique to Italy. Almost everywhere in Europe exist-ing political systems had to adapt to the deep social changes broughtabout by the war and respond to the increasing demands for politicalrepresentation by the working classes. Other countries, however, such asGreat Britain, achieved a relatively smooth transition to a post-war set-tlement. In Italy, the changes were too abrupt to permit such a smoothtransition, and the countrys political system was too immature toabsorb the new divisions, while the decision-making process hadshifted further away from Parliament during the war.

  Another reason why Parliament was not able to mediate between thevarious demands put forward by conflicting social groups was that thetwo political parties which at first most benefited, in terms of membersand votes, from the social changes brought by the war the SocialistParty and the newly formed Catholic Party (Partito Popolare, PopularParty) were not interested in taking the initiative and transformingthe old Liberal political system into a parliamentary democracy based on

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 49

• mass parties. Neither wanted to form a coalition government by collabo-rating with the other, for two main reasons. First, the ideologies of thetwo parties were incompatible. Secondly, they both spoke largely for aregional constituency, and failed to think in terms of national politics. In1919 the Socialist Party was the nearest thing Italy had to a modern massparty. Yet even this party was taken unawares by the political mobiliza-tion of rural social groups. Furthermore, the Socialist Party had devel-oped a dual nature, being divided internally between a reformist wing,which looked back to the Giolittian system, and a revolutionary wing,which looked forward to a Soviet-style revolution. The Catholic Party,founded in 1919, was also a mass party, at least when compared to theLiberals, but it was even more regionally based than its main rival, andlacked the necessary expertise and cohesion to make Parliament work ona new basis. It was divided into three currents: the left wing, represent-ing the interests of the small landowners and share-croppers of thenorthern regions; the right wing, representing the interests of the largelandowners, whose paternalism was being threatened by the increasingmilitancy of their share-croppers; and the centre, which spent most of itsenergy trying to keep the party together. In addition, the Catholic Partydid not enjoy the full backing of the Vatican, which considered it bothtoo radical and too secular, thereby depriving it of an important sourceof legitimacy.

  The mutual exclusiveness of the Catholic and Socialist subcultures,and the worsening of the class-based cleavage in both the rural and theindustrial sectors, opened the way for Fascism. Mussolini was quick tograsp the potential of the Nationalist programme for achieving politicalpower, but he was also aware of the need to appeal to rural Italy and torespond to the mobilization of both industrial and rural workers.Nationalism was by no means dead after the war. The myth of mutilatedvictory in other words, the feeling that Italy was being unfairly treatedat the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 refuelled Nationalist feelings anddiscredited the Liberal ruling class. The division of public opinionbetween interventionists and neutralists persisted after the war, keepingalive those right-wing, anti-parliamentary, anti-Liberal groups whichhad successfully allied themselves with big business before the war.

  Mussolini respun the web of these alliances around his own Fascistmovement, which had been founded in March 1919. More importantly,in the autumn of 1920, his party developed into a mass party of the right.In the Po Valley, in particular, it broke the Socialists hold over labour,

  50 Anna Cento Bull

• collaborating with landowners and large tenant farmers, promisingsupport for those middle strata which were seeking upward socialmobility, and making a systematic use of violence against recalcitrantlabourers. This is known as agrarian Fascism, and, interestingly, it was aregional phenomenon. Consciously or not, Fascism exploited the terri-torial character of its political opponents, and dealt separately with eachone. By concentrating on attacking the Socialists and conspicuouslysparing the Catholic movement, Fascism could appear as an ally of boththe Catholics and the Liberals. When Giolitti briefly resumed office in1920, he assumed he could safely play the right against the left, andturned a blind eye to Fascist violence. He also formed electoral pacts withboth Nationalists and Fascists at the 1921 elections, attempting to revivehis old strategy of bringing extra-parliamentary political movementswithin the Liberal framework. The strategy backfired badly.

  The idea of doing away with parliamentary mediation and compro-mise, of creating a strong authoritarian state bent on imposing nationalunity through a hierarchical and highly disciplined society, in short theidea of doing away with the Liberal institutions altogether, had becomeincreasingly appealing to some sectors of the establishment. Fascismthus became the successful solution to Italys post-war crisis. The way itcame to power shows that it was to a large extent allowed to succeed bydefault. The Liberal governments after Giolitti continued to fail to actagainst its violence, while Mussolini promised a return to law and order.The new Pope, Pius XI, elected in February 1922, distanced himself evenfurther than his predecessor from the Partito Popolare, and appeared tosignal his approval of a government which would include the Fascists.Industrialists and landowners viewed Fascisms anti-Socialist tacticswith favour. In this context, the famous March on Rome of 28 October1922, whereby the Fascist squads were to take over control of the city,was an essentially peaceful affair rather than a coup dtat, and the kinghimself asked Mussolini to lead a coalition government.

  Fascism seemed to possess all the ingredients for succeeding inimposing a national culture on Italy. By reintroducing protectionism in1925, it recemented the socio-economic lites on a long-term basis. Bydestroying Socialist and Catholic organizations in their respectivestrongholds (the latter, with similar tactics to those employed in the PoValley, in 19234), it incorporated their followers into its own structures.Thus Fascist unions replaced Catholic and Socialist ones, a Fascist after-work organization was established, and sport and leisure associations

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 51

• became largely a Fascist prerogative. By allying with the Church as aresult of the Lateran Agreement of 11 February 1929, Fascism gainedlegitimacy and neutralized Catholic public opinion. The rift betweenChurch and state was officially over, and the 1929 Plebiscite marked thisnew phase with the Church openly inviting Catholics to support thergime. Finally, with the introduction of a rudimentary welfare state inthe 1930s, Fascism extended the role of the state with the aim of reducingthe importance of the Church and making families more dependent onpublic agencies. And yet its unifying project failed.

  There are at least three reasons why Fascism achieved only a superfi-cial homogenization of Italian society and culture. First, economicfactors. Following the revaluation of the lira in 1927, there was a partialrecession in the late 1920s, followed by the much more serious crisis ofthe early 1930s. The formation of an inter-class industrial culture, whichFascism had borrowed from Nationalism, depended quite heavily onindustrial workers participating in the benefits of industrial expansion,particularly in a regime which ruled out free unions and strikes. Despitedisagreements among historians, it seems safe to say that industrialwages, from 1927 up to the mid 1930s, at best remained stable and atworst decreased substantially, leaving workers at most lukewarmtowards Fascism and the idea of industrial collaboration for the sake ofthe nation. Second, the myth of the land and of rural Italy, perhapsincautiously embraced by Fascism, and leading to promises of land tothe peasants and highly publicized policies such as the 1925 battle forwheat to make Italy self-sufficient in grain production, was increasinglyexposed for what it was just a myth. In particular, the strategy of sup-porting upwardly mobile small farmers and share-croppers in theirquest for land turned sour, again as a result of the recession, with manynewly created small landowners falling increasingly into debt in the late1920s and 1930s. Third, welfare state provisions were only modest inscope and bypassed large sections of society, while the shift to a nuclearfamily partially dependent on state support was both slow and patchy,allowing social networks and family strategies to remain dominant, andleaving the state in the position of a distant actor.

  By 1943 Fascism was totally discredited. A deeply unpopular interven-tion in the war on the side of Germany and badly fought military cam-paigns brought down Mussolini in July 1943, after the Allies had landedin Sicily. Following Mussolinis downfall, the king, Victor Emmanuel III,nominated Marshal Badoglio as the new Prime Minister, while the

  52 Anna Cento Bull

• ex-Duce was arrested. Badoglio initiated talks with the Allies, signing anarmistice on 3 September which was announced on the 8th, but whichwas not preceded by any military preparation for war against Germany.Leaving the Italian army in disarray and the population in deep confu-sion, the king and Badoglio fled to Brindisi, under the protection of theAllies. On 12 September, Mussolini was liberated by the Germans fromhis prison on the Gran Sasso mountain, taken to Germany, and finallybrought back to Italy on 23 September, where he set up a Fascist republic the Repubblica Sociale Italiana around Sal, on Lake Garda. TheRepublic attracted the support of the most fanatical Fascist leaders, andfrom the beginning was openly and brutally managed by the Germans.The country ended up divided between the South, which was under theAllied military government, and the Centre and North, occupied by theGermans and experiencing a Resistance movement dominated byCommunist partisan organizations. This movement was viewed withdistrust by the Allies, particularly Great Britain, which favoured contin-uation with the pre-Fascist moderate Liberal system rather than anyradical democratization of the country. Collaboration between the parti-sans and the Allies was therefore uneasy; as early as 1944, the Allies beganpreparing for the post-war period, which meant taking seriously intoconsideration the political future of Italy and especially the possibility ofa Communist-led revolution. The ideological conflict within Italy wasmerging with the ideological conflict between East and West.

  Italys political cultures after 1945

  After the collapse of Fascism, Italys superficial gloss of homogenizationdisappeared to reveal persisting cultural and structural differences. Theold Catholic and Socialist subcultures resurfaced in the north-easternregions and in the Po Valley respectively, against a process of deteriora-tion of the rural structures out of which they had originated in the latenineteenth century. Such a process had started under Fascism, and wasto accelerate in the 1950s and 1960s. In these regions the economic andsocial structure was undergoing change, while the political cultureremained largely unchanged. Even though Socialism in the Po Valleywas being increasingly replaced by Communism, the two ideologies per-formed a similar function, in that each was organized around a territo-rial network and offered supporters a strong collective identity. Thedislocation between structure and culture, however, was more apparent

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 53

• than real. The Catholic and Socialist/Communist subcultures, in fact,not only successfully adapted to socio-economic change, but alsoactively seconded the aspirations of the rural share-croppers and labour-ers, by offering them the possibility of social mobility through small-scale, small-business capitalism. The result was a fairly homogeneoussocio-economic structure in both regions, accompanied by persistingpolitical and ideological divisions.

  After 1945, however, the subcultural and territorial nature of politicalCatholicism and Communism had become less prominent due to theincreasingly national and international roles these two parties and theirideologies were playing. In the case of the Communist Party, participa-tion in the Resistance movement, its organizational role in the southernpeasants agitations of the 1940s, and the abandonment of its anti-clerical tradition, greatly contributed to overcoming the territorial andsectoral limitations of the pre-Fascist Socialist Party. The newly formedChristian Democratic Party also enjoyed a national standing. Unlike thepre-Fascist Partito Popolare, it enjoyed the full support of the Vatican,since it was politically moderate and its leaders had been formed withinthe ranks of trusted Catholic organizations. It also gained the backing ofinfluential conservative lites, and in the 1950s it replaced the southernlandowners and deputies with a centralized party machinery. Italy, atlast, appeared on the way to overcoming its regional divisions, with boththe Catholic and Communist movements enjoying support throughoutthe peninsula. Class-based subcultures, on the other hand, were just asstrong as in the past. However, in this, Italy was not alone. Indeed, theimmediate post-war period in Italy was characterized by a spirit ofnational consciousness and solidarity, in the name of anti-Fascism.Between 1945 and 1947 the country was ruled by governments ofnational unity, with the participation of all the anti-Fascist parties,including the Socialist and the Communist Parties. In an atmosphere ofcompromise and collaboration between the various political forces, aRepublic was established in 1946, a Constitution was agreed during 1947,and an electoral system based on proportional representation and uni-versal suffrage was introduced. Yet the general elections of 18 April 1948were marked by direct confrontation between two electoral and ideo-logical blocks. Communism and anti-Communism, dictatorship anddemocracy, East and West, anti-clericalism and clericalism (one of theCatholics slogans was Either with or against Christ) dominated thepolitical debate, splitting Italy into two opposing camps.

  54 Anna Cento Bull

• What made Italy an anomaly compared to other Western Europeanstates was the Cold War and the K (Communist) factor. The problem wasthat the Socialist Party had not evolved into a Social-Democratic partybut into a Communist Party enjoying close links with Moscow. In theeyes of the Italian political right and its American allies, the CommunistParty was simply a tool in the hands of the Soviet Union, implantedfrom the outside rather than rooted from within. This had two impor-tant consequences. The first was the tacit understanding that theCommunist Party had to be excluded from government at all costs. Thisled to a political system in which there was no alternation in powerbetween two parties or coalitions of parties. The Christian DemocraticParty occupied the centre ground of the political spectrum and was per-manently in government, in coalition with smaller parties situatedeither to its right or to its left. The second consequence, closely linked tothe first, was that the identification of the enemy, compared to theResistance period and the immediate aftermath of the war, shifted per-ceptibly from Fascism to Communism. Thus Italy developed a schizo-phrenic identity and the state became simultaneously the anti-state. Itsofficial culture remained anti-Fascist, celebrating the Resistance, thenew republican and democratic institutions, and the new Constitution.The covert culture was anti-Communist and in important respectsanti-democratic, bent on preserving Fascist laws and policies, delayingthe implementation of the Constitution, making use of Fascist ele-ments in the intelligence services, allying with secret and/or illegalorganizations such as the Mafia and Freemasonry. In the 1970s suspi-cions grew that the state itself or at least important sections of thestate were behind the so-called strategy of tension, consisting of aseries of bomb attacks against innocent civilians in public places, whichwas designed to disseminate disorder and terror in the country with aview to imposing authoritarian rule.

  To return to Italys official and visible culture, it was only with theeconomic miracle of the late 1950s and early 1960s when Italian indus-try expanded at an annual rate of 8 per cent and exports almost doubled the growth of consumerism, the development of the media and partic-ularly that of television, that a secularized, modernized, standardizedsociety and culture began to take shape. It is indeed possible to viewItalys development between the 1950s and the 1980s as a linear processwhereby the subnational boundaries increasingly faded and the integra-tion of the lower classes into the nation-state was finally achieved. The

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 55

• 1970s, in particular, were years of increasing liberalization and secular-ization of Italian society, with new social and pressure groups demand-ing greater civil liberties and new rights for women. Divorce andabortion were legalized and new laws relating to the family were passed.Admittedly, the student protests of 19678, originating from the failuresof the education system but soon turning into a frontal attack againstthe political system, the industrial workers struggles for higher wagesand rights in the autumn of 1969, as well as red terrorism in the 1970s,were all inspired by revolutionary and anti-capitalist ideologies and donot point to social and cultural integration. Nevertheless, they can alsobe seen as the last remnant of a revolutionary Syndicalist, anti-parlia-mentary and anti-Liberal tradition, or, alternatively, as representing con-fused aspirations for greater democracy. In any case, by the 1980s, theforce of protests and agitations had already waned, and the power of theunions had decreased. Proletarian culture had lost much of its appeal,and a new culture based on personal success and individual values hademerged.

  In keeping with the linear interpretation outlined above, thedecades from 1960 to 1990 would appear to have been characterized by aserious dislocation between the political system, which was blockedbecause of the Cold War, and the Italian economy and society, whichwere experiencing great change. After the rigid ideological confronta-tions and authoritarian style of government of the 1950s, the politicalsystem did, in fact, attempt to change, with the opening to the left in1963, i.e. the transition to centreleft coalitions which included theSocialists. One of the objectives of this transition was precisely to widenthe social basis of consensus for the democratic system by implement-ing a programme of social reforms. There was, however, resistance tothe new course in both Italy and the USA, which led to covert operations(such as the threatened coup dtat by General De Lorenzo in 1964) toreverse the political trend towards the left, considered as a dangerouspath towards the legitimation of the Communists. In the 1970s thepolitical system again appeared on the verge of substantial changes,when the Communist Party enjoyed a surge in popularity and distanceditself from Moscow, going as far as accepting Italys membership ofNato. These were the years when Enrico Berlinguer, the leader of theCommunist Party, launched the idea of a historic compromise with theChristian Democrats. Again, covert operations intensified and terror-ism was used to stop the governmental shift to the left. The use of covert

  56 Anna Cento Bull

• operations in the 1970s shows how long-standing the legacy of the ColdWar was in Italy. The opening to the left of 1963, the historic compro-mise of 19769, and the return to centreleft coalition governments inthe 1980s, on the other hand, show how that conflict had also given wayto a particular modus vivendi between the parties, almost like a renewedversion of trasformismo, defined by Lijphart as consensual democracy.8By this term Lijphart refers to a political system where rigid ideologicaland cultural divisions lead the political forces towards a mutual under-standing and an attitude of compromise, which, in turn, leads to politi-cal immobilism. It also led to systematic clientelism and corruption,involving hidden networks of power, including Freemasonry and theMafia.

  It is also possible, however, to take the view that Italys cultural stan-dardization since the 1950s masked the re-creation of regional socio-economic structures and value systems. In a pioneering study, thesociologist Arnaldo Bagnasco identified not one but three Italies: theNorth-West, characterized by conurbations, large industrial plants and awell-developed services sector; the North-East and Centre, characterizedby small-scale industrialization and the persistence of primary andsocial networks; and the South, externally modernized but economi-cally underdeveloped despite massive state intervention.9 The North-West presented a more pluralistic and individualistic political culture;the North-East and Centre the resilience of traditional subcultures; theSouth was still in the grips of a culture of clientelism and patronage.

  The end of the Cold War and the ensuing apparent collapse of the tra-ditional ideologies of Catholicism and Socialism/Communism haverecently brought great changes to the country, but they have notresolved the basic dilemma outlined above. Is Italy a country which hasdeveloped an increasingly homogeneous society and culture, and nowneeds only to establish a majoritarian political system to end its anoma-lous status among Western democracies, or, on the contrary, is it stillgreatly divided economically and socially, and also politically, at least forthe foreseeable future?

  Beyond the Cold War: Italy in the 1990s

  Political developments in Italy since the fall of the Berlin Wall, whichfreed voters from the perceived need to support the ChristianDemocratic Party as a bulwark against Communism, do not help us to

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 57

• answer the question outlined above. After the demise of traditionalpolitical ideologies, and the dnouement of the Italian states culture ofdeception and corruption thanks to the Clean Hands investigation,which unveiled systematic bribes and kickbacks involving politicalparties and private and public companies, political change has been bothrapid and contradictory.

  The success of an entirely new party, Forza Italia (Come On Italy!),founded by the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi at the 1994 political elec-tions, would appear to support the interpretation that Italian voters nowexpress their preferences on the basis of party programmes and candi-dates, rather than ideological allegiances. At another level, it seemshowever that it is precisely the end of the Cold War and the collapse oftraditional ideologies that have exposed the subnational, territorialcharacter of Italys political cultures. The rise of the regionalist andsecessionist Northern League in the north-eastern regions, previouslydominated by the Catholic subculture, the continuing success of the ex-Communist Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Democratic Party of theLeft) in the Po Valley and the central regions, the strength of the ex-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) in the South, point topersisting political divisions along territorial lines.

  The two interpretations outlined above are based upon opposing viewsof both social and cultural change, yet they are not necessarily in contra-diction. We have moved a long way from the idea that economic and socialmodernization is a uniform process, bringing with it cultural homogen-ization. Whereas todays mass media and global-communications tech-nologies reinforce both individualism and the development of anational (but also increasingly global) culture, they may also strengthenthe local dimension. In other words, globalization will not lead to thebreak-up of local and regional communities; indeed, subnational boun-daries, of a socio-economic as well as of a cultural nature, may acquire anew salience. However, perhaps the time has now come to acknowledgethat Italy is not an anomaly in this respect and that a homogeneousnational culture is as elusive in Italy as it is in most other Western states,which have to contend with social fragmentation, ethnic divisions,spatial subcultures and differing economic structures.

  The question, rather, is whether the subnational cultures need neces-sarily feed into the political system. The concept of trust can help usunderstand whether this is likely to happen. As we have seen in thecourse of this chapter, Italians have derived their interpersonal trust

  58 Anna Cento Bull

• largely from territorial and ideological, indeed quasi-ethnic, feelings ofbelonging to a community other than the nation-state. When this hasnot happened, trust has remained restricted to the family, leading to par-ticularism and clientelism. By contrast, the Italian state enjoys a lowdegree of legitimacy, and relations between the citizens and their politi-cal institutions are characterized by a lack of trust. Poor legitimacy of thepolitical system and corruption go hand in hand. Admittedly, regionaldifferences have contributed considerably to this lack of legitimacy; con-versely, trust and solidarity vary greatly across the country. Nonetheless,the devastating impact of the Cold War on Italys quest for national soli-darity has perhaps been underestimated. It prevented the democraticstate from raising the level of trust in the country and acquiring a newlegitimacy.

  After the Second World War, Italy, like West Germany, had the oppor-tunity of achieving a successful transition to a Liberal-democratic state,integrating its working classes and gradually reducing territorial imbal-ances. The creation of a national identity and inclusive citizenship couldhave stemmed from a genuine commitment to the new republicanConstitution. The existence of a strong Communist Party within Italianborders, and the Cold War, prevented any such development. The supra-national nature of the political conflict between East and West producedfor Italy the paradoxical outcome that its subnational boundaries wereartificially strengthened, rather than de-emphasized. Regions whichhad much in common, in socio-economic terms, such as the North Eastand the Centre, remained sharply divided politically and ideologically.The South became a battleground between Communism and anti-Communism, until it was colonized by the Christian Democratic Party,which increasingly used the special regional agency set up in 1950 known as the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno for clientelistic purposes ratherthan to promote sustainable economic growth. The state developed adual identity but pretended that only its official face existed. Citizenshipwas understood in exclusionary terms. Given the nature of the Italianstate during the Cold War, it appears therefore that lack of trust on thepart of Italians towards their state was both rational and justified, ratherthan simply a cultural trait inherited from the past.

  Now that the Cold War has finally ended, the Communists havebecome ex-Communists and the Fascists ex-Fascists, the country hasanother chance to develop into a democratic state for all its citizens. This,however, necessitates an end to the culture of deception on the part of

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 59

• the state, and to cynicism on the part of the citizens, as well as a sharedacceptance of clear and transparent democratic rules. Here the signs aresomewhat mixed. On the one hand, ideology plays a much lesser role inItalian politics today, and there is a new commitment from various quar-ters to both economic and political liberalism. Two coalitions of partieshave at last alternated in power, the centreright forming a governmentin 1994, the centreleft in 1996. The latter was able to take effective meas-ures to reduce the countrys excessive deficit and successfully negotiatedentry into the European Monetary Union. On the other hand, there hasbeen a certain hastiness in drawing the curtains over the First Republic.More importantly, various attempts by the centreleft government since1996 to reach widespread agreement for modernizing and revitalizingItalys obsolete political institutions have so far failed. There is a generalconsensus that the country has not yet achieved a successful transitionfrom the First to the Second Republic.

  Conclusion

  Looking back over 140 years of Italian unification, one is tempted to con-clude that the whole problem of the creation of a national identity in theface of strong subnational boundaries has been approached in two fun-damental ways. The first approach has consisted in the imposition of anauthoritarian state (governments of the Historic Right, Crispis period inoffice, the First World War and Fascism, and, to a lesser extent, the1950s). The second approach has consisted of mediation and compro-mise, often degenerating into clientelism and corruption (governmentsof the New Left, the Giolittian age, Christian Democratic rule from the1960s to the 1980s). In the first case, the emphasis was on imposing anational symbolic boundary through the authoritarianism in theabsence of the authority of the state; in the second, on accommodatingexisting subnational boundaries. Economic, as well as political, factorsappear to have influenced the choice of one or the other strategy. Thusrecession and financial constraints seem to have corresponded to anauthoritarian approach to politics, while expansion and growth havefacilitated compromise. Neither strategy aimed specifically at raising thelevel of trust in the country. This was attempted in the period immedi-ately following the Second World War, but was thwarted by the outbreakof the Cold War. Now Italy has another chance, but in a climate whichlacks the moral imperative of the 1940s and under pressure from various

  60 Anna Cento Bull

• quarters to conceal, rather than learn from, the mistakes of the FirstRepublic. In this context, the therapeutic effects of electoral and institu-tional reforms may be impaired, and the inertia of traditionalapproaches to Italys socio-cultural disunity may yet block the new pathsopened by the end of the Cold War.

  notes

  1. Roberto Cartocci, Fra Lega e Chiesa. (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), p. 50.2. Robert Putnam, La dolce vita is Finally Over, The Independent, 10 March 1993.3. John Davis, Remapping Italys Path to the Twentieth Century, Journal of ModernHistory 66 (1994), pp. 291320 (p. 320).4. Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton UniversityPress, 1990), p. 17.5. Lucy Riall, The Italian Risorgimento. State, Society and National Unification (London andNew York: Routledge, 1994).6. Pamela Pilbeam, The Middle Classes in Europe 17891914 (Basingstoke and London:Macmillan, 1990), p. 278.7. Franco Gaeta, Il nazionalismo italiano (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1981), pp. 99128.8. Arend Lijphart, Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).9. Arnaldo Bagnasco, Tre Italie (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977).

  further reading

  Allum, Percy, Politics and Society in Post-war Naples. Cambridge University Press, 1973.Banfield, Edward, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Chicago: Free Press, 1958.Bosworth, Richard, Italy and the Wider World 18601960. London: Routledge, 1996.Bull, Anna and Paul Corner, From Peasant to Entrepreneur. The Survival of the Family

  Economy in Italy. Providence and Oxford: Berg, 1993.Chubb, Judith, Patronage, Power and Poverty in Southern Italy. Cambridge University Press,

  1982.Ginsborg, Paul, A History of Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics 19431988. London:

  Penguin Books 1990.Hine, David, Governing Italy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.Levy, Carl, Italian Regionalism. Oxford and Washington: Berg, 1996.Morgan, Philip, Italian Fascism 19191945. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995.Pasquino, Gianfranco and Patrick McCarthy, The End of Post-War Politics in Italy. The

  Landmark 1992 Elections. Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press,1993.

  Putnam, Robert (with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Nanetti), Making Democracy Work:Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press, 1993.

  Trigilia, Carlo, Grandi partiti e piccole imprese. Comunisti e democristiani nelle regioni a econo-mia diffusa. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986.

  Social and political cultures from 1860 to the present 61

• b r i a n r i c h a r d s o n

  3

  Questions of language

  Unification and the questione della lingua

  Before the political unification of Italy, Italian was a language used,outside Tuscany and Rome, only by the literate few. Even by these, it wasreserved chiefly for writing: in everyday conversation, the great majorityof Italians either had to or chose to use one of the dialects of Italy or, incertain areas, a minority language such as French. By the end of thetwentieth century, well over 90 per cent of Italians could speak thenational language, but most still chose to use dialect or a minority lan-guage as well. The process of the diffusion of Italian against a back-ground of continuing linguistic diversity has been a long and difficultone, and it has led to discussions on important cultural and social issues,such as whether the national language should be allowed to develop nat-urally or should be based on a particular model; how conservative andselective, or tolerant of innovation and variety, it should be; how it was tobe disseminated and taught; and, on the other hand, what status shouldbe accorded to languages other than the standard.

  In some respects, these discussions have continued the questione dellalingua which first came to a head in the sixteenth century. In that period aconsensus was reached that the literary language of the Italian statesshould be based on the Tuscan used in the fourteenth century by theindisputably most elegant writers, Petrarch and Boccaccio. This solutionwas apparently backward-looking, but it proved the most viable andattractive, given the political fragmentation and vulnerability of Italyand the waning cultural prestige of contemporary Tuscany. Tuscan hadthe added advantage of being structurally more conservative than mostother dialects of Italy and therefore relatively closer to Latin, which was

• known to most educated people. However, the principle of imitation,which had to be adopted even by Tuscans themselves, inevitably provedconstricting. From the sixteenth century to the present, consequently,two major problems have underlain debates on the language. One is thatmany have been reluctant to reject altogether the vitality of the living lan-guage by cutting the standard off from spoken and regional varieties oflanguage. Some have argued that a common language should be able todraw on non-Tuscan forms, others that cultivated spoken Tuscan shouldplay a central role in the standard. The lack of popularity of Italian, thegulf between everyday reality and what has been essentially a written orsecond language, has even led some authors, especially poets and play-wrights, to use dialect in their works, sometimes on its own, sometimesside by side with the standard, sometimes in an artificial hybrid language.The other problem concerned the vocabulary of Italian. On the one hand,it was feared that using words and forms which were obsolete in speechwould seem ridiculously affected. On the other, changes in cultural andsocial conditions, especially from the eighteenth century onwards, haveraised the question of how much freedom one should have to innovate byborrowing words from foreign languages or by creating new ones.

  But unification also brought about an inevitable shift of emphasis inlinguistic discussions. Previously, although these had been shapedpartly by the political conditions of Italy, they had focused on literatureand had concerned only an lite. Once political unity was achieved,however, the debates came to centre not on literary Italian but on the useof the languages of Italy in social contexts. At times they have led tointerventions by central and local government. And as language ques-tions have broadened in scope, so they have attracted wider interest.They are no longer merely a matter of debate for academics and literaryauthors but have become the subject of books, broadcasts and press arti-cles intended for the general public.

  From 1861 to 1921

  Beneath the political unity of the new Italy lay a profound linguistic dis-unity. Tullio De Mauros estimate put the proportion of the nationstwenty-five million inhabitants which could speak Italian in 1861 thebetter educated, and natives of Tuscany and Rome at only 2.5 per cent.This is probably on the low side, yet even Arrigo Castellanis more opti-mistic assessment put the figure no higher than about 8.812.6 per cent,

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• with 9.52 his preferred estimate.1 Almost all other Italians spoke onlyone of the language varieties which, north of a line from La Spezia toRimini and to the east and south of Tuscany, often diverge markedly inpronunciation, grammar and vocabulary from the standard. Most ofthese varieties are classified as dialects, but in the Italian context thisterm refers to sibling tongues, each descended independently fromLatin, rather than to subordinate or debased versions of the interre-gional standard language (which, as we have seen, itself originated forcultural reasons from a written form of one dialect, Tuscan). Certainother varieties Sardinian, Friulian and the Ladin of the Dolomites have even been seen by some as autonomous languages because, whilesharing with dialects the crucial characteristic of being used in a rela-tively restricted area, they have particularly distinctive linguistic fea-tures or significant socio-linguistic or cultural prestige. Furthermore,nearly 1 per cent of the population in 1861 belonged to one of the linguis-tic minorities whose language is used also outside Italy, such as thespeakers of French, Occitan and Franco-Provenal in the Valle dAostaand Piedmont and of Albanian, Greek and Serbo-Croat in southern Italy.

  To acquire knowledge of the standard language would have beenbeyond the possibilities of many Italians in the 1860s. The main means ofaccess to Italian was still necessarily through the written word. But levelsof illiteracy were high: 78 per cent in 1861, 73 per cent in 1871. LiteraryItalian was remote from everyday life and often too formal to be popular.The education system, which could have given access to both writtenand spoken Italian, was still limited in its effectiveness. The Casati law of1859 prescribed four years of free education, but the third and fourthyears were compulsory only in comuni of over 4,000 inhabitants and,until the Credaro law of 1911, schooling was financed by the comuni ratherthan the state. The Matteucci inquiry of 1864 showed that unificationdramatically improved the availability of schooling in southern Italy,but that everywhere absenteeism was high (60 per cent in 1861, 50 percent in 1871), and that in most places teachers used either dialect or, atbest, an Italian influenced by dialect.

  The new nation, then, urgently needed a national language.Accordingly, the Minister for Education, Emilio Broglio, set up in 1868 acommission to propose means of making more universal, in all classesof the people, knowledge of good language and of good pronunciation.It had two sections, Milanese and Florentine, and its president was thegreat Milanese writer Alessandro Manzoni. He had always been

  Questions of language 65

• impressed by the linguistic model of the French nation, for which Parisprovided a common, living tongue, spoken as well as written. In thecourse of writing and revising his novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed)between 1821 and 1840, he had concluded that Florence should play thesame role in Italy. He rejected the conventional idea that the commonlanguage of Italy should be based on the written tradition: for him, a lan-guage not in full social use was a dead language. He argued instead thatall Italians (not just writers) should adopt in its entirety a living tongue.The choice, he believed, could fall only on the tongue of educatedFlorentines, because of its prestige and nature, though he was privatelyconcerned that it would be exceptional for the linguistic capital to beseparate from the political capital, destined to be Rome. In 1868 herapidly completed and published an essay Dellunit della lingua e dei mezzidi diffonderla (On the Unity of the Language and on the Means ofDisseminating It). Florentine usage, he wrote, should be propagatedthrough a dictionary of contemporary usage which would then act as aterm of reference for a series of dialectFlorentine glossaries. In anappendix, Manzoni and his two colleagues in the Milanese subcommis-sion proposed to use the education system (which in unified Italy provedto be one of the main starting-points for attempted linguistic reforms) inorder to spread living Tuscan, for example by giving preference toTuscan primary-school teachers and encouraging schoolgirls to learngood language which they would later pass on to their own children.

  However, the chairman of the Florentine subcommission, theGenoese priest and educationalist Raffaello Lambruschini, was reluctantto cut links with the past and with the written word. If a dictionary of theliving language was to be compiled, he wanted existing dictionaries to beused as its sources. Manzoni resigned from the hopelessly divided com-mission, but responded to Lambruschini with an Appendice (1869) toDellunit. Here he reiterated his belief that linguistic unity should bebased on the usage of a living society and that a new dictionary was thebest means both of propagating this usage and of restraining Gallicisms.Broglios influence ensured the compilation of such a dictionary: the Novovocabolario della lingua italiana secondo luso di Firenze (New Dictionary of theItalian Language According to Florentine Usage, 4 volumes, 187097),edited by Broglio himself and Manzonis Tuscan son-in-law GiovanBattista Giorgini. In practice, however, Manzonis theories, and measuressuch as the Novo vocabolario, had far less influence than the example of therelatively informal and not rigidly Florentinizing prose of I promessi sposi.

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• Support for Manzonis ideas did come from writers of an older gener-ation, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi and Cesare Cant, and from LuigiMorandi, who became tutor to the future Victor Emmanuel III. Alsofavourable to Manzoni was Ruggero Bonghi, a colleague on the Milanesesubcommission. Bonghi wanted writers to adopt a more accessible andnatural prose style, in the Manzonian mould. But he saw that this couldbe achieved only if the intellectual life of the nation became stronger andculture became more widely diffused. Another who qualified hissupport for Manzoni was the popular writer Edmondo De Amicis.Although in Lidioma gentile (The Gentle Idiom, 1905) he urged an imag-inary youth from his own region, Piedmont, to learn from listening tothe everyday conversation of Florence, he also attacked Florentines forusing dialect forms and satirized non-Tuscans who made exaggerateduse of Florentine pronunciation.

  However, with very few exceptions, Manzonis theories met with out-right opposition. For the Jesuit periodical Civilt cattolica (CatholicCivilization), the best way of achieving Broglios aim was to widen theteaching of the existing good language to all classes alongside dialects;the social conditions necessary for the whole nation to adopt a single lan-guage did not exist. Luigi Settembrini (181376), in a letter of 1868 toBroglio, stressed the crucial point at which Bonghi had hinted: that thespread of a language had to be linked with its use as a medium of culture.2

  This theme was developed by the great linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoliin the Proemio (Preface, dated Milan, 10 September 1872) to the firstvolume (1873) of his periodical, the Archivio glottologico italiano (ItalianLinguistic Archive), an essay as influential in defining a new approach tothe questione della lingua as any previous contribution. Ascoli began byfocusing on the first word of the title of the Novo vocabolario of 1870. Herethe o of contemporary spoken Florentine had been preferred to the uo offourteenth-century Florentine which the literary language had adoptedand diffused over many centuries. Italy was thus being asked to returnonce more to Florence in order to adapt what it had taken from the cityin the past. However, Italy and Florence did not stand in the same rela-tionship as France and Paris. The example of Germany, on the otherhand, showed that a national language did not have to be identified witha single city. But Italy had a double obstacle to achieving a similar lin-guistic unity: low density of culture and excessive preoccupation withform. Disunity was certainly an evil and, Ascoli agreed with Manzoni,the old ideal of classicism had not helped to overcome it. The new

  Questions of language 67

• fiorentinismo, though, would be harmful to the mental activity of thenation and would only encourage the cult of form.

  Another linguist, Napoleone Caix, agreed with Ascoli that a commonlanguage had to be based on the common literary tradition allied tonational thought. The linguist and critic Francesco DOvidio, however,attempted to reconcile the opposing positions: Manzoni was right to callon contemporary Florence to contribute to the diffusion of good Italian,but greater unity would follow political unity and increased intellectualand material exchanges, and it could not be imposed artificially but hadto be allowed to happen naturally. In 1905, Benedetto Croce, reviewingDe Amiciss Idioma gentile, dismissed Manzonis views as backward-looking. Philosophers, he argued, now saw language not as a sign whichcommunicated ideas but as the idea or the representation itself. Nosingle type of language could be declared objectively best; writing wellwas a form of spiritual intensity. As a Neapolitan, he felt he could not fitmarkedly Tuscan usage into any spontaneously conceived prose.

  The limits to Manzonis influence can also be seen in the importancewhich the written tradition continued to have in works of linguistic ref-erence and in education. Giuseppe Rigutini and Policarpo Petrocchi,though supporters of Manzoni, did not ignore the literary language intheir dictionaries. Raffaello Fornaciari explained in his Sintassi italianadelluso moderno (Italian Syntax of Modern Usage, 1881) that, while thefoundation of the contemporary language lay in the Tuscan people, itsdefinitive testimony was provided by writers. He took examples fromthe fourteenth century onwards and was unwilling to accept such fea-tures of familiar spoken Tuscan as the pronoun gli for le. He also edited,with only minor updatings, his father Luigis Esempi di bello scrivere(Examples of Elegant Writing, 1829 and 1835) for use in schools. Theprinciple (which had dominated the questione della lingua since the six-teenth century) that one should imitate the best authors from the pastwas supported by the canon of authors which the Coppino law of 1867prescribed for study after primary school.3

  Although the first language question to be faced by unified Italy wasthat of the relationship between Italian and Florentine, past andpresent, unification brought to the fore two other sets of problems.Firstly, how far should Italian go in accepting new words, many bor-rowed from French and other languages in adapted or unadapted form,or in tolerating the giving of new meanings to existing words? Thisproblem, much debated by purists earlier in the Ottocento, was aggra-

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• vated by the sudden need for an everyday national language and by thestrong influence of Piedmont in bureaucracy and education. One ofseveral works intended to contain the tide of barbarisms within certainlimits, the Lessico dellinfima e corrotta italianit (Dictionary of the Lowestand Corrupt Italian, five editions between 1877 and 1907) by PietroFanfani and Costantino Arla, condemned, for example, the bureaucraticor legal use of comprensorio (district) and of the Gallicisms prestigio (in thesense of authority) and vidimare (to certify).

  The other set of questions concerned the relationship of the nationallanguage with dialects other than Florentine. In the first place, there wasthe problem, as some saw it, of the growth of non-standard varieties ofItalian. The decades up to 1920 brought a gradual expansion in the use ofItalian, as a consequence of improved education, migration fromcountry to city as many workers moved from agriculture to factories andoffices, emigration, a centralized bureaucracy, military service and theexperience of the First World War. By the early twentieth century theproportion of the population which could use Italian of some sort rose toan estimated 50 per cent, although probably no more than 20 per centused it habitually. Impetus was given to what linguists have baptizeditaliano popolare, a variety (with roots traceable back to medieval times)containing informal features and used by the less educated.4 But allthese new users of Italian were normally also dialect speakers.Interference from local influences, especially in pronunciation and lexis,therefore encouraged the development of regional Italian, in otherwords regionally marked versions of the national language. There wasmuch criticism of regionalisms, and collections of the various errorscommitted were compiled. The survey of primary education by CamilloCorradini, published in 1910, showed that, as in 1864, teachers usedeither dialect or a hybrid language judged worse than pure dialect.

  Secondly, in the context of a desire for linguistic unity, how was theexistence of dialects to be seen? For some followers of Manzoni, theywere weeds. But Carlo Dossi used another horticultural metaphor inorder to lament the loss of dialects, seedbed of every effective and spon-taneous sentence. Ascoli saw bilingualism in Italian and dialect as aprivilege. Francesco De Sanctis spoke in 1883 of how in the previoustwenty years the language had taken on the agility and freshness ofdialect; for him dialect was destined to become the new seedbed of liter-ary languages. Morandi, Ascoli, De Sanctis (as Minister of Education)and others promoted a positive use of dialects as a resource in teaching

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• good language. The development of dialectology after unificationdepended not only on European scholarly trends but also on a concern topreserve what was under threat.

  Thirdly, there was the question of the use of dialect in literature. Inthe context of the spoken language, unification began the process of thedecline in the use of dialects and of their Italianization; but it did notbring an end to Italys strong tradition of dialect and plurilingual verseand prose.5 On the contrary: just as unification acted as a spur to dialec-tology, so the bringing together of disparate regions without a commonspoken language led to a linguistically centrifugal reaction on the part ofsome authors. Giovanni Verga developed an Italian narrative prosewhich occasionally included dialect terms but above all imitated thespeech patterns of humble Sicilians. Luigi Pirandello still believed in1921, as he had done in 1890, that Italian did not exist as a spoken lan-guage; he was very sparing in using dialect colouring in the Italian of hisnarrative or theatrical works, but he did write some plays in Sicilian.Dialect was used by several poets: the Neapolitan verse of Salvatore DiGiacomo is the best-known example. Authors who wove dialect wordsinto the fabric of their Italian included the novelists Emilio De Marchi,Antonio Fogazzaro and Federico Tozzi, and the poet Giovanni Pascoli.Italo Svevo used dialect hardly at all, yet on the other hand he refused togive in to criticisms that his prose did not conform with Tuscan. In liter-ature, then, as elsewhere, notwithstanding Manzonis urgings, the lin-guistic usage of unified Italy was not (in the phrase which he used of hisown novel) rinsed in the Arno.

  The Fascist period

  In the Fascist era, from 1922 to 1943, there were fewer linguistic discus-sions than before. In line with Ascolis analysis, the spread of Italian as aliving language was making debates on its desired nature increasinglysuperfluous. Crocean idealism, with its stress on the expressiveness oflanguage, also discouraged linguistic debate. However, two of the issuesalready mentioned continued to receive attention, and two which hadpreviously attracted little attention now gained importance. All werelinked with one or more aspects of Fascist policy: the nationalist promo-tion of an italianit with Rome at its heart; a totalitarian intolerance ofpluralism and an insistence on the subordination of the individual tothe centralized authority of the state; and a desire for self-sufficiency

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• (autarchy) which was deeply tinged with xenophobia. To a muchgreater extent than at any other time in Italian history, the stateattempted, for ideological purposes, to influence language issues bymeans of laws, ministerial decisions and the manipulation of culturalinstitutions. Significant initiatives were also taken by individuals whosupported the Fascist cause.

  The first issue was that of minority languages. In 1919 the proportionof the population which spoke them rose to 2.1 per cent with the annexa-tion of TrentinoAlto Adige and Venezia Giulia. The inhabitants ofthese regions included speakers of, respectively, a German dialect andSlovene. The Fascist state moved swiftly to attempt to Italianize linguis-tically both of these territories and the Valle dAosta.6 It was decreed in1923 that teaching in all primary schools had to be carried out in the lan-guage of the state. The purpose of this policy, as Ministers of Educationdeclared explicitly in 1924 and 1926, was to make linguistic minoritiesItalians in sentiment. The state also imposed the use of Italian in publicnotices and prescribed or strongly encouraged the Italianization of placenames and surnames. The teaching of German was reintroduced in theAlto Adige in the mid 1930s, as a result of Mussolinis rapprochementwith Hitler, but linguistic repression in this region left a legacy of deepresentment against central government.

  Dialects were another aspect of linguistic usage at odds with theunitary ideology of Fascism. At first the government was tolerant oftheir cultural status. The primary schools programme introduced in1923, and drawn up by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice, specified thatdialects were to be used as a constant point of reference in teachingItalian. In the 1930s, however, this educational policy was abandoned,partly because of its lack of practical success, and the Ministry ofEducation began to instruct the press not to publish dialect texts or evento discuss dialects. As one notice to the press in 1931 put the problem,Regionalism, and the dialects which constitute its principal expression,are vestiges of the centuries of division and servitude of the old Italy.7

  The national pride of Italy was also vulnerable, some felt, where loan-words were concerned. From 1923 onwards a passionate campaignagainst them was waged by men such as the senator Tommaso Tittoniand the journalist Paolo Monelli. The latter discussed foreign borrow-ings in his Barbaro dominio (Barbarous Domination, 1933 and 1943). Inmost cases the words were unadapted French or English ones (camion,film etc.) with only a few semantic borrowings (such as esperto expert,

  Questions of language 71

• magazzino shop). Monellis tone was calmer than that of Fanfani andArla in 1877, but his preface revealed his political motivation when itboasted of the Fascist clarity of his campaign, based on the principlethat strong peoples impose their language. Up to this time the govern-ment had taken only minor protectionist measures against the use offoreign languages in signs and films. But, as relationships with Britainand France worsened, the government campaign gathered strength.Restrictions on the appearance of foreign words in public places, packag-ing and advertising became much more severe. The government alsotook up a campaign begun in 1938 by a Florentine writer, BrunoCicognani, to replace lei as a polite form of address with the older voi. ForCicognani, lei went against the law of grammar and logic and was a testi-mony of servitude and abjection dating back to the overthrow of thecommunes by tyrants and reinforced by the usage of Spanish invaders.The Fascist party duly banned lei from official correspondence. In 1940the Accademia dItalia was charged to find Italian substitutes for loan-words, and as a result a Commissione per lItalianit della Lingua(Commission for the Purity of the Italian Language) produced alterna-tive spellings or designations for 1,555 words or phrases. BrunoMigliorini had in 1938 taken a more measured approach, free from xeno-phobia, in advocating neopurism, as he termed the contemporary cam-paign (distinguishing it from earlier purism, which had opposedneologisms as well as loanwords). While he wished to protect the struc-ture of Italian, he stressed the practical difficulties of replacing or adapt-ing some foreign terms and the need for a European linguisticcirculation.8

  In the same period, standard pronunciation became an issue not onlyin the context of the recommendations provided in dictionaries andgrammars but also in that of broadcasting. In 1939 the state radio organ-ization (EIAR) published a strongly politicized handbook on pronuncia-tion and spelling written by the linguists Giulio Bertoni and FrancescoUgolini. Quoting words of Mussolini on the moral importance of thecapital, they identified Rome rather than Florence as the new centre oflinguistic unification and recommended the beautiful and warm pro-nunciation of cultured Roman conversation.

  A victim of Fascist repression, the great Communist intellectualAntonio Gramsci had studied linguistics at university, and languageremained a central interest during his imprisonment from 1926 until hisdeath in 1937. His prison notebooks contain perceptive pages on the rela-tionships of power which underlay the questione della lingua. In notebook

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• 29, of 1935, Gramsci wrote that from the time of Dante onwards the ques-tione had been an aspect of the political struggle, in which intellectualshad reacted against the political and economic collapse of Italy and hadattempted to strengthen their own class. Whenever the questione sur-faced, it was a sign that the ruling class was seeking to reorganize its cul-tural hegemony over the masses; and various phenomena, such as thepublications of Monelli, showed that this was happening in his own day.However, it was not until later, after Gramscis works had been pub-lished in Turin (194851), that they began to influence the linguisticthought of a new generation of left-wing intellectuals, most notably PierPaolo Pasolini.

  From 1944 to 1999

  In the decades after the Second World War, Italian became a trulynational spoken language. There was an increased need for communica-tion between people of different origins, since up to the early 1970s therewas large-scale migration from the South towards the industrial North-West and from the countryside into towns. The proportion of theworking population employed in agriculture fell from 42.2 per cent in1951 to 11.2 per cent in 1981 and 7.4 per cent in 1995. At the same time, twofactors made the national language more accessible. Firstly, a reform of1962 made eight years of education, up to the end of the scuola media atthe age of fourteen, free and compulsory. By 1991, the illiterate propor-tion of the population over six years old had fallen to 2.1 per cent, and to0.5 per cent for those aged between six and fifty-four. The second factor,the growth of radio and (from 1954) television broadcasting, was evenmore important, since it affected all parts of the community.

  Consequently, Italian (though here the term does not refer to thestandard alone but includes regionally, socially and contextuallymarked varieties of the national language) increasingly took over therole of dialect in everyday spoken communication, as is shown by thefigures, from Istituto Doxa surveys, which show the percentages ofrespondents using Italian or dialect, or alternating between them, inparticular situations. Table 1 relates to speech within the family; Table 2relates to speech outside the home. These national statistics concealimportant social and regional variations, with dialect used more by men,the old, the less well educated, in the countryside, in the South and theislands, but also in the Veneto. A survey carried out by the IstitutoNazionale di Statistica (ISTAT, National Statistical Institute), in 1995

  Questions of language 73

• suggested that 94 per cent of Italians spoke Italian in some context butthat 60 per cent still knew and used dialect. In the home, 44.6 per cent ofthe sample (some 21,000 families) used Italian always or mostly, 28.3 percent used both Italian and dialect, and 23.6 per cent used mainly dialect.With friends, 47.3 per cent used Italian, 32.1 per cent used Italian anddialect, and 16.6 used dialect. When speaking to other categories ofpeople, though, the percentage of those using only or mostly Italian roseto 71.5 and that of those using only or mostly dialect fell to 6.8. The lin-guistic practice of children indicated that Italian would continue tospread: 81.7 per cent of those aged between six and ten spoke Italianoutside the circles of family and friends.

  Such changes naturally affected the development of both Italian andthe dialects. The numbers of those speaking Italian outside the homeinclude a majority which also speaks dialect; there is thus more scopethan previously for interference between the two types of language.Because of the spread of Italian as a spoken language, it has also beennoted that less formal linguistic usage has become more widely accept-able. The lofty norm based on the literary tradition is being replaced byan italiano delluso medio (average Italian) or neo-standard closer tospeech.9

  Moreover, the decline in the influence of Florence as opposed to thatof the industrialized North-West and of Rome (not only the political

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  Table 1. Speech within the family

  1974 1982 1988 1991

  Italian only used 25.0 29.4 34.4 33.6

  Both dialect and Italian used 23.7 23.9 26.0 30.5

  Dialect only used 51.3 46.7 39.6 35.9

  Table 2. Speech outside the home

  1974 1982 1988 1991

  Italian only used 22.7 26.7 31.0 29.9

  Italian used more often 12.9 15.2 16.3 18.2

  Both dialect and Italian used 22.1 22.0 19.5 29.1

  Dialect used more often 13.4 13.1 19.9 10.0

  Dialect only used 28.9 23.0 23.3 12.8

• capital but also the centre of state broadcasting and of the film industry),together with economic and technical innovations, led to the introduc-tion of many new words: regionalisms, neologisms and foreign (nowmainly English) borrowings. Just as the expansion of Italian afterunification aroused fears about its contamination, so the spread of thelanguage in a changing post-war Italy led some writers to lament that ithad become slovenly, anarchic, vulgar, awkward and (especially inofficial and political contexts) obscure, and to attack the permissivenessof others who felt that the language, far from being in terminal decline,was following a stable evolution. Unadapted Anglo-Americanisms wereseen by some as a danger to the health of Italian, though others havejudged such concern excessive.10

  The question of which regional pronunciation, if any, should beregarded as a model became considerably more controversial from 1945.In that year Bruno Migliorini attempted to remove the RomeFlorencerivalry which had grown under Fascism by proposing a reasoned butovercomplicated compromise between the two models. As the Fascist eragrew more distant, some reasserted the primacy of Florence. In La correttapronuncia italiana (Correct Italian Pronunciation, 1965), Carlo Tagliaviniargued that, since Florence had provided the written language, culti-vated Florentine should also be chosen as a model for speech. In 1966Giulio Lepschy made a devastating attack on those who considered onelocal variety of pronunciation, Florentine, objectively more correct thanothers. His appeal for Italians to be left to speak Italian freely, withoutnormative interventions, led to heated objections from some older lin-guists (see LItalia dialettale 30 [1967], pp. 181207). But Lepschys essay,following explicitly in the tradition of Ascoli and of Croces review of DeAmicis, pointed the way to an attitude more tolerant of regional diver-sity within Italian. For foreign learners, too, cultivated Florentine pro-nunciation lost its former high status, and it was suggested thatnorthern pronunciation should be taken as a model because it now hadthe greatest prestige.11

  In 1964 Pier Paolo Pasolini began a lecture entitled Nuove questionilinguistiche (New Linguistic Questions) by asserting that Italy had notrue national language. Only the bourgeoisie possessed both spoken andliterary Italian. However, he went on to note that technical terms werebecoming a common element in his own prose, in the language of politi-cians and in advertising. He therefore believed that this technologicallanguage was tending to create a new linguistic unity at all levels. Italian

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• as a national language has been born, he announced, with the new tech-nocratic class of the industrial North, the TurinMilan axis as he put it,now dominant in place of the RomeFlorence axis which seemed toprevail before. Pasolinis analysis was challenged by many. He rightlysensed a change in the use of Italian, but he both overestimated theimportance of its technical component and underestimated the extentto which unity was being achieved on the basis of the language in its tra-ditional form. Early in 1965, Italo Calvino responded to Pasolinis articlewith two essays in which he called for the use of Italian to be as concreteand precise as possible and warned against the bureaucratic antilinguawhich, on the contrary, preferred the vague to the meaningful.12 Suchfeelings of alienation from burocratese eventually found an officialresponse in 19946, when a project of the Dipartimento della FunzionePubblica (Department of Public Administration) aimed to simplify andclarify what to most was a remote and arcane register.

  Towards the end of the 1960s, voices began to be raised in condemna-tion of the linguistic barriers which the education system seemed to set inthe path of many who did not have a command of standard Italian. TheLettera a una professoressa (Letter to a Schoolmistress, 1967) by Don LorenzoMilani accused schools of discriminating against working-class childrenbecause they could not express themselves correctly. De Mauro and othersappealed in the mid 1970s for a more democratic education which did notlook down on non-standard varieties such as dialects. The new scuola mediasyllabus of 1979 duly encouraged their use as a cultural and linguisticresource. In the light of subsequent experience, however, there was areturn towards recognizing the importance of a linguistic norm.

  Concern that Italian usage fostered another type of repression, dis-crimination against women, came to the fore in the 1980s. AlmaSabatinis recommendations for schools and school textbooks on a non-sexist use of the Italian language (Il sessismo nella lingua italiana, 1987 and1993) were published as part of a government programme to achieveequality between the sexes. A suggestion which would alter the languageitself was that feminine forms should be preferred for professional andsimilar titles, giving for example la senatrice, la medica, la professora, la stu-dente (not la studentessa, since the -essa suffix can be pejorative). Such pro-posals will be adopted only if social attitudes change. But the 1995 editionof the authoritative Zingarelli dictionary significantly recommendedlavvocata (rather than lavvocatessa), lambasciatrice, la presidente and so on.

  We saw earlier that unification provoked a more pronounced

  76 Brian Richardson

• regionalism in the language of literature. In post-war Italy, against abackground of declining use of dialect, and doubtless in reaction to thecentralizing oppression of Fascism, there was a similar need to reassessthe cultural functions of dialects and of non-standard Italian. Suchvarieties of language were used to add greater authenticity to portrayalsof working-class life, both in Neorealist cinema and in the novels ofPasolini and the Roman tales of Alberto Moravia. Several poets (includ-ing, again, Pasolini) used the resources of dialect. On the other hand, DeMauro pointed out that the cinema contributed to the spread of Italianby associating dialect with negative features of society, with oppressionand provincialism, and that theatre in dialect is perceived to lack imme-diacy, since it is most successful in large cities, precisely where thedecline of dialects has been strongest. Some major writers saw dangersin the recourse to dialect. Already in 1935 Cesare Pavese had noted in hisdiary that he had striven to make his work not dialectal but national. Hisviews did not change in the 1940s. Since dialect was now distinct fromItalian, one could not turn back without donning a peasants mask.Dialect was subhistory. One had to run the risk of writing in Italian,thus moving into history; the problem was to invent a new vivacity [. . .]without folklore, i.e. without superficial local colour. Moravia, in 1959,saw the contemporary fashion for dialects as a legitimate consequence ofthe crisis of cultured language and of the class which spoke it, after thefall of Fascism. But he warned that modern writers were using dialect inan artificial, experimental way, without the spontaneity of the greatdialect authors of pre-unification Italy. Calvino condemned the dialectrevival as a sign of involution and tiredness. Writers had to devise theirown complex language, going beyond the mere photographing ofdialects, just as a novel should be a definition of our time, not of Naplesor of Florence. However, dialects used for expressionistic rather thannaturalistic purposes were a major element in the plurilingual prose ofCarlo Emilio Gadda and others. The post-Fascist period also saw thechampioning by literary critics, foremost among them GianfrancoContini, of the tradition of plurilinguismo (as opposed to a Petrarchanmonolinguismo) which was seen to stretch from Dante to their own times.

  In the 1980s, there was a turning back to dialects in the context of thenorthern separatist movements. Imitating the Liga Veneta, the LegaLombarda aimed in its 1982 programme to recover the Lombard linguis-tic heritage and diffuse it through education. This policy wasabandoned in the mid 1980s. But in 1991 fears that dialect would be used

  Questions of language 77

• as a focus of separatism were raised again. In November a bill on minor-ity languages was approved by the Chamber of Deputies; it did not,however, reach the Senate. The new law would have allowed thirteensuch languages to be used in schools, local administration and broad-casting. Its aim was to put into practice the safeguarding of linguisticminorities envisaged in Article 6 of the Constitution and to provide ameans of civic expression for all Italians. However, the bill came in thewake of the break-up of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia, and amongthe thirteen languages mentioned were Sardinian, Friulian andDolomitic Ladin, which are counted by some among the Italian dialects.The vote caused an outcry. Academics and politicians saw the bill as thethin end of a wedge which would destroy Italys hard-won political andcultural unity by promoting separatists use of dialects and by hamper-ing the teaching of the national language. Only in December 1999 didthe Italian Parliament pass a law on this subject.

  The main linguistic problem which faced Italy at the time of unifica-tion was the need to provide a common language for a nation whichspoke chiefly dialects or minority languages. At the start of the twenty-first century, now that Italian, for all its variety, is firmly established as aunitary national language in writing and in formal spoken contexts, animportant question which remains open is the obverse of the earlierone: whether, and if so how, Italy should foster its rich multilingual her-itage.

  notes

  1. Arrigo Castellani, Quanti erano glitalofoni nel 1861?, Studi linguistici italiani 8 (1982),pp. 326.2. Tullio De Mauro et al., Lingua e dialetti nella cultura italiana da Dante a Gramsci (Messinaand Florence: DAnna, 1980), pp. 15164.3. Marino Raicich, Scuola, cultura e politica da De Sanctis a Gentile (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1981),pp. 1223.4. Manlio Cortelazzo, Avviamento critico allo studio della dialettologia italiana. iii:Lineamenti di italiano popolare (Pisa: Pacini, 1976); Giulio Lepschy, Litaliano popolare:riflessioni su riflessioni, in F. Albano Leoni et al. (eds.), Italia linguistica: idee, storia,strutture (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985), pp. 26982.5. Hermann W. Haller, The Hidden Italy: A Bilingual Edition of Italian Dialect Poetry(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986) and The Other Italy: The Literary Canon inDialect (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Verina R. Jones, Dialect Literatureand Popular Literature, Italian Studies 45 (1990), pp. 10317; Alfredo Stussi, Lingua,dialetto e letteratura (Turin: Einandi, 1993); Emmanuela Tandello and Diego Zancani(eds.), Italian Dialects and Literature: From the Renaissance to the Present. Journal of theInstitute of Romance Studies, Supplement 1, 1996.

  78 Brian Richardson

• 6. Sergio Raffaelli, Le parole proibite: purismo di stato e regolamentazione della pubblicit inItalia (18121945) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1983); Gabriella Klein, La politica linguistica delFascismo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986), pp. 67110.7. Fabio Foresti, Proposte interpretative e di ricerca su lingua e fascismo: la politicalinguistica , in Erasmo Leso et al., La lingua italiana e il fascismo, 2nd edn (Bologna:Consorzio Provinciale Pubblica Lettura, 1978), pp. 11148 (p. 120).8. Bruno Migliorini, Purismo e neopurismo (1938), in his La lingua italiana nelNovecento (Florence: Le Lettere, 1990), pp. 81107.9. Francesco Sabatini, Litaliano delluso medio: una realt tra le variet linguisticheitaliane, in G. Holtus and E. Radtke (eds.), Gesprochenes Italienisch in Geschichte undGegenwart (Tbingen: Narr, 1985), pp. 15484; Gaetano Berruto, Sociolinguisticadellitaliano contemporaneo (Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1987), pp. 13103.10. For examples, see respectively Arrigo Castellani, Morbus anglicus, Studi linguisticiitaliani 13 (1987), pp. 13749, and Gian Luigi Beccaria, Italiano antico e nuovo (Milan:Garzanti, 1988), pp. 21545.11. Bruno Migliorini, Pronunzia fiorentina o pronunzia romana? (Florence: Sansoni, 1945);Giulio Lepschy, Saggi di linguistica italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1978), pp. 7793; NoraGalli de Paratesi, Lingua toscana in bocca ambrosiana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984),pp. 23945.12. Oreste Parlangli (ed.), La nuova questione della lingua (Brescia: Paideia, 1971),pp. 79101; Pier Paolo Pasolini, Empirismo eretico (Milan: Garzanti, 1972), pp. 928; ItaloCalvino, Una pietra sopra: discorsi di letteratura e societ (Turin: Einaudi, 1980), pp. 11626.

  further reading

  Bruni, Francesco, Litaliano: elementi di storia della lingua e della cultura. Turin: UTET, 1984.Bruni, Francesco (ed.), Litaliano nelle regioni: lingua nazionale e identit regionali. Turin:

  UTET, 1992.De Mauro, Tullio, Storia linguistica dellItalia unita. 5th edn. Bari: Laterza, 1999.Grassi, Corrado, Alberto A. Sobrero and Tullio Telmon, Fondamenti di dialettologia itali-

  ana. Bari: Laterza, 1997.Lepschy, Anna Laura, Giulio Lepschy and Miriam Voghera, Linguistic Variety in Italy,

  in C. Levy (ed.), Italian Regionalism: History, Identity and Politics. Oxford: Berg,1996, pp. 6980.

  Maiden, Martin, A Linguistic History of Italian. London and New York: Longman, 1995.Maiden, Martin and Mair Parry (eds.), The Dialects of Italy. London and New York:

  Routledge, 1997.Marazzini, Claudio, La lingua italiana: profilo storico. 2nd edn. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1998.

  Da Dante alla lingua selvaggia: sette secoli di dibattiti sullitaliano. Rome: Carocci, 1999.Migliorini, Bruno, The Italian Language, abridged and recast by T. G. Griffith. 2nd edn.

  London: Faber and Faber, 1984.Serianni, Luca and Pietro Trifone (eds.), Storia della lingua italiana, 3 vols. Turin: Einaudi,

  19934.Sobrero, Alberto A. (ed.), Introduzione allitaliano contemporaneo, 2 vols. i: Le strutture. ii: La

  variazione e gli usi. Bari: Laterza, 1993.

  Questions of language 79

• d a v i d w a r d

  4

  Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy

  An idea of Italy

  On the face of it, contemporary Italian intellectuals have a more prestig-ious existence than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. Whether as writers,academics, journalists or film-directors, Italian intellectuals are courtedby political parties of all persuasions to add lustre to their slates at elec-tion time, and wooed by the media as influential opinion makers. Thecontact Italian intellectuals have with the institutions of civil societycomes from a long tradition going back to the Middle Ages. Indeed,Italian society has consistently relied on its intellectuals, rather than itspolitical class, to supply the nations agents for social change. WhenDante, for example, in his De vulgari eloquentia examined the panoply oflocal dialects to find one on which to base a supraregional language forthe peninsula, he turned to the literary idiom of his fellow poets, whichseemed to him the only noble and unifying element present in an Italyrife with factionalism.

  Dante set a trend that was to be repeated as Italy made its way towardunification in the second half of the nineteenth century. Unlike Englandand France, Italy had no dominant centre like London or Paris fromwhich political, cultural and linguistic hegemony could be exerted.Instead, Italy had several principalities or city-states, many of whichwere in competition with each other and split within their own commu-nities. The absence of a dominant centre deprived the country of a stablepolitical leadership, leaving it easy prey for the long period of foreigndomination which began in 1494 with the conquest by Charles VIII ofFrance and lasted four centuries. Nevertheless, foreign domination hadthe positive effect of engendering the beginnings of a national sensibility.

• National unity, however, was an idea which remained far more the prop-erty of intellectuals than of the political class, and the names that mostreadily spring to mind as the precursors of a unified Italy come from theworld of literature or opera Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli, PietroBembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Vittorio Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo andGiuseppe Verdi rather than from the world of politics. Although theidea of a unified Italy began to circulate in intellectual circles after 1494,in concrete terms little political progress was made towards nationalunity. It was only when the drive toward unification was taken up by themore politically sophisticated Piedmontese Liberals, and in particular byCavour (181061), that Italy as a united nation became a reality. Despitetheir success, the main agents of the unification process, the enlightenedmembers of the Piedmontese bourgeoisie, did little to set a nationaltrend, and found relatively few emulators outside their region.

  In the absence of a dynamic bourgeois class, it fell to intellectuals toprovide the impetus Italy needed to modernize itself. This was a rolewhich the intellectuals of the post-unification period accepted withrelish; however, it was a role which went beyond the effective powers ofany class of intellectuals. In a society lacking agents of political andsocial change, there was little intellectuals could do, no matter howgifted they were. In addition, they were constrained by two furtherfactors: first, their reluctance to ally themselves with modern societysmain agent of change, the political party; and second, their traditionalstrong allegiance to high culture, the effect of which has been thatItalian intellectuals have generally produced texts whose messages havenot been, and indeed could not be, appreciated by the nation as a whole,not least because the Tuscan-based literary Italian that the cultural litehad adopted as the national language in the sixteenth century was notthe language spoken by the majority of the nation. Lacking the powerand influence to exercise cultural leadership, hindered by a bourgeoisiethat was unreceptive to enlightened reform, unwilling to bridge the gapbetween intellectual and civil society, the history of Italian intellectualsattempts to exert an influence over Italian society is a history of gallantwell-intentioned effort, but above all a history of failure.

  Intellectuals in the early twentieth century

  No Italian philosopher has investigated the failure of Italian intellectu-als to bridge the gap between intellectual and civil society more thor-

  82 David Ward

• oughly than Antonio Gramsci (18911937), the Sardinian-born co-founder of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Written in the prison towhich he had been condemned by the Fascists in 1926, his PrisonNotebooks bear specifically on the intellectuals function as permanentpersuaders within civil society and as agents both for the promotion ofchange and for the maintenance of the status quo. His analysis of theRisorgimento as a passive revolution, in which the Piedmontese moder-ates consolidated their power over the whole nation, focused on the rad-icals inability to develop a political culture which had relevance for theAction Partys potential supporters in the peasant masses. Instead ofarming itself with effective political weapons such as the offer of landreform and a political platform which spoke to the peasants in a lan-guage they could understand, the Action Party led by Giuseppe Mazzini(180572) stood for an abstract political culture based largely on the callsfor unification which had come from Italian literature. Although suchwritings represented a powerful rallying cry for the intellectuals of thetime the minority who had read them their appeals had no purchaseon the consciousness of the peasantry.

  As Gramsci wrote his notes from his prison cell in the late 1920s and1930s, he must have been thinking of those intellectuals who, in the firstdecades of the twentieth century, had attempted to reform Italiansociety. Like Gramsci, though for different reasons, many of these intel-lectuals most notably Giuseppe Prezzolini (18821983), GiovanniPapini (18811956) and others gathered around the influential Florence-based review La voce (The Voice), together with the philosopherBenedetto Croce (18661952) and Piero Gobetti (190126) were deeplydisappointed with the Italy that had emerged in the years after the unifi-cation process. What particularly disgruntled the Voce group was thatpower in the unified nation had been shifted from the upper to themiddle classes. This shift had brought into existence an Italy that wasvery different from the great nation that the Risorgimento had seemedto promise. Italian culture had invested great hopes in the Risorgimentoand saw it as the fulfilment of centuries-long dreams. These dreams,which all centred around a unified Italys return to its proper status asgreat world power after centuries of foreign domination, were largelythe creation of the literary culture of the pre-Risorgimento centurieswhich had romanticized the notion of the unified nation. Nevertheless,it was an attractive image; and for a while it seemed that the battles andexploits which had created Italy, and especially the charismatic figures of

  Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy 83

• Mazzini and Garibaldi (180782), gave credence to the idea that dreamswere coming true in history. But the Italy that emerged from theRisorgimento, and the modest, myopic ruling class that was in power,seemed to many of the vociani to be but pale shadows of the nation thathad been envisaged and of the heroes that had created it. Italy was nowItalietta (Small Italy) or Italia vile (Vile Italy), the product of the trium-phant vulgarity of Italys new masters, the lower middle classes and theirnew found commercial prosperity based on hard work, sacrifice andthrift. Deeply anti-Socialist, an ideology they saw as aspiring to the samemediocrity exhibited by the bourgeoisie, the vociani imagined them-selves as a revolutionary vanguard, an enlightened lite that rejected allthe mediations of bourgeois political life and parliamentary democracy.Rather than seeking representation in existing political parties, thevociani sought to create their own party, the party of intellectuals, whoseaim was to launch (to quote the title of Papinis 1906 article) TheCampaign for Compulsory Reawakening.

  The vociani owed a great debt to their contemporary, the philosopherBenedetto Croce. Their project aimed to return to people the powers ofcreativity and agency that Croce had theorized in his early writings. Inthe figure of what Prezzolini called Croces God-man, many of thevociani found inspiration for their own assault on the constricting cate-gories of thought and action in which contemporary humankind hadbeen imprisoned. Although he had given his initial support to La voce,and reviews like Hermes and Leonardo which had preceded it, Crocebecame increasingly impatient with the vocianis drift into a mysticalworld that bore little relation to reality and, as such, ridiculed his redis-covery of the powers of human agency. The vociani had become ever moredisenchanted with the age of prose that had followed the heroicRisorgimento age of poetry, and looked to Gabriele DAnnunzio(18631938) as the poetseer who would recreate Italys Golden Age.Consequently, some vociani, especially Papini, attacked the staidness oftheir former ally in the new Futurist review Lacerba. Croce survived theattack and went on to outlast the vociani. Indeed, the influence histhought has had on Italian culture has made him the most important ofall twentieth-century Italian intellectuals. Rather than the vociani andthe Futurists, it was Croces example that gave Italian intellectuals thesense of mission which many feared was lacking in the post-Risorgimento period; rather than to Prezzolini and Papini, it was toCroce that Gramsci referred when he spoke of his influence over Italian

  84 David Ward

• culture as akin to that of a secular Pope; and it was to Croce that Italysanti-Fascists turned as an antidote to La voce and Futurist-style culturalpolitics which, with their Nationalism, anti-Socialism, denigration ofparliamentary democracy and valorization of the actions of the strongindividual, the superman, had, if not created Fascism, then certainlyhelped to pave its way.

  Deeply sceptical about any form of transcendent thought be it ofChristian, Hegelian or Marxist origin Croce developed a new idealistphilosophy that freed human activity from the abstract paradigms inwhich it had been imprisoned by Positivism, the philosophical ortho-doxy of the period. Following the thought of Giambattista Vico, hisNeapolitan precursor, Croce viewed humankind as neither tool nor crea-ture of history. Rather, humankind was itself the tool that forged historyas its own creation. This newly found confidence in the creative powersof human agency had also been championed at the end of the nineteenthcentury by one of Croces precursors, who also deeply influenced thevociani, the literary scholar Francesco De Sanctis (181783); and it was onthe basis of this sense that Croce aimed to rejuvenate Italy. What he hadto say obviously struck a chord, as the tumultuous response granted tohis Aesthetics amply testified. But if this text, published in 1902, madehim a crucial figure on both the Italian and European intellectual scene,Croce exerted even greater influence through his review La critica(Criticism), which he founded in 1903. With this review, Croce and hisco-editor, Giovanni Gentile (18751944) with whom he later quarrelledand who became the theorist of the Fascist rgime set out to establishtheir cultural hegemony over Italian intellectuals. Unlike other reviews,which featured contributors drawn from across the spectrum of Italianintellectual life, La critica followed a rigid editorial policy. Almost all thearticles were written by either Croce or Gentile, and the infrequent guestcontributors all had to toe the reviews cultural line. Croces purposewith La critica was avowedly political. Through its columns, he set out toconstruct a new literary and cultural canon that would renew the Italiantradition and form a new class of intellectuals. To be political, however,did not mean putting culture at the service of politics, and Croce wasalways adamant that culture was an autonomous activity separate anddifferent from politics, indeed superior to it. At the same time, however,Croce never denied that culture had a political function.

  The extent of Croces influence on Italian culture in the first decadesof the twentieth century can be gauged by the array of intellectuals from

  Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy 85

• differing ideological backgrounds who found inspiration in him. If histhought had been an example for the conservative vociani in the earlydecades of the century, in the years after the Fascist attainment of powerin 1922 Croce had an equal attraction for many of Italys young anti-Fascists. Croces formal leadership of the Italian anti-Fascist movementin the mid 1920s came about with his Manifesto of Anti-FascistIntellectuals, written in response to Gentiles Manifesto of FascistIntellectuals, which had been signed by figures as prominent as LuigiPirandello (18671936) and Filippo Marinetti (18761947). However,Croces influence over young, anti-Fascist intellectuals had deeper rootsthan the manifesto. It came rather from his belief that the cultural activ-ity resulting from an individual giving expression to his or her creativeenergies was also political activity; and that free cultural activity was notand could not be subservient to politics. This twin position was enor-mously attractive to many young intellectuals for whom Croces thoughtoffered a liberation. In fact, the future leaders of Italys anti-Fascistmovement like Gobetti, Leone Ginzburg (190945), Norberto Bobbio(1909 ), Vittorio Foa (1910 ), Ugo La Malfa (190379) and others wereset on the path toward anti-Fascism by reading Croce.

  Both a great admirer of Croce and his sternest critic, Gramsci wasamong the first to realize the implications of Croces cultural politics andhow it drew intellectuals into the orbit of the moderate Liberal Party.Croce was not as disingenuous as the vociani had been in believing thatmediation between politics and culture could be sidestepped. The bridgebetween culture and politics that Croce designed was the Liberal Party, ofwhich he became President and which he saw as the party of men andwomen of culture. Croces Liberal Party was no ordinary political party:for one thing, it had no party line, policy being determined on a case-by-case basis as a result of the creative cultural activity of the partys mili-tants. This, of course, left a great deal of room for manoeuvre. But thiswas Croces point, and the source of his partys attractiveness. Yet thisapparently freehand approach to politics had its pitfalls. In the early1920s, for example, it led Croce to welcome Mussolinis Fascist govern-ment as the necessary short-term shock treatment Italy needed to defusethe threat posed by the left. In Croces scenario, Fascism was to take a backseat once its immediate task had been accomplished, and return power tothe traditional party of government, the Liberals. Instead, in the worstmisjudgment of Croces career, Fascism stayed in power until 1943.

  Gramsci detected the profound conservatism lurking behind Croces

  86 David Ward

• cultural politics. For Gramsci, the centre of the political spectrum whichCroce claimed was proper to the Liberal Party was not a centre at all.Rather, it was a deeply entrenched moderate position that masqueradedas an ideologically neutral centre. The effect of Croces cultural politicswas to construct intellectuals who adhered to his thought as Liberals, atthe very moment they imagined they were exercising their free creativ-ity. If the moral and intellectual leadership of society was in the hands ofmoderate Croceans, argued Gramsci, then in order to further theprogress of the working classes it was necessary to develop an alternativecultural politics which would exert the same power of attraction overItalian intellectuals as Croces had done. The traditional figure of theintellectual one like Croce who appeared to speak the value-free lan-guage of culture, but who in reality was the mouthpiece of establishedclass and ideological positions had to be replaced by a new figure, theorganic intellectual, drawn from the working classes and who spoke forhis/her classs interests.

  In Gramscis thought, it is intellectuals who lay the cultural founda-tions on which moral and intellectual leadership are established insociety. This cannot be the task of a small, isolated group; and, forGramsci, intellectuals are not only people engaged in the academic orwriting professions, but all those figures who have attained a certainposition within civil society, who promulgate an opinion or world-view,and who are thus in some way permanent persuaders engaged in the for-mation of consciousness. Teachers, of course, are intellectuals; but so areclerics, doctors, veterinarians, journalists, even barbers insofar as theycontribute to the formation of a given societys world-view. What waslacking in Italy, and had been lacking at least since the Risorgimento,Gramsci claimed, were groups of intellectuals who represented theinterests of the potentially revolutionary sectors of Italian society, theworking class and the peasantry.

  A great deal of the inspiration for Gramscis thinking on the neworganic intellectual came from his experiences with the factory councilsin Turin between 1919 and 1920. These were worker-run councils thathad taken over the management of some factories and offered a model ofan Italian worker-run state. Despite their limited impact outside Turin,the factory councils also had a lasting effect on a young Liberal intellec-tual, Piero Gobetti. Unlike other Liberals, Gobetti was convinced thatthe new protagonists of post-First-World-War Italy would be themembers no longer of the bourgeoisie, but of the working classes. For

  Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy 87

• Gobetti, the bourgeoisie represented a moment of inertia in the courseof a societys political development, and so could not supply its dynamicmotor. In the Turin factory councils Gobetti saw the work ethic, sense ofsacrifice, and personal responsibility which the Italian bourgeoisielacked, but which would enable the working class to become an effectiveagent of change in Italian society as a whole.

  The Italian bourgeoisie, however, was less than enthusiastic aboutthe insurrectionary climate that marked the years following the end ofthe First World War, and of which the factory councils had been aproduct. Indeed, to a great extent it was the Italian bourgeoisies fear ofthe workers movement that had paved the way for the coming to powerof Fascism. In the way it treated intellectuals, the Fascist regime was verymuch a two-headed beast. On the one hand, it ensured that its most out-spoken opponents were silenced, as with Gramsci, by sending him toprison; or, as with Gobetti, by beating him up to such a degree that hedied of his injuries in Paris; or by forcing them into exile abroad, as withCarlo (18991937) and Nello Rosselli (190037), who were murdered inFrance on Fascist orders; or, as with Carlo Levi (190275) and LeoneGinzburg, by sending them into involuntary exile in the remote regionsof Southern Italy. On the other hand, the rgime did relatively little toharass Croce and left him isolated rather than attempting any punitivetreatment. By the mid 1920s, when Croce finally rejected Fascism, he hadbecome such a well-known international figure that his name aloneserved him as a shield against any possible retaliation. Furthermore, thergime had everything to gain from leaving him in relative peace, as itcould thus project abroad an image of tolerance.

  The Fascists were well aware of how culture could be harnessed to thergimes political aims. Indeed, they controlled newspapers, the radio,cinema, and the free time of Italian citizens, this latter through thergimes network of workers leisure-time organizations known asDopolavoro (After Work). Yet, despite these measures, it would be amistake to assume that Fascism invaded all spheres of cultural life, thatItalians were coerced into dancing to the rgimes tune, or that they wereforce-fed an undiluted diet of political propaganda. For every attempt bythe Ministry of Popular Culture (known as Minculpop) to nationalizethe masses and foster an Italian consciousness in line with the rgimesaims, there were countless US-made films shown in the nations crowdedcinemas, including Mickey Mouse who was, it seems, a particular favour-ite in the Mussolini household.

  88 David Ward

• Intellectuals and the Communist Party

  Gramsci stressed the importance of binding the masses to a politicalproject, and he envisaged the PCI spreading cultural-political messagesto the masses through the mediation of organic intellectuals.Implementation of Gramscis scheme, however, had to await the fall ofFascism, during the hegemony of which the PCI, whose leadership wasin exile in Moscow, had been forced into clandestine activities. Despiteits proscription under Fascism and its losses in personnel during thetwenty-year rgime and in the anti-Fascist Resistance movement of19435, which it in great part led, the PCI, together with the moderateCatholic party, Christian Democracy, became the dominant player on thepost-war Italian stage. Intellectuals were drawn in great numbers to thePCI, and for a while it seemed that the party, or at least the left, had amonopoly over cultural activity in Italy. This occurred not because thePCI took draconian measures to silence its ideological adversaries, butbecause, after Fascism, it had become problematic to take up a conserva-tive political and cultural agenda, a major consequence of which was thealmost total disappearance of a Liberal voice from Italian culture andpolitics of the immediate post-war period.

  Even if intellectuals were drawn to the PCI in great numbers, thequestion of the relationship between culture and politics that thevociani, Croce, and Gramsci, had attempted to settle remained open.Perhaps the clearest illustration of the tension between the two spheresis provided by the short-lived, but nevertheless influential, literary andcultural review Il politecnico. Founded in 1945 and edited by theCommunist intellectual and writer Elio Vittorini (190866), the reviewset itself the task of broadening the nations horizons and supplying itwith an effective culture that would inform its political life effective,because never before had culture been part of everyday life, nor had itever had a civilizing effect on human beings and afforded them protec-tion against the worst excesses of history, such as Fascism. Vittoriniaimed to give culture real power in the world; yet, at the same time, thisnecessitated some accommodation with politics and political parties. Itwas the failure to find a middle way between intellectual freedom andparty discipline that proved to be the reviews undoing. Vittorinis insis-tence that culture be autonomous complicated his allegiance to the PCI,provoking the anger of the party leader Palmiro Togliatti (18931964),who had originally welcomed Il politecnico. For Togliatti, in particular,

  Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy 89

• the review had promised to be a useful tool in the construction of thePCIs cultural hegemony Gramscis precondition for assuming theleadership of society. To Togliattis claim that integrating their culturalactivity with the partys needs did not automatically mean that intellec-tuals autonomy was sacrificed, Vittorini replied reaffirming that auton-omy was a precondition for cultures political role.

  Togliattis disagreement with Vittorini was as much aesthetic as itwas political. Having identified Realism and Neorealism as the literarygenres that would best represent the values of class solidarity and com-mitment for which the post-war PCI stood, Togliatti had little time for Ilpolitecnicos tendency to promote, alongside Italian Realist artists, a liter-ature that was more formally experimental and which drew onEuropean and American influences. Indeed, it was the question of thenation which informed Togliattis attack on Vittorini. Rather than beinginsurrectionary, the cultural policy pursed by the PCI in the immediatepost-war years promoted the idea of interclass, domestic solidarity. ThePCI was anxious to create an image of itself as a reliable, patriotic forcewhose activities during the Resistance on behalf of the Italian nationhad shown that it had the interests of the nation at heart.

  Yet, despite the PCIs unquestionable power in the cultural sphere,the extent to which the partys intellectuals influenced Italian civilsociety is highly debatable. It has been argued that the PCI exercised agreater power of attraction over intellectuals than over civil society. Theresult of the 1948 general election, a landslide victory for the anti-Communist Christian Democracy, seems to bear this out. The PCI, por-trayed in election propaganda as a political force whose ideology wasincompatible with Italian society, was defeated on the very terrain ofreliability and patriotic values on which it had attempted to build itspost-war house. Although the PCI was hampered by the massive injec-tion of American funds into the Christian-Democrat campaign and by avicious propaganda war, the Catholic election victory sent the clearmessage that moderate, Catholic intellectuals held more sway overItalian civil society than their Communist counterparts.

  One of the reasons why PCI intellectuals, and the partys culturalpolicy in general, had a limited impact on Italian civil society can betraced to the partys attitude to culture. The PCIs main allegiance was tohigh culture, and many party intellectuals, thanks to their perceptionof its pernicious role under Fascism, were deeply suspicious of what theyconsidered to be the conservative agenda lying behind mass culture.

  90 David Ward

• These attitudes had two effects, one positive, the other less so. First,through its network of book clubs, popular libraries, film clubs etc., thePCI brought high culture, literacy, personal dignity, and an enhancedsense of self to many Italians who had not been well served by the stateseducation system; at the same time, the emphasis on high culturemeant that the PCI had little influence over those sectors of Italiansociety whose cultural demands were primarily satisfied by forms ofmass culture. And when in the late 1970s and 1980s, following the dere-gulation of television, the diet of mass culture available to Italiansincreased dramatically, the party found it difficult to react appropriately.

  Intellectuals and culture in a changing Italy

  The political role of the intellectual underwent a profound change as thepost-war period progressed. If, in the optimistic atmosphere of the post-war years, many left-wing intellectuals sought to forge alliances with theworking class, as time passed it became increasingly clear that theworking class was a problematic ally. During the 1960s, as prosperityincreased and memories of post-war economic hardships receded, so toodid the revolutionary option. Far more than intellectuals, workersseemed basically content with their lot and, despite intractable structu-ral inequalities, showed little inclination for change. As a result, com-mitted intellectuals turned their attention to new concerns. Inparticular, on the one hand, they sought Italys (and Europes) missingrevolution in geographically distant places like China and Africa; moregenerally, they focused on the superstructural elements of civil society,like language and literature, which shaped consciousness and percep-tion. If language was one of the vehicles for the bourgeois codes whichhad conditioned the working class, it was only by revising those codesthat the preconditions for change could be created. This conclusion hadradical consequences: intellectuals no longer needed the working classas a direct ally. They were free to carry out their work independently; andthe kind of writing encouraged was of a far more experimental naturethan the Neorealist texts sanctioned by the PCI a kind of writing, infact, that had little meaning for a mass readership.

  The events of 1968 brought intellectuals back into the kind of contactwith civil society that had seemed lost a few years earlier. A fertile terrainfor the revolt of 1968 had been created by the Vietnam war, the culturalrevolution in China, events in France, the pontificate of John XXIII and

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• the Second Vatican Council which encouraged more direct contactbetween Catholics and civil society, and domestic circumstances such asthe increased demands made on factory workers. Above all, the 1968revolt was the revolt, against their cultural and political parent-figures,of a younger generation, the sessantottini (sixty-eighters) as they calledthemselves, many of whom were born in the post-war years. In the Italiancontext, this meant a revolt against both the Catholic and Communistcultures, neither of which had been able to meet the demands of the newconstituencies emerging within Italian society the womens, gay, andecological movements, for example. The cultural needs of such groupswere catered for by alternative circuits of bookshops, publishing housesand film clubs. These counter-cultural groups also began to have a directeffect on civil society. Although they were unable to put the structuralbases of economic power into question, they succeeded in bringing aboutradical changes in Italian society. First, young people managed to carveout an identity for themselves from within the counter-culture. Culturebecame less associated with an external aspect of life to which one had ordid not have access, and more with a lifestyle that was defined by theshared beliefs, tastes, language, spaces, clothes, and political world-viewof group members. Second, the counter-culture changed the mode of cul-tural communication through networks of small radio stations and theconfessional style of their typical format, the phone-in programme.Third, some of the counter-cultures theorizing, like the womens move-ments assertion that the private was political, entered the discourse ofmainstream society and had deep-seated effects on personal relation-ships. Finally, the deregulation of radio and television in 1975, and thepassing of legislation permitting divorce and abortion would probablynot have occurred, or possibly only much later, without the pressureexerted by the counter-culture.

  Another lasting effect of 1968 was the deep changes it brought aboutin the forms of cultural mediation. In the post-1968 period, and increas-ingly up to the present, Italian culture has become less bookish andprint-dominated as radio and especially television have become the priv-ileged means of communicating with large numbers of people. Indeed,to be an influential intellectual in the Italy of the 1990s meant to havemastered the new media. And in the case of left-wing intellectuals, itmeant overcoming their deeply rooted reticence towards such media.Two intellectuals, originally from similar ideological backgrounds, butwho have gone in opposite directions, Walter Veltroni (1955 ) and

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• Giuliano Ferrara (1952 ), owe much of their influence to their dexteritywith the new modes of communication. Veltroni is a young, telegenicintellectual whose political formation took place in the PCI, but who hascome to the forefront of Italian political life as a leading light in theDemocratic Party of the Left (PDS) and as General Secretary of theDemocrats of the Left (DS), the new names the PCI has given itself sincethe fall of the Berlin Wall. His cultural formation, however, is stronglyUS-influenced and shows the kind of appreciation of popular culturewhich is comparatively rare in a left-wing intellectual. As editor of thePDS, and formerly PCI, newspaper LUnit, for instance, Veltroni boostedcirculation by including with the newspaper cassettes of popular filmsand card collections of famous footballers.

  The son of a PCI official, Ferrara worked full-time as a salaried admin-istrator in the partys Turin headquarters. However, he left the PCI to jointhe Italian Socialist Party, which in the 1980s was dominated by BettinoCraxi (19342000) and was following an anti-PCI line. After a few yearswith the Socialists, during which he became a well-known presence onItalian television, Ferrara joined Silvio Berlusconis new party Forza Italia,which was named after a well-known football slogan. In fact, it is onBerlusconis television channels that Ferrara has become known nation-ally. Ferrara is an interesting figure for two reasons. First, he has willinglyembraced every opportunity the media have made available to him, eventhat of US-style trash television, to communicate with a large audiencein a simple, direct, mainly pro-Berlusconi language which has few prece-dents in either Italian broadcasting or politics. The second reason is thathe has consciously styled himself as the exemplary figure of the modernItalian intellectual, who knew when to leave the sinking ship ofCommunism and ally himself with what he saw as the more modern,enlightened, Liberal-leaning forces represented by Craxi and Berlusconi.

  In fact, the emergence of a generation of neo-Liberal intellectuals inthe 1990s, many of whom have made the move from the left to the centreof the Italian political spectrum, represents something very new:namely, a challenge to the hegemony which left-wing intellectuals havegenerally enjoyed in the years since the end of the Second World War.Indeed, Liberal intellectuals have not only attacked the cultural andpolitical bases on which Italys First Republic was built, but have alsosuggested that the hegemony enjoyed by the left in the post-war periodhas been to the detriment of the nation as a whole. This latest develop-ment in Italian cultural life would not have been possible without the

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• collapse of the Berlin Wall and its attendant ideological ramifications.Now that Communism had finally been discredited Liberal intellectu-als reasoned it was high time that Liberalism, the forgotten ideology ofpost-war Italy, made a comeback.

  The active presence of high-profile Liberal intellectuals meant thatthe 1990s were a time of great intellectual antagonism in Italy. Thismarked a radical change from much of the post-war period, based as itwas largely on the common experience and values of the Resistance andanti-Fascist struggles. In the Italy of the 1990s, however, a far more abra-sive cultural battle was fought out, the main terrain of which was Italyspost-war First Republic, judged by Liberals to be little more than a man-ifestation of Communist hegemony in deed if not in name. The attackLiberal intellectuals have mounted on post-war Italy has taken twodirections: first, a concerted attempt to discredit the Italian Resistanceand anti-Fascist movement on which both Togliattis post-war PCI andthe First Republic based their claims to legitimacy; secondly, an equallyconcerted attempt to suggest that Fascism had not been the disastrousexperience left-leaning intellectuals had typically depicted. In the firstcase, the figure of the partisan has been redescribed as no longer thepatriotic hero, but a machine-gun-toting terrorist meting out indiscrim-inate and ideologically driven retribution; and Togliatti, one of thefather-figures of the First Republic, has been portrayed as indifferent tothe fate of Italy and Italians, a slave to Moscow, where his ultimate loyal-ties lay. In the second case, Fascists have been redescribed as brave sol-diers who fought for what they thought were the best interests of theircountry. At the heart of this still ongoing debate lie patriotic values:those of the Communist and post-Communist left are being called intoquestion, those of the Fascist right are being reaffirmed.

  To non-Italian eyes, the campaign to discredit the only Italians tocome out of the Second World War with any credit and to relegitimate aparticularly obnoxious Fascist rgime may appear incredible. Closerinspection of the terms of the debate reveals that what is at stake is lessFascism and the Resistance as such than the function that these twocrucial twentieth-century experiences have assumed for Italian cultureand politics. The real quarry of Liberal intellectuals is what they see asthe thoroughly negative role that the PCI-dominated left has played inpost-war Italy: hence their attempts to destroy the anti-Fascist legacy,the PCIs main source of legitimacy. The main charge that neo-Liberalintellectuals level at the PCI is that it exploited its position within Italian

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• society, through its leadership of the Resistance movement, to install argime of left-wing cultural hegemony in the post-Second-World Warnation, from which all non-PCI aligned intellectuals were excluded. Theexclusion of Liberal intellectuals from Italys corridors of cultural power neo-Liberals argue has had the detrimental effect of depriving Italyof the kind of dynamic, Liberal free-market culture which in the wake ofThatcherism, Reaganism and the collapse of the Berlin Wall has proveditself victorious in Western and Eastern Europe and Asia.

  Yet talk of a left-wing cultural rgime orchestrated by the PCI onorders from its masters in Moscow is clearly a mystification. It is difficultto imagine how a party which had never been in government until 1996,even allowing for its period of collaboration with the DC in the 1970s,could ever exercise such a tight stranglehold on Italian cultural life.Although the PCI certainly had a great influence on cultural mattersthrough its control of newspapers, weekly and monthly magazines, pub-lishing houses, and radio and television stations, as was only natural fora party which had a strong grassroots organization throughout most ofthe country and consistently polled around 30 per cent of the vote, thatinfluence never amounted to anything resembling a monopoly. Indeed,the historian Renzo De Felice (192995), who dedicated much of his lifeto a huge and controversial study of Fascism, and who is the intellectualfigure most often put forward as a victim of Italian left-wing culturalhegemony, published his many volumes with prestigious publishinghouses, was appointed to an important Chair at the University of Rome,and founded an influential school of historical research. It is certainlytrue that many PCI intellectuals disagreed publicly and violently withDe Felices analysis of Fascism, especially his claim that Fascism enjoyedthe consensus of vast sections of Italian society, and that many of theirobjections stemmed from a reluctance to consider the experiences ofFascism and the Resistance in anything other than the starkest of black-and-white terms. But such reluctance to revise entrenched positions con-stitutes cultural myopia rather than censorship. Indeed, the firstrevisions of the overly simplistic and entrenched versions of the Fascistand Resistance experiences that dominated left-wing culture in theimmediate post-war years were produced by historians like LuisaPasserini (1941 ) and Giovanni De Luna (1943 ) who came from thebroad area of the Italian left.

  Even though the making of predictions is not an exact science, itseems likely that the revision of recent and not-so-recent Italian history

  Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy 95

• will be the terrain on which the cultural and political battles of the nearfuture will be fought. The outcome of these debates will depend, on theone hand, on how well left-wing Italian intellectuals are able to defendItalys anti-Fascist legacy and to update it, making it relevant to youngergenerations for whom the Resistance is fast taking on the status of for-gotten ancient history; on the other, on how well Italian Liberals fare intheir project to delegitimate the anti-Fascist basis of Italys FirstRepublic and create conditions amenable to the birth of a SecondRepublic in which the Italian right can play the cultural and politicalrole which, in their eyes at least, it had been denied by the left-domi-nated Italy of the post-war years.1

  notes

  1. A longer version of this chapter is forthcoming in The Italianist 21 (2001).

  further reading

  Adamson, Walter, Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism, Cambridge Mass. andLondon: Harvard University Press, 1993.

  Asor Rosa, Alberto, La cultura, in Storia dItalia, vol. iv-ii. Turin: Einaudi, 1975, pp.8211664.

  Croce, Benedetto, Estetica come scienza dellespressione e linguistica generale, 9th edn. Bari:Laterza, 1950.

  De Luna, Giovanni, Storia del Partito dazione. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1982.Forgacs, David, Cultural Consumption, 1940s to 1990s, in D. Forgacs and R. Lumley

  (eds.), Italian Cultural Studies. Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 27390.Gobetti, Piero, La rivoluzione liberale, ed. E. Alessandrone Perona. Turin: Einaudi, 1964.Gramsci, Antonio, Gli intellettuali e lorganizzazione della cultura. Turin: Einaudi, 1949.

  Il Risorgimento. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1971.Jacobitti, Edmund, Hegemony Before Gramsci: The Case of Benedetto Croce, Journal of

  Modern History 52 (1980), pp. 6684.Lumley, Robert, Challenging Tradition: Social Movements, Cultural Change and the

  Ecology Question, in Z. Baranski and R. Lumley (eds.), Culture and Conflict inPostwar Italy. New York: St. Martins Press, 1990, pp. 11536.

  Passerini, Luisa, Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin WorkingClass. Cambridge University Press, 1987.

  Sapegno, Maria Serena, Italia, Italiani, in Letteratura Italiana, vol. v. Turin: Einaudi,1982, pp. 169221.

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• p e r c y a l l u m

  5

  Catholicism

  Introduction

  In the last hundred years the Church of Rome has formulated two greatprojects defining the Christian presence in society: those of Popes LeoXIII (18781903) and John XXIII (195863). The former was determinedby the need to come to terms with the new situation created by the FrenchRevolution; the latter was provoked by the need to adjust to the momen-tous changes which had taken place since the Second World War. Bothprojects represented major changes in the orientation of an institutionthat has always preferred to claim continuity rather than admit change,that sees restoration where others see revolution.1 The projects focused,in the first case, on establishing the bases for a Christian reconquest of ahostile world; and, in the second case, on changing the Churchsapproach to an outside world no longer conceived as fundamentallyhostile, hence one with which it could enter into dialogue.

  The significance of these projects for Italian Catholic culture isobvious in view of the authority of papal pronouncements in the pro-duction and propagation of Catholic doctrine. It is well known that theMarxist critic Antonio Gramsci discussed the Catholic Church as anideological apparatus with its own institutional grassroots structure(parishes and dioceses) and cadres (clergy) whose task was to guide andinstruct the faithful about their place in the world. This was tradition-ally achieved, first, in a largely didactic manner through liturgical activ-ity (sermons, cathechism) to ensure that the simple verities of the faithwere continually reaffirmed; and, second, by controlling the orthodoxyof intellectual expression through disciplinary measures such as ex-communication.

• The Churchs doctrinal activity suggests that discussion of ItalianCatholicism needs to attend to three areas: Church teachings, grassrootCatholic understandings, and the interconnection between the two.These areas will be examined in terms of the two projects outlinedabove.

  Leo XIII and the Christian reconquest

  Papal teaching and instrumentalitiesThe French Revolution broke the Church of Romes traditional link withthe states of the Ancien Rgime and, hence, its identification with pre-revolutionary societies. It was responsible for the complete laicization ofthe state and public life for the first time in the history of ChristianEurope, and so for the complete separation of Church and state. With theadvent of Liberalism as the main ideology of the new rulers of Europe,the Catholic Church found itself in a hostile environment. The situationwas worse in Italy than in other European countries because the newlyunified state occupied the Papal States (186070), thereby depriving theChurch of its temporal power. Pope Pius IX (184678) refused to acceptthis fait accompli, and the resulting Roman Question (that is, the conflictover the territorial sovereignty of the Holy See) was to determine theChurchs largely hostile relations with the Italian state for the next fiftyyears, until its resolution in the Lateran Pacts of 1929.

  The Churchs reaction to a hostile outside world was to condemn it.For Pius IX and his successors, Liberalism was the very negation ofChristianity since it put humanity in Gods place. It constituted an evengreater threat than Protestantism, because it was presented as the bearerof a total civilization superior to Christianity. Thus, the Popes viewedLiberalism as a mortal enemy, the more so since the Church of Rome con-sidered itself not only as the one true Church, but as the perfect society.This explains Pius IXs intransigence, expressed in the formula Therecan be no compromise with this world-order, and his condemnation ofthe secular world as iniquitous in the Syllabus errorum (1864).

  Leo XIII (18781903), however, while maintaining the intransigenceof his predecessor in temporal and doctrinal matters, realized thatsimple rejection and condemnation were insufficient if the Church wasnot to lose its influence over peoples minds and over society. To ensurethat this did not happen, it had to offer an alternative vision of society.This required the Church coming to terms with its new situation in the

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• world; however, this was not to be done at any price because the Churchsprinciples encompassed eternal truths. The strategy adopted wassimple: combine maximum doctrinal rigour with extreme realism. Thismeant defending Church principles while taking advantage of the polit-ical opportunities offered by secular rgimes.

  Moreover, since the Church saw modern society as a counter-church,the solution was to develop itself as a counter-society. Indeed, manyinfluential Catholics harboured the belief that eventually modernsociety would be forced to recognize the error of its ways and once againembrace the Church. In the meantime, Leos great project, which hepursued methodically throughout his pontificate in nine major encycli-cals (letters addressed to clergy and faithful stating official Church doc-trine), was to prepare the Church to regain its former dominant position.The tools for achieving this were essentially two: teaching and organiza-tion. The aims were to restore the philosophical basis of Catholic teach-ing while setting out its practical implications in terms of lay action formodern society (social doctrine), and to propagate this teaching (massconfessional associations).

  Although more of a practical man than a theoretician, Leo XIII under-stood that all institutional activity required a basis in a coherent body ofknowledge. Thus, in his first encyclical (Aeterni Patris, 1879), he restoredThomism the Scholastic philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas (122774)which harmonized faith and reason as the Churchs official philosophy.He thus emphasized the continuity of Christian teaching and traditionalCatholic identity. Leos exaltation of the perennial significance ofThomism was proof that Catholicism had a complete, philosophicallybased doctrine capable of confronting its modern ideological rivals ontheir own ground, that of understanding the world. The doctrinal certi-tudes announced in a long series of papal encyclicals by Leos successorsreinforced Catholic identity, while at the same time furnishing an explana-tion for the unhappy state of modern society: present ills were the result ofloss of faith and the consequent abandonment of Christian principles.

  Thomism also provided a philosophical structure through whichpolitical and ethical questions could be posed and analysed. God wasrational and purposive and the natural world was made in his image;humanitys role was to live in harmony with nature; belief and reasonwere not contradictory, but merely two different ways of knowing truth.Indeed, the Thomist vision of a hierarchical and ordered world, begin-ning with God and proceeding through a series of gradations of Being

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• which placed humanity in a unique position as the link between heavenand earth, was given intellectual substance in the famous theory ofnatural law organized in terms of three levels: divine law, natural lawand human positive law. The dictates of each level needed to be in accordfor social harmony to be achieved.

  In addition, the Thomist framework provided a way for dealing withchange and the political pretensions of the Churchs ideological rivals.This was the doctrine of indirect sovereignty based on the separation ofthe spiritual and temporal, but with the primacy of the former. This dis-tinction provided the basis of the so-called thesis and hypothesis theorywhich distinguished between authoritative pronouncements (theses: tobe obeyed in all circumstances) and other pronouncements (hypotheses:modifiable if necessity demands) in expounding the Christian message.The significance of this doctrine was that it permitted the Church toadjust to change without altering any fundamental principle, and soopened the way to acknowledging some of the values of modern society.The doctrine of indirect sovereignty had a further aspect. Since divinelaw was superior to natural law, the Church claimed the right to inter-vene in those areas of the temporal sphere involving moral questions,which meant virtually all areas of contemporary life. Indeed, in his ency-clical Quas primas (1925), Pius XI (192239) asserted not only the spiritualdimensions of this moral leadership, but also its socio-political dimen-sions, announcing a programme of Christian restoration. Unsurprisingly,such papal pretensions were a source of potential conflict with laygovernments.

  Finally, the restoration of Thomism furnished a pedagogical methodfor the propagation of the Christian message. Leos encyclicals made asuccessful ideological appeal to the faithful. They inspired mobilizationamong the lower clergy which led to the creation of those associationsthat were to constitute a mass social movement in the new century, theItalian Catholic movement. It was in the nascent parish circles that theencyclicals were discussed, thereby ensuring their influence on ItalianCatholic culture. The basis of Catholic social doctrine, as expounded inLeos great encyclical Rerum novarum (1893), was the famous medievalorganicist conception of human society, whereby society was a divinelyordained moral organism in which each part had a special role to play insecuring the well-being of the whole. As Leo XIII put it: nature wishesthe two classes in civil society to find harmony between themselves andthe equilibrium that results. The one has an absolute need of the other;

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• neither capital without labour, nor labour without capital. Concordcreates the beauty and order of things; whereas perpetual conflict canonly bring confusion and barbarity. The Churchs task was to promotethis social concord by laying down the duties of each class based onjustice. Catholic social doctrine propounded the pacific acceptance byeach group of its natural and rightful place in society, and the faithfulexecution by each of its duties as established by the Church: that themasters accept the need to be good masters and the servants accept theirsubordination.2 As a result, the Church could claim to be the guardianof workers and employers alike.

  Private property, the family and work were the three interconnectedpillars of the Churchs social doctrine. They too were a product ofThomist natural law and of its belief in humanitys privileged relation-ship with God. From this stemmed two important consequences:humanitys absolute and rightful domination over nature this was theprincipal distinction between humanity and the animal world and theessential equality of all human beings in the social and economicspheres. The domination that humanity has over non-human elements,deriving from its capacity to reason, is the basis of the right to property.This right fulfilled the fundamental need of humanity to express its owndignity and freedom through the family and work. However, enjoymentof the right was limited by its social aspect: the basic equality of allhuman beings. Hence, the Churchs social doctrine explicitly rejectedboth Liberal capitalism and Marxist Socialism. Moreover, it specificallyencouraged class harmony by endorsing the natural right of the workersto a just wage while stressing the Christian obligations of the employer.It proposed a rgime of corporations of employers and workers whichwere to be self-regulating, but co-ordinated by the state. How this co-ordination was to be achieved was crucial, because it was the key to thesocial harmony which the Churchs corporatist rgime was intended tosecure. Other moral aspects derived from the social doctrines natural-law approach were the protection and encouragement of the family asthe most direct expression of humanitys nature; and, last but not least,the principle that there is no authority except from God (Immortale Dei,1885).

  Turning to the organizational aspect of Leo XIIIs project, the Churchformulated two major responses to the problems posed by its position in ahostile world. The first was to centralize power and authority in the HolySee and in the person of the Sovereign Pontiff. This had already begun

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• under Pius IX, and became the central theme of the First Vatican Council(1870), which proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility in doctrinalmatters. It was followed by the publication of the Code of Canon Lawunder Benedict XV in 1918, which set out the rules governing the behavi-our of Catholics. The purpose was to ensure uniformity of action withinthe Church, and to secure the strict obedience of the faithful and clergy totheir bishops and of the bishops to the Pope. The second response waswhat has been called the appeal to the laity, namely, exploiting theopportunities offered by the new secular rgimes, specifically the possibil-ity of mobilizing the faithful in civil society outside the state sphere. Theappeal to the laity amounted to the Churchs sponsoring of large-scaleorganizations in which and through which the layperson was calledactively to support the Church by defending and extending its mission inthe world. Lay mobilization assumed a wide variety of organizationalforms: religious, social, economic and, eventually, political.

  The Pope who developed this second response and made it the basisof his strategy of Christian reconquest was Pius XI. For him, CatholicAction, the mass organization of lay Catholic militants founded in thelate nineteenth century, was the principal instrument for the propaga-tion and achievement of Christian principles in individual, family andsocial life, but always under strict clerical control. We should perhapsadd that Pius XIs predilection for Catholic Action should probably beexplained in terms of the specific circumstances of his pontificate(192239, i.e. during the Fascist rgime), when all non-Fascist organiza-tions except Catholic Action were banned. It was allowed to survive,under the 1929 Lateran Pacts, with a role limited to educational andreligious activity. Indeed, it not only survived but prospered, with mem-bership expanding throughout the 1930s to constitute a mass force oftwo million people, disciplined and obedient, at the Popes command(The Popes Army).

  In addition, as part of his aim to secure the Kingdom of Christ onearth, Pius XI frequently expressed his views on various social issues,such as the family and education, to assert the Churchs position in par-ticular when these matters were neglected or opposed by secular govern-ments. However, it was his successor, Pius XII (193958), who, in the1940s and 1950s, stressed the role of papal teaching in the reconqueststrategy. He discoursed on every topic, thus giving the impression thatCatholic culture was complete in itself and able to provide doctrinalorientation in every branch of knowledge and in professional matters.

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• Ideological concerns and propagation networksAnalysis of devotional literature indicates a number of ideological con-cerns which remained largely unchanged from the unification of Italyright down to the Second Vatican Council (19635). The major concernswere the value of private property, the family and the subordination ofwomen, the myth of the land, the acceptance of ones social station andthe virtue of obedience, and the castigation of atheists, Communists andsinners. The purpose of this literature was to propagate the papalmessage that there was no moral alternative to the Christian way of life.

  Private property operated as a moral value on two levels. For thewealthy, their property confirmed that they were among the privileged,and hence that they had a responsibility to husband it with care. For thepoor, lack of property was proof of their humble station, and hence ofthe need to practise humility, which was likely to secure their salvationin the afterlife. Alongside property was the family, which was the naturalcondition for both men and women (and so willed by divine law); itdetermined, moreover, the very different, but complementary, roles ofmen and women: he, the lord and master; she, the maid and servant. Thepurpose of marriage (and the family) was to collaborate with God in per-petuating human life. A womans role was that of mother and husbandshelpmate, with the attendant virtues of modesty, submission and sacri-fice. The role model was Mary, who suffered silently and with dignity.For women, there were no Christian virtues outside the family.

  The myth of the land as the source and depository of all Christian andcivic virtues was an even more significant ideological theme. Peasantsociety represented a fundamental point of reference for the identifica-tion of ethico-religious and political values (NatureManGod). Duringthe course of the nineteenth century, Catholic apologists transposed theEnlightenment myth of the noble savage into the ideology of the noblepeasant last refuge of sound customs and the true faith.3 It was thismyth that led the ecclesiastical hierarchy to condemn industry andurbanization as the source of spiritual and material degradation. Twoother Catholic themes were linked to the myth of peasant society: theacceptance of ones station in life and the supreme virtue of obedience toGods will. Not only were they a call to support the social status quo andreject secular ideologies, they also constituted a command to obey theChurch as an institution and to regard its leader, the Pope, as the onlytrue interpreter of Gods will.

  Finally, the notion of obedience reappeared in the castigation of

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• atheists, sinners and revolutionaries, for whom eternal damnation waspromised. Since the Counter-Reformation, dechristianization had beenconsidered by the Church as a direct consequence of the Reformationwhich was deemed the work of Satan. The revival of the notion of theworks of the devil to explain modern civilization led to the widespreaduse of apocalyptic language. Since 1917, but above all during the ColdWar, Communism had been the specific target of these ecclesiastical con-demnations. Moreover, the association of the devil, atheism and revolu-tion with urban civilization enabled the Church to weave its majorthemes (the land, family and labour) into a coherent ideological product:peasant civilization with its nostalgic appeal to a past golden age.

  Before examining the views of the faithful, it is worth outlining thenetworks that propagated Catholic culture in the pre-Second VaticanCouncil period. Catholic institutions were both numerous and wide-spread. First, there were the ecclesiastical territorial institutions whichin the 1950s comprised a clerical population of a quarter of a million, ofwhom 65,000 were bishops and priests who ministered to the faithful in282 dioceses and 25,000 parishes. Secondly, there were the Catholic asso-ciational networks which embraced some 10 per cent of Italians: CatholicAction itself in the 1950s numbered over three million members in80,000 groups. Together with its dependent bodies, Catholic Action wasnumerically the largest private organization in the country. To this, onecan add the more autonomous professional bodies, all founded in theimmediate post-war period, like the Farmers Confederation (one and ahalf million families, representing seven million people in 13,000 sec-tions); ACLI (Association of Catholic Workers one million members in6,000 branches); CISL (Trade Union Confederation two and a halfmillion members); and the Christian Democratic Party (one and a halfmillion members in 12,000 branches, and some eleven million voters).Thirdly, there was the Catholic press which controlled some 1,800 publi-cations with an overall circulation of sixteen million copies, more thanhalf the magazine sales in Italy. Lastly, given that the Christian DemocratParty was continuously in power, the Church could count on publicinstutions (schools, radio and television) to spread the precepts ofCatholic culture.

  The orientation of the faithfulThe faithful generally assimilated the themes outlined above; however,in certain circumstances, there were subtle interpretations whereby the

  104 Percy Allum

• official arguments were stood on their head or simply rejected. Theprocess and extent of reinterpretation depended on the role of theChurch in local society. In the Lombardo-Veneto of the 1950s, where localsociety was strongly integrated around the local parish, Catholic culturehad become the local mass culture. On the other hand, in the South inthe same period, where local society was in an advanced state of transfor-mation, reinterpretation was more widespread. One needs only recallthe spread of Protestant sects in the South since the start of the century.

  Studies of the 1950s point to the direct reproduction by the faithful ofthe messages contained in clerical discourse. The repetition of catch-words and ready-made phrases confirm the themes already outlined: thefamily, labour, acceptance of ones station, obedience to the Church. Forexample: Teaching religion makes us good Christians, good labourersand good men, honest and devoted to our families (peasant); Religionhelps us to endure the sad adversities of life (mechanic); Religion is afaith, believing what the priests tell and have told us and what we havelearned from Scripture (housewife).4 An analysis of 1950s politicalstereotypes has persuasively shown that in the Lombardo-Veneto threesets of messages predominated: religionChurch, laboursocial justiceand fatherlandfreedom.5 They mirrored the stereotypes of Catholicculture, and determined mass attitudes towards political parties. In thewords of one respondent: Occupation peasant. I am ignorant of politics.I observe the Ten Commandments and I vote for the ChristianDemocrats. The DC was the most popular party because it was viewedpositively with regard to religion and patriotism, even though it wasperceived negatively with regard to laboursocial justice. TheCommunist Party lost because, although it was judged positively onsocial justice, it was condemned for its atheism. However, where theCatholic cultural message was more problematic, for instance in secular-ized and working-class areas, more critical attitudes were found. Thesetended to take one of two forms: either total rejection in the form of anti-clericalism, or an acceptance of the Catholic cultural framework, whileturning the judgments implicit in the official interpretation on theirheads. For example: The DC should be less accommodating and ensuregreater respect for the laws which help smallholders and the less well-off (clerk). Thus, even in cases where religion was not the sole factordetermining the influence of Catholic culture at the grassroots, itremained nonetheless a significant one.6

  Historians have commented on the Churchs role in determining the

  Catholicism 105

• political and cultural orientation of the majority of Italians in the Fascistand Cold-War periods. The reason for this, it is claimed, lay in the cen-tralism and discipline imposed on the Church by Leo XIII and his succes-sors. Discipline was such that the behaviour of ordinary Catholicsfaithfully followed the clergys instructions. The lines of communica-tion were very efficient: papal pronouncements were discussed in themost authoritative Catholic journals, and popularized in thousands ofparish magazines and bulletins and, above all, in the sermons of parishpriests.

  John XXIII and the People of God

  The Churchs dream of the Christian reconquest of Italian society wasshattered as much by the development of that society as by the triumphof rival ideologies. Indeed, by the 1960s Italy was no longer a Catholiccountry, in the sense that practising Catholics were a minority a factwhich the divorce and abortion referendums of 1974 and 1981 respec-tively were to confirm. Pope Leo XIIIs and his successors project of theChurch regaining its hegemony over Italian society through its appeal tothe people was no longer viable.

  The Pope and the CouncilJohn XXIIIs pontificate (195863) and the Second Vatican Council(19625) which he called mark something of a break in the Churchsrecent history. This was the result more of witness John XXIIIs wholeconception of being Pope than of doctrinal revolution. As he declaredin his 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra, a social message is not only to beproclaimed, but is also to be put concretely into practice. The new Popesaw his role as that of the Good Shepherd. He believed in the essentialgoodness of humanity, but he was also aware of the crisis threatening theChurch because it was losing contact with ordinary men and women,who consequently were turning away from God. It was his firm intentthat contact be renewed. Hence the Popes surprise decision to call theCouncil and his pastoral activity as Bishop of Rome. This aim wasevident above all in his Gospel message of hope and co-operation: hepreached the language of mercy and reconciliation rather than that ofreprobation, used by his immediate precedessors. This approach reachedits climax in his last and most celebrated encyclical, Pacem in terris (1963),which was addressed an absolute novelty to all men of good will and

  106 Percy Allum

• not just to the episcopacy, clergy and faithful. While following orthodoxCatholic doctrine, imputing the present crisis in the world to its havingforsaken God, the encyclical nonetheless emphasizes the distinctionbetween error and the erring (the non-believer is above all always ahuman being and retains [. . .] his personal dignity) and the need for dia-logue with other currents of opinion, even with those with whom theChurch disagreed on fundamentals. The justification for such behaviourwas an acute historical intuition, namely, that false doctrines regardingmankinds nature, origin and purpose should not be confused with thepolitical movements that found inspiration in them.

  During the first session of the Council, a change in the direction ofthe Church corresponding to John XXIIIs vision appeared to be a realpossibility; however, none of the proposed constitutional documentswas voted on and the Pope died before the second session opened.Although his successor, Paul VI (196378), was committed to the spiritof the Council, he was much more cautious and concerned with doctri-nal continuity, so that some of the Councils innovatory impact wasblunted. Despite the compromises, however, two documents, Lumengentium and Gaudium et spes, remain important for their innovatorythrust.

  Lumen gentium was the Churchs new dogmatic constitution and wentbeyond the earlier Tridentine hierarchical conception of Church author-ity, revalorizing the contribution of all its members. The chapterdefining the Church as the People of God, that is embracing believersand unbelievers alike, was significantly placed before the one setting outthe Churchs hierarchical structure. Moreover, the constitution pro-posed a more active role for the laity than hitherto, speaking of acommon ministry of the faithful in addition to the official or hierarchi-cal ministry. It reconfirmed, nonetheless, the doctrine of papal pre-eminence.

  Gaudium et spes was the document that originated from John XXIIIsconcern that one of the Councils principal tasks should be to respond tothe worlds problems and hopes: poverty, liberation and peace. It waspresented as the Magna Carta of the Churchs social teaching: the pasto-ral constitution of the Church in the contemporary world. Its existencewas an authentic novelty; however, owing to the difficulty the Councilhad in its final session in reconciling the new perspectives with tradi-tional views, it was both long, complex and convoluted. For example, inthe first part, it proclaimed basic human rights, including respect for the

  Catholicism 107

• freedom of conscience of the erring and the fundamental equality of allhuman beings and their opinions; but in the second, it repeated the tra-ditional views on the family, marriage, divorce, birth control and abor-tion. In this way, doctrinal continuity was safeguarded, while leaving theway open for dialogue between believers and non-believers. Such anapproach, however, frustrated the Council Fathers who believed that adeeper inquiry was necessary if the Church was to appreciate the demo-graphic, economic, social, and not just the moral, implications of itsfamily doctrine.

  What needs to be emphasized is that the Council proposed the prem-ises for a radical change in the Church, but it lacked both the time andthe power effectively to overcome the mentality of the Vatican adminis-tration. Indeed, John XXIIIs intuition of the relevance of the Gospelmessage to the modern world was more a change of style than a realproject. In action, it caused tensions; and his successors, fearful of theconsequences, endeavoured to limit the Councils impact. Indeed, bothPaul VI and John Paul II (1978 ) increasingly blamed the overt crisis ofthe Church in the 1970s and 1980s on the Council. Thus, as early as 1972,Paul VI claimed that the Council had not produced the sunny day that itwas legitimate to expect, but a day of clouds, storms, and darkness.Despite such reservations, the Church has made an effort to adapt itselfto the needs of the post-Conciliar world, above all by increasinglyemphasizing the ethical, rather than the purely religious, dimension ofthe Christian message. Thus, papal pronouncements have attemptednot only to demonstrate that Catholic moral commandments containvalid responses to the problems of contemporary society, but also topresent them in a persuasive manner: no longer dogmatically, but prob-lematically. Thus, John Paul II, in his encyclical Centesimus annus (1991),weighs the pros and cons of capitalism as the best possible economicsystem, recognizing its virtues, recalling its vices and eschewing allsweeping judgments.7

  Pluralism and dialogueDespite the surprise and general hostility of the Italian episcopacy, theimpact of John XXIIIs pontificate and the Second Vatican Council wasquite dramatic. By liberating latent cultural tensions and energy, itbrought the crisis of Catholicism into the open. The changes producedby the Catholic reformation of the Sixties passed through three phaseswhich coincided with the three succeeding pontificates. The first phase

  108 Percy Allum

• (19635) was more or less responsible for the liquidation of the project ofChristian reconquest of Italian society, at least in Pius XIIs version of ahierarchically organized militant Church. Pluralism and dialogue, assignalled in John XXIIIs actions and encyclicals, were the order of theday. The second phase (196576: Paul VI) was dominated by Catholicdissent; spontaneous development of grassroots communities; crises ofthe clergy (decline in vocations, exodus from Holy Orders) and of officialCatholic collateral organizations; and the formation of oppositionmovements, like Cristiani per il socialismo or local ecumenical move-ments. The third phase (since 1978: John Paul II) has been something ofthe calm after the storm and has seen the Church attempting to reconsti-tute unity around the Popes charismatic figure.

  From the point of view of grassroots cultural shift, the second phaseis of particular relevance. The religious and cultural crisis that theSecond Vatican Council released (coinciding with the upheavals of 1968)undermined the organizational viability of the official Catholic collat-eral associations, resulting in confusion, splits and the dissolution ofnumerous local associations. Membership of Catholic Action and otherassociations declined by two-thirds in the five years from 1966 to 1971.Indeed, the result in 1969 was a new statute for Catholic Action foundedon the so-called religious choice, that is a purely apostolic commitmentto the Churchs pastoral mission. The development, on the other hand,of a whole series of spontaneous groups led to loss of Church credibility,protest against the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and a general fragmentation,both organizational and cultural, of the hitherto disciplined Catholicmovement. Catholic dissent reached its peak in the mid 1970s with thevote in favour of divorce in the 1974 referendum. However, the failure ofthe protest groups to change the world pushed them towards mysticism,which enabled the Church authorities to regain some measure of institu-tional control over cultural dissent in the religious sphere. This wasachieved in two ways: first, by the systematic elimination of dissenttowards Church authority; and secondly, through the recovery of part ofthe innovatory experiences in a spirit of give and take (acceptance ofcertain criticisms of the Church concerning submission to Churchauthority).

  Research in the 1970s identified four major cultural areas withinCatholicism.8 The first, Traditional Catholicism, corresponded to thepre-Conciliar Catholic culture outlined above, and had its touchstonesin the words religion, charity, Christianity, spirit and Catholic,

  Catholicism 109

• which expressed the thematic contents of the now minority, ruralCatholic tradition.

  The second was Progressive Catholicism, which can be defined as theofficial culture of the Second Vatican Council, and whose vocabularycomprised the key words community, service, path, choice, testi-mony, liturgy, catechism, Gospel, love and communion.Progressive Catholicism owes much to the French Catholic philosopherJacques Maritain and his book LHumanisme intgral (1936), which arguedthe case for the autonomy of Catholics in the temporal sphere where thefaithful should be free to bear witness according to personal conscience.

  The third area was Modern Extra-Ecclesiastical Catholicism whichwas tendentially heterodox and made up of groups that had broken withthe Church, initially on the grounds of class. Key words in their vocabu-lary were: friendship, experience, person, friend, personal,together, achieve, need. They were the groups most profoundlyaffected by the post-1968 experience, and which formed Cristiani per ilsocialismo. The interaction of this experience with traditional Catholicculture was responsible for the so-called spontaneous Catholic associa-tionism that characterized the 1970s. This form of Catholicism stressedthe fraternal (or horizontal) relationship instead of the traditional verti-cal relationship of authority between clergy and laity a developmentthat Pope John Paul II has gone out of his way to quell.

  The fourth tendency was Intransigent Catholicism, which was thatof the hardline militants, particularly associated with Comunione e lib-erazione, who were well organized and hostile to all forms of progres-sive Catholicism. Its vocabulary included such key words as man,neighbourhood, reality, world, social and political. The main thrustof this group was to see the Gospel message in purely political terms thatcould be implemented in a lay context.

  The second and third groupings were more widespread, at leastamong the young, than the first and the fourth. Further, the latter werestronger in central Italy (including Rome) and the South than in theNorth. By the 1990s, the Catholic cultural area seemed to have stabilized.For example, Garelli identified two groups: what he called the Catholicmajority (some two-thirds of Italians who accept the generic definitionof Catholic), and the Catholic minority (perhaps one-third, who areintensely religious, of whom one-tenth belong to groups, movements orassociations).9 Thus, while 80 per cent of Italians believe in a ChristianGod, the quota that actually believes in specific Catholic precepts is dra-

  110 Percy Allum

• matically lower (fewer than 30 per cent). The significance of the distinc-tion is twofold: first, the proportion of committed Catholics that recog-nizes and obeys the precepts is half that of generic Catholics; secondly,the proportion of committed Catholics who believe that not followingcertain precepts, above all in the field of family and sexual morals, whichpapal teaching continues to stress is not a mortal sin, is substantial(about 35 per cent). This breakdown in the system of Catholic moralbeliefs has been attributed to a process of deregulation aided and abettedby the Church itself and consisting in the progressive neglect of the rep-ertory of indications given to those the clergy whose task was oncethat of ensuring compliance in moral behaviour, above all in the field ofsexual and family ethics.10

  Conclusion

  The great change in Catholic culture after unification resulted from achange in the project of defining the Christian presence in Italiansociety: it is no longer a militant movement seeking to reconquer amonopoly position for the Church, but rather a plurality of groups indialogue with other cultural movements, promoting peace and goodwill for all conditions of persons. Indeed, it can be argued that thepassage of Catholicism from an institutional centre of social aggregationin Italian society to a largely cultural area has paradoxically come aboutas much as a result of the Churchs action as against its will. However,one thing the Church has not abandoned is its dogma: the claim to uni-versal truth. In his encyclical Veritatis splendor (1993), Pope John Paul II isexplicit: all modern philosophies are false Liberalism and Socialism,but also Rationalism in all its forms, Naturalism, Pantheism, Positivism,Materialism, etc. for the very simple reason that by the will of Christ,the Catholic Church is the master of the truth; its function is to expressand teach the authentic truth at the same time as proclaiming andconfirming, by virtue of its authority, the principles of the moral orderthat follow the very nature of man. However, this claim has beenincreasingly rejected by a majority of Italians, because the simple moralprinciples dictated by the commandments of divine and natural law areincreasingly at odds with the contradictory experience of life in a post-modern society. A measure of this changed attitude is the disappearance,with the Cold War, of the Christian Democrat Party after almost fiftycontinuous years in power.

  Catholicism 111

• notes

  1. N. Ravitch, The Catholic Church and the French Nation (London: Routledge, 1980), p. 135.2. The two passages are quoted in Giuliano della Pergola, Le ideologie dei cattoliciitaliani dalla questione operaia a Cristiani per il socialismo, in Fernando Vianello et al.,Tutto il potere della DC (Rome: Coines Edizioni, 1975), pp. 10955 (pp. 114 and 116).3. See Carlo Prandi, Alle origini moderne dellegemonia. Religione e popolare inItalia tra XVIII e XIX secolo, in G. Guizzardi (ed.), Chiesa e religione del popolo (Turin:Claudina, 1981).4. The first two quotations from Percy Allum and Ilvo Diamanti, 50/80: Venti anni(Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1986), pp. 1201; the last from Percy Allum, Politics and Societyin Postwar Naples (Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 269.5. Ilvo Diamanti, La filigrana bianca della comunit. Senso comune, consenso politico,appartenenza religiosa nel Veneto degli anni 50, Venetica 6 (1986), pp. 5581.6. Ibid., p. 67.7. See E. Pace, Lunit dei cattolici in Italia (Milan: Guerini e Associati, 1995), p. 125.8. See della Pergola, Le ideologie; G.-C. Milanesi (ed.), Oggi credono cos, 2 vols. (Milan:Elledici, 1981); G.-C. Quaranta, Lassociazionismo invisibile (Florence: Sansoni, 1982).9. F. Garelli, Religione e chiesa in Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991).10. Pace, Lunit dei cattolici, p. 127.

  further reading

  Alberigo, G. and A.Ricciardi (eds.), Chiesa e papato nel mondo contemporaneo. Bari: Laterza,1990.

  Guizzardi, G., The Rural Civilization. The Structure of an Ideology of Consent,Social Compass 23 (1976), pp. 197220.

  Miccoli, G., La Chiesa e il fascismo, in G. Quazza (ed.), Fascismo e societ italiana. Turin:Einaudi, 1973, pp. 185208.

  Magister S., La politica vaticana in Italia, 19431978. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1979.Martini, G., La Chiesa negli ultimi trentanni. Rome: Studium, 1977.Nichols, P., The Politics of the Vatican. London: Pall Mall, 1968.Poggi, G.-F., Catholic Action in Italy. Stanford University Press, 1967.Poulat, E., LEglise romaine, le savoir et le pouvoir, Archives de sociologie des religions 37

  (1974), pp. 521.

  112 Percy Allum

• r o b e r t s . d o m b r o s k i

  6

  Socialism, Communism and other isms

  Before the second half of the nineteenth century, there was no Socialistmovement in Italy, for the conditions that would enhance its develop-ment had yet to come into being. Socialist concerns for justice andequality were not lacking in the writings of reformers and patriots ofthe eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but they remained, withfew exceptions, universal ideals largely untested in concrete, historicalarenas of struggle.1 It was not until the Risorgimento had borne thefruits of Italian unity, providing the stimulus and the basis for thedevelopment of capitalism on a national scale, that the Socialist move-ment could find its channels of political development and ideologicalgrowth.

  The Italian Socialist Party was formed at the time of the SecondCongress of the Italian Workers Party, held in Genoa in August 1892. Theprincipal decisions taken included the definitive separation betweenAnarchists and Marxists, and the constitution of a party with a distinctlyproletarian base and committed to Marxist principles. The programmevoted in 1892 would remain the partys official platform until 1919. Itproclaimed as its end the socialization of the means of work [. . .] and[the] collective control of production which could only be achieved bythe action of all the proletariat organized in a class party.2 The maincurrents operative in pursuing some or all of these objectives wereessentially three: Marxism, Reformism and Syndicalism. BakuninistAnarchism, which preached the abolition of the state, had a discrete fol-lowing mainly in Southern Italy and constituted an important momentin the partys prehistory. Its defeat in about 1880 signalled the birth of amodern Socialism, based on reason and the political growth of theworking class; its legacy, however, would not be erased completely from

• the partys history, as the tactics of Syndicalism and, later, Mussolini-ism would bear ample testimony.

  Marxism

  While Marxism had been known in Italy since 1848, it took hold amongItalian intellectuals only in the late 1880s. The cultural environment inwhich it was diffused was largely Positivist and anti-clerical. The phil-osopher Antonio Labriola and the future leader of the Socialist Party,Filippo Turati, were its principal spokesmen. Labriola propoundedwhat is commonly referred to as orthodox Marxism: a doctrine, basedin the Hegelian dialectic, that reiterated Marxs original views on theinevitable overthrow of capitalism by violent revolution. AlthoughLabriolas orthodox position would have a lasting influence on theSocialist movement, it would be overshadowed by the much lessradical and more practical positions held by Turati, which left open thequestion whether violent revolution was necessary and inevitable,while still adhering to the tenets of an evolutionary Socialism. Turatisbrand of Socialism, from which the party took its organizationalimpetus, maintained that, in order to gain power, the workers had toengage in an organized class struggle in the political arena, that is, inrelation to the then dominant Liberal governments and within the par-liamentary system. This position set the stage for the battles betweenreformists and revolutionaries that would impair party unity fordecades to come.

  Reformism

  Like Marxism, Reformism in the Italian context branched from left toright in its approach to Socialism, that is, from positions that remainedanchored to the Marxist principle of revolution, while emphasizing thepolitical development of the working class and proletarian reforms, tothose which were collectivist, but not, strictly speaking, Marxist. Thislatter orientation preached the conquest of political power by theworking class through elections and reforms, while rejecting all insurrec-tional activity. These ideas had been instrumental in the formation in1882 of the Italian Workers Party and played a crucial role in the develop-ment of the Socialist programme. Alongside such reformism developedthe revision of Marxist doctrine inspired by the work of Eduard

  114 Robert S. Dombroski

• Bernstein, which brought the idea of Socialism-by-degrees to its logicalconsequences. For the German Social Democrat Bernstein, capitalismhad become too strong to collapse either under the weight of its internalcontradictions or by the pressures applied to it by the workers move-ment, while class distinctions were seen to be less and less binding. Hencethe only road that could lead to Socialism was transformation within thestructure of the capitalist state.

  Bernsteins Revisionism, which negated both the Marxist dialectic(according to which the more capitalism exploited the proletariat, themore the proletariat was in a position to organize itself into a revolu-tionary force capable of expropriating the expropriators) and theautonomy of the working class, was an attack on Marx from the right. Itsimpact on the Socialist movement consisted much less in its concreteappeal than in its having created the theoretical premise from which amore influential form of Revisionism from the left would develop. For, ifthe concept of class struggle was no longer valid, where did Socialism, asa class-oriented political party, find its justification? The Syndicalistmovement, whose principal theoretician was the Frenchman GeorgeSorel, would emerge at this very moment, when Socialism began movingtowards accommodation with Liberal political institutions.

  Syndicalism

  Denouncing all compromise with bourgeois politics, Syndicalismmaintained that only the trade unions could guarantee the autonomy ofthe working class. From within the trade unions, the workers wouldwage their battles against the capitalist enemy by means of their mostpowerful weapon, the general strike. The general strike, in Sorels view,was not a practical expedient but rather a myth of creative violencewhich he equated with the Revolution. The deliberate impulsiveness ofrevolutionary Syndicalism, the emphasis it placed on the force ofwilling (voluntarism), became instrumental in the birth and growth ofFascism.

  On the whole, the extremes of Revisionism and Syndicalism wererejected by the Socialist Party, while orthodox Marxism, accepted as eco-nomic theory, remained until 1912 in the background of the partys poli-tics. Genuine Socialist revolutionary work was that performed on a dailybasis in the factories and co-operatives; it sought the progressive erosionof bourgeois hegemony through practical means. And in sharp contrast

  Socialism, Communism and other isms 115

• to Syndicalism, Socialism was not the expression of a revolutionary willto power to be harnessed and directed by the party, but rather the end ofan evolutionary process.

  Socialism during the Giolitti ministries

  The party, from its foundation to 1926, when it was forced by Fascism toleave Italy, developed in tandem with the national state, as a response toLiberal politics at home and in the international arena. Having survivedpersecution under the Crispi and Pelloux governments, it gained instrength, unity and adherents. However, during the Giolitti ministries(190114) it split irreparably along ideological and political lines.Giolittis attitude toward Socialism was one of astute compromise. Hesupported the representation of workers organizations and promoted aseries of Socialist-like reforms, including public-health legislation andsubsidies for the co-operatives, in an attempt to make the workingclasses more receptive to Liberal politics. The party, in the light ofGiolittis politicking, had difficulty in charting a clear course. In order toavoid disintegration, it embraced the contradictory distinction betweenminimum and maximum programmes, the former geared to reform, thelatter to revolution. This position gave rise to the policy of integralism,which was born from the alliance of Syndicalists and centrists, andattempted to negate the contradiction between violent revolution andreform simply by combining the politics of long-range goals and short-term gains. In 1903, the Socialists joined the government, despite the dis-sension of the Syndicalists who, a year later, manoeuvred a generalstrike, the effect of which on Socialism was that it abandoned integral-ism, expelled the Syndicalists, and returned to the moderate, reformistleadership of Turati.

  In 1911, in competition with England, France and Germany over eco-nomic rights in North Africa, Italy declared war on Turkey over Libya,which belonged to the Turkish Empire. The party under Turatis direc-tion, amid the notable growth in national prosperity, had been on acourse between outright collaboration with Liberalism, a position sup-ported by Leonida Bissolati and Invanoe Bonomi, and orthodox (revolu-tionary) Marxism, whose leader was Costantino Lazzari. The war movedthe party decisively to the left. With the advent of an imperialist war, itwas no longer possible to justify reconciliation with the bourgeoisparties. Among the rank and file, the opposition to the war was immedi-

  116 Robert S. Dombroski

• ate. Against the rights cry for unity at any cost came strikes and numer-ous instances of organized disruption.

  Mussolini

  The second Party Congress of Reggio Emilia (1912) has rightly beenviewed as an important turning-point for Italian Socialism. It was at thisCongress that Benito Mussolini made his first major public appearance.Mussolini had sensed that times had changed and that the anti-reformist battle could be fought not from the margins but from thecentre of the party. In reality, his anti-reformist polemics conveyed nonew messages with respect to what the Syndicalists had been preachingfor years. What was new was the fiery style with which he condemned alarge variety of adversaries, but especially Giolitti and the partys collab-orationist wing. When the dust had settled, the party had voted outBissolati and Bonomi and forced Turati, again for the sake of unity, tocompromise with the new revolutionary leadership.

  It was plain from the start that Mussolini had little in commonwith veteran revolutionary Socialists. His vehement campaign againstGiolitti had no equal, even among the Syndicalists and the mostintransigent of revolutionary Marxists, and his ability to excite andmobilize the masses clearly set him apart from any other politician ofhis time. He differed from the Anarchists in that he was not an idealist,and from the Syndicalists because his disruptive tactics were devoid ofmythicizing fervour. Rather, those tactics were guided by an ideologi-cal fluidity that made it possible to adapt them to different situations.What remained constant in Mussolinis invectives, however, was hishatred for parliamentary government and the Liberal state which hestrove to undermine. To further this goal, Mussolini, as editor-in-chiefof the party newspaper Avanti! (Forward!), persuaded Socialism toopen its doors to the petty bourgeoisie and the subproletariat whichuntil then had been active on the fringes of the workers movement.He supported the organization of red blocs whose purpose wassimply to promote turmoil. Under Mussolinis leadership, Socialismhad become a vehicle for the agitation and disturbances that culmi-nated in the Red Week of June 1914. In many respects the party tookon an avant-garde character, similar to that of the Futurist Partywhich, motivated by a need to engage in concrete social struggle, alsoparticipated in street rallies and riots.

  Socialism, Communism and other isms 117

• Although the general strike and insurrectional activity were short-lived, it emerged from the ensuing regional elections that the Socialistmove to the left had a solid base. However, there was no revolution insight. Order had been restored, as doubt reigned on both sides. The leftwas uncertain as to whether the proletariat had either the maturity orthe ability to carry out a revolution, while the bourgeoisie appearedpassive and undecided on how to respond to such a threat. Mussolinionce again took advantage of the situation. He saw that the workersmovement was not prepared to go the full distance, but also that theLiberal state was unwilling to act forcefully in stopping the strikes andprotests. Heeding the reactionary fervour building up within the bour-geoisie, he continued his call to revolution, but now it was not a particu-larly Socialist or proletarian revolution he expounded, but rather justrevolution.

  Italy entered the First World War on 15 May 1915. At first the party,now back in the hands of Turati, preached neither collaboration nor sab-otage, but as the war intensified, this position changed to one of whole-hearted support for the Italian forces. Such enthusiasm came to anabrupt end in the autumn of 1917 with the defeat of Italian forces at thebattle of Caporetto. Shortly thereafter news of the Russian Revolutionreached Italy.

  Socialism after the Russian Revolution

  In the wake of these two crucial events, the partys left wing once againmobilized. The time was ripe for revolution and the Russians had pro-vided the model. Lazzari and Nicola Bombacci urged the Italian troopsto fight not against the enemy but against their own government.However, the soldiers, although sick of the war, could not, for the lack ofa unifying ideological message and practical organization, be incited tooverthrow the capitalist state.

  Until 1918, the Socialist Party had been held together by virtue of suchparadoxical ideological formulations as the party has to be reformist inorder to be revolutionary and revolutionary in order to be reformist,3thereby eliminating the extremes of left and right in order to promote afunctional unity. Now the great historical events called for clarity andresolve among the opposing factions. The time of debate and compro-mise had past. Socialism had to decide not only what it wanted but whatit could and should pursue. In Russia, the Bolshevik revolution had

  118 Robert S. Dombroski

• transformed Socialist ideology into a reality; it was no longer possible toadhere to a programme which supported furthering Socialism throughthe existing organs of government. Given that the programme agreedupon in Genoa in 1892 had been rendered obsolete by historical events, itwas necessary to set a different course.

  In October 1919, the party met in Bologna to draft a new politicalagenda. The ideology that prevailed was neither reformist or ultra-revolutionary, but rather that of the maximalist electionists which con-stituted a centre position within the party. It defended both the use ofviolence as a means of achieving power and the furthering of the princi-ples underlying the Communist revolution in Russia from within thecapitalist state. In contrast to the programme of 1892, which was basedon the idea that pressure could be exerted on the ruling classes to acceptSocialist policies, the new objective of the party was to create a statewithin the state as a means of ending bourgeois rule. For ItalianSocialism this was both too little and too much. Although the new pro-gramme placed its emphasis on revolution, it also opted to work withinthe parliamentary system to create the conditions for bringing about therevolution. Therefore, in practice, it was much less a departure fromreformist policies than it seemed in principle. At the same time, it alsoprevented the party from moving Liberal politics definitively to the leftby taking hold of the government, since this would have entailed an alli-ance with the newly formed Popular Party, the first Catholic politicalparty in Italy, led by the Sicilian priest Don Luigi Sturzo.

  It is fair to say that, for the sake of party unity, Socialism missed itschance in 1919, either to overturn or to reform the capitalist state. Thereis no doubt that, in the aftermath of the war, Italian capitalism wasunder siege and it appeared on the verge of collapse. Strikes para-lysed every sector of the economy; inflation ran rampant, demobiliza-tion left a whole generation of servicemen without a sense of purpose ora place in society, the treaty of Versailles took away the promised spoils ofvictory. But the revolution which would put an end to the chaos was of akind the Socialists could neither imagine nor effectively combat. It was arevolution of reaction, generated in defence of bourgeois privilege,against proletarian demands, by a host of outcasts from the Liberal state.It crystallized in the Fascist coup dtat of October 1922. Under the guid-ance of Mussolini, it was able to use the debris left by the war to goodadvantage. Financed by landowners and big industry, the Fascists brokeup strikes and conducted a series of punitive raids against local Socialist

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• headquarters. Their strategy was simple and straightforward: do what-ever was necessary to prevent a proletarian revolution.

  The Communists

  The Socialist Party now had to wage a physical battle against Fascism forwhich it was unprepared, while at the same time it had to decide how torespond to the well-organized Communist movement that had grownup in northern factories, especially in Turin. To force the partys handeven more, there came from Moscow the famous list of Twenty-OnePoints, conditions that had to be fulfilled by any party wanting to belongto the Third International. In essence, Moscow demanded that the partyabandon its desire for unity and thus purify its ranks of all bourgeoisand patriotic elements. The party held a special Congress at Livorno inJanuary 1921 to vote on the matter. It resulted in the Communists, whounconditionally supported Moscows Twenty-One points, leaving theparty and founding the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The schism dealta lethal blow to the Socialist movement, dividing allegiances through-out the country at both the political and trade-union levels. Henceforth,the history of Socialism in Italy would be marked by the relationshipbetween two political parties, inspired by the same social ideology, whichwould represent the interests of more or less the same constituency.

  The newly formed Communist Party was faced with the difficult taskof creating a foundational ideology, which included defining its positionin relation to the Socialist Party and to the Third International. Its archi-tect was the most important Marxist thinker of the twentieth century,Antonio Gramsci. The Communist Party, as conceived by Gramsci, wasthe revolutionary party of the working class, actively engaged in unitingthe masses and linking them integrally to the international Communistmovement. The partys aim was to bring about a real revolution in oppo-sition to the failed revolution of the Risorgimento. The ideologicaltension between Communism and those positions within Socialismagainst which it waged battle would be lessened not by rejecting themoutright, but rather by historicizing them: that is, by showing, asGramsci did, that what was once vital in them had now found its place inhistory within Communism. In relation to the party as such, Gramsciargued that it alone was the repository of Communisms moral andethical substance and that, therefore, it was the guiding force of theRevolution. Hence the Communist Party, with Gramsci as its undis-

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• puted intellectual leader, took its distance from a now irreparably frag-mented Socialist movement. It was inspired by a deep idealism and bythe belief, supported by the Russian Revolution, that it was on thecorrect side of history.

  Against Fascism

  After the Livorno Congress, the Socialist Party had to wage its fight ontwo fronts: against the Communist heretics and against the strategicviolence of Fascism which, in 1921, had intensified its raids against strik-ers and Bolshevik strongholds, preparing the ground for its takeover ofthe government a year later. The fate of Socialism had been decided; thereasons for its failure can be best summed up perhaps in the words ofPietro Nenni, a future party leader: A revolution announced every dayand every day postponed ends by being a beaten revolution. And slaveryawaits the beaten.4 This rather simple assessment cuts to the heart ofthe matter. Socialism both defeated itself and was defeated because itwas a party of intellectuals and politicians, skilled in debate, for whomrevolution was nothing more than a concept or, at best, a strong belief;it was defeated because it lacked both the will and the means to translatethat concept into a practical means of waging an all-out physical (andmoral) war against its adversaries; and it failed because it underesti-mated the will and the power of its enemies to do whatever was neces-sary to combat the threat it posed.

  The Communist Party also had its part to play in the Socialist defeat.As far as it was concerned (at least initially), Fascism was nothing morethan a pause in the march of history; it thus expended most of its energyin attacking what was left of the Reformists and Maximalists who, afterthe split and the Fascist coup, had regrouped in the Partito Socialista deiLavoratori Italiani and the Partito Socialista Massimalista. Of these twoconfigurations, the latter, having abandoned any attempt at compro-mise with the international Communist movement, directed its atten-tion to impugning the intimidation and violence with which Fascismcontrolled parliament in the wake of the March on Rome. Its most elo-quent spokesman was its secretary, Giacomo Matteotti, whose namebecame a symbol of anti-Fascism and of courage in the defence ofSocialism and democratic government. After a virulent, extemporan-eous attack on Fascism in the Chamber of Deputies, Matteotti was kid-napped and murdered in June 1924 by a squad of thugs commissioned by

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• Mussolini. The events that followed resulted in the defeat of parliamen-tary democracy and the beginning of Fascist dictatorial rule.

  Matteotti was the first Socialist to understand the true nature ofFascism. His assassination marks the passage to a new Socialist orienta-tion, one defined by a broadly anti-Fascist ethical base. The time hadcome for Socialism to abandon the ideals and myths on which the partywas founded and enter into a new age with a new generation of minds asits spiritual and political leaders. Of the new, young, and distinctly anti-Fascist intellectuals who came to the forefront in the wake of Matteottisdeath, two stand out for their courage, intelligence and moral commit-ment: Piero Gobetti and Carlo Roselli, both of whom were also killed byFascist thugs. Gobetti was only twenty-four when he too was sentencedto death by Mussolini. A friend and associate of Gramsci in Turin,Gobetti was a brilliant and indefatigable journalist. In 1922, he foundedthe Rivoluzione liberale, a paper which expounded his ideal of an open-minded Communism devoid of dogma and receptive to anti-Fascists ofall beliefs. His broad-based brand of anti-Fascism was, for its time, autopian dream whose appeal remained strong for a few decades.

  Like Gobetti, Carlo Roselli was another young Liberal intellectualwho believed that Fascism could be defeated only through a revival ofSocialism. He, however, was much more pragmatic and political thanGobetti. His was a Socialism whose principal task was to defeat Fascismthrough a resurgence of what was best in the Liberal and Republicanheritage. Exiled in Paris, Rosselli created the Giustizia e Libert groupthrough which he voiced his idea of a liberal Socialism. Justice andLiberty gradually took on the features of a political party, and, after thewar, its adherents went on to form the Partito dAzione (Action Party).Rosselli, with his brother Nello, would be murdered by Fascist agents in1937.

  The post-war period

  In late 1925, after an unsuccessful attempt on Mussolinis life, Fascismput an end to what was left of democratic liberties in Italy. Socialists andCommunists alike were either imprisoned, if not killed, or had to live inexile until 1943. During the intervening years much happened to deter-mine the character of post-war Socialism. New leaders came forth tomend the rift between the two Socialist parties in a united front againstFascism, and it seemed possible, briefly, that the common enemy couldalso bring the Communists back into the fold. Pietro Nenni, who became

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• the secretary of the newly reunited party in exile and the editor of theNuovo Avanti (New Forward), was particularly instrumental in theunitary movement and in establishing ties with the Communists.Giuseppe Saragat was another new face who would become prominentin the party after the war. Saragat was a Liberal who came to Socialismafter a career in banking. His objective, which he developed from anexcellent knowledge of English Socialism, was to achieve a Socialisteconomy through parliamentary means. His was a Socialism basedsolely on economics, completely devoid of class hatred and revolution-ary ideals.

  Post-war Socialism would also draw on the distinguished history ofthe Italian partisan movement, particularly on the Resistance to Nazirule over Northern Italy, in which both Communists and Socialistsplayed the most decisive part. The Communists, who suffered the great-est repression under Fascism, formed the Garibaldi Brigades, and werethe largest single political component of the Resistance. The Socialistscame second under the banner of the Justice and Liberty Brigades of theAction Party, which incorporated adherents to different Socialist andradical groups.

  The relative unity achieved by the Socialist movement during exileand the Resistance was quick to dissolve after 1944. In the wars after-math, the reconstituted party began a new course with the hope ofhaving learned the lesson of past errors. Like the Partito dAzione to itsright and the Communists to its left, it supported the republic and waswilling to work within the structures of democratic government tofurther its goals. Up until 1947, the pact that it formed in exile with theCommunists remained intact. But as the relations between Soviet Russiaand the Western powers deteriorated, the friction between Socialists andCommunists intensified. The right wing of the party, led by Saragat,opposed unity of action with the Communists and eventually broke awayto form the Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani (Italian WorkersSocialist Party), which in 1947 became the Italian Social DemocraticParty. Ultimately, it came down to making a choice between Soviet Russiaand the United States, which was busy financing the nations reconstruc-tion. Saragat and his followers chose what can be called the capitalist wayto Socialism, that is, first the creation of wealth through the developmentof industry and agriculture, then the reform of institutions alongSocialist lines. However, the majority of the party, now bearing thename of Partito Socialista Unit Proletaria (PSIUP, Socialist Party ofProletarian Unity), remained faithful to the positions outlined by Nenni

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• which stressed, if not unity, at least co-operation with the Communists.But as the Cold War developed, it became more and more difficult to carryout such a strategy. Expelled from the government in 1947, the Socialistand Communist Parties began fighting each other again, and by the endof 1948 the alliance between them had for all practical purposes com-pletely dissolved. The elections of April of that year, in which bothCommunists and Socialists lost badly, left the Socialist Party in shambles.From this point on, with the implementation of the Marshall Plan andthe Stalinization of the Soviet Union, the Socialist Party began its tor-mented journey towards the centre of Italian electoral politics, surren-dering much of its rich heritage to the Communists.

  Communist Party membership grew considerably in the late 1940sand early 1950s. It also brought within its sphere of influence numerousallied associations such as the Unione delle Donne Italiane (Union ofItalian Women) and the Lega delle Cooperative (The League of Co-operatives), which contributed to strengthening its position on the left.However, on account of the Cold War, and the absolute majority enjoyedby the Christian Democrats in parliament, the party was forced to themargins of Italian political life. Its isolation was the result of a concertedeffort on the part of the government, helped by American money, and theVatican. Part of this strategy involved the creation of non-Communisttrade unions. Next to the largely Communist CGIL (ConfederazioneGenerale Italiana del Lavoro, General Italian Confederation of Labour,created in 1943) rose the Social Democratic and Republican UIL (UnioneItaliana del Lavoro, Italian Union of Labour) and the Catholic CISL(Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori, Italian Confederation ofWorkers Trade Unions). These new politically oriented labour organiza-tions, which had difficulty working together, considerably weakened theworkers movement, and as a result the influence of the Communist Partyon labour. In 1949 the Church too contributed directly to intensifying theCold War by excommunicating all Marxists. Isolation was also furtheredfrom within the party, as its intellectuals reacted against the controlsimposed on their ideas by the Soviet Union through the agency of thePartys Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, Emilio Sereni. A typicalexample of the strained relations between the party hierarchy and itsintellectuals is the case of Il politecnico, a review founded by the novelistElio Vittorini in 1945 with the purpose of initiating a debate on themeaning of culture. The journal hosted the writings of many Communistintellectuals who were active in the Resistance; its general goal was tobring Italy up to date on the development of European and American

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• culture. This meant, in effect, the liberalization of party positions withregard to non-Marxist cultural practices. Vittorinis defence of the liter-ary and artistic avant-garde, his open window on American culture andhis rejection of Zhdanovism were repudiated by Palmiro Togliatti, one ofthe founders of the PCI and the chief architect of its policies throughoutthe Cold War period. Il politecnico was forced to close in early 1947 for thelack of party support. By 1950, although few intellectuals actuallydefected or were expelled from the party, dissatisfaction with its culturalpolitics was widespread. Only in 1951, when Sereni was replaced by CarloSalinari, did tensions between intellectuals and the party hierarchy easesomewhat.

  In the early 1950s, the PCI was controlled by Luigi Longo and PietroSecchia, both old-guard Stalinists. Togliatti was not prepared to wage aneffective war against the right wing of his party. After having survived anassassination attempt by a lone fanatic in 1948, he was almost killed twoyears later in a car accident from which it took him over a year to recover.But with the death of Stalin in March 1953 and the subsequent de-Stalinization of the USSR, Togliattis moderate internal politics tookhold once again. Giorgio Amendola replaced Secchia as head of thepartys internal apparatus, while Togliatti, in the wake of Khrushchevsspeech on Stalins crimes (February 1956), attempted to steer a coursebetween attributing Stalins excesses to an excess of personal power andproclaiming the soundness of the Italian bureaucratic model.

  Togliattis politics of loyalty and independence with regard to theUSSR were dealt a severe blow in October 1956 with the Soviet invasionof Hungary, which led to an extensive exodus of militants from theinternational Communist movement. Within the PCI, most of theleaders supported the Russian invasion, but numerous intellectuals leftthe party and disillusionment was widespread among the rank and file,especially in the South among peasants and workers whose faith in theSoviet Union was previously strong. It was estimated that some 400,000members defected between 1955 and 1957.5 Yet the party remained sub-stantially intact, while outside of it developed currents of dissidenceexpressed in such journals as Opinione (Opinion), Passato e presente (Pastand Present) and, later, in the 1960s and 1970s, Quaderni piacentini(Notebooks from Piacenza), which became a major forum for the NewLeft. Although the rift between dissidents and the party hierarchy waswidened by Togliattis refusal to criticize the USSR, it was clear that, afterthe watershed events of 1956, the PCI had to become and in fact became more autonomous and Eurocentric in its outlook, less committed to

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• Communist orthodoxy and more liberal in its cultural politics, despiteTogliattis loyalty to Moscow.

  The effect of 1956 on the Socialist Party was equally significant. TheRussian invasion of Hungary, which the Socialists condemned outright,marked the end of the PSIs united front with the Communists.Henceforth it would act alone to fashion its own destiny in alliance withthe Christian Democrats who, after the elections of 1958, with the emer-gence of Amintore Fanfani and Aldo Moro as party leaders, became com-mitted to an opening to the left. The alliance was also made possible bythe more liberal climate in Washington brought about by the Kennedyadministration, by the liberalization of the Catholic Church at the handsof John XXIII, and by the economic boom then taking hold, whichprompted big business to support the move to the left. The Italian indus-trial giants believed that by assimilating the Socialists into the govern-ment they would be blocking the progress of the Communists. Thecentreleft coalition, however, was not successful. The struggle betweenthe left and right factions within the Socialist Party and the general con-servative reaction to the Catholics move to the left weakened it consider-ably. The national elections of April 1963 proved, in fact, that the alliancewould be less of a solution to the countrys political problems than wasexpected, as significant losses were registered by both the ChristianDemocrats and the Socialists, while the Communist Party moved from22 to 25.3 per cent of the vote.

  In the summer of 1964, during a trip to the USSR, Togliatti died of astroke. His death brought to an end the absolute rule of the partys oldguard. Luigi Longo, a supporter of Togliattis middle way policies, tookover as Party Secretary, but his role was generally that of a caretaker.Younger Communists, such as Giorgio Amendola and Pietro Ingrao,both sensitive to the realities of Italys neo-capitalist economy, tookimportant leadership roles within the party, respectively on the rightand on the left. Amendolas position was that the countrys opening tothe left had failed. He believed that, with the imminent collapse of thecentreleft alliance, the Socialists would be in a position to reunite withthe PCI to form a new left-reformist bloc to correct the inequalities inItalian society. Ingrao, by contrast, did not believe that the party shouldabandon its Socialist principles in favour of democratic reformism, andsaw the centreleft alliance as an attempt to integrate the working-classmovement into the capitalist system. In his view, the party, on the onehand, had to react aggressively to reformism by taking charge of workerradicalism in the factories, and, on the other, to become more democratic

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• internally. At the Party Congress held in January 1966, it became clearthat Ingraos supporters were in the minority; the party leadership,Longo and Enrico Berlinguer, regarded Ingraos brand of radicalism asdangerous to the partys internal structure. Amendola, for his part, wasforced to revise his reformist position. The party seemed impervious tothe demands of a new culture of young workers and students whichwould make itself heard in the late 1960s. The moderate direction itwould take was clearly marked by its acceptance of the Common Marketand its support of the new Dubcek government in Czechoslovakia. In1969, the party publicly opposed the Soviet invasion, while its New Leftgroup, headed by Ingrao and inspired by the spontaneous action of theworkers in Prague, founded Il Manifesto group and a daily newspaper ofthe same name which supported the development of grassroots studentand workers organizations and the democratization of the partys inter-nal operations. Il Manifesto was not the only revolutionary group thatcame into being after the Autumn of 1968, but it was the one that lastedthe longest. In the early 1970s it tried to unite the extra-parliamentaryleft in a platform of non-violent, yet militant radicalism; having failed todo so, it formed Democrazia Proletaria (Proletarian Democracy) withother dissidents on the left. The newspaper continued publication intothe 1990s.

  The historic compromise

  By 1970 the Communist Party had completely abandoned the principlesof revolutionary change on which it was founded in 1921. While it wasstill committed to the realization of a Socialist society, it no longerbelieved in the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The roads toSocialism, as Czechoslovakia and China had shown, could be varied, andthe Soviet model was no longer useful in the industrialized West.Instead, the party maintained that in order to succeed in realizingSocialist principles it was necessary to work within the parliamentarysystem and in coalition with other political parties. Such a change inCommunist ideology made possible what became known as the historiccompromise, an initiative taken by the party to safeguard against thepossibility that the reaction under way against the student and workerprotests would lead to a rightist coup, similar to the one that broughtdown Allende in Chile. Its architect was Enrico Berlinguer, elected PartySecretary in 1972. The compromise involved forming an alliance withthe Christian Democrats based on what Berlinguer believed were

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• compatibilities in their moral systems, chiefly their common oppositionto the wholly materialist and consumerist nature of late capitalism.Through such an alliance, Socialism, Berlinguer argued, could beachieved. It is generally acknowledged that Berlinguers argumentswere flawed because they were based on an unrealistic appraisal of theChristian Democrat Party which represented the capitalist and conserva-tive forces the compromise intended to combat.6 It is understandablethat the historic compromise was regarded by many on the left as theassimilation of the party by the neo-capitalist hegemony. The bargain-ing with the Christian Democrats, as well as the partys overtures to theSocial Democratic and Communist parties of Western Europe, in aneffort to build Socialism through large-scale reforms within the capital-ist system, were no small factors in accounting for the disaffection withparty politics which led to the political terrorism on the left that charac-terized the 1970s. Moreover, the party endeavoured to show the elector-ate that it was committed to the parliamentary system and a defender oflaw and order. It supported repressive police measures against thestudent movement and the groups that formed the extra-parliamentaryleft; in so doing, it unwittingly promoted the conditions for Red terror-ist violence.7

  The partys move to the right, supported by its new, non-revolution-ary image, succeeded in attracting large numbers of young middle-classvoters. The PCI made large gains in the local elections of 1975, and in thenational elections of the following year it received 34.4 per cent of thevote, an increase of 7.2 per cent over the previous election, a mere 4.3 percent less than the Christian Democrats and 24.8 per cent more than thePSI. With such a strong show of popular support, the party gained con-siderable bargaining power which translated into a number of commit-tee chairs in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, and in theelection of Pietro Ingrao as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.8

  The Craxi years

  If 1976 witnessed a remarkable rise in the appeal of the CommunistParty, it also marked the start of the period known as gli anni di piombo(the years of the bullet, 197680) as Red terrorist activity reached its all-time high. Among numerous political killings and kneecappings, themost infamous terrorist event was the kidnapping by the Red Brigadesin March 1978 of Aldo Moro, President of the DC, and his execution attheir hands two months later. Moro was a left-leaning Christian

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• Democrat and strong advocate of co-operation with the Communists.His lifeless body was found in the boot of an abandoned car on a streetmidway between the DC and PCI headquarters, stressing the politicalsymbolism of the kidnapping. On the matter of negotiating with the ter-rorists for Moros life, the Communists were intransigent in their policyof no compromise, while the PSI, now under the leadership of BettinoCraxi, were in favour of an exchange of prisoners. The ChristianDemocrats, although divided, also chose to stand firm. The statesrefusal to negotiate marked the beginning of the end of terrorist activityin Italy. Although the killings continued into 1980, the Red Brigades hadlost all the support they might have had among militant workers andstudents, becoming more and more isolated, and finally succumbing tothe anti-terrorist offensive of General Carlo Alberto Della Chiesa.

  The electoral success of the historic compromise was short-lived.From an ideological standpoint, the party had entered into the politicalestablishment, but it did not gain entry into the government. For, withMoro dead, it had no strong Catholic advocate to help combat the influ-ence exerted by the United States on the Christian Democrats to preventCommunist participation. The PCI would never again win such a highpercentage of the vote as it did in 1976; its numbers would graduallydiminish in the face of the growing appeal of the Radical Party on the leftand the newly organized Socialist Party on the right which, underCraxis leadership, had discarded all traces of its Marxist heritage infavour of Social-Democratic programmes, designed to gain the supportof a rising professional class of businessmen and bureaucrats who wereinterested more in individual gain than in collective welfare. CraxisSocialist Party, now allied with the Christian Democrats, went on toestablish itself at the centre of Italian politics. In wake of the scandalregarding the p2, a clandestine Masonic lodge engaged in subversiveanti-Communist activity, which embarrassed and demoralized the DC,and with the PCI licking its wounds from the defeat of the historic com-promise, in August 1983 Bettino Craxi became the first Socialist PrimeMinister of Italy.

  While the Socialists, fuelled by Craxis political skill, became in the1980s a dominant force in Italian politics, the Communist Party, owingto the decline of Communism in the West but particularly to its inabilityto renew its political ideology after the death of Berlinguer in 1984,faded into the background. The collapse of Communism in the SovietUnion and in Eastern Europe put an end to all hopes for the partysresurgence. In 1990, the Partito Comunista Italiano, the largest

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• Communist Party in the West and the force behind the economicprogress made by the working class after the defeat of Fascism, was dis-solved. Its more moderate members went on to form the DemocraticParty of the Left (PDS) . The end of the Cold War also created the condi-tions for the demise of Craxis Socialist Party. Since it was no longer pos-sible to exploit the fear of Communism, there was no need to create asafe anti-Communist majority, and in the midst of a nationwide cam-paign to crack down on political corruption, Craxi, along with otherprominent politicians and Socialist Party members, was convicted ofreceiving billions of lire in illegal bribes. He escaped to Tunisia, pendingappeal against his eight-year prison sentence.

  The success of the PDS in the elections of 1992 and 1994, togetherwith that of the Rifondazione Comunista, which housed those membersof the PCI who opposed the change in symbols and ideology, showedthat Communism was not yet ready to disappear from the Italian politi-cal spectrum, as it had been prophesied. Instead, it was the SocialistParty, devastated by the corruption scandals, which passed out of sight.

  notes

  1. Renato Zangheri, Storia del socialismo italiano ( Turin: Einaudi, 1993), vol. i, pp. 918.2. Cited in Wayland Hilton-Young, The Italian Left ( Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,1975), pp. 289.3. Gaetano Arf, Storia del socialismo italiano (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), p. 253.4. Hilton-Young, The Italian Left, p. 133.5. Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy (London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 207.6. Ibid., p. 357.7. Ibid., p. 381.8. Alexander De Grand, The Italian Left in the Twentieth Century (Bloomington andIndianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1987), p. 157.

  further reading

  De Felice, Renzo, Le interpretazioni del Fascismo. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1970.De Grand, Alexander, Italian Fascism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.Spriano, Paolo, Storia del partito comunista italiano. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1969.Tasca, Angelo, Nascita e avvento del fascismo. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1950.Vialiani, Leo, Il partito socialista nel periodo della neutralit. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1963.Zangheri, Renato, Storia del socialismo italiano. Turin: Einaudi, 1963.

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• s h a r o n w o o d a n d j o s e p h f a r r e l l

  7

  Other voices: contesting the status quo

  Introduction

  No word occurs more frequently in any discussion of Italian affairs thananomalous. Italy is conventionally held to be anomalous in manyspheres: in the nature of its party system; in the democratic but one-party government which held power throughout the life of the FirstRepublic; in its inability to suppress the systematic use of violence in itsterritory and to secure for the state what Durkheim termed a monopolyof violence; in its incapacity to construct trusted and efficient institu-tions; in the mixture of covert and public forces by which the countryhas been governed; and, underlying all of these, in its idiosyncratic attri-bution of legitimacy. The process of gaining and conceding legitimacywas, for Max Weber, fundamental to the acceptance of the operation ofpower in any body politic. Legitimacy is the validation and normaliza-tion in a given time and culture of the right to rule. Since it exists at thelevel of perceptions, ideas, ethics and culture, legitimacy is a relativenotion subject to change, not an objective standard to be weighed empir-ically. Nor is it an absolute, transcendent concept which remains unal-tered in time. The self-image of individuals or groups in society alters,and with it the limits of their willingness to underwrite the legitimacy ofa particular system of governance. It is a mere clich to assert thatwomen in the 1990s do not see their social role in the same terms as didtheir forebears and that, as a consequence, the nature of the polity whichthey are prepared to view as legitimate has inevitably undergonechange. The same is true, if in less dramatic form, of other constituentparts of the Italian body politic.

  Every state is an arena of competing voices and interests, whose

• rivalry will be settled, in a Lockean liberal democracy, inside an acceptedframework of law and within given institutions. Such a settlement is notalways possible, as the concession of certain demands in unmodifiedform would shatter the existing social contract. The nature of dissentfrom the status quo has varied throughout Italian history, with some dis-sident groups denying all validity to the existing system, and others,more modestly, complaining only of their own exclusion. Not all thosewho de facto dispute the states monopoly of legitimacy do so in the nameof a rival ideology. For many Italian citizens, the state produced by theRisorgimento settlement was, and would remain, either absent or anadversary. Distrusted by its subjects, the Italian state has had to contendwith an animus towards it which has no parallel among other Europeannations. The celebrated words of dAzeglio that once Italy had beenmade, it was time to make the Italians underlined this lack of popularcohesiveness.

  Strong regional identities militated against the sense of nation. Aslate as the 1960s, Danilo Dolci found Sicilian peasants who had neverheard of Italy, while Antonio Gramsci branded the Risorgimento afailed revolution which had been unable to construct a national-popular culture. In Gramscis analysis, the culture of the new Italy hadfailed in one fundamental purpose, that of forging a complex of valuescapable of welding together a society and making it what BenedictAnderson would later term an imagined community.1 The refusal offederalism during the Risorgimento, the imperialist adventures inLibya, the intervention in the First World War, Mussolinis attemptedsuppression of dialects, were all attempts to make an Italy which hadnever been willed into full being. On the other hand, dissident voiceswere heard throughout the period. The history of other voices in thepost-Risorgimento period is the history of one side of a multi-facetedstruggle between those who wished to make, and those who wished toun-make, or re-make, Italy.

  This chapter aims to study the views of groups and movementswhich, explicitly or implicitly, at different times and in contrastingways, contested the legitimacy of the prevailing status quo in the Italianstate or in Italian civil society. Discussion will be focused on such diversebodies as the Catholic Church, which over the course of a century movedfrom a position of exclusion to one of dominance, and subsequently to aposition as no more than one of several influential power blocs insociety; the mafia, which can be seen as a state within a state; the extra-

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• parliamentary left and terrorist groups which sought to overthrow theexisting structures of society; the various regional Leagues in NorthernItaly which aim to undo the Risorgimento; and, perhaps most crucially,the womens movement.

  Church and state: the cold war

  In strictly historical terms, the first and strongest of the voices of theexcluded was the voice of the religion to which the majority of Italiansproclaimed their allegiance. At its foundation, the state encountered adenial of legitimacy from the Church. On the seizure of Rome in 1870,Pope Pius IX declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican and with thePapal Bull Non expedit forbade Catholics to participate in the affairs ofstate. The secular, anti-clerical nature of the dominant Liberal Party leftthe forces of Church and state drawn up for their own cold war. TheChurchs opposition declined over the years only because it saw morepernicious enemies on the horizon. The Gentiloni Pact (1913), drafted bythe Catholic Count of that name, was an accord between Catholic laymenand certain Liberal candidates which upheld the idea of the family andproclaimed hostility to divorce. Catholics were allowed to vote in theelections held that year, but only for candidates who aligned themselveswith the pact.

  Don Luigi Sturzos Partito Popolare (Popular Party), founded in 1919and suppressed by the Fascists in 1926, was the first genuinely Catholicparty, but it encountered the hostility of the Vatican. Only with the for-mation of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC), the Christian Democrat Party,in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, was a Catholicparty established with the Churchs benediction. The subsequent domi-nation of the state by that party makes it easy to forget that the entry ofthe Catholic masses into political life, and the accession of their repre-sentatives to power, was a revolution in itself. The state which had beenthe enemy was now in captivity; the excluded were now the masters.Between the elections of 1947 and 1992, the DC was able to exercise itsversion of one-party rule. Its value for its more powerful allies was that itmade Italy a bulwark against Communism; however, this strength wasalso a weakness. Once the Berlin Wall crumbled, so too did the DC andthe rgime it headed.

  Initially, the DC split into two principal parts: the Centro CristianoDemocratico (Democratic Christian Centre), which allied itself with

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• Berlusconi and the right, and the left-leaning Partito Popolare; but therewere schisms in both camps. The situation was further complicated bythe announcement in February 1998 by the former President, FrancescoCossiga, that he was to form his own party. The Union for the Defence ofthe Republic (UDR), however, was not conceived as an exclusivelyCatholic grouping. The single party for all Catholics has vanished andwill not be revived.

  The disintegration of the post-war Catholic bloc had been under wayat least since the 1974 referendum on divorce, but the new position of theChurch vis vis the state is undoubtedly the main change between thepolitical life of the First and Second Republics. This change may bringcloser to realization the hopes of enlightened Risorgimento politicians,such as Sidney Sonnino, who aspired to a situation where the voice of theChurch was neither unheard nor dominant. The three democraticrgimes which have held power since unification correspond to threephases in the relationship between Church and state, and in the measureof legitimacy accorded by the former to the latter. Under the Kingdom ofItaly, with the Liberal Party supreme, Catholics were excluded, orexcluded themselves, from the exercise of power, and in turn deniedlegitimacy to the secular state; under the First Republic, with theChristian Democrats in the ascendancy, Catholics enjoyed a position ofsupremacy; under the Second Republic, Catholics are part of the struc-ture of power, but without special privileges. This mutual concession oflegitimacy represents an equilibrium not previously attained.

  Power sharing with the mafia

  During the First Republic, the Christian Democrats ruled in open coali-tion with other parties of the centreleft or centreright, but also prac-tised a covert version of power-sharing with more sinister forces. Theexact course of this collaboration cannot, of its nature, be satisfactorilychronicled; however, historians and journalists have done much touncover the co-operation between ministries and masonries the mostfamous being the p2 Masonic Lodge of Licio Gelli as well as betweenelected politicians and subversive right-wing, neo-Fascist organizations.Connivance with Italys organized crime syndicates is, or was, of a differ-ent order, if only because these organizations have a social base whichthe Lodges and the terrorist cells never had.

  Power-sharing with organized crime syndicates like the Sicilianmafia, the Neapolitan camorra and the Calabrian ndrangheta had the

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• paradoxical effect of heightening the legitimacy of these bodies whilelessening that of the body politic. The distrust in which the state washeld was increased by the knowledge that, while its public figures pro-claimed their dedication to ideals of justice and equity, the state wasactually run by a continual infringement of these values. The cohabita-tion with the mafia and organized crime, already apparent in the imme-diate post-1860 period, meant that corruption and the toleration ofviolence were intrinsic to the exercise of power in large parts of Italy.

  The mafia does not proclaim anything so abstract as an alternativephilosophy, but it does embody a different voice and an alternative viewof honour, wealth and power. Scholars of mafia activity from HennerHess to Pino Arlacchi, as well as such pentiti (ex-mafiosi turned state evi-dence) as Tommaso Buscetta, have enabled a code of mafia belief andpractice, and a hierarchy of mafia values, to be drawn up. The mafia mustbe viewed as being, in the anthropological sense, a culture. For someobservers (notably Hess), the mafia was never more than that. The debateover whether the mafia was a hierarchical organization or somethingmore amorphous can be taken to have been definitively settled byBuscettas revelations. The mafia has indeed a structure of command, aseven such previous opponents of this viewpoint as Pino Arlacchi haverecognized.

  Nevertheless, the fact that some commentators were mistaken inasserting that the mafia was an exclusively cultural entity, to which onebelonged by osmosis, not by initiation, cannot be taken as refutation ofthe existence of a mafia culture, or counter-culture. The mafia representsa degenerate form of the culture of Sicily, itself the product of centuriesof conquest by invaders. When power in the state is held by outsiders, thetendency everywhere is to turn inwards, to trust only those linked byblood or adherence to common customs. The family became the onlyunit accorded unquestioning trust by Sicilians, so that, in LeonardoSciascias much-discussed mot, the family is the state of the Sicilian. Thisview of the family and the state was only one among many instances ofthe failed meeting of minds between North and South which followedthe Risorgimento. Piedmontese law, imposed on Sicily after the 1860landing at Marsala, was founded on a notion of the state derived fromthe French Revolution and from European Liberalism. The historicaland cultural inheritance of the nineteenth-century proto-mafiosi, on theother hand, was formed by their experience of an island familiar onlywith rule imposed by force and, consequently, of a state denied all legiti-macy by those who regarded themselves as its subjects and not its

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• citizens. The cult of the family in such circumstances easily degeneratedinto the amoral familism which Edward Banfield identified, anddeplored, as cause and symptom of the mafia.2

  In Sciascias view, Sicilians, whether mafiosi or not, had experiencedthe state only as repression, law only as the arbitrary whim of the despotand reason only as cunning. However, for trying to explain not defend the attitudes of his fictional mafia boss in The Day of the Owl, donMariano Arena, Sciascia was attacked after his death and accused ofbeing bewitched by evil. Paradoxically, one of his detractors, PinoArlacchi, had also delved into the cultural hinterlands of mafia behavi-our, pointing out that, unlike what occurred in developed capitalist soci-eties, the notion of honour was the basic unit of currency in a mafiaculture. Other observers have underlined the fundamental importanceof the cultural concept of omert, deriving from the Latin homo (man),which has declined from its original connotations of maleness, or manli-ness, to indicate the iron code of silence to be maintained by Sicilians inany dealings with the Law. This practice may have originally representedan imperative of any conquered people in the face of overlords, but itcame to underwrite mafia power. None of these considerations implies,as Buscetta has done, that there ever was a golden age of a Robin-Hoodmafia, but they are a recognition that there is a specific mafia mindsetwhich positively sanctions deviation from conventionally acceptednorms in a way the outlook of ordinary criminals does not. Making allallowance for mendacity and hypocrisy, the statement from mafia bossGenco Russo to Danilo Dolci that he spent his time resolving disputes isan expression of the enduring reliance on interpersonal contact which isthe reverse side of the widespread distrust of state institutions.3

  In the three phases of its development rural, urban and entrepre-neurial identified by commentators, the mafia has presented a chal-lenge to the monopoly of violence which was, for Durkheim, thefundamental right and duty of the state. Only in the 1990s did the mafiafind itself under sustained assault. The greater vigour of police and magi-strates in pursuing the mafia is itself a symptom of the changed statusand diminished legitimacy of the mafia in the eyes of Sicilians them-selves. The 1990s Cosa Nostra had more in common with other forms ofinternational gangsterism than with earlier versions of the mafia, andno longer had those ready links with its social roots which were once partof its being. Its contemporary power is based on the inculcation of fear,not on an interclass, Sicilian solidarity. Its cultural legitimacy is at an

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• end, although that does not mean that its power has been smashed, sincethe mafia is still a financial power and an armed force. Culture or not, themafia was and is also a barbaric, exploitative, violent organization whoselegitimacy derived in part from the exploitation of sicilianismo, a self-interested, quasi-nationalistic ideology which saw in any attack onaspects of Sicilian life, including its organized criminality, an offenceagainst Sicily itself. The Christian Democrat Party, cultivating its ownself-interest, made routine use of the mafia to encourage voters tosupport it and, in return, facilitated the one process which was ofgenuine interest to the mafia, the accumulation and maximization ofwealth. The relationship was an alliance between two (almost) equalforces, a meeting of two cultures, and not the relationship betweenfeudal lord and vassal. It will be interesting to see how the mafia willadapt to the political realities of the Second Republic.

  Remaking Italy: the terrorist strategy

  The terrorism which affected Italy in the 1970s and early 1980s was frac-tured and fissured, not only in that Italy faced parallel, simultaneouscampaigns of the right and left, but also in the sheer variety of forma-tions operating on both sides. Tullio Barbato counted over 180 distinctgroups at the height of the campaign.4 The terrorist campaign itself canbe regarded as spanning the years from the neo-Fascist bombing of theBanca Nazionale dellAgricoltura in Milan, on 12 December 1969, to thekidnapping by the Red Brigades of General Dozier, on 17 December 1981.

  Leaving aside considerations of political morality, the terrorists mustbe numbered among those who aimed to unmake and remake Italy. Theytoo made a claim to legitimacy based on an inheritance of ideology andmythology from Italys past. In the case of the neo-Fascist groups, thegenealogical line is clear. The strategy of tension was a replay of thecampaign of violence practised by Mussolinis squadristi. The objectivewas to create chaos, so arousing demands for the appointment of astrong man to restore order. The p2 Masonic Lodge, presided over byLicio Gelli who was one of Mussolinis henchmen in the Duces last days,played a significant part in organizing the campaign, highlighting thecontinuity between late Fascism and its 1970s version. The relationshipof the left-wing groups to Italian history was more complex. Theirprimary source of myth was the Resistance. Giangiacomo FeltrinellisGAP (Gruppi di azione proletaria, Groups of Proletarian Action), the

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• first of the groups to be formed, presented themselves as a reconstitutionof the partisan group with the same initials, and gave as their aim thedefence of Italy from reversion to Fascism. Resistance practice providedjustification for acts of violence and murder which would have been dis-missed as adventurism in orthodox Marxism-Leninism. While thejargon-laden communiqus talked of the power of systems such as theSIM, the Imperialist State of the Multinationals, their victims wereindividual journalists, magistrates and industrialists.

  The terrorists were the product of Italian history and society.Attempts to demonstrate that they were willed into being by the fiat ofthe Kremlin or of the Pentagon have been unsuccessful. In the shortterm, their roots were to be found in the disaffection and militancywhich flowed from the events of May 1968 in Paris and from the hotautumn in Italy the following year. The political commentator GiorgioBocca pointed to deeper roots when he coined the designation cattocomu-nisti, Catho-communists,5 to indicate the mixture of Marxist politicsand the absolutist ethic of Catholicism in terrorist ideology. Both ofthese were part of the Italian heritage, and both Church and party had, atsome stage, denied the legitimacy of the state. Although disowned bythe Italian Communist Party (PCI), the Red Brigades inherited a myth ofrevolution from the unreformed, pre-Berlinguer PCI. From the svolta diSalerno, the 1944 declaration in which the Communist leader PalmiroTogliatti announced that he would accept the rules of parliamentarydemocracy, through a gradual process of internal destalinization to the1968 condemnation of the invasion of Prague and the break withMoscow, the PCI followed its own determined path towards the accep-tance of Liberal, pluralist democracy. The party, however, had a tendencyto deny rather than confront its own past. It was established PCI leaders Ingrao, Secchia, Amendola and not New-Left theorists who had advo-cated revolution not reform. Left-wing terrorists in the 1970s were ableto maintain that their campaign of violence was revolutionary and inkeeping with authentic Communist traditions which had been betrayedby the clique of class-collaborators surrounding Enrico Berlinguer.

  The terrorists were dismissed by Umberto Eco as nineteenth-centuryrelics, unaware of the nature and complexity of twentieth-centurypower.6 The truth of Ecos scornful analysis was demonstrated by thecurious respect for the Italian state shown by the Red Brigades. The dis-persal of power, characteristic of globalization, seems to have escapedthem, as did the weakness and incompetence of the Italian state. The

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• encounter in captivity between the former Christian Democrat PrimeMinister, Aldo Moro, and his kidnappers is illuminating for the clash itdramatized between pure ideology and the pragmatic belief in politicsas management which was the quintessential DC genius. For Moro imbued with the refusal of idealism, the distrust of reason divorced fromtradition, and the quasi-pessimism which underlies all conservativethought from Burke and de Maistre onwards_the task of governanceconsisted in compromise, in unending negotiations, in continuityviewed as a value in itself. Moro was the object of Pasolinis scorn7 for hisfamously tortuous prose which led him on one occasion to adopt themeaningless phrase about the PCI and the DC being on two convergingparallels; yet he was also the architect of the agreement which broughtthe PCI into the area of government. The Moro kidnapping, viewed atthe time as the supreme proof of the strategic genius of the RedBrigades, actually marked the point at which their self-belief began towane and their voice lost credibility.

  The Leagues and the anti-Risorgimento

  The declared and explicit project of the Northern League is to reshapeand remake the Italian state produced by the Risorgimento. One of thecentral debates among the leaders and thinkers of the nineteenth-century unification process was whether the new Italy should break withits diversified past, whether power should be centralized or devolved,whether Italy should be a unitary or a federal state. The unitary line, pro-moted by Cavour (181061), was victorious over the federalist policy pro-moted most strongly by Carlo Cattaneo (180169). Umberto Bossi, thecharismatic leader of the movement, has carefully constructed a lineagefor the League aimed at presenting it not as threateningly novel andiconoclastic, but as the natural heir to a tradition. Apart from acknowl-edging a debt to Cattaneo, he has identified the League, in its oppositionto constituted power and to corruption, as the heir of the Resistance; hehas chosen the medieval Lombard condottiere Alberto da Giussano as theemblem to be carried on all League banners, and made the small town ofPontida, where the thirteenth-century Lombard comuni took an oath toresist the German Emperor Barbarossa, the venue for the Leagues grandceremonial gatherings.

  Paradoxical though it may be, Mack Smiths definition of Cavour as aconservative revolutionary8 could be applied to Bossi, who is radical in

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• politics but conservative in economics. The economic policies of theLeague are those of the New Right in Europe and North America; itadheres to market economics with Thatcherite fervour, has led a fiscalrevolt against high taxation and advocates the reduction of state power.The Northern League has no overall political ideology distinct from thefederalist proposal, but in Italian politics that approach is genuinelyradical. The electoral success of the League compelled other parties, atleast for a time, to re-examine their constitutional priorities. Theanomaly is that the voice advocating federalism speaks with the accentsof the rich, powerful North and not those of the poorer South. Apartfrom Cattaneo, previous advocates of federalism, such as the SardinianEmilio Lussu (18901975), were from the Mezzogiorno, and wereanxious to redress an asymmetry of power and privilege. The League didnot create Italys NorthSouth divide; however, especially in its earlierphases, it unscrupulously adopted an anti-Southern, quasi racist rheto-ric, and its policies accentuate rather than lessen difference.

  At their formation, the Venetian and Lombard Leagues benefitedfrom the disdain in which the Italian state and the traditional partieswere held. Founded in April 1984, the Lombard League has grown with arapidity which is probably without parallel in European politics. In 1987it won 3 per cent of the vote in Italy overall, which gave it two seats in theItalian parliament. In February 1991, it united with other Leagues inNorthern Italy to form the Lega Nord, which took 8.2 per cent of the votenationwide in the 1992 elections. In 1994, after elections which it foughtin an acrimonious alliance with Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia,members of the League entered government, but Bossi quickly with-drew from the coalition, bringing down Berlusconis administration.Some members left, but the League confounded its critics by its strongshowing in the 1996 elections.

  The fundamental policies of the League have altered in keeping withBossis mercurial character. Initially, the League sought a federal solutionto the impasse of Italian politics, but was concerned only with securingfor Lombardy a financially autonomous status which would free it of theburden of contributing to less developed regions. By the early 1990s, thispolicy had shifted to one of overall federalism with a division of Italy intothree macro-regions: the North or Padania, the South or Mezzogiornoand the Centre, which had no settled name. In 1995, Bossi announcedthat federalism was not enough and advocated the secession of Padania.The referendums on devolution in Scotland and Wales caused further

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• alteration in policy, and at the Congress in Varese in July 1999, he declaredthat the League was aiming for devolution, Scottish-style.

  Internal tensions and contradictions within the Northern Leaguecame to the surface in the late 1990s. Padania as such had no history, nocommon memory, no culture of the sort the Lombards, the Piedmonteseand the inhabitants of the Veneto claim for their own regions. These loc-alist feelings were particularly strong in the Veneto, whose Liga Venetawas founded before the Lega Lombarda, and where the Northern Leaguehad had its strongest showing in the 1996 elections. Fabrizio Comencini,leader of the movement, had never hidden his doubts over Bossi, and inautumn 1998 he denounced him as a tyrant and a traitor. In the ensuingfracas, he led the Liga Veneta out of the Northern League, and declaredthat the former would struggle for the autonomy of the Veneto alone.

  The Northern League can claim the principal credit for ending thediscredited and corrupt rgime of the First Republic. Bossi succeededwhere the left-wing groupings of the 1960s and 1970s failed. He estab-lished a force which was electorally credible, which appealed to votersdisillusioned with the status quo but distrustful of any alternativewhich appeared socially and politically too revolutionary. For a time, itseemed that the League and the magistrates involved in the mani pulite(clean hands) anti-corruption drive were two sides of a pincer move-ment; both attacked the old parties, the magistrates in the name of thelaw, the League in the name of a new order. Although Bossi later turnedon the magistrates, it was no accident that both the League and the magi-strates most involved in incriminating the old order were based in thesame city. The history of the new Republic, whatever form it eventuallytakes, had its origin in Milan. However unlikely the prospect of thepolitical dissolution of Italy may be, the success of Bossi does demon-strate the continuing fragility of the cultural unity of the Republic, andthe discordance of the voices still heard inside it.

  Feminism

  The demand for womens rights the vote, civic and legal equality hasconsistently challenged Italys unitarian and democratic credentials.Church and state have both sought to stabilize society by emphasizingthe family and womens role within it. If the strength of traditionalpatriarchal culture meant a comparatively forlorn movement for eman-cipation in the early years of the new state, the political crises of the

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• 1960s and 1970s, on the other hand, led to the emergence of one of theWests most forceful Feminist movements. A dual stress on philosophi-cal theory and political praxis stressed womens legitimate positionwithin the institutions of the state, while radically questioning the mis-ogynistic structures of power.

  UnificationThe ambition of the Risorgimento as conceived by Giuseppe Mazzini(180572) was both to create a new nation-state and to bring about thesocial and moral regeneration of all its citizens, including women.Mazzinis patriotic notion of political freedom and national unity waspredicated on releasing women from ignorance and servitude. Theunited nation, modelled on the family, required the social, civil andpolitical emancipation of women as well as of working men. However,Mazzinis idealism and his familial metaphor suggest not a departurefrom, but a reaffirmation of, womens traditional roles; as mothers tothe nation they should distance themselves from the moral and intellec-tual squalor which prevented them from playing their full part in thenew Italy.

  The reality of most womens lives was much less inspiring. While thecondition of women in the new state varied somewhat between regions,their disadvantageous economic, political and juridical status was rein-forced by the new national legal code. A wife was not permitted toadminister her own property or to have a bank account without herhusbands permission. She had few rights with regard to her children,while the prevailing morality led to a notorious double standard, rein-forced by the law, in sexual matters: women could swiftly be accused ofadultery, while a patriarchal notion of honour left largely crimes ofpassion committed by men unpunished. Yet women contributed sub-stantially to the Italian labour market, employed in textiles and silk pro-duction, spinning and weaving, as well as agriculture, for a fraction ofthe male wage and in largely unregulated conditions. Illiteracy levels,high across the nation, were worse for women. The new nation clearlyneeded a more educated workforce however rudimentary that educa-tion and jobs such as schoolteaching and telegraph operating soonbecame filled by girls from the lower and middle classes. While exact sta-tistics are unobtainable, it is hard to overestimate the scale of womenswork, whether in the fields, the factories, schools or the home. It is argu-able that the modest industrial revolution achieved by Italy was rooted

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• in exploitative working conditions for women. There was a vast gulfbetween their contribution to the nation through work and the minimalrights accorded them by the state.

  The questione femminileFeminism emerged later in Italy than in Britain or France, where politi-cal and industrial revolution had profoundly shaken the anciens rgimes,or the USA, where the anti-slavery movement had led to a parallel analy-sis of the condition of women. Early philanthropic interventions onbehalf of women in Italy, in the second half of the nineteenth century,aimed to improve standards of education for girls and combat illiteracy,and many of these early emancipationists had their intellectual andideological roots in Mazzinis moral and secular Republicanism. Thequestione femminile gathered momentum as women gained experience inthe new factories that were becoming established in northern cities,while the Italian Socialist Party, which returned its first candidate toParliament in 1892, began to organize in favour of workers rights. Arange of positions began to develop around the new term Feminism,which entered Italian usage through womens magazines such as Ladonna (The Woman). Indeed, the introduction of the term and its wide-spread use indicates a significant shift: feminism is of its very natureextraneous to the various political formations.9 While Radical, Socialistand Catholic Feminists differed over questions affecting the family, suchas divorce, all agreed on the need for improved access to education and tothe professions, for the issue of prostitution to be addressed, for workingconditions to be regulated, and for some form of maternity leave to beconceded.

  The question of suffrageWith the development of the industrial infrastructure in Italy, chang-ing patterns of work coincided with the rise of left-wing movementssuch as Anarchism and, more importantly, Socialism. As women flowedinto the new factories, so they began to be conscious of a double exploi-tation both at work and in their social and domestic roles. Yet thedemand for suffrage caused the fledgling Socialist Party an acutedilemma. Turatis closest female associate, Anna Kuliscioff, persis-tently reminded the party of the gender equality envisaged byMarxism. Turati could hardly oppose votes for male workers in thenew factories, but to support votes for women was considered politi-

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• cally too dangerous, a move which might not only hand votes to lessprogressive parties, but which might also be greeted with less thanenthusiasm by Socialist supporters. Early industrial workers sought alevel of wages with which to support the family, not emancipationwhich they feared would destroy it. Italian suffrage remainedextremely narrow until well into the twentieth century, when, in 1913,Giolitti massively expanded the vote at the time of the Gentiloni pact, amanoeuvre designed largely to end the Catholic boycott of the newstate. But suffrage still did not extend to women. While some Catholicsover the next few years were to make common cause with LuigiSturzos Partito Popolare one of the few strands of Italian politics,together with small groups of Liberals and Feminists, to endorsewomens suffrage the Vatican remained implacably hostile.

  Other FeminismsOther Feminists, such as Anna Maria Mozzoni (18401920), adopted adifferent strategy from Kuliscioffs, arguing for the question of womensemancipation to be considered apart from trade-union and class dis-course. For Mozzoni political activist, writer and indefatigable pro-moter of womens rights and suffrage Feminism should retain its ownagenda and not be subsumed within a wider struggle. Mozzoni analysedwomens social, economic and juridical inferiority, arguing, as hadMazzini, for the Risorgimento to be made complete by the absorption ofwomen into the modern progressive state through education, work andthe introduction of divorce. She battled for equal pay as early as 1863,translated John Stuart Mills On the Subjection of Women in 1870, and was aleading contributor to the journal La donna, founded by Adelaide Beccariin 1869, which brought together women whose demands for emancipa-tion were based on Mazzinian ideals of humanity and equality. Post-unification Italy, however, was largely hostile to womens issues and thedemand for emancipation. The countrys drive to modernize was fet-tered by an increasingly stagnant economy. Mozzoni, like SibillaAleramo, sought to arouse the middle-class female consciousness and toseparate bourgeois women from an exclusively domestic role, evenwhile the torpor of the Italian economy and the weight of tradition leftlittle possibility for the expansion of womens work into the professions.The failure to win suffrage in 1912 was a serious defeat, and the emanci-pationist movement died away with the onset of war and the subsequentrise of Fascism. Once again, the questione femminile had been swallowed

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• up by more powerful political forces predicated on the oppression andexclusion of large sections of the nation.

  From Futurism and Fascism to the New FeminismWith the failure of the battle for the vote never as vigorous and subver-sive as in America or Britain few new voices were to be raised to assertwomens political or civil rights. Marinettis Futurist movement showedearly promise with its virulent attack on the family, on traditional bour-geois culture, and on all the archaic underpinnings of Italian society;however, it was to prove itself as misogynistic as Fascism. Meanwhile,many early Feminists, such as Teresa Labriola, found that nationalistsentiment brought them closer to Fascism than to Socialist Feminism.Fascism had claimed to succeed where the Risorgimento had failed, increating a united and powerful nation-state able to compete on the inter-national stage. Fascist ideology parallelled Catholic traditionalism in itspromulgation of the woman as wife and mother; and the Lateran Pacts of1929 sealed the mutual interests of Church and state in the limited defi-nition of womens roles. Yet the exalted cult of motherhood concealedthe shortcomings of an economy where cheap female labour would notbe sacrificed for ideological principle. Mussolinis battle for populationgrowth failed. Barring women from the higher echelons of the profes-sions affected limited numbers and masked shifting work-patterns;indeed, more rather than fewer women entered the labour market ayoung, largely unskilled and badly paid workforce which, on marrying,returned to the home.

  With the fall of Mussolini and the drama of the Resistance, womenonce more entered the body politic. Historians still debate the extent towhich the Resistance afforded a space to develop an alternative, femalevision of social politics; however, it was without doubt womens contri-bution to the Resistance that finally led to their participation in elec-tions, local in 1946 and national in 1948. There were those on the left,however, who blamed women, supposedly politically naive, priest-ridden and easily manipulated, for the emergence of the DC as the mostpowerful political force.

  While the powerful Italian Feminist movement in the late 1960s and1970s had clear parallels elsewhere in Europe and the United States, onceagain Italys singular situation lent its organization and its discursivepractices specifically national configurations. The polarization of post-war Italian politics left women little space between a Christian

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• Democrat Party increasingly reliant on the social control offered by theChurch, and a strong left which functioned as a near-autonomous localculture and was, at best, ambivalent about emancipatory politics. Thereformist UDI (Unione Donne Italiane, Unon of Italian Women), affili-ated to the PCI, kept womens issues on the agenda, and a slowly expand-ing bourgeois female culture found expression in womens magazines,some of which began to express overtly Feminist ideas. The new consu-mer society, the breakdown of social formations as people moved insearch of work, and the rapid expansion of educational opportunity ledincreasingly to dissatisfaction with traditional roles and expectations.

  The crisis of traditional parties in the early 1970s created politicalspace for social movements and facilitated the politicization of civilsociety. Feminism grew out of the student protests of 1968 and the subse-quent workers movement, outstripping both in longevity and effective-ness. The traditional marginalization of women led to highly politicizedgroups of radical women operating on the borders of, or outside, ortho-dox politics. Communist women, for example, looked with suspicionupon consciousness-raising as an litist political practice a bourgeoisphenomenon, not a strategy to be taken up in the class struggle. At thesame time, some of Feminisms most biting analyses were of left-wingpolitical organizations which replicated rather than challenged thepatriarchal structures of the Church and the Catholic political parties.This was a break from the moderate reformism of movements such asthe UDI. Class-based political analysis was dismissed as inadequate andhostile to womens interests. Women operated within and alongsidepolitical parties, while simultaneously setting up their own autono-mous formations which were structured on a loose federal, rather thannational, system.

  The achievements of the new Feminism were considerable. Womenwere able to organize on a large scale, unlike earlier movements whichhad never achieved mass support. These achievements included anational plan for nurseries and family-planning clinics. Improved rightsin the workplace included equal pay for equal work, paternity leave andfive-month maternity leave, while reform of family law gave womenequal authority within the family. Some Feminist groups sought topoliticize the question of housework, demanding a salary for house-wives. Legal reform also included the repeal of the legislation on rape,whereby a marriage of reparation effectively cancelled out the crime,thereby placing enormous pressure on women not to pursue their com-

  146 Sharon Wood and Joseph Farrell

• plaints through the courts. The Movimento di Liberazione della Donna(Movement for the Liberation of Women, MLD), affiliated to the RadicalParty, demanded contraception, free medical services and the end of dis-crimination on the grounds of gender. Two major issues, however,deemed almost untouchable by earlier activists, united the variousstrands of Feminism: maternity and the family, presented in the 1970s interms of the availability of divorce and the right to abortion.

  The need to appease the Church had kept the question of divorce offthe political agenda. Finally introduced in 1970 by the Radical Party, thedivorce law found consensus across the political spectrum, excludingthe DC. The MLD was active in promoting the law, and the campaignconstituted the first focus for concerted Feminist intervention. The refe-rendum of 1974 was equally significant, with mass demonstrations andcampaigning by a now confident Feminist movement. The upholding ofthe divorce law marked the abyss between popular lay opinion and therepressive political culture of the DC; it also highlighted the caution ofthe Communists, who had no wish to be branded as the party whichwanted to destroy the family.

  The campaign for abortion, as well as being the single issue whichunited all aspects of Feminist opinion in Italy, similarly placed womenon the front line between traditionalism and a modern, secular society.The huge pro-abortion rallies established Feminism as a radical forcewhich cut across traditional class and political lines, while womens newwillingness to reveal the sore of clandestine abortion exposed the realityof womens lives. The MLD campaigned for abortion and easily collectedthe 500,000 signatures required to trigger a referendum, thus forcingthe issue on to the political agenda. Abortion was finally legalized in1978, albeit with a number of important restrictions, and a later referen-dum to abolish Law 194 regulating and permitting abortion was con-vincingly defeated.

  As a powerful grassroots organization with strong political links,Feminism brought about swift reform of an archaic political and legalsystem. Having changed the law on divorce and abortion, the mass cam-paigns and rallies of Feminism were largely at an end, and the womensmovement returned largely to its former loose, fragmented structure. Itturned its attention to a more reflective, theoretical exploration ofsexual difference, not content to rest with the belated admission ofwomen to specific areas and rewards of work and representation. Asearly as 1966 a manifesto produced by the Milan-based Demau group

  Other voices: contesting the status quo 147

• had renounced emancipation and the conventional objective of femaleintegration in favour of an exploration of sexual difference. Unlikeearlier forms of Feminism, Neo-feminism implicitly challenged ratherthan upheld the legitimacy of the state. Even while it remained rooted inpolitical activism, demanding equality before the law, the newFeminism also sought to understand the significance of gender as a lin-guistic and philosophical category, and to seek alternative forms of per-sonal and social relationships. Italian feminism, eclectic in its outlookand in its sources, seeks to bridge the gap between a theoretical, philo-sophical analysis and active political engagement.

  Gradually the centre of attention shifted from the relationship withthe (male-dominated) institutions to developing new ways of livingwhich would be woman- rather than man-centred, where relationsbetween women rather than between the sexes became the dominantfocal point. Equality is dismissed as a goal, on account of its inherenttendency to assimilate womens difference into the male preconceptionsof the world: sexual difference requires a shift in thought and in lan-guage in order to accommodate a double perspective. In practical termsthis led to the establishment of womens cultural centres, most famouslythe Centro Culturale Virginia Woolf in Rome, and of separate academicsyllabuses and courses of study as well as separate cultural spaces,including women-only theatres and publishing houses. For women totake each other as reference points meant much more than embracinglesbianism as a political and ethical, as well as a sexual, choice. Thedynamic separatism of affidamento, or entrustment, whereby onewoman sets out consciously to relate both her public and private self toanother woman, was rooted in the desire not only to produce a suppor-tive network, but also radically to rethink a system which took the maleas its formative paradigm. This move was closely related to the analysisof maternity. The traditionally oppressive, static mother was rejected infavour of a mother-figure who would offer a more dynamic possibilityfor achieving ones potential and more open-ended relationshipsbetween women.

  Practical as well as theoretical, Italian Feminism embraces both func-tional change and theoretical reflection. After two decades of Feminism,women are active in all areas of cultural, social and political life.Nonetheless, the collapse of the First Republic was largely unaffected bythe womens movement. The proportion of female deputies in theItalian parliament has still to rise above ten per cent, while quota

  148 Sharon Wood and Joseph Farrell

• systems in local elections have proved extremely controversial. Italiansociety and culture remain irreducibly male-dominated, despite the dra-matic success of a number of individual women writers and the highprofile of a handful of women politicians. Italian Feminism at the begin-ning of the twenty-first century no longer has the clear objectives of the1970s, although equal opportunities and the tackling of sexual harass-ment and violence are still on the agenda. Nonetheless, the impact ofFeminism is felt in every area of social, cultural and family life, and inmodes not always registered by the cold statistical measurements oforthodox politics.

  notes

  1. Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread ofNationalism (London: Verso, 1983), pp. 2345.2. Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York: Harcourt Brace,1958).3. Danilo Dolci, Sicilian Lives (London: Writers and Readers, 1981), pp. 678.4. Tullio Barbato, Il terrorismo in Italia (Milan: Bibliografica, 1980), p. 35.5. Giorgio Bocca, Il terrorismo italiano 19701978 (Milan: Rizzoli, 1978), p. 7.6. Umberto Eco, Faith in Fakes (London: Secker and Warburg, 1986), pp. 11319.7. Pier Paolo Pasolini, Scritti corsari (Milan: Garzanti, 1975), pp. 457.8. Denis Mack Smith, Cavour (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), p. xi.9. Franca Pieroni Bortolotti, Alle origini del movimento femminile in Italia, 18481892(Turin: Einaudi, 1963), p. 17.

  further reading

  Arlacchi, Pino, La mafia imprenditrice. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1983.Birnbaum, L. Chiavola. La liberazione della donna: Feminism in Italy. Middletown, Conn.:

  Wesleyan University Press, 1986.Chiarante, Giuseppe, La democrazia cristiana. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1980.Cicioni, Mirna and Nicole Prunster (eds.), Visions and Revisions: Women in Italian Culture.

  Oxford: Berg, 1993.De Giorgio, Michela, Le italiane dallUnit a oggi. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1992.Diamanti, Ilvo, La lega. Rome: Donzelli, 1993.Duggan, Christopher, Fascism and the Mafia. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,

  1989.Falcone, Giovanni, Cose di Cosa Nostra. Milan: Rizzoli, 1991.Hess, Henner, Mafia. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1973.Kemp, Sandra and Paola Bono (eds.), Italian Feminist Thought. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.Kemp, Sandra and Paola Bono (eds.), The Lonely Mirror: Italian Perspectives on Feminist

  Theory. London: Routledge, 1993.Spadolini, Giovanni, Giolitti e i cattolici 19011914. Florence: Le Monnier, 1960.

  Other voices: contesting the status quo 149

• g i a n - p a o l o b i a s i n

  8

  Narratives of self and society

  11 May 1860. Garibaldi lands at Marsala, Sicily, and opens the way for theunification of Italy under Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, the galantuomo King.

  [The Prince] opened the newspaper. On May 11 an act of flagrant

  piracy was effected through the landing of armed men on the Marsala

  coast. Subsequent reports have clarified that the band numbers about

  eight hundred, and is commanded by Garibaldi [. . .] The name of

  Garibaldi troubled him a bit. That adventurer, all hair and beard, was

  a pure Mazzinian. He would cause trouble. But if the Galantuomo

  [King] has let him come down here it means hes sure of him. Theyll

  bridle him.1

  The novel is indeed the modern artistic form of the bourgeoisie, butthere is no law prohibiting aristocrats from writing in another classsstyle; so, almost exactly a century after the unification of Italy, a Sicilianprince, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (18961957), wrote a very suc-cessful and revealing novel, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1958) about theevents that led to the decline and eventual demise of the aristocracy.Modelled on the authors grandfather, the protagonist of the book,Prince Fabrizio Salina, witnesses those events with the wisdom anddetachment of his age and with a historical and sociological insight thatmakes him support his nephew, Tancredi Falconeri, when the latterjoins the Garibaldini If we want everything to stay as it is, everythinghas to change (p. 24), he tells his worried uncle and when he wants tomarry the beautiful bourgeois Angelica Sedara instead of Concetta, theprinces own daughter.

  Il Gattopardo is perhaps the most conspicuous example in modernItalian literature of a historical novel a genre which, in the wake of Ugo

• Foscolo (17781827), Alessandro Manzoni (17851873), Ippolito Nievo(183161) and Giuseppe Rovani (181874), not to mention the popularsuccess of Massimo dAzeglio (17981866) and others, has occupied aprominent position, accompanying the rise of the new state with narra-tive sagas that have effectively inserted individual or family storieswithin the historical context of national development. Undoubtedly,Manzoni is the writer who is the father of modern Italian fiction. HisI promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 182740) is the single work that hasexerted a crucial influence not only on the historical novel, but on theItalian novel in general, and not only in the first half of the nineteenthcentury, but also well into the twentieth. After Manzonis Lombardy(depicted under a seventeenth-century Spanish rule that recalled thecontemporary Austrian domination), the region that gained literary pre-eminence was Sicily: novels dealing with the aftermath of theRisorgimento in the island have played a particularly significant role.

  Giovanni Verga (18401922) was interested not so much in historicalnovels as in a great naturalistic-style cycle, I vinti (The Vanquished), ofwhich only two novels were completed. Yet these contain pages onhistory that, together with their descriptions of Sicilian landscapes andcharacters, and with the more explicitly historical novel I Vicer (TheViceroys, 1894) by his contemporary Federico De Roberto (18611927),established a kind of Sicilian code of historical-novel writing which hadto be followed (either in acknowledgment or rejection) by later writerssuch as Luigi Pirandello (18671936), himself a Sicilian. When he decidedto paint the large historical fresco of I vecchi e i giovani ( The Old and theYoung, 1913), Pirandello followed some of Vergas and De Robertosimages, themes and ideas in outlining the historical reasons for the disil-lusionment of an entire generation and an entire region after the failuresof the Risorgimento.

  Certainly, Tomasi di Lampedusa drew upon these predecessors whenhe wrote Il Gattopardo. The historical and social picture he presented is sopersuasive that it overshadows the portrayal of his protagonist. Thesupple and ornate language in which he composed his elegy for a lostage, as well as his perceptive insights into the nature of class struggleand historical causality, were not sufficient, at first, to outweigh the con-servative implications of his world-vision in the eyes of many intellectu-als. The Italian language was enriched by a new word, gattopardismo,which stood (and still stands) for the ability to change sides in politicswithout effecting any real, meaningful change on society. It was against

  152 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• Lampedusas conservatism that Leonardo Sciascia (192189) who was tobe the author of such historical novels as Il consiglio dEgitto ( The Councilof Egypt, 1963) and Morte dellinquisitore (Death of the Inquisitor,1964) reacted with a novella, Il Quarantottu (The Fortyeight, 1958),that was immediately received as a progressive response to Il Gattopardo.Against the same historical background of Garibaldis landing in Sicily,the character Ippolito Nievo, the Romantic novelist who actually was amember of the Garibaldi expedition, becomes the spokesperson for allthose Sicilians who do not speak out but who, despite the odds, treasuredignity and justice in their hearts. Similarly, in a luxuriant and refinedlanguage, Il sorriso dellignoto marinaio (The Smile of the Unknown Sailor,1976) by Vincenzo Consolo (1933 ) portrays the social struggles of poorSicilian workers and peasants, mostly from the viewpoint of a Liberalaristocrat, Baron Mandralisca. In all these novels Sicily is the microcosmin which a crucial period of Italian history is played out.

  In other novels, the Risorgimento is part of a broader picture, as inIl mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po, 1940), by Riccardo Bacchelli(18911985) or is shunned altogether. Luigi Malerba (1927 ) deals withthe Middle Ages in Il pataffio (Pastiche, 1978 the title refers to the plotas well as to the language) and with Papal Rome in the sixteenth centuryin Le maschere (The Masks, 1995). Sicily in the eighteenth century is thesetting for Dacia Marainis (1936 ) La lunga vita di Marianna Ucria (TheLong Life of Marianna Ucria, 1990) and in the early nineteenth centuryfor Le menzogne della notte (Nights Lies, 1988) by Gesualdo Bufalino(192096). Seventeenth-century Piedmont is the setting for SebastianoVassallis (1941 ) La chimera (The Chimera, 1990), a beautiful novelthat, following and renewing the Manzonian model, is also a microhis-tory dealing with a young girl who is falsely accused of being a witchand burnt at the stake. And an old sexton chronicles the life of a tinyIstrian parish from the Hapsburg Empire to Italian rule and theYugoslav takeover in La miglior vita (The Best Life, 1977 ) by FulvioTomizza (1935 ).

  A peculiar feature of Italian literature is the use of art history as thesubject-matter for historical novels and short stories. Thus, Artemisia(1947), by Anna Banti (18951985) is an intriguing identification of thewriter with the seventeenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi; and,like a modern Vasari, Neri Pozza (191288) brings back the splendours ofVenetian Renaissance art and culture in Processo per eresia (Trial forHeresy, 1970) and La putina greca (The Little Greek Girl, 1972) through

  Narratives of self and society 153

• the everyday humanity of a number of artists, from Lotto to Titian, andthrough the distinct stylistic features of the dialect.

  History can also be made the subject of a novel in other ways. ElsaMorantes La storia (History/The Story, 1974) thematizes the vicissi-tudes of a group of humble characters during the Second World War, theResistance and the Holocaust. It aspires to an epic grandeur; however,the lasting impressions that readers carry away are of such figures as themother Ida Ramundo, the small child Useppe and the intellectualDavide Segre all of them victims of history.

  More recently, Umberto Eco (1932 ) has drawn on the genre of thehistorical novel to create three bestsellers, Il nome della rosa (The Name ofthe Rose, 1980), Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucaults Pendulum, 1988), andLisola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before, 1994). Dealingrespectively with religious power struggles during the Middle Ages, aninternational plot which also dates back to the Middle Ages but reachesforward to involve contemporary terrorism, and geographical explora-tions during the seventeenth century, these three books are historicalnovels only on one level. They are better understood as encyclopaedicworks in which the authors erudition and fantasy, as well as his semi-ological, philosophical and narratological interests, combine to form fic-tional worlds that are as much historical as they are projections of thepresent.

  In little more than a century, the course of the Italian historical novelhas been, first, to accompany the emergence of the national state, andthen to transcend both regional and national boundaries to become cos-mopolitan and marketable worldwide.

  20 July 1866. The Italian fleet is defeated at the battle of Lissa in the Adriatic Sea bythe Austrian Navy.

  In that group, instead of the fallen donkey, there were two sailors,

  with their sacks on their shoulders and their heads bandaged [. . .]

  They said that a great naval battle had been fought, and that ships as

  big as Aci Trezza had drowned, packed to the gunnels with sailors; in

  sum, a world of things which made them seem like those who told

  the story of Roland and of the paladins of France down at the

  waterfront in Catania, and people stood listening straining their ears,

  thick as flies.2

  During its first years as a unified country, Italy had to overcomenumerous difficulties that had to do partly with international recogni-

  154 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• tion in 1866 it reclaimed the Veneto from the Hapsburg Empire, and in1870 the Vatican lost the protection of the French, so that Rome finallybecame the capital of the Kingdom but mostly with the variety of theeconomic, social and cultural conditions present in its territory. Suchconditions explain the pedagogical fervour of two famous narrativetexts for children, Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures ofPinocchio, 1883,) by Carlo Collodi (182690) and Cuore (Heart, 1886)by Edmondo De Amicis (18461908), both of which extended their influ-ence well beyond the 1880s into this century; and even a cookbook, theaffable La scienza in cucina e larte di mangiar bene (Science in the Kitchenand the Art of Eating Well, 1891) by Pellegrino Artusi (18201911), con-tributed greatly to the unification of culinary customs and terminology.Many writers devoted their attention and their fictional representationsto the nations regional differences, which became a characteristic trait ofthe literary movement called verismo (from il vero, the truth). Its poeticswere expounded and practised especially by two Sicilian authors andfriends, Luigi Capuana (18391915) and Giovanni Verga.

  The technique of narrative impersonality was especially importantfor the poetics of verismo. Patterned after the French Naturalists docu-mentary and scientific tenets, it was masterfully used by Verga in numer-ous short stories dealing with poor Sicilian peasants (one of these storiesbecame a famous opera, Pietro Mascagnis Cavalleria rusticana) and in hismajor novels. I Malavoglia (The Malavoglias, 1881) recounts the life ofthe Malavoglia family in the village of Aci Trezza through an anony-mous narrative voice that can be identified with the spirit of the villageitself the speaking community from whose point of view all events areperceived and narrated: thus the battleships are as big as Aci Trezza, andthey had drowned in the battle. But such a narrative voice should beidentified more precisely with language itself, the spoken language forexample, in the constant use of prosopopeia, of which the drownedships are but an instance. The result is a truly epic, yet humble narrative,in which the impersonality of the narrative voice does not preventpathos while providing the objectivity necessary for multiple view-points and voices. It is the same technique that, many years after Verga,Virginia Woolf, a mistress of Modernism, was to use in To the Lighthouse(1927).

  Vergas other major novel, Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889), has a broaderscope. It portrays the ascent of Gesualdo Motta, a self-made man whorises from poverty to riches and marries into the aristocracy, only to be

  Narratives of self and society 155

• left to die alone in his mansion. Here impersonality functions with thesame objectivity and multiplicity as in I Malavoglia, but with two majordifferences: it no longer represents a community, and the narrative voicedialogues with the characters and corrects, comments on or underminestheir words. Through this particular use of impersonality Verga againshows his modernity and sets an intriguing precedent for the works andthe viewpoints of writers such as Luigi Pirandello and Italo Svevo.

  However, in terms of literary history, Vergas legacy was mostly tied tothe objective representation of humble realities within well-definedlocal boundaries. Such a legacy developed even in authors like AntonioFogazzaro (18421911), who was interested ( la Manzoni) in ethical andreligious problems and dealt with the middle class and the provincialaristocracy of the Valsolda in Piccolo mondo antico (The Little World of thePast, 1896), and Federigo Tozzi (18831920), whose lower-middle-classcharacters live out their dramas, narrated with psychoanalytic sensitiv-ity, in Siena and the surrounding Tuscan countryside in such anti-Naturalistic novels as Con gli occhi chiusi (With Closed Eyes, 1920) andTre croci (Three Crosses, 1920 ).

  The influence of Verga and verismo can be traced well into the twenti-eth century. Maria Zef (1937) by Paola Drigo (18761938) is the grippingstory of family incest and the rape of a very poor girl, set in the moun-tains of Carnia-Friuli; Zebio Cotal (1958) by Guido Cavani (18971967) andCasa daltri (The Others House, 1952) by Silvio DArzo (192052) dealwith the life of destitute persons in the Emilian Apennines; FulvioTomizzas Materada (1960) portrays the rugged destinies of Istrian villag-ers. The modes of verismo can even be noted in the dry and almost mini-malist style of the best among the many books by Carlo Cassola (191787):Il taglio del bosco (Timber Cutting, 1954) or La ragazza di Bube (BubesGirl, 1960). The minute and detailed realism of Giorgio Bassani(19162000), on the other hand, should be traced back to a classicalmodel such as Manzonis, notwithstanding its localism; his works arecollected under the title Il romanzo di Ferrara (The Novel of Ferrara, 1980)

  16 February 1883. Funeral of Richard Wagner.

  The corpse was there, enclosed in its crystal coffin; and next to it,

  standing, was the woman with the face of snow [. . .] The silence was

  acute, and they [the six pall-bearers] did not bat an eyelid, but a

  violent grief wounded their souls like a squall and shook them

  violently down to their deep roots [. . .] An infinite smile illuminated

  156 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• the face of the laid-out hero: infinite and distant as the rainbow of the

  glaciers, as the glare of the seas, as the halo of the stars [. . .] The

  profound silence was worthy of Him who had transformed the

  powers of the Universe into infinite song for the religion of men.3

  Certainly the funeral of a great composer can take on emblematicovertones and become the symbol of an entire age, especially if it isdescribed, as in Il fuoco (The Fire, 1900), by another emblematic figurelike Gabriele DAnnunzio (18631938) for his own artistic purposes against the backdrop of Venice, the city that he made the capital ofDecadentism in the collective imagination of his time (it is enough tothink of Thomas Mann).

  The description of Wagners funeral has in fact many characteristicsof Decadentism: pretentious language (including the use of capitalletters), grandiose nature similes, sublime passions, noble sentiments;the celebration of an artist as hero (and hero is always associated withthe Nietzschean notion of superman); the pre-eminence of music,theatrical music to be precise, as an indication of the fusion of the arts,and of art and life DAnnunzios own ideal and world-view ; the cultu-rally and historically precise choice of Wagner (not Verdi!) a clear indi-cation that certain aesthetic ideas dear to the author were European, andnot just Italian, in scope.

  DAnnunzios Decadentism was an exacerbation of Romantic tenetsand tastes, filtered through his omnivorous erudition that extendedfrom the Italian Renaissance and Baroque artists to French and EnglishSymbolist poets and writers, from German philosophers to Russian nov-elists. The celebration of Wagner in Il fuoco, at the end of a novel whosefemale protagonist is the thinly disguised actress Eleonora Duse, followsthat of the aesthete in Il piacere (Pleasure, 1889) and the political leaderin Le vergini delle rocce (The Virgins of the Rocks, 1896).

  DAnnunzio loved experimentation, and as an accomplished imagemaker (he called himself limaginifico) he did not hesitate to patternhis stylistic choices on medieval religious texts (for their archaic vocabu-lary and mystic inspiration), as well as on the contemporary linguisticgames of the scapigliati, the dishevelled avant-garde writers, such asCletto Arrighi (18301906), Giovanni Faldella (18461928) or Carlo Dossi(18491910); he was equally interested in the morbid themes of some ofIginio Ugo Tarchettis stories, such as Fosca (1869). As image maker, hewas tremendously conscious of the expectations of his audience, and in

  Narratives of self and society 157

• an age in which the mass media were still limited to a small portion ofthe population, he certainly succeeded in reaching it, and in fulfillingthe sentimental and aesthetic needs of the bourgeoisie, to whom he pro-posed aristocratic and sublime models.

  His influence was enormous, far-reaching and long-lasting. (E. M.Forster, to name but one, was still fascinated by him even on the eve ofthe Second World War.) It was most powerful in poetry, but it should notbe underestimated in narrative prose, in the theatre, in fashion, in poli-tics; Mussolini learned much from him, admired him, used him, andfinally kept him at a distance in an elaborate villa on Lake Garda.Certainly, Eugenio Montales statement that in order to be a modernpoet it is necessary to have passed through DAnnunzio is valid too forthe novelist. It is no wonder that James Joyce was fascinated byDAnnunzios rich style studded with verbal inventions, regardless ofthe fact that, as his friend Ettore Schmitz (who wrote under the pseudo-nym Italo Svevo) would point out to him, the writers meaning oftenremained elusive. In the first three decades of this century, MassimoBontempelli (18781960) owes much for his magic realism to theDannunzian penchant for the irrational and even the mystical, as doesGrazia Deledda (18711936), who, in 1926, received the Nobel Prize, whenshe was honoured for her novels of her native Sardinia (the regionaltheme is of course a legacy of verismo; her islands primitive and supersti-tious customs would appeal to D. H. Lawrence and to Elio Vittorini). Inturn, the magic of magic realism can be seen as a precedent for the fan-tastic inventions of writers as diverse as Dino Buzzati (190672),Tommaso Landolfi (190879) and Anna Maria Ortese (1914 ), whileAlberto Savinio (18911952) remains in a decidedly Surrealist area.

  Without DAnnunzios taste for an elaborate and hyperliterary vocabu-lary, it would be difficult to understand Emilio Cecchi (18841966), whoseart prose distilled the aestheticization of experience for an entire genera-tion, as well as the works of later writers like Carlo Emilio Gadda(18931973), Antonio Pizzuto (18931976), Gesualdo Bufalino (192096),Giorgio Manganelli (192290), Luigi Meneghello (1922 ) and AlbertoArbasino (1930 ), who are all remarkable for their linguistic refinementand experimentation. And while Elsa Morante (191285) wrote her novels,from Menzogna e sortilegio (Deceit and Sorcery, 1948) to Aracoeli (1982), withluxuriant images and metaphors, her vision of the world is the very antith-esis of DAnnunzios: her characters, like the young narrator of Lisola diArturo (Arturos Island, 1957), a true masterpiece, are anti-heroes.

  158 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• 24 May 1915. Italy enters the First World War.

  26 June 1915. The war has reached me! I who used to listen to thestories of the war as if it were a war of other times about which it wasamusing to talk, but about which it would have been foolish to worry,here I happened to be in the middle of it, surprised and at the sametime astonished that I had not realized before that sooner or later Ihad to become caught up in it. I had lived quite calmly in a buildingwhose ground floor was burning and had not foreseen that sooner orlater the whole building together with me would be immersed inflames.

  The war grabbed me, shook me violently like a rag, deprived me inone go of all my family and also of my administrator.4

  The mature Zeno Cosini, the protagonist of La coscienza di Zeno(Zenos Conscience, 1923) by Italo Svevo (18611928), who is telling thestory of his psychoanalytical treatment and of how he was affected by thewar, is a major representative of the modern anti-hero. His conscience isthe sum of many incongruous fragments that laboriously and hilari-ously make up a unified self. He may decide something, but life is full ofsurprises for him, and he always ends up as the one who is acted upon,not the one who acts. The outbreak of the First World War is no excep-tion. By saying, The war has reached me, he becomes literally (syntacti-cally) the object, not the subject, of the story; his amazement at the turnof events is underscored by the strongly marked attributes surprisedand astonished, his reluctance to accept what is happening is signalledby the repetition of the temporal syntagm sooner or later, while hisbourgeois condition and his self-irony are conveyed by his reckoningthat the war has deprived him in one go of all his family, significantlyincluding his administrator. He is witnessing the beginning of hostil-ities while taking a walk in the hills around Trieste, and all his previouspreoccupations with smoking his last cigarette, with his guilt over thedeath of his father, with being faithful to his wife, with loving his sister-in-law, all of a sudden become irrelevant games. His long search for hisindividual self abruptly ends in the encounter with and recognition ofthe other (society, history). The apocalyptic ending of the novel expandsand universalizes the image of the building going up in flames: it signalsthat Zenos individual disease is truly a collective one, and exposes theinfamous proclamation by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (18751944) thatwar is the only hygiene of the world as the horrible folly it is. It shouldbe noted that Futurisms avant-garde innovations had a very limited

  Narratives of self and society 159

• influence on Italian narrative prose in general, though they were rele-vant to poetry (the parole in libert or words set free of syntax) andpolitical discourse (the rhetorics of the manifesto), not to mentionpainting and sculpture. In stark contrast, Futurist innovations wereinfluential in French and even British literature suffice it to recall EzraPound, the Vortex, and even James Joyce. In any case, the First WorldWar caused a lot of soul- searching among European intellectuals. InItaly, Esame di coscienza di un letterato (A Literary Mans Examination ofConscience, 1915) by Renato Serra (18841915) and Carlo Emilio GaddasGiornale di guerra e di prigionia (Journal of War and Imprisonment, 1955)are exemplary texts in this respect, but few works have the poignancy,lightness and visionary power of the final pages of La coscienza di Zeno.

  Under the pen name of Italo Svevo, the Triestine Ettore Schmitz hadstarted to write and publish novels, short stories and critical piecesduring the last two decades of the nineteenth century, bringing psycho-logical analysis to depths never reached before in Italian literature.Using the same techniques as the later Verga to subvert the expressivecodes and modes of Naturalism, he offered unforgettable portraits ofanti-heroes in Una vita (A Life, 1893) and Senilit (Senility, 1898), bothwritten in the third person. Only La coscienza di Zeno, however, achievedthe kind of lucid subjectivity, self-awareness and self-reflexivity that wasappropriate to one of the milestones in the modern representation of the(male, bourgeois) self.

  Of course, as the earlier reference to Federigo Tozzi implied, Svevowas not alone in this endeavour. From the marginal perspective of hisnative Sicily, and also using much the same narrative techniques as thelater Verga, Luigi Pirandello had started his own analysis of the humanpsyche and behaviour in such seemingly Naturalistic novels as Lesclusa(The Outcast, 1901) and Il turno (The Turn, 1902). His representative ofthe modern self burst forth in 1904 in Il fu Mattia Pascal (The Late MattiaPascal), a revolutionary novel in which the improbable plot (the narra-tor dies twice) is used to explode the principle of causality, and the veryessence of the protagonist is put into radical question. The oxymoronicname Mattia Pascal is not enough to indicate a personality that is split inmore than two ways: it is a personality that by the end of the book isshown not to exist at all the late Mattia Pascal. Similar claims can bemade for Pirandellos later novels, including the first one to deal with thenew art form of cinema, Si gira (Shooting, 1915, later retitled Quaderni diSerafino Gubbio operatore, Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio Cameraman,

  160 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• 1925) and Uno, nessuno e centomila (One, None and A HundredThousand, 1926) not to mention his theatre.

  Unquestionably, Svevo and Pirandello are major protagonists inmodern Italian literature. They have contributed greatly to a betterunderstanding of the modern individual, and their knowledge and useof psychoanalytical ideas have considerably expanded the field of thenovel. Alberto Moravia (190790) in the 1930s and Giuseppe Berto(191478) in the 1960s wrote significant works in this same vein, whileGuido Piovene (190775) and Mario Soldati (1906 ) continued in themore traditional, Manzonian vein of a tormented Catholicism.

  But what about the feminine self? In this area, too, there are innova-tive and illuminating texts. Sibilla Aleramo (18761970) published herautobiography, Una donna (A Woman), in 1906: her book is the start-ing-point of and the point of reference for much contemporary prise deconscience by women writers searching for a definition of the self that isnecessarily different from that of their male conterparts. Una donna(just a woman, not the woman of the male tradition, with its idealizedand symbolic overtones) is a strong-willed, sensitive and painfulaccount of Aleramos own liberation from the strictures of cultural andsocial roles she was unable to accept. Paramount in her autobiographyare the conflicts between family and independence, motherhood andwriting.

  Similar accounts abound, with varying degrees of success both in lit-erary achievement and in the process of self-liberation. I shall mention atleast Deleddas Cosima (1937), Alba De Cespedess (1911 ) Dalla parte di lei(On Her Side, 1949) and Quaderno proibito (Forbidden Notebook,1952,), Le voci della sera (Voices of the Evening, 1961) by NataliaGinzburg (191691), Dacia Marainis Donna in guerra (Woman at War,1975), Casalinghitudine (Housewifeness, 1987) by Clara Sereni (1946 ),and Susanna Tamaros Per voce sola (For Voice Only, 1991), which is amuch more powerful book than her bestseller Va dove ti porta il cuore (GoWhere the Heart Takes You, 1994). Womens voices have contributed asubstantial and remarkable level of discourse, both personal and social,in contemporary narrative from Gianna Manzini (18961974) to LallaRomano (1906 ), from Francesca Sanvitale (1928 ) to Rosetta Loy(1931 ), from Gina Lagorio (1922 ) to Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti.

  Nassera Chohras recent Volevo diventare bianca (I Wanted to BecomeWhite, 1993) deserves particular mention. Chohra is an Algerian womanfrom a Saharawi tribe, whose parents emigrated to France. She later

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• settled in Italy, where she wrote her book in Italian with the collabora-tion of Alessandra Atti Di Sarro. Her autobiographical testimony showshow feminine identity is constructed in the wake of decolonization andin the face of racism, economic hardship and profound cultural diver-sity. With her witty, energetic and practical attitude, Chohra develops astimulating discourse not only on the feminine self, but also on thepresent conditions of Italian and European society, characterized by anemerging and growing multiculturalism.

  5 May 1936. After conquering Ethiopia, Benito Mussolini announces the foundingof the Italian Empire from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia in Rome.

  Then the reiterated exultation of the whole body, as if a spring were

  throwing it upward of the whole abundant person: in order to seem

  an even greater emir on top of four hoofs; then the sudden

  protuberance of that phallic proboscis of his, snoutlike in the

  dimension of a swine [. . .] ecco ecco ecco eja eja eja, the glorious and

  virile excitement of the no-longer-seen masturbation: and the

  consequent virile pollution in the face of the many, of the clapping.5

  Er Maccheronaro, in via del Ges [. . .] had tiled it [the sandwich],

  inside, with such three slices of fillet [. . .] all three supported by that

  sort of small beam of a double loaf, that was a slipper, Madonna!, that

  nowadays we cant even remember, now that the empire has come in

  between.6

  After the First World War, Mussolini was able to take power by capi-talizing on popular discontent and the weakness of the Liberal parlia-ment. A fictional but accurate rendition of these events is the Symbolistnovel Rub (1921) by Giuseppe Antonio Borgese (18821952), whileIgnazio Silone (190078) was compelled to write and publish his anti-Fascist novels Fontamara (1933) and Pane e vino (Bread and Wine, 1937) inGerman translation while in exile in Switzerland. In both Silonesnovels, the anti-Fascist stand is combined with an impassioned denunci-ation of the incredibly poor conditions of the Southern hired hands andpeasants and this denunciation marked an important date in the per-sisting Southern Question which inspired the works of writers likeCorrado Alvaro (18951956), Rocco Scotellaro (192353) and FrancescoJovine (190250). Alberto Moravia was able to publish Gli indifferenti(Indifferent People, 1929), a scathing portrayal of the Roman bour-geoisie in the 1920s only because it did not contain any direct allusion tothe Fascist power structure. Obviously, those intellectuals who openly

  162 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• opposed Fascism could publish their works only after its fall. The mostmemorable among these was Cristo si fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped atEboli, 1945) by the Turinese physician and painter Carlo Levi (190275),a fascinating account of his time in internal exile among the peasants ofLucania during the 1930s

  In general, Italian writers abstained from explicit criticism of theFascist rgime so as to avoid censure and persecution. Only afterMussolinis fall did they express their feelings and their judgments, andthe favourite form for these reactions was satire. Notable among thesewriters was Vitaliano Brancati (190754), whose main target from thebeginning of his career had been the virility so valued by Fascists andSicilians alike, which he exposed in terms of customs rather than politicsin his Don Giovanni in Sicilia (Don Juan in Sicily, 1941), and then explicitlyin Il bellAntonio (Handsome Antonio, 1949) and in Paolo il caldo (Paolothe Hot, 1955).

  Not by chance, then, Gadda chose two powerful and ferocious expres-sionistic means the sexual metaphor of a public masturbation and theequation (synecdochehyperbole) between the Fascist leader and agigantic phallus, in order to give full relief to his outrage at Mussolinismanipulation of the Italian crowds in his speeches from the balcony ofPalazzo Venezia. In so doing, he eloquently condemned the Fascist deg-radation of Eros, a positive principle of love and life, into Priapus, aviolent and destructive possession, a true rape of culture and civiliza-tion. Another means by which Gadda attacks Fascism is to undermine itwith passing references to its effects on the daily life of the people, suchas the difficulty of having a succulent sandwich of the kind ErMaccheronaro used to prepare nowadays we cant even remember,now that the empire has come in between the narrative prolepsis jerksthe reader from the time of the story (1927) to that of writing (19456),when the disastrous effects of Fascisms policies were still widely felt.

  But in both passages given above, what is really important is Gaddasstyle. He writes with a composite, multilayered, colourful languagemade up of standard Italian, various dialects, technical terms and neolo-gisms much as Joyce does. His spastic use of language is a most effec-tive tool to express his vision of a world that for him is fragmented into amyriad of conflicting aspects that only such a style can hope to captureon the page. Whether he deals with the Milanese bourgeoisie and hislove-hatred for it in LAdalgisa. Disegni milanesi (Adalgisa. MilaneseDrawings, 1944) and La cognizione del dolore (Acquainted With Grief,

  Narratives of self and society 163

• 1963) (under the veil of a fictional Latin American country), or whetherhe treats the lower bourgeoisie and the common people of Rome in Querpasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (That Awful Mess on Via Merulana,1957), Gadda wants to portray the richness of the world, although heends up by leaving many of his works incomplete, unfinished.

  The chaotic enumeration, the list and the catalogue cannot exhaustall the possibilities of the real; no single cause can account for anynumber of effects. Gaddas fictional worlds retain the fluidity and themultifaceted marvel of a life in progress, and his language refracts theabundance that the world can offer, on the sexual as well as on the gas-tronomical level, in Milan as well as in Rome. That Gadda was alsoneurotic in his psychological make-up and frustrated about the impos-sibility of possessing everything only adds to his modernity.

  8 September 1943. Italy signs a separate truce with the Allied forces. The Germansset up a puppet government in the North under Mussolini. Beginning of the armedResistance against the Nazis and the Fascists.

  So I had to keep a bit of an eye on what was going on around the girl.

  You understand me. With you I had nothing to worry about, nothing

  at all. You always talked, for hours. Or rather, you talked and Fulvia

  would listen. Isnt it true?

  Its true. It was true.

  With Giorgio Clerici instead . . .

  Yes, he said with his tongue dry.

  Recently, last summer I mean, the summer of 43, you were in the

  army, I think [. . .] Recently [Giorgio] came too often, and almost

  always at night. [. . .]

  And this went on until when?

  Oh, till early last September. Then there was the chaos of the

  armistice and the Germans. Then Fulvia went away from here with

  her father. And I, fond as I was of her, was glad. I was too anxious. I am

  not saying they misbehaved . . .7

  The protagonists of this dialogue in Una questione privata (A PrivateQuestion, 1963) by Beppe Fenoglio (192263) are an old woman who isthe custodian of a villa on the Piedmontese hills near Alba, and Milton,the young partisan who has stopped while on patrol to look at the placewhere he loved Fulvia, talking with her about English literature and lis-tening to American records, especially Over the Rainbow. In the course ofthe dialogue, he learns that Fulvia has in all likelihood betrayed him

  164 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• with his best friend, Giorgio Clerici. This dialogue is both an event and asymbol. As an event, it propels the plot of Una questione privata forward,because Milton absolutely must find out the truth from Giorgio, who isfighting in another partisan brigade in the nearby hills; but finding himproves much more difficult than anticipated, since he has been takenprisoner by the Fascists. The novel is the story of Miltons ever morefrantic efforts to save Giorgio and learn the truth. As a symbol, Fulviaspossible betrayal is superimposed, through the coincidence of the dates,upon Italys unquestionable (albeit necessary) betrayal of Germanyeffected with the separate truce. The private question of the title seemsto upstage the historical question of Italys switching sides and having tofind its truth in the struggle for liberation from the Nazis and its ownFascist legacy.

  The pathos of Una questione privata derives from the ethical rigourwith which Fenoglio describes both the urgency of Miltons privateplight and the loyalty and idealism with which he nonetheless continuesto fight. The Resistance, in this book, is as true as it could ever bedescribed. But Fenoglios other texts on the subject, the epic I ventitrgiorni della citt di Alba (The Twenty-Three Days of the City of Alba, 1952)and Il partigiano Johnny (Johnny the Partisan, 1968), should not be for-gotten, nor should the others on the harsh life of the peasants in theLanghe hills, La malora (Ruin, 1954) and Un giorno di fuoco (A Day ofFire, 1963).

  Fenoglio is perhaps the most representative of the Italian authorswho have dealt with the traumatic events of the Resistance. Before andbehind him are the so-called Decade of Translations and Neorealism.During the 1930s many Italian authors Elio Vittorini (190866), CesarePavese (190850), Eugenio Montale (18961981) among others engagedin translating American novels (by Melville, Faulkner, Steinbeck,Anderson and Caldwell) as a means to bypass the cultural parochialismof Fascism, and to see their destinies projected on to the gigantic screenof American literature, as Pavese wrote. Vittorinis anthology Americana(1941) was perhaps the culmination of what has been rightly called themyth of America for Italian intellectuals.

  The lesson they learned was not simply one of political freedom, butalso one of stylistic renewal against the centuries-old stuffiness of Italiantradition with the consequent revaluation of writers like Verga andAldo Palazzeschi (18851974), who had employed spoken dialogue of thetype prevalent among American authors. Elio Vittorinis Conversazione in

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• Sicilia (Conversation in Sicily, 1941) and Uomini e no (Men and Non-Men, 1945) are certainly marked by such freedom and renewal, as is thewhole of his career as an influential intellectual. And Cesare Paveses Lacasa in collina (The House on the Hill, 1949) and La luna e i fal (TheMoon and the Bonfires, 1950), while testifying to a lucid and tor-mented consciousness of the moral and ideal choices the Resistancerequired, are splendid literary achievements in their fusion of symbol-ism and personal myths with social and linguistic realism, while Dialoghicon Leuc (Dialogues with Leuc, 1947) is a poignant testimony to hiseffort to be part of a community, and to communicate this effort, eventhough the community takes the form of the Jungian collective uncon-scious of classical mythology (Leuc is the spoken-style abbreviation ofLeucothea, the nymph of consolation).

  The Neorealism that exploded on to Italian screens with the post-warfilms of De Sica, Rossellini, Lizzani and other directors, depicting theharsh realities of Rome as an open city, of sciusci (shoe-shine boys) andpoor bicycle thieves, spilled over into the literary field and marked awhole generation of writers. Among them were Italo Calvino (192385) who however always kept Neorealism in check with his fabulous vein,in the early stories as well as in Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path of theSpiders Nests, 1947) Renata Vigan (190076), Carlo Cassola(191787), Vasco Pratolini (191391) and Primo Levi (191987), who distin-guished himself for the subdued tone of his testimony of the Holocaust,Se questo un uomo (If This Is a Man, 1947), and for the inflexible moraldefence of the dignity of the human person in all his works, all the way toI sommersi e i salvati (The Drowned and the Saved, 1986).

  Although Fenoglio translated English (not American) classic texts,his style clearly reflects the changes brought into Italian literature by thedecade of translations and by cinematographic Neorealism; the stoicismof his gaze, the immediacy of his language, the English- and Latin-pat-terned neologisms of his vocabulary, his dialogues, the speed and inex-orability of his narrative pace all these make him the greateststoryteller of the destinies of the individuals who fought in the anti-Fascist Resistance in the years 194345, and of the collective saga thatresulted from it.

  1953: Federico Fellini directs I vitelloni; 1959: La dolce vita; 1973: Amarcord.

  Both the province of I vitelloni and the movie-making world of Rome

  are circles of hell, but they are equally enjoyable lands of Cockaigne.

  166 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• This is why Fellini succeeds in troubling to the core: because he

  makes us admit that what we would most like to keep far away is

  intrinsically close to us. [. . .] Fellini transforms the cinema into the

  symptomatology of Italian hysteria [. . .] which he from that

  geographical middle ground of his Romagna redefines in Amarcord as

  the true unifying element of Italian behaviour. The cinema of

  distance which had nourished our youth is definitively overturned

  into the cinema of absolute proximity. For the brief span of our

  lifetimes, everything remains there, painfully present; first the

  images of eros and the premonitions of death reach us in every

  dream; [. . .] the film we deluded ourselves we were only watching is

  the story of our lives.8

  The juxtaposition of the Resistance and Fellinis films is not as arbi-trary as it might seem. It reflects the dramatic and fast-paced changesundergone by Italian society in the past fifty years, and most notablyfrom the 1950s to the 1970s. After the Liberation and the reconstruc-tion, Italy quickly became an industrialized country with all the char-acteristic phenomena of a modern, affluent society: urbanization, massmedia, rapid transport, consumerism, alienation, pollution, and thenwomen and youth movements, and organized crime, terrorism, cor-ruption. All these phenomena powerfully contributed to a radicalreshaping of traditional family and societal structures and values, andall were represented in the films of the great cinematic masters Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni as well as in the narrative works of theperiod.

  One can clearly follow these phenomena simply by reading Italiannovels and short stories. Calvinos La speculazione edilizia (Speculationin the Building Trade, 1957), La nuvola di smog (The Cloud of Smog,1958) and Marcovaldo, ovvero le stagioni in citt (Marcovaldo, or theSeasons in the City, 1963); Pier Paolo Pasolinis Ragazzi di vita (TheLads, 1955), Teorema (Theorem, 1968) and Una vita violenta (AViolent Life, 1959) 1959 is also the year of Fellinis La dolce vita amemorable contrast as well as Ottiero Ottieris (1924 ) Donnarummaallassalto, (Donnarumma on the Attack); Memoriale (Memor-andum, 1962) by Paolo Volponi (192494); Il padrone (The Boss,1965) by Goffredo Parise (192986); Leonardo Sciascias Il giorno dellacivetta (The Day of the Owl, 1961), A ciascuno il suo (To Each HisOwn, 1966) and Todo modo (One Way or Another, 1974); Vogliamotutto (We Want Everything, 1971) by Nanni Balestrini (1935 ); Ferito a

  Narratives of self and society 167

• morte (Wounded to Death, 1961) by Raffaele La Capria (1922 ) withits Neapolitan vitelloni; or by contrast the autobiographical accountPadre padrone (Father Boss, 1975) by Gavino Ledda (1938 ); and evenPorci con le ali (Pigs With Wings, 1976) by Marco Lombardo-Radiceand Lidia Ravera (1951 ) are but a few of the narrative texts that,while showing the remarkable diversity of their respective literaryqualities, could be used by sociologists to understand modern Italy. Inthe case of Pier Paolo Pasolini (192275), not only his novels, but alsohis poetry, films, essays, journalistic contributions and personal life-style should be considered in their totality as an intellectual and cultu-ral project that had a considerable impact on the Italian scene and wasemblematic of the period.

  But Italo Calvino is by far the most representative writer of his gener-ation. I have chosen a quote from his Autobiografia di uno spettatore(Autobiography of a Cinemagoer, 1974) for several reasons. It under-scores the importance of the cinema in reflecting and shaping the collec-tive imagination; it points to the centrality of the visual element inCalvinos own writing and cognitive process (visibility is one of thevalues or qualities of literature he wants to preserve for the next millen-nium); and it shows the peculiar terseness and sharpness of Calvinosway of narrativizing conceptual views (distance, proximity andmeaning are interrelated).

  Certainly, a passage from the fantastic trilogy I nostri antenati (OurAncestors, 1960), or from one of the combinatorial texts like Le cosmico-miche (Cosmicomics, 1965) and Le citt invisibili (Invisible Cities,1972), or from the later, metanarrative ones like Se una notte dinverno unviaggiatore (If on a Winters Night a Traveller, 1979) and Palomar (1983),or even from an anthropologically oriented one like Sotto il sole giaguaro(Under the Jaguar Sun, 1986) would illustrate Calvinos power as awriter just as well or, conceivably, even better than the one I have chosen.However, by pointing out the reasons of my choice and the list of otherpossible works, I am metacritically following Calvinos own lead andunderscoring his constant use of metanarrative awareness throughouthis oeuvre. Like Sciascia, Calvino admired the Enlightenment and wasprofoundly influenced by it; like Gadda, he loved the cornucopia of theworld and wanted to possess it by naming it in numerous lists and cata-logues. His oeuvre is an elegant and profound expression of high moder-nity: an ironic, light, multiple encyclopaedia in which Italy is a tiny butall-important place in the world.

  168 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• 1981. First edition of India, a Travel Survival Kit. Vittorio Sereni publishes his col-lection of poems Stella variabile (Variable Star).

  The taxi driver had a pointed beard, a hairnet and a ponytail tied with

  a white ribbon. I thought he was a Sikh, because my guidebook

  described them exactly like this. My guidebook was called India, a

  Travel Survival Kit, Id bought it in London, more out of curiosity than

  anything else.

  I stretched out on the bottom of the boat and began to look at the

  sky. The night was truly magnificent. I followed the constellations

  and thought about the stars and about the time when we used to

  study them and about the afternoons spent at the planetarium [. . .]

  And then I thought about variable stars and the book of a person dear

  to me. And then about dead stars, whose light still reaches us, and

  about neutron stars.9

  The attitude displayed by Tabucchis narrator in Notturno indiano(Indian Nocturne, 1984) while riding in a Bombay taxi and whileresting in a boat in Nova Goa is perhaps typical of a contemporary tourist the product of the affluent society and post-modern culture in whichbricolage and irony mix with memory or even elegy. Light years separatehim, say, from Paveses Anguilla contemplating the stars and dreamingof distant lands and future travels in La luna e i fal.

  The protagonist of Notturno indiano is a special tourist. He travels toIndia in order to find a lost friend, but ends up losing himself instead.His search is punctuated by all sorts of intertextual and interculturalencounters and interchanges (like the allusion to Serenis Stella variabile),and is related in quick strokes, with effective notations about the land-scape and the characters, in a highly communicative language whichuses copious ironic references to popular culture and the collective imag-ination. Most of Tabucchis narrative production, from the short storiesof Piccoli equivoci senza importanza (Little Misunderstandings of NoImportance, 1985) to the recent novels, Requiem: unallucinazione(Requiem: A Hallucination, 1992) and Sostiene Pereira (PereiraMaintains, 1994), both set in Lisbon (Tabucchi is an expert in Portu-guese literature), displays the qualities and the characteristics ofNotturno indiano and emphasizes the difficulty of finding, or clinging to,a sure individual Self that is always challenged by the desired, or feared,or sudden encounter with the other. This other might be FernandoPessoa, the avant-garde Portuguese writer Tabucchi translated intoItalian, famous for his heteronyms (in Requiem); or Monteiro Rossi, a

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• young activist against the Salazar rgime, who provokes a quiet but dra-matic change in the life of an old and lazy journalist (in Sostiene Pereira).

  But the tone of Tabucchis writing cannot be fully grasped without atleast mentioning his taste for adventure and the exotic, running fromDonna di Porto Pim (The Woman of Porto Pim, 1983) to Il gioco del rovescio(The Game of the Other Side, 1981) and exemplified in a truly delightfulmanner in his recent story Il mistero del messaggio cifrato (The Mysteryof the Message in Cypher, 1994). In this story the protagonist is CortoMaltese, the sailor from Hugo Pratts immensely popular comic strip (andPratt also appears as an innkeeper specializing in hot-pepper chicken),who tries to help freedom fighters from East Timor in todays Lisbon.

  Contemporary Italian literature is not only Italian but also interna-tional as far as its geographical referents are concerned, as befits anincreasingly homogenized but still multicultural world, and a growinginstability of the very notion of the Self. Ecos best-selling novels areperhaps the clearest example of this trend, as are the beautifully writtentexts by Daniele Del Giudice (1949 ): Lo stadio di Wimbledon(Wimbledons Stadium, 1983 ), whose narrative quest is concluded inLondon; Atlante occidentale (Western Atlas, 1985), set in Geneva; Nelmuseo di Reims (In the Museum at Reims, 1988); and Staccando lombra daterra (Detaching the Shadow from the Ground, 1994), whose landscapeis the whole sky over the Mediterranean Sea, above national boundaries.But it is worth remembering too Maria Pace Ottieris Burkina Faso inAmore nero (Black Love, 1984), the California of Andrea De Carlo (1952 )in Treno di panna (Cream Train, 1981), the Austria of Francesca Duranti(1935 ) in La casa sul lago della luna (The House on Moon Lake, 1984),the Paris of Rossana Campo (1963 ) in Mai sentita cos bene (Never Felt soGood, 1995), or Rimini (1986) by Vittorio Tondelli (195591), titled afterthe resort town on the Adriatic Sea.

  As for the philosophical referents, suffice it to mention Quattro novellesulle apparenze (Four Short Stories on Appearances, 1987) and Verso lafoce (Towards the River Mouth, 1989) by Gianni Celati (1937 ), in bothof which a Palomar-like perplexity is at play, and it seems that the Selfcan be rescued only by the Other.

  Berkeley, autumn 1995spring 1996

  As I approach the conclusion of this essay, I am increasingly aware of itslimitations my biases and some inevitable omissions. I can only hope

  170 Gian-Paolo Biasin

• that what precedes may stimulate you, the readers, to approach theItalian narratives of self and society, which I have presented here,keeping your minds open and ready to make further intertextual andintercultural connections. Above all, I hope that you and I shall feel that,paraphrasing Calvino, the books that we thought we were merelyreading are indeed the story of our lives.

  notes

  1. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1969), p. 36. Alltranslations are the authors own.2. Giovanni Verga, I Malavoglia (Milan: Mondadori, 1968), p. 154.3. Gabriele DAnnunzio, Il fuoco (Milan: Treves, 1904), pp. 5568.4. Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno (Milan: dallOglio, 1966), p. 465.5. Carlo Emilio Gadda, Eros e Priapo (Da furore a cenere) (Milan: Garzanti, 1967), p. 38.6. Carlo Emilio Gadda, Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (Milan: Garzanti, 1975), p.166.7. Beppe Fenoglio, Una questione privata (Milan: Garzanti, 1970), pp. 224.8. Italo Calvino, Autobiografia di uno spettatore, in La strada di San Giovanni (Milan:Mondadori, 1990), pp. 4171 (p. 71).9. Antonio Tabucchi, Notturno indiano (Palermo: Sellerio, 1994), pp. 13, 89.

  further reading

  Aric, Santo (ed.), Contemporary Women Writers in Italy. Amherst: University ofMassachussetts Press, 1990.

  Baranski, Zygmunt, and Lino, Pertile (eds.), The New Italian Novel. Edinburgh UniversityPress, 1994.

  Biasin, Gian-Paolo, Italian Literary Icons. Princeton University Press, 1985.Cannon, JoAnn, Postmodern Italian Fiction. London and Toronto: Associated University

  Presses, 1989.Debenedetti, Giacomo, Il romanzo del Novecento. Milan: Garzanti, 1976.Dombroski, Robert, Lesistenza ubbidiente. Naples: Guida, 1984.Hume, Kathryn, Calvinos Fictions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.Lazzaro-Weis, Carol, From Margins to Mainstream: Feminism and Fictional Modes in Italian

  Womens Writing, 196890. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.Lucente, Gregory, Beautiful Fables. Self-consciousness in Italian Narrative from Manzoni to

  Calvino. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.Sartini Blum, Cinzia, The Other Modernism: F. T. Marinettis Futurist Fiction of Power.

  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.Valesio, Paolo, Gabriele DAnnunzio. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.Wilkinson, James, The Intellectual Resistance in Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

  University Press, 1981.

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• s h i r l e y w. v i n a l l a n d t o m o n e i l l

  9

  Searching for new languages: modern Italianpoetry*

  Tradition: stimulus or millstone?

  In newly unified Italy, the Italian literary tradition was particularly ven-erated. The periods leading poet, Giosue Carducci (18351907), in thevigorously anti-Romantic preface to his Rime (Poems) of 1857, had iden-tified only three poetic currents as worthy of cultivation in an ItalianItaly: Classical Latin; the medieval and Renaissance tradition fromDante to Tasso; and the neo-Classical current from Alfieri to Leopardi.Carducci wrote academic studies on Dante, Petrarch and Leopardi, andechoed Dantes civic poetry in his invectives against those of his owncontemporaries who seemed unworthy of their countrys past. Both as apassionate Republican and democrat before 1871, and subsequently as aMonarchist, Carducci saw poetry as an elevated civic calling: theCongedo (Envoy) to the Rime nuove (New Poems, 1887) famously pic-tures the poet as a blacksmith who, in his fiery soul, fashions gloriousnational memories into swords to fight for freedom, shields for protec-tion, and garlands to celebrate victory. Thus, to inspire his contempo-raries, Carduccis public poetry draws on episodes from Italys history,often linking them into an ideal narrative culminating in unification.He celebrates Italys Roman heritage, the triumphs of its free medievalcommunes, its famous poets and, especially, the heroes of unification.Even his metrics illustrate his belief that the past could nourish thepresent: his Odi barbare (Barbarian Odes) aim at the effect of classicalLatin verse forms, as read during the barbarian period when distinc-tions between vowel lengths were lost and rhythms were based insteadon tonic stress.

  In complete contrast, in 1909, only twenty years after the final version

• of the Odi barbare, the inaugural manifesto of the Futurist movementboldly called on poets to sever all ties with tradition. Its founder, FilippoTommaso Marinetti (18761944), proclaimed that their subject-matterand sensibility should, instead, reflect the violent industrial world.Subsequent manifestos demanded a total rejection not only of poeticforms but also of conventional syntax, as the movement vied with themost advanced French avant-garde groups to be the most revolutionaryin Europe.

  The extreme radicalism of Marinettis 1909 proposals owed much tohis awareness that Italy whose image abroad depended on the gloriesof Rome and the Renaissance was culturally backward with respect toFrance. Reacting against Positivism, the late nineteenth-century FrenchDecadent and Symbolist poets had taken further the irrationalism, mys-ticism and cult of originality of the Romantics, producing Mallarmscomplex theories of pure poetry and extensive exploration of the dis-tinctiveness and evocative force of poetic language, the power ofanalogy, the effects of sound qualities and the musicality of the newlydeveloped vers libres. Marinetti composed his earliest poetry in French according to such aesthetics, but during the first decade of the newcentury his notion of modernity came to embrace subsequent, contrast-ing, French poetic trends, such as the celebration of action and urbansociety.

  Gradual innovation in the late nineteenth century

  However, one should not assume that desires for modern poetry (invarious senses) had not been expressed earlier in Italy. In fact, the inter-vening years of intense economic, social and ideological change had seenthe emergence of various new concepts of the poets role and of poeticform, though none as far-reaching as Marinettis. Indeed, even immedi-ately after unification, Carduccis mainstream classicism did not repre-sent the whole picture. Although there had been no thoroughgoingRomantic revolution in early nineteenth-century Italy, the Milanesescapigliati (Bohemians) had expressed their desolate rejection of bour-geois morality through grotesque imagery and echoes of Baudelaires LesFleurs du Mal, especially in Penombre (Half-lights, 1864) by Emilio Praga(183975). Giovanni Camerana (18451905) was influenced by VerlainesArt potique in seeking indefiniteness in his verse forms; and, thoughcoming from different starting-points, Carlo Dossi (18491910) and

  174 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• Vittorio Betteloni (18401910) portrayed everyday life in a less elevatedlanguage than that of the poetic tradition. Symbolist elements wereused by various minor poets in the 1890s, especially Gian Pietro Lucini(18671914).

  The most important transitional figures were Gabriele DAnnunzio(1863-1938) and Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912), whose wide-ranging uvreswould powerfully influence twentieth-century Italian poetic languageand technique, even when their views of the poets role were rejected. Avast gulf lay between DAnnunzios highly publicized sexual and politi-cal adventuring and Pascolis withdrawn, academic existence, and,indeed, between their themes; but both, while being deeply imbuedwith Greek, Latin and earlier Italian literature, incorporated certainDecadent elements into the Italian lyric tradition, thereby contributingsubstantially to its breakdown.

  Aestheticism, in various forms, was the first of many foreign-inspiredmanners adopted by DAnnunzio. Following Gautiers Emaux et Cames(Enamels and Cameos, 1852), he regarded art as decorative, depictingthe poet as a craftsman and, specifically, in Il sonetto doro (The GoldenSonnet, 1883), as a goldsmith. Like the English Pre-Raphaelites, headopted an archaizing manner, imitating Trecento and Quattrocentoverse forms in Isaotta Guttadauro ed altre poesie (Isaotta Guttadauro andOther Poems, 1886). His revealing line Il verso tutto (Verse is all)became the motto of the paradigmatic Decadent aesthete AndreaSperelli, the protagonist of his first novel Il piacere (Pleasure, 1889).Subsequently, in the Poema paradisiaco (The Poem of Paradise, 1893), as acorollary to the Decadent sensuality, even sadism, of some of his work,he explored sensual weariness and loss of innocence in the muted tonesand simple language of Verlaine and the Belgian Symbolists Maeterlinckand Rodenbach.

  The poetics of DAnnunzios Laudi del cielo del mare della terra e degli eroi(Praises of the Sky, Sea, Earth and Heroes) combine further Decadentand Symbolist literary influences with the political ideology ofNationalism and Activism. Adapting Nietzsches concept of theSuperman, DAnnunzio sees the poet as a man of superior will, capableof taking political action to defend the privileges of the lite and of dom-inating reality through his imaginative creations. The programmaticprelude Laus vitae (The Praise of Life), which constitutes most of thefirst volume, Maia (1903), depicts the poets epic journey of initiationthrough Greece and Rome to the fearsome industrial cities of the

  Modern Italian poetry 175

• present. Inspired by Nietzsches theories that ancient Greek art derivedfrom a Dionysian intoxication with life and change, DAnnunzio repre-sents the poet as revitalized by rediscovering a pre-Christian sense ofharmony with nature; and prophesies that the appearance of a new musecalled Energia (Energy) will through the Superman usher in a newage of Italian imperialism. The poems climax celebrates the poetsexpressive power, representing it, like Wagners symphonic writing, as amanifestation of this new age.

  The third volume, the celebrated Alcyone (1904), depicts theSupermans temporary respite from his heroic mission including theNationalistic writing in the second volume, Elettra (1903) but is not arejection of it. Alcyone is constructed as the diary of a summer when thepoet recovers the primitive sense of identification with nature andcreates new myths. Its far-reaching influence depends not, however, onits ideology but on its Symbolist techniques designed to give poetry theevocative power of music. Delicate analogies skilfully transmute realityinto a fragile, evanescent dream, as in Novilunio di settembre (NewMoon of September):

  il viso della creatura

  celeste che ha nome

  Luna, trasparente come

  la medusa marina,

  come la brina nellalba,

  labile come

  la neve su lacqua,

  la schiuma su la sabbia1

  (the face of the creature

  of heaven whose name

  is Moon, transparent like

  the jellyfish of the sea,

  like hoar-frost at dawn,

  fleeting like

  snow on water,

  foam on sand).

  Words are selected for their sound effects; and complex patterns of sug-gestion are created through alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme,near-rhyme and rhythm.

  The lyrics of Alcyone, where DAnnunzio experiments within theItalian metrical tradition, constitute a crucial staging-post in the devel-

  176 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• opment of Italian free verse. While some rework classical and earlyItalian metrical forms, the most musical use DAnnunzios own strofelunga (long strophe), a free combination of traditional lines of varyinglengths, where traditional licences are exploited to create new rhythms.Londa (The Wave), with its underlying ternary rhythm, perfectlyencapsulates this interdependence of sound and sense:

  Londa si spezza,

  precipita nel cavo

  del solco sonora;

  spumeggia, biancheggia,

  sinfiora, odora (Alcyone, pp. 4389)

  (The wave breaks,

  falls into the hollow

  of the furrow resonantly;

  it foams, it turns white,

  it bursts into flower, it gives off fragrance).

  The poem is both an onomatapoeic representation of the movement ofthe waves and a self-referential praise / of my Long Strophe, a celebra-tion of the verse form whose rhythms can evoke the rhythms of the uni-verse (Alcyone, p. 100).

  Pascoli, who composed poetry in both Italian and Latin, was also, inContinis words, a revolutionary within the tradition.2 He wrote narra-tive and civic poetry, as well as lyrics, but disagreed with Carduccis viewof the poets role. Instead, like the Symbolists, he believed in the auton-omy of poetry, though not in formalistic aestheticism. According to thefundamental expression of his poetics, the essay Il fanciullino (TheLittle Boy, 1897), poetry could, paradoxically, increase its readers lovefor their country, their family and humanity, not by being didactic but bybeing itself. The poet should gaze at the world like an innocent child,with wonderment and without preconceptions. Thus poetry shouldhave no privileged subjects, but in an echo of Virgils lacrimae rerum should find in things themselves [. . .] their smile and their tears.3 In hismost influential lyric collection, Myricae (Tamarisks; first edition 1891,definitive edition 1903), humble scenes are captured in detail, withoutbeing made to illustrate any political or moral stance: The long andshaky gate creaks / and blocks the road; standing at the fence / thegossips chatter in a huddle (In capannello, In a Huddle, Poesie, vol. i, p.58). However, in a way which will be taken up by later poets, these scenes

  Modern Italian poetry 177

• can become images of emotional states. Thus, anguished isolation andterror at the mysteries of the universe are evoked by the vivid, hallucina-tory sensory impressions encapsulated in the noun phrases ofTemporale (Storm):

  Un bubbolo lontano . . .

  Rosseggia lorizzonte,

  come affocato, a mare;

  nero di pece, a monte,

  stracci di nubi chiare:

  tra il nero un casolare:

  unala di gabbiano (Poesie, vol. i, p. 95)

  (A distant rumbling . . .

  The horizon glows red,

  as though on fire, towards the sea;

  pitch black, towards the hills,

  tatters of bright clouds:

  amidst the blackness a farmhouse:

  a seagulls wing)

  and by the haunting vision of a world illuminated by a flash of lightningin Il lampo (The Flash of Lightning):

  E cielo e terra si mostr qual era:

  la terra ansante, livida, in sussulto;

  il cielo ingombro, tragico, disfatto:

  bianca bianca nel tacito tumulto

  una casa appar spar dun tratto;

  come un occhio, che, largo, esterrefatto,

  sapr si chiuse, nella notte nera (Poesie, vol. i, p. 119).

  (And heaven and earth revealed themselves as they were:

  the earth heaving, bruised, shuddering;

  the heavens laden, tragic, torn apart:

  white white in the silent tumult

  a house appeared disappeared in an instant;

  like an eye, which, wide open, astounded,

  opened closed, in the black night).

  While DAnnunzio enriched his poetic lexicon with rare literary words,even describing modern machines with elaborate Latinate vocabulary,

  178 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• Pascoli extended his by including everyday language, precise botanicaland ornithological terms, onomatapoeic representations of birdsong,and sectorial language, such as that of the Italians who have lived inAmerica:

  Ioe, bona cianza! . . . Ghita, state bene! . . .Good bye. Lavete presa la ticchetta?

  Oh yes. Che barco? Il Prinzessin Irene.

  (Italy, Poesie, vol. i, p. 329).

  (Joe, good luck! . . . Ghita, all the best! . . .

  Good bye. Have you got your ticket?

  Oh yes. Which boat? The Princess Irene.

  The combination of such unconventional language with the rhymescheme of the Divine Comedy typifies Pascolis particular blend of old andnew. Furthermore, he creates new rhythms within traditional metricalforms, not only, like DAnnunzio, by exploiting poetic licences, but also,paradoxically, by imitating Latin forms, though in a way different fromCarduccis: he reproduces the pattern of Latin long and short vowels as apattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, thereby producing a new,regular rhythm.

  The new movements of the early twentieth century

  Armonia in grigio e silenzio (Harmony in Greyness and Silence, 1903) byCorrado Govoni (18851965) is generally considered the first manifesta-tion of the diffused tendency defined as crepuscolarismo (the poetry oftwilight) by the critic G. A. Borgese in his 1910 review of Poesie scritte collapis (Poems Written with a Pencil) by Marino Moretti (18851979). Inhumble language, like Pascolis, Govoni and other crepuscolari paintedmelancholy pictures of quiet provincial life, emphasizing motifs such asdeserted gardens, hospitals, churches and convents, drawn from thePoema paradisiaco and from DAnnunzios own French and Belgiansources. The crepuscolari, however, rejected DAnnunzios cult of art andhis self-aggrandizing view of the poet. While they also rejected Pascolisbelief in poetrys ultimate moral value, the scenes they depicted, likePascolis, could become emblems of emotion, and their marginalizedcharacters could represent the disillusioned poet who, lacking any senseof civic purpose, is alienated from modern society. The most celebratedexamples occur in the work of Sergio Corazzini (18861907), the leading

  Modern Italian poetry 179

• member of the Roman crepuscolari: in Per organo di Barberia (For aBarrel Organ), from Il piccolo libro inutile (The Useless Little Book, 1906),the monotonous, neglected lament of the barrel organ represents hisown writing, and in Desolazione del povero poeta sentimentale (TheSorrow of the Poor Sentimental Poet), in the same volume, he paradoxi-cally gives his own poetry validity by denying that it fits into traditionalcategories, portraying himself not as a poet but as a suffering childlonging for death.

  Montale was to look back with special admiration to Guido Gozzano(18831916), the leader of the crepuscolari in Turin, for going beyond theomnipresent DAnnunzio and thus acting as a bridge to Montales ownpoetry.4 Gozzanos distinctive tools of irony and parody set the sublimetones of traditional poetic language alongside the prosaic. Famously, thebackground to the lovers conversations in La signorina Felicita, in his1911 collection I colloqui (The Conversations), is not the melancholy,abandoned aristocratic park beloved of DAnnunzio but a vegetablegarden. However, such realism did not constitute a rejection of art. Thebanal motifs such as the homely character of Felicita herself also haveliterary sources (in such poets as Pascoli, or Gozzanos French contempo-rary Francis Jammes). Contrasting manners are juxtaposed in a complexexploration of the appeal of literature, despite its artificiality. In I colloquiexperience is stylized, literary allusions abound, and the structurerecalls that of a Petrarchan canzoniere, where poems reflecting the poetsdevelopment are framed by others expressing the contemplative voice ofhis later self. Here, memorys multiple perspective produces an ironictone, as the poet contemplates his earlier self in various Romantic poses,or in the guise of literary characters. The great Romantic themes of Loveand Death prove illusions, and, with his dreams destroyed, the poet isdenied even the consolation of emotion.

  Parody, but in more comic vein, was also the way forward for AldoPalazzeschi (18851974). Chi sono? (Who am I?, 1909), the riddle-likesummation of his pre-Futurist poetics, presents him as another alienatedfigure, unconcerned with civic duty, formal beauty, or musicality. Histhemes, like Corazzinis, are melancholy and nostalgia, but with an eccen-tric, clown-like twist: he memorably described himself as Il saltimbancodellanima mia (the acrobat of my soul).5 Futurisms radical rejection ofRomantic subjectivity intensified Palazzeschis often grotesque whimsy.In his Futurist collection Lincendiario (The Fireraiser), the poets conver-sation with sexually aberrant flowers in I fiori (The Flowers) parodies

  180 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• the myth of natures consoling purity; and in La fiera dei morti (AllSouls Fair), the clichd subject of All Souls Day, traditionally an occasionfor a melancholy description of autumn and a lament for the dead, istransformed into a scene of transgressive popular festivity and an oppor-tunity for witty, disrespectful fantasizing about conventional epitaphs.

  However, Palazzeschis Futurist poetry is not simply negative. E las-ciatemi divertire! (And Let Me Enjoy Myself!) envisages the creation ofnew poetry from the destruction of the old: pure sounds, the basic build-ing-blocks of language, can be used in a poetry whose justification issolely ludic. Similarly, La passeggiata (The Walk), while furtherdebunking DAnnunzio and Romantic tradition, also creates newpoetry, in the manner of Cubist collages of objets trouvs, out of the visuallanguage of the city.

  Futurist ideology in its narrower sense not shared by Palazzeschi orthose on the margins of the movement who sympathized mainly with itscultural iconoclasm involved an irrationalist cult of action, violence,speed, aggressive nationalism, the glorification of war and the aestheticsof the machine. Futurist poetry celebrated electricity, cars and aero-planes; and Marinetti nurtured the ideal of a machine-like Futuristhero, no longer debilitated by human morality, affection or Romanticlove. He even dreamt of replacing traditional themes with a poetry of thematerial world.

  While early Futurist poetry, influenced by French Symbolism andLucinis theories, used free verse, Marinettis 1912 invention of parole inlibert (words in freedom), which he claimed would better representmodern sensibility in a world of fast communications and global aware-ness, constituted a revolution in technique. Punctuation and conven-tional syntax were abolished, along with adjectives and adverbs;infinitives were used to eliminate the personal; and meaning dependedon nouns linked together not by logic but by analogies (that crucialdevice of the Symbolists), in a process of wire-less imagination. The firstexample of the technique, Marinettis Battaglia Peso Odore (BattleWeightSmell, 1912), evokes his experience of the Libyan War as con-fused simultaneous sensations:

  Mezzogiorno 3 flauti gemiti solleone tumbtumb allarme

  Gargaresch schiantarsi crepitazione marcia Tintinno zaini fucili

  zoccoli chiodi cannoni criniere ruote cassoni (De Maria and Dondi,

  Marinetti, p. 89)

  Modern Italian poetry 181

• (12.45 flutes groans heat tumbtumb alarm Gargaresch crashing

  cracking march Jingling knapsacks rifles hooves nails cannons manes

  wheels ammunition-chests).

  He expresses no emotion or judgement, but evokes associated sensationsthrough a dynamic sequence of suggestions: Sea laceemeraldsfreshnesselasticityabandonsoftness (ibid., p. 91).

  Through further typographical experimentation and cross-fertil-ization with the techniques of the increasingly innovative Futuristartists, parole in libert swiftly developed into tavole parolibere (free-wordpaintings) strikingly new visual poetry which, despite the wide-spread restoration of tradition immediately after the First World War,would influence the concrete poetry of the 1960s and 1970s. Manyvaried examples filled the pages of the Florentine periodical Lacerba in191314, during the highly fruitful alliance between its editors,Ardengo Soffici (18791964) and Giovanni Papini (18811956), andMarinettis movement. Soffici, attracted like others to the techniquespotential while not fully sharing Marinettis aesthetics, produced free-word poems and tavole which stand out for their subjectivity and ironicwit.

  New and old on the eve of the First World War

  New approaches were clearly in the air on the eve of the First World War,even in the work of emerging poets who were formally at the oppositeend of the spectrum to the Futurists. Umberto Saba (18831957) andCamillo Sbarbaro (18881967) used traditional metres, especially theendecasillabi (eleven-syllable lines) and settenari (seven-syllable lines)most closely associated with the Italian lyric, and focused exclusively onintimate autobiographical subjects. However, they were forward-looking in their combination of traditional form with unheroiccontent, and in their use of prosaic language not polemically, but as anatural means of expression. Saba celebrated his everyday experiencesin the poems of Coi miei occhi (With My Own Eyes, 1912); while inPianissimo (Very Softly, 1914) Sbarbaro used subdued, unmelodic tonesand bare language to explore the psychological barrenness of what hesaw as his narrow life. Endecasillabi and settenari appear, too, in theFrammenti lirici (Lyric Fragments, 1913) of Clemente Rebora(18851957), but are interwoven with the contrasting rhythms of eight,

  182 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• ten, and twelve-syllable lines to express contemporary psychologicaland moral tensions.

  Autobiography, accompanied by moderate formal experimentalism,especially the blurring of the boundaries between poetry and prose,characterized the work of many writers associated with the Florentineperiodical La Voce (The Voice). Piero Jahier (18841966), a close ally ofGiuseppe Prezzolini (18821982), who had founded the journal in 1908with a programme of wide-ranging cultural reform, alternated prosepassages with impressionistic lyrics in Ragazzo (A Boy), where the deepemotional experiences of his youth, especially those occasioned by hisfathers suicide, are conveyed in movingly direct language. His poemsthemselves often approach rhythmic prose in their use of lines which areconsiderably longer than the endecasillabo, a metrical technique whichpossibly influenced Paveses poetry in the 1930s.

  The prose poetry of Arturo Onofri (18851928), especially Orchestrine(Small Orchestras, 1917), was based on different aesthetics. His influen-tial theories, published in 1915 in La Voce, now under the more literaryeditorship of Giuseppe De Robertis (18881963), focused on the fram-mento, a brief, dense fragment of lyricism, regarded not as an expressionof emotion or ideas but as pure poetry, based on the Symbolism ofMallarm and Rimbaud.

  Rimbauds Illuminations strongly influenced the poetry and the prosepoetry of the extraordinary Dino Campana (18851932), whose mentalinstability forced him into the life of an outsider. Canti orfici (OrphicSongs, 1914) includes both forms, united, however, in their powerfullyvisual and richly colourful language. Futurist technique influencedsome descriptions of the external world, such as the opening ofPasseggiata in tram in America e ritorno (Tram Journey in America andBack): Harsh prelude of a muffled symphony, trembling violin with anelectrified string, tram which runs in a line in the iron sky of curvedwires while the white bulk of the city towers like a dream;6 but indus-trial society is not Campanas subject. Rather, his descriptions draw onmemories, dreams or hallucinations, and take on a mysteriously sym-bolic quality, as in La notte (The Night):

  I remember an old city, turreted and with red walls, burning in the

  boundless plain in scorching August [. . .] Unconsciously I lifted my

  eyes to the barbarian tower which dominated the very long avenue of

  the plane trees. Over the silence which had become intense it relived

  its distant and savage myth. (Canti orfici, pp. 1517)

  Modern Italian poetry 183

• Experimentalism and tradition in Ungarettis poetry

  Perhaps the most lasting synthesis of modern experimentation with theessential elements of tradition appears in Giuseppe Ungarettis FirstWorld War poems. Like Marinetti, Ungaretti (18881970) was born inEgypt and had a French literary education. He was familiar with thelatest French and Italian avant-garde developments, being close to thegroups around Lacerba and De Robertiss La Voce. The distinctly modernconsciousness voiced in his first volume, Il porto sepolto (The BuriedHarbour, 1916: part of Lallegria, Joy, in Ungarettis collected works)involves not a celebration of the industrial world, but rather the aware-ness that identity, defined through family and religious heritage, can belost in urban society (In memoria, In Memory) and that the loss oftraditional certainties causes suffering (Peso, Burden). Individualfeeling thus remains the stuff of his poetry, but it is not expressedthrough wordy eloquence. Scenes from reality are divested of their occa-sional characteristics but not of their concreteness so that they canbecome powerful symbols of something more abstract or universal: inUnaltra notte (Another Night), for example, the intensely concen-trated description of the poets fumbling attempt to refamiliarizehimself with his features after some shocking experience becomes ananalogy of his painful attempt to make sense of his existence:

  In questoscuro

  con le mani

  gelate

  distinguo

  il mio viso

  Mi vedo

  abbandonato nellinfinito7

  (In this darkness

  with my hands

  frozen

  I make out

  my face

  I see myself

  abandoned in infinity).

  The separation of concrete and abstract, or the two elements of theanalogy, into separate stanzas shows how Ungarettis free form closely

  184 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• reflects meaning. His short lines of versi liberi require a measured readingwhich emphasizes the single word, thereby deepening the layers ofmeaning despite the apparently simple vocabulary: but traditionalmetres have not been totally jettisoned, and endecasillabi may sometimeslie, half-unnoticed, in combinations of lines. With such techniquesUngaretti succeeds in exploring his complex experience of war: both thedestruction, suffering, isolation and loss, and the intoxicating momentsof harmony with nature and the revitalizing sense of comradeship,which creates a sense of national identity and symbolizes the power ofhuman brotherhood as a shield against the human condition. At thesame time he celebrates the power of art to give permanence to fleetinghuman experience.#

  Ungarettis intentions in Il porto sepolto were to examine the pieces of awatchs mechanism to find out how it worked. The watch was poetry, itspieces words. A second edition included a preface, Towards a new classi-cal art, reflecting his return to tradition like other poets, such as Sabaand Sbarbaro, in the aftermath of the First World War. If Ungarettisintentions had originally been to examine the watchs pieces, his inten-tion from Sentimento del tempo (Feeling of Time, 1933) onwards was toreassemble them. Times manifold manifestations were examined witha sense of transiency tinged with deep melancholy: Gi verso unalta,lucida / Sepoltura, si salpa (Already towards a high, lucid / Sepulchre,we weigh anchor: Le stagioni, The Seasons). The individual words ofIl porto sepolto here come together in magnificent alliterative verse, exem-plified in the opening of O notte (Oh Night): Dallampia ansia del-lalba (From the ample anxiety of dawn). The return to traditionalmetre was motivated by a desire to move away from the particularity ofLallegria towards universality; and that was to be achieved throughabstraction, what, in Memoria dOfelia DAlba (Memory of OpheliaDAlba), Ungaretti called Cose consumate: / Emblemi eterni, nomi, /Evocazioni pure . . . (Things consumed: / Eternal emblems, names, /Pure evocations . . .). Yet the poetry was far from abstract, rescued fromsuch a risk through its strong sensuality, as seen in Nascita daurora(Birth of Dawn).

  Given Ungarettis French education, Baudelaire, Mallarm andValry can be sensed here; but the seminal influences are Italian Petrarch and Leopardi, particularly Leopardis Alla Primavera (ToSpringtime) and Inno ai Patriarchi (Hymn to the Patriarchs). Platotoo is present in the contemplation of the ideal, recognizable in

  Modern Italian poetry 185

• Danni con fantasia (You Damn with Imagination); but the Platonicideal is overshadowed by a sense of the innate corruption of humannature, which derives ultimately from Saint Augustine. Memory, as aconsequence of this Augustinian sense of corruption, loses its clarityand innocence to become decidedly darker, as in Alla noia (ToEnnui): [. . .] fluido simulacro, / Malinconico scherno, / Buio delsangue . . . ([. . .] fluid simulacrum, / Melancholy mockery, / Darknessof blood . . .).

  The haunting beauty of Sirene (Sirens) anticipates the laterpoetry of La Terra Promessa (The Promised Land, 1950) whose earliestfragments date from 1935; but personal grief, along with an awarenessof civilizations fragility, resultant on the Second World War inter-rupted with Il dolore (Grief, 1947) the sensuous abstraction towardswhich his poetry was moving. The Baroque horror of the void, alreadypresent in Sentimento del tempo, here finds its objective correlative inthe Brazilian landscape of Tu ti spezzasti (You Shattered) wherefabulous turtles emerging from the seas depths mesmerize the poetsyoung son, represented in that hostile foreign landscape as a gold-crest, the smallest of Italian birds. On a grander scale, in Folli i mieipassi (Mad My Steps), Michelangelo and, in Defunti su montagne(Dead on the Mountains), Masolino da Panicales fresco in SanClemente in Rome, both serve as examples of hope that the creativespirit may yet prevail.

  La Terra Promessa appeared in 1950, to be followed in 1960 by Ultimicori per la Terra Promessa (Last Choruses for the Promised Land), whichconstituted the greater part of Il taccuino del vecchio (The Notebook ofan Old Man). The Promised Land may have been suggested byUngarettis Egyptian birth, but the literary model was provided byVirgils Aeneid, whose protagonist replicated the autobiographicalsuperstite / lupo di mare (surviving old / sea dog) of Allegria dinaufragi (Joy of Shipwrecks); and it was that autobiographical strandwhich guaranteed against abstraction and provided the texts withtheir poetic and psychological modernity. The opening Canzonedescribed the poets state of mind, and the nineteen Choruses dedi-cated to Dido were entitled Choruses Descriptive of the States of Mindof Dido. Yet these subtly nuanced texts found elaboration withinpoetic vehicles whose complex accomplishment belonged originallyand notably to the lyric masters of the fourteenth century, Dante andPetrarch.

  186 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• Dante and Montale

  Ungaretti is perhaps the exemplar of the wedding of tradition and indi-vidual talent of which Eliot spoke. Eugenio Montale (18961981; Nobelprize for literature, 1975) rejected from the beginning the tradition ofthose modern laureate poets, like DAnnunzio, who moved only amongplants with little-used names: box-wood privet or acanthus in favour ofhis native Ligurian landscape with its grassy ditches where in half dried-up puddles boys caught the odd skinny eel (I limoni, The lemons,from Ossi di seppia, Cuttlefish Bones, 1925, definitive edition 1931). Thatrealistic note so evident throughout his early poetry was to be a constantin Montale, nowhere better illustrated than in Languilla (The Eel)from his third and finest volume, La bufera e altro (The Storm and OtherThings, 1956), where the eel turns up again in a thirty-line poem whosemixture of eleven and seven-syllable lines constitutes one single, unin-terrupted syntactical movement.

  But if the realism is the same, its purpose has changed, for the eel hereundergoes a transformation, becoming in turn green soul, spark andiris, an iris moreover which is twin to the one your lashes frame / andyou set shining virginal among / the sons of men, sunk in your mire.What these lines reveal is that the poems true subject is not the eel but afemale figure whose vitality it mirrors. The lower-case iris echoes anearlier upper-case Iris, the title of the opening poem of Silvae(Woods), La buferas most important section; but there the name issimply one of a number of senhals (or fictitious names for the beloved, asin old Provenal poetry) for the dedicatee, I. B., of Montales secondvolume, Le occasioni (The Occasions, 1939). The initials are those of anAmerican Dante scholar, Irma Brandeis, whom Montale had met inFlorence in 1933. The love poetry inspired by her was to take the form ofa homage to her medieval interests through its broadly Petrarchan struc-ture (a structure whereby the physical absence of the beloved becomes apoetic presence thanks to the power of memory), allied to a strong moralimpulse reflecting their interest in Dante. The longer poems of Le occa-sioni and La bufera have a richness and complexity which make themunique in contemporary Italian poetry; but the shorter poems, the ossibrevi (short [cuttle-fish] bones) of Montales first volume, the mottetti(motets) of his second, and the Flashes e dediche (Flashes andDedications) of his third, may have been more influential on later poets.Poesie a Casarsa (Poems to Casarsa, 1942), by Pier Paolo Pasolini (192275),

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• for example, clearly reveal a rare understanding of how their model,Montales mottetti, worked.

  And yet, if one considers one of Montales most memorable poems,La casa dei doganieri (The Customs House), it is difficult not to thinkof him as an instinctive follower of Petrarch; for, as in many of Petrarchspoems, the pre-text here is constituted by the effective absence of thebeloved, which becomes in the text an intense presence throughmemory. Nevertheless in its images and references it is entirely modern.

  Montales second and third volumes, given their inspiration, repre-sented a poetry of high culture (of the highest culture, providing as itdid a synthesis of the major strands of the poetic tradition, the catharticmemorial strand so important in Petrarch and the polyphonic richnessof Dantes Commedia) not at all immediately accessible to the generalityof readers: a poetry which echoed the closed nature of medievalProvenal verse, and one which provided a model readily taken up by thepoets of the next generation, the Hermetics.

  Montales subsequent poetry, while much more accessible, repre-sented a change in tone rather than subject-matter. The poems inmemory of his wife, for example (which have drawn comparison withHardys late poems for his first wife), shot through as they are with linesmemorable in their simplicity [. . .] But it is possible, you know, to lovea shadow, being shadows ourselves (Xenia i, 13, from Satura, 1971) arefor all that no less Petrarchan (or Dantesque: Brodsky reminds us here ofthe meeting of Statius and Virgil in Purgatorio xxi.1306)8 than theearlier poetry, filling as they do the void created by her absence withmemories of her alive so vivid in detail as to create the illusion of a pres-ence. There is, however, another strand running through this laterpoetry, much of it characterized by an epigrammatic quality, and that isself-irony, parodic in nature and targeting his earlier verse, now seen, inhis own words, as works in regress.

  Petrarch and Quasimodo

  The poetry of Salvatore Quasimodo (190868; Nobel prize for literature,1959) seemed to undergo a radical change in mid-stream. The immediatecause was the German occupation of Italy after the armistice of 8September 1943. The opening of Alle fronde dei salici (On the WillowBranches, from Giorno dopo giorno Day after Day, 1947) says it all: Andhow could we have sung / with the foreign foot upon our heart, / among

  188 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• the dead abandoned in the squares? In his Discourse on Poetry, philos-ophers, Quasimodo stated, had claimed that poetry was not subject tochange either during or after war, but that was an illusion, because waralters the moral life of a people. But the deepest causes governing therhythm of the history of the arts are not, as Kundera suggested, sociologi-cal or political, but aesthetic.9 Confirmation of this was to be found inQuasimodos 1945 essay on Petrarch and the Sense of Solitude. MarioLuzi (1914 ), the most precocious of the younger poets (his first volume,La barca, The Boat, had appeared in 1935, only five years afterQuasimodos first volume, Acque e terre,Waters and Lands), also wrote anessay on Petrarch in 1945, entitled Hell and Limbo. What Quasimodosessay suggested, in spite of the realism of Giorno dopo giorno, was not abreak but a continuity, a continuity argued by Carlo Bo, the theoreticianof the Hermetic poets, in his 1947 introduction to the volume.10 But acontinuity with what?

  Line 5 of the volumes title poem reads: And no longer can I return tomy Elysium. Elysium was his native Sicily: not simply the modernisland, but the much older one of Magna Graecia. Quasimodo, who hadstudied Latin and Greek in his twenties, was to excel as a translator ofGreek lyrical poetry and tragedy. That classical vein, allied to his innatePetrarchism, is finely illustrated in Vento a Tindari (Wind at Tindari),where the harshness of mainland exile and the bitterness of bread whichhe must break contrast with Sicilys positive aspects in the poemsopening: Tindari, I know you mild / among broad hills, above thewaters / of the gods soft islands. It was this contrast, Quasimodosversion of Yeatss quarrel with himself out of which poetry is born,which would continue throughout his poetic career.

  Hermeticisms implosive silence: Luzi and Parronchi

  The silence imposed by the war on the Hermetics became a critical com-monplace which long endured in Italy and beyond. Vittoria Bradshaws1971 anthology From Pure Silence to Impure Dialogue. A Survey of Post-WarItalian Poetry 19451965 illustrates it well. By 1945, however, the Hermeticswere barely out of their twenties, and if we look at Luzis essay onPetrarch, the endless source in song of which he talks is recognized forwhat it is: a false paradise, self-centred and inward-looking, cut off fromthe real world, existing purely in a timeless vacuum. Certainly theimagery of Avorio (Ivory), from Avvento notturno (Nocturnal Advent,

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• 1940): The equinoctial cypress speaks, obscure / and mountainousexults the buck deer would suggest just such an introspective aestheti-cism as indeed did much pre-war Quasimodo.

  But already, in 1936, in Cimitero delle fanciulle (Cemetery of YoungMaidens), to the Limbo-like world of Petrarch Luzi had juxtaposed hissolemn craggy existence. Its first fruits were to be found, appropriatelyenough, in Primizie del deserto (First Fruits of the Desert, 1952). Thus, theopening of Notizie a Giuseppina dopo tanti anni (News for Josephineafter So Many Years), What do you hope for, what do you promise your-self, my friend / [. . .]?, modelled on one of Petrarchs best-knownsonnets, Che fai? Che pensi? Che pur dietro guardi (What are youdoing? What are you thinking? You who still look behind you), recog-nized, despite that nostalgic backward glance, its destiny in the present,not the past, and in the other, not in self: Everything else which must bestill exists, / the river flows, the countryside changes, / there is hail, itstops raining, the odd dog barks.

  Pasolini claimed, in a review of Onore del vero (Truth to Tell, 1957),that the depiction of the real world was merely a projection of Luzisinternal world, redeemed in poems like E il lupo (And the Wolf) as aresult of its moral creed (Everything, / even the gloomy animal eternity /that moans in us, can become holy), but that ultimately it was vitiated,even in his finest poems, by an insensitivity when faced with the phe-nomena of human life and history. Likewise, he was to observe that acontemporary of Luzi, Alessandro Parronchi (1914 ), had taken a stepforward in Coraggio di vivere (Courage of Living, 1956): But he will stillhave to realize, some day, that to believe in our own existence we have tobelieve in the existence of history.11

  Lyricism versus Realism: Pavese, Bertolucci, Sereni

  The question of the nature of Realism, discussed by Pasolini and Luzi inLa Chimera (The Chimera) in 1954, seemed encapsulated in the formersremarks on Parronchi. But given the lyrical nature of Italian poetry, aRealist tradition was improbable. Italian literatures mind-boggling lackof concreteness from the fifteenth century until the end of the nine-teenth, as noted by Lampedusa,12 was, in poetry at least, to be neithereasily nor quickly remedied in spite of the Neorealist climate of theperiod. Arguably the only genuine experimenter with narrative verse wasCesare Pavese (190850) in his 1936 Lavorare stanca (Work is Tiring), pos-

  190 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• sibly influenced as mentioned earlier by Jahier, although a narrativestrand inspired by Gozzano could be said to exist in the early Montale,who, as already noted, much admired Gozzano, as well as in VittorioSereni (191383), who had written his thesis on him in 1936, and inPasolini. Serenis Un posto di vacanza (A Holiday Place, in Stella Variabile,Variable Star, 1981) might be cited as an example, but it is La camera daletto (The Bedroom, 1984, definitive edition 1989) by Attilio Bertolucci(19112000) which perhaps best represents this narrative strand. Writerslike Giorgio Bassani (19162000) and Leonardo Sciascia (192189), whobegan as poets, had to turn to prose to articulate that belief in historyadvocated by Pasolini in his Parronchi review. Most poets, however,refused to have poetry serve as social commentary. Louis MacNeices pleafor impure poetry, for poetry conditioned by the poets life and the worldaround him, would have carried little weight in Italy. Serenis Una visitain fabbrica (A Visit to a Factory), for example, grew from two lines happy with others bread / which only with an alert mind tastes bitter,lines which echo Dante (Paradiso xvii.59) to ninety-five, its final partinscribing Leopardis A Silvia: E di me si spendea la miglior parte (and thebest part of myself was spent). Poetry, even in its purest lyrical moments,even in its closest contact with (industrial) reality such as here, reflectsnot life but literature. The title poem of Pasolinis Le ceneri di Gramsci, too,is written in tercets which approximate those of Dantes Divine Comedy,and he also has recourse, like Sereni, to literary inscription, in thisinstance the English poet William Wordsworths Ode on the Intimationsof Immortality which is literally cited within Pasolinis text (And O yeFountains . . .).

  With few exceptions Camillo Sbarbaro, a botanist; LeonardoSinisgalli (190881), an engineer most modern Italian poets come froma humanities background and become academics or schoolteachers.Andrea Zanzotto (1921 ), for example, taught in his native Pieve diSoligo (Treviso) for most of his life. Sereni too was originally a teacher,but in 1952 he moved to Pirelli and, in 1958, to Mondadori.

  War and Resistance: Sereni, Pasolini, Zanzotto

  What indelibly marked Serenis post-war poetry was his absence fromthe Resistance through having been a prisoner of war in North Africa:Late, too late for the feast / the foul throat taunted / too late! (Il maledAfrica, The African Sickness, from Diario dAlgeria, Algerian Diary,

  Modern Italian poetry 191

• 1947). Pasolinis poetry too was marked by the Resistance, his youngerbrother Guido being killed by Yugoslav partisans in 1945. The Montellowood in Zanzottos Il Galateo in Bosco (The Woodland Book of Manners,1978) was the scene of fierce fighting during the Great War. While thevolumes title alludes ironically and distantly to Della Casas 1558 treatiseon manners, Il Galateo, ovvero de Costumi (Galateo, or on Manners), muchmore seriously and closer in time it refers to the destruction of a societywhich, as Vivienne Hand notes, has been irreversibly shattered by theevents of historical reality, such as the battles between Austria andHungary fought in the Montello region in 1918.13 The awareness of thefragile veneer of civil society in our century, rent as it has been by war andstrife, has been one of the unifying strands of Italian poetry fromUngaretti to Zanzotto.

  Explosive silence: Luzi

  But to return to the paradigm provided by the dynamic broadening ofLuzis poetic horizons. Those hints of a shift away from an earlier stasis,present in the 1950s texts, come to full bloom in Nel magma (In theMagma, 1963). Presso il Bisenzio (Near the Bisenzio river) is exem-plary, with its radically hypermetric line stretching well beyond the tra-ditional hendecasyllable because such metrical expansion is required bythe poems subject. Here it is no longer pre-existent form that constrainsit within predetermined structures; rather, it is that same subject thatmodulates it in a totally free fashion. To that metrical freedom weshould add the self-evidently dramatic nature of a text whose dialogueperhaps anticipates a theatrical calling which Luzi will pursue intandem with his lyrical verse, from the long dramatic poem Ipazia(Hypatia, 1972), to the more recent Felicit turbate (DisturbedHappinesses) on the early Mannerist painter Pontormo and Ceneri eardori (Ashes and Ardour) on the French writer Benjamin Constant, onwhom Luzi had written many years earlier. But to return to Presso ilBisenzio, the burning issue of the Resistance You were not burnt aswe were by the fire of struggle / when it blazed and good and evil werealight on the pyre and its almost literal partisanship, presented interms strongly reminiscent of Dantes Farinata canto (Inferno x), demon-strated that Luzi was no less conscious of the weakening effect of warand civil strife on the social fabric.

  The high point of his poetry, however, is perhaps to be found in the

  192 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• three long poems of Su fondamenti invisibili (On Invisible Foundations,1971). Their exhilarating verse structure, ranging even more freelybeyond the limits of traditional metre than Nel magma (where thatfreedom was already substantial), with its incredible richness anddensity of imagery allied to its strong dramatic quality, itself a manifes-tation of the conflictual nature of the moral and intellectual problemswhich he confronts, are of a quality akin only to Montales Silvae in Labufera.

  Paradoxical paradigms of language and dialect: Pasolini,Zanzotto and Bigongiari

  Pasolinis Poesie a Casarsa, in its remarkable and highly original synthesisof the European poetic tradition from Symbolism onwards, has claims paradoxically, since it was his first volume and, moreover, in dialect tobeing his best work. The Italian poems of Le ceneri di Gramsci (GramscisAshes, 1957), with their unorthodox Marxism reflecting a contrastbetween history and prehistory, nature and culture lying at the root ofall Pasolinis work, have a no less compelling unity and originality.Although he continued to publish poetry up until his murder in 1975,much of it was occasional, subordinate to the cinematographic activitywhich dominated his last fifteen years.

  Pasolini, too, may nevertheless serve as a paradigm. The alternativelanguages of his verse, dialect or Italian, with their profoundly antithet-ical autobiographical roots (mother versus father, country versus city),with the increasing dominance of the paternal at the expense of thematernal that is to say the increasingly homogenized bourgeois Italianat the expense of the countrys various dialects reflected the changingsocial and cultural reality of the times. In 1952 it had been possible forhim to publish (along with Mario DellArco, 190597) Poesia dialettale delNovecento (Dialect Poetry of the Twentieth Century) and, in 1955,Canzoniere italiano. Antologia della poesia popolare (Italian Canzoniere. AnAnthology of Popular Poetry). Thirty years later, Biagio Marin(18911985), a dialect poet from Grado (Gorizia) singled out by Montaleas worthy of greater fame in a review of Pasolini and DellArcos anthol-ogy, lamented publishers reluctance to print even a selection of hispoetry. The 1996 Cambridge History of Italian Literature discreetly and post-humously recognized the rightness of Montales judgment.

  Dialect poetrys survival may depend on philologists, even foreign

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• ones. Hermann W. Hallers The Hidden Italy (1986) was warmly reviewedin Italy itself. Closer to home, Pier Vincenzo Mengaldos Poeti italiani delNovecento (1978) had already incorporated not only dialect poets but alsotranslators as poets tout court: Giacomo Noventa (18981960), dialettale,with Sergio Solmi (18991982) and Luzi, in lingua; Tonino Guerra (1920 ),dialettale, with Franco Fortini (19171994) and Nelo Risi (1920 ), inlingua; Giaime Pintor (191943), translator of Rainer Maria Rilke, withSereni and Pasolini.

  It is the direction of Zanzottos poetic development, however, whichis most telling. Dietro il paesaggio (Behind the Landscape, 1951) had beenawarded the 1950 San Babila prize prior to publication by a jury includ-ing Ungaretti, Montale, Quasimodo, Sinisgalli and Sereni. Ungaretticoncluded his presentation of the volume by pointing out that Zanzottowas now part of an illustrious history.14The adjective underscored thatearly poetrys literariness; but a shift in the direction of experimentalismfrom La belt (Beauty, 1968) onwards, wonderfully exemplified inLelegia in petl (Elegy in Petl; petl is the nonsense talk used bymothers to their children), cast doubt on that early literariness, focusingas it did on metalinguistic concerns which, informed by the insights oflinguistics and semiotics, suggested that Zanzotto might be the post-modernist poet in Italy. He is, after Montale, the poet who has attractedmost attention in the English-speaking world. Within Italy that positionwould seem to belong to Luzi.

  To return to the languagedialect nexus , however, Zanzotto, start-ing with the poems of Fil (Peasants Wake, 1976), written for FellinisCasanova, has increasingly regressed from literary Italian: witness thepoems of Mistieri (a dialect term meaning small, poor trades, 1979),now reprinted in Idioma (Idiom, 1986). But these works in regress areno more regressive than Montales later work, conscious as Zanzottois that no dialect has ever existed which was not something explo-sively different, at least potentially.15 A similar awareness of thepotentiality of language is to be found in Piero Bigongiari (19141997),particularly from Antimateria (Antimatter, 1972) onwards. It is not bychance that Stefano Agosti, one of Zanzottos most attentive readers,has also written on Bigongiari. More telling perhaps than criticalinterest is the interest of younger poets: Silvio Ramat (1939 ), argu-ably the historian of twentieth-century Italian poetry, Roberto Carifi(1948 ), Milo De Angelis (1951 ) and Roberto Mussapi (1952 ),among others.

  194 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• The schematic presentation of all too few poets in the second half ofthis essay has meant, regrettably, that more has been omitted thanincluded; nor has space allowed me, again regrettably, to speak of neo-avant-garde movements such as the 1961 Novissimi and the Gruppo 63 withits forty-three adherents; nor women poets such as Margherita Guidacci(192192), Alda Merini (1931 ), Maria Luisa Spaziani (1924 ) andAmelia Rosselli (193096). Critics and theoreticians too (LucianoAnceschi, 191195, in particular) have no less regrettably been sacrificed,as have literary journals. Il verri, linked to Anceschi, still survives, butOfficina (Workshop), linked to Pasolini, has long since gone as hasRendiconti (Reports), inspired by Roberto Roversi (1923 ), a friend fromPasolinis student days in Bologna who, together with the poet andFrancesco Leonetti (1924 ), had constituted Officinas editorial board.While it may be true that journals have less influence nowadays, theregular monthly appearance on the news-stands of Poesia bespeaks anongoing interest in the art.

  notes

  * The symbol #, which appears approximately half-way through this chapter, marksthe point at which the part of the essay composed by Shirley Vinall comes to an endand that written by Tom ONeill starts.1. Gabriele DAnnunzio, Alcyone, ed. F. Roncoroni (Milan: Mondadori, 1982), p. 715.2. Gianfranco Contini, Il linguaggio di Pascoli, in Giovanni Pascoli, Poesie, 4 vols.(Milan: Mondadori, 1969) , vol. i, pp. lxiixcviii (p. lxxiii).3. Giovanni Pascoli, Prose, 3 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1952), vol. i, p. 22.4. Eugenio Montale, introduction to Guido Gozzano, Le poesie (Milan: Garzanti, 1960),p. 14.5. See Luciano De Maria and Laura Dondi (eds.), Marinetti e i futuristi (Milan: Garzanti,1994), p. 375.6. Dino Campana, Canti orfici, ed. F. Ceragioli (Florence: Vallecchi, 1985), p. 267.7. Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vita dun uomo: Tutte le poesie, ed. L. Piccioni (Milan: Mondadori,1979), p. 72.8. Joseph Brodsky, In the Shadow of Dante, in Less than One (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1996), pp. 95112 (p. 103).9. Milan Kundera, Betrayed Testaments (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995),p. 59.10. Salvatore Quasimodo, Tutte le poesie (Milan: Mondadori, 1960), pp. 199200.11. Pier Paolo Pasolini, Passione e ideologia (Milan: Garzanti, 1960), pp. 457, 460.12. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Opere (Milan: Mondadori, 1995), p. 1787.13. Vivienne Hand, Zanzotto (Edinburgh University Press, 1994), p. xii.14. Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vita dun uomo. Saggi e interventi (Milan: Mondadori, 1974),p. 993.15. Andrea Zanzotto, Fil (Milan: Mondadori, 1988), p. 75.

  Modern Italian poetry 195

• further reading

  Cary, Joseph, Three Italian Poets: Saba, Ungaretti, Montale. 2nd edn. Chicago and London:The University of Chicago Press, 1993.

  Gentili, Alessandro, and Catherine OBrien (eds.), The Green Flame: Contemporary ItalianPoetry. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1987.

  Hainsworth, Peter, and Emmanuela Tandello (eds.), Italian Poetry since 1956, Supplement1 to The Italianist, 15, 1995.

  Jones, Frederic J., Giuseppe Ungaretti. Edinburgh University Press, 1977.The Modern Italian Lyric. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1986.

  Klopp, Charles, Gabriele DAnnunzio. Boston: Twayne, 1988.Montale, Eugenio, Collected Poems 19201954. Translated by Jonathan Galassi. New York:

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.ONeill, Tom, Pier Paolo Pasolinis Dialect Poetry, Forum Italicum, 9, iv (1975), pp.

  34367.Montales Fishy Petrarchism, Modern Language Notes 106 (1991), pp. 78116.

  Picchione, John, and Lawrence R. Smith (eds.), Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: AnAnthology. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1993.

  Sanguineti, Edoardo, (ed.), Poesia italiana del Novecento. 2nd edn. Turin: Einaudi, 1972.Wedel De Stasio, Giovanna, et al. (eds.), Twentieth-Century Italian Poets, Dictionary of

  Literary Biography. cxiv and cxxviii. Detroit, Washington, DC, and London:Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1992 and 1993.

  196 Shirley W. Vinall and Tom ONeill

• a n n a l a u r a l e p s c h y

  10

  Drama: realism, identity and reality on stage

  Introduction

  In the Italy of the second half of the eighteenth century comedy had pre-vailed over tragedy, with authors such as Carlo Goldoni, Pietro Chiariand Carlo Gozzi. This was superseded by the tragic drama of VittorioAlfieri, Vincenzo Monti, Ippolito Pindemonte, Ugo Foscolo, SilvioPellico and Alessandro Manzoni.1 By the mid-nineteenth century thedearth of original texts for the theatre (the emphasis having shifted toopera)2 was compensated by the skill of great actors such as GustavoModena, Adelaide Ristori, Tommaso Salvini and Ernesto Rossi. This hasbeen referred to as drammaturgia dellattore, the actors drama, and it isnotable that later, when in the rest of Europe the producer had takenover, in Italy the actor still predominated until at least the 1930s.3Indeed, the term regista, director, was only coined by the linguist BrunoMigliorini in 1932.4Alongside the early nineteenth-century tragedies, inresponse to the expectations of the emerging bourgeoisie, there was apost-Goldonian vein (as in Augusto Bon, Alberto Nota and others) whichtook the eighteenth-century dramatists realism and regionalism intothe following century. Overlapping with this trend, and spreading intothe period of verismo, is the first group of playwrights I shall discuss: theybelong to the unification period and are representative of teatro a tesi, atheatre primarily concerned with ideas.

  Theatre of ideas

  The Ligurian Paolo Giacometti (181687), who composed historical playswhich reveal the influence of French Romantic drama, in 1861 wrote his

• best-known play, La morte civile (Civil Death) which was first performedwith a cast including Rossi and Salvini. The protagonist, an escaped life-prisoner, commits suicide in order to let his wife remarry. The messagethat emerges from this play is the plea against the indissolubility of mar-riage, summed up in the famous finale after the suicide: Legislators,behold! The modenese Paolo Ferrari (182289), after a first manner in the1850s with popular comedies in dialect, took as his subject-matter recentItalian writers, as in his successful Goldoni e le sue sedici commedie nuove(Goldoni and His Sixteen New Comedies, 1852); in his third manner,like Giacometti, he concentrated on themes of contemporary concern.His Cause ed effetti (Causes and Effects, 1871) comes alive in its femaleprotagonist, who, in the face of all opposition, persists in her idealisticsearch for something other than frivolous entertainment. Social preoc-cupations typical of the time are also expressed in the works of theNeapolitan Achille Torelli (18411922).

  Realism and dialect

  During the period of the great actors, playwrights were very much attheir mercy. But during the latter part of the nineteenth century, withthe advent of verismo, two transformations took place. First, as writers ofthe calibre of Giovanni Verga (18401922), Luigi Capuana (18391915),Federico De Roberto (18261927) and Gabriele DAnnunzio (18631938)took to writing for the theatre, they were in a position to commandgreater respect from the actors, from whom a less self-centred anddeclamatory style also was expected. Secondly, dialect was increasinglyused for dramatic texts. Dialect was perceived as being closer to the lin-guistic reality of both characters and audience, and was also more accept-able to certain companies.

  The creative writings of the veristi (for whom drama was often secon-dary to narrative) were accompanied by their theories, which showed theinfluence of French Naturalists like Zola and Maupassant. One of theadvantages of drama, according to De Roberto, was that dialogue was theperfect vehicle for complete impersonality on the part of the author, whomade his characters reveal their psychology entirely through their ownwords. The Sicilian veristi, Capuana and Verga, turned various of theirnarratives into dramas: most notably, Verga rewrote his short storyCavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry).

  The Piedmontese Vittorio Bersezio (18281900) at first refrained from

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• writing in dialect, fearing it went against the aspirations of a unifiedItaly; however, he gradually changed his mind, claiming that you writebetter in the language you have learnt from birth.5 In his most famousplay Le miserie d Monss Travet (The Mishaps of Monss Travet, 1863), theprotagonist, goaded by an attack on his honour, is transformed from aweak-willed clerk into an assertive, independent worker. Another writerwho passed from a negative to a positive attitude towards dialect was theVenetian Giacinto Gallina (185297), who expressed an ethos of familysolidarity and common sense within carefully structured plots. In Lafamegia del santolo (The Godfathers Family, 1892), a story based, likeIbsens The Wild Duck, on uncertain paternity, there is the decision,however hard, made after an initial condemnation with a single power-ful word Vergognosa, Shame on you! , to ignore the adultery com-mitted by a wife twenty-five years earlier.

  The Neapolitan Salvatore Di Giacomo (18601934) sometimes basedhis theatre on his poetry and short stories. The seven sonnets (1895) of ASan Francisco (In San Francisco Prison) became a libretto (1896) and thena play (1897) about the inmates of the prison. O mese mariano (MarianMonth, 1900; also a libretto, 1910), based on the Italian short story Senzavederlo (Without Seeing Him, 1886), presents another social drama: amother is forced to put her eldest child into the poorhouse. These twoplays are representative of Di Giacomos most powerful themes: A SanFrancisco of passion and jealousy, O mese mariano of the tragedy ofpoverty. Another Neapolitan, Roberto Bracco (18611943), whose workencompasses many different phases (some of which will be mentionedlater), in his early dramatic career wrote romantic melodramas in whichpoverty is contrasted with upper-class wealth (Sperduti nel buio, Lost inthe Dark, 1901), and where the shame of family prostitution leads todespair and suicide (Notte di neve, A Night of Snow, 1906). Perhaps hisfinest work is Il piccolo santo (The Little Saint, 1909), where the tragedythat strikes the village priest, considered a saint, remains a mystery tocharacters and audience alike.

  Alongside tragic drama in Naples, there was a tradition of comedydating back to the commedia dellartes Pulcinella (the forerunner of theEnglish Punch). Antonio Petito not only played the part of Pulcinella (forwhich he eventually substituted the role of Pascariello) but also createdfor the young actorplaywright Eduardo Scarpetta (18531925) the char-acter of the empty-headed snob Felice Sciosciammocca. Scarpettas ownplays spanned a wide range, from works like Nu bastone e fuoco (A Fire

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• Stick, 1887), which still contained the character of Pulcinella, to his wellknown Miseria e nobilt (Poverty and Nobility, 1888), a drama written inboth dialect and literary Italian.

  Giuseppe Giacosa (18471906), who wrote a positive assessment ofVergas Cavalleria rusticana, was influenced in the 1880s by the Sicilianwriter. After abandoning the medieval fashion of his 1871 Partita a scacchi(A Game of Chess), he embraced a bourgeois form of verismo in Tristiamori (Sad Loves, 1887) and in Come le foglie (Like the Leaves, 1900). Inbetween these plays came La moglie ideale (The Ideal Wife, 1890) byMarco Praga (18621929). There is a continuity between Giacosas Tristiamori, Pragas Moglie ideale and Giacosas Come le foglie, with the passagefrom a dwindling nobility to a middle class which is asserting itself, andfrom the optimistic successes of this new class to its corruption, adulteryand compromises.

  DAnnunzio and Svevo

  In contrast to the tradition of bourgeois realism, we have the teatro dipoesia of Gabriele DAnnunzio which bears traces of two figures hegreatly admired, Nietzsche and Wagner. Eleonora Duse wasDAnnunzios muse and the protagonist of many of his plays. Even whenhe took historical themes and presented them in accurate settings, ordrew his material from popular culture, DAnnunzio was primarilyinterested in timeless myths and archetypal characters. His two mostsuccessful plays were the verse dramas La figlia di Iorio (Iorios Daughter,1903) and La fiaccola sotto il moggio (The Light under the Bushel, 1905).One direction of Italian drama was in fact that of myth in its widest his-torical sense, ranging from pagan and archaic to Christian and medievalor Renaissance. The mythic drama of Ercole Luigi Morselli (18821921) issometimes ironic, as in Orione (Orion, 1910), sometimes elegiac, as inGlauco (Glaucus, which Pirandello recast into Sicilian, 1919), while thehistorical trend was followed by Sem Benelli (18771949) with his vigor-ous verse play La cena delle beffe (The Dinner of Tricks, 1909). On the otherhand, Benellis 1908 Tignola (Bookworm), a bourgeois drama about thedisasters that befall a timid and idealistic booksellers assistant thebookworm of the title belongs to the intimist tradition of Giacosa.

  The fame of Italo Svevo (18611928), like Vergas and DAnnunzios,rests on genres other than the theatre. Notable are the idiosyncratic plotsof his dramatic works which were written throughout his career but

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• published posthumously, except for Il terzetto spezzato (The Broken Trio,1927) which was performed during his lifetime. The psychology of thisplay is reminiscent of Strindberg, and it also echoes Braccos 1893Maschere (Masks). In the more complex Un marito (A Husband, 1931),with its Ibsenian return to the past, a lawyer, absolved after killing hisunfaithful first spouse, is faced with the possible infidelity of his secondwife; however, the roles of the couple are gradually reversed as the posi-tion of the wife, Bice, is asserted. Svevos preoccupation with marriageand infidelity reappears in his most successful play, Rigenerazione(Regeneration, c. 19278), with the figure of Giovanni Chierici, anelderly businessman who undergoes a rejuvenating operation, behindwhose obsession with illness and old age there is a zest and humourreminiscent of La coscienza di Zeno (The Conscience of Zeno).

  Futurism and the theatre of the grotesque

  The existence of drama alongside other forms of artistic expression iseven more marked in the case of the Futurists. The theatre stands inopposition to the visual arts, for which the Futurists are mostly remem-bered (one only has to think of Balla and Boccioni), while their writtentexts were more ephemeral. In the tradition of Alfred Jarrys Ubu roi(1896), with its puppet-like parodic figures, are the early plays of FilippoTommaso Marinetti (18961944), written in French. Audience participa-tion was one of the principles of the Futurist teatro di variet, which fromits early improvisation later developed into carefully constructed workslike Piedigrotta and Funerale del filosofo passatista, both of 1914, directed byMarinetti. The Funerale was a polemic against the outmoded philoso-pher Benedetto Croce, and consisted of chanting Futurist pall-bearersled by Marinetti and accompanied by mouldering books and vegetables.

  Following the variet came the sintesi of 1915 and 1916. These synthe-ses consisted of lightning action based on positive and negative struc-tures (often Futurist versus antiquated), or they were the enactmentof set phrases, like Cangiullos Non c un cane (Not Even a Dog) in whicha dog quickly disappears behind the scenes; objects were the protago-nists of Marinettis sintesi as in Vengono (They Are Coming) with itseight chairs and a table. Alongside the theatre of variet and sintesiexisted a third Futurist dramatic expression, il teatro della sorpresa, thetheatre of surprise, with its 1921 manifesto signed by Marinetti andCangiullo. The last theatrical manifesto was the 1924 anti-psychological

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• one, in which the physical and the metaphysical prevailed over thepsychological.

  The term grottesco is used to define plays which have in common acertain schematic simplification of the characters, who tend to assumethe qualities of puppets or masks; the plot is often paradoxical and fixesthe characters, rather than being created by them. This is one of thereasons why many object to even Pirandellos early dramas being giventhe appellation grottesco. Another difference between Pirandello and thetheatre of the grotesque concerns the mask, which hides a real facebeneath it for the grotteschi, but another mask for Pirandello. InMarionette, che passione! (Puppets, What a Passion!, 1918) by Pier MariaRosso di San Secondo (18871956), the unnamed characters (theGentleman in grey, the Lady in the blue fox fur, the Gentleman inmourning) first meet in a post office and then, like puppets, are broughttogether again in unexpected circumstances and combinations. Of thesame date as Marionette is Luomo che incontr se stesso (The Man Who MetHimself) by Luigi Antonelli (18821942), in which the protagonist meetshimself as a young man and tries to prevent his double from sufferingthe same fate as himself at the hands of his unfaithful wife. Nostra Dea(Our Dea, 1925) by Massimo Bontempelli (18781960) opens with theprotagonist Dea being dressed by her maid. While she is in her petticoatshe behaves and speaks with the automatism of a puppet, and it is onlyas she dons one sumptuous dress after another that she acquires a per-sonality, or rather personalities, since what seems an unpredictable andcontradictory character to her friends is in fact only a series of externalmutations caused by changes of attire.

  Pirandello

  Luigi Pirandello is hailed by Ferdinando Taviani6 as one of the threeglories for which Italian theatre is known, the other two being commediadellarte (including Goldoni) and opera. The progression of Pirandelloscreative writing is usually given as poetry followed by narrative, overwhich eventually his theatre would dominate. In fact he wrote verymany early plays, of which often only the title has survived. His criticalideas, which informed his creative production, covered many fields andcame from varied sources. G. I. Ascolis Proemio (Preface, 1873) had animpact on his linguistic thought, encouraging him to accept an anti-Manzonian and anti-normative approach. Other thinkers whose theo-

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• ries influenced the development of his thought were Max Nordau,Gabriel Sailles, Alfred Binet, Luigi Capuana and Benedetto Croce (inspite of his disputes with that philosopher). Their ideas contributed tohis belief in the relativity of truth and the multifaceted nature of person-ality, and to his particular view of objectivity and subjectivity and of thenature of humour, with its latent tragedy, its sense of the opposite ilsentimento del contrario notions which he elaborated in his impor-tant essay Lumorismo (On Humour, 1908). Pirandellos Maschere nude(Naked Masks) are the creation of a writer whose personal world wasfraught with problems: economic ruin, a wife who gradually lost herreason, and a daughter who tried to commit suicide.

  Role-playing is one of Pirandellos most constant themes. In the playwhose very title expresses this idea, Il giuoco delle parti (The Rules of theGame, 1918), the traditional triangular relationship between wife (Silia),husband (Leone) and lover (Guido) acquires an unexpected but logicaltwist when Leone, who is required to fight a duel to defend Siliashonour, sends to fight and to die in his stead Guido, who has in all butname usurped his role. This play also emphasizes a theme, connectedwith the triangle, which again in Pirandello receives varied treatment,that of vindictiveness and revenge. In Come prima, meglio di prima (AsBefore, Better than Before, 1920) the different roles of the protagonistare symbolized by her different names: she is Fulvia to her husband,Flora to her lover, and Francesca when she returns to her husband as hissecond wife. In Tutto per bene (All for the Best, 1920), a play that has affin-ities with Ibsens The Wild Duck, Lori is thought by everyone to haveknown about his wifes infidelity and that Palma is really the daughter ofhis friend Manfroni. When Lori discovers he has been playing a role (orliving a lie) for sixteen years, he is unable to accept the new situation, andwith Palmas help reconstructs their relationship into one of father anddaughter. The play closes with the type of unresolved ending in whichPirandello excels. The theme of illusion which becomes reality isrepeated in one of Pirandellos best-known plays, Enrico IV (Henry IV,1922), in which Enrico, after twelve years of real madness, decides to con-tinue behaving as if he were mad, rather than return to a world where hehas no role.

  The question Which is the real person? asked of characters withseveral roles has no answer and is an example of the relativity of truthwhich Pirandello especially develops in Cos (se vi pare) (Its Like This (IfYou Think So), 1917) and Come tu mi vuoi (As You Desire Me, 1930). The

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• first (containing the most striking of Pirandellos raisonneurs, LambertoLaudisi) examines the problem from the perspective of the townspeoplewho are faced with three mysterious newcomers mother, daughter andthe latters husband and the impossibility of pinning down the iden-tity of the wife, Signora Ponza; the second focuses on the individual atthe centre of the riddle, on lIgnotas feelings at being appropriated by aGerman as his music-hall lover Elma, and by an Italian as his long-lostwife Cia. In both cases the audience is left with the mystery unresolved.The settings of these two plays are well defined. We have the hierarchicalpetty-bourgeois world of Cos , and the debauchery of the Berlin of theTwenties contrasted with the superficial calm of the Udine uppermiddle class in Come tu mi vuoi.

  Another well-characterized setting is that of the theatre. The mostimportant plays dealing with this setting are the play-within-a-playtrilogy, Sei personaggi in cerca dautore (Six Characters in Search of anAuthor, 1921), Ciascuno a suo modo (Each in His Own Way, 1924) andQuesta sera si recita a soggetto (This Evening We Improvise, 1930). In themPirandello explores the relationships between the various aspects of thetheatre: in Sei personaggi between capocomico (director), actors and charac-ters who have their own existence; in Ciascuno between drama on stageand drama in real life; in Questa sera between director, actors and critics,and between the actors and the characters they are portraying. Abstractnotions lurk behind these plays. In the 1925 preface to Sei personaggiPirandello addresses the critic Adriano Tilghers distinction, applied tohis earlier plays, between Vita and Forma, the flowing life of the humanbeing as opposed to the constricting form of art. But Pirandello neverremains abstract not for nothing did he reject the accusation that hiswork was above all philosophical and he turns these notions of Vita andForma into creative paradoxes.

  In each play of the trilogy Pirandello uses the device of the play-within-a-play differently. In Sei personaggi the two plays merge as thecompany, interrupted in their rehearsal of Il giuoco delle parti, devotethemselves to trying to perform the characters drama, which culminatesin the scene in Madama Paces brothel in which the mother surprises thefather with the stepdaughter. We have alternating scenes: the characters(re)living their experiences living is more accurate, for it is happen-ing now, it is always happening!, as the mother declares and the actorsgiving a professional interpretation to what they have seen. In Ciascunothere is a different kind of parallelism, with Moreno and Nuti rejecting

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• the drama clef on stage, yet finding themselves irresistibly drawn toimitate it. Pirandello often took his short stories as the starting-point forhis plays. In Questa sera, perhaps the most ambitious and interesting ofthe three, the director Hinkfuss is adapting for the stage the short storyLeonora, addio!, a tale of Sicilian jealousy and destruction. This providesthe subject for the improvisation of the actors, who slip in and out oftheir roles, so that there is uncertainty as to whether it is the actor or thecharacter who is speaking.

  The Sicilian element, which is very strong in the above short story,frequently emerges in Pirandello. Several plays for instance Pensaci,Giacomino! (Think About It, Giacomino!, 1917), Il berretto a sonagli (Capand Bells, 1918), Liol (1917) and La giara (The Jar, 1925) were originallywritten in dialect. Sometimes a play was started in Italian and thenturned into Sicilian, as was the case of Tutto per bene. Liol was written inPirandellos own dialect of Agrigento (the phonetics of which he hadanalysed in his doctoral thesis at Bonn), whereas the others, with theirmiddle-class settings, were written in the Sicilian of the bourgeoisie.

  Mythic elements, which had been present in earlier plays, find anorganized development in the myth trilogy of the late 1920s, La nuovacolonia (The New Colony, 1928), Lazzaro (Lazarus, 1929) and the unfin-ished I giganti della montagna (The Mountain Giants, published posthu-mously in 1938). In simple terms, the trilogy covers the myth of society,the myth of religion and the myth of art, to which one turns as a lastresort, but all of which fail to provide solutions. In this negativeapproach to myth, Pirandello could be said to differ from writers likeDAnnunzio who tried to find in myth a thread linking different ages.

  Fascism and the avant-garde

  The Fascist rgime, conscious of the political potential of the theatre,encouraged patriotic history plays like those by Giovacchino Forzano(18841970), with his propagandist trilogy Campo di Maggio (Champ deMai, 1930), Villafranca (1931), Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar, 1939), in whichhe used drafts prepared for him by Mussolini. Rino Alessi (18851970)wrote a mystical history play, Savonarola (1935), performed to a mass audi-ence in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. Another large-scale play,directed by the young Alessandro Blasetti, was 18BL (1934), in which theprotagonist was a lorry that had been in use from the First World War tothe establishment of the rgime. Fascist interest in the theatre was also

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• expressed by the setting up of travelling companies (Carri Tespi,Thespiss Carts) and in the creation of the Sabato Teatrale (TheatricalSaturdays) as part of the Dopolavoro (After Work) activities, as well as bythe broadcasting of more radio plays.

  The avant-garde was active throughout the Fascist period. Apart fromthe Futurists, there were writers like Achille Campanile (190077), who,as well as narrative works, produced brief humorous dramatic piecesand was particularly known for his two-liner plays, for example, the 1924Alla stazione (At the Station), in which the characters are two puffingengines. One of the avant-garde dramatists who is now rightly receivingmore attention is Beniamino Joppolo (190663), who took an activelyanti-Fascist position, for which he was twice imprisoned and then sentinto internal exile. His early plays were Lultima stazione (The LastStation, 1941), In cammino (En Route, 1942), Sulla collina (On the Hill)and Domani partiremo (Tomorrow We Leave, both 1943). In 1949 he wroteI carabinieri (adapted by Godard in his 1963 film Les Carabiniers), perhapshis best-known play, along with the two-act Le acque (The Waters, pub-lished in 1961) in which water, the element linking the two acts, onlycauses floods and does not quench thirst.

  Alberto Savinio (the pseudonym of Andrea De Chirico, 18911952),who started his career in the avant-garde in Paris with his brotherGiorgio De Chirico, in 1925 staged for Pirandellos Teatro dArte his Lamorte di Niobe (The Death of Niobe, 1925), a striking one-act mime inwhich the tragedy of a modern-day Niobe is enacted before an impas-sive stage audience; while in Capitano Ulisse (Captain Ulysses, 1934) heoffered an ironic treatment of the contemporary interest in myth. Alsocharacterized by a mythical theme is Lunga notte di Medea (The LongNight of Medea, 1949) by Corrado Alvaro (18951956), which presentsthe tragedy from the point of view of the unfaithful Jason. VitalianoBrancati (190754) was the author of bitter farces. His 1942 Le trombedEustachio (Eustachian Tubes) is a parody of Fascist detective dramaand has amongst its characters an ear and an eye; while his 1952 Lagovernante (The Governess) was banned for having lesbianism as itstheme. The satirist and theatre critic Ennio Flaiano (191072) wrote forVittorio Gassman Un marziano a Roma (A Martian in Rome, 1960), inwhich an alien is welcomed by the Romans, who think that contactwith him will make their life genuine and simple. Instead, their visitortakes to Roman life with gusto, acquiring a lover, two bodyguards,three secretaries and the title Dottore.

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• Drama of commitment

  Some plays were written by anti-Fascists in exile. Leo Ferrero (190333)who left Italy for Paris in 1928, wrote in French his satirical dramaAnglica (1928), which he later translated into Italian. In the form of afable, this tells of the contemporary political struggle, as viewed by awriter who chooses the mode of ironic detachment. Ignazio Silone(190078) wrote Ed egli si nascose (And He Hid, 1944) in exile, exploringthe necessity and hardships of that condition. In August 1943 a mani-festo was issued by a group of dramatists, including Diego Fabbri(191180), Vito Pandolfi (191774) and Tullio Pinelli (1908 ), affirmingthe need to face up to the traumas of a nation suffering war and internalconflicts. Their commitment to contemporary problems was combinedwith a Catholic viewpoint. The theatre of Ugo Betti (18921953) can belinked to this tradition. Betti, by profession a magistrate, had startedwriting in the 1920s: La padrona (The Mistress, 1926), La casa sullacqua(The House on the Water, 1928), followed by his well-known Frana alloscalo nord (Landslide at the Scalo Nord, 1933 taken off the stage by theFascists), which, like his post-war plays Corruzione al Palazzo di giustizia(Corruption in the Palace of Justice, 1948) and Laiuola bruciata (TheBurnt Flower Bed, 1953), treat the themes of evil and responsibility at auniversal level.

  The Neapolitan drama of Viviani and De Filippo

  Returning to the first half of the twentieth century, there is also anotherthread to be followed, less literary and more performance-oriented.Raffaele Viviani (18881950) was born in Naples where the theatre wasdominated by Eduardo Scarpetta, against whose drama, often influ-enced by French comedies and farces, Salvatore Di Giacomo had reacted,wanting a more genuine Neapolitan product firmly rooted in the realityof the city. Viviani started his career as a child actor, and before the FirstWorld War he achieved fame in the Teatro di variet, in sketches in whichhe impersonated traditional Neapolitan types, both comic and tragic, inparticular the victims and the defeated. Vivianis best plays are Pescatori(Fishermen, 1924), Zingari (Gypsies, 1926) and the one-act La musica deiciechi (Music of the Blind, 1927). Pescatori is a bleak family tragedy whichtakes place behind a foreground of the vividly depicted activities of afishing community. Zingari is less realistic: the protagonist achieves a

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• fantasy killing of his rival in the delirium of high fever. In La musica deiciechi a blind musician is in danger of losing his position through jeal-ousy, until the bitter-sweet twist of his wifes confession that she is sougly nobody would court her.

  An actorwriter whose early activities had links with Pirandello wasEduardo De Filippo (190084). Their collaboration started in 1935 whenthe De Filippo company staged a Neapolitan version of Liol. Much hasbeen said about the Pirandellian nature of De Filippos theatre. Clearlythere are some common elements, like the umorismo whereby an out-wardly comic situation hides seriousness and even tragedy. However, DeFilippos theatre is more rooted in Neapolitan reality, sometimes includ-ing socio-political concerns which may find their resolutions in hopeand improvement. It is a far cry from the psychological conflict whichconsumes Pirandellos characters. Eduardo De Filippo was the son ofEduardo Scarpetta. His long professional life coincided with the spreadof the mass media, so that he came to be known not only through hisstage performances, but also through radio, and above all television. DeFilippo often used political and social problems as a backdrop. A case inpoint is the immediate post-war corruption and black market of Napolimilionaria (Millionnaire Naples, 1945). The plot of Filumena Marturano(1946) hinges on the justified trick played by an ex-prostitute and servantto get her long-standing lover Domenico to marry her. She pretends to bedying and tells him that one of her three sons is his, refusing to say whichso that he will accept all three. The unconventional Grande magia (GrandMagic) and Le voci di dentro (The Voices from Within) are both of 1948.The first is based on the illusion which a professional magician createsfor Calogero di Spelta, whose wife has run away from him, namely thathis wife is safely stored away in a little Japanese box. This incredibleexplanation is more acceptable to Calogero than the reality of abandon-ment. In the second, which has the form of a detective story, Alberto, anunemployed organizer of parties, has prophetic dreams of the deathsthat will strike his relatives. One of De Filippos most memorable crea-tions appears in this play: z Nicola, who has given up communicatingverbally with an uncaring world and only makes contact by letting offfireworks.

  Neapolitan theatre has continued to flourish, but with a darker,crueller streak, the result of the disintegration of social structures andthe stranglehold of the camorra, so that more recent plays seem to haveas much in common with Genet and Pinter as with Viviani and De

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• Filippo. There is Mario Santanelli (1930 ) with his Pinter-like Uscitademergenza (Emergency Exit, 1981) and Bellavita Carolina (1987) on thewartime black market; there is Annibale Ruccello (195686) withFerdinando (1985), a drama centred on the bisexual seduction of a beauti-ful youth against the setting of a decaying Neapolitan villa; there is EnzoMoscato (1948 ), with Compleanno (Birthday, 1992), in which rebellion,despair and silence characterize the microcosm of family life.

  Dario Fo

  In 1984, when De Filippo, who was a life Senator, died and his body lay instate in the Italian Senate, the person invited to give the official com-memoration was Dario Fo who, although very different in his approachto the theatre, was seen as De Filippos successor. Fo was born in 1926 andstudied as an architect and scenographer. His skills led him to practicaltheatre, and he trained with the mime Jacques Lecoq, who had workedwith the director Giorgio Strehler at the Piccolo in Milan. In 1952, at thePiccolo, Fo, Franco Parenti and Giustino Durano put on a review, Il ditonellocchio (Finger in the Eye), followed the next year by Sani da legare(Sane as Hatters), even more politicizing and violently anti-conformist.It was at this time that Fo began to run into trouble with censorship andto clash with the authorities. His marriage and professional partnershipwith Franca Rame, who came from a family of travelling puppet-mastersand comedians, gave him experience of a different type of theatre. Fortheir company, set up in 1957, Fo wrote some very successful surrealfarces into which he injected topical allusions, for instance Gli arcangelinon giocano a flipper (Archangels Dont Play Pinball, 1959) and Settimo, rubaun po meno (Seventh, Steal a Bit Less, 1964). After 1967, Fo and Rameabandoned bourgeois theatre, where paradoxically the butt of theirsatire the middle classes by laughing at themselves took the sting outof the criticism, and instead performed in left-wing cultural clubs andfringe theatres, encouraging audience participation in their Teatro delcampo (Community Theatre).

  Fos approach was gradually to build up his plays as he rehearsedthem so that the written text only emerged at the end. One of his best-known plays is the 1970 Morte accidentale dun anarchico (Accidental Deathof an Anarchist), which had the serious motive of looking into the deathof the Anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli while in police custody, and in whichFo uses genuine passages taken from police statements. The play however

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• makes its point as a farce, with a madman finding his way into the policestation and being mistaken for the judge investigating Pinellis death.Another type of production, Mistero buffo (Comic Mystery), was devel-oped by Fo as a one-man show from 1969 into the 1990s. This has itsorigin in medieval and biblical figures, which are endowed with featuresapplicable to the present, and owes its fascination to Fos brilliance as anactor and to his original creation of languages with which the differentscenes are interspersed. In 1997 Fo was awarded the Nobel prize, a recog-nition which was received with mixed reactions in Italy where he is oftenconsidered more important as a performer than as a writer.

  Drama from the 1960s to the present

  To return to works of a more literary nature, we find contemporary prob-lems also represented by the art critic, poet, novelist and playwrightGiovanni Testori (192393). In his Arialda (produced in 1960 by Visconti,but swiftly banned by the censors), he depicts the life of the poor inMilan, the breakdown of family life, the drug scene, and the problems ofSouthern immigration. But behind these realist themes there is a highlystylized drama of suffering humanity driven by desire, expressed in alanguage heightened by popular idiom. The language becomes morepersonal and formulaic in the trilogy LAmbleto (1972), Macbetto (1974)and Edipus (1977), distortions of the Shakespearean and classical trage-dies, with the extremes of evil and violence turning into infernalsequences.

  A personal interpretation of the classics, this time emphasizing notalienation but approachability, was provided by one of the experimentalGruppo 63, Edoardo Sanguineti (1930 ). In 1968 Luca Ronconi stagedSanguinetis highly successful dramatic representation of AriostosOrlando furioso, in which different episodes were enacted simultaneously,with the audience moving from scene to scene, and in 1989 FedericoTiezzi produced his Inferno in which an expressionistic rendering ofDantes language created a taut, dramatic version. An embodiment ofthe neo-avant-garde is Carmelo Bene (1937 ), a brilliantly versatile manof the theatre, actor and producer sometimes of his own texts. The bestknown is the 1966 Nostra Signora dei Turchi (Our Lady of the Turks), anirreverent sequence based on his own southern ItalianSaracen back-ground, rejecting nation and religion, and unconventional in its treat-ment of the audience.

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• In 1968 Pier Paolo Pasolini (192275) wrote his Manifesto per un nuovoteatro (Manifesto for a New Theatre), in which he rejected both aca-demic and avant-garde theatre: the theatre of chiacchiera (chatter/gossip), and the theatre of gesto or urlo (gesture or scream). Instead hewanted a more abstract, classical, fragmented drama, with a culturalunderstanding between stage and audience of the scenic mistero/enigmaas he called it. After translations of the Oresteia and the Miles gloriosus ren-dered into a popular idiom based on Roman dialect, in 1966 camePasolinis own verse plays, Caldern, Affabulazione (Affabulation), Pilade(Pylades), Porcile (Pigsty), Orgia (Orgy) and Bestia da stile (Beast ofStyle). Not very successful at first, they later achieved fame throughRonconis productions. Pasolinis is a teatro di parola (theatre of words), aconceptual drama with debate and conflict in a struggle to achieveReason, which for him was a form of mythicized historical materialism.

  Like Testori and Pasolini, Natalia Ginzburg (191691) was not primar-ily a playwright, and like them she caught in her own characteristic waythe dilemma of her age. She wrote eleven plays, and her deceptivelysimple dialogue creates a sense of loneliness, disillusion, incompatibil-ity and fragile, uneasy relationships which are established anddestroyed. Dacia Maraini (1936 ), primarily a novelist, has taken up anexplicitly social and political position. She set up various theatre compa-nies, including the Teatro della Maddalena in Rome (197390), a venturewhich was run by women to encourage Feminist culture in Italy. Herplays include Centocelle: gli anni del fascismo (Centocelle, the Years ofFascism, 1971), Viva lItalia (Long Live Italy, 1973) and La donna perfetta(The Perfect Woman, 1974) which depicts the tragedy of a young girlwho dies after an abortion. A Feminist stance is also taken in the shows ofFranca Rame (1929 ), co-authored with Dario Fo: Tutta casa, letto e chiesa(All Home, Bed and Church) and Parliamo di donne (Talking of Women,both 1977), and Coppia aperta (Open Couple, 1981).

  In other contemporary dramatists there are frequent expressions offamily torments: In La fastidiosa (Awkward, 1963) by Franco Brusati(1922 ), a play with echoes of Edward Albee, the conflict is epitomizedby the wifes desire to become a nun; his Piet di novembre (NovemberPity, 1966) presents the life of Luca (modelled on Lee Harvey Oswald),who cannot accept mediocrity. Ugo Chiti (1943 ) has written a trilogy:Paesaggio con figure (Landscape with Figures, 1992), Allegretto (per bene manon troppo) (Allegretto (All Proper But Not Too Much), 1987) and La pro-vincia di Jimmy (Jimmys Province, 1989) which take us respectively to the

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• Italy of the turn of the century, of Fascism, and of the youth rebellion ofthe 1950s. Especially in La provincia, there is the influence of Americancinema and a move towards popular speech. Fratelli destate (SummerSiblings, 1995) by Cesare Lievi (1952 ) is a family tragedy reminiscent ofEugene ONeill, with generational recriminations, while La camera biancasopra il mercato dei fiori (The White Room Above the Flower Market, 1995)by Rocco DOnghia (1956 ) takes place in a De Chirico-style square,recounting the vicissitudes of five individuals who go back in time ineach act, from old age to young adulthood, a record of the destruction ofillusions and relationships. Lievi and DOnghia reject the middle lan-guage often found on the Italian stage and use shifting registers whichpass from Baroque to popular, preferring the tradition of narrativewriters like Gadda. Giuseppe Manfridi (1956 ) offers us Recanati, thehome town of Leopardi in Giacomo il prepotente (Giacomo the Bully,1987); the violence of Teppisti (Thugs, 1986) where verse is used to alien-ate us from the situation; and the multimedia environment of Stringimi ate, stringiti a me (Press Me to You, Press Yourself to Me, 1990). The theatrehistorian Paolo Puppa (1945 ) has passed from adaptations of classicaland modern drama to his own plays: Parole al buio (Words in the Dark,1992 ), twelve dialogues and a monologue, in which a Goldoni rehearsalis interrupted by a character trying to persuade the director to read thepoetry of her dead friend; La collina di Euridice (Eurydices Hill, 1996),another powerful dialogue, in which elderly parents who have lost theironly child conceal beneath empty chatter, the trauma of their loss; andthe haunting Tre albe (Three Dawns, 1999). Noteworthy too is thedynamic young company of the Teatro Settimo of Turin, who write theirown shows, sometimes basing themselves on existing narratives, as intheir 1989 Libera nos, adapted from Luigi Meneghellos prose-work Liberanos a malo (1963). Meneghellos narrative has also been the subject ofanother dramatization, Lorto (The Orchard, 1998), by Marco Paolini(already well known for his television work Il racconto del Vajont, TheStory of Vajont, 1994).

  The final play I wish to mention also draws its inspiration from recentwriters, in this case Pessoa and Pirandello. This is Il Signor Pirandello desiderato al telefono (Signor Pirandello is Wanted on the Phone, 1988) bythe novelist and short-story writer Antonio Tabucchi (1943 ). It takesplace in a psychiatric hospital, with an actor entertaining the patients.The actor plays the part of Pessoa and imagines he is ringing Pirandelloto discuss theatrical problems with him:

  212 Anna Laura Lepschy

• I would like to ring Pirandello

  perhaps he could help me

  get out of this situation

  he knows how to deal with characters

  who find themselves trapped, slaves

  of a role and of a mask.

  In view of the centrality of Pirandello in Italian post-unification theatre,Tabucchis lines seem a fitting conclusion to this survey.7

  notes

  1. Giorgio Pullini, Il teatro in Italia. iii. Settecento e Ottocento (Rome: Edizioni Studium,1995), pp. 183213.2. Roberto Alonge, Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo Ottocento (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1988),pp. 3ff.3. Franca Angelini, Teatro e spettacolo nel primo Novecento (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1991),pp. 13974.4. Gianfranco Pedull, Il teatro italiano nel tempo del fascismo (Bologna: il Mulino, 1994),p. 112.5. Alda Croce (ed.), Teatro italiano della seconda met dellOttocento (Rome and Bari:Laterza, 1940), vol. ii, p. 156.6. Ferdinando Taviani, Uomini di scena, uomini di libro (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995).7. A longer version of this chapter is forthcoming in The Italianist 21 (2001).

  further reading

  Barberi Squarotti, Giorgio (ed.), La letteratura in scena. Il teatro del Novecento. Turin:Editrice Tirrenia Stampatori, 1985.

  Bloom, Harold (ed.), Luigi Pirandello. New York: Chelsea House, 1989.Gnsberg, Maggie, Patriarchal Representations. Gender and Discourse in Pirandellos Theatre.

  Oxford and Providence: Berg, 1994.Livio, Gigi, Il teatro in rivolta. Futurismo, grottesco, Pirandello e pirandellismo. Milan: Mursia,

  1976.Lorch, Jennifer, Setting the Scene: Theater in Italy Before Pirandello, in J. DiGaetani

  (ed.), A Companion to Pirandello Studies. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991,pp. 12543.

  Meldolesi, Claudio and Taviani, Ferdinando, Teatro e spettacolo nel primo Ottocento. Romeand Bari: Laterza, 1991.

  Puppa, Paolo, Itinerari nella drammaturgia del Novecento, in Cecchi, Emilio andNatalino Sapegno (eds.), Il Novecento, vol. ii. Milan: Garzanti, 1987, pp. 713864.

  Teatro e spettacolo nel secondo Novecento. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1993.Squarzina, Luigi, Da Dioniso a Brecht. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988.Tessari, Roberto, Teatro italiano del Novecento. Florence: Le Letere, 1996.Tinterri, Alessandro (ed.), Il teatro italiano dal naturalismo a Pirandello. Bologna: Il Mulino,

  1990.Wood, Sharon, Italian Womens Writing. 18601994. London: Athlone, 1995.

  Drama 213

• p e t e r b o n d a n e l l a

  11

  Italian cinema

  Italian silent cinema

  On 11 November 1895, Filoteo Albertini applied for a patent on theAlbertini Kinetograph, and between 1909 and 1916, the Italian silentcinema represented a major force in world cinema before the hegemonyof Hollywood was firmly established. Albertini produced the firstfeature film with a complex plot La presa di Roma (The Taking of Rome,1905) a treatment of a patriotic theme, the annexation of the EternalCity to the new Italian state in 1870. The next year, a major productioncompany, CINES, was founded, which enabled Italian films to capturethe world market for a brief period. While Italian silent films reflected avariety of genres Roman costume dramas, adventure films, comedies,filmed drama, even experimental, avant-garde works the industrysmost popular product was the costumed film set in classical antiquity.The periods greatest director was Giovanni Pastrone (18831959), whosemajestic silent classic Cabiria (1914) established the popularity of thefeature film with its depiction of the Second Punic War and influencedD. W. Griffiths Intolerance (1916).

  The coming of sound and the Fascist era

  After the end of the First World War, foreign competition almostdestroyed the Italian film industry, forcing production to drop from 200films in 1920 to fewer than a dozen works in 1927. A few years later, soundwas introduced to Italian audiences with La canzone dellamore (The Songof Love, 1930), directed by Gennaro Righelli (18861949) from a shortstory by Luigi Pirandello. Mussolini himself received a private showing

• of this first venture into the talkies in Italy, a reflection of howimportant cinema was to his regime. During most of the 1920s,Italian cinemas (numbering some 3,000 at one point ) could onlyimport works from abroad. When the Italian government moved toblock the American monopoly within the peninsula, Hollywoodstudios withdrew from the Italian market. No longer forced to faceoverwhelming American economic pressure, local productionboomed. During the Fascist period, over 700 films were produced in

  216 Peter Bondanella

  1. Giovanni Pastrones Cabiria (1914): Maciste (Bartolomeo Pagano) rescues Cabiria fromsacrifice to the Carthaginian god Moloch.

• Italy, most not really Fascist films at all but primarily entertainmentand documentary.

  Outside Italy, little was known of Italian cinema during the Fascistperiod, and this ignorance created the erroneous idea abroad that post-war Italian film rose miraculously from the ashes of the war and anti-Fascist culture. Many important contributions laying the groundwork forthe post-war creative explosion (including the technical and aestheticpreparation for the birth of Italian Neorealism) must be credited to thepre-war period. The Fascist regime played a major role in this develop-ment. The government built one of the worlds great film complexes,Cinecitt (Cinema City), which Mussolini himself inaugurated in1937. The regime also founded an important film school, theCentro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Experimental Centre ofCinematography, 1935). Both institutions are still in operation today andconstitute the backbone of the present industry. Several important filmjournals Bianco e nero (Black and White, the official organ of the Centro)and Cinema (edited at one time by Mussolinis son Vittorio) helped tospread information about foreign theories and techniques through trans-lations and reviews. Most of the great directors, actors, technicians andscriptwriters of the Neorealist period received their training during theFascist period, and some post-war figures, such as Roberto Rossellini(190677), made their first films in the service of the Fascist government.

  Two directors stand out during this period: Mario Camerini(18851991) and Alessandro Blasetti (190087). Camerinis stylish come-dies stressed role-playing in society, and first brought together VittorioDe Sica (190274) as an actor and Cesare Zavattini (190289) as a script-writer in a classic comedy, Dar un milione (Ill Give a Million, 1935). Longbefore De Sica became identified as the director of post-war Neorealistclassics scripted by Zavattini, he was the most popular actor and singerin Fascist Italy. Camerinis comedies the best of which were those withDe Sica, such as Il Signor Max (Mr Max, 1937) established a level ofcraftsmanship and witty sophistication that rivals the best products ofcontemporary Hollywood studios. Blasetti was the first Italian directorin the sound period to make use of non-professional actors and on-location shooting in the pursuit of film realism (all supposedly originalinventions of post-war Neorealism). These stylistic features are evidentin his masterpiece 1860 (1934), a patriotic film about Garibaldi, theoriginal version of which linked Garibaldis soldiers to MussolinisBlackshirts much as anti-Fascist partisans would later link GaribaldisRedshirts to their own guerilla forces wearing red neckerchiefs.

  Italian cinema 217

• Blasettis Vecchia guardia (The Old Guard, 1935) does provide heroicdepiction of Mussolinis rise to power with a documentary style glorify-ing the March on Rome. Yet Blasetti also made one of the most beautifuland fanciful of all pre-1945 films, La corona di ferro (The Iron Crown,1941), in which ornately stylized studio sets testify to the technicalprowess reached by Cinecitt and whose dominant theme was a hymn topeace. His Quattro passi fra le nuvole (A Stroll in the Clouds, 1942) prefig-ures the poetic style of De Sicas Neorealism.

  Italian cinema during the Fascist period was nationalistic and patri-otic, much like every other national cinema, including Hollywood. Onlyabout a dozen of all the feature works produced during the rgimeslifetime can really be said to embody Fascist ideology or to have beenproduced with political ends in mind. The Fascist rgime preferred acinema of entertainment, and exerted its ideological control predomi-nantly through newsreels and documentaries rather than throughfiction film. The search for a realistic documentary style in Italiancinema began not with the post-war Neorealists but with directorsenjoying Mussolinis favour. For example, in Lassedio dellAlcazar (TheSiege of the Alcazar, 1940) by Augusto Gennina (18921957), the story of

  218 Peter Bondanella

  2. On the outskirts of Rome, Mussolini begins construction of the largest film studioin Europe, Cinecitt (Cinema City). Underneath his image as a film director is thepropaganda slogan Cinematography is the most powerful weapon, a remark made byLenin, whom Mussolini admired.

• the heroic defence of the Toledo fortress by Francos Fascist troopsduring the Spanish Civil War, there is a fascinating combination of factand fiction, documentary style and fantasy, that would be continued inthe major documentaries shot for the Italian armed forces by FrancescoDe Robertis (190259) and by a young Rossellini. Rossellini shot threeimportant pre-war films that may be called his Fascist trilogy: La navebianca (The White Ship, 1941), Un pilota ritorna (A Pilot Returns, 1942)and Luomo dalla croce (The Man With a Cross, 1943). They employ thehybrid style later made famous by post-war Neorealism: on-locationshooting, documentary photography, many non-professional actorsand fictionalized historical plots.

  Post-war Italian Neorealism

  With the fall of Mussolini and the end of the war, international audi-ences were introduced to Italian films through a few great masterpiecesby Rossellini, De Sica and Luchino Visconti (190676). ItalianNeorealism underlined social themes (the war, poverty, the Resistance,unemployment); it seemed to reject traditional dramatic and cinematicconventions associated with Hollywood; it stressed on-location shoot-ing rather than studio work, as well as the documentary photographicstyle favoured by many directors under the former rgime; and it oftenemployed non-professional actors in original ways. Film historians haveunfortunately tended to speak of Neorealism as if it were an authenticmovement with universally agreed stylistic or thematic principles. Thebasis for the fundamental change in cinematic history marked by ItalianNeorealism was less an agreement on a single, unified cinematic stylethan a common aspiration to view Italy without preconceptions and toemploy a more honest and ethical, but no less poetic, cinematic languagein the process.

  The masterpieces of Neorealism are Rossellinis Roma citt aperta(Rome Open City, 1945) and Pais (Paisan, 1946); De Sicas Ladri di bici-clette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948); and Viscontis La terra trema (The EarthTrembles, 1948). Roma citt aperta so completely reflected the moral andpsychological atmosphere of the immediate post-war period that itsinternational critical success alerted the world to the rebirth of Italiancinema. With a daring combination of styles and moods, due in greatmeasure to brilliant scriptwriting by Sergio Amidei (190491) and ayoung Federico Fellini (192093), Rossellini captured the tension and

  Italian cinema 219

• 220 Peter Bondanella

  3. Luchino Viscontis Ossessione (1942), an unauthorized Italian version of James Cainsnovel The Postman Always Rings Twice, is one of the films made during the Fascist periodthat would lead to Italian Neorealist style. Here the debilitating effects of an illicit loveaffair can be seen on the faces of Gino (Massimo Girotti) and Giovanna (Clara Calamai).

  4. Roberto Rossellinis Roma citt aperta (1945): partisan leader Manfredi (MarcelloPagliero), photographed as a crucified Christ, is tortured by the Gestapo.

• tragedy of Italian life under German occupation and the partisan strug-gle out of which the new democratic republic was subsequently born.Pais reflects to a far greater extent the conventions of the newsreel doc-umentary, tracing in six separate episodes the Allied invasion of Italyand its slow process up through the boot of the peninsula. Yet thegrainy film, the awkward acting of the non-professional actors, theauthoritative voice-over narration and the immediacy of subject-matterwe associate with newsreels do not completely explain the aestheticqualities of the work. Rossellini depicts the historic encounter of twoalien cultures, resulting in initial incomprehension but eventualkinship and brotherhood.

  De Sicas Ladri di biciclette is the finest example of non-professionalacting in Neorealist cinema. While De Sica employs non-professionals,

  Italian cinema 221

  5. Roberto Rossellinis Pais (1946): a black GI named Joe (Dots M. Johnson)meets a Neapolitan street urchin named Pasquale (Alfonsino Pasca).

• on-location shooting and social themes (unemployment, the effects ofthe war on the post-war economy) typical of many Neorealist films, theappeal of Ladri di biciclette cannot be explained completely by its superfi-cially realistic style. The mythic structure of the plot a quest for abicycle, ironically a Fides (Faith) brand, that has been stolen suggests tothe viewer that De Sica is not merely offering a political film denouncinga particular socio-economic system. Social reform may change a world inwhich the loss of a mere bicycle spells economic disaster, but no amountof social engineering or even revolution will alter the basic facts of life inDe Sicas universe solitude, loneliness and alienation.

  Viscontis La terra trema is a far more ambitious ideological and aes-thetic undertaking. An adaptation of the veristic novel by GiovanniVerga, I Malavoglia (The Malavoglias, 1881), it is coloured by the Marxisttheories of Antonio Gramsci. In many ways, the film fits the traditionalstereotypical definition of Italian Neorealism better than any other filmfrom the same period. No studio sets or sound stages were used, and thecast was selected from the Sicilian fishing village of Aci Trezza, thenovels setting. Visconti even refused to dub the film into standard

  222 Peter Bondanella

  6. Vittorio De Sicas Ladri di biciclette (1948): Bruno (Enzo Staiola) delivers one of thegreatest of all non-professional performances as a child who helps his father locate astolen bicycle.

• Italian, preferring the more realistic effects of Sicilian dialect and syn-chronized sound. The films visuals underline the cyclical, timelessquality of life in Aci Trezza. Viscontis typically slow panning shots witha stationary camera, or his long, static shots of motionless objects andactors, produce a formalism that bestows dignity and beauty on humble,ordinary people.

  These four masterpieces by Rossellini, De Sica and Visconti, all origi-nal contributions to film language, were (with the exception of Romacitt aperta) unpopular within Italy and achieved critical success primar-ily among audiences, critics, filmmakers and intellectuals abroad. One ofthe paradoxes of Italian Neorealism is that the ordinary people suchfilms set out to portray were relatively uninterested in their own screenimage: Italians preferred to see Hollywood products. Of the approxi-mately 800 films produced between 1945 and 1953 in Italy, only a

  Italian cinema 223

  7. Luchino Viscontis La terra trema (1948): deep-focus photography adds to thespatial realism of a Neorealist masterpiece.

• relatively small number (about 10%) can be classified as Neorealist, andmost of these films were box-office failures. Italian audiences were reluc-tant to abandon popular Hollywood codes, and a number of less originalbut more successful Neorealist films were able to achieve greater resultsat the box-office by incorporating traditional Hollywood genres withintheir narratives about Italian subjects. Such films as Vivere in pace (ToLive in Peace, 1946) by Luigi Zampa (190591), Senza piet (Without Pity,1948) by Alberto Lattuada (1914 ), Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, 1948) byGiuseppe De Santis (191797) and Il cammino della speranza (The Path ofHope, 1950) by Pietro Germi (191474) expanded the boundaries ofItalian Neorealism by shifting away from semi-documentary treatmentsof social problems toward conventional Hollywood themes and filmgenres, such as the Western or film noir. As a result of their combinationof Neorealist style with Hollywood subject-matter, such works manageda respectable performance at the box-office.

  The crisis of Neorealism

  It soon became obvious that while Italian leftist intellectuals and socialcritics preferred the implicitly political and sometimes even revolution-ary messages of Neorealist cinema, the public was more interested inHollywood films or Italian films with a Hollywood spirit. Even the great-est Neorealist directors (Rossellini, Antonioni, Visconti) soon becameuncomfortable with the restrictive boundaries imposed upon theirsubject-matter or style by well-meaning but ideologically motivatedcritics. In Italian film history, the transition beyond Neorealism is oftencalled the crisis of Neorealism. In retrospect, the period from 195053 to1968 can be more accurately described as a natural evolution of Italianfilm language toward a cinema concerned with psychological problemsand a new aesthetic style no longer dominated by non-professionalactors, on-location shooting, documentary style and social problems.Crucial to this historic transition are a number of early works byMichelangelo Antonioni (1912 ), several works starring IngridBergman by Rossellini and the first films directed by Federico Fellini. InCronaca di un amore (Story of a Love Affair, 1950), Antonionis first featurefilm, the director employs a plot indebted to James Cains novel ThePostman Always Rings Twice and to American film noir. But his distinctivephotographic signature is already evident: characteristically long shots,tracks and pans following the actors; modernist editing techniques

  224 Peter Bondanella

• reflecting the slow rhythms of daily life; and philosophical concernswith obvious links to European Existentialism. In Viaggio in Italia(Voyage to Italy, 1953), Rossellini abandons his documentary style toembrace an abstract psychological realism that also reflected the empha-sis upon alienation typical of contemporary post-war European philos-ophy.

  It was with Fellinis early films that the Italian cinema moved reso-lutely beyond a preoccupation with social problems, although his workscertainly reflect a deep understanding of Italian culture that no otherItalian director can match. In I vitelloni (1953), for example, Fellini pro-vides a classic portrait of six provincial characters which a Neorealistdirector would have presented as an indictment of provincial backward-ness. But Fellini is more interested in exploring the private fantasyworlds of his creations than he is in making polemical statements aboutItalian society. Fellinis concern with private fantasy worlds and hisbelief in transcendental experiences beyond mere humdrum reality findtheir greatest expression in two masterpieces, both of which were toreceive an Oscar for Best Foreign Film: La strada (The Road, 1954) and Lenotti di Cabiria (The Nights of Cabiria, 1956). In each film, Fellini movesbeyond a strictly realistic portrayal of provincial life to reveal a new

  Italian cinema 225

  8. Roberto Rossellinis Viaggio in Italia (1953): the marriage of Katherine (IngridBergman) and Alexander (George Sanders) falls apart amidst the ruins of ancientPompeii.

• poetic dimension, one motivated by a personal vision and a particularFellinian mythology concerned with spiritual poverty and the necessityfor grace or salvation (defined in strictly secular terms but owing anobvious debt to Catholicism).

  New directions after Neorealism

  In the decade between 1958 (a time when the so-called crisis ofNeorealism had clearly passed) and 1968 (a year of violent social and polit-ical upheavals all over Europe which shook Italy to its foundations),Italian cinema reached a level of artistic quality, international popularityand economic strength it had never before achieved. Film productioncontinued at well above 200 films per year in Italy, while a prolongedcrisis in Hollywood reduced American competition within the Italianmarket and abroad. Not only did Italy boast a number of distinguishedauteurs (Antonioni, Fellini, Rossellini, Visconti) whose names had becomehousehold words everywhere and whose greatest films were being pro-duced at this time, but the Italian cinema also witnessed the arrival of asecond generation of brilliant young directors who had been apprenticesto their masters: Pier Paolo Pasolini (192275), Bernardo Bertolucci(1940 ), Marco Bellocchio (1939 ), Gillo Pontecorvo (1919 ), ErmannoOlmi (1931 ), Francesco Rosi (1922 ), Elio Petri (192982), Paolo (1931 )and Vittorio Taviani (1929 ) and Sergio Leone (192189). Italian filmsregularly won major prizes at the worlds most important festivals(Cannes, Venice, Berlin, New York); Italian films, their directors and theiractors were the toast of international critics and film historians who priv-ileged the so-called art film; and perhaps most importantly, the industrymade huge profits in the international market by exporting not only thetraditional film comedies that had always been the staple product of theItalian industry, but also other genre films, such as the spaghettiWestern (a genre usually associated with Hollywood but which Italiansrevolutionized, making a star out of Clint Eastwood in the process) or thepeplum film costume films set in the classical period that recalled Italysinitial success with this genre during the silent period.

  Film comedy

  Film comedies (the so-called commedia allitaliana) and spaghettiWesterns dominated the Italian market during this decade. The Italian

  226 Peter Bondanella

• cinema was blessed with a number of excellent comic directors, such asMario Monicelli (1915 ), Luigi Comencini (1916 ) and Dino Risi(1917 ). Even more important, Italian cinema boasted a wealth of greatactors: Alberto Sordi (1919 ), Vittorio Gassman (19222000), MarcelloMastroianni (192396), Nino Manfredi (1921 ), Ugo Tognazzi(192290), Monica Vitti (1931 ), Claudia Cardinale (1939 ), SophiaLoren (1934 ) and Stefania Sandrelli (1946 ) which no nationalcinema outside of Hollywood could match. Many critics of the leftduring the period denigrated commedia allitaliana as merely commer-cial cinema without artistic value, just as they ignored the Italian contri-bution to the Western genre. Their ideological bias ignored the fact thatItalian comic films often contained more trenchant social criticism thanthe more acceptable, ideologically oriented art films of the period. Thegreat comic films of the decade from 1958 to 1968 provide an amusingbut often accurate mirror of changing Italian customs and values. Theyhelped to force the average Italian into a greater awareness of conflictingmoral standards; they attacked age-old prejudices; and they questionedthe rule of inept governing lites and institutions. The film which best

  Italian cinema 227

  9. Pietro Germis Divorzio allitaliana (1961): in the absence of a divorce law, Fef(Marcello Mastroianni) must trick his wife Rosalia (Daniela Rocca) into committingadultery with Carmelo (Leopoldo Trieste) so that he can kill her and escapepunishment.

• reflects the combination of humour and social criticism typical of thecommedia allitaliana is Pietro Germis Divorzio allitaliana (Divorce,Italian Style, 1961). Made before Italian law permitted legal divorce,Germis satire of Sicilian sexual mores chronicles the comic attempts of aSicilian nobleman to force his hated wife into adultery, so that he canmurder her, receive a light sentence for a crime of honour (hence thefilms title), and marry his mistress. Utilizing a complex narrative juxta-posing the directors critical view of this affair with the Sicilians biasedjustifications of his misdeeds, Germi recreates the oppressive atmos-phere of Sicilian provincial life that forces men and women to commitviolent crimes in order to obtain sexual fulfilment.

  The spaghetti Western and the peplum film

  The other remarkably successful commercial genre during this periodwas the Western, dominated by a single man: Sergio Leone. The Italianspaghetti Western owes a debt to another popular genre, the so-calledneo-mythological or peplum film, which accounted for 10 per cent ofItalian production between 1957 and 1964. Set in vaguely classical timesand populated by mindless musclemen and buxom damsels in distress,these works appealed to a predominantly male audience that thrived onviolent action and strong, anti-intellectual heroes such as Steve Reeves(only one of a number of American actors employed by the Italian indus-try during this period). The peplum films characteristic emphasis uponaction was continued by the spaghetti Western. Between 1963 and 1973,over 400 such Westerns were produced in Italy, but none of them had theimpact of Leones first work, Un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars,1964). This film revolutionized what was at the time an almostexhausted Hollywood genre by a conscious departure from what hadcome to be known as the classic Western formula. Leone plunges us intoa violent and cynical world far removed from the traditional West ofJohn Ford or Howard Hawks. The hero is motivated by the same greed asthe evil bandits, and graphic violence is accompanied by grotesquecomic gags and mannered close-ups indebted to Eisenstein. A crucialartistic element is the skilful music of Ennio Morricone (1928 ), whofirst received international recognition from his collaboration withLeone, and whose unusual sound track composed of gunfire, ricochet-ting bullets, cries, trumpet solos, Sicilian folk instruments and whistlesbecame an international best-selling record. The classic Western show-

  228 Peter Bondanella

• down becomes in Leones hands a ritualistic act concluding a narrativecycle and employs a crescendo of music not unlike the conclusion of anaria in grand opera. Though few in number, Leone s influential Westernfilms that followed Un pugno di dollari were not merely hugely profitable:they also revived the most famous of all American film genres.

  Auteurs and the art film: Visconti, Antonioni, Fellini

  If film comedy, Roman pot-boilers and Western epics produced theindustrys most lucrative returns, the so-called art films directed byauteurs proved to be almost equally good investments during the decade.In fact, one of the remarkable features of this period in Italian filmhistory was its ability to produce great art that also turned a handsomeprofit. Works such as Fellinis La dolce vita (The Sweet Life, 1959),Viscontis Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1962) or Antonionis Blow-Up (1966)were not only major artistic creations, but also gained a large share of theinternational film market. Fellinis best work during the period empha-sized his introspective fantasy world and brilliant, Baroque imagery, asin his masterpiece Otto e mezzo (81, 1963), and in Giulietta degli spiriti

  Italian cinema 229

  10. Sergio Leones The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966): the site of the climactic gunfightthat concludes all of Leones spaghetti Westerns.

• (Juliet of the Spirits, 1965) and Satyricon (1969). Viscontis best films Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and his Brothers, 1960), La caduta degli dei (TheFall of the Gods, 1969) and Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice, 1971) analyse European decadence and owe a great debt both to grand operaand to the European novel. Antonionis brilliant modernist photogra-phy finds its best expression in the black-and-white trilogy of LAvventura(The Adventure, 1960), La Notte (The Night, 1961) and Leclisse (TheEclipse, 1962), and in his innovative treatment of colour in Il deserto rosso(The Red Desert, 1964).

  Otto e mezzo, Il deserto rosso and La caduta degli dei reflect the highlycomplex stylistic shifts which had occurred in the work of these threeauteurs, each of whom had his origins in the Italian Neorealist era.Visconti usually aimed at establishing a link between his films and abroader historical context. La caduta degli dei provides a powerful visualmetaphor for the infernal nature of moral degradation, a pathologicalcase history of Nazi Germany underlined by the violent and hellishcolours that dominate the films visuals. In Antonionis Il deserto rosso,colour photography pre-empts the central function of traditional plotand character by concentrating on the relationship between charactersand their environment, represented by the machinery and contempo-

  230 Peter Bondanella

  11. Michelangelo Antonionis Il deserto rosso (1964): the directors careful compositionswithin the frame underlie his abstract use of colour and form.

• rary technology of a modern oil refinery in Ravenna. Antonionis colourphotography is thoroughly modernist (only a single scene, a dream of adesert island, is shot in what we have come to consider as natural filmcolour). Its hues come from the world of industrial plastics, chemicalsand artificial fabrics. In some cases, the director even changes the coloursof natural objects (grass, fruit) to reflect the psychological states of hisdisturbed characters. And he frames each shot as if he were a contempo-rary abstract painter, asking us to consider objects from the world oftechnology primarily as art forms and only later as objects with a utili-tarian function. Fellinis Otto e mezzo embodies its creators belief that thecinema exists primarily for the purpose of individual self-expression,not historical investigation or abstract photography: fantasy, rather thanreality, is its proper domain, because only fantasy falls under the direc-tors complete artistic control. The harried protagonist of the film, thedirector Guido, possesses many of Fellinis personal traits. Fellinis nar-rative moves rapidly and seamlessly between Guidos reality, his fanta-sies, and flashbacks to the past of his dreams a discontinuous story linewith little logical or chronological unity. The influence of psychoanalysisis obvious in the view Fellini presents of sexuality in the film, as personal

  Italian cinema 231

  12. Federico Fellinis Otto e mezzo (1963): the exhausted director on the set of analternate ending for the film that was eventually rejected.

• problems prevent Guido from achieving artistic fulfilment. In no otherfilm by Fellini was there to be such a perfect synthesis of his personality,his introspective style and cinematic bravura.

  A new generation of auteurs: beyond Neorealism

  While Visconti, Antonioni and Fellini dominated Italian cinema duringthe period, their international prestige coincided with the rise of anextremely talented group of younger men whose first works wereindebted to Neorealism but who reflected what might be called a criticalrealism with ideological implications. The best examples of such preco-ciously brilliant works are Pasolinis Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The GospelAccording to Matthew, 1964), Pontecorvos La battaglia di Algeri (TheBattle of Algiers, 1966), Bernardo Bertoluccis Prima della rivoluzione(Before the Revolution, 1964), Marco Bellocchios La Cina vicina (ChinaIs Near, 1967), Francesco Rosis Salvatore Giuliano (1962) and ErmannoOlmis Il posto (The Job, 1961).

  In Il posto, Olmis use of non-professional actors and his emphasis uponexpressive deep-focus shots in office interiors reflect an obvious debt to DeSicas poetic Neorealism. Rosi, following Viscontis example in his beliefthat film must make an ideological statement, moves beyond Neorealistpresentation of facts to what he terms a documented method of makingfilms in Salvatore Giuliano. This treatment of a Sicilian bandits career anddeath is less a work of fiction than an investigation (film inchiesta) into theambiguous historical circumstances of the figure. The film uncoverscorrupt connections between the Christian Democratic Party and theMafia, establishing itself as the first of many Italian political films thatwould flourish in the period. Pontecorvo employs a documentary style inLa battaglia di Algeri, with a narrative structure that uses flashbacks andflashforwards to provide critical commentary on the facts the film pre-sents. His careful recreation of a case history of Third World revolutionowes an important debt to the early war films and techniques ofRossellini. Pontecorvos highly mobile, hand-held cameras employ fastfilm stock; the telephoto lenses common in television news reporting sim-ulate a documentary style; duplicating the negative of his film in the lab-oratory recreates the grainy, documentary texture of Rossellinis Pais.

  Bertolucci, Bellocchio and Pasolini all influenced by the aestheticsof Brecht and the cinematic practice of Godard exhibit a far moreambiguous relationship with the heritage of Italian Neorealism.

  232 Peter Bondanella

• Pasolini accepted many of the superficial characteristics of Neorealiststyle non-professional actors, on-location shooting, contemporarythemes, natural lighting but he rejected any attempt to employ cinemato present a naturalistic view of life. For Pasolini, Realism includedmythology and dream. The cinematic signature he developed in Ilvangelo secondo Matteo, a biblical film made by a Marxist atheist, can bedescribed as pastiche, mixing the most disparate cultural and thematicmaterials. Bertolucci and Bellocchio present a fresh view of Italian poli-tics in their youthful works. With Prima della rivoluzione, Bertolucciadapts Stendhals The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) in a poetic and highlylyrical study of a young bourgeois intellectual from Parma (Bertoluccishome) who toys with Marxism but eventually prefers a safe, middle-class marriage to revolution or an incestuous love affair with his aunt.Bellocchios artistic perspective is angry and provocative rather thanlyrical and elegiac. While Bertoluccis Fabrizio retreats into the protec-tive womb of the Italian nuclear family, Bellocchios protagonists in LaCina vicina attack the very notion of a provincial, middle-class family ina satire on Italian political corruption. The result is a political allegoryattacking the compromise between the right and the left in Italy, viewedfrom the microcosm of a small, provincial family.

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  13. Francesco Rosis Salvatore Giuliano (1962): an overhead shot of the dead Sicilianbandit opens Rosis semi-documentary account of his life.

• Post-1968 cinema: politics and ideology in the dramaticfilm

  Between the upheavals in Italian society that took place around 1968 andimmediately afterwards, and the mid 1980s, when a period of normalcywas re-established in Italian society, a number of major critical trendscan be traced in the evolution of Italian cinema. Politics and ideologycontinued to play a major role, moving even normally apolitical direc-tors (such as Fellini) to treat political themes. Nevertheless, it is also fairto say that the emphasis on ideology in the cinema was also responsiblefor some of the most boring and pretentious cinematic works of theperiod that are best left unmentioned. Films that combined politicalthemes with intriguing and original cinematic styles (hardly an exhaus-tive list) include: Medea (1969) and Il Decameron (The Decameron, 1971) byPasolini, Bertoluccis Il conformista (The Conformist, 1970), FellinisAmarcord (1976), Elio Petris Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto(Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, 1970), Padre Padrone (FatherBoss, 1977) and La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars,1982) by the Taviani brothers and Olmis Lalbero degli zoccoli (The Tree ofthe Wooden Clogs, 1978).

  With Medea, Pasolini employs the classic tragedy by Euripides as ametaphor to explore the confrontation of Western, industrializedsociety with the preindustrial cultures of the Third World. In IlDecameron, Pasolini transforms Boccaccios panoramic portrait of therise of middle-class, mercantile culture in an age dominated by thecity of Florence into an amusing portrayal of the subproletariat ofNaples and its sexual adventures. The film not only underlines theclass-oriented nature of the original literary source, but also proposesliberated sexuality as a characteristic of non-industrialized culturesand uses this innocent sense of sexuality to criticize modern, Westernvalues.

  Bertoluccis Il conformista and Fellinis Amarcord provide two very dif-ferent interpretations of Italys Fascist heritage. Bertolucci employs acomplicated plot with frequent flashbacks, portraying the creation of aFascist assassin. Bertoluccis mature grasp of his craft is evident in thefamous tango scene between two women, with its quickly shiftingcamera angles, positions, graceful motions and skilful editing, a virtu-oso performance due, in large measure, to the brilliant cinematogra-phy of a young Vittorio Storaro (1940 ). Fellinis Amarcord is much less

  234 Peter Bondanella

• stridently ideological but is no less a condemnation of Fascist restric-tions of individual freedom. In an unforgettable evocation of life in asleepy provincial town, Fellini combines a nostalgic view of his child-hood with a searing indictment of Italian conformity during theFascist period.

  Two directors became identified almost exclusively with trenchantcritiques of Italian political life in this period: Elio Petri and FrancescoRosi. Petris works, blending his ideological message with suspense andslick, commercial presentation, have always been popular abroad.Indagine di un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto, winner of an Oscar for BestForeign Film, presents contemporary Italian politics in an abstract,almost philosophical manner akin to Kafkas parables, and Petrismessage applies not only to power in Italy but to power in general. Rosismany interesting political films are less comprehensible abroad, sincethey contain a more specific connection to actual events in Italian dailylife. The richly documented denunciations of the system which he beganwith Salvatore Giuliano are continued in a series of interesting works:Lucky Luciano (1973), a probing look into the link between American poli-ticians and the Sicilian mafia; Cadaveri eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses,1975), a chilling parable of the connection between political power andcorruption in Italy, adapted from a novel by Leonardo Sciascia in which

  Italian cinema 235

  14. Federico Fellinis Amarcord (1974): sexual immaturity, for Fellini, representsone of the many ways provincial life under Fascism was shrouded in ignorance.

• the image of the mafia is transformed into a universal metaphor forcorrupt power all over the world; and Tre fratelli (Three Brothers, 1981), aview of contemporary Italian life seen through the lives of three brotherswho return to southern Italy for the funeral of their mother.

  Lalbero degli zoccoli by Olmi is one of the many good Italian filmsfinanced by the state-controlled television network (the RAI), an increas-ingly important source of funding for Italian works or co-productionswith other European national cinemas. In it, Olmi offers a patient re-creation of peasant life on a farm near Bergamo at the turn of the nine-teenth century and adopts a style recalling the conventions ofNeorealism, employing non-professional peasants from the area whospeak their local dialect. The three-hour length of the film allows Olmito duplicate the slow rhythms of life in a preindustrial peasant culture.

  The Taviani brothers are perhaps the most interesting of the so-calledpolitical directors. Their Padre Padrone is an autobiographical account ofhow an illiterate Sardinian shepherd struggled to become a professor oflinguistics. The acquisition of standard Italian thus becomes a metaphorfor the acquisition of full citizenship in modern Italian society. La notte diSan Lorenzo is a post-modern reinterpretation of Italian Neorealism andits central theme, the partisan Resistance and the liberation of Tuscanyin August 1944.

  236 Peter Bondanella

  15. La notte di San Lorenzo by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1982): in recounting a storyabout the meeting of American soldiers and young Italians in war-torn Tuscany, thesepost-war directors pay homage to Rossellinis Pais and their own Neorealist origins.

• Bittersweet laughter: social criticism in the commediaallitaliana

  While films with predominantly political or ideological content tendedto dominate the production of art films between 1968 and the mid1980s, traditional film comedies continued to provide the backbone forthe Italian industry, and were consistently the most popular works in thepeninsula while frequently dealing with important social issues. Takenas a group, comedies during this era embody a black, even grotesquevision of contemporary Italian society, and the laughter in these worksrings bittersweet. An excellent example of the creative combination ofhumour and social criticism in this modified commedia allitaliana is Panee cioccolata (Bread and Chocolate, 1973) by Franco Brusati (192293), adevastating indictment of the conditions experienced by Italian guestworkers in what is depicted as a racist Switzerland.

  The dominant director of this bittersweet kind of film comedy isEttore Scola (1931 ), who began working in cinema as a scriptwriter ondozens of comic films produced in the 1950s and the early 1960s. In anumber of memorable works Ceravamo tanto amati (We All Loved EachOther Very Much, 1974), Brutti, sporchi e cattivi (Dirty, Mean and Nasty,1976), Una giornata particolare (A Special Day, 1977) and La terrazza (TheTerrace, 1980) Scola employed a metacinematic narrative to treat thehistory of Italian cinema itself, examining not only the heritage ofNeorealism (especially his model, Vittorio De Sica) but also the assump-tions of the commedia allitaliana. Ceravamo tanto amati is the mostcomplex of these films, combining a consideration of the many socialand political changes which Italy has undergone since the fall of theFascist rgime with an equally comprehensive survey of major develop-ments in the history of post-war Italian cinema.

  In a series of excellent films Mim metallurgico ferito nellonore (Mimthe Metallurgist Wounded in his Honour, 1971), Film damore e danarchia(A Film About Love and Anarchy, 1972), Travolti da un insolito destino nel-lazzurro mare dagosto (Overcome by an Unusual Destiny in the BlueSea of August, 1974) and her masterpiece, Pasqualino Settebellezze(Pasqualino Seven Beauties, 1975) Lina Wertmller (1928 ) combinesan exuberant imagery indebted to Fellini with a concern for topicalpolitical issues, all set within the conventions of traditional Italian filmcomedy, with its vulgarity, stock characters and frontal attack uponsocietys values. Wertmllers films aroused the ire of many Feminists, as

  Italian cinema 237

• her works did not conform to what many Anglo-American academicsconsidered to be proper for a womans film. In addition, PasqualinoSettebellezzes treatment of the Holocaust was set within a comic frame-work and was attacked by some critics as irreverent. Nevertheless, itsportrait of the hellish life inside a concentration camp found importantcritical defenders, while the virtuoso performance of its protagonist,Giancarlo Giannini (1942 ), made him an international star.

  Another controversial portrait of the Holocaust was Il portiere di notte(The Night Porter, 1974), a work by another woman director, LilianaCavani (1936 ). In sharp contrast to Feminist hostility to Wertmllersfilms, Cavanis morbid portrait of a love affair between a woman in adeath camp and a sadistic German officer, a relationship which isrenewed in the post-war period after a chance encounter between thetwo in Vienna, was praised by a number of Feminist critics though

  238 Peter Bondanella

  16. Lina Wertmllers Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975): in order to survive in theconcentration camp, Pasqualino must seduce its hefty female commandant(Shirley Stroler).

• damned by others for its revisionist view of evil in the camps. The treat-ment of the Holocaust during this period in the Italian cinema that elic-ited almost unanimous praise (except from Giorgio Bassani, the novelistwhose book was its source) was Vittorio De Sicas Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, 1971), a lyrical, elegiac por-trait of the Jewish population of pre-war Ferrara which was awarded theOscar for Best Foreign Film in 1972.

  Italian blockbuster epics

  At the height of the Italian cinemas international success, two directors Bertolucci and Leone produced three films that seemed more typicalof Hollywood blockbusters than of Italian cinematic production.Bertoluccis 1900 (1977) describes the history of the class struggle in Italyfrom the death of Verdi to our own times through the intertwinedaccounts of two boys from different classes. It may well be described as aMarxist Gone With the Wind. A much more successful epic film wasBertoluccis Lultimo imperatore (The Last Emperor, 1987), the story of PuYi, Chinas last emperor who ended his days as a humble gardener. With

  Italian cinema 239

  17. Bernardo Bertoluccis Lultimo imperatore (1987): Pu Yi (John Lone) is driven out ofthe Forbidden City in an epic portrait of Chinas last emperor that earned Oscars innine categories.

• a brilliant flashback/flashforward structure, this work swept the boardof Oscar awards for the year, winning in nine categories (including BestPicture, Direction, Cinematography, Costumes, Editing and Music), anunprecedented honour for an Italian director and for a film indebted pri-marily to Italian technicians. Perhaps the most fascinating epic film tocome from Italy was Sergio Leones last work, Cera una volta in America(Once Upon a Time in America, 1984) an ambitious attempt to changethe generic conventions of the Hollywood gangster film as Leone hadalready done with the Hollywood Western, with Jewish, not Italian,gangsters.

  The passing of the old guard and new faces at the dawn ofthe millennium

  By the time Fellini received a fifth Oscar for his career, shortly before hisdeath in 1993, Italian cinema seemed to be immersed in an economic andartistic crisis. On the other hand, its rich tradition of great directors,actors and films was universally recognized by a number of interna-tional awards. In the late 1980s and 1990s, a new generation of youngdirectors rose to prominence within Italy and some even garneredimportant recognition abroad, holding out the promise of yet a thirdrenaissance of Italian cinema that would follow those of Neorealismand of the generation of Bertolucci and Pasolini. These include suchfigures as Maurizio Nichetti (1948 ), Nanni Moretti (1953 ), GabrieleSalvatores (1950 ), Giuseppe Tornatore (1956 ), Gianni Amelio (1945 ),Roberto Benigni (1952 ), Francesca Archibugi (1960 ) and Carlo Carlei(1961 ).

  Amelios Le porte aperte (Open Doors, 1990), nominated for an Oscar, isan adaptation of a novel by Sciascia about justice in Fascist Italy. His Illadro di bambini (The Thief of Children, 1992), winner of a Grand JuryPrize at Cannes, is a moving treatment of children reminiscent of DeSicas classic Neorealist works. In Lamerica (America, 1994), Ameliofocuses upon Albanian emancipation from Communism and looks at apoor country (Albania) from the novel perspective of a nation (Italy) thatwas once poor and chronicled its poverty in Neorealist film, but is nowrich and intent on exploiting the poor in Albania.

  Unlike Amelio, many of the younger faces in the Italian cinema preferthe comic genre, and the variety of styles they employ is impressive.Nichettis Ladri di saponette (Soap Thieves, 1989), a brilliant spoof of De

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• Sicas Neorealist classic Ladri di biciclette, employs techniques the directorlearned from working in television and advertising, while his Volerevolare (To Desire to Fly, 1991) mixes actors and cartoon characters in atechnique exploited most notably in Robert Zemeckiss Who Framed RogerRabbit? (1987). Tornatores tremendously popular Cinema Paradiso (TheParadise Cinema, 1988) owed much of its success to its bittersweet lookat contemporary Italy through the prism of its cinematic past. It wasawarded a special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1988 and the Oscar for BestForeign Film in 1989. Salvatoress Mediterraneo (Mediterranean, 1991),another Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, employs the old formula ofthe commedia allitaliana to portray the Second World War from the per-spective of Italian soldiers marooned on a Greek island. While its direc-tor (Michael Radford) is certainly not Italian, everything about Il postino(The Postman, 1994) has links to the Italian film industry and the peren-nially popular commedia allitaliana. The film brought actor MassimoTroisi to the attention of international audiences, but Troisi died shortlyafter shooting was completed for the film. Il postino was a smash criticaland commercial success, receiving five Oscar nominations and oneaward, in the category of Original Musical Score. While practicallyunknown outside Italy, Leonardo Pieraccionis recent comic films havemade spectacular gains at the box office within the lucrative Italianmarket: Il ciclone (The Cyclone, 1995) and Fuochi di artificio (Fireworks,1996).

  Two actors who script and direct their own films, Nanni Moretti andRoberto Benigni, have enjoyed international success. With Caro diario(Dear Diary, 1994), Moretti the favourite director of Italians agedunder forty won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for anautobiographical portrait that led some critics to label him as the ItalianWoody Allen for his cerebral brand of comedy. Roberto Benigni firstachieved international attention as the strange Italian learning Englishin Jim Jarmuschs Down by Law (1986) and as the heir to Peter Sellers roleas Inspector Clouseau in Blake Edwardss Son of the Pink Panther (1993).His Johnny Stecchino (1991), a spoof on the gangster genre, broke allrecords for Italian or American grosses inside Italy. La vita bella (Life IsBeautiful, 1997), a tragicomedy about the Holocaust indebted to CharlieChaplins The Great Dictator (1940), earned Benigni special recognition atthe Cannes Film Festival, three Oscars and nine David di Donatelloawards ( the Italian equivalent of the Oscar). It also broke every Americanrecord for box-office returns for a foreign film in the post-war period.

  Italian cinema 241

• Like the phoenix, post-war Italian cinema seems to arise from theashes of the past in each generation. With a younger generation boastingthe talents of such directors as Benigni, Moretti and Tornatore, its artis-tic future during the next millennium looks promising.

  further reading

  Armes, Roy, Patterns of Realism: A Study of Italian Neo-Realism. Cranbury, NJ: A.S. Barnes,1971.

  Bazin, Andr, What Is Cinema? ii. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.Bondanella, Peter, The Cinema of Federico Fellini. Princeton University Press, 1992.

  The Films of Roberto Rossellini. Cambridge University Press, 1993.Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. 3rd rev. edn. New York: Continuum,

  2001.Recent Work on Italian Cinema, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 1/1 (1995), pp.

  10123.Brunetta, Gian Piero, Storia del cinema italiano. 4 vols. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1993.Gieri, Manuela, Contemporary Italian Filmmaking. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

  1995.Landy, Marcia, Fascism in Film. Princeton University Press, 1986.

  Italian Film. Cambridge University Press, 2000Marcus, Millicent, Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation.

  Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.Sitney, P. Adams, Vital Crises in Italian Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.Sorlin, Pierre. Italian National Cinema 19861996. London: Routledge, 1996.

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• e u g e n i a p a u l i c e l l i

  12

  Art in modern Italy: from the Macchiaioli to theTransavanguardia

  The Macchiaioli and the unification of Italy

  Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the term Italy was anabstract concept that intellectuals and artists since Dante had used todescribe their imagined homeland rather than a political reality. Thefirst group of artists who presented themselves as linked to the nationwere the Tuscan Macchiaioli, whose emergence was made possible bythe Prima Esposizione Italiana (First Italian Exhibition) that was heldin Florence in 1861, a matter of months after unification. (The nameMacchiaioli was taken from macchia which means sketch or sketchtechnique.) It was at this exhibition that, for the first time, artists whowere living and working in different parts of the Italian peninsula weregrouped together. As is well known, the centuries-long fragmentation ofthe Italian states and the numerous foreign dominations had signifi-cantly contributed to the absence of a national art or culture. Moreover,the divided state of the peninsula did not facilitate exchanges betweendifferent regions. Not surprisingly, many nineteenth-century artistswho, with unification, wished to expand their boundaries and horizonsconsidered Italian life and art to be marked by cultural provincialism.

  To counter this impression, after the declaration of the Kingdom ofItaly which designated Florence as its first capital, the Prima Esposizi-one overtly presented itself as Italys first national art exhibition. Theexhibition made possible interaction between regional artistic schoolsand traditions, and created the opportunity for retracing and redefininga national cultural identity. Although the Macchiaioli were a regionallybased movement, redolent of Tuscan backgrounds and scenes, theirwork struck a national chord, and their influence and fame spread well

• beyond their local confines to make them the artistic movement mostclosely associated with the Risorgimento.

  The Macchiaioli were a very active group of artists who establishedtheir school in Florence in the mid-nineteenth century and who had allfrequented the Florentine Caff Michelangelo, the centre of cultural andartistic life in the years (182459) of the reign of Grand Duke Leopold II(17971870). Many of the members of the group such as Odoardo Borrani(18341905), Telemaco Signorini (18531901) and Giovanni Fattori(18251908), who painted Garibaldi a Palermo (Garibaldi in Palermo,18602; fig. 18), were patriots and had volunteered to join the forces ofGiuseppe Garibaldi (180782) in Tuscany. Painters were deemed to havea key function in spreading a sense of patriotism, as well as in addingrhetorical emphasis to historical facts. Another important characteristicof the 1861 exhibition, therefore, was the way it marked the arrival of anew artistic genre, centred on contemporary history, and whichincluded paintings that took as their subject-matter episodes drawnfrom the wars of unification and other patriotic motifs.

  In addition to their political art, the Macchiaioli had ties with theRealism of the day. They painted familiar Tuscan landscapes, the vedute,and depicted the simple life of ordinary people. In order to strengthentheir sense of the Italian artistic and cultural tradition, the Macchiaiolisought inspiration in the fifteenth-century Florentine school of paint-

  244 Eugenia Paulicelli

  18. Giovanni Fattori, Garibaldi a Palermo (Garibaldi in Palermo), 18602.

• ing. For instance, a painting such as Borranis Le cucitrici delle camicie rosse(The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts, 1863; fig. 19) had the effect ofturning a simple scene into a deeply political and specifically Tuscanmoment. The figures of the women are grouped together in forms thatevoke the silence and mystery of frescoed paintings typical of the fif-teenth century. Borranis painting came into being during a time ofpopular enthusiasm for Garibaldis campaign to conquer Rome. The his-torical event which inspired this painting was the failed patriotic war of1862 during which, without the support of Cavour, Garibaldi (whoseportrait we see in the background hanging on the wall) marched onRome, which owing to papal hostility was not yet part of the Kingdom ofItaly. The women depicted in Borranis painting sewing the red shirts arerelatives of Garibaldis irregulars. The theme of an intimate anddomestic environment pervaded an earlier painting by Borrani, his

  Art in modern Italy 245

  19. Odoardo Borrani, Le cucitrici delle camicie rosse (The Seamstresses of the RedShirts), 1863.

• 26 Aprile 1859 (1861; fig. 20), which was presented at the national exhibi-tion. Here again, we see a woman sewing pieces of fabric in the colours ofthe Italian flag. The historical events informing this painting are thoseof 1859 which forced Grand Duke Leopold II to flee from Tuscany.

  Borranis paintings, and especially the ones considered here, offervivid examples of two of the main characteristics of the Macchiaiolis art.First, as already stated, the recovery of the Renaissance artistic tradition,seen in the calm majesty of the figures. Secondly, the fascination,common to all the Macchiaioli, with the new medium of photography.In Borranis The Seamstresses of the Red Shirts, there is a diffuse andwarm light effect very similar to that which can be obtained by photog-raphy. Painters started to draw on photographs for inspiration or todevelop their work in innovative ways. It goes without saying that

  246 Eugenia Paulicelli

  20. Odoardo Borrani, Il 26 Aprile 1859 (26 April 1859), 1861.

• photography, which was present at the first national exhibition, butunder the category of Chemistry, was very popular and went on to revo-lutionize perspective.

  After the Churchs resistance to unification had been overcome, Romebecame the capital of the new state in 1870. The various political factionsagreed to make Rome the place where Italys national culture and artwould be defined. The planning and execution of monuments celebrat-ing the great figures of the Risorgimento took many years, since deepideological disagreements characterized the relationships among thedifferent political groups. The conflicts and political disputes involvingthe nature of the image of Rome as the capital of the newly formednation testify to the difficulties involved in creating the new Italy and itsartistic culture.

  Divisionism

  The end of the nineteenth century was marked by the co-existence of avariety of artistic currents and forms of experiment. The notion of artitself was problematized, as was its function in society, its potential toenrich the spiritual life of human beings, and its contribution to theunderstanding of nature and history. The situation of the visual arts inItaly was exceedingly complex: on the one hand, art was expected tohelp construct the new Italian national identity; on the other, it was sup-posed also to satisfy a desire for internationalism by crossing local andnational boundaries, thus overcoming what was perceived to be its pro-vincialism. This explains the interest in and contributions of Italianartists to European artistic movements and debates such as Impression-ism and Symbolism. Giovanni Segantini (185899), among Italys mostfamous painters of the period both at home and in Europe, was one ofthe leading protagonists of the artistic current known as Divisionism.Despite his premature death at the age of forty, Segantinis work wasexhibited in Vienna in 1898, and later, in 1902, a retrospective was orga-nized, again in Vienna, at the Palace of Secession. It is important to notethat many artists at this time were critical of official institutions andtook up anti-academic positions, forming alternative groups fromwhich the term secession derived its origin.

  Divisionism in Italy gave expression to several concerns that ani-mated European cultural and artistic debates. The movements novelviews on how to represent reality, which included the need for cultural

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• and artistic renewal, combined with a faith in science and intelligence,prevailed over the patriotic sentiments of earlier years. Moreover,Divisionism incorporated some of the ideas of the Lombard group ofwriters known as the scapigliati (Bohemians), especially their rejectionof empty formalism and refusal to conform to established artistic tech-niques. Among the exponents of Divisionism, besides Segantini, was thePiedmontese painter Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (18681907), famousfor his Il quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate; fig. 21). The painter adhered toDivisionism mainly because of his interest in the movements rationalistapproach. He also had ideas in common with the Socialist intellectualsin Turin, ideas which reinforced his belief in a committed art.

  Pellizzas first inspiration for Il quarto Stato came from the big indus-trial strikes of the 1890s. He subsequently changed the subject to apeasant march in the village of Volpedo where he had been born andfrom which he took his surname. The crowd was, for the painter, thesymbol of humanity marching towards progress and redemption. Thecharacters are symmetrically organized into groups of three as theynarrate their stories to each other. The scene, especially in its emphasison the characters bare hands, recalls Raphaels The School of Athens(150811), a fresco that Pellizza studied while composing Il quarto Stato.He worked on the painting for several years before exhibiting it for thefirst time at the Turin Quadriennale in 1902.

  The opening decades of the twentieth century were marked in Italy

  248 Eugenia Paulicelli

  21. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Il quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate), 1901.

• by a widespread sense of disenchantment with the state of the nation,which had been unified for less than fifty years. For many, the Italy thathad emerged from the unification process was but a pale shadow of thenation in which they had invested their hopes. Disenchantment was feltacross the ideological spectrum, while in all areas of Italian intellectuallife, including art, significant moves were made to regenerate what wasseen as the debased, petit-bourgeois dominated state of Italian cultureand politics.

  The Futurist movement

  Foremost among the new artistic movements were the Futurists, whoseproject was to effect a deep rupture with everything that the past, andespecially the recent past, represented. Inspired by the experiences of theEuropean avant-garde, which was oriented not towards figurative depic-tion but towards the idea of art for arts sake, the Futurists aimed toreform radically all aspects of art, society and culture. Filippo Marinetti(18761947) published the first Manifesto futurista (Futurist Manifesto)in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro on 20 February 1909. Following onfrom Marinettis literary manifesto, Futurist painters prepared a mani-festo of their own, which was signed by Umberto Boccioni (18821916),who became the leader of the movement, Carlo Carr (18811966), LuigiRussolo (18851947) and Gino Severini (18831966), who at the time wasliving in Paris. The Manifesto dei pittori futuristi (Manifesto of FuturistPainters), published on 11 February 1910, was presented in a theatre inTurin where the artists, together with Marinetti, launched the pro-gramme with which they aimed to renew the contemporary artisticscene. The artists attacked what they deemed to be the quasi-religiousrelationship with tradition embodied especially in places like museums.Futurist art was to find inspiration in the present and in the tangiblemiracles of contemporary life.1

  The urban environment, its speed and nocturnal atmosphere,constitute some of the favourite subjects of Futurist painting.Interestingly, the descriptions of subjects and atmospheres found inMarinettis literary manifesto were to provide a much richer source ofinspiration for artists than for poets, on account of the manifestos lan-guage and its immediate figurative translatability. For the Futurists, thenotions of dynamism and movement were fundamental in conceiving

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• the representation of a reality that was never seen as static.Furthermore, psychological feelings were thought to be deeplyinvolved in the reception of a gesture or of a given reality. In otherwords, things and feelings were continuously moving around thepainter and the viewer to the point where the Futurist artist claimed tobe able to place the viewer inside the picture, as if s/he were part of thepainting itself, the real protagonist of the scene created. The image wasnot conceived in frozen fixity as if evoking a sort of calm finitude, butrather in its materiality, as a vital flux of emotion and feelings. A strik-ing visual representation of these ideas is Dinamismo di un cane al guinza-glio (Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912; fig.22) by Giacomo Balla(18711958). Underpinned by a marked sense of intellectual rigour,Boccionis work, as he himself presented it in his book Pittura e sculturafuturiste (Futurist Painting and Sculpture), stressed the function of theStati danimo (States of Mind) as an important principle for Futuristpainting; and it is noteworthy that he painted a series of picturesbearing this general designation, whose particular titles are: Gli addii(Goodbyes, 1911), Quelli che vanno (Those Who Go, 1911) and Quelli cherestano (Those Who Stay, 1911).

  After Boccionis death in 1916 at the age of thirty-four, the main expo-nents of Futurism continued to be active in many different artistic andcultural areas. It is important to note that the significance of Futurism

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  22. Giacomo Balla, Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio (Dynamism of a Dog on aLeash), 1912.

• was only recognized after the Second World War. In Italy, during theperiod of their greatest creativity, the Futurists were not taken seriously.Nevertheless, their influence has been extensive.

  Metaphysical painting

  The Futurists set great store by what they hoped would be the beneficialregeneration offered by war and the tabula rasa effect it would have onhuman endeavour. However, differently from how the Futurists ima-gined things would turn out, one of the major consequences of the dev-astation and confusion caused by the First World War was to drive manyartists to search for a return to order. As a result, they turned towards amore figurative art (though figurative in this instance should not beunderstood as equivalent to realistic or naturalistic modes). It wasduring these years that painters such as Giotto, Piero della Francesca andRaphael were studied once again, and in a new light, thanks to the influ-ence of the art historian and critic Roberto Longhi (18901970), who pro-posed new evaluations of Italian Renaissance art. In addition, muchattention was paid to the aesthetic of the form of a work of art ratherthan its content, following a tradition established by Italys foremostand most influential twentieth-century philosopher, Benedetto Croce(18661952).

  In the years before the advent of Fascism in 1922, much of the above-mentioned debate on art took place in the pages of the journal Valoriplastici: Rassegna di arte contemporanea (Plastic Values: Review ofContemporary Art), edited by Mario Broglio (18911948), who was botha painter and an art critic. The journal was published in Rome from theend of 1918 until 1922. The painters Carr and the De Chirico brothersGiorgio (18881978) and Andrea (18911952) (the latter using the pseudo-nym Alberto Savinio) contributed to the journal, as did other Italian andforeign artists. In their writings for Valori plastici, De Chirico and Saviniotheorized so-called Metaphysical painting which had its major protag-onist in De Chirico. In De Chiricos paintings, his links to Symbolism andSurrealism are evident as well as a sense of the return to order withinthe chaos of the present. It is enough to think of the presence of build-ings, arches, columns and walls, as well as the statuesque bodies andbusts. His clean lines and apparently well-ordered fragments of land-scapes allow the viewer almost to feel for a moment the ambiguity ofexistence which his paintings represent with their mysteries lurking in a

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• corner of a street, in an empty piazza or in the shadows of a sunny day, asin his LEnigma di un giorno (The Enigma of a Day, 1914; fig. 23).

  Art under Fascism

  On 26 March 1923, on the occasion of the opening of the art exhibitionArtisti del Novecento (Artists of the Twentieth Century) at the GalleriaPesaro in Milan, Mussolini stated that in a country such as Italy it wouldbe impossible for any government not to care for art and artists. Theartists whose works were presented at the exhibition were a group ofseven painters, among them Achille Funi (18901972) and Mario Sironi(18851961), all of whom were gathered around the art critic and journal-ist Margherita Sarfatti (18831961), Mussolinis brilliant Jewish mistress

  252 Eugenia Paulicelli

  23. Giorgio De Chirico, Enigma di un giorno (The Enigma of a Day), 1914.

• who greatly influenced him. She was the art editor of the national news-paper Il Popolo dItalia (The Italian People), director of the party journalGerarchia (Hierarchy) and a biographer of the Duce. Sarfatti was amongthe few women who corresponded with important intellectuals, artistsand political figures; she also organized art exhibitions, lending hersupport to artists and writers. Her relationship with the Duce ended inthe early 1930s.

  In recent years, it has become possible to look back at Fascism in arather more objective manner than was possible in the decades immedi-ately after the war, and to study its culture and cultural policies to seehow it attempted to build consensus among the population, and henceestablish and maintain its hegemony. Art and culture in general wereassigned an important role by Fascism as it sought to create generalconsent for itself among Italians. It was as Fascism consolidated itspower in the 1930s that Mussolini began forcefully to pose the questionof a Fascist art in the overall context of a general fascistization ofItalian life and culture. The Fascist bureaucratic apparatus was wellorganized and capable of ensuring that artists adhered to its tenets,while at the same time allowing painters some artistic freedom ofexpression. Instead of building an art for the rgime, Fascism devel-oped a more pragmatic approach. It encouraged and directed artiststhrough a network of commissions and exhibitions: five editions of theVenice Biennale from 1930 to 1940; the Quadriennali I, II and III in Romein 1931, 1935 and 1939; the second Exhibition of Rational Architecture inRome in 1931; the exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in Rome in 1932;the two national exhibitions of plastica murale (Mural Plastic) in Genoain 1934 and Rome in 1935. In addition, Fascism encouraged a vastnumber of local exhibitions, offered space to artists in the press andappointed them to public posts. In these circumstances, it is possible toappreciate how the visual arts played a key role during Fascism, espe-cially at the end of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, the period whichsaw the construction of the Fascist corporate state.

  On the occasion of the inauguration in Perugia of the Accademia diBelle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts) in 1926, Mussolini declared that hewanted to create a Fascist art, but also added that he had no intention ofencouraging anything that might resemble state-controlled art. Thisdual emphasis well exemplifies Fascist attitudes towards art. Art,according to Mussolini, belonged to the realm of the individual, and thestates role was to encourage artists and to create appropriate conditions

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• for them to develop. Subsequently, however, following the alliance withGermany and the racial laws of 1938, the rgime proved to be less gener-ous to the nations artists. Telesio Interlandi, co-director with GiovanniPreziosi of the journal La difesa della razza (The Defence of the Race),tried to define a pure modern Italian art, which, in Interlandis view,was characterized by non-imported aesthetic canons and was to befirmly distinguished from the corrupt arte ebraizzata (Jewish-influencedart). In this respect, it is important to remember that two art shows wereorganized in 1937 in Munich: one of degenerate art which includedavant-garde artists and Expressionists, and one of healthy art withexhibits which exalted Nazi ideology and the superiority of the Aryanrace. Thus, after the passing of the racial laws, the Fascist rgime tried tofollow the example of Germany and stimulate an art that would stressthe values of the Italian race. One of the results of this new attitude wasthe Cremona Prize, set up in 1939 and sponsored by Roberto Farinacci(18921945) of Cremona, the former ras, or local Fascist leader, andSecretary General of the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National FascistParty). The aim of the prize was to promote a true Fascist art and icon-ography through the illustration of a number of pictorial themes such asStates of Mind Created by Fascism in 1939 or The Battle for Grain in1940 all themes suggested by Mussolini himself. Not surprisingly, noserious artist competed for the Cremona Prize. As a counterweight to theCremona Prize, which he denounced as vulgar and lacking artistic merit,the open-minded Fascist Minister for Culture, Giuseppe Bottai(18951959), organized the Bergamo Prize, which represented a totallydifferent way of conceiving art during the Fascist rgime. The BergamoPrizes first exhibition was also held in 1939 and enjoyed considerableprestige among artists. Indeed many of the most important figures ofItalian art, such as Renato Guttuso (191287), Mario Mafai (190265),Filippo De Pisis (18961956), whose real name was Filippo Tibertelli, andPio Semeghini (18781964), were given awards.

  Architecture, on account of its monumentality, was the art that bestsuited Fascist aims, as well as Mussolinis desire to leave a permanentand visible mark of his rgime. A self-consciously Fascist style of archi-tecture, a mix of classicism and modernism, much of which is still visiblein Italian cities today, especially in Rome, was developed. Mussoliniintended Rome to become the Fascist city par excellence, as well as themodel for cities outside Italy which were part of the Fascist empire. Sideby side with the glorification of imperial Rome and its grandiosity,

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• Fascism also emphasized notions of novelty and giovinezza (youth). Inthis way the glorification of the past was integrated into the fabric ofpresent needs. Inevitably, this dual focus could not but bring out a seriesof contradictory elements within architecture and urban planningwhich mirror the contradictions within Fascism itself. Ideologically, thergime was attempting to straddle two mutually exclusive positions: onthe one hand, it underlined Fascisms continuity with the greatmoments of Italys past, such as the Roman Empire and theRisorgimento; on the other, it presented itself as a completely new phe-nomenon which had no precedents and no debts to the past, much asFuturism had done. These two contradictory concerns are enshrined inthe very first lines of the Manifesto degli intellettuali fascisti (Manifesto ofFascist Intellectuals) organized by the philosopher and Fascist theoristGiovanni Gentile (18751944), in which Fascism is introduced as both arecent and ancient movement of the Italian spirit.2

  This fundamental contradiction was especially apparent in Fascistarchitecture. Officially sanctioned Fascist architects were grouped in thesignificantly titled Associazione dellArchitettura e della ModernitFasciste (Association of Fascist Architecture and Modernity). Mussolinihimself declared that he was for modern architecture by which hemeant a relationship of non-continuity with the architecture of the ageof Giolitti, the Liberal politician whose policies were associated with thepost-Risorgimento decline of Italy. Hence the notion of being newmeant to be in step with the times or, in other words, in tune with theFascist era. However, differing views existed among architects as to howthis notion of modernity should be expressed. The architect MarcelloPiacentini (18811960), who was also an academic, and later on otheryoung architects belonging to the Gruppo 7 (Group 7), who had gradu-ated from the newly established faculties of architecture in the 1920s,argued for innovation. Among these, Adalberto Libera (190363), one ofthe best-known architects of this period, assumed a prominent positionat the first National Architecture Exhibition in 1928. At the same time,however, the rhetoric of the past glory of ancient Rome set the trend forother Fascist architects. Through the evocation of Italys past glories,architecture contributed to create a sense of admiration for the rgime,as well as serving as a means of persuasion and propaganda. It is enoughto think of the monuments in the Foro Italico (Italian Forum) in Rome.Here, the inscriptions on the huge marble plaques celebrate the victoriesof the Fascist rgime. After the fall of Fascism, two anti-Fascist

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• inscriptions were added to two of the plaques, which had originally beenleft blank so as to mark what was going to be Fascisms next greatachievement, victory in the Second World War. Tellingly, the anti-Fascistinscriptions commemorate the fall of Fascism in 1943 and the proclama-tion of the Republic in 1946.3

  The post-war period

  The post-war years were marked, initially at least, by the wish for a newbeginning which would exorcise the ghosts of Fascism and the war. Inthe art world, this hope found expression in an intense proliferation ofmovements and debates, all of which argued for change, and whichfound expression in the customary manifestos. Milan and its Via Brerawere the centre of artistic life. Art, literature and cinema were all per-vaded by a great vitality which seemed to embody both a reaction to thedark years of Fascism and the war, and the urge to return to life.Although a strong desire to create a new art was shared by many artists,their aims, styles and ideological positions differed greatly. It should notcome as a surprise that considerable effort was expended in exploringthe language of art along with its social, political and aesthetic implica-tions. Between the years 1946 and 1948, two important manifestos werepublished: the manifesto of Realism and that of Spazialismo(Spacialism). The latter was influenced by another manifesto, theManifesto Blanco (White Manifesto), which was drafted in Buenos Aires(hence its Spanish title) in 1946 by Lucio Fontana (18991968) and hispupils. In addition, the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti (New Front of the Arts)was founded in Milan, along with the movement for concrete art.

  The art scene of the post-war years was profoundly affected by theopposition between Marxism and Catholicism which dominated allaspects of Italian life: committed art, literature and film associated withNeorealism opposed escapist cinema, art and literature. Other tensions,such as those between Realist or figurative art and Abstractionism,marked relations between different artistic movements, as well as rela-tions within a group such as the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, which broughttogether left-wing artists. The group eventually split into two factions.On the one hand, the Neorealists, who shared a poetics with Neorealistwriters and film directors, aimed to create a figurative art with recogniz-able mimetic elements, which were organized in a familiar narrativethat at times had a popular as well as a populist intent. On the other

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• hand, the second group was more interested in recovering the legacy ofthe experimental language of the Italian and European avant-gardes.

  The need to explore new forms of Realism was motivated by the politi-cal and social circumstances of the immediate aftermath of the war.Realism in art responded more to an ethical need than to a search for newforms and vehicles for art, and so was less concerned with effecting anyreal break with established conventions. As an aesthetic, Realism disap-peared towards the mid 1950s, although Guttuso remained the leadingpost-war figurative painter. Guttuso participated actively in artisticdebates, making decisive contributions in the form of articles about paint-ing and its currents. Already in 1937 he had wanted to draw the attentionof other artists to arts figurative qualities and to the need for artists toengage with history. He did this most notably through his paintingFucilazione in campagna (Shooting by Firing Squad in the Countryside,1944), in memory of the murdered Spanish poet Federico Garca Lorca.Guttusos talent had already been recognized under Fascism when theartist was in his twenties. His painting Crocifissione (Crucifixion), whichhe completed in Rome in 1941, was exhibited in 1942 and won the FourthBergamo Prize. The Crocifissione, with its CubistExpressionist style anddramatic force, stood out among the plethora of still-life paintings. Bytreating a religious subject with a passionate tension towards pain anddeath, Guttuso intended to represent the deep sufferings of the Italianpeople both under Fascism and during the war.

  During 1945 and 1946, the debate regarding the two contrasting aes-thetics of Abstractionism and Realism continued to focus on complexquestions regarding the relationship with the past in the context of thechanges that were taking place in the post-war period, and the implica-tions of these for artistic language. The need was felt for artists tobroaden their artistic horizons and explore visual language as a cogni-tive act. In order to pursue this goal, the Alleanza della Cultura (Allianceof Culture) was founded which, between September and November1948, organized the first national exhibition of contemporary art inBologna. Among the prominent artists who participated in this exhibi-tion were Renato Birolli (190559), Antonio Corpora (1909), Guttusoand others.

  Differences among artistic projects, and above all those between theworks of abstract artists and Realists, continued to characterize left-wing art for at least a further ten years. However, the landscape of post-war Italian art was not confined to the debate on the nature of

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• committed art. Fontana returned from Argentina, where he had beenliving since 1939, and in 1947 presented in Milan the Primo manifesto dispazialismo (First Manifesto of Spacialism). The manifesto illustratedhis idea of constructing a total art which combined both reason and theunconscious. The following year in Milan on 18 March, Fontana, alongwith other artists such as Milena Milani (1922 ), also signed the Secondomanifesto dello spazialismo (Second Manifesto of Spacialism). Present inthis manifesto is a critical, yet lucid awareness of the significance ofavant-gardes such as Futurism which bring about a new notion both ofart and of the role of the artist. In addition, the tendency to frame anatmosphere or a visual experience, as occurred in Metaphysical art, isrejected. Equally, the manifestos opening undermines the notion of theeternal monumentality of the work of art, something that was dear toFascism. Indeed, in the Primo manifesto the concepts of eternity and mon-umentality are placed in direct opposition. A similar view is expressed inthe Secondo manifesto.

  Artistic experimentation from the 1950s to the present

  The 1950s and 1960s were marked by experimentation, the rejection oftraditional techniques, and an openness towards foreign influences,especially those of French, German and New-York-based artists.Moreover, the economic boom at the end of the 1950s helped to establisha thriving market for art. Typical of this period was the formation of agroup of dissident abstract artists based in Rome. Alberto Burri(191595), one of its exponents, was originally a doctor who started topaint in 1944 while he was still a prisoner of war in Texas. He had his firstexhibition in 1947 in Rome, where he decided to settle. In 1950, alongwith Giuseppe Capogrossi (190072), Ettore Colla (18991968) andothers, Burri signed the manifesto of the group called Origine (Origin),which expressed a very distinctive anti-figurative aesthetic. Refusingany codified language of art, their aim was to explore a sort of primordialmateriality synthesized by the use of mixed media, which banished anytrace of image-making. Burri, in fact, incorporated a variety of materialslike wood and plastic to form his canvas, an example of which is hisfamous series of Sacchi (Sacks). In these works, the very concept of thecanvas and its spaces are completely re-explored and redefined, as in hisGrande sacco (Big Sack), which he exhibited in 1952 at Romes NationalGallery of Modern Art. Burri and Fontana, each of whom developed a

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• personal aesthetic, were to become the best-known Italian artists of thisperiod. In 1952, Fontana exhibited at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milanhis Concetti spaziali (Spatial Concepts), which he created by piercing thesurface of a piece of paper inserted in a canvas.

  If the post-war years and the early 1950s were marked by a highlycharged ideological debate on the function of the arts in renovatingculture, the 1960s represented a moment of widespread and variedexperimentation. The economic boom, the advent of television and ageneral improvement in economic and social conditions contributedgreatly to the profound changes that occurred in Italy at all levels ofsociety. The drive to experiment reflected these changes, though it wasalso encouraged by an artistic market and affluent buyers open to inno-vation. Equally, much higher attendances were registered at art exhibi-tions all over Italy. In addition, a fruitful international exchangebetween artistic movements took place. Particularly influential in Italywas Pop-art, which grouped together various Anglo-American artistsand was introduced for the first time at the Venice Biennale of 1964.Consumerism and the language of the mass media, represented in apolemical and critical style, were the main targets of this art. The objectsin themselves were not considered important. Rather, it was their reifiedand fetishized image that was foregrounded. It is enough to think of theCampbells soup-can by Andy Warhol, or his gigantic and multipliedversion of Marilyn Monroes face. Pop artists began to concern them-selves with the mythologies of mass consumerist society as had theFrench critic Roland Barthes in his collection of essays entitledMythologies (1957), a text which was widely read at the time.

  These were also the years during which artists and art critics wereposing questions concerning the very notion of a work of art, as well asthe problems involved in its reception. The provocative shows of PieroManzoni (193363), which involved, for example, signing almost nakedpeople as Living Sculptures (1961) or producing his Merda dartista (ArtistsShit, 19601) in a box, a gramme of which he sold at the same price as agramme of gold, can be considered as polemical reactions to the fetish-ization of the art object. In September 1967, in La Bertesca gallery inGenoa, Germano Celant organized an exhibition called Arte povera e IM-Spazio (Poor Art and IM-Space) that included in its arte povera sectionartists like Alighiero Boetti (194094), Luciano Fabro (1936 ), GiulioPaolini (1940 ), Jannis Kounellis (1936 ), Pino Pascali (193568) andEmilio Prini (1943 ). The epithet poor in the exhibitions title was

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• borrowed from Grotowskis theatre, and Celant used it to refer to worksthat were realized with natural elements and industrial material ofcommon use. Many of the artists who belonged to this group expressedtheir ideas about art in various installations as well as in sculptures. Anespecially striking instance of this trend is Venere degli stracci (Venus ofthe Rags, 1967; fig. 24) by Michelangelo Pistoletto (1933 ), in whichcontrasting elements and materials were combined: Venus, the classicalicon of beauty, is shown surrounded by a mountain of old rags of differ-ent colours. Another artist, Pascali, produced a series called Armi (Arms),anti-militaristic toys including the work in the form of a fake cannonCannone bella ciao (Bella Ciao Cannon, 1965), which quotes in its title afamous song of the Italian partisans. The piece, which was made of dis-carded car parts and pipes, was also meant to offer a symbolic critique of

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  24. Michelangelo Pistoletto, Venere degli stracci (Venus of the Rags), 1967.

• the Vietnam War, which was being fought at the time. It is possible tounderstand some of the conceptual implications which lay behind thevarious experimentation in the arts by remembering the heated debatesgoing on at the same time about the nature of literature and language.

  In the wake of conceptual art and arte povera, as well as of the broaderdiscussion on the nature of signs, came experiments in visual and con-crete poetry. These experiments combined word and image, andexplored the pictorial charge of the verbal sign, both on the iconic andverbal levels. In this regard, particularly important were the works of thepoet Adriano Spatola (194189), most notably Verso la poesia totale(Towards Total Poetry, 1969) and Il segno poetico (The Poetic Sign, 1977).Several exhibitions were organized in the 1970s and early 1980s whichculminated in the exhibitions Visual Poetry (19691979), which took placein Florence between December 1979 and January 1980, and, again inFlorence, Il Colpo di Glottide. La poesia come fisicit e materia (The Stroke ofGlottis. Poetry as Physicality and Material) held in April 1980.

  The year 1968 marked a radical change in art and society. The VeniceBiennale of the same year was strongly contested and many young artistswent through a deep crisis as regards the nature of language and com-munication. In this same period, Italian art also lost many of its mostfamous names. In 1968, Fontana, Colla, Leoncillo and Pascali all died. Inthe aftermath of 1968, some artists found inspiration in the studentprotest movement and in the confused ideological climate to produceworks with an explicitly political content. Such a work is Funerali dellan-archico Pinelli (Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli, 1972) by Enrico Baj(1924 ). Pinelli had been wrongly charged with placing a bomb in abank in Milan, and died while he was being interrogated by the police.

  The protests of the late 1960s turned, in some cases, into terrorism,which by the 1980s led to a marked decrease in political commitment. Inthe art world, this change of mood was reflected by the increasing interestin matters of form over content. The Transavanguardia, comprisingMimmo Paladino (1948 ), Sandro Chia (1946 ) and Emilio Cucchi(1950 ), who were known outside Italy as the Post-Expressionists, recov-ered and reworked the artistic language and the style of the historicalavant-garde, as well as that of the past in general. The tendency to quotefrom the artistic movements of the past was, in fact, a characteristic ofvarious artists in the 1980s. The Anacronisti (Anachronists), for example,reworked the iconography of Baroque and eighteenth-century painting.

  The 1980s were also the years in which the concept of the

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• post-modern became fashionable. In this context, the notion of citation-ism was transformed into a general eclecticism and was accompanied bya corresponding lack of historical perspective. This trend found animportant voice in the exhibition Una generazione postmoderna (APost-modern Generation), which took place in Genoa from November1982 to January 1983. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the artistic scenewas fragmented not just in Italy, but throughout Europe and the USA.Artistic research became more personal and individualistic, reflectingthe increasing lack of faith in all-powerful ideologies and the generallack of confidence in long-term projects. However, with the fall of theBerlin Wall, it is possible to recognize a general search for new perspec-tives in studying the trauma of Europes recent past as represented bythe continents totalitarian rgimes and by the wars the Europeannations have fought amongst themselves. It is interesting to note thatfifty or so years after the end of the Second World War, one can perceiveall across Europe a renewed interest in exploring the relationshipbetween art, society and history. Several exhibitions organized in the lastfew years testify to this. Many of these exhibitions look back on the his-torical past, especially the most traumatic moments of Europes recentpast. These exhibitions respond to the need to recontextualize the pastand the artistic experiences that occurred at the beginning of ourcentury and between the two World Wars. Some of the most importantare Degenerate Art in Berlin in 1992; Art and Dictatorship in Vienna in 1994;Art of Freedoms, of Antifascism, of War and Liberation in Europe in Genoa in1995; Art and Power. Europe under the Dictatorships in London in 1996; in thesame year, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, In the Face of History; andfinally, at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1997, Europe in the 1930s.19291939. The Threatening Times.

  Perhaps this recent pan-European phenomenon in the art world,characterized by a renewed interest in looking back on Europes recenthistory, is a sign that art is playing the role Walter Benjamin assigned tothe Angel of History in his well-known interpretation of Klees paintingAngelus Novus looking back on history, seeing the single catastrophethat has been the twentieth century, and attempting to make sense of theheap of ruins which confronts its gaze.

  notes

  1. Maria Mimita Lamberti, I mutamenti del mercato e le ricerche degli artisti, in P.Fossati (ed.), Storia dellarte italiana (Turin: Einaudi, 197983), vol. iii, pp. 134204.

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• 2. Emilio R. Pepe, Storia di due manifesti, in Il Fascismo e la cultura (Milan: Feltrinelli,1958), pp. 59102.3. For additional information on Fascist architecture, see the following chapter, pp.2712.

  further reading

  Arte Italiana 196082. Catalogue of the Exhibition Held at the Hayward Gallery, London: October1982January 1983. Milan: Electa, 1982.

  Barocchi, Paola (ed.), Storia moderna dellarte in Italia, 2 vols. Turin: Einaudi, 1992.Bossaglia, Rossana, Il novecento italiano. Storia, documenti, iconografia. Milan: Feltrinelli,

  1979.Cannistraro, Philip and Sullivan, Brian R., Il Duces Other Woman. New York: William

  Morrow and Company, Inc. 1993.Celant, Germano (ed.), The Italian Metamorphosis: Italy 19431968. Catalogue. New York:

  Progetti museali editore-Guggenheim Museum, 1994.De Seta, Cesare, Gli anni trenta. Larte e cultura in Italia. Catalogue. Milan: Mazzotta, 1982.Matteucci, Giuliano (ed.), The Macchiaioli: Tuscan Painters of the Sunlight. Catalogue. New

  York: Stair Sainty Matthiesen, 1984.Olson, Roberta J. M. (ed.), Ottocento: Romanticism and Revolution in 19th-Century Italian

  Painting. New York: The American Federation of Arts, 1992.Soby Thrall, James, Giorgio De Chirico. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955.Stajano, Corrado (ed.), La cultura italiana del Novecento. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1996.Tonelli, Edith and Hart, Katherine (eds.), The Macchiaioli Painters of Italian Life 18501900.

  Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986.

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• p e n n y s p a r k e

  13

  A modern identity for a new nation: design inItaly since 1860

  Introduction

  In the second half of the nineteenth century the face of Italy was trans-formed in a number of different ways. The political effects of nationalunification, combined with the economic, social and cultural ramifica-tions of industrialization, engendered a new country complete with anew programme of action designed to take it into the twentieth century.The idea of newness permeated many aspects of Italian life, underpin-ning numerous efforts to define the character of the new nation. Theconcept of Italianness was also given renewed impetus in this period. Akey theme in its formation was the appeal to past strengths: for example,to moments of high cultural achievement when Italy had made a uniqueimpact in the international arena. Nowhere was this Janus-faced orien-tation a simultaneous relationship both with the past and with thefuture more apparent than in the design of Italys objects and environ-ments in the second half of the nineteenth century and in the first half ofthe twentieth. For five hundred years, through their artistic achievementand their high cultural significance, Italian decorative arts had been pre-eminent. The ceramics, glass, metalwork, furniture, interiors, textilesand costume of the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies had established a standard of excellence to which many othercountries had aspired. Equally, the level of workmanship and creativityin the objects and environments made by Italian Renaissance artists hadserved to erode the distinction between the high and the lesser artsand to establish an international reputation for Italian decorative artwhich was still in place several centuries later.

  Aesthetic leadership in this area had been made possible by the

• special nature of the manufacturing and artistic infrastructure whichhad sustained Italys decorative art production. The system of smallworkshops and highly skilled itinerant artists; of masters and appren-tices; and of the transferral of two-dimensional imagery, complete withits systems of symbols, available through prints, on to three-dimensional artefacts, resulted in the unique quality of Italian decora-tive art objects, from maiolica to metal goods, and from textiles tofurnishings. It was a model of practice which remained substantiallyintact until well into the twentieth century, providing a framework forthe many design innovations in goods such as mass-produced furnitureitems, electrical goods and automobiles that were to transform Italiancultural and artistic life at that later date.

  If the achievements of the Renaissance had the effect of applying astylistic brake to the evolution of Italian material culture in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a strong innovatory push wasprovided by the joint effects of national unification and industrializa-tion. In its frantic search for a new identity, Italy moved enthusiasticallyinto the new industrial era. This offered new prodution techniques andnew materials, such as steel and, later, plastics, with which to innovate.Thus, while one face of Italys material culture looked back towards itsheroic artistic past, another looked towards the products of its engi-neers bicycles, trains, ships and new consumer machines with theaim of finding new design solutions for these goods, as well as for themore traditional decorative art products, such as ceramics, glass, metal-work and textiles.

  The story of modern Italian material culture, which reached itsapogee in the decades after 1945 when the concept of Italian designreached the height of its maturity, is based on the marriage between artand industry which aligned the strengths of the past with the challengeof the future. It was a union which located its singular identity in theidea of design, a newly constructed concept belonging uniquely to theera of industrialization (and distinct from its roots in the indigenousnotion of disegno or drawing) which, by the second half of the twentiethcentury, had come to characterize an important face of the internationalachievement of modern Italian culture. As a process the concept ofdesign is a result of the division of labour within mass production aresult, that is, of the separation between conceiving and making goodsunknown within the unified craft process. As a feature of manufacturedgoods, it is the visual manifestation of the way in which functional, aes-

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• thetic and semantic requirements have been combined; and, as a featureof modern society, it is a visible marker of the phenomenon we call con-spicuous consumption.

  Perhaps more than any other country, it was Italy which sought torenew its past reputation for artistic excellence through the nineteenthand twentieth centuries, and in so doing make a bid for entry into theworld of modernity through the appearance and nature of the goodswhich make up the everyday, mass environment. In this way Italy soughtto ensure for itself a unique place within international modern culture.By the mid 1960s, the exclusive, luxurious decorative art objects of thenineteenth century had been joined by much more banal material goods from ashtrays to sewing machines representing the democratizedface of design. They remained imbued, however, with qualities resultingfrom a rigorous and self-conscious programme of aesthetic and indus-trial innovation. As a result, for the second time in its history, Italyearned a unique reputation for its attention to the important role thatobjects play within culture as a whole.

  The evolution of the modern Italian design movement was synony-mous with many of the key shifts in the economic, technological, politi-cal, social and cultural life of the Italian nation in the years after 1860. Itstands, in many ways, as a testimony to those shifts, providing a materialexposition of them, visible both to the inhabitants of Italy itself and,perhaps more significantly, to the rest of the industrialized world. Thestory can be broken down into a sequence of historical moments whichfocus on the periods 18601914, 191439, 193965, 196575 and 1975 tothe present day. Each moment marks a stage in the development of aphenomenon which had its formative years in the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries; which began to become clearly visible in the 1930s;which reached its zenith in the subsequent three decades; and whichexperienced a series of crises and redefinitions in the years after 1970.

  New goods for a new nation, 18601914

  The second half of the nineteenth century saw the new Italian nation insearch of a self-identity which would be visible both at home and abroad.Where mass material culture was concerned, however, change was slow.The country was predominantly agricultural in nature and the produc-tion and consumption of goods clothing and furniture among them were essentially local in nature. The goods themselves, for the most part,

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• perpetuated long-standing traditions. During this period, however, themovement of large numbers of people to cities and the emergence of afew large-scale mechanized industries steel manufacture featuring as acrucial development in this respect led to a transformation of theItalian material landscape and the introduction of the concept of moder-nity into many peoples lives. Nowhere was this more evident than in theemergence of new objects of transport (trains, ships and eventually cars);in objects for the work environment (among them typewriters and itemsof office furniture); and in the new forms of mass retailing, predominantamong them the urban department store. Such advances were concen-trated in the area known as the industrial triangle in the north of thecountry, namely in the area between Milan, Turin and Genoa, whereindustrialization was most rapid. At the Milan National Exhibition of1881, held in specially constructed buildings in the Public Gardens, forexample, a small electric railway took visitors from one site to another,while a large Machine Hall contained numerous examples of machinesdestined, among others, for the expanding textile industry. The coach-building manufacturers of Turin and Milan were also represented at theExhibition, as were more traditional decorative-arts objects, glass,ceramics and furniture in particular.

  Inevitably most of the new consumer goods and services were aimedat the wealthier sectors of society, as indeed were the vast majority of themore traditional goods which continued to emanate from the decora-tive-arts industries. The new products were fashioned in an un-self-conscious engineered style which reflected their means of manufacture,while the traditional goods ceramics and glass items, textiles, furni-ture and other items of household display remained the key statussymbols, manifested in the historicist repertoire of fashionable styles,among which Baroque and Rococo featured strongly. By the turn of thecentury, however, and as was clearly manifested at the TurinInternational Exhibition of 1902, the more modern Art Nouveau idiom,or, as it was called in Italy, the Stile Liberty, had emerged.

  Italy could boast a few innovators of its own in this modern, turn-of-the-century style: important among them was the furniture designerCarlo Bugatti (18551940). Still firmly linked to the nineteenth-centuryworld of historicism and bourgeois display, Bugatti succeeded nonethe-less in creating a number of furniture designs which earned Italy a placewithin the international stylistic avant-garde. Although he was part of alarger group of furniture innovators other members included Eugenio

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• Quarti (18671931) and Carlo Zen (18511918) their contributions didlittle to stem the continuous flow of traditional designs which character-ized the production of the majority of furniture workshops of theperiod. Most furniture was still made in small workshops in historicalstyles, as indeed were the majority of the glass and ceramic objects. A fewfirms, such as the ceramics manufacturer Richard Ginori, rationalizedtheir production; however, the aesthetic of the goods made was still farfrom innovative. Only the floral style of the Stile Liberty began to makean impact. By the turn of the century it provided a means by whichmiddle-class, style-conscious consumers could represent their desire toenter into modernity.

  The new industries, on the other hand, emanating from electricalengineering and from iron and steel manufacture, produced utility,rather than status, goods, clearly demonstrating this fact in their chosenaesthetic. The Olivetti typewriter company, for example, applied theprinciple of producing innovatory items of function rather than fashionat the same time as it rationalized its manufacturing systems accordingto principles which Camillo Olivetti (18681943) had observed in theUSA. The simple, unadorned form of his m1 typewriter, with its black,enamelled body-shell, marked the presence in Italy of a new, functional,industrial aesthetic which was to exert a tremendous influence in subse-quent years.

  At the turn of the century Italian cars were only enjoyed by thewealthy. The products of the Fiat company (founded in 1899), Lancia(founded in 1905) and Alfa Romeo (founded in 1910) were all luxury items,embellished with an appropriate level of conspicuous comfort. Thesecompanies drew heavily on Italys well-established coachbuilding tradi-tion represented by companies such as Castagna and Alessio, both ofwhich were based in Turin. Only Fiats Zero model, developed between1912 and 1915 but never produced in large numbers, aimed, like the USAsModel T Ford, to be perceived as a utility car directed at a wide market.

  The years 1860 to 1914 were marked, therefore, by an essentially prag-matic approach to design. They also witnessed the formation of theindustrial, social and cultural framework which was to sustain subse-quent developments in this area. The move towards industrial rational-ization, combined with the expansion of the material needs of a new,middle-class urban population which identified itself with the values ofa new nation emerging in the context of a transformed, modern environ-ment, created a new stylistic imperative for Italys goods which was to

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• reach partial fruition in the inter-war years, but which only achieved fullmaturity in the years following the Second World War. At the same time,however, the traditional values and production methods of the decorative-arts industries continued to exert an important influence, constrainingItalys rush into the future.

  The emergence of Italian modernism, 19141939

  The ambivalence towards modernity continued in the years following theFirst World War. At the same time, it was in the years 191439 that Italymoved one step nearer towards the formulation of a modern Italiandesign movement. This occurred in the context of an Italy which, from theearly 1920s onwards, was transformed politically with the advent ofFascism. Most significantly, where material culture was concerned,Fascism was a political ideology with a strong economic and cultural pro-gramme which was implemented through state control, and whichbrought with it the need for industrial self-sufficiency and the necessityfor a strong visual national identity. Mussolini was more progressive thanHitler in his aesthetic preferences, and was sympathetic to the stark formsof the architectural and design movement known, in Italy, as Rationalism.For a few years in the early 1930s, in fact, Rationalism appeared to offer anappropriately progressive visual face for the rgime. At the same timeMussolinis political programme depended on the presence both of anumber of large-scale industrial enterprises, which continued to emulatetheir counterparts across the Atlantic, and of a network of small, regionalmanufacturing workshops to which he gave his full support. Thisresulted in a dualism which encouraged the perpetuation of the tradi-tional decorative arts, acting, once again, as a brake upon the moreforward-looking thrust of Italian material culture. Thus, as had happenedbefore, while the inter-war years saw a highly progressive approach tomaterial culture, they also continued to hark back to the past, both stylis-tically and where manufacturing processes were concerned.

  The progressive attitude was reflected in the startingly modernappearance of many of the products of the new, mass-production indus-tries. Fiats model 1500 car of 1933, for instance, was a prime example ofAmerican-inspired streamlining, its flowing body lines clearly indebtedto Chryslers futuristic Air-flow car. Lancias Aprilia model of two yearslater was designed like a section of an airplane wing. The Olivetticompany continued to lead the way in graphic and product aesthetics. In

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• the 1920s, Adriano, the son of Camillo, returned from a trip to the USAintent on modernizing not only his factorys production methods butalso the visual identity of the company as a whole. To this end heemployed a number of progressive graphic designers, among themAlexander Schawinsky (190479), who had trained at the famousBauhaus design school in Germany. With this group of innovative artistsand designers he succeeded in modernizing all the graphic material ema-nating from his company. By the late 1930s, he had extended this pro-gramme of modernization to the machines that came off the productionlines. Marcello Nizzoli (18871969) was brought in to head this project,while two leading architects of the day, Luigi Figini (1903) and GinoPollini (1903), designed the companys new factory in Ivrea which wascompleted by the end of the decade. Other firms keen to emulateOlivettis example included the Necchi sewing-machine company andPhonola, a radio manufacturer. The latters futuristic model of 1939,designed by Luigi Caccia Dominioni (1913 ) and Livio (191179) and PierGiacomo Castiglioni (191368), emulated the shape of a modern tele-phone an object which had already been accepted by a large slice of thepopulation in an attempt to reassure consumers that it was an advancedpiece of technology which at the same time was familiar and safe.

  The importance of the Rationalist movement in architecture anddesign, which began to make its mark in the late 1920s and which, by themid 1930s, had had a considerable impact, more in terms of its influenceon theoretical and pedagogical ideas than in terms of actual constructedbuildings, cannot be overestimated. Influenced by the work of architectssuch as Walter Gropius (18831969) in Germany and Le Corbusier(18871965) in France, it proposed a modern style for the modern envi-ronment based on new materials concrete and steel among them andsimple, functional forms devoid of unnecessary ornamentation.Rationalism embraced the use of new technologies as evidenced by theElectric House (La Casa Elettrica), designed by Piero Bottoni (190373),together with Figini and Pollini, for the Monza Biennale of 1930, dem-onstrating the movements claim to be the way forward for the materialenvironment of the new age. Rationalism allied itself with the interna-tionalism of the architectural Modern Movement of the inter-war years,although, for a short time at least, it was also aligned with the Fascistrgime. This association found expression in, among other projects, thecompetition proposals of 1933 for the new Florence Station and in theCasa del Fascio (1932-6) in Como, by Giuseppe Terragni (190443).

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• In spite of the ideological marriage between Rationalism andFascism, the style proved too international in essence to representadequately the fiercely nationalistic ambitions of Mussolini and hisparty. Much nearer to the essential Italianness that he sought was themuch more overtly nationally oriented modern architectural anddesign style referred to as Novecento (Nineteenhundred). Rooted inclassicism, it was a simplified version of this style, and served toremind Italy simultaneously of its great past and of its ambitions forthe future.

  Buildings constructed by Mussolini in the key industrial centres aswell as in the new towns Littoria and Sabaudia among them helpedthis new style to become the symbolic expression of Fascism. Novecentoalso influenced the decorative arts, providing a stylistic bridge betweenthe past and the present, with its combination of the familiarity of classi-cism and a new simplicity. Gio Pontis (18911979) ceramics for RichardGinori, for example, displayed the simplified classical motifs that char-acterized the style. Goods in the Novecento idiom also dominated thedisplays at the exhibition held in Milan known as the Triennale, socalled because it was held at three-yearly intervals from 1933 onwards.The exhibition was crucial for Italys bid for modernity in the interna-tional arena, as it was visited by large numbers of people. The buildingwhich housed it, designed by Giovanni Muzio (18931982) in 1933, epito-mized the Novecento style.

  The inter-war years proved to be ones of both consolidation andchange for Italian material culture. The essentially modern concept ofdesign, imported from the USA along with ideas about rational manu-facturing, existed alongside a reworking of the traditional concept ofthe decorative arts, a reworking which began to align itself with the ideaof modernity. Additionally, Italian architects and designers had toaddress the problem of finding a style to reflect the dominant politicaland ideological imperatives of the day. This last need instilled intoItalian material culture a level of significance which was absent in theAmerican model. In the USA design remained primarily commercial inorientation. In the Italian context, however, commerce, industry, cultureand politics interacted with each other to create a richer frame for Italysforay into modern design. By 1939 that infrastructure was fully in place,although it was not until after the Second World War that it was to findits fullest expression.

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• From reconstruction to conspicuous consumption,19391965

  Although the framework which was formed by 1939 exerted a stronginfluence on the way in which the concept of Italian design was con-structed after the cessation of hostilities in 1945, the key instigatorbehind this notion was the need to represent the post-Fascist Republicthrough a new and specifically Italian material culture. Spurred on bythe desire to oppose all that had gone before, the architects and design-ers of post-Mussolini Italy sought to create a new environment whichreflected the transformation that was taking place in the country. It isironic, however, that in many ways the evolution of post-1945 Italiandesign was heavily influenced by events of the pre-war years, mostnotably by the programme of industrialization, modernization andrationalization that had been undertaken by the Fascist state.

  In the immediate post-war years a new Rationalism, articulated moststrongly by the architect Ernesto N. Rogers (190969) in the importantarchitectural and design periodical Domus, which had existed since the1920s and of which Rogers became the editor in 1945, was seen as themeans by which a new domestic environment could be created for thelarge numbers of people left homeless by the war. More than this,however, it was a means of combining the new ideological and culturalprogramme with an aesthetic which could represent it. It is a question,wrote Rogers in the first January edition of the magazine published in1946, of forming a taste, a technique, a morality, all terms of the samefunction. It is a question of building a society.

  These ambitions were realized in the new simple furnishings thatpoured out of the furniture workshops in Brianza and in the simplemetal goods that emerged from the factories, increasing numbers ofwhich were reorganized along mass-production lines. The Americandesign idiom known as streamlining was once more in evidence, espe-cially in the forms of the new office machines, in items of coffee-barequipment, and in objects of transport that symbolized the new democ-racy. The Italian line, as it came to be called, was visible, for example, indesigns for cars by Pinin Farina (see fig. 25), in Piaggios Vespa motor-scooter of 1947, in Gio Pontis coffee-machine for La Pavoni of 1948 (seefig. 26), in the Cisitalia car of 1951, and in Marcello Nizzolis Lexicon 80typewriter for Olivetti of 1948. As symbols of the newly democratized

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• Italy, goods such as these penetrated the mass environment in a hithertounprecedented manner. Their mass production was part of the renewedindustrial effort that took place after 1945, of which these goods becamethe most visible face.

  The rapid evolution and dissemination of a concept of Italiandesign, linked to a sophisticated modern aesthetic in goods making upthe everyday environment, occurred in the period of Italian reconstruc-

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  25. Coup 1900. Photograph by Pinin Farina, 1953.

  26. Gio Ponti, Espresso coffee machine for La Pavoni, 1948.

• tion and economic boom, namely 194560. A product of the twin forcesof industrialization and modernization, the new popular concept ofdesign became a key element in the image that Italy presented of itselfboth domestically and internationally. Its success was dependent onseveral contingent factors, among them the presence of a number ofmanufacturing industries both large and small which sought to dif-ferentiate their goods in foreign marketplaces through their modern,sophisticated aesthetic; the availability of a group of architect-designers,trained within the ethos of Rationalism, ready and able to apply theirvisualizing skills to a wide range of goods; the rise of an Italian homemarket wealthy enough to consume many of the new goods; and theemergence of a new Italian image of domesticity that was to have enor-mous international appeal.

  As the Republic moved from its early left-wing phase in the yearsimmediately after the war into a more moderate era dominated by theChristian Democrats, design in Italy became central to the image of thegood life that became a key aspiration for many Italians in the 1950s and1960s. Luxury and comfort became represented, however, less by anappeal to tradition and to the familiar decorative arts and more by thehighly expressive image of modernity conveyed through the furnitureitems, lighting objects and other small goods that made up the idealItalian domestic landscape. From the sinuous forms of chairs designedby Marco Zanuso (1916 ) for Arflex and by Osvaldo Borsani (191186) forTecno, to the sculptural forms of lighting by Gino Sarfatti (1911 ) forArteluce designed in the early 1950s, to the sensuous shells of the newelettrodomestici and household goods, among them the Spalter vacuumcleaner designed by the Castiglioni brothers and Sergio Astis soda watersyphon (see fig. 27), Italian designs joined together to create a com-pletely new image of domesticity. In the international arena, this imagereplaced the craft-based, humanistic environment of the Scandinavianhome with a much more aestheticized, dehumanized and aggressivelymodern living area.

  By the end of the 1950s, at the height of Italys economic boom, all-plastic chairs, in bright synthetic colours, designed by Vico Magistretti(1920 ), Marco Zanuso (1916 ) and Joe Colombo (193071), were pre-sented in glossy magazines, such as Domus, Abitare (Living) and StileIndustria (Industrial Style), appealing through their pages to style-hungry affluent consumers worldwide. Depicted on plinths like sculp-tures, these chairs represented much more than the mere act of sitting.They conveyed, rather, an image of modernity which Italy had made its

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• own, and through which it was communicating, to the rest of the world,the measure of its economic achievement in the mid-century. In addi-tion, the names of the designers were sold along with their products,thereby reinforcing their status as art objects. The post-war years saw, infact, the emergence of a group of designer-heroes whose names were asimportant as their work.

  By the mid 1960s a concept of Italian design, linked with a seductiveimage of a lifestyle for the late twentieth century, had penetrated theinternational consciousnes. This was partly made possible by Italiandesigns visibility at the Milan Triennali of these years (1947, 1951, 1954and 1957) and by the international design press which seized upon it. Itssuccess coincided with a general rise in prosperity in the industrializedworld, and with an increased faith in technological progress and in the

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  27. Soda water syphon, designed by Sergio Asti, 1956.

• dream of democracy on the part of a large section of the population ofWestern countries.

  From design to anti-design, 19651975

  After 1965, however, this sense of optimism was showing signs of fading.In Italy the industrial strikes of the early 1960s had indicated a hiatus inthe economic miracle and, combined with the student movement laterin the decade, seemed to indicate that the upward curve of growth andoptimism about the future was beginning to move downwards. Sodeeply entrenched was the ideology of the Italian design movementwithin the enthusiasm for technology and the faith in the economicmiracle that reservations about the one inevitably caused doubts aboutthe other. The 1968 Triennale closed early as a result of student agitation,and by the end of the decade it had become apparent that design toocould contain its own counter-movement. Contro- or Anti-designgrew out of ideas put forward by Italian architects and designers whowere responding to the shift in the status quo. More than any othersingle individual, the Austrian-born designer Ettore Sottsass (1917 ),who in 1959 became a consultant to Olivetti working on their early com-puter, the Elea 9003, and subsequently, through the 1960s, on their inno-vative range of typewriters, presented a new role for design in Italy. Sincethe early 1960s, Sottsass had been experimenting with projects in theareas of furniture and ceramics. He was fascinated with the idea ofdesign being its own cultural messenger, rather than the handmaiden ofthe manufacturing industry. Design, for Sottsass, had to be first and fore-most an agent for change, and his Valentine typewriter of 1969designed for Olivetti a bright red pop object intended for flexible usein a number of different environments outside the conventional office demonstrated his commitment to the essential flexibility and mutabil-ity of design and its accompanying ideology.

  Rooted in the ethic of pop culture, which favoured ephemerality overpermanence, Sottsasss statements inspired a larger movement in designthinking which developed into a critique of mainstream practice.Groups of architects and designers, many of them based in Florence andall of them formed in 1966 among them Archizoom, Superstudio,Gruppo NNNN and Gruppo Strum rejected the image of the individu-alized designer-hero which had developed in the post-war years and setabout using design as a form of commentary upon Italian culture as a

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• whole. In place of the unremitting modernity, seriousness and high cul-tural intentions which had characterized Italian design a decade earlier,these agents provocateurs injected humour, historical references andbanality into their radical designs, thereby offering the possibility ofdesign functioning independently of the post-war economic industrialprogramme. Even manufacturing companies responded to this new rad-icalized role for design; the Zanotta company, for example, in 1969 pro-duced its famous Sacco (Sack) chair, a formless seat made up ofthousands of polyurathene pellets. The Sacco was a design anti-statementinasmuch as it had no inherent or fixed form, a strategy which denied itthe possibility of standing for luxury or conspicuous consumption. Itwas a strategy which was repeated in a number of other designs of theperiod, among them Achille Castiglionis Boalum Lamp.

  For the most part, however, Anti-design found its natural home inthe art gallery rather then in the environment of everyday life. In 1973 amajor exhibition about Italian design, entitled Italy: The New DomesticLandscape, curator Emilio Ambasz (1943 ), was held at the Museum ofModern Art in New York. It presented the different faces of Italiandesign as these had emerged over the previous decade, but focused on

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  28. Ettore Sottsass, Yantra Ceramici, 1970.

• the oppositional nature of many of its contemporary manifestations.The idea of design becoming its own critique dominated the 1970s, pro-viding an alternative route to the more mainstream, chic face of Italianmaterial culture recognizable through a preference for leather andchrome in furniture and, in products, through an alliance with contem-porary sculpture which continued to represent that country in theinternational marketplace.

  Towards post-modernism, 1975 to the present

  By the end of the 1970s, Italian design dominated the international arenabut, at the same time, it continued to include its own critique. By the early1980s, the Anti-design movement, which had been an exclusively Italianphenomenon in the 1960s, began to show signs of reviving. This time itinfluenced attitudes to design outside Italy as well as within it. Nowherewas this more obvious than in the dramatic and sudden impact of the firstshow of the Memphis group, held in 1981 in Milan. The group was headedby the veteran agitator, Ettore Sottsass, who since 1979 had been collabo-rating with a radical group project, known as Studio Alchymia, which hadregrouped the older members of Anti-design and recruited new ones.Memphis extended the programme of Studio Alchymia in a more publiclyaccessible way, and within weeks of the first exhibition it was clear thatItaly was leading an international sea-change in design.

  The effects of Memphis, characterized by its zany, kitsch pieces of

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  29. Superstudio, The Continuous Movement, 1969.

• furniture covered in brightly coloured and highly decorated plastic lam-inates, and its pieces of glass and ceramic which flaunted craft principles,were rapidly felt beyond Italy. The work of Sottsass, Michele de Lucchi(1951 ), Matteo Thun (1952 ), and others showed a way out of theimpasse of good taste and confirmed that Italian design was still at theforefront of debate and innovation.

  The 1980s saw a number of Memphis shows and a widening of themovement to include a host of new names, many of whom came fromoutside Italy to work in Milan. While the design avant-garde flourished,the flexible structure of Italian manufacturing industry made it possiblefor their ideas to be realized. The Milan furniture fairs of the decadewere filled with visitors looking for the latest design idea.

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  30. Achille Castiglioni, Boalum Lamp, 1970.

• In the 1990s, however, Italian design lost its pre-eminence in the faceof other countries France, Spain, Japan and Singapore among them rising up to challenge its authority in the marketplace. A growing inter-nationalism in design meant that, increasingly, non-Italians came towork in Milan, while Italian influences were felt across the globe.Although the manufacturing giants Alessi, Cassina and Olivettiamong them continued to impress and push the boundaries forward,the heroes of modern Italian design remained the generation of menthen moving into their seventies and eighties. Today, a modern designmovement features less strongly in Italys contemporary identity,viewed both from within and without. The emulation of Italian designby other countries has permitted newly industrialized nations to learnfrom its achievements. They are now busy harnessing modern design totheir own emerging national identities. Designs task of bringing Italyinto the modern world seems to have been completed.

  further reading

  Ambasz, E. (ed.), Italy: The New Domestic Landscape. New York: Museum of Modern Art,1972.

  Branzi, A., The Hot House: Italian New Wave Design. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.Branzi, A. and De Lucchi, M., Il design italiano degli anni 50. Milan: IGIS, 1981.Dansi, S. and Patteta, L., Rationalisme et architecture en Italie. Milan: Electa, 1976.Fossati, P., Il design in Italia 19451972. Turin: Einaudi, 1972 .Fratelli, E., Il disegno industriale italiano 19281981 (Quasi una storia ideologica). Turin: Celid,

  1982.Grassi, A. and Pansera, A., Atlante del design italiano 19401980. Milan: Fabbri, 1980.Gregotti, V., Il disegno del prodotto industriale: Italia 18601980. Milan: Electa, 1982.Modern Italian Design. Catalogue. Manchester City Art Gallery, 1956.Radice, B., Memphis: The New International Style. Milan: Electa, 1981.Sartago, P., Italian Re-Evolution: Design in Italian Society in the 80s. California: Museum of

  Contemporary Art, 1982.Sparke, P., Italian Design: 1970 to the Present. London: Thames and Hudson, 1986.

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• e u g e n i a p a u l i c e l l i

  14

  Fashion: narration and nation

  There is a scene in Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1958), the novel byGiuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (18961957), in which the character ofDon Calogero, who represents the new aspiring bourgeois class, isinvited for the first time to dinner at the Prince of Salinas summer resi-dence. The Prince, who is also the narrator of the novel, describes DonCalogeros arrival with a high degree of stylistic virtuosity. Don Calogero we are told is the only guest who is not appropriately dressed for theoccasion. In fact, he is wearing a formal frock-coat since he wants to showthe aristocratic Salina family that he is wealthy enough to afford one.The Prince, however, is wearing an afternoon suit, as he has always doneat his rural retreat in order not to embarrass the locals. Don Calogerosoutfit is a real catastrophe not so much for its fine fabric as for its cut,which reveals his stinginess and lack of style as he has chosen an incom-petent local tailor instead of relying, as the true aristocrats did, on amore expert and expensive tailor based in England. In addition to thisfault, the Prince remarks that not only are Don Calogeros shoes wrongbut his shirt-collar is shapeless, details which act as clues to his definingtrait: his hopeless lack of refined manners and elegance, despite hisnewly acquired wealth.

  This description of Don Calogeros outfit underscores the encounterof the two worlds present in the novel: the aristocracy and the wealthypetty bourgeoisie. The novel is set, in fact, at the moment of the pettybourgeoisies rise to becoming the new ruling class, and follows itsstruggle for hegemony during the Italian Risorgimento. In the novel,social dynamism is often depicted in terms of clothes and uniforms. It ispossible, in fact, to note a progressive change in the various clothes andmilitary uniforms of the major protagonists as the social and political

• situation in Italy evolves during the 1860s. The process comes to a headtowards the end of the novel in the ball scene, rendered famous byLuchino Viscontis film adaptation, in which the soldiers who formerlywore the Garibaldinian red shirts are now dressed in the more sober anddignified blue of the Piedmontese-Savoyard army, soon to become Italysfirst national army.

  Clothes do not have symbolic meaning if we isolate them either fromtheir socio-political context or from those elements the body, grace,elegance, accessories and ultimately the performance of their wearing which reinforce their narrative function. It is for these reasons that liter-ary texts, paintings, memoirs, letters and so forth help us to reconstructthe nuances of a given historical period through their representation ofclothes. Fashion, we might say, is a system of signification as well as anon-going process of communication which narrates history. However,fashion does this at a level different from that on which people live theirlives as regards both everyday activity and special rituals.

  Let me at once stress that fashion does not exist without the notion ofchange, and it is for this reason that it has an intimate link with moder-nity. Fashion in Europe, in fact, emerges as a phenomenon with the earlyphases of capitalism, the expansion of trade and the growth of cities. Itsbeginnings can be traced back to the fourteenth century with the break-down of hierarchical relationships between classes, which led to the riseof an increasingly powerful bourgeoisie. It was during the HighRenaissance that bourgeois culture first displayed a self-awarenessabout the fashioning of the human subject as a controllable process.With the creation of its mythologies, fashion represents a visible narra-tion of a given epoch which illustrates the contradictions and manifesta-tions of class and gender conflicts. Furthermore, through fashion we canidentify social and class agendas which go towards the shaping of thepolitical environment at both the individual and the collective levels.Works like Il libro del cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528) byBaldassare Castiglione (14781529), which is the first text of its type inWestern culture, addressed the question of the construction of thepublic image in court society. The book gives practical advice to bothmen and women which allows us to trace the different contemporaryideological constructions of femininity and masculinity. What we nowcall dress for success was an aesthetic and political game whose rules thepowerful men and women of the Renaissance knew very well, as do someof the characters of The Leopard. Fashion, besides being a system of sig-

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• nification and a process of communication, can function as a techniquewith which to construct gender and identity within a given narrative.With clothes we dress, cover and adorn our bodies. With clothes it is pos-sible for someone to project an identity; or better, we could say thatclothes contribute to creating a veil of images in the communicative rela-tionship between people. The concern with and refinement of appear-ances should not be dismissed merely as a superficial aspect of humanactivity. Rather it constitutes an important component of what we callidentity in the modern age. Human needs and desires cannot be rele-gated solely to the realm of usefulness. This also helps explain the rela-tionship between fashion and art. Thus, the search for beauty representsanother important aspect of the fashion system, an aspect which is ini-tially connected with the self and its psychological implications beforegoing on to constitute a politics of style.

  From the sixteenth century onwards, French fashion held sway inItaly and in the rest of Europe. Most men and women belonging to thenoble classes bought their clothes and accessories in Paris, and those whocould afford it employed a French tailor. A biting portrait of a Milanesegiovin signore (young gentleman) is offered by Giuseppe Parini (172299)in his poem Il Giorno (The Day, 1763), a text which is dedicated tofashion. As a reaction to this and similar influences, and spurred on bythe rise of patriotic movements and the drive towards the peninsulasunification, attempts were made during the nineteenth century to createfashions that could be deemed independent of external influences. Forinstance, high-society ladies started to dress in red, after Garibaldisredshirts, calling their colours magenta or solferino, referring to thevictorious battles of the unification campaign.

  However, this patriotic impetus was little more than a fad and did notlast long, since French fashion continued to exercise a powerful appeal.Nevertheless, attempts were made in the years preceding Italys unifica-tion to create a distinctive Italian fashion separate from the French. Inmagazines such as Il corriere delle dame (The Ladies Newspaper), severalarticles stressed that French fashion patterns could not be completelyadapted or copied because of the cultural and climatic differencesbetween the two countries. To illustrate the relationship betweenfashion and the desire to create a national image, we might mention twofashionable items. One is the famous cappello alla calabrese (Calabrian-style hat), adopted by some Milanese women and derived from apopular, rustic and exclusively masculine world. It thus represented a

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• double transgression of established gender and social norms. It wasworn during the Milan insurrections of 1848 and was outlawed later thatsame year. At the same time, a distinctive vestire alla lombarda (dressing inthe Lombard fashion) appeared in the iconography of the period. Thepolitical message of this trend was contained in the fabric used to makethe clothes: the black velvet which was produced in the region, asopposed to wool, which was imported from Austria or Germany.1

  These sporadic and timid attempts to build a genuine Italian fashiondid not have a real impact. It was not until the first two decades of thetwentieth century that a new, more dynamic image of woman, more intune with the speed of modernity, appeared. With their short hair andshorter skirts, women dressed in a functional manner more appropriateto the less leisured life many working women led after the First WorldWar. This change in the culture of womens clothes, part of the whirl-wind of social change which took place in the opening decades of thecentury, was noted by the Futurists who published the Manifesto dellamoda futurista (Manifesto of Futurist Fashion, 1920). Although thereexisted a strong desire to create an Italian national fashion, the condi-tions were not yet present for this to happen. French fashion and itsindustry would continue to dominate foreign markets until the 1960s.

  If fashion is the creation of images and simulacra able to markpopular memory through the creation of consciousness and the projec-tion of strong models of social hegemony, we can understand whyMussolini, especially in the autarchic phase of the rgime, concernedhimself with the rhetoric of fashion and promoted the fashion industry.Fascism was to represent a new way of being, living and appearing.Italians were no longer to shake hands, as this was not considered to bevirile enough; instead, they were to greet each other with the FascistRoman salute of the raised right arm. And, of course, it was the Ducesdesire to influence the way people dressed, thereby creating a compleximage of the perfect Fascist. At public parades and rallies, each genera-tion was dressed in uniforms created by the Fascist rgime, for examplethe black shirt and the beret with a tassel for men. As a totalitarianrgime, Fascism was concerned with the construction and presentationof an image of Italy and Italians which was standardized and controlledby the state. The new image of the Fascist woman was spread throughvarious magazines such as La Donna (Woman), Bellezza, (Beauty) andPer voi Signora (For You Madam). She had a strong athletic body, but wasnot too skinny, in contrast to the dominant image of French women,

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• from whom the Fascist rgime was at pains to distance itself. At the sametime, the Fascist woman had to project a reassuring and protective imageof maternal femininity.

  In April 1933, the Queen of Italy, Elena, inaugurated the first Italianexhibition of fashion, which was held in Turin, the city chosen by thergime as the capital of fashion. This was the first concerted officialattempt to convince Italian upper-class women that not just French butalso Italian fashion was chic. Tailors, dressmakers and women wereencouraged to seek inspiration in the regional costumes of Italy.Photographs of the future queen Maria Jos wearing traditional dresswere published in popular female magazines. In 1932, the EnteNazionale della Moda (National Fashion Board) was established inTurin with the purpose of Italianizing fashion.2

  As well as French authority, Fascist Italy had to contend with anotherforeign influence, this time coming from Hollywood films which wereextremely popular. American cinema represented an important source ofinspiration for Italian women, who began to copy the dresses worn by theactresses. In 1936, the Ente Nazionale della Moda published a dictionary offashion by the journalist Cesare Meano with the purpose of purifyingItalian fashion jargon of foreign terms. This 500-page dictionary, whichwas reprinted several times and which contained quotations from Italianauthors such as Dante, Boccaccio, Foscolo and Manzoni, set out to create anew Italianized fashion jargon which was to be adopted by people workingin the fashion industry. The results of this linguistic nationalization cam-paign sometimes touched upon the ridiculous, as in the case of words likecignone which was supposed to replace the French chignon. Unfortunately,in Italian, cignone means big swan. In 1938, in the midst of the racial laws,disciplinary sanctions were enacted in order to eliminate foreign influ-ences from Italian life. Even the publication of French patterns in popularmagazines, as occurred in the case of Vita femminile (Feminine Life), wascensored. Interestingly, as had already happened in the Renaissance withthe sumptuary laws which aimed to control the social body by disciplininghow people dressed especially women, Jews and lower-class people these kinds of sanctions were unfailingly transgressed.

  A more lasting innovation of these years was the introduction of syn-thetic fibre or so-called intelligent fibres such as rayon. As a conse-quence, it became possible to produce cheaper mass-produced clothesfor an ever-growing market. Department stores such as UPIM and LaRinascente, which still exist today, were opened. We have to remember,

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• however, that a wide gap continued to exist between cities, on the onehand, and the countryside and small towns and villages on the other. Forthe real ready-to-wear revolution, we have to wait until the 1960s.Nevertheless, the concern with appearances, which is captured in thesaying fare bella figura, to look good, was a concern that extended to allsocial classes in both rural and urban Italy. The notion of bella figura,which also means to create a good impression and to possess a sense ofdecorum in social and public occasions, is an important component ofItalian identity and is part of a tradition which can be traced back to theRenaissance and to texts such as Castigliones Il cortegiano.

  The link between fashion and the search for a national identity con-tinued during the post-war years when Italian fashion started to imposeitself on the international market, especially in America. The develop-ment of an authentic Italian style and a modern fashion system tookplace within the context of the new international fashion system. Thereciprocal attraction between Italy and the USA was the result of theAmerican presence in the peninsula during the last phase of the war. Inthe 1950s Florence became the capital of Italian fashion and the ideal sitefor fashion shows. This also occurred thanks to the efforts of theFlorentine aristocrat Giovanni Battista Giorgini, who organized the firstItalian fashion shows and invited many American buyers to attendthem. These society events greatly contributed to making Italian fashionknown internationally. The 1950s were the time when Italian fashiondesigners such as the Sorelle Fontana, Emilio Pucci, Emilio Shubert,Valentino, Germana Marucelli and others started to make a name forthemselves both in Italy and in foreign markets, above all in the USA. Animportant contribution to the creation of the Italian look was made bythe very high standards and technological sophistication of the Italiantextile industry, which was well known outside Italy and the fashionworld. In fact, the textile and clothing industry boomed in the 1950s andplayed a major role in Italys economic reconstruction.

  As a result of these various circumstances, Italian fashion started toreceive wide recognition, and Italian clothes, styles and fabrics began tobe identified as specifically Italian.3 During the same period, a numberof American films, most notably William Wylers Roman Holiday (1953),showed an image of Italy which was different from that presented byNeorealist films. Italy was often depicted as the perfect place for romancein which American or foreign tourists were mesmerized by its art andarchitecture, and not only by the good pasta and olive oil. Italianit was

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• romanticized and associated with the beautiful artistic cities steeped inhistory, which also created an ideal backcloth for fashion photographsand for the idea that Italian clothes and people were romantic and sexy.Indeed, some of Hollywoods most famous actresses wore dresses byItalian fashion designers.

  In the mid 1960s, the emergence of ready-to-wear as opposed to highfashion revolutionized the fashion world and started the process of itsdemocratization. It was during this time that Max-Mara, among others,began to play a key role in the ready-to-wear industry, establishing a rep-utation which, both in Italy and abroad, has continued to this day. Max-Mara contributed to the creation of a total look which, with itsco-ordinates (dresses, blouses, coats, sweaters and so forth), established asubtle, understated urbane elegance for professional women.4 Similarly,in the late 1970s, Fiorucci exercised a strong attraction for the youthmarket, creating a playful, colourful line of inexpensive clothes: T-shirts, jeans, dresses, etc.

  As regards youth culture and styles, post-war Italy differed from theUSA and Britain. Teddy-boy, mod, hippie and punk styles were importedvia the mass media into Italy, which, in general, has not created its ownindigenous youth subcultures. The only such specifically Italian group-ing were the paninari. These young people, however, did not constitute atransgression of the established order or dress codes, and were com-pletely at ease in consumer society. They appeared in the early 1980s atthe same time as a number of sandwich bars (in Italian paninoteche, aword derived from panino, sandwich, from which the designation pani-naro was also taken) which served as their meeting-places. The paninariforged a look based on designer casual clothing, and a jargon of theirown which was mainly drawn from the world of English-languagepopular music. The paninari were a typical phenomenon of the 1980s: thedecade of conspicuous consumption and of the so-called riflusso, or lackof interest in the political activism which had characterized previousdecades. The 1980s also saw Milan become one of the foremost inter-national capitals of fashion, on a par with Paris and New York. TheItalian look was sold all over the world.

  With more women working in high-level positions, a new image andidentity were created by the fashion world: that of the woman manager,characterized most effectively by the androgynous look made famous byGiorgio Armani. As well as masculinizing female clothes, Armani alsocontributed to femininizing the male business suit, deconstructing its

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• stiffness and rendering it sexier thanks to the use of soft and luxuriousfabrics such as wool and silk, as well as cashemere.5 To this day, Armanicontinues to be the foremost Italian designer in terms of sales in theUSA. Other high-fashion designers, such as Gianni Versace, took inspira-tion from punk street-styles, while developing the high-couture versionof the motorbike leather jacket. Versace gave an innovative twist to thetraditional world of Italian fashion. His image of woman was deliber-ately provocative, eccentric and exaggerated, the very opposite image ofArmanis understated one.

  Another designer, Gianfranco Moschino, has played an even moreironically irreverent role in subverting the notion of classic elegance.His clothes have parodied religious garb, and have combined differentstyles and fabrics in the same outfit. Moschino aims at giving a carniva-lesque and derisive character to mainstream fashion it is enough tothink of the dress recalling a ballerinas tutu he made out of what lookedlike recycled bras even though he does this from within the system hewishes to undermine. As a matter of fact, several fashion designers havetaken this direction in the last two decades, as if to underline the fetish-istic and crossdressing elements which are part of fashion. Perhaps thisphenomenon hides a constant fear of being taken for granted, and a sortof stylistic restlessness which reveals a lack of new ideas. On theEuropean scene, Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gautier, John Gallianoand Alexander McQueen are examples of designers who offer a bricolagemade up of quotations from historical costumes, punk styles, paintingsand turn-of-the-century coquettes.

  By way of conclusion, I should like to go back to literature and recallthe well-known text by the nineteenth-century poet Giacomo Leopardi,his Dialogo tra la moda e la morte (Dialogue between Fashion andDeath). Among many interesting observations, this dialogue, in whichfashion and death are sisters, calls our attention to the fact that fashionlives in the utopia of the fleeting moment, the present. This is an impor-tant detail on which philosophers and sociologists among them GeorgSimmel and Walter Benjamin were to ground some of their reflectionsin their seminal writings on fashion.6 Fashion, in occupying the divid-ing line between past and future, feeds on the ungraspable present.From this derive the constant urge towards the new and the need tochange.

  But if fashion lives in the folds of the present, clothes weave the fabricof memory. Fashion and clothes move at different speeds, and they are

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• not the same thing. The history of a particular item does not necessarilycoincide with the history of fashion. Thus, certain clothes, as in some ofthe cases mentioned in this essay, designate what the historian PhilippePerrot has called events as opposed to structure, which Perrot, viaRoland Barthes, identifies with fashion.7 It is through single events,their functions and roles, as well as the associative chains they forge, thatwe are able to construct and narrate a story, or, if we are patient enough,to discover passages and remnants which might have escaped the dis-tracted gaze of history.

  notes

  1. Grazietta Butazzi, La moda a Milano dal regno dItalia al 48, Il Risorgimento 3 (1992),pp. 493515.2. Natalia Aspesi, Il lusso e lautarchia (Milan: Rizzoli, 1982).3. Luigi Settembrini, From Haute Couture to Prt--Porter, in G. Celant (ed.), TheItalian Metamorphosis (Milan: Progetti Museali, 1994), pp. 48494; Valerie Steele,Italian Fashion and America, ibid., pp. 496505.4. Nicola White, Max Mara and the Origins of Italian Ready to Wear, Modern Italy 1/2(1996), pp. 6380.5. Valerie Steele, Fifty Years of Fashion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).6. Georg Simmel, Fashion (1895), in G. Wills and D. Midgley (eds.), Fashion Marketing(London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), pp. 17191; Walter Benjamin, Parigi: Capitale del xixSecolo. I Passages di Parigi (Turin: Einaudi, 1986).7. Philippe Perrot, Suggestions for a Different Approach to the History of Dress,Diogenes 114 (1981), pp. 15776

  further reading

  Barthes, Roland, The Fashion System. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.Butazzi, Grazietta, 19221943 Ventanni di Moda Italiana. Florence: Centro Di, 1980.De Giorgio, Michela, Le italiane dallUnit ad oggi. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1992.De Grazia, Victoria and Furlough, Ellen (eds.), The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption

  in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.Giordani Aragno, Bonizza, Moda Italia. Milan: Domus, 1988.Levi-Pisetsky, Rosita, Storia del costume in Italia. v. LOttocento. Milan: Rizzoli, 1969.

  Moda e costume, in Storia dItalia. v. I Documenti. Turin: Einaudi, 1973.Storia della moda e del costume in Italia. Turin: Einaudi, 1978.

  Paulicelli, Eugenia 1994. Fashion as a Text. Talking about Femininity and Feminism,in G. Miceli-Jeffries (ed.), Feminine Feminists. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, pp. 17189.

  Le narrative della moda. Egemonia, genere, identit, Quaderni ditalianistica 16(1998), pp. 31537.

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• c h r i s t o p h e r w a g s t a f f

  15

  The media

  Today, ownership and control of the media in Italy (the press andtelevision broadcasting in particular) are so important as to determinethe outcome of elections, and are a burning issue on the Italian politicalagenda. For this reason, rather than tell the story of the development ofthe media chronologically through the twentieth century, this chapterwill start by outlining the institutional situation in the 1990s, which isillustrated with some facts and figures, and then proceed to discuss thechronological development of radio.

  Who and what are the media for?

  Firstly, it is generally agreed that the closer a state approaches to theideal of democracy, the greater the need of the voters for information onwhich to base their choice of representatives. They need to know whatexactly is happening in the country, what measures the elected represen-tatives are enacting, and what policies candidates for election are pro-posing. Secondly, a nation coheres partly through values and beliefsconcerning the history of its society, the meanings that have been givento life and to both personal and communal activity, as well as a commonlanguage (verbal, visual, dress-codes, eating habits, etc.) shared or atleast discussed by the community. Thirdly, people need to relax andlaugh together; solitary people (like the elderly) need contact withothers; and creative talent needs to find expression.

  In the days when broadcasting was in most countries (Italy was one ofthem) a state monopoly and a public service, it was asserted that its func-tions were information, culture and entertainment, corresponding tothe three needs that we have just listed. However, in the United States

• broadcasting was neither a state monopoly nor a public service, but wasrather a commercial enterprise carried on by private companies forprofit. In Britain a public service monopoly was joined by a private,commercial sector from the 1950s onwards. This gives us three institu-tional models for broadcasting: public service, commercial andmixed. About public service broadcasting we want to ask how it is con-trolled, and how much autonomy it has with regard to the state; aboutcommercial broadcasting, whether it is regulated or not, how and bywhom; about the mixed system, what the relationship is between thetwo sectors. The answers are as follows: for public service broadcastingin Britain, it was funded by a licence fee and controlled by an autono-mous body whose job was to act as a buffer between the broadcasters andthe government; for commercial broadcasting in the USA, it was fundedby the revenue from advertising, and strongly regulated by the FederalCommunications Commission. When Britain moved to a mixed system,the public service sector remained as it was, while the commercial sectorwas funded by the revenue from advertising, and was strongly regulatedby the Independent Broadcasting Authority which set quality levels tobe met, and distributed franchises accordingly.

  Italys state public service broadcasting was controlled by the politi-cal party holding a majority in parliament (before the Second World Warby the Fascist Party, afterwards by the Christian Democrat Party). Butfrom the start of national (radio) broadcasting in Italy in 1924, it wasfunded partly by a licence fee, and partly by advertising revenue. Noinstitutional decision was ever made at a policy level to introduce amixed system in Italy. Instead, in 1976, the Constitutional Court ruledthat prosecuting private broadcasting companies for violating a statemonopoly was unconstitutional. RAI (Radiotelevisione italiana, thestate broadcaster) was ruled to have a monopoly over national broadcast-ing, but not local broadcasting; Silvio Berlusconi, the owner of a numberof television stations, simply had all his local stations broadcast simulta-neously the same programming which was delivered to them in video-cassettes by a trucking company which he owned. In due course, BettinoCraxi, the Prime Minister and an ally of Berlusconi, issued decrees in the1980s permitting existing networks to broadcast nationally. Finally, thelaw of 13 August 1992 gave licences to broadcast nationally to the follow-ing channels: the three RAI (state) channels, the three Fininvest channelsowned by Berlusconi (Canale 5, Italia 1, Retequattro) and three furthercommercial channels (Telemontecarlo, Rete A and Videomusic).

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• The functioning of the two alternative systems of control is generallytheorized in the following way: public service broadcasting is guided bythe criterion of public service: to meet the needs (for information,culture and entertainment) of the various different sectors of the popu-lation men and women, the old and the young, manual workers andintellectuals, practising Christians and non-believers, and so on: in aword, the licence-fee payers, all of them at some time, but not necessarilyall of them at the same time. The word pluralism is used in English torefer to this notion of a single broadcaster satisfying a plurality of dif-ferent audiences; as we shall see, the same word (pluralismo) is used inItaly in a different way. On the other hand, commercial television, in theabsence of regulation, functions to meet the needs of its shareholders forprofits, and since these come from advertising revenues, the criteriontends to be that of attracting the largest possible audience at any one time what is called competitive programming. Regulation has generallybeen deemed necessary to ensure that commercial broadcasters do notcater exclusively for the lowest common denominator in their program-ming, but that they meet the needs of different sectors of the populationfor the three different types of programming we have described.

  In the mid 1970s, Italy could be said to have landed herself with theworst possible institutional arrangement. She had a public service sectorwhose first duty was to the needs of the ruling political party, and whosesecond duty was to attract advertising revenue; and she had a totallyunregulated commercial sector whose duty was exclusively to its share-holders. Because RAI had to compete for advertising revenue, and there-fore audiences, with the commercial sector, it was forced to adoptcompetitive programming in order to remain solvent.1

  Viewers who watch commercial programming believing that they arebuying the information, culture or entertainment that they choose bypurchasing the goods advertised are deluding themselves. They are, it istrue, involved in a marketing operation; but it is not the programmethat is being sold to the viewer, it is the viewer who is being sold to theadvertiser. Viewers and the meeting of their needs are not the end andgoal of the whole enterprise; rather, the meeting of the broadcastersneed for revenue is the end and goal of the enterprise, and he meets thisneed by selling to the advertisers the viewers he attracts with his pro-gramming. The viewer is a means to his end.

  It is worth following this train of reasoning as far as it takes us. Itmight be thought that the existence of Berlusconis three television

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• networks constitutes a contribution to Italian mass culture. But if theprogramming of those networks is (as it almost exclusively was for manyyears, and still is, to a large extent) bought-in American material, pre-packaged with national advertising by Berlusconis advertising conces-sionary (Publitalia), and dumped on the networks according to a plan ofaudience-targeting, it is hard to see the operation as contributing in avery meaningful way to Italian culture.2 If the airwaves are public prop-erty, then perhaps we can best describe the situation by using an analogy.Outside a row of apartment blocks and small shops the kerb offers theinhabitants, the businesses and their customers the facility for parkingtheir cars. If a trucking company from around the corner, to save therental of a lorry park, parks its articulated lorries in front of the apart-ments, it is occupying a public space for private profit, and censoring,so to speak, the other small commercial enterprises. Berlusconis adver-tising concessionary, Publitalia, now has a near-monopoly on televisionadvertising (with the exception of the RAI). Publitalia suppliesBerlusconis own television networks, which have a near-monopoly oncommercial broadcasting. An advertiser who places spots with a televi-sion station of which Berlusconi disapproves can be threatened withdiminished access to Berlusconis networks, or seduced over to Publitaliaby especially advantageous rates which is what happened to the adver-tisers who were buying time on an interesting and successful indepen-dent TV station, Videomusic, whose owner had to sell the station at aknockdown price to Cecchi Gori, Berlusconis one-time partner in filmdistribution, and the owner of Telemontecarlo.

  The point of this line of reasoning is not so much to demonizeBerlusconi as to demonstrate that the institutional arrangements forbroadcasting have a strong bearing on the cultural contribution of amedium to the life of a nation. There is, however, a further considerationwhich modifies the conclusions one might draw from the merely institu-tional picture of the Italian media, and this is that the use made of amedium by its consumers is not completely determined by its institu-tional identity. Viewers do not watch television, for example, passively;they integrate it into their social lives. One characteristic of Italian televi-sion which might be considered a shortcoming, its dependence on quizshows, phone-ins and interviews (all eminently cheap programming, inthe sense that production costs are low), could be seen as the integrationof the public sphere into the essentially private, domestic life of Italiansociety. When Italian television first started broadcasting in 1954, for the

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• first few years it was watched communally in bars, clubs and theatres,and people would trek in from miles around in rural areas to watch ashow, people who had never contemplated going to the cinema perhaps partly because of the nature of the address to the audience thattelevision made, its phatic qualities (the way it establishes and main-tains direct contact with the audience), rather than its informationalcontent. Part of the experience of communal viewing would be the dis-cussion of what was being viewed.

  It might be helpful to introduce here a word or two of theory relatingto the press: newspapers carry out similar functions to broadcasting,but ownership and control can have a major bearing on how they carryout those functions. Newspapers can be owned by companies that existfor, and earn their revenue by, publishing (either newspapers alone, ornewspapers, periodicals and books). Alternatively, they can be owned bycompanies which exist for, and earn most of their revenue from, otheractivities, and for whom the newspaper is merely a tool for promotingthose other activities. A third category is one in which a newspaper isowned by a political party as a mouthpiece for its policies. In the lattertwo cases, readers and their needs are once again a means to an end.Italy at the moment has almost none of the first kind of newspapers(owned by companies which exist solely for publishing an exception isIl manifesto, which is strongly aligned ideologically with Communism);the majority of her newspapers are of the second kind (owned by busi-nesses with other, more important, interests), and a few are of the thirdkind (run by political parties for their own ends). One last piece of theor-izing, this time about journalism in general: journalists can believe thattheir duty is to seek out and communicate the objective truth concern-ing the events taking place around them. They can, on the other hand,believe that it is an ideal impossible to reach, and that the nearest to thetruth to which a reader or viewer can ever aspire is to read a number ofperhaps less than objective accounts of those events, each, however,recounted by someone whose bias and limitations are openly declared.The readers or viewers can then discount the known bias of each report,and construct the truth for themselves out of the multiple perspec-tives. A number of contemporary philosophical positions challenge thenotion of objective truth and reality, and the certainties implicit inthat notion. One reason why these philosophical positions are so suc-cessful is that we perceive ourselves to be living in a world in whichpublic communication (of which the media in their widest sense are

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• the vehicle) has so usurped the place of private conviction and choice inour lives, that competition in the marketplace between rival realities,which their purveyors have to communicate in order to pay their mort-gages or further their careers, now appears to be the only reality aboutwhich we can be sure. Where once farming and heavy industry fed theinhabitants of Britain and Italy, and talk was cheap, now the marketingof hardware and software for the communication of words, images andsounds gives a living to very large sections of the populations of our twocountries. The result is that the reality of the money involved in themedia, which determines the health of our economies, threatens torender the value of the content of each item of communication almostinsignificant. Thus reality is the outcome of competing discourses ina market, and at the same time, competition is the only thing that isreal. The discourse of this chapter suggests that competition is theleast real phenomenon of all.

  Italian journalism uses the word pluralismo for the second approachto truth in news reporting (multiple known perspectives), and whilemany criticize this position, the organization of Italys media institu-tionalizes it.3 Whereas, as we have seen, in the UK pluralism refers toone broadcaster satisfying the needs of a plurality of audiences, in Italypluralismo means a plurality of broadcasters satisfying one viewersneed for reliable information. When, in 1975, the RAI was reformed atthe instigation of Communist Party parliamentarians, in order toreduce the Christian Democratic Partys control over the informationand cultural programming of the RAI channels, what was set up wasnot a single newsroom that attempted to communicate the newsobjectively, but three entirely separate newsrooms, one for eachchannel, each controlled by a different political party, each ones bul-letin being different from that of the other two (the ChristianDemocrat one gave much prominence to stories about the Vatican andlittle to labour disputes, while the Communist one gave more space tostrikes and workers action and less to the Vatican). The name given tothis procedure is lottizzazione, sharing out, and it was applied to radionewsrooms as well. The assertion that journalists and editors in RAI(not only in RAI, and not only in broadcasting) are employed not fortheir professional ability but for their party affiliation is so widespreadand is so little contradicted in Italy that we have no grounds for chal-lenging it.

  When, in 1994, Silvio Berlusconi became Prime Minister, he told a

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• reporter it is certainly anomalous for a democratic state to have a publicservice [television] that opposes the majority that elected the govern-ment of the country.4 He promptly appointed his own people to posi-tions in the RAI. In other words, he controlled all six of the majortelevision networks in Italy. Whatever we might think of the Italiannotion of pluralismo applied to the news, Berlusconis actions rendered itimpossible. Objectivity was not deemed an achievable end, and plura-lismo was blocked by monopoly control.

  The reader might think but there was always the press, and indeedthe press staunchly argued the case for freedom during the struggles of1994. First, however, the circulation of newspapers in Europe is lowest inGreece, and next lowest in Italy. There is no popular daily press in Italy(unless one counts the sports dailies). Giancarlo Bosetti has written:People like those who, in other countries like Great Britain, Germanyand the US, read a popular newspaper and watch the television, [in Italy]watch television and thats it.5 Secondly, newspapers are not written forthe ordinary person-in-the-street in Italy. Stories are allusive, ratherthan giving the what, who, when, where, etc., and the prose style is dif-ficult for the less well educated. Many believe that Enzo Forcellasfamous characterization in Tempo presente in November 1959 still appliesto Italy today:

  A political journalist in our country can count on around 1,500

  readers: ministers and under-secretaries (all of them), members of

  parliament (some of them), party leaders, trade union officials, high

  prelates, and some industrialists who want to be informed. The rest

  do not count, even though the paper sells 300,000 copies [. . .] The

  whole system is based on the rapport between the political journalist

  and this group of privileged readers. If we lose sight of this factor, we

  cannot understand the most characteristic aspect of our political

  journalism, perhaps of Italian politics in general the feeling of talk

  within the family, with protagonists who have known each other

  since childhood.6

  So far, we have theorized and generalized about ownership andcontrol in the Italian media, and asserted its centrality in Italian politics.The best way to bring home to the reader the full picture is simply toprovide hard data, firstly about the sharing out of power between thepolitical parties in state broadcasting (Radiotelevisione italiana RAI),and secondly about how companies (and therefore the owners of thosecompanies) own the media.

  The media 299

• Lottizzazione in the RAI newsrooms in 1991

  A news bulletin is called a telegiornale, Tg for short. The following werethe party affiliations of main editors, newsdesk editors, main journalistson political newsdesks and newsreaders on the three RAI channels:

  Tg1 (out of 22 people counted): Democrazia Cristiana 16; Partito

  Democratico Socialista (or known PDS sympathizers) 3; Partito

  Liberale Italiano, Partito Repubblicano Italiano, Partito Social

  Democratico Italiano 1 each.

  Tg2 (out of 22 people counted): Partito Socialista Italiano 16; DC 4;

  PLI, PDS 1 each.

  Tg3 (out of 20 people counted): PDS 14; DC (left faction) 4; PLI,

  PSDI 1 each.7

  Press and commercial television ownership in Italy in19891991

  What follows was the situation around 198991. Companies which hadonce simply manufactured goods or produced publications (like theautomobile manufacturers FIAT, or the publishers Rizzoli) had gradu-ally grouped themselves into or been taken over by large holding com-panies (companies or groups of companies which hold shares in order tocontrol other companies; the companies they control can be in a multi-tude of different industries for the purpose of diversification andspreading risks, or they can be other holding companies). Such compa-nies are identified by an (H) after their names. It was the implications ofthe situation we describe below that in 1990 led a number of politiciansin Italy, from the left of the DC to the PDS, to decide that the regulationof cross-media ownership and control was long overdue. SilvioBerlusconi (see (vi) below) was acquiring control of Mondadori-LEspresso (see (ii) below). It would have given him control over the dailyLa Repubblica and the weekly LEspresso, perhaps the two most indepen-dent voices in the Italian press, and this at a moment in which pressurewas being put on the editor of Il Corriere della Sera, traditionally Italysnewspaper of record, by its owners to make it more competitive.However, in April 1991 a judicial decision gave the group of LEspresso andLa Repubblica autonomy (though under De Benedetti, the owner ofOlivetti) from Berlusconi and the rest of Mondadori. Since 1991 variousparts of the picture painted below have changed, but this year has been

  300 Christopher Wagstaff

• chosen because it is the one in which the nation as a whole first fully real-ized the enormity of the mess it had got itself into, and because thepicture illustrates the complex interweaving of both public and privatefinancial, political and propaganda interests that has characterized theItalian state, and which the Mani pulite campaign of the judiciary soughtto unravel.

  It is necessary to bear in mind that the Italian daily press is muchmore local and regional than the British press, which means that a paperwith a circulation of around 300,000 copies can be the main newspaperfor that region, and therefore that there is not really national competi-tion between papers like La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Bari), Il Mattino(Naples), Il Messaggero (Rome), La Nazione (Florence), Il Resto del Carlino(Bologna), La Stampa (Turin) and Il Corriere della Sera (Milan) exceptperhaps for the last of these, which also operates as a national newspaperin competition with La Repubblica.

  (i) In the group consisting of Fiat (H)Gemina(H)RizzoliCorriere dellaSera (RCS) (H), Giampiero Pesenti (one of the owners of PoligraficiMontiPesentiEditoriale (H), see (iv) below) was President of Gemina(H), while the publishing branch, RizzoliCorriere della Sera (RCS) (H),was owned 62 per cent by FIAT (H) (which in turn was owned by theAgnelli family, which means that it was controlled by Gianni Agnelli),and 21.6 per cent by Ferruzzi (H) (which owns Montedison (H)) ofwhich the president was Raul Gardini (see (iii) below).

  The group owned the daily newspapers Corriere della Sera (Milan, cir-culation 689,000); Gazzetta dello Sport (Milan; circulation 733,000); LaStampa (Turin, owned directly by FIAT/Agnelli; circulation 591,400);Stampa Sera (Turin, owned directly by FIAT/Agnelli; circulation: 40,600),giving the group a total daily circulation of about two million, or 22.59per cent of the market. The group also owned the weeklies Amica, Brava,Anna, Bella, Pi bella, Astra, Salve, Linus, LEuropeo, Il Mondo, Oggi, Domenicadel Corriere, Novella 2000, Domenica Quiz and Corriere dei piccoli, with a totalcirculation of about three million, giving it 19.47 per cent of the market.It owned the television station Telemontecarlo through Rete Globo, aBrazilian company, though Ferruzzi (H) (see (iii)) was later to take a con-trolling interest. The station passed eventually to Vittorio Cecchi Gori,Italys major film producer, who at this time, together with BerlusconisFininvest (H), in a distribution company called Penta Film, handled 25per cent of the films distributed in Italian cinemas. The group owned

  The media 301

• three advertising agencies, Rizzoli, Publikompass (owned directly byFIAT/Agnelli) and RCS Pubblicit. Its holdings in book publishing werethe Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri (H) (which included Fabbri, Bompiani,Sonzogno, Etas, and 48 per cent of Adelphi), Rizzoli (RCS Libri) and RCSCartiera Marzabotto.

  (ii) The MondadoriLEspresso (H) group was owned by AMEF(Mondadori) (H)CIR (H)Olivetti (H). Carlo De Benedetti ownedOlivetti and he and his supporters had 63 per cent of CIR-AMEF.Berlusconi had 8 per cent of AMEF, and when the Formenton family Mondadoris partners in AMEF fell out with De Benedetti, they sold toBerlusconi a stake which gave him control of the group (he was madepresident). Raul Gardini (Ferruzzi) had 18 per cent of LEspresso.

  The group owned the national dailies La Repubblica (Rome; circulation839,000), La Nuova Sardegna (circulation 101,000), Alto Adige, Il Centro, Gazzettadi Mantova, Il Lavoro, Mattino di Padova, Nuova Gazzetta di Modena/Gazzetta diCarpi, La Nuova Venezia, La Provincia Pavese, Il Tirreno and La Tribuna di Treviso,giving it a total circluation of about 1.5 million, or 14.15 per cent of themarket. Its weeklies were LEspresso (circulation 410,000), Panorama (circula-tion 508,000), Nuova Guida TV (circulation 460,000), Grazia (circulation400,000), Auto oggi, Dolly, Epoca and Guida cucina, giving it a total circulationof about 2.6 million, or 17.7 per cent of the market. The group controlled theadvertising agency A. Manzoni & Co., and owned the large book publishersArnoldo Mondadori Editore. (In the mid 1990s, together with the publish-ers Electa, Mondadori formed Elemond, which has acquired control of theimportant Turinese publishing company Einaudi.)

  (iii) The Ferruzzi (H) group owned Montedison (H), the major chemicalcompany, and was headed by Gardini (who also had 21 per cent of RCSand 18 per cent of LEspresso), publishing the main dailies Italia Oggi (cir-culation only 126,000, but it was an influential business newspaper) andIl Messaggero (Rome; circulation 396,000), giving it about 5.7 per cent ofthe market.

  (iv) The PoligraficiMontiPesentiEditoriale (H) group, owned byMonti 52 per cent, Pesenti 20 per cent, Varasi 10 per cent, Ligresti 10 percent, owned the dailies Il Resto del Carlino (Bologna; circulation 305,400),La Nazione (Florence; circulation 268,000), Il Tempo (Rome; circulation158,000), Il Piccolo (Trieste), Il Corriere di Pordenone and Il Telegrafo, giving itabout 9.2 per cent of the market.

  302 Christopher Wagstaff

• (v) The Rusconi group owned the daily La Notte (Milan; 90,000), and theweeklies Eva Express (circulation 314,000), Gente (circulation 944,000),Gioia (circulation 458,000), Onda TV (circulation 304,500), giving it 13.2per cent of the weeklies market.

  (vi) The Fininvest (H) group (now owned by Mediaset (H)) was owned byBerlusconi, who also controlled the Mondadori (H) group, with theexception of La Repubblica and LEspresso. Its main daily was Il GiornaleNuovo, but it was its weeklies, TV Sorrisi e canzoni (one of the largestnational weeklies, if not the largest), Ciak and Telepi, which gave itabout 16 per cent of the market. Its real monopoly power lay in its owner-ship of the Publitalia advertising concessionary (the biggest turnovernationally), and the four national commercial television networks,Canale 5, Italia Uno, Rete Quattro and Rete Italia (Berlusconi sold off thelast of these).

  To complete the picture for the period under discussion, the Bancodi Napoli (H) controlled the papers of the South, Il Mattino (Naples)and Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Bari), while Italys most prestigious busi-ness-oriented newspaper (the Italian equivalent of the BritishFinancial Times or the US Wall Street Journal), Il sole-24 ore (circulationapproximately 300,000), was owned by the Confederation of ItalianIndustry, Confindustria. Daily newspapers were also owned by politi-cal parties: Il Popolo by Democrazia Cristiana; Avanti! by the SocialistParty; LUnit and Paese Sera by the Partito Comunista Italiano; Il mani-festo called itself Communist, but was independently owned and runby a collective; Il Secolo dItalia by the Movimento Sociale Italiano. Thelargest and most important Italian news agency, ANSA (AgenziaNazionale Stampa Associata), was government-controlled, whileASCA was controlled by the DC, ADN-KRONOS by the PSI and Italiaby ENI (H) (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, Italys major petroleumgroup).

  It is worth adding a note to illustrate how industrial interests seepress and television ownership as instruments to be used for their ownpurposes. In 1996, Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone, with a controllinginterest in, and an option to buy, Il Mattino, and ownership of Il Tempo(acquired from MontiPesenti (iv)), bought Il Messaggero from Ferruzzi(iii). Caltagirone also owned the major local television station for Rome,Teleregione. This gave him an overwhelming media dominance in theRome area. Caltagirone was at the time a developerconstructor, with

  The media 303

• his eye on government contracts for two major construction projectscoming up in Rome: the Jubilee, and the possibility (which existed at thetime) that Rome might be chosen for the 2004 Olympics.8

  The picture that emerges is one of cross-media ownership, a fusingtogether of public and private financial and industrial interests, andthe concentration of control over the media in the hands of a few whohad vested interests in controlling it for their own ends. Four mencould determine what information Italians were privy to: Agnelli,Berlusconi, De Benedetti and Gardini. Only the state-controlled broad-caster, RAI, stood outside this oligopoly, but that was not to last. TheCommunist Party (now named the Partito Democratico della Sinistra)promoted a policy for regulating media ownership, limiting the extentto which one organization could own or control more than a certainpercentage of the nations press and broadcasting. Since Berlusconisbusiness operations depended on monopoly control of advertising andits markets, this policy threatened the profits of Fininvest. When, in1994, the political alignments in Italy broke down, and it looked likelythat the PDS would form part of a government coalition, Berlusconi, inorder to protect his interests against their proposed legislation, wasforced to form his own political party (Forza Italia), use the massivepropaganda resources offered by his television networks to get himselfelected as Prime Minister, and thwart the plans of the PDS. As Presidentof the Council of Ministers, Berlusconi was then in a position also tocontrol the information output of the RAI. He controlled all majornational television networks except Telemontecarlo, plus a large partof the weekly magazine market, and very nearly owned one of the twomajor national newspapers, as well as having a near-monopoly on tele-vision advertising. Because of the need to compete for audiences, thestate channels (with the exception of the third, cultural, channel) hadreduced their treatment of current affairs by dropping current-affairsprogrammes and documentaries, and operating a policy of multiple,short news bulletins throughout the day as opposed to a small numberof longer bulletins. Romano Prodis left-of-centre government, whichsucceeded Berlusconis in 1995, reinstalled a governing body for theRAI which reflected the more liberal and pluralist complexion ofthe government coalition, but the RAI still bears today the chains of thepast.

  304 Christopher Wagstaff

• Radio and reliability

  A single chapter in a volume of this kind can only cover so much ground,and so it is now proposed to change the subject, and give an account ofthe development of radio in Italy, in order to introduce a historical per-spective into the discussion of the medias role in Italian culture.

  The formation in 1924 of URI, the Unione Radiofonica Italiana(Italian Radio Union), to become, in 1927, EIAR, Ente Italiano per leAudizioni Radiofoniche (Italian Corporation for Radio Reception)institutionalized radio broadcasting in Italy as a monopoly funded by alicence fee and advertising. The much-trumpeted broadcast byMussolini from the Teatro Costanzi on 25 March 1924 that was to heraldthe uniting of a nation of listeners was marred by interference, and allthat could be heard was the confused bubbling sound of his voice withno words distinguishable. This humorously illustrates the extent towhich technological development is integral to the development ofbroadcast media, and has continually conditioned radio in particular.

  URIs broadcasts officially began on 6 April 1924, with a mixture ofconcerts, theatre, news and conversation, its listeners predominantlyyoung people, students, engineers and electronics enthusiasts. The needfor radio, its potential as a channel for popular culture and news,brought about its spread: 6,196 hours of transmission in 1927, 15,768 in1929 and 43,723 in 1934. At first, a radio licence cost as much as a white-collar workers monthly salary, and radio sets cost 3,000 lire (while theaverage annual wage was 1,300 lire). In 1927 there were 40,000 licences(while in Britain there were two million), in 1929 61,500, in 1939 onemillion (whereas by then in Germany and Britain there were eightmillion each) and in 1943 1.8 million. The listeners were a great deal morenumerous than the licence-holders, however, because they listened toradios in public places, just as they were to do with television in the1950s. Despite the governments attempts to promote the constructionand marketing of cheap sets, it was not until 1937 that the Radioballila,costing 430 lire, was made available.

  The programming developed its popular character throughout the1930s, with singing stars, light music, variety, comic sketches andheroiccomic adventure drama. The first audience to be specifically tar-geted was children. Reports and broadcasts were launched from the warin Ethiopia, and in the late 1930s sports broadcasts began. The sources

  The media 305

• for the news were the governments press agency, Stefani, and a fewapproved newspapers, such as Il Popolo dItalia. Radios potential for prop-aganda could only be realized to the extent that the product of radioitself, firstly its hardware and then the regular programming, had beensold to the public in the first place. By the outbreak of the Second WorldWar, this potential was being realized, but it was precisely at thismoment that another consideration came into play.

  In a war that involves civilians, the latter need information. Thegovernment used EIAR for propaganda instead, giving a picture of avictorious Italy, minimizing defeats and demonizing the enemy.However, the technology of radio gave the government little controlover which stations citizens radio sets were tuned into. The publicfound the BBC Italian Services broadcasts from London (called RadioLondra) more reliable than those of its own broadcasters, and manyalso tuned into Italian broadcasts from Moscow (Radio Mosca andRadio Milano Libert), despite the fact that clandestine listening waspunishable by law. In a contest over reliability, EIAR was humiliatinglyrejected. On 8 September 1943, a strange silence descended: EIARmerely broadcast a repeated message that Mussolini had resigned andthat a new government had been formed by Marshal Badoglio. Ababble broke out: in the liberated zones ex-EIAR stations restartedunder the tutelage of the Psychological Warfare Branch of the AlliedMilitary Government; the German occupying forces broadcast inItalian; the government of Sal officially took over EIAR; clandestinepartisan transmitters broadcast in the North. Because the damagedequipment and cabling did not permit the linking of the ex-EIARstudios and transmitters in the liberated zone (Bari, Naples, Palermoand Cagliari), these stations broadcast independently of each other,giving Italians a taste of a radio that was relatively free of centraliza-tion, pluralist in the Italian sense, and capable of dealing with regionalcircumstances. Rather than learn from these experiences, the Italiangovernment, at the end of the war, reinstated a government service,and as the liberation coalition gave way to Christian Democrat hege-mony, the newly baptized RAI (Radio Audizioni Italia later to becomeRadiotelevisione italiana) adopted a Catholic conservative line. Tobegin with, two networks were set up, again for technical reasons: ReteAzzurra in the North and Centre and Rete Rossa in the South andCentre, with a gradual centralization of operations in Rome which pro-voked resistance and protest from the regions. What was set up was not

  306 Christopher Wagstaff

• very different from what had been the case during Fascism, except thata different political party was in power.

  The 1950s saw firstly the boom, and then the decline of radio in Italy.After 1951 three services were modelled on those of the BBC, theProgramma Nazionale, the Secondo Programma and the Terzo Pro-gramma (a cultural service). But another technological innovation in the1960s led to greater programme differentiation: transistors, first devel-oped in 1948. Instead of one radio receiver listened to by an entire house-hold, a number of sets would be used, particularly by a rapidlyexpanding young audience, who wanted their own programming. Astelevision took over prime-time attention, radio began to function as anenvironmental medium, continually turned on, giving backgroundsound: music for the young, and companionship for housewives and theelderly. Various plans for modernizing the RAIs programming failed tobe implemented, and the explosion of commercial broadcasting withthe deregulation of the 1970s blew apart the RAIs hold on its audiences.

  Whereas the expensive technological and production require-ments of television led to the rapid formation of an oligopoly (actu-ally, a duopoly) in television, the lower economic and technicaldemands of radio permitted far more broadcasters to survive. By theearly 1990s, 4,000 radio stations were broadcasting in Italy, 15 at anational level (3 belonging to RAI, and 12 others, of which 9 broadcastmusic for the young), 150 at a regional level, 1,500 interprovinciali, and2,000 at or below the level of a provincia (the level of local governmentbetween that of a town or city council like Pisa or Livorno and that of aregion like Tuscany). Of the regional and inter-provincial stations,about 250 had an important and stable status; 600 private stationswere Catholic.

  The ideals with which many a station was launched were contro-infor-mazione (an alternative source of news in opposition to that of the statebroadcaster and the wealthy newspapers), and partecipazione (participa-tion listener input), or radio confessionale (confessional radio typicallyCatholic). Contro-informazione was only achieved (and still is in somecases) by a few stations in Bologna, Rome, Florence and Milan.Otherwise, most stations gradually subsided into providing music forthe young. There were three types of station: commercial ones that madea profit, linked in pools and getting national advertising; promotionalones sponsored stations operating locally (supported by political,religious, cultural or even commercial interests); and non-professional

  The media 307

• ones, staffed by volunteers, often holding to some of the original princi-ples, and including what were called the free radio stations, whichbroadcast an independent programming that was an alternative to bothstate and commercial broadcasting. A classical music station broadcastsfrom Fiesole (near Florence), surviving on subscriptions from listeners,and borrowing from the example of public radio and television in theUSA, but there are few other non-standard initiatives in Italian broad-casting.

  The function of radio became music for the young, information(news), background wall-to-wall music (nastroteca), and breaking the iso-lation of housewives and pensioners. As radio has accepted these func-tions, and has accepted also the hegemony of television in the evening,patterns of listening have taken shape. In the early morning, all catego-ries of listener tend to listen to the RAIs news services. These are fol-lowed in the morning by talk and discussion shows, and then music, thewhole sequence being repeated after lunch. After listening to the newson RAI in the early morning and lunchtime, listeners will often tune totheir favourite commercial channel. RAIs initiative in broadcasting all-night music on its FM channels, and its (relative) freedom from therequirement of sticking to the top-fifty records, has led to an increase inyounger listeners during the night. However, radio lost advertising totelevision (it had 10.3 per cent of total advertising in 1978, and five yearslater only 5 per cent) partly because of the way television developednationally, and partly because radio stations, packed closely together onthe FM frequency band, all providing similar programming, were rela-tively indistinguishable one from another, and difficult to tune intoprecisely, so that it was difficult to identify benefits accruing to theadvertiser from advertising on any one particular station. Attempts toreverse this decline currently aim at targeting specific audiences, anddifferentiating programming.

  Waste

  RAI was in the forefront of developing High Definition Television andbroadcasting by satellite. The medias cultural and technical potential inItaly has at times been enormous, but it has not always been realized(though RAIs educational broadcasting has been very successful). Untilrecently, technical training in broadcasting was piecemeal, and broad-casters have had a great incentive to look more to their political connec-

  308 Christopher Wagstaff

• tions than to their professional abilities for success in their careers. Toomany people and organizations have used the media for their own ends,and too few have used the medias potential for the benefit of thereading, listening and viewing public. Nevertheless, Italians watch tele-vision more than anyone else in Europe, and the most prestigious inter-national award for quality broadcasting, instituted in 1949, is the PrixItalia.

  notes

  1. See Mauro Wolf, Italy: From Deregulation to a New Equilibrium, in G. Nowell-Smith (ed.), The European Experience (London: BFI, 1989), pp. 5164.2. See David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 18801980 (ManchesterUniversity Press, 1990), pp. 1823.3. See Wolfgang Achtner, Penne, Antenne e Quarto Potere (Rome: Baldini & Castoldi, 1996).4. Donatella Papi, Interview with Silvio Berlusconi, Il Giornale, 8 June 1994, quoted inAchtner, Penne, Antenne, p. 24.5. Giancarlo Bosetti, in the monthly Reset, October 1994, quoted ibid., p. 77.6. Enzo Forcella, Millecinquecento lettori. Confessioni di un giornalista politico,Tempo presente 7 (November 1959); quoted in Robert Lumley, Peculiarities of the ItalianNewspaper, in D. Forgacs and R. Lumley (eds.), Italian Cultural Studies (OxfordUniversity Press, 1996), pp. 199215 (p. 209), which is the place to start for anunderstanding of Italian newspapers.7. Anon., RAI Lottizzazione: Giornalisti, Panorama, 15 September 1991, p. 52.8. The sources for all the data in this section are too numerous to list, but a detailedhistorical account of much of what is described here can be found in Paolo Murialdi,La stampa italiana dalla Liberazione alla crisi di fine secolo (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1998),pp. 236ff.

  further reading

  Baranski, Zygmunt and Lumley, Robert (eds.), Part v. Looking at Television: FromPublic Monopoly to Competition, in Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy.Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990, pp. 245336.

  Castronovo, Valerio and Tranfaglio, Nicola (eds.), Storia della stampa italiana. 7 vols.Rome and Bari: Laterza, 197694.

  Grasso, Aldo, Storia della televisione italiana. Milan: Garzanti, 1992.Lumley, Robert, Italian Journalism. Manchester University Press, 1996.Monteleone, Franco, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia. Venice: Marsilio, 1992.

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• j o h n c . g . w a t e r h o u s e

  16

  Since Verdi: Italian serious music 18601995

  18601900

  In the years immediately following the unification of Italy, seriousmusical activity throughout the peninsula was still overwhelminglydominated by opera, as it had been during the Risorgimento period. Inall the major cities, and many smaller ones too, the operatic public waslarge and various, and was still at least as interested in new operas as inestablished classics. At this time, one senior living Italian opera com-poser towered above all others, dwarfing them so drastically that most ofthem are nowadays hardly remembered even in their own country:Giuseppe Verdi (18131901) is now regarded everywhere as the only reallylastingly important Italian composer who was active across the thirdquarter of the nineteenth century, and indeed as one of the greatestopera composers who ever lived. Although Verdi became markedly lessprolific in his later years, many (perhaps most) of his finest works datefrom after 1860, and Aida (1871), Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893) have longbeen rated among the highest achievements of Italian genius in anyfield. However, by the time the two last-mentioned operas were written,the semi-retired Verdi had come to occupy a less unquestionably centralplace in Italian musical life, and new creative developments were emerg-ing which in various ways showed signs of transforming the character ofthe new music being written at the time.

  Several of these developments had links with innovative Italian liter-ary trends or with the traditions (musical and otherwise) of countriesnorth of the Alps, or both. Arrigo Boito (18421918), author of the out-standingly effective Shakespeare-based libretti of Otello and Falstaff, wasa leading writer in the scapigliatura (Bohemian) movement and was also

• himself a composer. His own single completed opera Mefistofele (1868;revised version 1875) is imperfect and eclectic in style; yet it is rightlyremembered as an important milestone on the road which led Italianopera away from the powerful but relatively simple-minded world ofVerdis earlier operas (which had more or less covertly reflected theRisorgimento spirit) towards wider cultural horizons and greater aware-ness of the more complex musical idioms that had recently been emerg-ing outside Italy. Boito was clearly more receptive to Wagners example(albeit within limits) than Verdi ever was; but a more marked upsurge ofWagnerian tendencies in Italian opera can be seen in the works of twoslightly younger composers who were for a time associated with the scap-igliatura: Alfredo Catalani (185493) and the talented but grievouslyneglected Antonio Smareglia (18541929). In responding to Wagnerianand other foreign models neither composer wholly negated his funda-mentally Italian character, especially where cantabile vocal writing is con-cerned; yet the last act of Catalanis La Wally (1892) is pervaded by analmost Nordic nature-mysticism. Despite a weak libretto, the work hasretained a precarious foothold in the repertory in Italy, and demon-strably influenced Giacomo Puccini (18581924).

  However, it was with the arrival on the scene of Puccini himself that itbecame increasingly obvious who could be regarded as Verdis heirapparent in the rising generation of Italian composers: he was quicklyrecognized as such by the most powerful and influential of Italys music-publishing houses, G. Ricordi and Co., which owed (and owes) a substan-tial part of its wealth to the on-going success of Verdis own operas.Ricordi wasted no time in launching Puccinis works, from Manon Lescaut(1893) and La Bohme (1896) onwards, on to a wide international market.In so doing, the firm was to some extent driven by rivalry with anotherMilanese publishing house, Casa Musicale Sonzogno, which in the sameperiod was successfully launching operas by some highly commerciabile iflesser composers of the same generation as Puccini: the crude yet freshand compelling Cavalleria rusticana (Rustic Chivalry, 1890) of PietroMascagni (18631945) set Sonzognos run of major successes in motionby winning a lasting worldwide popular acclaim which the composersnumerous later operas never quite recaptured. Close on the heels ofCavalleria, Sonzognos other durable successes included I pagliacci (TheClowns, 1892) by Ruggero Leoncavallo (18571919) and Andrea Chnier(1896) by Umberto Giordano (18671948). So strong, indeed, was thejoint influence of Ricordi and Sonzogno on the fortunes of Italian operas

  312 John C. G. Waterhouse

• in general that in these years a composer who failed to win adequatesupport from either firm was likely to lose any chance of major operaticsuccess in his own country. Smareglia was a particularly extreme case inthis respect: having personally offended Giulio Ricordi for non-musicalreasons, he found himself ostracized by most of the major theatres,achieving some degree of lasting recognition only in Trieste.

  The responsiveness of new operatic developments to literary trends,both in and out of Italy, continued: Cavalleria rusticana was based onVergas famous short story and play of the same name, with the resultthat the term verismo, which originally referred to the important move-ment in Italian literature of which Verga was a supreme exponent, cameto be applied not only to Mascagnis most successful opera, but also (notalways so appropriately) to those of a wide range of other Italian compos-ers active around the turn of the century, including Puccini. Althoughhis musical style has recognizable roots in Verdi and Catalani, Pucciniwas much influenced by the popular French operatic tradition as epito-mized in the successful operas of Jules Massenet (18421912). It is there-fore appropriate that the plots, too, of several of his operas were ofFrench origin: in Manon Lescaut he openly competed with Massenet in histreatment of a subject on which one of the French composers biggestsuccesses had been based.

  Meanwhile the predominance in Italy of opera over all other musicalgenres, though it continued, was gradually becoming less extreme.During the later nineteenth century, chamber music societies foundedin various Italian cities had begun to attract select but increasinglyreceptive audiences; and in 1872 Italys first really systematic series ofpublic orchestral concerts (the Concerti Popolari, founded in imitationof Pasdeloups famous Concerts Populaires in Paris) had been launchedin Turin. Further progress in this sphere remained slow, however, withthe result that an Italian composer who chose to turn his back on opera,and to devote his energies principally to writing concert works, might bedeemed somewhat unrealistic, even foolhardy. Yet such composers hadexisted inconspicuously throughout the nineteenth century, andbecame more prestigious (though still relatively little performed) as theturn of the century approached.

  Unquestionably the outstanding non-operatic composer in Italy atthat time was Giuseppe Martucci (18561909), whose Second PianoConcerto (1885), two symphonies (1895 and 1904) and several majorchamber compositions raised Italian instrumental music to a level of

  Since Verdi: Italian serious music 18601995 313

• excellence which had seldom been reached by anyone else workingsouth of the Alps since the end of the eighteenth century. InevitablyMartuccis larger pieces could find few regular outlets in his own country,and some of his most important music significantly had to be publishedabroad. Though not devoid of Italian characteristics ranging from thebel canto lyricism of La canzone dei ricordi (The Song of Memories, 1887) tothe neo-Scarlattian brilliance of some of his best short piano pieces hisstyle owed a fair amount to the Austro-German tradition, especially toSchumann and Brahms. It is therefore ironic that lack of practicalsupport from his fellow-countrymen prevented Martuccis distinctiveand distinguished responses to that tradition from being adequatelyappreciated by the world at large. Only in the 1990s, thanks to thegrowing exploratoriness of the record industry outside Italy, has thisrewarding aspect of late nineteenth-century Italian music at last becomea bit more accessible to an international audience.

  19001930

  In Italy as elsewhere, the first three decades of the twentieth centurysaw a sustained upsurge of radically innovative movements in music (asin the other arts), all in various ways rebelling against nineteenth-century styles in general and the established Italian opera tradition inparticular. Public resistance to these new trends could, however, bestrong, and the overall situation in Italy may seem provincial whencompared to what was happening in some other countries: it is no acci-dent that several of the more adventurous Italian composers felt theneed to travel, and even to live abroad for long periods, in closer contactwith new cultural developments such as those in France and theGerman-speaking world.

  The case of Ferruccio Busoni (18661924), easily the most modern-minded Italian composer born before 1875, was particularly extreme inthis respect: after spending his entire earlier career abroad (mainly inGermany), in 1913 he became director of the Bologna Liceo Musicale,believing this might give him his long-awaited chance to lead a revolu-tion in Italian music. But he found himself surrounded by indifferenceand obstructive bureaucracy and soon gave up the struggle, thenceforthresigning himself to permanent exile: it is questionable, therefore,whether Busonis strangely fascinating (if at times perplexingly hetero-geneous) music can legitimately be counted as being Italian at all.

  314 John C. G. Waterhouse

• However, by the second decade of the twentieth century a new gener-ation of Italian artists was already seeking and proclaiming new crea-tive ideals. The most pugnacious group among them, the Futurists,admittedly achieved far more in the fields of literature and (especially)the visual arts than in music, although the intonarumori (noise-tuners)of Luigi Russolo (18851947) ingenious but somewhat naive contrap-tions designed to produce a new kind of music based on organized noise are of interest as primitive forebears of the electronic music andmusique concrte of the 1950s and beyond. The ferment of new ideascentred on the famous Florentine periodical La Voce (The Voice,190816) proved more fertile where music was concerned: musiciansassociated with the Vocian circle included Ildebrando Pizzetti(18801968) who before the outbreak of the First World War was alreadyestablishing himself as a relatively moderate but profoundly seriousinnovator whose style derived important features from long-neglectedItalian music of the remoter past, such as Gregorian chant and the greatpolyphonic compositions of the Renaissance period. This overtlyarchaic side of Pizzettis style is particularly evident in his unaccompa-nied choral works, of which the Messa di Requiem (19223) is the supremeexample; but he was also a distinguished writer of chamber music and asignificant reformer of Italian opera: his operatic methods owe more tothe examples of Monteverdi, Mussorgsky and Debussy than to hisimmediate Italian predecessors.

  Of all composers, Pizzetti was the one who collaborated most closelywith Gabriele DAnnunzio notably in his first published opera Fedra(190912; premire 1915), whose libretto was adapted by the poet himselffrom his play of the same name. DAnnunzios own obsession with elab-orately colourful archaisms, together with his personal responsivenessto music, did much to encourage the revival of interest in previously for-gotten early Italian composers, which was soon being reflected increas-ingly in the works of other composers of Pizzettis generation theso-called generazione dellOttanta (generation of the 1880s). Themusic of Ottorino Respighi (18791936), being more colourful andhedonistic than Pizzettis, may seem more truly DAnnunzian in spirit,despite Respighis less close personal connection with the poet. In thelong run his picturesque symphonic poems and decorative arrange-ments of old music have fared better on the international market thanthe works of his more high-minded Italian contemporaries: pieces suchas the famous Fontane di Roma (Fountains of Rome, 1916) and Pini di Roma

  Since Verdi: Italian serious music 18601995 315

• (Pine Trees of Rome, 1924) have a natural appeal to virtuoso conductorswhich has kept them in circulation through all the vicissitudes of subse-quent changing fashions.

  However, the most adventurously innovative composers wereundoubtedly Alfredo Casella (18831947) and Gian Francesco Malipiero(18821973), both of whom defied the Italian musical establishmentdrastically enough to arouse strong hostility from many of their compa-triots. Casella, like Busoni, lived and worked for many years abroad, inhis case mainly in France. However, when he returned to Italy in 1915 he too with the conscious aim of transforming Italian music in the lightof his recent experiences north of the Alps he was better able thanBusoni to persist, gradually gaining ground in the teeth of fierce opposi-tion. Casella was a born organizer, and in 1917 he founded the SocietItaliana di Musica Moderna, which during its brief existence acted as arallying point, concert platform and propaganda machine for much thatwas truly new in Italian music. It is at least symbolic that the Societyssubversive and entertaining magazine Ars Nova included articles by theleading Metaphysical painters De Chirico and Carr (who were then atthe heights of their powers) as well as by the Vocian writer Papini.

  Casellas own music was at its most radically Modernist from 1914 to1920, when he boldly responded to the examples of Stravinsky, Bartk,Schoenberg and others in his intensely dissonant so-called secondmanner. After 1920 this gave place to a consciously neo-classical thirdmanner, in which he too (following the example of Stravinskys mostrecent works) derived significant aspects of his style from pre-nineteenth-century music. All through this period (up to 1928) Casellaavoided opera, and instead played a crucial part in the continued resur-gence of instrumental music in Italy. In this he was encouraged by theknowledge that Italian composers had made many major contributionsin this field in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  The less practically minded but more original Malipiero did notrenounce opera altogether, but rebelled against established models farmore idiosyncratically than Pizzetti did. Malipiero declared that his Settecanzoni (191819) which consists of seven little operatic vignettes, musi-cally linked but dramatically quite independent and each with a song asits musical nucleus was born of the conflict between two sentiments:fascination with the theatre and boredom with opera.1His other theatreworks of the period are equally experimental, culminating in the enig-matically dream-like Torneo notturno (Night-time Tourney, 1929).

  316 John C. G. Waterhouse

• During and immediately after the First World War theatrical innovationwas widespread in Italian spoken drama too: suffice it to mention thefamous paradoxical plays of Pirandello, with whom Malipiero collabo-rated in 19323. Malipiero also composed prolifically for the concert hall,and his direct involvement with the revival of old Italian music soonbecame second to none: in 1926 he himself began to edit what is still theonly complete modern edition of the surviving music of Monteverdi,and influences from early music (albeit far from conventionally treated)are prominent, for example, in his San Francesco dAssisi (1921).

  All through this time various older Italian composers remainedactive; but only Puccini had enough powers of self-renewal to go ongiving of his best to the end often stimulated by the examples of com-posers younger than himself. Madama Butterfly (1904) already containsDebussian elements; and in Turandot (left unfinished at his death in 1924)he enhanced the operas more aggressive side by using tough disso-nances evidently picked up from Stravinsky and Casella. Right to theend, Puccini remained the living composer most favoured by Ricordi forworldwide promotion; but after Tito Ricordis retirement in 1919 thefirms former overwhelming preoccupation with popular operaticsuccess gradually gave place to a more open-minded policy: thus themore defiantly non-conformist composers, who previously had oftenhad to turn to foreign publishers, were now increasingly accepted by theItalian publishing establishment. Meanwhile, in 1922, Fascism hadcome to power; but it had little direct effect on the musical world beforethe 1930s.

  19301960

  Censorship of the arts under Mussolini never grew to the same mon-strous proportions as in Hitlers Germany: there were too many incon-sistencies in the Duces own thinking on the subject for a coherent policyever to be formulated, let alone carried out, and this was especially truewhere a non-conceptual art such as music was concerned. Yet the rgimeexerted pressures of other, more subtle kinds, partly through its propa-ganda and partly (though not until the 1930s) through its attempts toimpose a comprehensive bureaucratic structure on the musical world ason so many other things.

  An influential aspect of Fascist propaganda, which affected manycomposers (including some of those already mentioned), sprang from

  Since Verdi: Italian serious music 18601995 317

• Mussolinis megalomaniac desire to revive and surpass the glories ofItalys great past, from ancient Rome to the Renaissance and beyond.This naturally gave a boost to revivalist trends of all kinds, and it must beadmitted that some of the most vital as well as some of the most debasedItalian artistic tendencies owed at least something to such influences.Italian musicological research was certainly not discouraged; nor wasthe already existing creative interaction between its findings and thenew music of the time.

  Closely linked with this cult of Italys past we find a correspondingdenigration of the achievements of other countries: a slogan that wasincreasingly brandished by conformist Italian critics was the curt con-demnation of a composer for being internazionale, and therefore, in asense, a traitor to his country. This was the main accusation levelledagainst current progressive trends by a group of relatively conservativecomposers (including Respighi and the now increasingly reactionaryPizzetti) in a notorious anti-Modernist manifesto published in severalnewspapers on 17 December 1932. However, perhaps the most startlingaspect of the fracas which followed the manifestos appearance is that onthis occasion Mussolini came down firmly on the side of the Modernists.After such a persuasive show of solidarity with more advanced trends,and explicitly with Casella and Malipiero, Mussolinis abrupt and char-acteristically unpredictable banning, less than two years later, of thelatters opera La favola del figlio cambiato (The Fable of the ExchangedSon, 19323) inevitably came as a rude shock to all concerned.

  This drastic piece of censorship remained isolated, however, and onthe whole one is surprised by how much freedom there was in Italianmusical life, owing to the non-conformist influence of intelligent andcultured Fascist leaders such as Giuseppe Bottai and the important artsbureaucrat Nicola de Pirro. Thanks especially to the latter, it was possiblefor Alban Bergs powerfully Expressionist opera Wozzeck (1925), whichhad long been banned in countries under direct Nazi rule, to have itsItalian stage premire, astonishingly, in Rome in 1942 even though bythen the officially favoured principle of autarchy was on the wholeleading to strong preferential treatment for Italian composers overforeigners. By the late 1930s, within the framework of the emergingCorporative System, the state was seeking to control, and also to subsi-dize, all activities relating to opera, the concert world and the radio; butthe system operated mainly at an administrative and economic ratherthan dictatorially regulatory level, and novelty was in some ways actively

  318 John C. G. Waterhouse

• encouraged even by the official rules. For instance, opera houses weresubsidized only on condition that they presented a certain quota of newor recently composed works though admittedly these often turned outto be by Italian composers of mediocre gifts and relatively conservativeoutlook.

  Yet it was less surprising than it might have been, all things consid-ered, that the 1930s saw the emergence of some powerful new creativetalents in Italian music. The most important of these newcomers wereLuigi Dallapiccola (190475) and Goffredo Petrassi (1904 ), both ofwhom first made their marks in the context of organizations such as therecently founded Venice Festival of Contemporary Music (launched in1930, with Casella as one of its directors) and the International Societyfor Contemporary Music, which had an active if at times controversialItalian section. Although, like almost all Italian composers of the time,Dallapiccola began by naively accepting Fascism at its deceptively per-suasive face value, by the end of the 1930s when Italys adoption ofHitlers race policies came as a direct threat to the safety of his Jewishwife the scales fell from his eyes. His fury at the true nature of therapidly deteriorating situation found expression in his choral Canti diprigionia (Songs of Imprisonment, 193841), which remains one of themost powerful of all modern musical protests against tyranny. No lesspowerful was the opera Il prigioniero (The Prisoner, 19448) whichDallapiccola conceived during the very worst part of the war and gave tothe world amid the mingled disillusionments and cautious hopes of theimmediate post-war period. In creating the tormented, intenselyExpressionistic idiom of this opera, Dallapiccola owed much to theSchoenberg school and especially to Berg; yet here again the strongimpact of foreign influences did not stifle the composers evident Italiancharacteristics notably in his vocal writing, whose roots can even betraced back as far as Verdi.

  Meanwhile Petrassi, whose early music sometimes had a dynamic,celebratory quality owing something (as he later freely admitted) to thepageantry associated with Fascism, abruptly entered a new phase whenwar broke out. His darkly pessimistic Coro di morti (Chorus of the Dead, asetting of Leopardi, 19401) may be less overt in its protest thanDallapiccolas Canti di prigionia; yet there is no mistaking the works deepresponsiveness to the grimmer aspects of contemporary reality. By the1950s Petrassi had moved a very long way from his creative starting-point (despite certain recurrent technical features which define his

  Since Verdi: Italian serious music 18601995 319

• musical personality through all the changes), and in due course he evenproved strikingly receptive to the attitudes of the new generation ofavant-garde composers who emerged after the war.

  The main pioneering figures in this new generation, among whomBruno Maderna (192073), Luigi Nono (192490) and Luciano Berio(1925 ) were the first to establish international reputations, were moti-vated almost from the start by the urge to construct a post-war musicalculture utterly different from almost anything that had existed in Italybefore 1945. Significantly, all three composers (and other Italians too)made regular visits to that most stimulating and influential breedingground for radical post-war innovation, the annual InternationaleFerienkurse fr Neue Musik at Darmstadt. In Germany the need for atotal clean break from the officially approved music of the immediatepast was obviously somewhat greater than in Italy. However, for evidentpolitical and historical reasons, it was understandable that manyItalians, too, should want to make a radically innovative start; and it is nocoincidence that several members of this new avant-garde were alsostrongly attracted to the Gramscian form of Marxism which was to dom-inate so much of the countrys cultural and intellectual life in the thirdquarter of the twentieth century.

  Nono was a particularly clear case in point: several of his most com-pelling pieces among which the choral work Il canto sospeso (TheSuspended Song, 195556) remains one of the most impressive combine extreme musical modernity with fiercely direct anti-Fascistprotest, in which his left-wing political standpoint can clearly be sensed.This sort of polemical attitude to the immediate past, though naturalenough in the circumstances, was soon to give rise to unfair distortionsof historical perspective which caused even many of the better musicalfruits of the Fascist period to become hidden from view, along with thedross that the period undoubtedly produced in quantity.

  19601995

  By 1960 the post-war rebuilding of musical life was already welladvanced in practical terms, carried forward on the crest of the Italianeconomic miracle. New musical creativity was by now being encouragednot only (as previously) by music publishers, festivals of contemporarymusic, subsidized opera-houses, etc., but also, more than ever before, bythe huge, monolithic national broadcasting organization generally

  320 John C. G. Waterhouse

• known as RAI (Radio Audizioni Italia). RAIs Terzo Programma had orig-inally been created in direct imitation of the BBC Third Programme; butby the early 1960s (before the same thing happened in Britain) the pro-gramme had been extended throughout the day. Moreover, the broad-cast output of serious music was being further expanded with the helpof a cable radio network (filodiffusione) available in the main cities. Neverbefore had the Italian public had such easy access to so vast a range ofmusic, including an admirably varied offering of serious works of thetwentieth century, new and not so new. One may now look back at thatsituation with nostalgia, so greatly has it deteriorated since RAI gaveway to commercial and political pressures after losing its monopoly in1976.

  Meanwhile the post-war Italian avant-garde, though never all-domi-nating, was gaining in international prestige, often to the detriment oflonger-established or more conservative composers. Berio became andhas remained especially well known in the English-speaking world, fol-lowing the widespread acclaim that greeted works such as his Circles(1960 an aptly capricious setting of the poetry of e.e.cummings) and hisbrilliantly multifaceted Sinfonia (Symphony, 19689) with its cunninglydeployed quotations from Mahler and others, including himself. EvenNono and Maderna have been thrown into the shade by comparison. InItaly, however, Berio is just one of several composers of his generationwho are now rightly regarded as major figures: during the 1960s and1970s, big reputations were won by (among others) Aldo Clementi(1925 ), Franco Donatoni (1927 ), Sylvano Bussotti (1931 ), NiccolCastiglioni (193296) and the precocious Salvatore Sciarrino (1947 ), allof whom attained the status of eminent (if still controversial) seniorfigures in their countrys music.

  All these composers initially owed something, directly or indirectly,to the Darmstadt experience, as well as to other important internationalnew musical developments: for example, Italys first centre for the crea-tion of electronic music, the Studio di Fonologia attached to the Milanbranch of RAI, had been founded by Berio and Maderna as early as 1954in direct response to recent innovations in Cologne. However, it wouldbe wrong to see the Italian avant-garde as a mere reflection of the inter-national radical movements of the time: the main composers all havestrong individualities, and great contrasts can be seen, for example,between the colourful, very Italian lyricism of Maderna; the restless,dynamic textures of Donatoni; the kaleidoscopic, rather naive

  Since Verdi: Italian serious music 18601995 321

• capriciousness of Castiglioni; the provocative, idiosyncratic extravagan-zas of Bussotti; the outwardly static yet subtly shifting continuum tech-niques of Aldo Clementi; and the evanescent, refinedly shimmeringsound-world of Sciarrino.

  The time is perhaps not yet ripe to draw firm conclusions about thenumerous composers younger than Sciarrino who have made their markin Italy in recent years. But even if none of them has yet made interna-tional reputations commensurate with those of, say, Nono or Donatoni(let alone Berio), they nevertheless display a wide variety of stylisticapproaches and types of talent. The achievements of, for example,Adriano Guarnieri (1947 ), Fabio Vacchi (1949 ), Ivan Fedele (1953 )and Luca Francesconi (1956 ) are already sufficient to merit more sus-tained worldwide attention. Although most of the best of these youngercomposers owe a considerable amount to their immediate Italian prede-cessors, there seems (in Italy as elsewhere) no longer to be the samealmost moral pressure to follow radically innovative paths which wasfelt so keenly by so many new composers in the immediate post-waryears. In the heterogeneous (not to say directionless) post-modernculture of the 1980s and 1990s, the idea of a clearly focused avant-gardemovement lost much of its meaning, and in some quarters fashionsswung right over in the other direction, towards a frankly populist neo-tonalism whose achievements may be debatable but have undeniablywon significant public success: this is particularly true of the eclecticoperas of the theatrically skilled Lorenzo Ferrero (1951 ).

  Although, all in all, there is plentiful creative talent among Italiancomposers active at the present time, the multiplicity of co-existingtrends reflects the uncertainty of a country (and a world) going through aperiod of unsettling transition. More practical aspects of Italian music,too, are contributing to the disorientation. Since RAI is no longer socommitted a cultural and educative force as it was able to be in the 1950sand 1960s (by the mid 1990s all but one of the established radio sym-phony orchestras had been abolished), it has become considerablyharder for visitors to Italy to make systematic contact with the seriouscontemporary musical scene, unless they are able to travel widely with aview to hearing the music in live performances. There are, it is true,various music festivals notably the long-established and still remark-able Venice Festival of Contemporary Music which continue to provideprestigious platforms for modern works. However, in the present unsta-ble, sadly philistine political and economic climate, there are disquiet-

  322 John C. G. Waterhouse

• ing signs that even these institutions may soon be under threat.Moreover, although the rather limited Italian record industry hasbecome a bit more enterprising in the age of compact discs than it usedto be, the current exceptional difficulty of finding sponsorship for any-thing riskily adventurous is stunting what might have been a promisingand long-overdue growth. Significantly, the recent modest expansion inthe previously very limited range of twentieth-century Italian seriousmusic available in commercial recordings owes at least as much toforeign as to Italian enterprise.

  The real if slow improvement in this last-mentioned sphere does, atany rate, mean that several significant aspects of Italian music of the pastcentury and more, which had previously been in danger of falling intoundeserved oblivion, have recently begun to find a new worldwide audi-ence. Market forces have never, of course, allowed such naturally commer-ciabile items as the operas of Verdi and Puccini, or the orchestral tonepoems of Respighi, to sink from public view. But only a few years ago theworld at large seemed almost to have forgotten about all too many otherworthwhile facets of Italys music of the period with which this book isconcerned. Reference has already been made to the recent rediscovery ofMartucci, in which the international record industry has played a majorpart; and the same sort of thing is now starting to happen to thosemembers of the generazione dellOttanta (other than Respighi) whosemusic was so frowned on in Italy in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, forreasons which have more to do with political and ideological historythan with the qualities of the music as such. With growing historical per-spective, it is now becoming easier to perceive that Italy did, after all,make lasting contributions to the serious music repertoire in all phasesof the twentieth century. The time is therefore ripening for a reassess-ment of the entire panorama, with its bewilderingly varied mix ofcontradictions and continuities.

  note

  1. Gino Scarpa (ed.), Lopera di Gian Francesco Malipiero (Treviso: Canova, 1952), p. 192.

  further reading

  Bortolotto, Mario, Fase seconda: studi sulla Nuova Musica. Turin: Einaudi, 1969.Budden, Julian, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols. London: Cassell, 197381.Carner, Mosco, Puccini: A Critical Biography. London: Duckworth, 1975.De Paoli, Domenico, La crisi musicale italiana (19001930). Milan: Hoepli, 1939.

  Since Verdi: Italian serious music 18601995 323

• Labroca, Mario, Lusignolo di Boboli (cinquantanni di vita musicale italiana). Venice: NeriPozza, 1959.

  Martinotti, Sergio, Ottocento Strumentale Italiano. Bologna: Forni, 1972.Nicolodi, Fiamma, Musica e musicisti nel ventennio fascista. Fiesole: Discanto, 1984.

  Opera Production from Italian Unification to the Present, in L. Bianconi and G.Pestelli (eds.), Opera Production and its Resources. Chicago: The University ofChicago Press, 1998, pp. 165228.

  Osmond-Smith, David, Berio. Oxford University Press, 1991.Rosselli, John, Music and Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Italy. London: Batsford, 1991.Waterhouse, John C. G., Italy from the First World War to the Second, in R. P. Morgan

  (ed.), Man and Music. Vol. viii. London: Macmillan, 1993, pp. 11127.(with Julian Budden), The 20th Century: Italy, in S. Sadie (ed.), The New Grove

  Handbooks in Music: History of Opera. London: Macmillan, 1989, pp. 26980.

  324 John C. G. Waterhouse

• a l e s s a n d r o c a r r e r a

  17

  Folk music and popular song from thenineteenth century to the 1990s

  In 1954, when the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915 ) took asix-month trip to Italy together with Diego Carpitella to record originalfolk music, the country that he found was scarred by the Second WorldWar and still dominated, in large areas of the southern countryside, by arural and archaic culture. For the purpose of his research, however, Italywas an untouched paradise, as precious to an ethnomusicologist asHungary had been to Bartk and Kodly. The tradition of Italian folkmusic is arguably one of the least spoiled, most vigorous, and varied ofWestern Europe, he wrote. And yet Lomax realized that the situationwas changing:

  So far as the Italian amusement industry is concerned, the only

  worthwhile native song traditions are those of Naples and the Alps.

  The combined battery of radio, television, and the jukebox pours out

  a steady barrage of Neapolitan song, American jazz, and opera, day in

  and day out, as if some unseen musical administrators had resolved to

  wipe out the enemy, folk music, as quickly as possible.1

  It is true that, as Italy underwent a major transformation from ruraleconomy to city-based industry, folk music reminded urban people ofthe oppressive peasant life that they were eager to leave behind. In hismassive study of the origins of the tarantella as a medicine ritual, theanthropologist Ernesto De Martino (190865) could still experience therichness of southern lore in connection with music.2 But in the newsoundscape provided by radios, the jukebox and public television(which was introduced in 1954), folk music was non-existent. Only someof the Neorealist films caught a glimpse of that fading world: inViscontis La terra trema (The Earth Trembles, 1948), and in Rossellinis

• Viaggio in Italia (Voyage to Italy, 1953), one can hear voices singing in thebackground with a purity that is now lost and that even in those dayswas difficult to hear outside the most remote countryside.

  The German scholars who began to study Italian folk songs at thebeginning of the nineteenth century were perplexed by the disdain withwhich Italian men of letters looked at folk material. As Carpitella andLomax pointed out, Since the period of the Renaissance this Italianpeasant music [. . .] has lived almost without contact with the greatstreams of Italian fine-art music. It has followed its own courses,unknown and neglected, like a great underground river.3 Luigi Carrerand Giacomo Leopardi were probably the first poets who took an interestin the folk songs of their native regions. Subsequently, the Neo-classicalhabit of the Italian cultured classes was replaced, albeit slowly, by a moreRomantic attitude towards the people, and many researchers paved theroad for an Italian ethnomusicology. Printed material became widelyavailable, but only in 1948 did Giorgio Nataletti (190772), founder anddirector of the Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare (NationalCentre for the Study of Folk Music) at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia inRome, begin to build up an archive of field recordings of peasant music.

  Neapolitan, Alpine, Piedmontese and Risorgimento songs (togetherwith the Venetian villotte and canzoni da battello, boat songs) were notpeasant music. They stemmed from the artisan song genre the urbanfolk music most influenced by Italys fine-art music. Due to the wide-spread use of band arrangements and copielle (broadsheets), these songsrelied upon well-established performing practices. Between the end ofthe eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century themost popular Neapolitan songs were still attributed to celebrated operacomposers: Te voglio bene assaje (I Love You So Much, 1835) was creditedto Donizetti, and Fenesta ca lucive (Lighted Window, 1842) to Bellini. Atany rate, after the success of Santa Lucia (1848), Neapolitan song nolonger needed illustrious fathers. Funicul funicul (Funicular, 1880) byLuigi Denza, a classically trained composer, sold more than a millioncopielle in a year, and its earthy verve and unusual phrase-structurearoused the attention of several classical composers. The golden age ofthe nineteenth-century Neapolitan song was exemplified by O sole mio(My Sun, 1898), and by the poems of Salvatore Di Giacomo (Marechiare,Clear Sea, 1885, music by Francesco Paolo Tosti). Di Giacomo(18601934) indulged on the sentimental side of the Neapolitan soul,but not without a gentle ironic look that was often lost in the work of

  326 Alessandro Carrera

• his populist followers and definitely lost in the sceneggiata, a truculentgenre of popular theatre based on tear-jerking songs and crime stories.

  Francesco Paolo Tosti (18461916) was the undisputed king of theromanza da salotto (salon song). He was equally famous in Italy and at thecourt of England (where he was Sir F. P. Tosti), and his friendship withDAnnunzio produced many successful romanze (A vucchella, Tiny Mouth,1892). The romanza da salotto ultimately gave way to operetta and the differ-ent forms of variety show (cabaret, tabarin, caf chantant). Armando Gill(Michele Testa, 18791945) was perhaps the first singersongwriter in amodern sense the first cantautore, author and performer of his own songsin the caf chantant (the word cantautore did not come into use before 1960).His songs (for example Come pioveva, How It Rained, 1918) were sentimen-tal, but the language was plain and updated, not unreminiscent of thecrepuscolari, the Twilight Poets (Gozzano, Corazzini, Moretti). The worldof caf chantant could not survive the newborn record industry and massentertainment, and it was replaced by variet or rivista. Ettore Petrolini(18861936) made a name for himself with Gastone (1921), in which hepoked fun at the now obsolete caf chantant characters.

  From rivista came Rodolfo De Angelis (Rodolfo Tonino, 18931965), agifted lyricist and performer. De Angelis had been in the Futurist move-ment, and together with Marinetti he wrote the Manifesto del Teatro dellaSorpresa (Manifesto for the Theatre of Surprise, 1921). Unlike his mentor,he was not well accepted by the Fascist rgime, and from 1922 to 1940 heconcentrated on songwriting (Ma . . . cos questa crisi?, So . . . What Is ThisCrisis Anyway?, 1933).

  Far away from the salotti of the upper class, other songs were sung:anarchist ballads like Addio Lugano bella (Farewell, My Beautiful Lugano,1894), Socialist hymns (Bandiera rossa, Red Flag) and songs of emigration(Mamma mia dammi cento lire, Mother, Give Me One Hundred Lira). TheFirst World War produced official patriotic tunes like La leggenda del Piave(The Piave Legend, 1918), as well as strong anti-war statements like OGorizia tu sei maledetta (O Gorizia, May You Be Damned, 1916).

  The Fascist rgime made a great use of propaganda songs, fromGiovinezza, giovinezza (Youth, Youth, a pre-Fascist song of 1921 whichbecame the official Fascist hymn) to Faccetta nera (Little Black Face, 1935,the unofficial hymn of the Abyssinian war). Far from the public parades,the success of popular song was connected more and more with radioand cinema. Solo per te Lucia (Only for You, Lucia, 1930) and Parlamidamore, Mari (Tell me About Love, Mari, 1932, sung by a very young

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• Vittorio De Sica) were the centrepieces of two of the first film musicali not musicals, but movies in which the story was based on a song. At theend of the Second World War the rivista either disappeared or trans-formed itself into the commedia musicale (musical comedy). Wanda Osiris(Anna Menzio), the post-DAnnunzian diva of the most glamorousriviste, was replaced by the earthy Anna Magnani, who achieved her firstgreat success with Tot (Antonio De Curtis) in German-occupied Rome.Sandro Giovannini and Pietro Garinei, who wrote scripts for AnnaMagnani in 1945, later became the kings of the commedie musicali thatdominated the Roman scene until the end of the 1960s.

  The songs of the 1940s and the 1950s often have a distinctive regionalcharacter. In Milan, Giovanni DAnzi (190674) was able to put down animpressive number of hits, ranging from the gentle populism of hisMilanese sketches (Madonina, Little Madonna, 1938) to love ballads of aCole-Porter-like harmonic complexity (Viale dautunno, Avenue inAutumn, 1953). But Neapolitan song was alive and well, and it reneweditself either by mourning the landscape of wartorn Naples (Munasterio eSanta Chiara, St. Chiaras Convent, 1945) or incorporating jazz harmo-nies (Anema e core, Soul and Heart, 1950). The influence of Americanmusic must not be underestimated. Although banished in the lastdecade of Fascism, jazz played an important role in the changingmusical landscape of the 1940s and 1950s. In defiance of the Fascistpolice, the young jazz aficionados cherished the few dusty records thatwere smuggled from America. Ironically, one of them was RomanoMussolini, one of the Duces sons, who after the war forged a career forhimself as a jazz pianist. The censors could sometimes be fooled. As thelegend goes, St. Louis Blues, performed by Bessie Smith and LouisArmstrong, was released under the delightful title Le tristezze di San Luigi(The Sadnesses of Saint Louis) because the censor believed it to be areligious song. In the last days of the Second World War, Resistancesongs (at least in Northern Italy) and Glenn Millers In the Mood were theunlikely soundtrack of the Liberation.

  After the war, some young entertainers adopted swing with an ironicapproach. Renato Carosone (1920 ) made a name for himself withTammurriata nera (Black Drumroll, 1944; Carosone recorded it in 1957), adevastatingly funny account of how Neapolitans coped with the arrivalof the American soldiers in 1943 (A new baby is born, and he is black.Such things are not rare; weve seen countless numbers of them.Sometimes it takes no more than someone looking at the mother, and all

  328 Alessandro Carrera

• of a sudden she is imprinted . . .). After his first hit, Carosone made thecharts again with his swingy Tu vuo fa lamericano (So You Want To Be anAmerican, 1957) in which he poked fun at the Italian youngsters tryingto pose as Americans while buying Camel cigarettes with mommysmoney.

  Fred Buscagliones America, on the contrary, was both very foreignand very familiar. Fred (Ferdinando) Buscaglione (192160) was born in aworking-class district of Turin. He dressed and behaved like a characterout of a Damon Runyon or Mickey Spillane novel, and his songs relo-cated with devastating irony the world of the American gangster movieto the outskirts of an Italian industrial town (Eri piccola cos, You Were asSmall as This, 1958).

  The most important performer of the 1950s was Domenico Modugno(192894). He caused a national commotion by appearing at the 1958Festival di Sanremo with his new song, Nel blu dipinto di blu (In the BlueSky, Myself Painted in Blue, 1958). To fly far from the world and into theinfinite blue of the sky was a very strange subject for an Italian song, buteven more impressive was Modugnos vocal and performing style. Hisvoice was still the voice of a southern cantastorie (story-singer). Italianswere still surrounded by those voices, but they were not used to hearingthem on television. With Modugno, vocal Neorealism had reached themedia. Renamed Volare (Flying), the song became a worldwide hit,selling more than twenty-two million copies.

  The 1950s still had room for other great voices. Mina (Mina AnnaMazzini, 1940 ) is the most versatile pop singer in Italian music. Asoprano with an astonishing extension and agility, Mina has been a stapleof TV variety shows for many years. Swingy and anti-melodic in her earlyyears (Tintarella di luna, Moon Tan, 1959), her singing later acquired highdramatic tones. Ornella Vanoni (1934 ) went from Giorgio StrehlersPiccolo Teatro to sophisticated schmaltz, while Milva (Maria Ilva Biolcati,1939 ) went from the Sanremo Festival to Strehler, who turned her intoan accomplished Brechtian singer. At the beginning of the 1960s, otheryoung female singers were ready to interpret the new female roles: RitaPavone and Caterina Caselli were both sassy and sentimental, and PattyPravo (Nicoletta Strambelli) was even sexually aggressive.

  Adriano Celentano (1938 ) is the closest thing to Jerry Lee Lewis andLittle Richard that Italy has produced. When he made a cameo appearancein Fellinis La dolce vita (1960), he was a Milanese street boy infatuated withrock and roll. And yet Celentano was very much an Italian original.

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• Ventiquattromila baci (Twenty-four-thousand Kisses, 1961) was one of thefirst post-war songs in which the language of love was drastically updated.Celentano also provided the Italian pop scene with a distinctive urban andworking-class posture that was almost unknown. His characters were theyoung rockers living on the outskirts of the newly industrialized towns.Italy at the time being a gentler place than Liverpool or Detroit, its blue-collar workers and apprentices still clung to the words of the local priest,and their biggest problem was not how to find dope but how to find a date(Il problema pi importante, Our Most Urgent Problem, 1962).

  Gianni Morandi (1944 ) is the Dorian Gray of Italian song. In hisfifties now, he still looks like the teenager who made girls scream when,like Paul Anka, he topped the charts at sixteen, singing thought-provok-ing lyrics like: Have your mother send you to buy milk, I have to tell yousomething about us. If I see you coming out of school with that otherguy, Ill definitely smash his face (Fatti mandare dalla mamma, Get YourMother to Send You, 1963).

  Increasing social unrest marked the end of the 1950s. Some youngwriters and singers, spurred on by the example of French chansonniers,Brechtian song and by rumours of a folk-revival movement in Americaand Britain, began to think that popular songs could be made into a lessapolitical medium. A loose association of lyricists, composers and per-formers called Cantacronache (News Singers) was formed in Turin in1957. Obscure and amateurish as it was, Cantacronache marked the begin-ning of the modern canzone dautore, or art pop song. With the occasionalhelp of Italo Calvino (who wrote lyrics for them), Cantacronache recordeda number of allegorical and overtly political songs. Per i morti di ReggioEmilia (For the Dead of Reggio Emilia, 1960) sounded like a Resistancefolk tune with Russian overtones (the chorus quotes a passage fromMussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition). Due to their widespread use inleftist gatherings, Resistance songs like Bella ciao (Goodbye, MySweetheart) or Fischia al vento (The Wind is Whistling, based on aRussian tune brought back to Italy by Italian soldiers who had fought inRussia) were the only folk songs that the young city dwellers knew.Resistance songs were therefore instrumental in renewing the interestin folk music. Two young researchers, Diego Carpitella (1924 90) andRoberto Leydi (1928 ) championed the new area of study (Carpitellahad been De Martinos and Lomaxs field assistant). Tullia Magrini(1950 ) followed in their steps and is now editor of Music & Anthropology.

  Another researcher, Gianni Bosio (192371), took a more militant

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• approach. Outside the academic circles, he created the Istituto Ernesto DeMartino, named after the anthropologist who had investigated the rootsof southern folklore. Bosio and his collaborators were not merely lookingfor folk art. They aimed at documenting and enriching the counter-culture expressed by the rural and working classes. While, in the sameyears, Pasolini was longing after the prepolitical condition of the subprol-etarians, Bosio relied upon Gramscis notes on hegemony and folklore, aswell as on the so-called operaismo of the 1960s (operaismo, working class-centered Marxism, was the name of a splinter Marxist theory promotedby the philosopher Raniero Panzieri). While field research was theIstitutos main occupation, its practical arm was the Canzoniere italiano, afree-form group of urban singersongwriters, urban folk singers, grass-root folk singers like Giovanna Daffini (an astonishing mondina voice themondine being the rice-picking women of northern Italy) and a well-trained musician, Giovanna Marini. Marini (1937 ) was heading towardsa career as a performer of Renaissance music when she decided to devoteherself to folk material and the composition of long, intellectually pas-sionate ballads, inspired by American talking-blues, rural music from theItalian South, Brechtian song and Renaissance recitatives (vi parlo del-lamerica,4 I Am Talking about America, 1965). Initially spurred on by ablend of MarxistCatholic anti-capitalist pauperism which is almostuniquely Italian, she subsequently composed complex modern madrigalsfor a quartet of female voices, cantatas and oratorios, and a poignant suitebased on youthful poems by Pasolini (per pier paolo, For Pier Paolo,1985).5 While Luciano Berio (1925 ) is the only contemporary classicalcomposer who has shown a constant interest in folk music (Folksongs, 1964;Voci, Voices, 1984), Roberto De Simone (1933 ) is, like Giovanna Marini, afolk-oriented composer. Working in association with the NuovaCompagnia di Canto Popolare, he reached international success with thefolk operas la gatta cenerentola (Cinderella, the She-Cat, 1976) and lacantata dei pastori (The Shepherds Cantata, 1981).

  The early 1960s saw the rise of a new Italian cabaret. The early songs ofDario Fo and Enzo Jannacci (La luna una lampadina, The Moon Is a Bulb,1963; Ho visto un re, I Have Seen a King, 1963) are masterpieces of popSurrealism, demented urban stories that recount the transition from thesimpler, paternalistic Italy of the 1950s to the neo-capitalist country ofthe 1960s. Jannacci (1935 ) has remained more or less true to his roots; Fo(1926 ) achieved international success with his satirical plays and, to thesurprise of many, won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Literature.

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• The new breed of singersongwriters who captured the spirit of the1960s mostly came from Genoa. In defiance of all the pop schmaltz, LuigiTenco (193867) could freeze the casual radio listener with a line like: Ifell in love with you because I had nothing to do (Mi sono innamorato di te,I Fell in Love with You, 1962). Excluded from the 1967 Sanremo Festival,and perhaps mired in debt, Tenco killed himself (the 1958 Nobel prize-winner, Salvatore Quasimodo, wrote a moving eulogy on him, at a timewhen intellectuals did not normally bother about singers and theirsongs). Even more desperate than Tenco was Piero Ciampi (193480)from Livorno, who, while drinking himself to death, reached a level ofangst unmatched by any other Italian song composer. Gino Paoli(1934 ) presented an equally non-conformist image. The handful ofsongs that he wrote in the early 1960s served as the soundtrack of thefirst mass vacations and the first sexual freedoms experienced by theyoung Italian generation entering the neo-capitalist Garden of Eden ofthe Economic Miracle (Sapore di sale, A Taste of Salt, 1963).

  Among the Genoese singersongwriters, Fabrizio De Andr(194099) maintained a strong appeal to young audiences. The most lit-erary and intellectual of the group, for many years he provided themusical background for liceo classico students (liceo classico being a secon-dary school with a literary orientation). De Andr reached his artisticmaturity with creuza de m (Alley to the Sea, 1982). The songs were inGenoese dialect and the arrangements were entirely acoustic, withmusical references ranging from Southern Italy to the Middle East. Hisnext songs were equally powerful. Don Raffa (in le nuvole, TheClouds, 1990), a devastating portrait of a hapless prison guard who fallsunder the spell of the camorrista that he is supposed to watch, is a stun-ning reminder of the years of disorientation and corruption that ledItaly into the Tangentopoli scandal of 1992.

  Between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, manyother singersongwriters emerged, each of whom would deserve adetailed analysis (Franco Battiato, Edoardo Bennato, Lucio Dalla,Francesco De Gregori, Francesco Guccini, Gianna Nannini). Beat, main-stream rock, progressive rock and fusion had their day too, with groupslike Area, Banco, PFM and Stormy Six.

  Aristocratic, isolated, ironic, Paolo Conte (1937 ) stands alone. Hewrote songs for Celentano, most notably Azzurro (Blue, 1968), butachieved widespread popularity only in his late forties. Paolo Conte isperhaps the most refined song composer since Giovanni DAnzi, and the

  332 Alessandro Carrera

• most original lyricist since Rodolfo De Angelis. He is the quintessence ofthe old cool, looking at the world with his older generations wisdom,unflinched by the vagaries of post-modernity (un gelato al limon, ALemon Ice-Cream, 1979).

  But, significant as it is, the influence of all these musicians palesbefore that of Lucio Battisti (194398). As the semiotician Paolo Fabbriput it, he did not sing about Italian teenagers; he created them.6 From1966 to 1979 he found his lyricist in Mogol (Giulio Rapetti), who becamefor him what Ira Gershwin was for his brother George (emozioni,Feelings, 1970). Battisti was no intellectual. He had a harsh, unpleasantsoul voice, a reputation for bad temper, and an unparalleled gift forexpressing the sexual frustration of a young male in a country that hadseen its reassuring patriarchal values vanish. Increasingly reclusive andaloof, at the peak of his fame he disappeared from the music scene. Afterhis collaboration with Mogol came to a bitter end, Battisti resorted to ayoung and obscure lyricist (Pasquale Panella) who furnished him withbizarre imitations of experimental poetry (don giovanni, 1986).Mogols lyrics, however, deserve attention. Halfway between linguisticinventiveness and kitsch, they combine the failed poetry of a teenagersdiary with the shrewd immediacy of a television ad.

  At the end of the 1990s, the singersongwriters are still the most origi-nal Italian contribution to contemporary pop culture. Although they nevercaptured British and American audiences, they are well known aroundmuch of Europe. Heavy-metal rock bands (Litfiba), rockers (Ligabue) andpop cabaret acts (Elio e le Storie Tese) have their audiences; female singers(Nada Malanima, Fiorella Mannoia and Anna Oxa) still undertake theirjourney from rebellious youth to adult sophistication; and yet it is thesingersongwriter who is supposed to be the spokesperson of the young.Some of the new artists seem promising (for example, Daniele Silvestri),but many older singersongwriters are still active, and not easily super-seded. The list would not be complete without Nino DAngelo (1957 ),who is probably the last scion of the Neapolitan melodic song. His voicehas a populist appeal in which no subtlety is allowed.

  The most interesting musical phenomenon of the last decade is theemergence of an Italian form of rap. Italian rap has spread through thealternative network of centri sociali (self-managed social centres) andindependent record companies. Although some of the groups enjoy cultfame (see the anthology fondamentale vol. 1, 1992), none has reachedthe success of Jovanotti (Lorenzo Cherubini), a former DJ who began his

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• career exploiting rap merely for commercial purpose. In recent years,Jovanotti has somewhat matured, and now produces a blend of rap andcanzone dautore not entirely devoid of social concerns (lorenzo 1994,1994). Rap, in fact, is just one of the ingredients that these new groupshave mixed together: others are reggae (Pitura Freska), dub(Almamegretta, most notably with anima migrante, Migrant Soul,1993), world music (Agricantus, Novalia), and even tarantamuffin, a mixof Jamaican ragamuffin (reggae plus rap) and tarantella.

  Italian rap is committed to protest movements, anti-racist and multi-culturalist. Italian rappers often find dialect to be more expressive and tothe point than standard Italian, and they make large use of it. Historicalcontinuity with the tradition of the campaigning song has not beenbroken, and political consciousness still walks hand in hand with popu-lism. The assimilation of rap proves once again that Gramsci was rightwhen he pointed out that popular music is not necessarily written by thepeople or for the people.7 Popular music is the music that is adopted bythe people insofar as it conforms to what the people think about theworld and life, in opposition to the official views promoted by the estab-lishment (whatever the meaning of the people, opposition and theestablishment is nowadays, of course).

  notes

  1. Alan Lomax, introduction to Italian Treasury: Folk Music and Song of Italy, one sounddisc (Rounder Records 1166118012, 1999), p. 1. The first version of this introduction(signed with Diego Carpitella) is in the inside cover of the Columbia World Libraryseries albums (see note 3).2. See Ernesto De Martino, La terra del rimorso (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1961).3. Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, introduction to The Columbia World Library of Folkand Primitive Music. xv: Northern and Central Italy and the Albanians of Calabria. xvi:Southern Italy and the Islands, four sound discs (Columbia Records, kl 5173 and kl 5174,1957).4. To distinguish them from song titles, LP and CD titles are written in small capitals.5. See Alessandro Carrera, Il lamento di Narciso. Le poesie friulane di Pasolinimusicate da Giovanna Marini, Italica 71/3 (1994), pp. 33753.6. Quoted in Tullio Lauro and Leo Turrini, Emozioni. Lucio Battisti vita mito note (Milan:Zelig, 1995), p. 109.7. Antonio Gramsci, Letteratura e vita nazionale (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1971), p. 273.

  further reading

  Borgna, Gianni, Storia della canzone italiana. Milan: Mondadori, 1992.Carpitella, Diego, Italian Folk Music, in Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians. v:

  Appendix. London: Macmillan, 1961, pp. 13564.

  334 Alessandro Carrera

• Carrera, Alessandro, Musica e pubblico giovanile. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980.Coveri, Lorenzo (ed.), Parole in musica. Lingua e poesia nella canzone dautore italiana.

  Novara: Interlinea, 1996.Falassi, Alessandro, Italian Folklore: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1985.Filippa, Marcella, Popular Song and Musical Cultures, in D. Forgacs and R. Lumley

  (eds.), Italian Cultural Studies. Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 32743.Leydi, Roberto, I canti popolari italiani. Milan: Mondadori, 1973.Lomax, Alan, Musical Styles in Italy: Text of a Hypothesis, American Anthropologist 61

  (1959), pp. 92754.Portelli, Alessandro. Typology of Industrial Folk Song, in The Death of Luigi Trastulli and

  Other Stories. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991, pp. 16192.Prato, Paolo. Tradition, Exoticism, and Cosmopolitism in Italian Popular Music

  (1950s-1980s), Differentia 2 (1988), pp. 195218.Straniero, Michele, Manuale di musica popolare. Milan: Rizzoli, 1991.Testa, Carlo, The Dialectics of Dialect: Enzo Jannacci and Existentialism, Canadian

  Journal of Italian Studies 52 (1996), pp. 1940.

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• r e b e c c a j. w e s t

  18

  Epilogue: Italian culture or multiculture in thenew millennium?

  On the threshold of the new millennium, as Italy prepares to playan ever more active part in the European Union, it is not inappropriatethat students of Italian culture should ask: What is contemporaryItalian national identity, and what will the adjective Italian mean inthe future? The essays in this volume have primarily looked back overcultural developments in post-unification Italy from the perspective oflate twentieth-century contemporaneity. They have also occasionallysought to make conjectures about possible future developments. In thisbrief epilogue, my focus will be on the present and the future, a prospec-tive stance reflective of some of the collections general aims, and condi-tioned of course by current realities. The question of what Italian nowsignifies, and what the adjective may well encompass in future yearsimplicitly or explicitly informs all that follows.

  Italy was belatedly born as a nation under the sign of a constructedpolitical and linguistic unity. Unification has always been more a dreamthan a reality, however, in spite of the many efforts over the last centuryto bring about national unity. Historically, Italian society and culturehave been fragmented, and today there is an increasing, and new, frag-mentation under pressure from both internal and external forces.Among these forces are greatly increased immigration, mainly from so-called developing countries, the revival of regionalism and widespreadAmericanization. The effects of these social and political phenomena onItalian cultural production have been and continue to be great, and it isno longer the case that a few hegemonic centres (certain cities, univer-sities, dominant political parties, publishing and other media entities,the Catholic Church) direct and control most of what has traditionallybeen thought of as Italian culture. Added to these forces are the seismic

• political upheavals of recent years: the scandals associated withTangentopoli; the emergence of the separatist Northern Leagues; the fallof the First Republic; the rise of Berlusconis media empire; the con-certed efforts to join the European Monetary Union. These upheavals,while occurring specifically in Italy, nonetheless have global repercus-sions. Thus, Italy is both increasingly fragmented within and intenselyinvolved in extranational, global matters. The result is that its nationalidentity is caught up in transformations of great speed and complexity.

  In a newspaper piece published in 1997, Alberto Papuzzi wrote of oneof the most significant phenomena affecting Italy today: immigration.1In the late 1960s, Italy was still a country of emigration, and there wereonly around 150,000 immigrants living in the country; twenty yearslater, Italy had over 500,000 immigrants, while having the lowest birth-rate in Europe. By the year 2000 the number of native-born Italians willhave dropped by four million, while the number of non-native citizenscontinues to grow exponentially. From the late 1980s to the late 1990sthe (legal) immigrant population doubled, and it now represents around2 per cent of the overall population of the country. In comparison withother European nations, this percentage is low. More interesting is thefact that Italy hosts the most varied gamut of immigrant nationalities.While German immigration has been dominated by Turks, French byPortuguese, Algerian and Moroccan, and English by people from theCommonwealth (West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians, etc.), in 1997 Italyhad over 100,000 Moroccans, 63,000 Albanians, 57,000 Philippinos,54,000 North Americans, 44,000 Tunisians, as well as contingents num-bering from 45,000 to under 20,000 people respectively from suchvaried places of origin as Serbia, Rumania, Senegal, China, Poland, Peru,Egypt, Somalia, Algeria and Iran. While the immigrants from countriesin Africa and from the former Yugoslavia are the most visible, the urbancentres of Milan, Turin and Rome are filled with people from all thecountries mentioned, and smaller cities and even tiny towns in the prov-inces have many non-native Italians living and working in them.

  With so many immigrants now living in Italy, why, Papuzzi asks, hasthe presence of others generated so much negative reaction in the formof intolerance, violence and racism? According to him, one answermight lie in the tendency among Italians to amalgamate diverse immi-grants into one image of otherness; and that image has a black face.How much simpler it is to see them as completely separate and differ-ent from us when skin colour marks difference. This explanation is

  338 Rebecca J. West

• open to question, however, since many Italians appear, rather, to com-partmentalize different national and ethnic groups, much as they passdifferent collective judgments on Italians coming from diverse regionsand cities. In either case, an us versus them mentality would appear toplay a significant role in the response to those seen as other, as is thecase throughout the world. Another source of negativity may be theidentification of all immigrants with illegal immigrants, so that theyare perceived as criminal and a threat to an ordered society. Africanimmigrants have commonly been called vucumpr (will you buy?),while other immigrants are deemed to be lavavetri (window washers),according to their humble means of livelihood: street vending andmaintenance. Socio-economic difference is thus added to ethnic orracial difference, and a hostile mentality becomes even moreentrenched among the Italian population. The situation is made worseby some public figures. Umberto Bossi, the head of the NorthernLeague, plays on the economic fears of middle-class Italians in northernItaly (where a high percentage of the immigrant population lives).Fiercely and vociferously divisive, he delights in ridiculing southernItalians, calling them Africans and mafiosi and commenting on theirdarker skin and on the ways in which they drain the resources of themore affluent North. The major goals of the Northern League are a lesscentralist government and more political and economic power for theNorth; anti-southern and anti-immigrant positions are used to forwardthis goal. Bossis view particularly of black others is clear; in a talk atthe first national conference of the Lombard League, held in 1989, heopined: assimilation is not valid regarding immigrants of colour, forwhom integration is not foreseeable, perhaps not even centuries fromnow. With them the classic mechanisms of integration marriage andchildren in common do not work, and it would be impossible torealize an ethnic bond without generating grave racial tensions inher-ent in the society.2 Interracial marriage, a reality in many societies, ischaracterized as impossible in Italy; yet no reasons are adduced insupport of this claim, with the result that it is made as if it were self-evident. Bossi (and others) seem to forget that Italians are no morepure than other ethnic groups, and that many diverse peoplesthroughout the centuries settled in what is now the nation of Italy, andbecame what are now known as Italians.

  Whether universally welcomed or not, the Italy of today is inesca-pably multiethnic. As Papuzzi writes: The face of immigration is still

  Italian culture or multiculture in the new millennium? 339

• obscure, and the condition of the majority of immigrants is still too pre-carious. But roots have been put down and nothing will be able to extir-pate them. Signs of these roots are the sixty mosques scatteredthroughout Italy; the many diverse centres for immigrants in Emilia-Romagna; the Islamic butchers shop opened in Naples in 1992; theFlorentine suburb of San Donnino, with a population of 4,500 Italiansand 3,000 Chinese; the town of Merlo in the province of Vicenza, half thepopulation of which is made up of Senegalese and Ghanaians. Cuisine,fashion and other aspects of social and cultural life are heavily influ-enced not only by American trends, but also by the many immigrantswho have settled in Italy for the long term, have married Italians andothers, have had children, and have begun to contribute to the economiclife of the country and to its literature, film, theatre and a host of othercultural expressions.

  There is now a flourishing Italophone literature, for example, thathas begun to be studied by Italianists. To give but one (salient) example:in the United States, the scholar Graziella Parati has published, over thelast few years, more than a dozen articles on Italophone literature andrelated topics. She has recently edited an anthology of translations ofimmigrant writings, and sits on the jury of a yearly literary prize pre-sented each summer in Rimini to an immigrant author whose work issubsequently published.3 Parati is among an increasing number ofItalian literary scholars who have begun to acknowledge the presenceand significance of Italian literature by non-natives: books written inItalian, but which often reflect an Italian reality quite distinct from thatof indigenous writers.

  Canonical approaches to literary culture may not yet acknowledgethese new texts, but it is virtually impossible simply to ignore them. Thesame holds true for other arenas of cultural activity, and scholars activein the field of cultural studies, primarily in the United States andBritain, as is discussed in the Introduction to this volume, have begun towork on redefinitions of Italian high and mass culture. For instance,they focus on aspects of todays transformed and continually transform-ing Italian culture, and on issues such as the role of the media, thefashion industry, immigration and gender.4 In studies such as these canbe found an Italian reality quite different from the view propounded bytraditional approaches to high cultural production. Historically, Italyhas been studied as the country of high culture par excellence, and it isknown internationally for its great works of art, its opera and, to a lesser

  340 Rebecca J. West

• extent, for certain of its writers (Dante, Machiavelli, Calvino, Eco). Fewnon-specialists are aware of the political and social complexities oftodays Italy; at most they may have a superficial knowledge of the ter-rorism and scandals that rocked and eventually toppled the FirstRepublic. The intricate effects of immigration, the separatist Leaguesand other events that have shaped and continue to shape Italy are notpart of the general perception of a country still seen to a great extent asthe land of sun, song and pasta with some paintings and monumentsthrown in for good measure. Only a small portion of recent Italian cultu-ral production makes its way to the shores of most other countries,including the United States and Britain (although more translated ma-terials are beginning to come on to the English-speaking market), so thatstereotypical views continue to hold sway. Scholars of history, culture,film and literature working both inside and outside Italy are, however,gradually beginning to provide information on the new Italy, and visi-tors to Italy experience for themselves something quite different fromwhat stereotypical perceptions have led them to expect. The face oftodays Italy multiracial, multiethnic and potentially multicultural isstarting to be unveiled to the world.

  It is not only scholars of literature and cultural studies who are inves-tigating this new Italy. Political scientists, sociologists and geographers,among others, have also contributed many studies in recent years thatfocus on the question of multiculturalism in the Italian context. In 1996,for example, a conference on Immigration and Multiculturalism inTodays Italy was held at the University of Macerata, and theProceedings appeared the following year.5 The convention drewtogether scholars from the Geography Department at Macerata, fromthe Association of Italian Geographers involved in a project calledForeign Immigration to Italy and from the Cariplo Foundation forInitiatives and Studies on Multiethnicities. Divided into several sectionsunder the headings Immigration in Italy and in its Regional Aspects,Problems Related to Immigration, Places of Departure and of Arrival ofImmigrants and Didactics and Interculture in Todays Schools, thevolume is rich in specific information about the geographical, political,familial, social, cultural and pedagogical aspects of immigration andabout growing multiculturalism throughout the regions of Italy. In oneof the essays, the geographer Guido Barbina provides a very usefulsummary of the history of ethnic identity and conflict in the Europeancontext, and then focuses his attention on the Italian situation of today,

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• in which he sees genuine multiculturalism as more a goal than a reality.6Barbina characterizes the politics of multiculturalism (with reference tothe Canadian context) as beautiful and attractive, but of difficult applic-ability. He continues: Italy has never shown proof of any effectivemulticulturalism. Born in the last century under the sign of national-ism, Italy in reality has never succeeded either in melding itself into asole culture or a sole language, or in some way respecting its own localcultures. Given the necessity of dealing effectively with the enormousimmigration into todays Italy, and the unlikelihood that the influx ofdiverse ethnic groups into Italy will stop in the future, Barbina urges apolitical and cultural awareness of the importance of differences ratherthan the neutralization of differences in the name of a more diffusedwell-being.7 He and other scholars in the volume support the flourish-ing of multiculturalism in Italy; for the moment, however, multicultu-ralism remains a future goal rather than a present reality.

  In this brief epilogue, it is impossible to enter into detailed analysesof the salient facets of contemporary Italian culture, many of which areanalysed in the essays contained in this volume. I have chosen to paysome attention to the pressing reality of immigration and its effects, fortodays Italy has been and continues to be changed perhaps most radi-cally by this enormous influx of peoples from other countries and cul-tures. Americanization and regionalism are also important elements inthe shaping of contemporary Italian culture. However, given thecomplex political, social and cultural nature of these elements, whichwould require a much more extensive venue than this short epilogue, Iwish instead to conclude by giving some necessarily small space to moremanifestly academic (as contrasted to socio-political) developments thatreflect transformations certain also to have significance for the Italy ofthe new millennium.

  More traditional components of modern Italian culture have longbeen exported; among them are fashion, cuisine, films, design and, to alesser extent, literature. What has also begun to be significantlyexported in the last decade is thought, by which I mean theoretical elab-orations in diverse fields of inquiry. Two major areas in which contem-porary Italian theory has begun to have more than a local effect among(primarily Western) intellectuals and academics are philosophical post-modernism and Feminism. The export of work in these areas hasbrought Italy squarely into contemporary global debates centringon new paradigms generated and promulgated internationally.

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• Furthermore, Italy is now more open than ever before to research meth-odologies, disciplinary shifts and modes of institutional education frombeyond its own borders. Contacts between and among Italian and otherEuropean scholars have long been established; now exchanges betweenItaly and North America are becoming routine, and more Italian criticaland creative texts in English translations are available for academic andgeneral readers in the English-speaking world (while, on the other hand,the Italian publishing industry has always routinely provided transla-tions of important scholarly texts from around the world). This widerexchange is due in part to the new electronic media, which transportinformation and facilitate collaboration in ways unheard of by earliergenerations; but it is also the result of widely shared views of what aregenerically called post-modern and Feminist thought and practice.

  Italy did not quickly welcome the term post-modern, as otherWestern countries did, although similar concepts were discussed underterms such as neo-Baroque, neo-avant-garde and post-metaphysical,depending on the particular discipline in question. However, criticalthought in Italy has, as elsewhere, become enmeshed in post-moderndebates generated in great part by the crisis of Marxism and the concur-rent crumbling of strong ideologies. With the move away from classicalrationality and grand narratives, scholars in many disciplines havebegun investigating alternative modes of conceptualizing and coming toterms with the inheritance of past forms of knowledge, as well as develop-ing new forms for the present and future. Philosophical thought is quitenaturally implicated in this shift in perspective, for metaphysics and thehistorical forms of investigating basic ontological and epistemologicalproblems are also now open to the effects of a generalized crisis of founda-tions. Aldo Garganis 1979 collection of essays entitled Crisi della ragione(Crisis of Reason, Turin: Einaudi) was one of the first important expres-sions of Italian post-metaphysical thought, while the 1983 collection ofessays, edited by Gianni Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti, Il pensiero debole(Weak Thought, Milan: Feltrinelli), created quite a stir with its heteroge-neous mix of untraditional pieces by philosophers, literary scholars andwriters. Weak thought is one of the Italian versions of post-moderntheory in which justification is no longer sought in transcendental catego-ries but rather in the contingent complexity of lived experience. It hascertain affinities with Derridean and other French schools, and Vattimo the leading spokesman of the trend has travelled throughout Europeand North America promulgating his ideas. The journal Differentia,

  Italian culture or multiculture in the new millennium? 343

• founded by Peter Carravetta in the United States in the late 1980s, has con-centrated on the dissemination of current Italian thought in Englishtranslations, and has done much to bring this thought into internationaldebates. The major effect of this recent work has been on methodologiesand pedagogical styles; the traditional emphases on historical, analyticaland philological approaches to knowledge are giving way to a more theo-retical orientation that is by now widespread in North America, Britainand France. Although still rooted in its own traditions, Italian research inmany disciplines is no longer radically distinct from research carried outin other Western countries; it is no longer overwhelmingly Italian, anymore than the countrys populace is purely native-born; it is, in short,moving into a kind of academic and theoretical multiculturalism.

  Italian Feminist theory is another instance of the growing interna-tionalism of Italys cultural productions. The essay Other Voices in thisvolume provides an excellent historical overview of Feminism in Italy,and I shall not repeat what is offered by Wood and Farrell. What is mostsignificant about current Italian Feminist work is that it is beginning tobe taken into account in the heretofore dominant contexts of researchand theorizing in the field: that is, in France, Germany, Britain and theUnited States. The feminist thinkers in Italy who have recently emergedas among the most important theorists for the most part have been orcurrently are tied to the Diotima group at the University of Verona, andare made up of philosophers, linguists and scholars from various otherdisciplines. The philosopher Luisa Muraro is the acknowledged leader ofDiotima, while Adriana Cavarero, formerly an important figure in thegroup, is no longer a member as a result of intellectual and ideologicaldifferences. Teresa de Lauretis, an eminent scholar known internation-ally for her work in Feminism, cultural theory and film studies, wasinstrumental in bringing word of recent Italian Feminism to NorthAmerican shores. Her translation of the ground-breaking Non credere diavere dei diritti (Dont Think Youve Got Rights) a collectively authoredrecord of the Milan Bookstore Collectives experiences in consciousness-raising and practical Feminist practices, was among the first books tobring contemporary Italian Feminist thought to the attention of schol-ars outside Italy.8 Muraro and Cavarero have both travelled widely topresent their work, and their and others research has started to have realresonance in international Feminist debates. Muraro currently concen-trates on past and present sites of autonomous female authority, such asfemale religious communities as distinguished from the patriarchal

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• order while Cavarero is attempting to overcome the clash between fun-damentally essentialistic metaphysical approaches to sexual difference(such as mark Muraros approach) and those post-modern approachesthat favour the concept of non-essentialistic, culturally constructed dif-ferences (such as mark the work of Judith Butler and Rosi Braidotti, forexample). While interested in local issues of pertinence to the daily livesof women living in Italy, these and other Italian scholars of Feminism arekeenly aware of directions in research and practice in other countries,and take active account of French, British and North American Feministtheory. Once again, this is an indication of a kind of intellectual multi-culturalism now very much a part of Italian intellectual and social life.

  In conclusion, it could be said that the terms Italy and Italian nowencompass realities and imaginaries that are quite different from thoseof only a few decades ago. No one can say for sure where the SecondRepublic is heading, nor how Italian culture will look a few decades intothe future. When a volume of essays is put together a century or so fromnow, one which concentrates on post-modern Italy rather than themodern Italy that this volume encompasses, its contents will tell a talethe storyline of which can only be faintly traced today. Or perhaps thestoryline that appears to be emerging now will have been erased andreplaced by another that cannot yet be imagined. Perhaps Italy will noteven exist any longer as an autonomous nation and a separable culture,as global trends continue to develop. There is no crystal ball, only eyesand minds that need to go on looking and thinking as clearly as thecomplex present allows.

  notes

  1. Alberto Papuzzi, Stranieri, la mappa tricolore, La Stampa, 12 April 1997, p. 23.2. Quoted in Laura Balbo and Luigi Manconi (eds.), I razzismi reali (Milan: Feltrinelli,1992), p. 84.3. Graziella Parati (ed.), Mediterranean Crossroads: Migration Literature in Italy (London:Associated University Presses, 1999).4. Beverley Allen and Mary Russo (eds.), Revisioning Italy: National Identity and GlobalCulture (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); David Forgacsand Robert Lumley (eds.), Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Oxford UniversityPress, 1996).5. Carlo Brusa (ed.), Immigrazione e multicultura nellItalia di oggi: Il territorio, i problemi, ladidattica (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1997).6. Guido Barbina, Conflittualita etnica e multiculturalismo, in Brusa (ed.),Immigrazione, pp. 12132.7. Ibid., pp. 129, 12930, 132.

  Italian culture or multiculture in the new millennium? 345

• 8. Non credere di avere dei dritti (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1987). Translated by Teresa deLauretis and Patricia Cicogna as Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990).

  further reading

  Balbo, Laura and Luigi Manconi (eds.), Razzismi: un vocabolario. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1993.Bettini, Maurizio (ed.), Lo straniero ovvero lidentit culturale a confronto. Rome and Bari:

  Laterza, 1992.Cavarero, Adriana, Nonostante Platone: figure femminili nella filosofia antica. Rome: Editori

  Riuniti, 1990. Translated by Serena Anderlini-DOnofrio and Aine OHealy as InSpite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 1995.

  Ceserani, Remo, Raccontare il postmoderno. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1997.Ghirelli, Massimo, Immigrati brava gente: la societ italiana tra razzismo e accoglienza. Milan:

  Sperling & Kupfer Editori, 1993.Gnisci, Armando, La letteratura dellimmigrazione, Forum Italicum 30/ 2 (Fall 1998), pp.

  36874.Lucente, Gregory, Crosspaths in Literary Theory and Criticism: Italy and the United States.

  Stanford University Press, 1997.Magni, Roberto, Gli immigrati in Italia. Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1995.Muraro, Luisa, Lordine simbolico della madre. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1991.Ruberto, Laura E., Immigrants Speak: Italian Literature from the Border, Forum

  Italicum 32/1 (Spring 1997), pp. 12744.

  346 Rebecca J. West

  coverThe Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culturecover.pdfThe Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian CultureContentsIntroducing modern Italian culture01 The notion of Italy02 Social and political cultures in Italy from 1860 to the present day03 Questions of language04 Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy05 Catholicism06 Socialism, Communism and other isms07 Other voices: contesting the status quo08 Narratives of self and society09 Searching for new languages: modern Italian poetry10 Drama: realism, identity and reality on stage11_Italian cinema12 Art in modern Italy: from the Macchiaioli to the Transavanguardia13 A modern identity for a new nation: design in Italy since 186014 Fashion: narration and nation15 The media16 Since Verdi: Italian serious music 1860-199517 Folk music and popular song from the nineteenth century to the 1990s18 Epilogue: Italian culture or multiculture in the new millennium

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