L`ANTIMONIO - Rivista di Studi Italiani

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HONOR, “QUALUNQUISMO”, AND ESSENTIALISM IN SCIASCIA’S
“L’ANTIMONIO”
JOSEPH FRANCESE
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
Abstract:
The fatalism of the protagonist of one of Leonardo Sciascia’s first published
fictions, “L’antimonio”, reflects Sciascia’s own essentializing belief in an
atemporal Sicilian way of life. When read in the light of an early Sciascian
declaration of poetics, “La sesta giornata”, “L’antimonio” casts into high
relief postures that will remain constant throughout the rest of Sciascia’s
career and inform his fictions and non-fictions. The protagonist’s
preoccupation with maintaining his honor allows him to avoid the public
humiliation associated with challenging and attempting to transform an
overwhelming power structure, in this specific case Fascism. At the same
time, preservation of personal honor safeguards the protagonist from shame,
an intra-psychic phenomenon. His preoccupation with honor leads him to
avoid all forms of collective action and to exhibit the profound disaffection
and distrust of all politics and politicians, and interclassismo characteristic of
the Uomo Qualunque, a movement that was popular especially in the
countryside of Southern Italy in the years following post-War II period, the
period in which the narrating I commits his story to paper. In addition, the
Author notes the similarities between the narrating I’s posture and Sciascia’s
own youthful politics.
Key-words:
Leonardo Sciascia, Honor, Mediterranean Studies, “Qualunquismo”, Sicilian
essentialism, “L’antimonio”, “tenace concetto”, masculinity, anti-political
individualism.
L
eonardo Sciascia first published “L’antimonio” – a novella whose
protagonist, a Sicilian sulphur miner, volunteers to fight in the Italian
brigades in the Spanish Civil War – in the 1961 re-edition of one of
his earliest works of fiction, Gli zii di Sicilia, which was first published in
1958 (OP I, p. 324)1. The author had originally intended it as the introduction
to a novel that he left unfinished (Ambroise “Cronologia”, LXI). In 1956,
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that is to say, at approximately the same time he was writing “L’antimonio”,
Sciascia published a brief essay, “La sesta giornata”, that contains a first and
important declaration of poetics that also sheds light on the reality, that of the
Sicilian working classes under Fascism, he sought to represent in
“L’antimonio”2. To a certain degree, Sciascia lived that reality through his
own youthful politics. While I will not pursue at length this topic here, I will
hypothesize that the salient points of Sciascia’s intellectual and political
formation, evinced through a reading of early texts such as “La sesta
giornata” and “L’antimonio”, provide a unique perspective on the ideas that
conditioned his entire career as writer and thinker. The plot of “L’antimonio”,
unlike that of much neo-realist prose written in the decade immediately
following World War II, did not represent the slow process of maturation of a
protagonist whose life events follow a liberating journey of ideal and social
growth. Rather, in the tales of Le parrocchie di Regalpetra and Gli zii di
Sicilia Sciascia attempted to recreate on the page the shared fatalistic
disaffection with politics of Sicilian workers in the decades that preceded and
followed World War II.
In “La sesta giornata”, after a brief discussion of the military background of
the Spanish Civil War, Sciascia states that the War played a crucial role in his
own political and intellectual formation (p. 292). The killing of García Lorca
and the fact that important cultural figures such as Dos Passos, Hemingway
and Chaplin advocated the Republican cause opened his eyes to the reality of
Fascism (p. 292). Indeed, Sciascia’s early anti-fascism was more cultural than
political3. Jones has documented how Sciascia’s political awakening had
been catalyzed less by contact with the peasantry, and more “through the
reading of certain books and periodicals, a Dante study group, and chiefly the
friendship of a young anti-fascist intellectual” (p. 77).
In any case, in “La sesta giornata” Sciascia hails Machado as “il primo
poeta della resistenza europea”, the writer who first elaborated “la poetica
della Resistenza”, which, for Sciascia meant offering up “la poesia come
arma contro il nemico” (p. 293). He argued that in Spain, during the Spanish
Civil War, and then France, during the German occupation, the writer had
gone beyond “un cerchio di esperienza esclusivo e si [è] ritrovato uomo tra
gli uomini, e la sua parola sia tornata ad essere azione” (p. 295). In Italy this
had not occurred. Italy had not produced “una poesia della Resistenza come
quella francese” (p. 295). Although after the War Italy had seen “una poesia
sulla Resistenza”, during the War there had been no flowering of “una poesia
[…] della Resistenza” (p. 296). This, he contended, was attributable to the
fact that Italians were “un popolo che in buona maggioranza ha il genio della
sesta giornata”, a term that makes ironic reference to “coloro che passata la
tempesta delle cinque giornate uscirono di casa armati e incoccardati”.
This term might also be applied to Sciascia, who spent the war years in
Sicily as a civil servant. In the autobiographical “Breve cronaca del Regime”,
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one of the chapters of Le parrocchie di Regalpetra, Sciascia paints a picture
of Sicilians as pragmatists without strong convictions or ideals. For example,
Sciascia’s father believed in Mussolini but was not a fascist; he joined the
Party because he needed a job (OP I, p. 35). One of Sciascia’s uncles appears
to have been a devout Fascist; he was president of the local chapter of the
Opera Balilla4. But in “Breve cronaca” Sciascia allows the reader to presume
that this uncle may very well have been one of the “fascisti fanatici” or one of
the police informants and spies who filled the ranks in Sicily of the antifascist
parties immediately after the arrival of the American liberators (OP I, p. 44):
indeed, this relative may have provided Sciascia with the model for the
protagonist’s uncle in La zia d’America.
In “Breve cronaca” Sciascia recounts how, as a child, he participated in the
Fascist youth organization Opera Balilla; not out of conviction (he disliked
the marching and other activities), but because they raffled off toys, and to
please his Fascist uncle. Nonetheless, Leonardo eventually gained the rank of
squad chief: even though he was not an especially willing or competent
leader, he applied for and won the concorso because of the persistent
interventions of this influential uncle (OP I, 36-37). In fact, because of this
uncle, Sciascia was exempted from tasks he did not enjoy: “se non volevo più
marciare mi dicevano di uscire dalle righe e starmene a guardare. Se non era
per mio zio mi avrebbero detto – no, crepa” (OP I). In Sicily, according to
Sciascia, “[g]razie alle parentele, alla protezione dei parenti, il fascismo
pesava di meno” (Onofri). And until the fall of Fascism, Sciascia could count
on this uncle who, in Sciascia’s own words, “[m]i risparmiava tante cose.
Persino il premilitare mi ha poi risparmiato” (OP I, p. 37).
As a young adult Sciascia joined and remained, “fino alla fine”, a member
of another Fascist organization, the Guf (Gioventù universitaria fascista). He
claims he did so not out of any special conviction, but for “il gusto della
beffa” (he tells how he and his friend would recite speeches given by men
such as Roosevelt and Stalin and attribute them to leading Italian Fascists
[OP I, p. 44]). In 1941, Sciascia was given a job at the local agricultural
consortium (Ambroise “Cronologia”, p. LII); in his own words, “mi avevano
trovato del lavoro”. He does not specify who found him his job, but adds:
“[a]vevo degli amici al mio paese” (OP I, p. 47; his emphasis), friends who,
the reader may assume, intervened at the behest of relatives. These family
members were apprehensive that Sciascia would end up in jail. Even though
they knew – as early as 1941, the writer asserts – from listening to Radio
London broadcasts that “tutto si sfasciava”, they feared a reversal in a
positive sense of Mussolini’s military fortunes. In other words, Sciascia’s
participation in the Guf led many acquaintances to view him “with
suspicion”, his family was concerned for him because, according to
Ambroise, “[p]oliticamente, negli ultimi tempi del fascismo, [Sciascia] è
vicino al partito comunista, a Pompeo Colajanni in modo particolare
(Ambroise “Cronologia”, p. LII)5.
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Sciascia married in 1944 and remained at his post at the agricultural
consortium – until 1948 (Ambroise “Cronologia”, p. LII) – where he had, in
his own words, simply“waited for Fascism to end” (Onofri). Because he had
been exempted from the draft6, he had not been forced to choose between
service on the Russian front with many of his fellow Racalmutesi (see OP I,
p. LI) and desertion. Therefore, unlike many of his generation, he was not
forced to make a fundamental scelta di vita. Instead, he spent the duration of
the war in Racalmuto where news of the forced removal of Mussolini from
office, in Sciascia’s own words, “[a]rrivò in ritardo perché da noi era venuta a
mancare la corrente elettrica e le radio perciò non funzionavano”. In fact,
when Mussolini was arrested “a Racalmuto c’erano già gli americani: ci
apparve dunque una notizia lontana, quasi estranea, come se fosse venuta da
un altro mondo” (Sciascia La palma va a nord, p. 133). Years later Sciascia
could recall the Liberation of Sicily, which he had lived far from the armed
conflicts of Central and Northern Italy, as having been a relatively pleasant
experience:
Lo sbarco degli americani è stato una kermesse. […] è stata una festa.
Avevano creato una divisione, chiamata “Texas”, composta interamente
da figli di siciliani. Sembrava una rimpatriata, una festa tra parenti.
Parlavano siciliano. (Sciascia Fuoco all’anima, p. 33)7
This may be why, in “La sesta giornata” he considers the deposition of
Mussolini little more than a “congiura di palazzo” that had had a negligible
effect on Italians: “[t]ranne i comunisti e i pochi di ‘Giustizia e libertà’, gli
italiani nei fatti del 25 luglio e dell’8 settembre 1943 non videro che la pace,
la fine del razionamento e dei bombardamenti” (p. 297). This perception, of
course, reflects Sciascia’s vantage point, Sicily, but does not seem to consider
Central and Northern Italy where bitter conflicts were waged to drive the
German occupiers out of the Peninsula.
In “La sesta giornata” Sciascia also expresses the belief that the history of
the Italian Resistance needed to be rewritten: he argues that in 1956 two out
of three Italians believed that had Mussolini stopped after the conquest of
Ethiopia, and not gotten involved with Hitler, “saremmo stati a posto” (p.
297). Although the prevalence among Italians of this attitude had prompted
“il più grosso partito politico italiano”, the Christian Democrats, to abandon
the patrimony of the Resistance to the Communists, “una minoranza di
cattolici, politici e uomini di cultura” were seeking to re-affirm the
interclassist legacy of the Resistance: “i resistenti proven[nero] da tutte le
classi e da tutti i ceti”8. Moreover, the Garibaldini and “Giustizia e libertà” –
groups with a heavy but not exclusive Communist presence – who had fought
for “un nuovo mondo” had little in common with the Badogliani, who would
have restored the monarchy. Instead, their idealism was shared by “molti
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giovani dell’esercito di Salò” who “[i]n un certo senso sono stati più vicini
allo spirito della Resistenza” than the Badogliani (p. 297-98). As we shall
see, such interclassismo was central to the tenets of the “Uomo qualunque”
movement of the post-War years.
Sciascia then returns to what he claims is the main thesis of his essay: “da
noi il popolo, nella sua guerra, non è stato accompagnato dalla voce dei poeti:
e che ciò non è avvenuto per contingente viltà” (p. 298). But what did not
take place during the war years could be rectified after the fact: in such a
context “la sesta giornata […] assume significazione di poetica”. By this he
means that those writers who in 1956 saw themselves as the heirs of the
Resistance – “coloro che hanno sentito come impegno d’onore ‘il gesto di
solidarietà fra lettere e storia’” – could gain through hindsight the dignity not
earned in battle: “non nelle vicissitudini della lotta”, but “nella
contemplazione di essa” (p. 298; Sciascia’s emphasis)9.
In sum, “La sesta giornata” casts into high relief two major lines of
Sciascia’s thought in the decade following World War II. Firstly, his
meditation on the political, moral, and intellectual legacy of Resistance
appears to corroborate a description of Sciascia as politically unaligned – in
the manner of the voice of the “Diario elettorale” included in Le parrocchie –
offered by a close friend, don Luigini Messana, inspiration for the character
don Fernando in Le parrocchie di Regalpetra who stated that Sciascia
“oscillò un po’ in tutti i partiti democratici al seguito di amici e dirigenti per i
cui passato politico e personale nutrì fiducia” (qtd. Ambroise, “Cronologia”,
p. LII). Secondly, it underscores the fundamental importance for Sciascia of
personal honor, a belief that will underlie and inform many of his later works,
including “L’antimonio”.
These two currents interweave in and inform “L’antimonio” when the main
character’s individualism causes him to reject all political affiliations and to
seek to restore his personal integrity after the shame of finding himself on
what he comes to see is the wrong side of the Spanish Civil War. I should
add that the weaving of these two concepts also reflect an essentializing view
of Sicilian reality, a topic I will take up in the concluding paragraphs of this
essay.
“L’antimonio” is told in the first person. The plot is divided – following
Aristotle’s “first principle” of tragedy or arrangement of incidents – into four
sections which correspond to the incentive moment or context; the climax;
the resolution – wherein the main character demonstrates understanding of
his situation –; and the dénouement. This form is well suited to this Bildung
of “an inarticulate apolitical proletarian” (Jones, p. 61), a sulphur miner, who
claims to have acquired a very high level of literacy while serving in the
Spanish Civil War. Jones has shown that many passages dealing with combat
were either taken directly by the author from his Parrocchie di Regalpetra or
re-produced almost verbatim from works on the Spanish Civil War by
Malraux and Orwell, and she has correctly indicated the difficulties inherent
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in such a device (p. 62). Indeed, the strategy of a sulphur miner who leaves
home knowing “appena leggere e scrivere, leggere il giornale e la storia dei
reali di Francia, scrivere una lettera a casa” and in seventeen months of
combat finds the time to learn to read “le cose più ardue che un uomo può
pensare e scrivere” (OP I, pp. 360-61) and to write at the level of Malraux
and Orwell tests credibility.
Nonetheless, Sciascia’s reader learns that that story was written10 at an
unspecified time after the Allied invasion of Sicily when the narrator states:
“io ho visto sei anni dopo [in 1944] tutti i fascisti del mio paese dichiararsi di
sinistra” (OP I, p. 339). This interval lends the device necessary plausibility:
the narrator has had sufficient leisure time to raise the level of his literacy. At
the same time, it must be noted that since the story is recalled approximately
a decade, or perhaps or even more, after the recounted events transpired, the
narrator’s perspectives do not necessarily reflect his beliefs during the late
1930s. Rather, since the story is written with the benefit of personal and
historical hindsight, we may legitimately postulate that what appears on the
page can show the persona’s affinity, at the time of writing, to those of the
“Uomo Qualunque” movement that took hold in Italy in the years following
the Second World War.
The process of acquisition of awareness is first set in motion by sensory
similarities between the narrator’s native province of Agrigento and Spain11.
Jones points out that “almost all Sicilian places mentioned in ‘L’antimonio’”,
such as Naro, Grotte, Milocca, the land between Caltanissetta and Enna,
Aragona, Enna, “are within a 50 kilometre radius of Racalmuto, Sciascia’s
home town” (p. 82). But other stimulae remind the narrator of places farther
from home. Since he can compare Cádiz to Trapani (OP I, p. 338), and
Vallodolid to Siena (OP I, p. 379) one must assume that in the period
between his return home and the writing of this text the persona had had the
time and the means to travel, an additional indication that the narrator set
testimony to paper at an unspecified time after the Allied occupation of Sicily
in 1943.
The narrating I’s mentor on this journey of awareness is a fellow Sicilian,
Luigi Ventura. Ventura had emigrated with his family to the Bronx at the age
of two, and was deported back to Sicily – subsequent to his being found in
the proximity of the killing of a New York City police officer – sometime in
the late 1920s. He wants desperately to reunite with his mother and other
family members in the U.S. So, immediately after learning of the opportunity
to serve in the brigades Mussolini was sending to fight in Spain on the side of
Franco’s insurgents, Ventura enlisted (OP I, p. 330). He did so even though
he is antipolitical. He tells the narrator, “[a] me non importa niente del
comunismo e del fascismo, ci sputo sopra: io in America voglio andare” (OP
I, p. 330).
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But this does not mean Ventura is not aware of the limits and shortcomings
of American-style liberal democracy. Although he is very favorably
impressed by the standard of living in the U.S. and by the opportunities
afforded recent immigrants, the capital punishment of Sacco and Vanzetti in
his view was “un fatto più terribile” than the firing squads of Spain. Indeed,
Sacco and Vanzetti, he argues, were executed after a sham trial and “per le
stesse ragioni per cui i falangisti macellano quelli della FAI [Federación
Anarquista Iberica]” (OP I, p. 333): Sacco and Vanzetti challenged the power
and the privileges of the “galantuomini” and the clergy in the name of the
large masses of the poor, as did the Spanish Anarchists who defended the
Republic (see OP I, p. 350).
Thus, Ventura helps the narrator understand “tante cose della Spagna e
dell’Italia, del mondo intero e degli uomini nel mondo” (OP I, p. 334). Prior
to enlisting in the army, the narrator felt an avversion for the clergy, and for
the “galantuomini” who held a monopoly on the sulphur mines and the arable
land in his town. Nonetheless, he “[c]redev[a] in Dio andav[a] a messa e
rispettav[a] il fascio” (OP I, p. 335). Ventura does not attempt to shake the
narrator’s faith in God (for his part, Ventura “non pensa né a Dio, né al
destino, né alla morte” [OP I, p. 332]), but he does open the narrator’s eyes to
the fact that Spanish and Italian fascisms both perpetuate and exacerbate
social inequities. Ventura also makes clear that the Italian “volunteers”
fighting on the side of fascism in Spain are nothing more than cannon fodder:
the War had provided Mussolini with the opportunity to unburden himself of
restless, potentially subversive masses of unskilled labor (OP I, p. 331).
The narrator can comprehend the social disparities of Sicily by analogy,
because they are grotesquely magnified in Spain:
era Spagna anche la zolfara, l’uomo sfruttato come bestia e il fuoco della
morte in agguato a dilagare da uno squarcio, l’uomo con la sua bestemmia
e il suo odio, la speranza gracile come i bianchi germogli di grano del
venerdì santo dentro la bestemmia e l’odio. (OP I, p. 384)
So, what was present in Sicily but invisible to the narrator prior to enrolling
in the Italian army in Spain becomes painfully obvious:
I poveri sono poveri peggio di noi; e i ricchi sono ricchi da fare spavento,
una intera nottata di treno ci vuole per attraversare le terre di un duca, un
feudo che non finisce mai. (OP I, p. 380-81)
This realization enables him to see another significant similarity between the
wealthy of Spain and Italy. Both will use any means – including recourse to
the armed force of sbirri, a derogatory term for members of the coercive
branch of the State – even against a democratically elected government, to
impose onto the poor an unjust economic and judicial system.
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As a result, in the tale’s dénouement the narrator will risk arrest by
repeating to friends and relatives that Italians fight in Spain for “i ricchi per i
preti e per la sbirraglia” (OP I, p. 381). The sbirraglia, the narrator
understands soon after arriving in Spain, are not forze dell’ordine, as he had
thought, but the detestable “traitors” of “il popolo di cui erano figli”. The
Guardia Civíl had betrayed their loyalty oath to the Republic and fought on
the side of Franco because they knew that Franco would allow them to
“continuare ad essere sbirri”; he would allow them to “incutere paura, da
umana feccia che erano, levarsi davanti al popolo in vibrante autorità” (OP I,
p. 369). Thus, the sbirraglia are to be detested not only for what they do –
they are the armed enforcers of economic exploitation – ; they are loathsome
because they abuse their authority, using it to humiliate the poor.
Despite his acquisition of social awareness, the narrator returns home a
fatalist. When he arrives in Spain he is apolitical; he sees no alternative to the
status quo and believes reality cannot be transformed. In a reverie he
remembers how many of his fellow townspeople – for example, his father,
who had suffered serious burns from the spontaneous combustion of firecamp while working in the sulphur mine; and the many others who had been
buried alive at various junctures – “se la prendevano col destino”. However,
once, in 1919 or 1920 the miners rebelled; they went on strike and also
threatened the owners. He does not tell his reader how the job action ended,
presumably because this detail is no longer relevant:
il tempo degli scioperi era passato, per la verità non credevo lo sciopero
fosse una buona cosa in una nazione d’ordine come l’Italia. (OP I, p. 336)
When he returns home to Sicily as a war hero after losing his hand in combat,
there is no indication that his views on the utility of any sort of collective
action have evolved. He is by no means the edifying protagonist of much
neo-realist prose fictions, so he does not achieve what Gramsci calls
“catharsis” – “il passaggio dal momento meramente economico (o egoisticopassionale) al momento etico-politico, cioè l’elaborazione superiore della
struttura in superstruttura nella coscienza degli uomini” (p. 1244). The
persona does return home at the end of this emotional and intellectual journey
transformed. Instead, his attitude can best be described as antipolitical. His
only desire will be to move far away from his hometown: his individualism
precludes participation in any sort of workers’ movement.
The narrator’s father had been a socialist and the narrator admits that it was
“una buona bandiera” (OP I, p. 342). But, as we shall see presently, the
narrator rejects all “bandiere”, a metaphor for collective action. In fact, he
believes that faith in socialism had led his father to the mistaken belief that
justice and equality could somehow be conjoined and achieved. In contrast,
the narrator, for all his anti-clerical sentiment, remains convinced that
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equality “solo davanti a Dio si può fare” (OP I, p. 342) while justice, unlike
equality, can be of this world and reached, one would assume based on his
condemnation of the inequitable and arbitrary conduct of the sbirri, through
the rule of law.
The narrator’s new-found comprehension of his personal and historical
situation, as he expresses it in the tale’s climax, is limited to the
understanding of
perché il fascismo non muore, e tutte le cose che nella sua morte
dovrebbero morire […], e quel che in me e in tutti gli altri uomini
dovrebbe morire perché per sempre il fascismo muoia. (OP I, p. 361)
He never explicitly articulates the essential aspects of human nature that
nourish this “eternal fascism”, to use Eco’s term (Cinque scritti, 30 and ff.),
even though one is left with the impression that what must be overcome is the
almost instinctual tendency to humiliate, as evidenced by the narrator’s
abhorance of the merciless exploitation by the wealthy, the abuses of power
perpetrated by the sbirraglia, and his own bloodlust in the gunning down of
routed Anarchist miliziani. At the same time, the narrator does suggest that it
is possible to rise above such fascistic behaviors and achieve individual
‘salvation’ through what he calls the “religione dell’uomo”.
After his left hand is mutilated in battle, the narrator discovers “che l’uomo,
col suo cuore vivo, per la pace del suo cuore, può legare in armonia pietra e
luce, ogni cosa alzare ed ordinare al di sopra di se stesso” (OP I, p. 379). That
transcendent peace is alien to the abstract ideal of social redemption; instead,
it revolves around the preservation of his own personal integrity:
quando un uomo ha capito di essere immagine di dignità, potete anche
ridurlo come un ceppo, straziarlo da ogni parte: e sarà sempre la più
grande cosa di Dio. (OP I, p. 378)
Dignity, or “degnità” – as the main character in a later novel by Sciascia,
Porte aperte, calls it – is a euphemism for maintaining one’s own self-respect
in the face of the pressures exerted by dominant, arbitrary power (OP III, p.
364). The pronunciation of this term by the main character of Porte aperte
reflects the more open “i” of Sicilian pronunciation and therefore is a way of
acknowledging one’s “sicilitudine”, a condition whose “essential
characteristics”, as Sciascia clarifies elsewhere, include “una forma
esasperata di individualismo in cui agiscono, in duplice e inverso movimento,
le componenti della esaltazione virile e della sofistica disgregazione” (OP III,
p. 1051). To phrase it a bit differently, such “exasperated individualism”
necessitates unwavering loyalty to oneself, one’s conscience and principles.
Therefore, it is synonymous with the “tenace concetto” embodied by Diego
La Matina (the main character of Sciascia’s Morte dell’Inquisitore) who, in
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paying with his life for his defiance of the Inquisition, affirmed “la dignità e
l’onore dell’uomo, la forza del pensiero, la tenacia della volontà, la vittoria
della libertà” (OP I, p. 685)12.
Similarly, the Spanish Anarchists lost the war, the narrator hints, because,
unlike the Communists, the former remained true to their principles, even if
doing so meant certain death:
Anche in una guerra come quella ci voleva ipocrisia, e i comunisti ne
avevano; se fossero stati loro a tenere i fili fin dal principio, nelle chiese
della Repubblica ci sarebbero stati i tedeum e non i tiri a bersaglio, si
sarebbero trovati a vagoni i preti che senza esitare avrebbero cantato
messa per le vittorie della Repubblica invece che finire davanti a un
plotone di miliziani. (OP I, p. 367)
For the narrating I of “L’antimonio” the preservation of his personal
integrity means he must distance himself, after the fact – during “la sesta
giornata”, so to speak – from the humiliation and shame of having served on
the wrong side of the Spanish Civil War. He arrives in Spain with an innate
distaste for gratuitous violence, evinced by his rejection of the corrida (OP I,
p. 380). He becomes friends with Ventura after the latter “aveva preso a
pugni un calabrese cui piaceva ‘vedere le fucilazioni’” (p. 329). The narrator
had heard of the executions, but his opinion of them comes into focus only
after he bonds with his fellow Sicilian (OP I, p. 338). Ventura considers the
Falangists’ firing squads a consumate example of cowardice and equates
them with the vigliaccheria demonstrated by other sbirri – New York City
police officers – when they arrested him:
Ho pensato: da oggi, il primo che mi dice di alzare le mani, o la sua pelle
o la mia. Finisce la dignità, a stare con le mani alzate mentre uno ti punta
il fucile. E le fucilazioni mi fanno venire il vomito: non c’è dignità a
mettere un uomo contro un muro e a sparargli con dodici fucili.
Disonorati, quelli che ordinano le fucilazioni e quelli che le fanno, ecco
che cosa sono: disonorati, persone che non hanno onore in faccia. (OP I,
p. 341)
Ventura goes on to explain that killing can be honorable, but only in certain
cases, specifically, when it comes at the culmination of a struggle between
equals, or when the object of a pre-mediated murder is someone who
humiliates members of the populace:
“C’è onore anche ad ammazzare”, disse Ventura, “ma quando si ammazza
in caldo, o la tua pelle o la mia; o quando si ammazzano le carogne, quelli
che per vigliaccheria o per mestiere fanno la spia, e quelli che nel
115
JOSEPH FRANCESE
comando puzzano: anche a freddo li puoi ammazzare, e fai una cosa
d’onore”. (OP I, p. 341)
At first, Ventura’s perspective resonates negatively with past experiences of
the narrator:
uccidere un poliziotto nel Bronx o un carabiniere nella campagna di Naro,
tirare un colpo alle spalle ad un ufficiale, gli parevano cose d’onore. E
questo modo di pensare non mi era nuovo: così i capomastri della zolfara
che prendevano soldi da noi e dai padroni, e a noi assicuravano il lavoro e
ai padroni il buon rendimento, e chi non pagava li offendeva nell’onore.
Persone che io detestavo: e Ventura era un po’ come loro, nella zolfara
forse l’avrei odiato […]. (p. 341)
But combat in Spain changes his view:
[…] dentro quella guerra le sue ragioni d’onore diventavano migliori, più
vicine alla dignità dell’uomo, di quelle che il fascismo metteva nelle sue e
nostre bandiere. (p. 341)
These “ragioni d’onore” are of a piece with the narrator’s “degnità”, the
cornerstone of his “religione dell’uomo”. The Spanish Civil War is his
“baptism” into a ‘faith’ that marked “un segno di liberazione nel cuore; di
conoscenza; di giustizia” (p. 378). Justice, as Sciascia often defines it, is a
question in which “si involge quello della libertà, della dignità umana, del
rispetto tra uomo e uomo” (Ambroise “14 domande”, p. XXI). Sciascia never
tired of averring that liberty, justice, and the law – equal for all and grounded
in reason – were the citizen’s safeguards against injustice, which Sciascia
defined as “il furto, l’abuso di potere” (Sciascia, La palma va a nord, p. 40).
Sciascia assumed, throughout his entire career as a writer and as a public
intellectual, that if citizens were truly equal before the law, social and
economic rights would automatically follow. If capitalism functioned
properly, “il furto” – whether at the hands of the mafia or of the
“galantuomini” – would not occur. As for the narrating persona of
“L’antimonio”, he seems to participate in what Sciascia has called the
Sicilian’s timeless aspiration for “un’impossibile alterità […] di un mondo
più libero, alieno da pregiudizi, ingiustizie e violenze, dove ciascuno ha
coscienza dei propri diritti e li vede rispettati”, a place where “le differenze
sociali e culturali sarebbero abolite” (Sciascia, La palma va a nord, p. 40).
Abuses of power offend the persona’s “degnità”. And following Ventura,
the narrator understands that the preservation of one’s “degnità” is a radically
individual affair, as is the manner in which the individual faces death:
Per me e per Ventura per tanti di noi, in una guerra che avevamo accettata
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“L’ANTIMONIO”
senza capire e che lentamente ci trascinava verso i sentimenti e le ragioni
del nemico, non c’erano bandiere: ciascuno di noi aveva verso se stesso
impegno d’onore a non aver paura a non arrendersi a non lasciare il
proprio posto. E può darsi che tutte le guerre si facciano così, con uomini
che sono soltanto uomini, senza bandiere; che per gli uomini che le
combattono non ci siano nelle guerre Italia o Spagna o Russia, e
nemmeno il fascismo il comunismo e la chiesa ci siano: solo la dignità di
ciascuno a giuocar bene la propria vita, ad accettare il giuoco della morte.
(OP I, pp. 341-42)
Spain exposes to the narrator the causes behind events and in his eyes it is a
synecdoche for the entire world13. After returning home he begins to preach
this revelation to all who would listen, causing relatives to fear he would
incur the ire of the Regime (OP I, p. 381). And so, at the tale’s conclusion,
rather than accept a job in a nearby city, he prefers, like Ventura, to move
away, in the narrator’s case to “‘una città lontana: fuori della Sicilia, […] una
città che sia grande’”. (OP I, p. 386)
In rejecting all “bandiere” the narrator seems to align himself with the
“Uomo qualunque” movement. It would appear he is building on the example
of Ventura, who remained indifferent to the fact that a handgrenade he had
launched may have killed fellow Italians:
“Mi dispiace”, disse Ventura, “ma anche se fossero stati gli americani che
vado cercando, la bomba l’avrei gettata. In certe circostanze non c’è né
l’Italia né America, né fascismo né comunismo; oggi la circostanza era
questa: c’era Luigi Ventura e c’era un tizio che voleva farlo prigioniero”.
(pp. 340-41)
The narrator’s hope for Ventura, after the narrator loses track of him,
duplicates this lack of concern for others. The persona wants only that
Ventura be “alive and happy”, and reunited with the latter’s “relatives in the
Bronx”. Whether Ventura earns a living honestly, by selling “beer and ice
cream” or dishonestly, by exploiting his fellow immigrants as a gangster, is
of no consequence (p. 375). In other words, the “Golden Rule” is alien to the
“religion” of “degnità”, while the “inerte egoismo” […] “separa[to]
dall’interesse pubblico” that provided the social humus for the qualunquista
movement of the post-World War II period (Truffelli, p. 352) jibes with the
persona’s individualism.
Both Ventura and the narrating voice exhibit a profound disaffection and
distrust of all politics and politicians consistent with what Truffelli calls the
“diseducation” of Italians under Fascism: “venti e più anni di dittatura, di
propaganda, di partito unico avevano indubbiamente diseducato i cittadini
alle regole, agli strumenti e alle difficoltà della vita democratica” (pp. 348117
JOSEPH FRANCESE
49). Thus, the “Uomo qualunque” of the post-War period was defined by its
“estraneità, quando non l’ostilità” (p. 341) towards politics (p. 345). For
Umberto Eco, the qualunquismo of the post-War period was “una malattia
infantile della democrazia italiana” that made manifest a widespread
“disaffezione e sfiducia nei confronti della classe politica” (“Qualunquismo e
neo-qualunquismo”). The qualunquisti believed it necessary to protect “una
proprio libertà d’individuo all’infuori dell’apparente costrizione che viene
dagli impegni reciproci nati nell’associazione, nel gruppo, nella lotta dei
partiti” (p. 347). This stance, which was predicated on the belief that “i
politici sono tutti uguali e in politica non cambia mai niente” (p. 354), had
been fueled in part by the “spettacolo di certe conversioni troppo immediate”
(p. 352) to the anti-Fascist cause – such as the repentine ‘conversions’ of
former fascists that occured immediately after the Allied landing in Sicily and
then in the Peninsola – a phenomenon Sciascia derided in non-fictional
venues and, as we saw above, in “L’antimonio”.
It is precisely this sort of obeisance to whoever happens to be in power that
Ventura and the narrator reject in the name of “degnità”. In Ventura’s case,
insubordination – he foiled the execution by firing squad of two miliziani –
allowed him to save both his personal integrity and a modicum of what was
sullied by Italy’s involvement on the wrong side of the Spanish Civil War:
the Nation’s honor.
Di Bella has argued that that there are two “criteri indissociabili che sono
gli unici responsabili del funzionamento dell’onore”: Blood and Name.
Blood, of course, implicates genealogy and the chastity of women, which, in
turn, impacts the integrity of the Name (p. 608). She explains that the roles
played by men and women in the safeguarding of “Blood” are
“complementari e mirano allo stesso scopo: mantenere la purezza
genealogica del gruppo” which, consequently, impacts the honor of the
Name. However, “[i]l ruolo degli uomini, all’opposto di quello delle donne,
si svolge interamente sul davanti della scena sociale” (p. 609). This is
pertinent to our thesis because offenses that are public result in humiliation, a
social form of shame, and, therefore, are distinct from those that cause egobased, individual, intra-psychic shame (Jennings and Murphy, p. 24).
In “L’antimonio” “Blood” is not an issue. What matters is the integrity of
the Name. Di Bella explains that after the Name acquires mythic or atavic
resonance, contributions to perpetuating its glory become encumbent on
individuals: single men must prove themselves worthy of the legacy
constituted by the legendary actions associated with the Name’s founding.
Typically, “[l]’oltraggio al nome del gruppo avviene quando un individuo o
un gruppo esterno offende, sia verbalmente sia materialmente, uno o più
uomini del gruppo” (Di Bella, p. 610). In “L’antimonio” the offense to the
Name comes not from without but from within: the Name of Italians is
discredited by Mussolini when he allies the Nation with those who perform
summary executions of peasants and workers in order to protect the power
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HONOR, “QUALUNQUISMO”, AND ESSENTIALISM IN SCIASCIA’S
“L’ANTIMONIO”
and privileges of the “galantuomini” and the clergy. Thus, Fascism is to be
rejected because it disgraces that which it pretends to glorify. Individual
Italians, such as Ventura and the persona, are powerless to shape Italy’s
foreign policy, but they can restore some of the lost honor of the stirpe italica
through their individual actions.
In their analysis of “cultural codes” Peter and Jane Schneider propose that
in Sicily
honor refers to a person’s worth as judged by others. One’s virtue,
dignity, morality, and status constitute one’s honor. To be rich in these
qualities presupposes personal autonomy – the freedom and capacity to
act. (Culture and Political Economy in Western Sicily, p. 86)
Following this logic, Franco’s Phalangists are publicly humiliated by their
need for outside help, especially the aid provided by North Africans – for
whom they harbored racial resentment (p. 362) – and by the presence of the
Italians: “testimoni di quella miseria e di quel sangue” which the narrator
compares to that of “chi è costretto a far vedere ad amici la povertà della sua
casa e dei propri famigliari” (p. 361).
The Schneiders also explain that the Sicilian peasants they observed were
“powerless to redress the inequalities of latifundism; they could not
effectively challenge baronial usurpations of land”. But honor could be
defended among social equals:
A man could, however, challenge his peers when they attempted to move
against the integrity of his property, for example, through abusive
grazing. The same was true of honor as it applied to women. (p. 100)
This explains why, in the oppressive environment of Sciascia’s fictions, the
value of personal autonomy is amplified. It also clarifies why the struggle to
maintain one’s “degnità” within the analysis of “siciltudine” is a constant
throughout Sciascia’s œuvre. Preservation of the self-image and maintenance
of intra-psychic equilibrium are paramount even though challenges to the
overwhelming power structure always end in defeat. For example, Professor
Laurana (Il giorno della civetta) and Inspector Rogas (Il contesto) are
murdered. In contrast, the “piccolo giudice” of Porte aperte can live with the
humiliation of a ruined career because he safeguards his “degnità”. Similarly,
in Morte dell’Inquisitore Fra Diego La Matina can go tranquilly to his death
because he has remained faithful to his “tenace concetto”14. Just as the
narrating voice of “L’antimonio” is proud that his mutilated arm is tangible
proof of the “fedeltà ed onore con cui avev[a] servito” (p. 379). Indeed, he
considers it an “immagine di dignità”, something that “sarà sempre la più
grande cosa di Dio” (p. 378).
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JOSEPH FRANCESE
The drastic inequalities inherent in the power structures Sciascia describes
in his prose fictions predestine his protagonists to defeat. These imbalances
shield them, somewhat, from the humiliation felt by the Phalangists. But this
state of affairs does not protect Sciascia’s characters from feeling shame, an
intra-psychic phenomenon. This is why the individual’s self-image, totally
invested in “degnità”, must be preserved at all costs, and against investments
in any “bandiera” that might put the safekeeping of the individual’s honor in
any set of hands other than his own.
In fact, the narrating persona of “L’antimonio” feels ashamed of what he
did in Spain, a sentiment that renews itself each time he receives his pension:
mi vedevo come un sicario che ha fatto il suo atroce lavoro e ha avuto
compenso, un Giuda coi suoi trenta danari, ricordavo il momento, l’unico
momento della guerra, in cui mi prese il freddo piacere di uccidere: i
repubblicani scappavano ed io con calcolo sparavo. […] Mia madre forse
avrebbe capito, se le avessi detto che quel denaro ai miei occhi, alla mia
coscienza, rappresentava vergogna: di una guerra che non era mia, contro
la gente come me, e di un momento in cui ero stato assassino. (OP I, p.
382)
In sum, “L’antimonio,” when read in the light of “La sesta giornata”, is an
accurate harbinger of the rest of Sciascia’s career. When read together the
two texts reflect a cornerstone of his thought, that of “sicilitudine”, which he
has defined as “a mode of being” distinctive to Sicily (“The Sicilian
Pantheon”). While Sciascia considered “sicilitudine” as a way of thinking and
acting conditioned and determined by the history of the Island, Rosengarten
has convincingly argued that Sciascia’s atemporal, or “‘ontological’
interpretation of Sicilian life” inadequately attempts to explain Sicilian life in
“essentialist terms” (p. 127). Peter and Jane Schneider also contend that
“Sciascia’s analyses betray […] an essentialist understanding of culture as
pervading all classes and groups, permitting of no alternative formulation (“Il
Caso Sciascia”, p. 257)15. To this I would add that Sciascia’s underlying
belief in an atemporal Sicilian way of being is of a piece with his narrator’s
fatalism, his belief that things could not be changed.
Indeed, according to Sciascia, attempts at realism by Sicilian writers with
widely divergent styles and worldviews such as Verga, Bonaviri, De Roberto,
Lampedusa, Borgese, Brancati, Pirandello and Vittorini all achieve
“existential, existentialist results”. The successful reflection of the
macrocosm within the Sicilian microcosm created by these authors is the
result of a paradox of “a regional and regionalistic literature (that is, one that
deals with Sicily, its conditions, its problems) which manages to be
universal” (“The Sicilian Pantheon”). That universality, Sciascia argued,
emanates from a shared “sicilitudine”, an attitude that is not unique or
idiosyncratic to Sicily, but is instead a metaphor for a more general human
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“L’ANTIMONIO”
condition: the human tendency to oppress the less powerful, or, to phrase it
differently, for a reality that “tende a diventare ovunque ‘mafiosa’”
(Padovani, p. VIII), that is to say, a reality characterized by the corruption
that stems from the abuse of power. To achieve this ‘universalizing’ goal,
Sicilian literature deals with four main themes, one of which is “the theme of
solitude: the solitary man as truth, the social man as falsehood”, that come
together in “one great single” theme: “death, the contemplation of death, the
triumph of death” (“The Sicilian Pantheon”.) “L’antimonio”, it should be
clear by now, shares this aspiration of universality with Sicilian literature as
Sciascia defines it. However, the problem, as Jane Schneider frames it, is that
the incapacity of Sciascia’s persona to act in history highlights but does not
counteract the difficulties and limits of what is an essentializing fatalism. It
would seem, to use her phrasing that Sciascia does not “generate an
alternative discourse” as much as he operates within, and reinforces what he
seeks to analyze (“Dynamics”, p. 15)16.
__________
NOTES
1
References to “L’antimonio” and all works by Sciascia that have been
included in the three-volume set of his Opere, first published in 1984, will be
indicated by the abbreviation OP followed by volume number.
2
“La sesta giornata” remains a relatively unknown text in large measure
because Sciascia, in collaboration with the editor of his opera omnia,
excluded it from the three-volume collection of his Opere. This decision is to
some extent explained by the insistence of Sciascia that “a fondamento
dell’insieme della sua opera fosse posto, fisicamente quasi”, Le parrocchie
di Regalpetra (Ambroise, “Tutto Sciascia?”, p. VIII). This assertion is at
least partially undermined by the inclusion – in the second appendix of OP
III – of works such as Favole della dittatura (1950), La Sicilia, il suo
cuore (1952), and Pirandello e il pirandellismo (1953) that were originally
published as discrete volumes (OP III, p. 900). Nonetheless, “La sesta
giornata” was republished in 1976, in a collection of essays titled La noia e
l’offesa, a volume whose declared purpose was to help Italian youth
undertand the effects of Fascism on two generations of Italians “attraverso la
più immediata trascrizione di coloro che lo hanno vissuto come scrittori,
come artisti, come intellettuali”. The decision to compile an anthology whose
authors were exclusively Sicilians was justified by the belief that in Sicily all
ills of Italian society are magnified (Giorganni, p. 7). “La sesta giornata” was
included because it is “una spregiudicata e anticonformista meditazione sulla
Resistenza da un punto di vista siciliano”. According to the volume’s editor,
this essay affords the reader “il punto di vista più giusto” to measure the true
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JOSEPH FRANCESE
significance of the Resistance, thereby serving as a warning against all
“mythicizing” or mistification (Giorgianni, p. 156).
3
He would later tell an interviewer “Da scolari, il fascismo era la più bella
cosa del mondo. […] Alla fine, però, giunse il momento della maturità, della
presa di coscienza: a quel tempo, era molto difficile in Italia comprendere
cosa stesse accadendo. […] Un giorno i giornali fascisti invitarono al
boicottaggio di quei numerosi attori e registi di Hollywood che apertamente
si erano dichiarati favorevoli alla repubblica spagnola. Per me, fu veramente
una rivelazione; per me, un ragazzino di sedici, diciassette anni era
impossibile accettare l’idea che Gary Cooper stesse dalla parte sbagliata, e
così – a poco a poco – cominciai a capire certe cose” (Jakob, p. 15).
4
Elsewhere (“Del disfattismo, della carne e di altre cose”) Sciascia specifies
that an uncle held the office of Ispettore dei fasci, which would have given
him membership in the Consiglio Nazionale del Partito Nazionale Fascista.
5
Colajanni, a native of Caltanissetta and decorated Resistance hero,
organized one of the first squads of partisans, in the Po Valley, almost
immediately after 8 September 1943.
6
In his own words, “La guerra non l’ho fatta. Ero magrissimo, per due anni
sono stato rivedibile. In seguito mi hanno fatto addetto ai servizi sedentari.
Ma non mi hanno mai preso” (Sciascia Fuoco all’anima, pp. 32-33).
7
In an interview given later in his life, Sciascia averred: “se non ci fosse stato
lo sbarco americano, in Italia avremmo ancora il fascismo: ci sarebbero state
delle contrarietà – la parola è debole – ma gli italiani le avrebbero sopportate
[…]” (Dauphiné, p. 41).
8
Satta explains that the “gretto individualismo” of the qualunquismo of the
post-War period “era diffuso soprattutto nelle contrade meridionali, che poco
o nulla avevano conosciuto la Resistenza e che secoli di dominazione
straniera, di diseducazione politica e civile e di sfiducia nello Stato e nelle
sue istituzioni, riportavano, come in ogni periodo di crisi delle istituzioni, a
un indvidualismo anarcoide, diffidente di ogni sommo valore e preoccupato
soltanto di sopravvivere agli eventi” (p. 28). This description would appear to
fit the narrating persona of “L’antimonio”.
9
Sciascia, it would seem, had done as much by writing, in 1950, Favole
della dittature, a collection of poems to which Pasolini had attributed an
important “valore retroattivo” (Pasolini, p. 338). If Sciascia did not write his
Favole a decade earlier, Pasolini argued, it was not for what Sciascia, as we
have seen, called “contingente viltà”: Sciascia would have been arrested, and
Italians would not have understood him or his gesture (p. 339).
10
This is a written testimony, not an oral one. See OP I, pp. 358-59: “Il
maggiore B. (il nome lo ricordo, non voglio scriverlo perché altre cose dovrò
raccontare di lui) […]”.
11
Shortly after arriving in Spain, the façade of one church reminds the
narrator of another in his home town, that is also consecrated to Saint Mary
(OP I, p. 327); he drinks wine that is “come quello di Pantelleria odoroso”
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HONOR, “QUALUNQUISMO”, AND ESSENTIALISM IN SCIASCIA’S
“L’ANTIMONIO”
(OP I, p. 329); the Spanish town of Maqueda, he is told, once belonged to a
duke who had served as viceroy of Sicily, and had lent his name to the most
elegant street in Palermo (OP I, p. 348); and the towns of the Aragon region
of Spain remind him of the Aragona in his home province of Agrigento,
evoking memories of his youth (OP I, p. 360). In sum, Spain is “come la
Sicilia […] verso il mare bellissima, piena d’alberi e di vigne; all’interno
arida, “terra di pane” come diciamo noi, e di pane scarso” (OP I, p. 380).
12
The courage of La Matina before his executioners caused his fellow
Racalmutese Sciascia to be overtaken by “commozione ed orgoglio” (OP I, p.
689). Sciascia identified intensely with his protagonist – pinnacle of “uomo
libero” who “tenne alta la dignità dell’uomo” – to such an extent that I would
argue he became Sciascia’s ego ideal: “mi hanno accompagnato in questo
lavoro […] per ore o per giornate intere, certe notazioni […] delle nostre
radici […], del nostro respiro, della nostra misura umana nel paese in cui
siamo nati. E mi hanno accompagnato i ricordi: di persone amate e stimate,
della mia famiglia e del mio paese, che ora non sono più. Uomini […] di
tenace concetto: testardi, inflessibili, capaci di sopportare enorme quantità di
sofferenza, di sacrificio. Ed ho scritto di fra Diego come di uno di loro:
eretici non di fronte alla religione (che a loro modo osservavano o non
osservavano) ma di fronte alla vita” (OP I, p. 716; Sciascia’s emphasis). In
his introduction to the 1967 re-edition, he describes Morte dell’Inquisitore
in the following terms: “[…] la cosa che mi è più cara tra quelle che ho
scritto e che effettivamente è un libro non finito, che non finirò mai […]”
(Sciascia [Introduction], p. 7).
13
The narrator’s claim that comprehension of what happened in Spain –
where “tutti gli errori e le speranze del mondo si sono concentrate” in the
battle between Fascism, Communism, and “la religione dell’uomo” is
necessary for understanding “quel che sotto i vostri occhi oggi accade” (OP I,
p. 360) provides further evidence that the narrator writes in the late 1940s,
when international geopolitics were shifting toward the Cold War between
East and West.
14
Indeed, a like attitude characterizes Sciascia’s entire career as public
intellectual. In Sciascia’s writings pure judgement is always a stimulus to
protest, but never a call to action; the ideal always remains detached from the
real. As Rosengarten has correctly theorized, novels such as A ciascuno il
suo and Il giorno della civetta do not translate “into any kind of coherent
politics. On the contrary, these books induce a feeling of renunciation, of
fatalism, that Sciascia himself regards as an integral aspect of Sicilian reality
and that he seems to share with his characters to some extent” (p. 126). To
further substantiate this observation, although a belief in justice was central
to Sciascia’s politics, in 1977 he advocated abstention from serving on a jury
charged with hearing a trial against the Red Brigades, a stance that, as Natalia
Ginzburg pointed out, put justice itself at risk (p. 139).
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JOSEPH FRANCESE
15
Such “interclassism”, a holdover from the nationalist ideology of Fascism,
which claimed to have superseded class struggle, “rifioriva”, Satta explains,
“con virulenza dopo la crisi dello Stato fascista”, the period of time in which
Sciascia’s persona sets “L’antimonio” to paper, because of a “contingente
stanchezza morale, fonte di disimpegno” (p. 28) that in turn fed into the petit
bourgeois revolt of “l’Uomo qualunque” against the antifascist political
parties that came to the fore after the fall of the Regime. According to
Ridolfi, “Il ‘qualunquismo’ si riallacciava alla carica antipolitica di una certa
tradizione borghese italiana, rappresentando in particolare le frustrazioni
della piccola e media borghesia moderata nella transizione dal regime
fascista, in cui si era fino ad allora riconosciuta, alla vita democratica. Alla
classe politica antifascista e non tanto al regime si addebitavano infatti le
miserie sociali e morali del paese” (p. 172).
16
According to Truffelli, the populist ideology of Qualunquism is not
synonymous but is similar to the populism of the Radical Party (p. 369).
Sciascia, after his falling out in the late 1970s with the Italian Communist
Party, was elected to the Italian Parliament as a Radical. For his part, Tronchi
explains that the populism of the Qualunquisti and the Radicals is grounded
in a common aversion to organized political parties and in their direct call to
the everyday citizen (Torchi, p. 19). The Radical Party came into existence
consequent to the scission of the progressive wing from the Italian Liberal
Party. From its inception in 1955 through 1975 “è stato oggetto di attenzione
solo in ambienti intellettuali, dove ha incontrato credito soprattutto per i toni
duri e diretti del suo anticlericalismo” (Torchi, p. 109). It gained greatly in
resonance after successfully leading the alliance of forces that opposed a
referendum to abrogate the legalization of divorce in Italy (Torchi, p. 109).
“Sebbene i destinatari dei loro messaggi siano sempre raffigurati nella veste
di ‘cittadini’, ovvero di soggetti più consapevoli dei loro doveri civici di
quanto non lo sia il semplice uomo della strada […], i radicali sono sempre
più attratti dagli atteggiamenti antipolitici, fra i quali rientrano il continuo
biasimo degli apparati burocratici dei partiti e l’appello rivolto a ciascun
individuo affinché faccia sentire direttamente la propria voce nella vita
pubblica ogni volta che i suoi interessi sono in gioco, facendo a meno della
mediazione dei professionisti della politica, e pienamente populista appare il
loro ‘attivismo antipolitico semplificatore’, incentrato sull’offerta di una
piena partecipazione alla portata di tutti, sulla denucia della corruzione e
dell’ipocrisia del ‘sistema partitocratico’, sul culto del leader” (Torchi, pp.
112-13).
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