Who we write for
We write for the dead.
We have more freedom
There was a time when I was convinced I lived in a country where we had more freedom than, say, people in countries under the Warsaw Pact. I’d got used to thinking we had more freedom and it felt like a thought that meant something, but actually I just thought it without thinking about it—it was a thought that had the advantage that you didn’t have to think it to think it, it was already thought. Then later I went to Russia, still under the Warsaw Pact, I came back to Italy, my first month back I couldn’t walk down the street. I was in a really bad way.
Who do we write for?
For the dead.
Internet
Now for example we’re in a time where everyone’s saying the internet’s this really democratic thing.
Subjective existing
There are certain things, in Kierkegaard, complicated things even, but the way Kierkegaard sets them out they seem simple. Like the thing about the objective thinker and the subjective existing thinker, for example.
Corporate ladder
There was a time when I was convinced it was important to climb the corporate ladder. It was a time when I was working overseas and I was all set on making the company I worked for as much money as possible. It was a time where I’d get up at five in the morning, go to bed at eleven, and all day long I’d be rushing round, I had things to prove.
Maybe not
So for a while there when I thought it was important to climb the corporate ladder, I might even have been right, in a sense, but in another sense I was wrong, in that I thought it was important to climb the corporate ladder from the perspective of the objective thinker, whereas, maybe in that moment it really was important to climb the corporate ladder, it probably was, but from the perspective of the subjective existing thinker, who, since he’s existing, is constantly changing. Maybe he’ll keep wanting to climb faster and faster, up the corporate ladder, maybe not.
Sure enough
Sure enough, two years later I quit.
Will you cut that out?
One time in Basilicanova, I would’ve been about ten, there was a festival in the piazza, the Crocile—in Basilicanova they call the piazza the Crocile, the crossroads. It isn’t a big piazza, they don’t have festivals there very often, but they’ll have one every now and then. So there was this festival, they’d set the stage up, some people had started singing, and I remember we were so happy that there was a festival in the Crocile, we ran round and round the piazza chasing each other, making a racket, then at a certain point the lady on stage, there was a lady singing, she broke off mid-song and said into the microphone Hey, will you cut that out?
Either, or
Either listen, she said, or go away, and we looked around and realized we were the only ones there, in the piazza. People weren’t used to having festivals in Basilicanova, there was no one there—maybe that’s also why she was a bit on edge, the singer, I’d have been on edge too.
Out the front of a church
In Modena, in the piazza with all the museums, out the front of a church, on a really hot day, a day when there were demonstrations across Italy to mark the anniversary of an incident of police brutality where someone had died, and Modena had a demonstration too, and I was there—on that day, after all the speakers from every possible or imaginable minute splinter group of the so-called young left and non-young left and the parliamentary left and the non-parliamentary left, the very last one to take the stage was an anarchist from the anarchist centre La Scintilla (The Spark), and I remember I’d hung around specifically for that reason, to hear this anarchist from the anarchist centre La Scintilla, which was a place where anytime I’d gone of an evening, something memorable had happened. So I remember on that day this anarchist had started off normally, saying he’d listened to the others who’d been up before him who’d talked about that incident, the police brutality, like it was something unheard of, like it was unprecedented And I can’t believe it, the anarchist said, I can’t believe it because it happens to us every day. And he started describing all the times the police had beaten someone from the anarchist centre La Scintilla up, and as he went on you could hear him losing his patience, his voice got louder and louder, and in the audience we all started sitting up, bit by bit, imperceptibly, our backs straightened, we lifted our heads, bit by bit, slowly, as if guided by the voice of this anarchist from the anarchist centre La Scintilla, this voice getting even louder, his patience slipping even further, he gets to the end and he’s pissed off as all hell, he caps it off by swearing and cursing God. Then afterwards I went up to congratulate him on his speech, but one of the organizers got to him first, someone from the Communist Refoundation Party, That’s not what we agreed, he said, you don’t blaspheme in front of a church. The anarchist looks at him Jesus fuck, he says, what is this, Sunday school?
The first time I’d heard it in my life
So then we looked at each other, Let’s at least listen to one song, we said, in the Crocile in Basilicanova, and we sat down, listened, and the song we listened to was Per i morti di Reggio Emilia (For the Dead of Reggio Emilia), the first time I’d heard it in my life.
Well done
After the song finished we got up and started roaming the piazza again, but quieter this time. Meanwhile some more people joined the audience, the concert went on, and I remember thinking when it ended, I should go up to that singer now and tell her, That was nice, that song you sang. Well done, I’ll tell her, I remember thinking. Then in the end I didn’t.
Lots of dancing
In his book Reggio Emilia: 7 July 1960, Renato Nicolai writes that Ovidio Franchi was very devoted to his grandfather, and when the old man died, Ovidio, who was seventeen, began regularly taking red flowers to his grave. When his mum asked what he did there, Ovidio told her, I ask him to give me lots of money and lots of dancing.
Imagine
When I was little, when I was ten, I liked to imagine myself doing grown-up things. I loved to pay the bill in cafés, I liked to look at my watch with a serious expression, I liked to imagine myself all dressed up somewhere saying In my opinion.
A wall
Nicolai writes that when Lauro Farioli’s brother sees his brother’s body laid out in the entrance hall of the Teatro Municipale, he punches a wall and fractures his hand.
Artistic
I remember when I saw the anarchist from La Scintilla speak, I thought the reaction he got, the backs straightening, the heads lifting up, it was the kind of effect you can get from a work of art, and the religious cursing at the end it made me think of a film I’d just seen where the key scene is a curse shouted out by the protagonist’s brother, terribly loud, liberating. I told the anarchist from La Scintilla all this and he looked at me Jesus fuck, he said, you’re right.
Emilio Reverberi
Emilio Reverberi, it makes me think of my dad who had a company, before it went bankrupt, with a partner called Reverberi—Nori & Reverberi, it was called. And then Emilio, that’s my brother’s name, and if my daughter’d been a boy I’d thought at one stage it’d be really nice if we called him Emilio.
Makarenko
Emilio Reverberi was thirty-nine, a former partisan, he had two small children and he was shot in the San Rocco arcade. Nicolai writes that his favourite author was Makarenko—his favourite magazine was Realtà Sovietica.
Realtà Sovietica
Realtà Sovietica was a magazine that ran from the late 1950s to the early ’70s. Its subtitle was A magazine to learn about a new world. It was what I’d call an Austro-Hungarian magazine and it had things like an article in the Men and Women section titled The Man Building the Synchrophasotron is the Son of a Labourer, in which Prof Mikhail Meshcheriakov, Director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, tells Realtà Sovietica’s readers about his teenage years. Or another story about why Streltsov didn’t play in the World Cup in Sweden, which said in the subtitle Streltsov was a fine young man when he first joined the ZIL factories and started playing football, then he got a big head and others helped make it bigger. The article began: It’s true! Streltsov did not play in the national team. All his promises, written and verbal, to cease his reprehensible behaviour have turned out to be nothing but lies.
Some may smile
Giuliano Rovacchi says in his speech On the 41st Anniversary of the Events of 7 July 1960, To Preserve the Memory and Defend the Rights of Citizens: I am sure some may smile at what we thought at the time, at our conviction that the previous generation had won their freedom through the struggle against Nazi-Fascism and it would be up to us, in our generation, to create socialism in Italy. Not the socialism we now see in hindsight, but socialism as we meant it: a society of just and equal citizens, founded on labour and not profit, on happiness and not fear, on equality between men and women, on identical responsibilities and not on the division between intellectual and manual labour.
School/factory
Makarenko, as well as being a writer, was also a pedagogue—Francesca tells me he was her favourite. Before getting her degree in the history of the Soviet Union, Francesca went to teachers’ college where she studied the various pedagogies, and she summarizes Makarenko’s pedagogy as: mornings at school, afternoons in the factory.
Tempered
We fought for freedom, Rovacchi writes, for a freedom that was under threat, but more than that for a freedom to be won rather than defended. We had been tempered in those years by hard clashes in the piazzas, and many of those young men showed it on that 7 July 1960 when they were assailed by the police.
Irma
A funny thing with my daughter, those early days, the first three months, I’d go to say her name and it wouldn’t come to me. Mirta? I’d think. Rita? Emma? Rina? Pina? It always took me a few seconds. Then another strange thing, when I saw her come out, in the delivery room, I remember the first thing I thought Shit, I thought, she looks just like me.
Courage
In those moments, Rovacchi writes, after the riot police tried to disperse us with their first jeep manoeuvre and a few rounds from a tanker that doused us in coloured water that burned our skin and stained our clothes, those boys, the workers, the young people still locked out of society’s institutions and civic life, picked themselves up, took cover and then fought with great courage and determination.
When we’re alone
Sometimes when we’re alone I pick my daughter up, look her in the eye and tell her Did you know that before, like last year, you weren’t here? Then one night your mum and I we decided, Okay, let’s make her.
The crackling of shots
I was in Piazza Cavour, Rovacchi writes, on the corner of Via San Rocco, under the portico, when suddenly, with the blinding smoke still all around, I heard the crackling of shots. The police were shooting and they were firing at people, not into the air. We stopped for a moment, stunned, incredulous. It wasn’t registering.
Irma la Douce
Irma la Douce, everyone says when they hear we’ve called her Irma. Actually, it’s after our Russian friend Irma, a ceramic artist in Saint Petersburg, such a beautiful, elegant, intelligent woman, but of course I don’t expect them to know her. Irma Bandiera, though, it’s strange that no one here in Bologna remembers Irma Bandiera, from the 7th Bologna Patriotic Action Group, who when captured in battle and viciously tortured, it says in the citation for the gold medal they awarded her after she died, never said a word that might compromise her comrades. After being blinded, she was slaughtered in the street.
His mouth
Nearby, Rovacchi writes, there was a young man I didn’t know. He had also stopped, incredulous. After the first shots, rather than taking cover, he set off decisively towards the police as if to stop them, to tell them off and make them see sense, imploring them not to do anything that could not be undone. In the meantime, I had lain down, taking cover behind some pots of evergreens that marked out the space in the piazza for the Bar Cavour’s tables. When I looked back over at him, intending to tell him to get down, I heard a blast of submachine gunfire. I saw him turn, spinning around on himself, blood pouring from his mouth.
Murderers
As I tried to crawl back under the portico of the San Rocco building, Rovacchi writes, a comrade, who had seen everything, leant out around the corner of the clothing shop and shouted, crying with rage, Murderers! Murderers! I heard shots fly over my head and at the same time I saw him fall down in a pool of blood. It was Marino Serri, aged forty, a worker and former partisan. He was murdered by the same officers who a moment earlier had killed Lauro Farioli.
Kierkegaard’s father
According to the Kierkegaard scholar Jesi, Kierkegaard’s father was very pious, maybe overly so, and it was because when he was young he’d been a poor shepherd in Jutland—so poor in fact that one day he’d climbed a hill and cursed God for allowing his suffering. A few days later, Jesi writes, an uncle on his mother’s side in Copenhagen called for him and introduced him into the world of commerce, and before long he was rich.
Afro Tondelli
According to Nicolai, Afro Tondelli, who worked at the District Hospital and was head of the hospital workers’ union and secretary of the local branch of the partisans’ association, would read the communist newspaper L’Unità before work every day, and also often read Realtà Sovietica, because he was very interested in keeping up with the scientific and technical progress being made in the Soviet Union.
God
In what had happened, Jesi writes, Kierkegaard’s father saw the sign of divine damnation. He had cursed God, and God, while granting his wish to end his suffering, was also condemning him by allowing him his tainted worldly riches.
Domenico Romani
Domenico Romani, who was a nurse on duty at the Santa Maria Nuova District Hospital in Reggio Emilia on 7 July 1960, and was Afro Tondelli’s colleague, says that when his dear workmate came in among the wounded, he went straight to his bedside to help and comfort him. Tondelli, Romani writes, was lying on a gurney, and between his groans of pain he repeated a number of times: They wanted to shoot me, they were aiming at me, I was on my own.
Hard
When I read Jesi’s story about Kierkegaard’s father, I thought it was quite beautiful, that idea of damning someone by allowing them their tainted worldly riches, a very poetic curse, and I thought Kierkegaard’s father must’ve been a very poetic man and his life must’ve been so full of meaning that it must’ve been a hard life, I thought.
Maybe ’cause he wasn’t Catholic
All that Catholic stuff, when they talk about God, the son of God, it’s always really irritated me, and lately, I’ve never been one to blaspheme but I’ve been getting the urge to, when I hear all that Catholic stuff, God, the son of God. Anyway maybe it’s because Kierkegaard wasn’t Catholic, but when I hear him talk about God, in his journals too, I don’t know why but it doesn’t irritate me at all.
People
For example in his journal, 18 April 1836, Kierkegaard writes: People understand me so little that they do not even understand my complaints that they do not understand me.
But I weep
Or on 14 July 1837, Kierkegaard writes: I too, in my own way, bring together the tragic and the comic: I jest and people laugh. But I weep.
Sometimes
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Odd question
The other day I heard myself say, I was at a book launch. So, why do you write? someone asked, which is an odd question, and whenever I’d been asked before I’d never come up with an answer. But the other day, the longer I’m at it, I heard myself say, the more I get the feeling my books, I mean I think I, but also other people who write novels, I mean I think in general you write novels for the dead.
Mortality
If I didn’t have my dead, I heard myself say, my grandpa, my grandma, my dad, I’d probably never have written anything, and I think the books I like are written for people who already know everything, not to inform, to inform, for the living, there’s newspapers, TV, the radio—novels, I think, are for the dead, and these days the more time passes, I heard myself say, the more I appreciate the dead part within the living, within myself: my mortality, not my vitality.
A novel
Like for example there’s a novel I wrote called Pancetta—that one was for a great dead man named Khlebnikov, and I hope he read it.
Having your dead
In the end it’s no small thing then, having your dead, in terms of what you do—just having your dead already gives life some meaning. I mean people who are searching for meaning in their life, it’s because they don’t realize they have their dead, I think.
Despite all the horseshit
For example the families of those men who died in Reggio Emilia, with forty-five years gone by, despite all the horseshit they’ve been put through, the injustices they’ve seen, despite the horror of what happened that day in Piazza dei Martiri, they’ve never given up, they’re convinced they’ll succeed in getting a parliamentary commission of inquiry set up to finally say, forty-five years on, what really happened on 7 July 1960 in Reggio Emilia. And the fact that they’ve never given up, that still, forty-five years later, they still have it perfectly clear what they need to do and what it means, to me, look I don’t know in general if you can draw conclusions from things in the world, but if you could, I’d conclude that these are people who have their dead and they’re very strong.
