As one scholar has noted, even when Silone’s work seems “too romantic, absurd, or paradoxical,” his masterful orchestration of realism, symbolism, and irony enabled him to “summon archetypal echoes that resonate with themes from universal history.” In reading the entire corpus, one begins to see that his subject was always the same: an examination of “the dynamics of power and the struggle of the individual to thwart the dehumanizing forces of history.” In one of his last published essays, “Quel che rimane” (That Which Remains), Silone insisted that “in spite of everything” he still considered himself a Christian and a socialist. R.W.B. Lewis memorably defined him as an “apprentice saint.” What remains for the writer is a Christianity “without myths, reduced to its moral essence, and a great respect but very little nostalgia for that which has been lost along the way . . . In the sense of fraternity and an instinctive devotion to the poor, there also survives the loyalty to socialism.”
Contrary to what might appear at first sight, the recent controversy and allegations of his collaboration with the Fascist police do not dispel this reality. In fact, although the documents may discredit Silone as unblemished hero of the left, they add shadow and depth to a figure who had been considered a secular saint, much to his displeasure. In his story, we might come to a better understanding not only of the man but also of the complicated moral choices demanded by his times.
Despite his desperate resolve to overcome the tragic essence of life, Silone never attained that state of grace so elusive to men and women of the twentieth (or any) century. “We are destined,” he concluded, “to proceed under a dark ideological sky.” George Orwell once described Silone as “a revolutionary and an honest man . . . one of those men who are denounced as Communists by Fascists and as Fascists by Communists.” After coming to know him, Iris Origo sensed that “he carried within him wounds which he knew to be unhealable.” Another writer saw in Silone someone who had “seen the truth before everyone else,” but that given contemporary society and politics, this was “an unforgivable sin.” His whole life was marked by paradoxical, even absurd ideas and events. Notwithstanding his earlier hope for the power of political change and his later faith in a “primitive” Christianity, Silone never managed to overcome a tragic vision. His trust in the power of politics to transform and redeem died with a “god that failed.” The certainty of a divine Christian comedy likewise withered. The wolves—in their many manifestations—prevented any possibility of overcoming that revelation. Those multifarious and polysemous wolves were still haunting him more than sixty years later when Silone found himself confronting his own death. Speaking to Darina at the clinic in Geneva where he was to end his days, he solemnly told her, “My only fear is that when I’m dead the wolves will devour you.”
“What wolves are you talking about? I’ve never seen any except in the zoo.”
“Wolves in human form,” he answered gravely.
“I don’t know if I have been successful,” he confessed in a speech in Jerusalem, “but from my first book, Fontamara, to my last, The Story of a Humble Christian, I have tried to represent the difficult experiences of man caught in the apparatus and web of tyranny . . . Our powers are limited, but our books will not be useless if they contribute to making human beings more humane.”
Are we today any closer to understanding Silone? Do we recognize the reality he chose to carry within himself and in his writing, what he called the human predicament of our time stripped to its barest essentials? Can we truly fathom his decision to cast his lot with the cafoni, his participation in a revolutionary party, his acceptance of a life underground, his letters to Bellone, his embrace of exile, his expulsion from the PCI, his denunciation of totalitarianism in its many guises, his prophetic warnings against affluence, consumerism, conformity, and nihilism? Two decades after Silone’s death, Gustaw Herling predicted that “one of the reasons that Silone’s work is destined to remain is that it is profoundly honest in a world that tends to be dishonest.”
After living with Silone for nearly forty years, Darina confessed, “It is always difficult to say that one knows a man . . . Many aspects of Silone remain a mystery even to me.” He was, she insisted, “a man fundamentally alone and lived in a world that was sometimes impenetrable, beyond the usual geography, even until his last moments.” He himself had once written that “everyone who has reflected seriously about himself and others knows that some decisions are secret and certain vocations mysterious and unaccountable.”
Notwithstanding the shadow cast over his reputation by the spying scandal, the works remain what they always were: powerful testaments to a struggle for justice and liberty. Seventy-five years after its publication, Fontamara continues to be read by people around the world. Some see it as “a universal fable about poverty, suffering and freedom,” while others read it as “a clarion call of protest against Italian fascism from an exiled son.” Perhaps its power lies in the fact that readers the world over—from small villages in Peru to shantytowns in South Africa to huts in Vietnam—recognize it is both. “Only loss is universal,” he wrote, “and true cosmopolitanism in this world must be based on suffering.”
Silone requested that he be buried in Pescina under the old bell tower of the ruined church of San Berardo. The church, built into the mountainside, destroyed by the earthquake of 1915, overlooks the entire town and commands a panoramic vista of the Fucino valley. Arriving one late winter day, I made the laborious climb up to the site just before sunset. It was the time of day “favorable to humility,” just before the stream would be “full of stars.” The tomb, more grandiose than that stipulated by Silone, is a striking monument. Stones hewn from the mountainside have been brought together by local masons. On hearing footsteps, I looked up just as one of these rough and honest men was coming down from gathering herbs on the mountain with his niece. He recounted with pride his own labor in building the tomb. A simple cross is the only ornamentation and concession to tradition. “I would like to be buried like this,” Silone once wrote on a photograph of the site, “at the foot of the old bell tower of San Berardo in Pescina, with an iron cross against the wall and the sight of the Fucino plain visible in the distance.” Sitting by his tomb, as the late afternoon sun sinks behind the mountains, with the smoke of chimneys drifting lazily into a sky burning violet, orange, and bloodred, hearing mothers calling their children home, it is easy to imagine Silone’s characters wearily making their way back to the town with their donkeys after a day of hard labor in the fields, only to drink from a bitter spring.
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
Notes
A NOTE TO THE READER WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON BIOGRAPHY
xv
The destiny of names: Luigi Sturzo, “Has Fascism Ended with Mussolini?” Review of Politics 7, no. 3 (July 1945): 306.
xv
Although he was born Secondino Tranquilli: Among the many names he took for the PCI were Sereno, Pasquini, Setra, Olivetti, Bibo, Gregorio, Ismera, Romano Simone, Marisco, Olivetti, Sormani, Fritz Nickel; for the OSS he often used Len, Frost, Mr. Behr, and, my favorite, Man of the Mountain. The name Silvestri is dealt with in chapter eight.
xv
“compelled to use so many names”: Silone, The School for Dictators, p. 39.
xv
“We have acquired too many names”: “The Situation of the ‘Ex,’ ” in Emergency Exit, p. 101.
xvi
“when suffering ceases”: Silone, preface to Fontamara, 1933, now in Ignazio Silone: Romanzi e saggi (hereafter cited as ISRS), vol. 1, p. 10.
xvi
“the insistence”: James Atlas, “My Subject, Myself,” New York Times Book Review, October 9, 2005, p. 24.
xvi
“the biographer remains invisible”: Jay Parini, “Goethe’s Bright Circle,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 11, 2007, p. B10.
xvii
“all historians are prisoners”: Arthur M. S
chlesinger Jr., “Folly’s Antidote,” New York Times, January 1, 2007, p. A19.
xvii
“I can guarantee its sincerity”: “Emergency Exit,” in Emergency Exit, p. 63.
xviii
Fish noted that: Stanley Fish, “Just Published: Minutiae Without Meaning,” New York Times, September 17, 1999, p. A19.
xviii
an address by the historian Joseph Ellis: Joseph Ellis, “Get a Life! Reflections on Biography and History,” adapted from a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, January 10, 2004, published in Historically Speaking 5, no. 5 (May/June 2004): 18–19.
xix
Jill Lepore’s assertion: Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography,” Journal of American History 88 (2001): 129–44.
xix
“a tremendous fear”: Quoted in Ines Scaramucci, “Silone e la letteratura,” in Ignazio Silone tra testimonianza e utopia, p. 17.
PROLOGUE THE LANDSCAPE OF MY SOUL
3
he was reading Dostoevsky: “Primo incontro con Dostoievski,” La Fiera Letteraria, March 4, 1956; reprinted in ISRS, vol. 2, pp. 1244–46.
3
“baptize the pagan surname”: Il pane di casa, ed. Giuseppe Ardrizzo (Bergamo: Minerva Italia, 1971); quoted in Bruno Falcetto, “Cronologia,” in ISRS, vol. 1, p. lxxv.
4
“a queer mixture”: Silone at the time was teaching Wilson Italian in postwar Rome. Dabney, Edmund Wilson, pp. 321–22.
4
peasant priest: Nicola Chiaromonte, “Silone il rustico,” Il Mondo, 1952.
5
“the absolute necessity”: “Emergency Exit,” p. 46.
5
Representativeness was imposed: Silone wrote the American critic that “in the future, your essay will constitute an indispensable source of consultation for whoever wishes to understand my work.” Silone to Lewis, July 5, 1961, Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 3, fascicolo 23.
5
“He became a socialist”: Lewis, “Ignazio Silone: The Politics of Charity,” in The Picaresque Saint, pp. 113, 121.
5
“socialism was his”: Bread and Wine, p. 438.
5
“Every man”: Quoted in Bruno Falcetto, “Introduzione,” in ISRS, vol. 1, pp. xxxiii, xxxiv.
5
“That situation was”: Personal correspondence, letter of August 11, 2000.
6
“Look at Silone”: Interview in the Parisian weekly Demain, November 15, 1957, p. 21.
6
“There is no single truth”: Quoted in Peter Coleman, “Ignazio Silone,” Quadrant 48, no. 1 (January 2004).
6
“I live in”: See Silone’s “Note on the Revision of Fontamara” in Fontamara, trans. Eric Mosbacher (London: J. M. Dent, 1985), p. xi.
7
as Irving Howe noted: Irving Howe, introduction to Bread and Wine, trans. Eric Mosbacher (New York: New American Library, 1988), pp. v–vi.
7
“a Socialist without”: Interview in L’Express, Paris, January 23, 1961.
8
forbade its reprinting: Silone, Der Fascismus. In spite of Silone’s clear instructions that the book was not to be translated into Italian, it appeared as Il fascismo in 1992 and again in 2002. Speaking of this last version, Darina Silone called it “a really splendid job.” When asked about the possibility of an English translation, she noted that a British publisher was interested but she hoped they would not move forward as “it couldn’t possibly be nearly as good as the Mondadori edition.” Personal correspondence, Darina Silone to the author, July 7, 2002.
8
“a touch of irony”: Author’s Note (1962) to Bread and Wine, p. 180.
8
“our inhuman fate”: Letter to Girolamo Valenti meant as a preface to a 1936 American edition of Fontamara that, for unknown reasons, was never published. The original letter is archived in the Taminent Institute of New York University and included in d’Eramo, Ignazio Silone: Clandestino del Novecento, pp. 146–48.
8
“But a great respect”: Silone to Giovanna Berneri, February 11, 1959, Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 3, fascicolo 21.
8
“There’s a kind of sadness”: Don Severino speaking to Donna Maria Vincenza, The Seed Beneath the Snow, p. 590.
9
the subject of a biography in English: Two important studies should be mentioned here: Maria Nicolai Paynter’s Ignazio Silone: Beyond the Tragic Vision and Elizabeth Leake’s The Reinvention of Ignazio Silone. The first is not a biography but a fine work of literary criticism. As will become apparent, although indebted to Paynter’s work, I question whether Silone ever transcended the tragic vision of life. Leake’s work is not a full-fledged biography but a psychoanalytical reinterpretation of Silone in light of the charges that he spied for the Fascist regime. Perhaps the best critical work on Silone in English remains “Ignazio Silone: The Politics of Charity” in R.W.B. Lewis’s The Picaresque Saint.
9
some discerning, insightful scholarship: Two outstanding works, to which I am much indebted, are Luce d’Eramo, L’opera di Ignazio Silone, and Bruno Falcetto’s meticulous editing of Silone’s collected works in two volumes as Ignazio Silone. Romanzi e saggi. Also of immense help were Vittoriano Esposito, Vita e pensiero di Ignazio Silone, and Diocleziano Giardini, Ignazio Silone. Cronologia della vita e delle opere.
10
“Ironically, the foreign writers”: “Silone and His Critics,” in Fontamara (London: J. M. Dent, 1994), p. 173.
10
“has now become”: Origo, A Need to Testify, p. 312.
11
Documents from the National Archives: The documents have been reproduced by a Swiss scholar and are available at www.peterkamber.ch/ignazio.html.
12
“Perhaps the real cause”: Bread and Wine, p. 260.
12
it was a classic case: See McDonald’s essay on the most recent controversy, “Il caso Silone,” pp. 77–89.
13
“But for the fact”: Bread and Wine, p. 201.
13
“saints should always”: “Reflections on Gandhi,” Partisan Review, January 1949.
13
“Silone was the man”: Darina Silone, Colloqui, pp. 87–88.
13
comparison with an earlier work: Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli.
13
As Elizabeth Leake demonstrates: Leake, The Reinvention of Ignazio Silone, p. 7.
14
“The difficulty Spina encounters”: May 14, 1936, Zurich, Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 4, fascicolo 6.
15
“Unforeseen and unforeseeable”: Silone to Mariapia Bonanate, January 1973, Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 10, fascicolo 1.
15
“Anyone who is deeply”: Gustaw Herling, “Rome, December 2,” in Volcano and Miracle, p. 28.
15
had no homeland: Interview with Ugo Alfassio Grimaldi in “Alcune domande a un francotiratore del socialismo,” Critica Sociale, November 20, 1965; reprinted in ISRS, vol. 2, p. 1273.
16
“I saw once again”: “Restare se stessi,” Il Resto di Carlino, January 20, 1963; reprinted in ISRS, vol. 2, pp. 1264–65. Darina Silone recounts the episode in Colloqui, pp. 88–89.
17
“if the spring is not clear”: Rocco De Donatis in A Handful of Blackberries, p. 168.
ONE SAINTS AND STONECUTTERS
20
“The wolves would come down”: A Handful of Blackberries, p. 192.
20
“Eventually a voice”: Bread and Wine, p. 461.
21
“It was a few days”: “Incontro con uno strano prete,” in ISRS, vol. 2, p. 772.
21
“You know”: Darina Silone, “The Last Hours of Ignazio Silone,” p. 81.
22
“I be
lieve it was that night”: A fictional version of the event is recalled by Don Benedetto in Bread and Wine (pp. 410–11) and with more detail in The Seed Beneath the Snow (pp. 822–24).
22
“Its glories”: “Rethinking Progress,” in Emergency Exit, p. 156.
22
“In the judgment”: “Restare se stessi,” pp. 1261–66.
23
“It is one of the most inhuman”: “Some Facts of My Life,” Twice a Year, Autumn–Winter 1938; translated and reprinted in ISRS, vol. 1, p. 1383.
23
“that other part”: Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli, p. 3.
Bitter Spring Page 39
