Diary of an Escape

by Antonio Negri

  Marco P. arrived in the afternoon, and we worked on a kind of programme. But that’s the last thing on my mind. The physicality of freedom is the only feeling I have – a dream come true. This physicality, I swear, conquered through prison … this sensation of reconquering the body … it’s like being a child again – a sensation which comes after you’ve passed through the total dispossession of your body through prison and torture, on top of the fact that life before prison, and becoming adults, had, unbeknownst to ourselves, forced us to reduce the body’s presence to the point of mystification … this physicality will now stay with me forever. If there is such a thing as baptism, for me, this evening is it. If there is a trinity of body and reason and life, this evening I have finally understood it. I get flashes of the unhappiness of the past. The faces of the comrades parade before me like ghosts. I shake hands with the ghosts, and I reject with horror the unhappiness. As I write I am sitting out in the open, under a lamp. Silence. You don’t even hear the monotonous chirruping of the crickets, which made me hate the summer nights in Rebibbia – the sounds of a nature that was unattainable. Now everything is perfect. Tomorrow … the struggle will begin again. I feel strong and able to sustain it. I think it is probably very late. I have no desire to sleep. Now I lie on the grass, smelling it and stroking it. Never have I felt the passion for justice so strongly as in this quietness, as if I am immersed in a compact silence. And anger for everything that has happened, for the comrades who are still in prison, for the injustices suffered – all this is very close at hand. In this complete serenity of being, the time of life, of rebellion and of transformation is very dear to me. In the arc of this day it stood poised between different worlds, between contradictory sensations, through to the certainty of having it in my hand. A point of real knowledge, against the intrigues of power. I stretch out on damp grass in the night air. (Rome – 8 July)

  3

  In Parliament

  9 July to 18 September 1983: Folios 58–98

  Folio 58

  Morning. I went to bed very late – drunk with freedom – but I woke early and started to write. So many things were going through my mind last night. I was mentally preparing the press conference that I shall be giving shortly. But, above all, I imagined the world I was just about to enter. I note that I shall now be able to pursue in more complex forms my analysis of the institution – which, up until now, I have only looked at from within the confines of the trial: Parliament, just like the court, is one face of the institution; but, compared with the court, it is more of an open space. Furthermore, whereas the trial experience was wholly swallowed up into the institution and antagonistic elements could only appear as heroism, here I already have the possibility of referring to other things: to alterity, to the diversity of the social forces in relation to the institution. It is fundamental to understand – and I need to put all my cognitive enthusiasm into this: previously the logic of prosecution and defence was locked into the confines of the courtroom; now, by contrast, I can live it externally, magnifying and endlessly discovering its antagonistic dimensions. In the trial, the contradiction of the institution can only unfold in an opaque space; now, in the free life I am beginning to live, I can make that contradiction transparent – if I take as my reference point these things which are ‘different’ from the institution and from the rotten politics that dwell within it. Transparency: of love and solidarity – the fresh force of people who are against this wretched world. Together with many other people we shall succeed in reconquering the meaning of transformation and democracy …

  Everyone is asleep – I can’t sleep. I am writing on the balcony, on the Lido. I have the San Marco lagoon in front of me, in all its beauty. The island of San Lazaro – a wonder of wonders – I can almost touch it if I reach out a finger. The enchantment of the night, and its bodily, humid transparency. What a day! This morning Marco P. had me doing the triumphant rounds of Montecitorio. I know Montecitorio well. I’ve known it for years, since the ’50s and ’60s, when I came to visit friends who were party secretaries and Members of Parliament, and to study. I allow Marco the satisfaction of thinking, in his triumphalism, that I am amazed by all of this. The good savage at the court of Madrid. Then we go in a big procession from Montecitorio to Piazza Argentina. With paparazzi running after us. Rossana does everything in her power not to be photographed together with Marco, and Marco does everything he can to get a group photo. Then the press conference – a hellish heat. Is it always going to be as hot as this in the institutions? Idiotic questions from the journalists, except those from the foreign press. Everyone is looking at me as if I were some kind of weird animal. What does it feel like to be out after four and a half years of more or less special penitentiary? They are amazed to see a man before them. They can’t work out whether he is an intelligent criminal or an innocent cretin: all their questions are directed to finding the answers to that question. Thanks. The crush is impressive. The photographers add a couple of hundredweight of extra frazzling heat to the temperature of the day. I have to smile and put up with various of Marco P.’s customary incredible idiocies about Marxism – but, for the rest, he is behaving well and he is obviously comfortable in this role. I, on the other hand, only feel comfortable when I spot a couple of friends in the crowd. I wink at them and pass them little notes about meeting up. Mauro G. is among them – I know him since the early ’50s, and I love him – we have in common glories and pains. He is now a symbol of that incredible continuity of revolutionary history, which constitutes us – almost a sign that our prison-imposed separation from all the others is at an end. Finished, finished. The idiotic, rapid fire of questions from the journalists continues. (Speaking of which – examine more closely the bestial character of the ignorance and arrogance of this corporation; resume discussion, not only of the corporation itself – which is brutal and cheap, but perhaps better than others – but of the journalists: ask them one by one who pays them, what is the balance between business and corruption, etc., etc.) I don’t care. It’s party time, I should be happy, and indeed I am. We continue. But it is beginning to get boring. Marco is on top form. More so than a peacock. Why? Anyway, I feel the need for a bit of novelty. At a certain point, the Radical senator pulls me into a corner and tells me: the secret services want to protect you. Well, that’s an entertaining novelty! They can go to hell. At lunch with Rossana we find the time for a free-ranging interview. Very emotional. I love you, Rossana. I don’t care that your old-style communism is grafted onto the institutions, I don’t care about that doglike Togliattianism of yours. Often you go beyond all this – and I love the fervent way in which your intelligence is conjugated with your communism. We eat well – and then we rush to the airport. The paparazzi hard on our heels again. At Fiumicino I meet Giulio E. and we embrace. A plane for Venice. Oh, what a splendid sky! How many times in prison did I follow from the prison corridors the vapour trails of high-flying aircraft!

  An almost hysterical emotionality – a nervousness that affects my whole body – I am like a young animal released from the cage in which it had been caught. These are the dimensions of your freedom – the dimensions of the sky – don’t forget it. Venezia, and a motor taxi to the Lido. From Tessera we do the canal between Murano and Fondamenta Nuove, between Arsenale and Vignole. And right there, out on the waters, Paola starts crying – no, not crying … yelling and weeping her happiness and all the accumulated pain. Evening is about to fall: the colours and shades between the sea and the sky are those of the bosom of the great mother. Paola’s scream is that of birth, of entering, of returning to life.

  On the terrace at the Lido I embrace my relations. With great emotion. From this terrace, you can see for miles. I am already restless. On the first evening I see, one by one, the comrades whom I left behind in prison. But imagination and revolutionary hope have to go further. On this terrace, on this evening, I am going crazy. Everything is pulling me out, pushing me beyond, towards that line of the marine horizon that is always
light-filled and always infinite. (Rome/Venice – 9 July)

  Folio 59

  Padova. I go to visit my mother’s grave in the cemetery. She died while I was in prison. I pour a bit of earth onto her grave, letting it slip between my fingers. The earth is dry, but my hand caresses it. I think of your smile, Aldina, my old young mother. I cry like a baby, without trying to restrain myself. My son, Francesco, 16 years of age, holds my arm tightly. Hope: of my freedom, of revolution, of community – how many sad and deep thoughts in this tender metaphysics of filial piety – how much of those desires and those imaginings did you nourish – sweetest mother, Lucretian figure – alma Venus. (Outside the cemetery a photographer tries to get a shot of me: I would have killed him, if it was worth the effort.) Then Milan. Once again, I set foot in that much loved and damnable city. It is Sunday evening when I arrive. The city is empty. I think about the metropolitan sidewalks which I love, and about these internal horizons, which are unknown to outsiders and jealously guarded by those who hold them. My metropolis. I conquered you in the times of revolutionary movement, from Pirelli and Alfa down to the city’s network of canals. I know you in your decades-long dynamics of unsuppressible movement for liberation and in your charming, permanent but by no means predictable capacity for transformation – and also of repression. What a strange complexion you have, my Milan, at once working-class and bourgeois, virgin and whore. The few remaining comrades in town come to visit me – from what I was told, several thousand have left, to go either into prison, or into exile, or into their private lives, which often involve drugs. And they are so many. In our quick chats they reveal aspects of what has been happening here, of the frequent, harsh and deep reality of repression. It is no longer the city that I left behind me, they tell me. I react: ‘Do you remember revolution?’ But, most of all, have we forgotten that formidable growth of metropolitan science which we saw developing in this theatre of action? And what about the quantity of knowledge accumulated? Good for you, they reply: at best, Milan is the capital of intellectual black labour. We shall see. Meanwhile I am doing non-stop interviews. I try to make myself one with the tiredness of the people I encounter, to destroy myself through work. It is obvious that I’m feeling a sense of guilt about having come out of prison alone, without my comrades. I begin to compensate for this sense of guilt by giving myself a bout of impossibly strenuous work. I sleep in snatches, I don’t make love. I work like a machine. My children, Francesco and Anna, look at me as you would at a monster. Am I beginning to live reality as if it were a prison? I have been out for two days now, and the only way I can relax is by working. Immediately, as of now, for the freedom of everyone. From 1971, since the time when I transferred myself definitively, Milan has been the centre of the world for me – both that of analysis and that of political practice. Milano: experientia sive praxis. This is where I should be moving ahead. If only Rome would let me work from here. But it won’t happen, of this I am certain. In that institutional shithouse which is Rome they will throttle me. I continue talking and talking with the few comrades still left in the city. I am a survivor, and they are people who escaped with their lives. Not much comes of it. All I understand is that the wound left by repression is so deep that it will not heal soon. Only a radical political change [una catastrofe politica] can set in motion these great and cherished forces. But I cannot allow myself yet to play the card of wisdom. A long job, a subtle project, Milan as the centre of the world, as the crystal of contradictions, of the crisis, of the possibility of reaction, of innovation: this has been and continues to be the correct working hypothesis. And yet I cannot permit myself to follow the correct hypothesis. I have to continue working like a lunatic, swimming in the shit of Rome. First of all to get the comrades out by whatever means – before becoming wise.

  This evening Piazza Vetra is sweaty instead of dry – standing aside from the love I bear it. Tomorrow to Rome, to begin a work that I detest. Farewell wonderful damnable Milan. (Padova – Milan – 10–11 July)

  Folio 60

  I enter the Parliament Chamber. The radicals, my colleagues, do not – as usual, for some strange tactical reason. They tell me that the leader of the Christian Democrat group has called on the Speaker not to let me in. The Radicals protest and make a racket, but they don’t enter the Chamber. They like their little jokes, these colleagues. For myself, when there’s uproar I’m in my element. I don’t think there’s too much to worry me here. I enter the Chamber with the comrades of Democrazia Proletaria (DP) – all of them great people. As soon as we sit down – the house is full for the opening of Parliament – as soon as we get ourselves seated on the benches on the far Left, on the ‘mountain’ – from the right they start shouting: ‘Murderer – Out!’ The people around me reply by chanting rhymes – in my view, the band of imbeciles in front of us don’t deserve the sometimes over-passionate responses of Mario C. and Guido P. The comedy repeats itself. Theatre and bourgeois Parliament are pretty much made of the same stuff – in what sense do their histories cross? (Diderot – the paradox of the theatre, the extremization of types, the imitation of the market – study this topic.) And the trial? I amuse myself by replacing the heads of these ugly monsters jumping around in front of me. I replace Almirante’s head with that of Santiapichi, Abbatangelo’s with that of Calogero, and so on. That way I feel at home, and the comedy becomes a scene that embraces the totality of the institutional experiences I find myself living through. However, the uproar shows no signs of abating. In the time-honoured rituals of commedia the characters line up. The fascists make as if they are about to cross the floor – ‘Just let me get at him …!’ – What a pantomime. The leader of the house, poor Scalfaro, who is old and therefore possibly mindful of the Constitution, reminds the halfwits that a member of Parliament is a representative of all the people – and that they should not get too angry with the people, since the people don’t understand much, and they have elected Negri, and in addition to Negri all the rest of this rabble, constituting it into an indivisible sovereignty. (Scalfaro – Musil – Count Leinsdorf.) The cynical heads of Santiapichi and Calogero nod, and gradually calm returns. (I think the final entertaining call was ‘Murderer, I’ll kill you …!’.) Then the new Speaker of Parliament is elected – Jotti gets the job. She goes to sit in the Speaker’s chair. I watch her – she’s used to this kind of thing – she sits with her body rigidly firm and she always moves both arms at the same time, as if she is conducting some kind of ritual from her perch. But there’s nothing sacred here, only degradation and indecency. Conjuring up a worthy ending to this parliamentary session, which began with the insults of the fascists, the Speaker thinks it appropriate to move the immediate reading of requests to initiate proceedings for the arrest of the honourable Member of Parliament Antonio Negri. Her intervention restores order and the house calms down at the announcement that a quick surgical excision will work to cure the ‘Negri sickness’. Not just quick, but immediate. Miraculous efficacity! It’s time to get this over with – the priestess is sweating. I think of her old teachers – maybe in some senses revolutionaries, sometimes antifascists, and certainly with a well-founded sense of the sacred: Gemelli and Togliatti must be spinning in their graves. Today, in the lobby and in the antechambers, I met a lot of people of my own generation, now members of Parliament for the first time. Lula, Gianni F., and many others. A new generation of parliamentarians. Will they be able to represent the country as it really is, in all its dynamism? I really wonder. Giacomo M., the great southern gentleman, the socialist – the only one who shows recognizable signs of sincerity in what he does for the proletariat – he seems to me infinitely more real as a person.

  For the rest of them, the formalism of the relationship is interwoven with the nervousness of functionaries who have just been promoted – emotions may well up, but they are dominated by a dry instrumentality of reason. Of the generation of ’68 I find Franco R. and Franco P. to be different from the average run of MPs, and more enjoyable to be with. F
or the rest, at this first contact all I experience is a bitter feeling of pointlessness. The rustle of gowns and robes. Cliques, sometimes secret, sometimes blatant. The long march through the institutions … memories of ideological perversions, which now I see before me as perversion in action.