We have to manage to put the maximum amount of meat on the fire, over the whole range of problems that have been opened up – and I have to do it in the shortest possible time, insofar as it involves me. I go to G9 to see the fascists in prison. Good people – the problem is how to give weight to their voice, as part of the prison movement. This question of unity is fundamental. All this happened a couple of days ago, if I’m not mistaken. In Rome it is unbelievably hot, unbearably so. And what have I been doing since then? Ah yes – a three-hour phone-in on the Radical Party’s TV channel. Some of them insulting me, some of them happy, but definitely a noticeable ebbing of the initial tension. Then endless arguments with the police escort – we almost came to blows. Paola drove into them with her car. This whole business is turning grotesque. Meanwhile, in the debate in the special committee, the Liberal Party spokesman, who is arguing for my re-imprisonment, has caught measles. So on this side too things are pretty weird. And they are refusing to give me a parliamentary passport – not actually refusing it, but bouncing me around from office to office. Here the grotesque is taking on an aspect of Andreottian malevolence. Then, yesterday, there was a meeting in the Giunta, to decide on my case. Summary justice? I wait in the antechamber.
The usual rabble of journalists. The whole thing is postponed until September. Halfway through September there will be a vote in Parliament. I’ve gained a month. Good. At last I am in Milan, at home. Enormous tiredness. I am shattered by a situation which is terrible, and the tasks I have set myself seem too much for me.
PS As regards the fascists in prison, I am continually clashing with those on the Left who refuse even to talk about them, both in prison and – above all – outside. They say that they’re criminals. No less than those who arrived in prison from the Left, I reply. They tell me that they are confused, that their ideology is shit. I reply that it seems to me not much different from that of a lot of people on the Left – and that in fact sometimes I find bits of lively thinking among them. And finally they tell me that these violent fascists are often instruments of the state.
This is the only argument that gets to me. Spontaneously my mind says: with all the problems that we already have, why do we need to concern ourselves with them? Let them be looked after by those, often within the state, who used these people as tools of provocation. But this too is a false argument – yes, maybe these lads were instrumentalized (and how about those of the Left, were they not?), but they are perfectly responsible. They are not of the Right – maybe at some time they have been subjected to the ideologies of the Right, but their motives do not lean to the Right. We really would have to look at the history of these past few years through the eyes of a Valiani or – and this amounts to the same thing – through the eyes of the secret services engaged in imperialist destabilization, in order to fail to understand that these so-called (one-time) fascists are simply a product of the blocked system of Italian politics. They have nothing more to do with Almirante and with the right than my comrades do. Furthermore, they are deeply involved in the prison movement, they have lived the experiences of liberation that prison imposes, and they have to be brought back into the political debate – fully and completely. I’m not sure how to go about this. I am certain that Il Manifesto will respond negatively when I ask for their documents to be published. Never mind, I shall keep pressing for it. I like those lads – behind them lies the whole history of the Italian provinces and its malaise, and the working-class neighbourhoods of Rome and their antagonisms. In them there is a hope for renewal, albeit badly interpreted. But who interprets things properly these days? As far as I am concerned, fascism is disgusting – but why be so blind as to call these lads fascist, and not the movers and shakers of the Historic Compromise? (Rome/Milan – 2–5 August)
Folio 71
I talk with Paolo. Intelligent and cold, as ever. No, not cold, but dispassionate – capable of abstracting himself and keeping himself at a distance from the immediate. He has a good way of interpreting what has happened to his generation, between movement and repression. Horror vacui is the phrase he uses to define what he feels – the wind of emptiness. A wind which blows things all over the place. The wind is empty, and so is its meaning. Starting from the enormous collective experience which the spirit of the 1970s had created in Milan and other cities of the north – an experience of community and constitution, an experience which, very naïvely and yet correctly, we called communism. The experience of fullness – followed by the horror of emptiness. It is incredible, this collective subjectivity of suffering. The 1970s were the opposite, with their saturation with joy with alternative life experiences, with community. But today? Fear, the horrors of everyday life, loneliness. I read the ‘Summer Notes’ published by Censis: Italy’s social decomposition, it complains, has come about in the absence of any significant initiative (at this point I would like to add ‘except for the repression’ – why is it that Di Rita forgets these terrible events, which are so deeply etched into the collective consciousness?) – in the absence of any significant initiative coming from power: that’s how the Censis talks. The flabbiness of power. Society is terribly segmented, it says – it calls for a resumption of the entrepreneurial autonomy of the social in relation to the political. You make me laugh – do you really not see the desert you have created? However, there is at least no hypocrisy here – the Censis people are not claiming that the desert is a garden. But in their mind’s eye they desire the garden, and they have not measured the impressive material depth of the drought of life. This is a classic situation, once characteristic of priests, and now of the policemen of thought – to destroy life and then lament the ontological deficit which is the outcome of their actions. They moan about how everything is adrift. But this is a result of the drifting of the movement, of the repression of its creativity, of its ending in the horror vacui. What desperation, what wretchedness there is in all this.
How can you think that an act of political will can alter this ontological destruction of life? The autonomy of a creative politics which is proposed here is impossible, just as the autonomy that permitted the repression of our movement was shameful. They tell me that one of my worst enemies, in Padova – in that agglomerate of evil that passes under the name of a university – is today looking back regretfully to the 1970s. They are still running late with their crises, these irresponsible young men – they should get themselves up to date, for God’s sake, so that they can feel at first hand the malaise and the horror, for real!
Today they are running around in the labyrinth – all of us go round in a labyrinth – and we have to exhaust all the possibilities (shall we have the courage for it?) of the labyrinth. Of this will, which becomes cowardly every time it loses contact with reason. Of this cowardly will of theirs – of all the intellectuals who have surrendered to repression because they lacked the serenity of reason. Failing in their task, which is to fight to make sure that reason stays always serene and constructive. But Paolo is insistent: he is not interested in polemics with the intellectuals. He lives the tragedy of the repression, of the movement being adrift, of the emptiness. And yet it is only on the desperation of will, on this presence of death and imprisonment, which sits on our shoulders like a monkey – it is only from this intensity of pessimism of the will, of the contact with desperation and repression – it is only from here that we can reconquer serenity. Labyrinth, horror vacui … Will is projected onto this unresolvable screen. Break it, Paolo. Reason is the overturning [catastrofe] of the world in which we live. The expression of a generation needs to be reconquered through the exercise of reason – what we are setting up here is an enormous concert, which reason can produce to the limits of the collective moment. We have lived it, Paolo, that collective moment. Your desperation is the desperation of abandonment. No, what is done cannot be undone. Factum infectum fieri nequit – the principle of every civilization. Today defeated Mongols, tomorrow Genghis Khan triumphant. Don’t be scared of the labyrinth – it is not one o
f reason but one of the will – an obstacle and not a limit. (Milan – 6 August)
Folio 72
Yesterday evening, a major scene with the escort. Paola stopped the car in a dark corner of a small street – and then reversed straight into the police car that was following us. I got out and started hammering on the car with my fists – like we used to do against scabs crossing picket lines – and then they followed us to the police station, where I put in an official complaint because they hadn’t given me their particulars. Ridiculous but effective. It will certainly prove useful. I don’t want the escort following us any more, for one simple reason – I have to start thinking about my escape, and having the police always on my tail, and in such numbers, inevitably makes it more difficult. It’s not impossible, because anyway, like any policemen, the worst they can be is irritating. So I am getting rid of an irritation, nothing more than that. And in a state which pretends to have a clean face (in order to hide its dirty face), you can make things easy by putting on a show of indignation. What a performance! So many people are telling me not to go back to prison. Almost everyone, in fact. Except Rossana and Marco P. Who knows what they have in mind for me …? Most of all, this is the word I’m getting from lawyers, in other words from people who know what’s going on in this trial – the frame-up and the machinations. I spent the day in Gressoney – at the house of Marcello G.; Gressoney is extremely beautiful. Already last week I was there to visit this extraordinary lawyer and friend. I would appoint him minister of justice. It seems that his friends don’t want him in that position. Why? Perhaps because, unlike most politicians with high hopes, who end up becoming Levantines, he is a Levantine who became political in order to loosen the knots of injustice. An injustice which he experiences in simple terms, as a partisan and as an antifascist. Simple, but within such a quantity of doctrine – that is the fundamental thing. Not that his brain is not still Levantine – in this he is like all the rest of the teachers of Italian law – but, in the drama of the emigration to the north that he is living (unresolved), the unhappiness of life and the heaviness of injustice weigh heavily upon him. He doesn’t have the bored look of Martinazzoli, who, he tells me, will be the minister. It is clear, however, that he would dearly like to be at the head of the Italian justice system. What would be better – his dramatic mobility as a Turinese immigrant, or the pacific tedium of Martinazzoli, a lawyer from Brianza? I don’t know who will be nominated – Martinazzoli probably, he is the stronger candidate – but I have a certain nostalgia for the restlessness of Marcello G. From his wife and children I get the sense of a life which is not satisfied with its present circumstances. No, this is not the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie. And no, he won’t make it to be minister. Contradictory feelings today, while the discussion swings between Kelsen and life (what a distance!), between the image of parliamentary Rome and the splendid mountains of Gressoney. No, he won’t make it to be minister. Today he is still a free man. Why? I remember how he came to visit me one time when I was in the special prison. He refused to speak to me through glass. You can’t look at the mountains of Gressoney in vitro. Meanwhile the escort is still following us. I look at them as they hide shamefacedly, a bit embarrassed after the blow-up of yesterday evening. And among these bright mountains I think of the jaundiced face of Rognoni. (Milan/Gressoney – 7 August)
Folio 73
A hellish day, but with a least one positive result. They have definitely put off any decision about my re-imprisonment until September – the 1st or the 8th. I have gained a month of freedom. It seems unbelievable to me. Today is Wednesday. This story – very tense – started on Monday, with a hearing before the committee for parliamentary privileges. Very embarrassed they were. I looked them straight in the eye, one by one. You could have got more expression out of the Sphinx. At least the Sphinx was beautiful. This bunch, with the exception of Mellini, are ugly, devastatingly ugly. I present my defence before the ‘committee for authorizations’ in a moderate tone. I am not in attack mode. I put before them a number of points in my defence, minimal but cogent and incisive. They sit there silently. The ambience and atmosphere of a meeting of carpetbaggers. I look around me. The place where they meet is a long narrow bunker. A bomb shelter. They are waiting for orders. In this half light, their terrible emptiness becomes apparent: they fill this shadow and don’t illuminate it. Tuesday: Despite the good press in the morning, in the afternoon the committee decides that I am to go back to prison – immediately. Then pandemonium broke out – I’m not sure exactly why. What is certain, however, is that the bag-carriers had misunderstood the orders of their bosses. There was a MSI-DC-PCI majority for immediate re-imprisonment. But the thing didn’t pass in the Communist Party. They are calling for a postponement of any decision until they’ve had a chance for political discussion. In the course of the night a variety of positions begin to be outlined. A certain Loda, a Communist Party member of Parliament, received a telling off. This is gratifying, but I don’t understand the operation, its meaning, and where it is leading. Rossana is making superhuman efforts. Today she left for a few days’ holiday and I went to see her off. All very emotional. Massimo is on the rampage – I see him often during these days – and he is convinced that a lot can be done in the party, if only we could gain some time. What is happening in the PCI is certainly important – but I don’t think they will have the ability to pull back from their repressive vocation – against myself and my comrades. They have already dirtied their hands too much in this regard. A party led, on occasion, by some rampaging court journalist, driven by motives of revenge, and in dialogue with some of the worst of our hanging judges! What a tragedy, this Noske returned from the dead, this Asiatic face – Sanfedist and brutish – of that once great party! No, they cannot escape from the shame of all this. The efforts of Rossana and of the comrades at Il Manifesto have paid off, nevertheless. Massimo is happy – even though he is extremely pessimistic about the future. Already on Tuesday evening we knew that any decision was going to be put off. Today is Wednesday – or is it Thursday? It’s so late, and the night is cool. I am not just tired – I am literally destroyed. I feel like I have a ring of iron round my head. I want to drink. In this house where I am staying there is not even a bottle of wine. So the great repressive alliance of the Historic Compromise – the DC and the PCI, with a bunch of fascists supporting them – has been shattered. I have a terrible headache. Marlboros make me sick, and today I have smoked only Marlboro. Tired. Tired. So … everything is put off till September. A month gained. This evening I walked through Campo dei Fiori with Paola, on our way to a restaurant run by a friend. In the half light, a boy dismantling the last of the flower stalls asked me for a cigarette. I give him one. He looks at me, recognizes me and says: ‘Hey, you’re the professor.’ I say ‘Yes’. I stand for a moment. Then he blurts out: ‘Don’t let them take you in again.’ I walk on. He runs after me, with a rose in his hand. He gives it to Paola. ‘Don’t let them get you, don’t let them get you.’ He’s right. No, no, I mustn’t let them get me. (Rome – 8–10 August)
Folio 74
I am on holiday at last, at Montescudaio in Tuscany. After talking with Scalfaro, the new Minister of the Interior, I have finally succeeded in getting rid of my escort. At last – I couldn’t take it any longer. The countryside is beautiful, and the house, rented from Sylvie and Giovanna, is delightful. The whole valley of the Cecina lies below, stretching towards Volterra upstream and the sea downstream. There is a lot of greenery, and always a wind to freshen the heat of the day. I reorder my thoughts, and once again I find a desire to live, returning surreptitiously. My relations with the people around here are good. Of course, I am a public figure, and that’s how they see me – people point me out, and look at me, and there are even journalists and photographers making the trip up here. But these are communist villages: many of the local people – some of the communists, and workers from Piombino, and farm workers – are interested in discussing with me – with a communist. S
o we begin to talk. They tell me about the workers’ struggle in the locality, about the crisis in the steel industry and the restructuring of Piombino. I notice that I have not forgotten anything of the communist style of working – and in passing I recall that here in Piombino we were doing political interventions twenty years ago! We keep talking in the bar, and then, in the evening, in people’s houses, and they are most welcoming. Excellent local wine. After an inconceivable length of time I begin again to enjoy the pleasures of relaxation. I meet other very dear friends, who come to visit me. We talk about politics, a lot. My situation requires it. And not even the delights of this countryside can lessen the sense of political and institutional tragedy in the situation that we are living. We are in a blind alley – the perversion of the institutions, the breakdown of the constitutional balance of powers, and the cancer spreading through the political machine: these are the results of the political blockage that has been imposed on us, massacring our hopes. Today, they tell me, people in the factories are starting to get angry again. I hope so. But we need self-criticism here. It must be deep, and it needs to attack not only the political class of the parties, but also certain sectors of the working class who, through the blind and exclusionary defence of their corporative interests, have allowed our massacre to take place. First 7 April, then the political sackings at FIAT, then the defeat of 1981 – and then downhill, all the way. Chaos. A chaos dominated by the force of the industrial restructuring that was put into place – and as a political formula dominated once again by creeping compromise. Nor will Craxi and the socialists be capable – not for a long time yet – of discharging the underlying tensions. And it is true that the Historic Compromise is the only possible political formula, the only possibility of governing and of recovering powers of decision-making out of the swamp of the social. It is the only way, given that the blockage of change has arrived at this violence of effects. The problem, the only problem, is how to destabilize the conditions that have allowed this disastrous stagnation to occur. But how can this be done? We know all the negative conditions, but we also know how fiercely they are capable of reproducing themselves and defending the mechanism of their reproduction. Prison, this fearsome weapon of social constraint; the rampant restructuring of industry, which is attacking and destroying the workers’ aggregations in factories and in communities; and war – an ever-present threat, which includes Lebanon, the atomic bomb and nuclear terror. All this tends to create a situation of passivity and fear. A fear which does not have the metaphysical strength to develop horizons of higher sociality out of relationships between human beings and to accept antagonism as the basis for guarantees of freedom. No, this is a fear which spreads over everybody’s heads, like a cloud laden with misfortune. And everything is flattened by its shadow. In such a situation only ethics – and only a new and very profound action of transformation that can be rooted in ethics – would permit us to re-found politics, outside of this fearsome solitude that we all share. I am reading and re-reading Leopardi, and I find him very much in tune with our times – between imprisonment in his hometown of Recanati and emptiness and passivity of the Italian way of life; between this destructive second nature which dazzles us and the ethical revolt which his poetry expresses, arising out of his solitude. I look around me – I can see these sentiments taking objective form among my children, among my friends, among the workers with whom I discuss. We need to reintroduce the prophetic into our lives. Gradually, as the days pass, my restlessness is growing. Maybe its interference with my reflections on ethics and politics has become part of my character. A malaise which wants to go and find rest somewhere beyond this condition of life and culture, of prison and society, which is imposed on me. It will always be this way, whether I am in prison or a free man, if ethical hope and transformative behaviours do not become the (mass) base of events of radical change for this society and for this state. Giangi, Giorgio, and so many of the others whom I see have abandoned militancy. They work and they have children. This does not lessen their desperation, for sure – but perhaps they, like me, expect a re-founding in all this; maybe they are waiting for a sign. But there will be no sign unless we build it ourselves, unless we transform the ethical unease into poetry, into the production of new signs. There are a lot of shooting stars in these August night skies. We need concrete signs of life, new children, new communities, and justice. Happiness has to be rebuilt as a material element, through restlessness, driving it to its inner ethical limit. Only in this way can we be productive of hope, and of the new. Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu être triste pour ressusciter Carthage. I contemplate with real terror the fact that I am going to have to throw myself back into the perversion of the world of politicians, into that swampy terrain of meaninglessness. Why? The non-truth of that world is such that there is no possiblity of a reply to my question on that layer of significations. Why? These days I have been writing the text of my self-defence before Parliament. I shudder to think of the parliamentarians’ faces I’ll have before me. I am trying to be as sincere and balanced as possible, in order to lay down some kind of marker of freedom. It will not be accepted, that’s sure. And it’s right that this is the way it is. There is nothing to be done. Nothing other than our radical and profound ethics, only our re-founded hope, only this producing of positive signs – between us and only between us. The rest is all a machine of hatred and repression. (Montescudaio – 12/21 August)
Diary of an Escape Page 20
