WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria, May: Bianciardi, A SOLEMN PISSED (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 They were the life and work of Luciano Bianciardi, the expression of the title is

by Bianciardi himself in a letter to a friend in 1962. In 2022 it was one hundred
years since the birth of the Maremma writer, who died in 1971; on his death the
figure of writer, journalist and polemicist fell into oblivion. He himself wrote
in La vita agra (1962) << It must be a nice funeral[...]Then they forget me too
 >>, despite the fact that he was one of the most original writers of the 20th
century. In 1993 a biography traces his life and his works in a book with an
indicative title: Vita agra di un anarchico.
Angry, restless, in revolt against the society of the time, which like today,
dazzled by development, by the economic and non-social boom, advanced towards
nothingness, emptiness, from clichés to social masquerades. Bianciardi, and a few
others after him, had understood this; in the works of the writer from Maremma
all the "subversive" charge of someone who sees an intense period of
mechanization, of aridity in social relationships, of success, which for him is
the past participle of succeeding, <<[..]This Tuscan of genius capable of
grasping with his works the "other faces" of an official Italy, plastered,
optimistic, in the midst of the economic boom whose underground effects could
only be grasped by an anti-moderate skeptic and anarchist like Bianciardi. >>

In the title of the biography there is the best known work of Bianciardi, La Vita
agra e la sua anarchia. Even if the "qualification" of anarchist was given to him
for the first time by Indro Montanelli (!) in an enthusiastic review of La vita
agra. Montanelli, so enthusiastic about Bianciardi, offered him a well-paid
position at Corriere della Sera, which the writer refused. Anarchy: certainly
Bianciardi was not a militant, but he had clear and precise ideas on what anarchy
is. "For me, anarchy means a society founded on consensus, and not on force. I
would like to abolish: prisons, prefects, quaestors, policemen. I would like a
school where everyone teaches everyone. I would like to abolish marriage, I would
like everyone to decide freely from time to time what is their choice. I would
like to abolish the bosses. This is anarchy for me." That in a nutshell there was
anarchy in Bianciardi was pointed out by Umanità Nova on August 28, 1957 in a
review of his first work, an essay, <<Il lavoro cultura>>, signed by Salvador:
<<Bianciardi is not new to the labors of the pen as a talented and brilliant
journalist, who deals with all problems with a fresh and alert intelligence.
"Cultural work" narrates, in an ironic key, the history of provincial culture in
the last twenty years. The youth who, ostracized by fascism[...]Find a
conscience[...]And try to reawaken the passion for culture in the masses,
founding film clubs, popular libraries, organizing conferences, etc. (it is the
cultural work that Bianciardi did in those years in Grosseto, n.d.a.). But even
after fascism, attempts were made to monopolize these spontaneous demonstrations
by young people. And then the people in charge of culture (pardon those in
charge) descend from the "centre" like so many looters and stuff the skulls (sic)
of the audience with empty big words and with words created on purpose by the
activists (here Bianciardi criticizes the cultural policy of the PCI,
n.d.a.)[...]Anyone who has frequented trade union offices, associations, cinema
clubs, will find the experiences and considerations made in Bianciardi's work.
Useful book[...]Even if with a certain mischievous and light-hearted satirical
air, he denounces and condemns certain methods and certain rhetoric and, in many
points, is very close to us. Bianciardi's book should not only be read, but
meditated on because in it there is so much philosophy, there is so much practice
of life, which should lead many people, and especially "cultural" young people,
to open their eyes to certain initiatives, to some clichés, on buzzwords that
serve no other purpose than to crowd fresh energies and, through a "certain
work", reduce them headless and inanimate[...](a book) that makes a good
impression both in the most complete library and in the one in training>>.

Bianciardi has clear ideas on what culture should be: <<Every culture
demonstrates its strength and modernity only by confronting all the historical
and social reality that lies before us, only if it succeeds in freeing everyone,
in freeing the peasants, to understand them, to make them similar to us>>.

An intellectual who still "speaks" to us today. We are also indebted to him, we
owe him the translations of American literature, thanks to which we have known
and read the works of many authors, one name above all Henry Miller whose name he
also translated into Italian: Enrico Molinari. Bianciardi also left us a literary
testament, and not only that, with Aprère il fuoco, 1969, <<[...]An important
book, a sort of anti-novel, an "open work" which faithfully reflects the
rebellious, anarchist and nonconformist spirit of 'author who declares his
profound moral and ideal crisis[...]It is certainly one of the most
"extraordinary" books of the Sixties>> in which the author reviews the five days
of Milan, 1848, the revolt of the Milanese against the occupiers Austrians, which
he places in 1959; an experimental novel, innovative, unique. Also in this last
work Bianciardi has clear ideas <<[...]Every revolution must remain permanent, no
form of power must assert itself: only in this way will men become free. And
don't think that this means disorder, on the contrary, never as during
revolutions do crimes decrease and men suddenly become just>> even if, as he
wrote to a friend in 1960, << We should make a revolution, but we can't find
followed>>.

Carlo Ottone

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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