Historical research sometimes arises from simple curiosity, only to
later reveal unexpected reasons for interest, and this is one of those
cases. ---- There are several biographies of Virgilia D'Andrea,
anarchist trade unionist, poet and propagandist, but in none of them had
I found any trace of a conference of hers of which I only knew the
unusual title: Libertarian Muse. ---- I had learned about it during
research on the history of the Livorno Trade Union Chamber, between 1920
and 1922, before fascism. ---- In fact, on the evening of June 15, 1922,
Virgilia D'Andrea, then thirty-four years old, held a well-attended
conference at the Trade Union Chamber, adhering to USI, located in Viale
Caprera, in the popular neighborhood of Nuova Venezia.
In the previous days, repeated clashes between fascists and subversives
had occurred in various areas of the city, including with gunshots, and
the tension was high as it would be in the following weeks, so the title
of that conference could seem at least out of place, even if for the
anarchist from Sulmona poetry was a weapon.
This is the brief account of the evening that was published in the
periodical of the Livorno anarchists «Il Seme» on June 18, 1922:
Suddenly on the 12th of this month a telegram arrived at the Trade Union
Labor Chamber, announcing the arrival of the brave comrade Virgilia
D'Andrea, inviting them to prepare a conference for Thursday evening.
Although time was short, the C.d.L.S. immediately sent out circulars to
all the participating sections, as well as to the avant-garde groups and
parties, inviting them to make the necessary propaganda for the success
of the conference, then arranging for the posting of a poster on the
wall announcing it, but at the last minute the Police Headquarters did
not want to allow it with the excuse of public order.
It is useless to comment on this artificial sabotage[sic]of the
unexpected conference, which however did not succeed in preventing the
large hall from being packed with workers including a good number of
women and girls.
At 9 pm, introduced with appropriate words by our[Riccardo]Sacconi,
comrade D'Andrea began her speech, masterfully developing the theme:
Libertarian Muse.
It is impossible for us to follow the talented orator in her refined and
polished speech, we only limit ourselves to saying that similar
conferences should be held more often and listened to even by those who,
forgetful of every form of civil life, live committing the saddest
actions, not excluding crime.
The impression of the audience was greater than expected, and in
everyone there remained alive the desire to be able to experience as
soon as possible again such an intellectual pleasure, which we hope the
good companion will not want to deny us.
Leafing through the chronicles of the anarchist newspaper «Umanità
nova», we learn that in the previous months Virgilia D'Andrea had
proposed and held a tour of pro-Umanità nova conferences in various
cities, requesting that the cost of the ticket to attend be at least one
lira; the proposed themes were Libertarian Muse, The value of sentiment
in life, Our prisoners, «which best suit her oratorical temperament and
her faculties».
From «Umanità nova» of 4 January 1922 we learn that on the evening of
31 January 1921, at a theatre in Rimini, despite the problems posed by
the police, she had held, in support of the anarchist newspaper, a
conference with a similar title: Liberating Muse: comrade
D'Andrea[who]for over an hour kept the audience enthralled by her
vibrant and moving words. She recalled the period of calm before the
war, spoke of the intoxication of war and continued declaiming her
poems, all vibrant with pure and human passion.
As happened in Rimini and Livorno, however, the relative reports of
these initiatives did not refer to the themes touched upon during the
conference and, as far as I know, the text of the conference has never
been published and in any case does not appear in the various published
collections of her conferences, thus arousing at least in the writer a
certain interest.
Probably, by the very admission of the militant authors of such reports,
there was embarrassment in describing the literary suggestions and the
emotions they aroused among the proletarians and comrades present;
moreover, as Virgilio Mazzoni would have noted, in his positive review
in «Umanità nova» of July 27, 1922, of the «rebel verses» of Tormento,
«although in our field, poetry does not have much success... commercially».
My curiosity therefore remained unanswered for a long time but, by
chance, it was at least partially satisfied having recently found in the
Roman chronicle of «Umanità nova» of March 22, 1922, an article that,
recounting the same conference held on March 19 in Rome, deals with it
in a sufficiently detailed way, so much so as to deserve to be
transcribed in full.
As mentioned yesterday, the conference held by comrade Virgilia D'Andrea
on Sunday morning at the Salon of Hairdressers was a splendid success.
Although it was a paid event, organized for the Circolo di Studi
Sociali, the audience still showed up in great numbers and many comrades
and supporters crowded the hall in Via Cavour.
Comrade D'Andrea was introduced by comrade Billi, a university student,
and spoke for about an hour amidst the lively and moved attention of the
audience, which demonstrated a very keen understanding and sensitivity.
With the simple but evocative lyricism that is her habit, with the words
vibrant with inner emotion that she knows how to say and that know how
to find the soul of the audience and shake it deeply, the speaker evoked
the most salient episodes of the life of the Italian people from the war
to fascism, setting in the speech that had precisely the theme
"Libertarian Muse", passages of poems and entire lyrics of her own
composition (they will shortly be collected in a volume), which written
under the immediate impression of the events as they unfolded in recent
times and therefore having all the naturalness of spontaneous things,
could not fail to captivate and enthuse the audience. "War blind",
"Decimation", "The return of the exile" (referring to the repatriation
of our Malatesta), "Capture and surrender of the factories", all these
episodes, these stages of the laborious journey of the workers towards
their tomorrow, towards their conquests, had in the verses of our good
companion such a communicative impetus, that all those present could not
refrain from showing their emotion in the most tangible way.
We are sure that artistic and social entertainments at the same time
like these, are very beneficial to the propaganda and education of the
masses.
The proletariat, the youth, the men of work, need not only the critical
and polemical conference, not only the fanfare, but also the melody.
These are sublimations of the spirit whose benefit is not at all to be
doubted.
In this conference what happens when the speaker manages to captivate
the soul and the brain of those who listen has occurred. The audience
applauds; but he has a stronger need to hold back the applause so as not
to disturb the state of spiritual enjoyment in which he is immersed. But
the held back applause then burst out thunderously when the speaker,
remembering all our victims, all those who died on the path of the
revolutionary struggle, closed with the magnificent verses of Carducci:
«... Blood
of the dead
hastens Your red
rivers
and fate
vaporizes to heaven
and with vengeance
intoxicates our
children!».
The announced book was Tormento, with a preface by Errico Malatesta and
a scarlet cover, published in Milan in the same year by Tipografia
Zerboni, and in March 1923 the Author was reported for contempt and
incitement to class hatred, with an arrest warrant, precisely in
relation to that collection of poems of hers which, evidently, in
addition to moving the proletariat, invited it to revolt. In a pathetic
attempt to summarize the content of the collection of poems, a zealous
police officer wrote: «The book is written in verse, and the verses are
overflowing with feline bile against Italy in its powers and in its
social structure: they are verses written thoughtfully and with study to
incite to crime, excite hatred and vilify the Army».
But before dwelling on the "excessive" poems presented by Virgilia
during the conference, I will make some hypotheses on the part of it in
which, as mentioned by the anonymous Roman editor, she had evoked «the
most salient episodes of the life of the Italian people from the war to
fascism».
Presumably they were, more or less, the same themes and protagonists
taken up in the countless conferences that she would have held between
1929 and 1932 in the United States where she had emigrated, together
with her life partner, ideals and militancy Armando Borghi, to escape
fascist and police persecution.
In particular, in the conferences Tenebre e fiamme nella tragedia
italiana and Le Tradizioni italiane rinegagate e tradite dal fascismo,
starting from the pages of Italian literature, not subjected for the
love of freedom to previous dominations, Virgilia D'Andrea had argued
that «fascism was and is the profound antithesis of Italian thought»,
also quoting Vittorio Alfieri: «My art is the muses; my predominant
passion is hatred of tyranny".
Taking into account that those American conferences were addressed to an
audience composed mainly of immigrant workers from Italy, towards whom
the fascist regime carried out intense propaganda focused on patriotism,
through newspapers and conferences organized by the Fasci also
constituted in the United States, one understands the anti-fascist sense
of the cultural conferences of the tireless anarchist.
Of the four poems recited in Rome, and almost certainly also in Livorno,
Blind with War (August 1920) and Decimation (September 1919) were
against the horrors of the First World War, with the curse of patriotic
rhetoric as a "derisive insult", and in The Return of the Exile
(December 1919), dedicated to Malatesta's clandestine return to an Italy
swept by revolutionary upheavals, there was the expectation "For the
immense impact of the "red" history", while The Capture and Surrender of
the Factories (October 1920) was a sort of bitter political assessment
of the Occupation of the Factories, which had ended a few months
earlier, "under the black sky".
All issues that screamed for vengeance and social justice, dangerously
appealing to the heart as well as the intelligence of every oppressed
and exploited person.
THE RETURN OF THE EXILE
To Errico Malatesta
He returns. From the white ship
Look at the deep blue austerities...
Around, around, a tired sweetness
Descends from above and is lost in the waves.
He returns. He shines from afar
A golden arch of solemn thought,
And in the passionate and arcane silence
Notes of a rebellious chorus vibrate.
And the placid and severe pupils
Think back that dream of passion
Immense love of the austere nights.
Throbbing with fever and tension.
Of daring flights, of audacious jolts,
Oof hopes and of a magical future,
Oof intense embraces and tenacious bonds
And mad waits and useless suffering!
O suffering, o wretched, o dispersed,
O slaves prone, pale and broken,
Under the blue of the beautiful clear skies,
Today you soar with bursting songs.
To the firm promises open your heart,
To the steep flights your pulsating mind,
And in your thoughts to the shining dawns
Open the passage, avenger and powerful.
And standing, bound and free, sing
The hymn of a vast and renewed world...
While the dream is torn apart you swear
To this faith, a deep heartbeat.
While the ship in the face of infinity
laughs at an intense blueness of glory,
Make the heart of steel and granite
for the immense impact of the "red" history.
Bologna, December 1919
* already published on the site www.toscananovecento.it
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
later reveal unexpected reasons for interest, and this is one of those
cases. ---- There are several biographies of Virgilia D'Andrea,
anarchist trade unionist, poet and propagandist, but in none of them had
I found any trace of a conference of hers of which I only knew the
unusual title: Libertarian Muse. ---- I had learned about it during
research on the history of the Livorno Trade Union Chamber, between 1920
and 1922, before fascism. ---- In fact, on the evening of June 15, 1922,
Virgilia D'Andrea, then thirty-four years old, held a well-attended
conference at the Trade Union Chamber, adhering to USI, located in Viale
Caprera, in the popular neighborhood of Nuova Venezia.
In the previous days, repeated clashes between fascists and subversives
had occurred in various areas of the city, including with gunshots, and
the tension was high as it would be in the following weeks, so the title
of that conference could seem at least out of place, even if for the
anarchist from Sulmona poetry was a weapon.
This is the brief account of the evening that was published in the
periodical of the Livorno anarchists «Il Seme» on June 18, 1922:
Suddenly on the 12th of this month a telegram arrived at the Trade Union
Labor Chamber, announcing the arrival of the brave comrade Virgilia
D'Andrea, inviting them to prepare a conference for Thursday evening.
Although time was short, the C.d.L.S. immediately sent out circulars to
all the participating sections, as well as to the avant-garde groups and
parties, inviting them to make the necessary propaganda for the success
of the conference, then arranging for the posting of a poster on the
wall announcing it, but at the last minute the Police Headquarters did
not want to allow it with the excuse of public order.
It is useless to comment on this artificial sabotage[sic]of the
unexpected conference, which however did not succeed in preventing the
large hall from being packed with workers including a good number of
women and girls.
At 9 pm, introduced with appropriate words by our[Riccardo]Sacconi,
comrade D'Andrea began her speech, masterfully developing the theme:
Libertarian Muse.
It is impossible for us to follow the talented orator in her refined and
polished speech, we only limit ourselves to saying that similar
conferences should be held more often and listened to even by those who,
forgetful of every form of civil life, live committing the saddest
actions, not excluding crime.
The impression of the audience was greater than expected, and in
everyone there remained alive the desire to be able to experience as
soon as possible again such an intellectual pleasure, which we hope the
good companion will not want to deny us.
Leafing through the chronicles of the anarchist newspaper «Umanità
nova», we learn that in the previous months Virgilia D'Andrea had
proposed and held a tour of pro-Umanità nova conferences in various
cities, requesting that the cost of the ticket to attend be at least one
lira; the proposed themes were Libertarian Muse, The value of sentiment
in life, Our prisoners, «which best suit her oratorical temperament and
her faculties».
From «Umanità nova» of 4 January 1922 we learn that on the evening of
31 January 1921, at a theatre in Rimini, despite the problems posed by
the police, she had held, in support of the anarchist newspaper, a
conference with a similar title: Liberating Muse: comrade
D'Andrea[who]for over an hour kept the audience enthralled by her
vibrant and moving words. She recalled the period of calm before the
war, spoke of the intoxication of war and continued declaiming her
poems, all vibrant with pure and human passion.
As happened in Rimini and Livorno, however, the relative reports of
these initiatives did not refer to the themes touched upon during the
conference and, as far as I know, the text of the conference has never
been published and in any case does not appear in the various published
collections of her conferences, thus arousing at least in the writer a
certain interest.
Probably, by the very admission of the militant authors of such reports,
there was embarrassment in describing the literary suggestions and the
emotions they aroused among the proletarians and comrades present;
moreover, as Virgilio Mazzoni would have noted, in his positive review
in «Umanità nova» of July 27, 1922, of the «rebel verses» of Tormento,
«although in our field, poetry does not have much success... commercially».
My curiosity therefore remained unanswered for a long time but, by
chance, it was at least partially satisfied having recently found in the
Roman chronicle of «Umanità nova» of March 22, 1922, an article that,
recounting the same conference held on March 19 in Rome, deals with it
in a sufficiently detailed way, so much so as to deserve to be
transcribed in full.
As mentioned yesterday, the conference held by comrade Virgilia D'Andrea
on Sunday morning at the Salon of Hairdressers was a splendid success.
Although it was a paid event, organized for the Circolo di Studi
Sociali, the audience still showed up in great numbers and many comrades
and supporters crowded the hall in Via Cavour.
Comrade D'Andrea was introduced by comrade Billi, a university student,
and spoke for about an hour amidst the lively and moved attention of the
audience, which demonstrated a very keen understanding and sensitivity.
With the simple but evocative lyricism that is her habit, with the words
vibrant with inner emotion that she knows how to say and that know how
to find the soul of the audience and shake it deeply, the speaker evoked
the most salient episodes of the life of the Italian people from the war
to fascism, setting in the speech that had precisely the theme
"Libertarian Muse", passages of poems and entire lyrics of her own
composition (they will shortly be collected in a volume), which written
under the immediate impression of the events as they unfolded in recent
times and therefore having all the naturalness of spontaneous things,
could not fail to captivate and enthuse the audience. "War blind",
"Decimation", "The return of the exile" (referring to the repatriation
of our Malatesta), "Capture and surrender of the factories", all these
episodes, these stages of the laborious journey of the workers towards
their tomorrow, towards their conquests, had in the verses of our good
companion such a communicative impetus, that all those present could not
refrain from showing their emotion in the most tangible way.
We are sure that artistic and social entertainments at the same time
like these, are very beneficial to the propaganda and education of the
masses.
The proletariat, the youth, the men of work, need not only the critical
and polemical conference, not only the fanfare, but also the melody.
These are sublimations of the spirit whose benefit is not at all to be
doubted.
In this conference what happens when the speaker manages to captivate
the soul and the brain of those who listen has occurred. The audience
applauds; but he has a stronger need to hold back the applause so as not
to disturb the state of spiritual enjoyment in which he is immersed. But
the held back applause then burst out thunderously when the speaker,
remembering all our victims, all those who died on the path of the
revolutionary struggle, closed with the magnificent verses of Carducci:
«... Blood
of the dead
hastens Your red
rivers
and fate
vaporizes to heaven
and with vengeance
intoxicates our
children!».
The announced book was Tormento, with a preface by Errico Malatesta and
a scarlet cover, published in Milan in the same year by Tipografia
Zerboni, and in March 1923 the Author was reported for contempt and
incitement to class hatred, with an arrest warrant, precisely in
relation to that collection of poems of hers which, evidently, in
addition to moving the proletariat, invited it to revolt. In a pathetic
attempt to summarize the content of the collection of poems, a zealous
police officer wrote: «The book is written in verse, and the verses are
overflowing with feline bile against Italy in its powers and in its
social structure: they are verses written thoughtfully and with study to
incite to crime, excite hatred and vilify the Army».
But before dwelling on the "excessive" poems presented by Virgilia
during the conference, I will make some hypotheses on the part of it in
which, as mentioned by the anonymous Roman editor, she had evoked «the
most salient episodes of the life of the Italian people from the war to
fascism».
Presumably they were, more or less, the same themes and protagonists
taken up in the countless conferences that she would have held between
1929 and 1932 in the United States where she had emigrated, together
with her life partner, ideals and militancy Armando Borghi, to escape
fascist and police persecution.
In particular, in the conferences Tenebre e fiamme nella tragedia
italiana and Le Tradizioni italiane rinegagate e tradite dal fascismo,
starting from the pages of Italian literature, not subjected for the
love of freedom to previous dominations, Virgilia D'Andrea had argued
that «fascism was and is the profound antithesis of Italian thought»,
also quoting Vittorio Alfieri: «My art is the muses; my predominant
passion is hatred of tyranny".
Taking into account that those American conferences were addressed to an
audience composed mainly of immigrant workers from Italy, towards whom
the fascist regime carried out intense propaganda focused on patriotism,
through newspapers and conferences organized by the Fasci also
constituted in the United States, one understands the anti-fascist sense
of the cultural conferences of the tireless anarchist.
Of the four poems recited in Rome, and almost certainly also in Livorno,
Blind with War (August 1920) and Decimation (September 1919) were
against the horrors of the First World War, with the curse of patriotic
rhetoric as a "derisive insult", and in The Return of the Exile
(December 1919), dedicated to Malatesta's clandestine return to an Italy
swept by revolutionary upheavals, there was the expectation "For the
immense impact of the "red" history", while The Capture and Surrender of
the Factories (October 1920) was a sort of bitter political assessment
of the Occupation of the Factories, which had ended a few months
earlier, "under the black sky".
All issues that screamed for vengeance and social justice, dangerously
appealing to the heart as well as the intelligence of every oppressed
and exploited person.
THE RETURN OF THE EXILE
To Errico Malatesta
He returns. From the white ship
Look at the deep blue austerities...
Around, around, a tired sweetness
Descends from above and is lost in the waves.
He returns. He shines from afar
A golden arch of solemn thought,
And in the passionate and arcane silence
Notes of a rebellious chorus vibrate.
And the placid and severe pupils
Think back that dream of passion
Immense love of the austere nights.
Throbbing with fever and tension.
Of daring flights, of audacious jolts,
Oof hopes and of a magical future,
Oof intense embraces and tenacious bonds
And mad waits and useless suffering!
O suffering, o wretched, o dispersed,
O slaves prone, pale and broken,
Under the blue of the beautiful clear skies,
Today you soar with bursting songs.
To the firm promises open your heart,
To the steep flights your pulsating mind,
And in your thoughts to the shining dawns
Open the passage, avenger and powerful.
And standing, bound and free, sing
The hymn of a vast and renewed world...
While the dream is torn apart you swear
To this faith, a deep heartbeat.
While the ship in the face of infinity
laughs at an intense blueness of glory,
Make the heart of steel and granite
for the immense impact of the "red" history.
Bologna, December 1919
* already published on the site www.toscananovecento.it
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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