Mirella Armiero "A Rebel Thought. Maria Bakunin, the Lady of Naples" -
Solferino Editore (Milan, 2025, 176 pages, EUR16.50) ---- The
fascinating human and political story, the complex and rich life of
Marussia Bakunin, a free and rebellious woman and scholar who preceded
her time, is dedicated to the beautiful, engaging, participatory and
passionate biographical reconstruction of the Neapolitan journalist
Mirella Armiero, author of the volume "A Rebel Thought. Maria Bakunin,
the Lady of Naples" ---- Maria - known as Marussia - Bakunin was born on
February 2, 1873 in Krasnojarsk, a freezing city in Siberia, but she
lived the rest of her life in the "country of the sun". Naples is the
city that in 1865, after the extraordinary escape from the Siberian
prison, was chosen by his father, the anarchist agitator and thinker
Michele Bakunin, for the sun, for the revolution, for the people and
above all for the coffee; here he will be one of the major inspirers of
the Circolo and of the weekly «Libertà e Giustizia» published from 17
August to 24 December 1867.
Marussia's sister, Sofia, is the mother of Renato Caccioppoli, the
anti-fascist and communist mathematician who in 1938, challenging a
squad of Nazi soldiers, sings and plays La Marseillaise; his aunt
manages to save him from the fascist prison. According to some research
and discoveries, rather than Michele Bakunin, with his brother and
sister, Maria is the daughter of Carlo Gambuzzi, a Neapolitan anarchist
lawyer and friend of her father, who after Bakunin's death in 1876, will
marry the young widow Antonia and educate his three children. Already in
1930 Marussia will forcefully and angrily defend her father's memory
from the mud and allusions of an aristocratic Russian writer about the
"white wedding", about the extramarital love of the heroic mother, who
had followed her father in his escape and exile. In Paris he meets the
publisher Gallimard and the author, and they agree to eliminate the
gossip. The agreement will not be respected because "publishers are
merchants who try to earn money and, in order to sell a few more copies,
they would be capable of selling their parents and children".
Nevertheless, in Europe and throughout the world, the myth and memory of
Bakunin will continue to fuel the irrepressible desire and the struggle
of humanity for the conquest - through social revolution - of freedom,
equality, human dignity denied to people by bullies and tyrants.
Throughout her life, the "professor" will be more than proud and honored
by the surname Bakunin: in a letter to the Austrian scholar Max Nettlau,
to whom she continuously sends letters and documents regarding her
father's life, she recalls that it was spent on the European
revolutionary barricades for the weak, the poor and the unfortunate of
the whole world, for freedom and human dignity.
Marussia is the first woman in Italy to enroll in the Faculty of
Chemistry at the University of Naples and to graduate in 1895. Then she
will be assigned the chair and will also be the first woman in Italy to
teach Chemistry until her retirement, at 75 years of age. Among his
students, who do not forget his severity but will always respect him,
there is - as his wife, the writer Pia Zanolli, told me - also the young
Calabrian anarchist Bruno Misefari. When necessary he encourages his
students in their studies and many future researchers and important
scientists will be trained at his school.1718
On June 11, 1896 - despite 26 years of difference - she marries her
professor, Agostino Ogliarolo, a Sicilian scientist and future rector.
Her career will also have other records. In 1906 she deals with the
eruption of Vesuvius. From 1910 to 1930 in the Salerno area, in the
Picentini Mountains, which he reaches on foot or on the back of a mule,
he discovers and analyzes the schists, dark sedimentary rocks rich in
organic matter that produce ichthyol, an ointment that for its
antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties is used in medicine and
dermatology. The ichthyol production factory, built in 1912 on the
advice of Marussia by two local entrepreneurs, will provide work for
many people, including many women. Downstream from the mine he even
built a school for the children of the miners of Giffoni Valle Piana
(Salerno), where Marussia lives, a guest of the engineer Giuseppe
Pistilli. Today the "magnificent family home" belongs to the professor
and scholar Vittorio Dini, to whose great courtesy and hospitality I owe
the honor of having visited it years ago, accompanied by the great
emotion of walking on the same floor walked by the "daughter of
Bakunin", whose writings, thoughts and life I know and admire. In
addition to the surviving walls of the school, following the mule track
of the Picentini mountains, you find the large circular tank buried by
vegetation, in which the material to extract the ichthyol was heated,
and you come across the shed of the powder magazine, where the sticks of
dynamite to split the mountain were made.
The museum-laboratory where Marussia worked is looked after by Virgilio
De Mattia, who has known the place since he was a child: his father, a
mine worker, tied him to the saddle of the mule, and took him with him.
Virgilio knows every secret of those rocks and from some, with his bare
hands - enchanted - he separates the various layers while the
characteristic smell of ichthyol can be felt in the air. When he breaks
a stone and glimpses the trace of a leaf or a fossil he rightly states:
"When I climb up here, I can spend hours reading a stone...".
On September 12, 1943, Nazi troops set fire to his home and to the two
hundred thousand volumes of the University Library, which he strenuously
defends in front of the Nazi officer who threatens to burn it because
someone has shot from the window. Marussia's resistance is in vain and
many precious volumes are engulfed in flames and incinerated.
She died in Naples on April 17, 1960. It was Easter Sunday. Many people
- professors, students, friends, commoners - followed her coffin,
covered with white flowers and red carnations, the color of the
revolution dreamed and preached by her father and herself for the
conquest of freedom, which - as she wrote to Max Nettlau - «is the most
beautiful thing that exists on this earth», testifying to a loyalty to
the anarchist ideal that she never abandoned and that had characterized
her father's life.
Giuseppe Galzerano18
https://umanitanova.org/marussia-bakunin/
_________________________________________
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
Solferino Editore (Milan, 2025, 176 pages, EUR16.50) ---- The
fascinating human and political story, the complex and rich life of
Marussia Bakunin, a free and rebellious woman and scholar who preceded
her time, is dedicated to the beautiful, engaging, participatory and
passionate biographical reconstruction of the Neapolitan journalist
Mirella Armiero, author of the volume "A Rebel Thought. Maria Bakunin,
the Lady of Naples" ---- Maria - known as Marussia - Bakunin was born on
February 2, 1873 in Krasnojarsk, a freezing city in Siberia, but she
lived the rest of her life in the "country of the sun". Naples is the
city that in 1865, after the extraordinary escape from the Siberian
prison, was chosen by his father, the anarchist agitator and thinker
Michele Bakunin, for the sun, for the revolution, for the people and
above all for the coffee; here he will be one of the major inspirers of
the Circolo and of the weekly «Libertà e Giustizia» published from 17
August to 24 December 1867.
Marussia's sister, Sofia, is the mother of Renato Caccioppoli, the
anti-fascist and communist mathematician who in 1938, challenging a
squad of Nazi soldiers, sings and plays La Marseillaise; his aunt
manages to save him from the fascist prison. According to some research
and discoveries, rather than Michele Bakunin, with his brother and
sister, Maria is the daughter of Carlo Gambuzzi, a Neapolitan anarchist
lawyer and friend of her father, who after Bakunin's death in 1876, will
marry the young widow Antonia and educate his three children. Already in
1930 Marussia will forcefully and angrily defend her father's memory
from the mud and allusions of an aristocratic Russian writer about the
"white wedding", about the extramarital love of the heroic mother, who
had followed her father in his escape and exile. In Paris he meets the
publisher Gallimard and the author, and they agree to eliminate the
gossip. The agreement will not be respected because "publishers are
merchants who try to earn money and, in order to sell a few more copies,
they would be capable of selling their parents and children".
Nevertheless, in Europe and throughout the world, the myth and memory of
Bakunin will continue to fuel the irrepressible desire and the struggle
of humanity for the conquest - through social revolution - of freedom,
equality, human dignity denied to people by bullies and tyrants.
Throughout her life, the "professor" will be more than proud and honored
by the surname Bakunin: in a letter to the Austrian scholar Max Nettlau,
to whom she continuously sends letters and documents regarding her
father's life, she recalls that it was spent on the European
revolutionary barricades for the weak, the poor and the unfortunate of
the whole world, for freedom and human dignity.
Marussia is the first woman in Italy to enroll in the Faculty of
Chemistry at the University of Naples and to graduate in 1895. Then she
will be assigned the chair and will also be the first woman in Italy to
teach Chemistry until her retirement, at 75 years of age. Among his
students, who do not forget his severity but will always respect him,
there is - as his wife, the writer Pia Zanolli, told me - also the young
Calabrian anarchist Bruno Misefari. When necessary he encourages his
students in their studies and many future researchers and important
scientists will be trained at his school.1718
On June 11, 1896 - despite 26 years of difference - she marries her
professor, Agostino Ogliarolo, a Sicilian scientist and future rector.
Her career will also have other records. In 1906 she deals with the
eruption of Vesuvius. From 1910 to 1930 in the Salerno area, in the
Picentini Mountains, which he reaches on foot or on the back of a mule,
he discovers and analyzes the schists, dark sedimentary rocks rich in
organic matter that produce ichthyol, an ointment that for its
antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties is used in medicine and
dermatology. The ichthyol production factory, built in 1912 on the
advice of Marussia by two local entrepreneurs, will provide work for
many people, including many women. Downstream from the mine he even
built a school for the children of the miners of Giffoni Valle Piana
(Salerno), where Marussia lives, a guest of the engineer Giuseppe
Pistilli. Today the "magnificent family home" belongs to the professor
and scholar Vittorio Dini, to whose great courtesy and hospitality I owe
the honor of having visited it years ago, accompanied by the great
emotion of walking on the same floor walked by the "daughter of
Bakunin", whose writings, thoughts and life I know and admire. In
addition to the surviving walls of the school, following the mule track
of the Picentini mountains, you find the large circular tank buried by
vegetation, in which the material to extract the ichthyol was heated,
and you come across the shed of the powder magazine, where the sticks of
dynamite to split the mountain were made.
The museum-laboratory where Marussia worked is looked after by Virgilio
De Mattia, who has known the place since he was a child: his father, a
mine worker, tied him to the saddle of the mule, and took him with him.
Virgilio knows every secret of those rocks and from some, with his bare
hands - enchanted - he separates the various layers while the
characteristic smell of ichthyol can be felt in the air. When he breaks
a stone and glimpses the trace of a leaf or a fossil he rightly states:
"When I climb up here, I can spend hours reading a stone...".
On September 12, 1943, Nazi troops set fire to his home and to the two
hundred thousand volumes of the University Library, which he strenuously
defends in front of the Nazi officer who threatens to burn it because
someone has shot from the window. Marussia's resistance is in vain and
many precious volumes are engulfed in flames and incinerated.
She died in Naples on April 17, 1960. It was Easter Sunday. Many people
- professors, students, friends, commoners - followed her coffin,
covered with white flowers and red carnations, the color of the
revolution dreamed and preached by her father and herself for the
conquest of freedom, which - as she wrote to Max Nettlau - «is the most
beautiful thing that exists on this earth», testifying to a loyalty to
the anarchist ideal that she never abandoned and that had characterized
her father's life.
Giuseppe Galzerano18
https://umanitanova.org/marussia-bakunin/
_________________________________________
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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