"They came here with the sword and the cross, they used the sword to slaughter us
and the cross to enslave us." ---- The sword and the cross, this is one of therecurring motifs of the latest, and full-bodied, publication by Pino Cacucci,L'elbano errante, Mondadori, 2022. ---- A different text from his other workswhere, however, we find settings and themes dear to him: a historical novelresulting from a vast documentation in which the journey, the inevitablecontradictions, the search for coherence, the denunciation, the complex balancebetween opportunities and possible answers, towards inhuman and wicked actions,assume that surprising breath that leads one of the protagonists to declare:"Never surrender to what seems to be the evidence: dreamers will always give ushope".The forced separation of Lucero (Elba) from his sister Angiolina gives life totwo opposing stories, but equally marked by the educational values transmitted inchildhood, e.g. in the exhortation of their father Santiago, who was alsodestined for a parallel existence: "People are not to be hated for their race,but for the wrongs that each one can do to you. Don't forgive wrongs, it's yourright, but never confuse individual scoundrels with the peoples to which theybelong".We are in the 16th century, the era of artistic flowering, of ethical andphilosophical immanence...At what price? suggests Cacucci. The humanist cultural renewal known as theRenaissance is here re-described in all its antinomies; wars, massacres, revengeand cruelty constantly draw the scenarios, from the Mediterranean to across theAtlantic, within which characters capable of finding relief and a desire forredemption are inserted and where it is precisely the chivalrous and picaresqueliterature that plays a role of emancipation. And it is no coincidence that theencounter between Elban and a Miguel de Cervantes, still far from becoming thegreat writer of utopia disguised as madness, turns into a solid friendship.We therefore find the other face of the Renaissance, but also affirmations ofessential universality symbolized, for example, by the ability to memorize anovel in order not to go crazy.Wars of domination blessed by an Inquisition which condemns the bearers of areluctant popular culture to the stake, which sends books of uncomfortablephilosophies to the Index, which destroys lands and populations guilty of beingconsidered savages in the name of a civilization which, alone, should deserve tobe handed down by history, while "the last of the last, those who scream as theyare killed during historical events or simply keep silent and do their best -with decency and dignity - to oppose barbarism, those have no voice and do notleave traces in history".And so swords and crosses take on narrative variants in which to insert contrastsof lightness also represented by luck, as a warning not to give in or a reminderof life that must be faced in any case, as a breath of freedom.Yes, because the author, while immersing us in the descriptive details of wartactics, seafaring strategies and bloody battles, wants to tell us that one can,must, always tell of yearning for freedom... despite the harsh realities, so muchso that Angiolina, forced to become Aisha finds salvation in understanding that"the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, contempt, looking away".Cacucci in some passages invites us to wink at the contradictions of theEnlightenment by resorting to splendid and effective ironies: "That's why he sayshe's mad like a horse. When they demand rational explanations instead ofaccepting the immense complexity of nature, humans always invoke madness.And while doubt accompanies every wanderer on earth and adventures are a gift forthose who know how to seek them, the least easy pitfalls to overcome are thosebased on hypocrisy.The flowing and linear expository style, despite the detailed historicalreconstructions (with some license for narrative needs specified at the end ofthe novel), is also effective in the unexpected and absolutely non-trivialending: in harmony with the sensibilities capable of appreciating the journey forthe journey - therefore not as a landing place but as a feeling of infinity - orthat sense of existential precariousness which is a continuous search for answers.Thank you Pino and good luck!chiara gazzolahttps://www.sicilialibertaria.it/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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