262
“Many respectable people”: “The Choice of Companions,” p. 121.
262
While postwar Europe: “Rethinking Progress,” pp. 163, 176, 186.
262
On another occasion: “Ecco perché mi distaccai dalla Chiesa,” La Discussione, October 31, 1965; reprinted in ISRS, vol. 2, pp. 1267–71.
263
did not imitate her gesture: Colloqui, p. 95.
263
“Dear Don Piccinini”: Silone to Piccinini, January 21, 1970, Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 10, fascicolo 1.
263
“by instinct I am allergic to celebrations”: Silone to Gentile, January 15, 1970, Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 10, fascicolo 1.
263
“a great privilege”: Silone to Kollek, no date (but 1970), Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 10, fascicolo 1.
264
Rouault prints and reproductions: Colloqui, pp. 85–86; Pieracci Harwell, Un cristiano senza chiesa, p. 30–52.
265
“sharp nostalgia”: “The Choice of Companions,” pp. 125–26.
267
“For us Abruzzesi”: “La Maiella è il Libano di noi abruzzesi,” in “Sulle tracce di Celestino,” a sort of preface to L’avvventura di un povero cristiano, in ISRS, vol. 2, p. 546.
267
“They summon it in”: Paolo Morelli, “Majestic Maiella,” Megazine, August 2001.
268
“Celestine can help us”: “In Celestine’s Footsteps,” in The Story of a Humble Christian, p. 18.
268
“I am fairly satisfied”: Silone to Margherita Pieracci Harwell, August 27, 1967, in Un cristiano senza chiesa, p. 63.
268
“What an ending!”: “Presenza di Silone,” in Gasbarrini and Gentile, Silone: Tra l’Abruzzo e il mondo, p. 17.
268
“CELESTINO: Will you restore me”: The Story of a Humble Christian, pp. 185–86.
269
at home recovering: Gurgo and de Core, Silone, p. 391.
269
tape a message: Grazia Livi, “Un premio al pudore,” Epoca, September 1968.
270
“If the idea of utopia”: “L’eredità cristiano,” in L’avventura di un povero cristiano, in ISRS, vol. 2, p. 556.
270
“In the depths of my soul”: Interview with Grazia Coco, September 1969, Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 10, fascicolo 1.
270
“that group of twentieth-century writers”: Howe, A Margin of Hope, p. 194.
271
“I no longer speak”: Claudio Casoli, ed., Bacchelli, Betocchi, Cassola, Luzi, Quasimodo, Silone interpretano la società del Novecento (Milan: Marietti, 2005), p. 136.
271
“I have always aspired”: Herling, “L’importanza di una rivista,” p. 16.
272
“enriched by the slow”: Herling, “Rome, December 2, 1971,” in Volcano and Miracle, p. 27.
272
“one of the many things”: “40 domande a Ignazio Silone,” La Fiera Letteraria, April 11, 1954; reprinted in ISRS, vol. 1, p. 1212.
272
“ ‘You know,’ ” she said”: “Joy the Weeper,” in Mr. Aristotle, pp. 85–86.
273
Silone again apparently contemplated suicide: Interview with Darina Silone, November 29, 2000.
273
“The Choice of Companions”: The essay was first presented at a conference in Turin in 1954 and published in June of that year in Comunità; it subsequently appeared in the Quaderni of the Associazione Cultural Italiana and in the Testimonianze rubric of the Associazione Italiana della Libertà della Cultura. It was included in Emergency Exit.
273
“What a mournful band”: “The Choice of Companions,” p. 111.
273
“How can one possibly know”: “Rethinking Progress,” p. 188.
273
“Nihilism,” Silone wrote: “The Choice of Companions,” pp. 112, 114, 116.
274
Once, while attempting to visit: “The Beginning of a Search,” in The Story of a Humble Christian, pp. 15–16. As with some other autobiographical stories, it is difficult to corroborate this episode. Italians might say, “Se non è vero, è ben trovato” (Even if not true, it is an illuminating tale well told).
275
“it would find me”: Interview with Gino De Sanctis, in Il Messagero, October 17, 1972; reprinted in ISRS, vol. 2, p. 1287.
276
“a timid, courteous”: A Handful of Blackberries, p. 32.
277
“Forgive me,” said the dying man: Ibid., pp. 191, 201–02.
278
“I’ll appeal to the Bishop”: Ibid., pp. 180–81.
279
“Stella was driven”: Silone was asked by the editors of the New Republic to comment on the promulgation of anti-Semitic legislation in Fascist Italy; “Italian Anti-Semitism,” New Republic, November 23, 1938, pp. 67–69.
279
As Adele admonishes: A Handful of Blackberries, pp. 182–83.
279
in his capacity as priest: Alfonsi, Ignazio Silone, p. 54.
280
“I have only these names”: Silone to Anissimov, January 15, 1957; in Un dialogo difficile, p. 56. Dovid Bergelson, a Yiddish writer and former member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II, arrested during Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaign of 1952, was executed on his sixty-eighth birthday. A similar fate was meted out to Peretz Markish, another Yiddish writer. Itzik Feffer was a more complicated case: A colonel in the military press corps and vice chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, he was also an informer for the secret police. This could not spare him in the 1952 purge and he too was shot. Moshe Kulbak from Vilna was taken from Minsk in 1937 and sent to a Soviet labor camp, where he perished, perhaps in 1940.
280
“I could not have found”: Archivio Silone, Pescina. “It is no accident that the word nebbish originated in Yiddish,” writes Franklin Foer, “a language without a nation that is spoken by a people repeatedly beaten down by pogroms and thus in a good position to empathize with nebbishes . . . According to the great Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich, Jews appropriated the word nebbich from their Slavic neighbors in the 11th century. Indeed, other European nations with similar histories of subjugation maintain similar words. In Ukrainian, for instance, the word bidni refers to an unfortunate, pitiable soul. Italian has poverino. The fact that nebbish made it into English owes much to Jewish Borscht Belt comedians becoming ’50s TV stars.” Franklin Foer, “Nerd vs. Nebbish,” Slate, July 12, 1998, www.peterkamber.ch/ignazio.html.
281
“a second life companion”: Gurgo and de Core, Silone, p. 292.
281
“It was not easy”: Interview with Darina Silone, November 29, 2000, Rome.
281
his old friend from Switzerland: Colloqui, p. 83.
281
“anguished and unconsummated love”: Sontag, “Simone Weil.”
282
“she was intensely Jewish”: T. S. Eliot, preface to Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (New York: Putnam, 1952), pp. vii–viii.
282
“Jewish self-hatred”: See, for example, Paul Giniewski, Simone Weil ou la haine de soi (Paris: Berg International, 1978), and Thomas R. Nevin, Simone Weil: Portrait of a Self-Exiled Jew (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
282
very heart of prophetic monotheism: J. Edgar Bauer, “Simone Weil: Kenotic Thought and ‘Sainteté Nouvelle,’ ” www.cesnur.org/2002/slc/bauer.htm#_edn10.
282
Carlo Levi’s meditation: Carlo Levi, Of Fear and Freedom, trans. Adolphe Gourevitch (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1950; Columbia University Press, 2008).
282
“One must always be ready”: Uscita di sicurezza, p. 891.
282
simpl
y noted the humiliation: “Semplicemente,” Tempo Presente, April–May 1961; “Fine d’anno e fine di secolo,” Tempo Presente, December 1966; reprinted in ISRS, vol. 2, pp. 1089, 1103.
282
equal to Camus, Orwell, and Sartre: See Silone’s January 15, 1957, letter from Rome to Ivan Anissimov, published in Tempo Presente, reprinted in Un dialogo difficile, p. 68; also in ISRS, vol. 2, p. 1153.
282
“a spiritual itinerary”: Colloqui, p. 83.
282
“If Silone had not encountered”: Ibid., p. 85.
283
better imagine Severina: Darina Silone, “Premessa” and “Storia di un manoscritto,” both in Severina, pp. 19–22, 131–44.
283
profoundly affected by Bread and Wine: Pieracci Harwell, “Silone e Simone Weil.”
283
to visit Selma: The correspondence between Silone and Selma Weil can be found in the Silone Archive, Florence.
283
“the two volumes”: Pieracci Harwell, Un cristiano senza chiesa, p. 48.
283
when the Russian writer was composing: Silone recounted this story to Annibale Gentile in “Quando Silone mi rivelò il ‘Segreto di Luca,’ ” Il Tempo, August 22, 1979.
284
“The loss of my mother”: Darina Silone, “Le ultime ore di Ignazio Silone,” pp. 174–75.
284
“Through the glass”: “The Painful Return,” pp. 144, 147.
284
“When, as occasionally happened”: McDonald, “Il caso Silone,” p. 78.
284
“for me it is a good experience”: Silone to Luce d’Eramo, quoted in Ignazio Silone, p. 18.
285
“I was already thirty”: The letter requesting an interview, the questions, and Silone’s responses can be found in the Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 10, fascicolo 1.
286
“I think that all ideological systems”: “Un scrittore socialista,” p. 1235.
286
“power to change”: Note on the Revision of Fontamara, in The Abruzzo Trilogy, p. 4.
286
“When we came out”: Origo, A Need to Testify, pp. 196–97.
286
In one of Silone’s last public interviews: “Credere senza obbedire,” Il Messagero, October 17, 1972; reprinted in ISRS, vol. 2, pp. 1285, 1290.
287
“I have no fear of dying”: Appendix to Severina, p. 169.
288
“miraculous ways”: Darina Silone to McCarthy, August 12, 1978, Vassar College, McCarthy Papers, box 223, folder 223.6.
288
“I have to consider his dignity”: Ibid.
288
“indeed desperate”: Darina Silone to McCarthy, August 8, 1978, ibid.
288
“How many years lost”: Colloqui, p. 82.
289
“I greatly admire Solzhenitsyn”: Herling, “Dragonea, August 28,” in Volcano and Miracle, p. 79. Solzhenitsyn’s Class Day speech was given at Harvard on June 8, 1978. Silone may have been referring to the following phrase: “But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive . . . A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience.” www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html.
289
“My Abruzzo can be anywhere”: Herling, “Dragonea, August 28,” p. 77.
289
“his joy when he realized”: Darina Silone to McCarthy, November 4, 1978, McCarthy Papers, box 223, folder 223.6.
289
In another version: “Le ultime ore di Ignazio Silone,” appendix to Severina, pp. 167–82.
290
Darina was still outraged: Ibid. In the margin of her letter to McCarthy here, Darina wrote, “The pity of it, Horatio, the pity of it!”
291
“people stealing even more”: Darina Silone to McCarthy, November 4, 1978.
291
“I simply had to clear out”: Darina Silone to McCarthy, February 28, 1979, McCarthy Papers, box 223, folder 223.6.
291
Silone had stipulated: See Darina’s appeal to collect Silone’s vast correspondence after his death in the New York Review of Books, July 19, 1979.
292
revert to the city of Pescina: The handwritten document is reproduced in Gasbarrini and Gentile, Ignazio Silone. Comunista, pp. ix–x.
292
At the hour of our death: The document is translated here for the first time. Darina Silone published a photocopy of the original and a transcription in the appendix to Severina, pp. 160–64. She judges it to have been written between 1963 and 1966.
293
“In his will”: Remarks at the centenary commemorations of Silone’s birth, May 1, 2000, Pescina.
293
She sent flowers: Colloqui, pp. 39, 123.
293
“the only serious way”: Carlo Rosselli, “Il neo-socialismo francese” (1933); reprinted in Costanzo Casucci, ed., Scritti dell’esilio (Turin: Einaudi, 1988), vol. 1, p. 227.
294
“Everything Silone wrote”: Howe, introduction to Bread and Wine, p. vi.
EIGHT “SILVESTRI”
295
archival documents: The documents were first presented at a conference organized by Stanford University in Florence. See Biocca, “Ignazio Silone e la polizia politica,” pp. 67–93, and Biocca, “ ‘Tranquilli’ (nell’ombra),” pp. 53–76; Canali, “Il fiduciario Silvestri,” pp. 61–86. Biocca and Canali used these essays as the basis for an expanded examination in L’informatore, as well as Canali’s Il caso Silone. A forum that included Romolo Tranquilli Jr. appeared as “Silone: per favore non chiamatelo spia,” Reset 54 (May–June 1999): 63–78. The charges are also scattered throughout Biocca’s Silone. In English, see Canali, “Ignazio Silone and the Fascist Political Police,” pp. 36–60.
295
Biocca’s bombshell was primed: Giovanni Belardelli, “Silone. Con l’OVRA per amore del fratello,” Corriere della Sera, March 7, 1996. Biocca’s address two days later was titled “The Taste of Ashes.”
295
a rival newspaper in Rome: “Silone: All’OVRA non collaboro più,” La Repubblica, April 30, 1996.
295
specialist on the Fascist secret police: Canali, Le Spie del regime.
295
“There were already continuous slanders”: Giorgio Bocca, “Ignazio Silone: ‘abnormale politico,’ ” La Repubblica, August 23, 1978.
295
“that he risked being”: Robert Gordon, “Emergency Exit,” Times Literary Supplement, October 20, 2000, p. 12.
295
“Press Collect Via ITALRADIO”: Archivio Silone, Florence, busta 2, fascicolo 8, doc. 106.
297
“He’s lucky”: Cutler, “Final Examination,” in Seeing the Darkness, pp. 13–14. I have not been able to ascertain whether this story was apocryphal or based on a true event, as Cutler has died.
298
the archive is the locus: Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
298
cannot be consulted by scholars: In contrast, Professors Maurizio Degl’Innocenti and Stefano Caretti and Dottoressa Paola Pirovani were collegial and helpful during the time I consulted the Silone Archive in Florence, as was the staff at the Centro Studi Ignazio Silone in Pescina.
298
several fine scholarly works: Alessandro Portelli, The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and the Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). See also Luisa Passerini, Fascism in Popular Memory: The Cultural Experience of the Turin Working Class, trans. Robert Lumley and Jude Bloomfield (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). For a survey of recent trends and debates in the methodology of oral history, see John M. Foot, “Words, Songs and Books: Oral History in Italy,” Journal of Modern History 3, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 164–74.
299
“all different from Silone’s”: Anna Petrecchia, “Silone spia?” Corriere della Sera, April 28, 2001.
299
As one scholar has aptly: Tamburrano, Granati, and Isinelli, Processo a Silone, p. 6.
299
“We don’t risk being accused”: Secondino Tranquilli, “Borghesia, piccola borghesia e fascismo,” Lo Stato Operaio, April 1928, quoted in Franzinelli, I tentacoli dell’OVRA, p. 311.
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