The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism: The Inimical Son (Italian and Italian American Studies) 3031238397, 9783031238390

Table of contents :
Foreword
Filomena Fantarella’s The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism—The Inimical Son
Foreword to the Italian Edition
Acknowledgements
Archives Consulted
Cambridge (Massachusetts)
Paris
Lugano
Rome
Florence
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Before Messina
1 From Molfetta to Florence
2 The Messina Earthquake
3 The Thread of Hope
Chapter 3: After Messina
1 Among Salvemini’s Friends …
2 A Political Fight: Universal Suffrage
3 A Refuge in War
Chapter 4: The Spiritual Father of a New Generation
1 The First Postwar Period
2 Peace at Home
3 Three young friends: Nello, Carlo and Ernesto
4 Antifascism: The Early Battles
5 1925–1933: Between France and England
Chapter 5: 1934–1941: Cracks in the Family. Exile and the United States of America
1 Toward New Lands
2 Between Fascism and Antifascism
Chapter 6: A Union Ended (1941–1946)
1 The Seduction of Power and the Sin of Ambition: The Case of Jean Luchaire
2 A Family in the Eye of the Hurricane
3 A Telegram from Ghita
4 Jean Luchaire’s Trial: The End of a Union
5 An Irreparable Break
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

ITALIAN AND ITALIAN AMERICAN STUDIES

The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism The Inimical Son Filomena Fantarella Foreword by David I. Kertzer Second Edition

Italian and Italian American Studies Series Editor Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, USA

This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another. Editorial Board Phillip V.  Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY, USA William J. Connell, Seton Hall University, USA Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY, USA Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University, USA Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy Rebecca West, University of Chicago, USA

Filomena Fantarella

The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism The Inimical Son

2nd ed. 2023

Filomena Fantarella Brown University Providence, RI, USA

ISSN 2635-2931     ISSN 2635-294X (electronic) Italian and Italian American Studies ISBN 978-3-031-23839-0    ISBN 978-3-031-28742-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, 2023 0th edition: © Donzelli Editore Roma 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Photos from Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

“How awful, despairing, to surrender to defeat before even having fought.” Gaetano Salvemini To all those who never give up

Foreword

Filomena Fantarella’s The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism—The Inimical Son Gaetano Salvemini, a towering intellectual force in the politics of twentieth century Italy, spent a good part of his adult life as a political exile from his homeland, becoming one of Fascism’s most influential critics worldwide. Fleeing Italy in 1925, he would return only twenty-three years later. Initially trained as a historian of late medieval Florence, he early turned his attention to the history of modern Italy, an academic pursuit that would soon mix in productive, if sometimes polemical ways with his deep involvement in contemporary Italian political life. Given Salvemini’s influence, a large academic literature, in good part by Italian scholars, has examined his life and works. Academic conferences have been devoted to consider his work, full-scale biographies have been published, and whole books have been written critiquing the historian’s writings.1 While Salvemini was known for his careful use of primary sources in his historical work and in his studies of the Italian Fascist regime, he was also not free from a polemical and argumentative streak of his own. Indeed, he alienated many with the sharpness of his critiques of those on both the left and the right. The work that has been published about his life and

1  The best general English-language biography of Salvemini is Charles L.  Killinger’s Gaetano Salvemini: A Biography (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).

vii

viii 

FOREWORD

work has, no surprisingly, similarly reflected contemporary political currents.2 As Filomena Fantarella points out in her introduction, what is so striking about this vast biographical literature is how little attention it pays to the domestic dramas that could never have been far from his mind and could not have failed to influence his work. Two in particular stand out as tragedies of such magnitude as to have scarred him deeply. The first, better known, although largely passed over in a few sentences in most studies of Salvemini, was the death of his wife and his five small children in the earthquake that struck the Sicilian city of Messina in 1908. At the time, Salvemini, thirty-five years old, was in his first university faculty position, at the University of Messina. As Fantarella so dramatically describes in these pages, he was in his apartment with his family when the horrific earthquake struck. It was the most devastating earthquake in Europe’s history, with Salvemini’s family among the 75,000 Messina residents who died that night, many buried amidst the rubble while still in their beds. It was a family disaster of a very different kind, though, that is the main focus of Fantarella’s book, and one that most works on Salvemini ignore entirely. In 1916, the widowed historian married Fernande Dauriac, a French intellectual living in Florence. Over the next years, Fernande’s teenage son Jean became close to Salvemini. As Fantarella shows, Jean became close to a number of Salvemini’s young protégés in Florence as well, some of whom would later become major figures in Italy’s anti-­ Fascist movement. In the very month in which Mussolini announced his dictatorship, January 1925, Salvemini helped found the first clandestine anti-Fascist newspaper in Italy, Non mollare. Five months later he was arrested. Benefitting from an amnesty coming weeks after his imprisonment, Salvemini fled the country, and he spent most of the next nine years in France and Britain. As a biographer of Salvemini put it, “He was soon to emerge as perhaps the most penetrating student of Mussolini’s Italy as well as one of the most acute observers of the world scene.”3 In these first years of his exile, he met with numerous major figures in the anti-Fascist 2  See, for example, Nicola Tranfaglia, “Gaetano Salvemini storico del fascismo.”  Studi Storici 29 (1989), no. 4, pp. 903–23; Gaetano Quagliariello, Gaetano Salvemini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007). 3  Dante A. Puzzo, “Gaetano Salvemini: An Historiographical Essay,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 20 (1959), n. 2, p. 224.

 FOREWORD 

ix

movement and served as an elder advisor to the younger men—men like Carlo Rosselli and Ernesto Rossi—who were organizing clandestine anti-­ Fascist groups in Italy. Among these new groups none was more prominent that Giustizia e libertà, founded with Salvemini’s help in Paris in 1929, its most prominent members including a number of his former students from Florence.4 Always prone to follow his own path and never comfortable with political organizations, Salvemini would never remain long in any of these groups, critical of choices they made. Rather than an organizational leader, he became, according to one common appellation, the independent “conscience” of the exiled antifascist movement.5 It was in this initial period of his exile, too, that he began publishing a series of carefully documented works on the Fascist regime, beginning with his 1927 book, The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy. These served as an important counterweight to the stream of propaganda Mussolini was so ably purveying internationally, winning him favourable publicity in much of the western world. Moving to the U.S. with his appointment to the faculty of Harvard University in 1934, Salvemini continued to combine his passions as an academic historian with his work as a political polemicist and fierce opponent of Italy’s Fascist regime. While publishing other books on Mussolini’s dictatorship along with a stream of articles, he also continued his conflict-­ filled relationships with his fellow anti-Fascists. As a strong anti-­ Communist, he alienated one segment of the anti-Fascist movement, while his attacks on the Vatican and the Italian monarchy as major enablers of the Fascist regime alienated others. When it finally became clear that Italy’s future would be post-Fascist, his 1943 book What to do about Italy?, written with his Harvard colleague and fellow Italian émigré George La Piana, helped focus debate on the country’s political future. Shockingly, at the same time as Salvemini was churning out his attacks on Italy’s Fascist regime and its supporters, his own stepson, Jean, now an adult in France, had become one of the most prominent and notorious supporters of French collaboration with the Nazis. When, in 1944, Allied troops liberated France, Jean escaped to Germany and began broadcasting Nazi-sponsored denunciations of the Allied forces and their French 4  Mauro Moretti, “Salvemini, Gaetano,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 89 (2017), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/gaetano-salvemini_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. 5  Charles Killinger, “Gaetano Salvemini: antifascism in thought and action,”  Journal of Modern Italian Studies 15 (2010), no. 5, p. 661.

x 

FOREWORD

supporters. Following the war, while Salvemini was immersed in his efforts to guide post-Fascist Italian political developments, his stepson was in a French jail, awaiting trial and possible execution for treason. His wife, Fernande, pleaded with him to come to her son’s aid. What are we to make of the fact that most Italian works on Salvemini’s political thought and anti-Fascist activities dealing with these years make no mention of this drama that affected him so directly and so deeply? And what are we to make of the fact that those relatively few works that do mention his stepson’s highly visible pro-Nazi activities do so only in passing? Is the subject somehow inappropriate? Is this a private family affair that has no role in serious biographical study? Thankfully, Filomena Fantarella is not of this persuasion, and this book, written in her lively style, with an incredible cast of fascinating characters, shows why no full understanding of Salvemini’s life can ignore the pain caused the anti-Fascist crusader and the dilemma he faced as a result of the path his stepson took. Fantarella’s use of unpublished correspondence between Salvemini and Jean’s mother, Fernande, adds to the dramatic tale told in these pages. Yet mysteries still remain, as Fantarella makes clear. Why during all those years that Salvemini spent at Harvard, did Fernande never join him in the U.S.? What are we to make of the fact that later, when Salvemini returned to Italy, he had no interest in having his tormented wife join him? The historian would die in Italy alone, two days before his 84th birthday in 1957. In short, this is a book that combines a dramatic political history with a no less dramatic family, personal history. The reader is in for a rare treat. Providence, RI January 4, 2022

David I. Kertzer

Foreword to the Italian Edition1

Gaetano Salvemini was a hero of the twentieth century. The Mazzini imperative teaches that in order for an intellectual, no matter how important, to become a hero, his thought must be consistent with his actions. It is this unity of theory and practice that marks Salvemini’s path from as early as 1873 when, as a young man born to a modest Apulian family, through his own virtue as much as by a stroke of good luck, he escaped an almost certain fate of material poverty and cultural drowning to become a brilliant scholar and passionate political activist by the end of the nineteenth century. Grateful to his excellent but modest teachers and eminent scholars like Pasquale Villari, who helped him rise to honourable heights, he built his existence on two pillars that were to uphold him until his death in September, 1957: the study and teaching of history and political activism—the one oriented toward intellectual edification and spiritual elevation, the other a tool used to defend the humiliated and disenfranchised, starting with the poor farmers of the Italian Mezzogiorno, promote civil and political progress, and defend freedom and democracy against incumbent threats, the most dangerous and harmful of which was Italy’s then Fascist dictatorship. Salvemini’s admirable and important work in social reform and his role as an unmovable opponent of Fascism made of him a Mazzini for the

1  Un figlio per nemico. Gli affetti di Gaetano Salvemini alla prova dei fascismi (Roma: Donzelli Press, 2018).

xi

xii 

FOREWORD TO THE ITALIAN EDITION

twentieth century. Like the great Genovese unifier, he groomed apprentices, was loved and supported by friends, persecuted by enemies, and forced into exile; he was both admired and denigrated. But celebrated as he is, he should not be praised blindly: he made mistakes, revealed severe incomprehension, threw himself into failed or inopportune battles, which he regretted, and which plunged him into a state of discomfort and disappointment. But he always reacted with staggering self-awareness. In political battle, he displayed a fiery temperament in stark contrast to the unbiased poise characteristic of his work as a historian. To give but one example of it: as Walter Maturi notes in Interpretazioni del Risorgimento, in 1925, Salvemini, a republican, federalist, and fervent admirer of Cattaneo, wrote “the clearest and most ingenious defence of the origins of the centralizing and unifying monarchic system in Italy” put into place by the historic Right after 1861, and without which preserving the country’s unity would have been impossible. My meeting with Salvemini took place in the second half of the Fifties, at the University of Turin. In one of the seminars he was leading, Maturi handed me Mazzini, requesting that I prepare a presentation of it. At the time, I knew next to nothing about the Apulian historian. I read it and grew excited. Then I decided, with my supervisor’s approval, to write my thesis on Salvemini and the South. I dedicated myself to it wholly, studying earlier and later figures of the Italian South, widening the scope of my project. My research on Salvemini was to become the central chapter of a book published by Einaudi in 1960 entitled The Myth of Good Government. The Question of the South from Cavour to Gramsci. As I prepared my draft, Maturi suggested that I attempt to meet and interview Salvemini, then a guest at the villa La Rufola in Sorrento. With the third-party help of Ernesto Rossi, to whom I had been introduced by Emilio Lussu, the meeting was set for September 7, 1957. I arrived at the villa that morning, unaware of Salvemini’s death just the previous day. I walked into the waiting room, where his coffin sat, minutes before it was closed. I saw him and was stricken by his small stature. Not only had a hero died, my hero had died. Following my graduation, in 1959, I undertook to complete my military service, determined to write a comprehensive essay on Salvemini’s political action and work as a historian. During mandated breaks, I began to collect research materials and take notes, which ultimately resulted in the essay Gaetano Salvemini, published by “Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi” in 1963.

  FOREWORD TO THE ITALIAN EDITION 

xiii

Now, that essay is not much more than an almost archaeological find in a rich bibliography on Salvemini. Using a number of different interpretative approaches, it uncovered the importance and significance of Salvemini’s work to his country’s history. But there was a lacuna in it, an important lacuna on a little known and still less investigated chapter of his private life: that regarding his second family, formed in 1916 when he remarried, taking as a second wife the French Fernande Dauriac, previously married to the professor and scholar Julien Luchaire, with whom she had had two children: Jean and Marguerite (diminutive, Ghita), born in 1901 and 1904. His second marriage, and its tragic demise, were no secret, but not many details were known about them. No one had dug that far. But a young researcher, Filomena Fantarella, has done just that, in the essay that follows, originally published by Donzelli Press. It is a worthwhile read, written with passion and based on scrupulous research conducted in a number of archives in the United States, France, Switzerland, and Italy. It brings to light that which might be defined the second personal tragedy to strike Salvemini, later in his life, many years after the Messina earthquake of 1908 that devastated his earlier years, depriving him, in one blow, of his wife and their five children. At the time, Fantarella writes, Julien and Fernande “were among those who [had] rushed to Sicily to help Salvemini find his family under the rubble.” A futile search. It was then, as the historian “threw himself frenetically into his work to alleviate the crushing weight of his pain,” that “Fernande became his friend and confidante” and that her two children afforded Salvemini “the illusion of the warmth of a family. He became particularly attached to little Jean, a vivacious boy passionate about politics, who Salvemini would affectionately call Giovannino” and who found in him “the passionate father that Julien, cold and distant, had never succeeded at being.” In 1915, Julien and Fernande divorced; the following year, Gaetano married Fernande, creating with her “a close-­ knit and happy family.” This second family constitutes the axis of Fantarella’s book. She frames their narrative making appropriate references to the cultural and political context in which Salvemini operated over the course of his life. But the true originality of her research lies in the pages dedicated to this family’s tragedy and to the distancing of Gaetano and Fernande. The catalyst: Jean’s adherence to Nazism—he had become so extremely active a journalist in German-occupied France, that he became known as the “Führer” of the French press—which led him to move to Germany in 1944, where he encouraged the extermination of members of the French Resistance. In

xiv 

FOREWORD TO THE ITALIAN EDITION

1945, he sought refuge, in vain, in Switzerland, where he was arrested; in 1946, he was tried, found guilty of treason, and executed on February 22nd. Needless to say, Jean’s deplorable political choices and his ultimate fate, swept his family into a whirlwind of misfortune. After the arrest of her son, Fernande begged her husband, a prestigious scholar and well-­ renowned antifascist, to intercede with the authorities. But her husband, himself painfully torn apart by his stepson’s fate, refused her request, both because he was convinced his involvement would amount to nothing, and because he believed that Jean should pay for what he had done. An irremediable rift was created between the two. Salvemini wrote to his wife: “What happened to Jean is just as painful to me as what happened to me on December 28, 1908. I cannot think about it without suffering immeasurably.” I’ll say no more about the events Fantarella narrates. It is up to the reader to read that which she has written about the man who adopted the lifelong motto, “Never give up” and who, in one of the most difficult moments of his existence—one which the author has finally brought to light—torn apart by the contrast between his personal feelings of compassion and his political and moral convictions, he unhesitatingly chose the latter, paying the price of a great deal of suffering and sacrificing his relationship with a wife he continued to love. Turin, Italy  June 2018

Massimo L. Salvadori

Acknowledgements

This work is based on research conducted in several countries and I am grateful to all those who made the English edition possible. My deepest thanks to Tania Zampini1 for her invaluable help with the English translation of the book. To Andrea Becherucci and Valerio Giannellini from Fondazione RossiSalvemini (Florence) go my heartfelt thanks for their all-important help and encouragement during the archival stage of my research. I’m extremely grateful to David Kertzer for supporting my work and enriching it with his foreword, generous and enlightening at the same time. My sincerest and most profound thanks to Massimo Riva, Caroline Castiglione and Cristina Abbona-Sneider for providing me with guidance and constant encouragement. Finally, I am sincerely thankful to Stanislao Pugliese for believing in this project.

1  Tania Zampini holds a Ph.D. in German and Romance Languages and Literatures from the Johns Hopkins University. She is a Montreal-based scholar of Italian culture and literature. Her teaching and research focus on early modern literature and contemporary Italian culture.

xv

Archives Consulted

Cambridge (Massachusetts) Harvard University, Harvard Archives, Papers of Gaetano Salvemini 1898–1957. Harvard University, Houghton Library, Papers of Gaetano Salvemini.

Paris Jacques-Doucet Literary Library, Théodore Frankel and Ghita Luchaire Dossier. École Nationale des Chartes Library, Letters and Manuscripts from the Dauriac-Lenéru family. Victor-Cousin Library of Philosophy, Lionel Dauriac Papers.

Lugano Cantonal Library, Giuseppe Prezzolini Archive.

Rome Gramsci Foundation, Sibilla Aleramo Papers.

xvii

xviii 

Archives Consulted

Florence Historical Institute of Resistance in Tuscany, Gaetano Salvemini Archives (Ags). This collection is divided into two parts: “Manuscripts and working materials” and “Correspondence.” The date and place of the correspondence will be indicated where it is known. For a detailed description of the Salveminian documents preserved in Florence, please see: S.  Vitali (ed.), Archivio Gaetano Salvemini, I, Manoscritti e materiali di lavoro, Ministero per i Beni culturali e ambientali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici (Roma: 1998); A.  Becherucci (ed), Archivio Gaetano Salvemini Inventario della corrispondenza (Bologna: Clueb, 2007).

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Before Messina  7 1 From Molfetta to Florence  7 2 The Messina Earthquake 18 3 The Thread of Hope 20 3 After Messina 29 1 Among Salvemini’s Friends … 29 2 A Political Fight: Universal Suffrage 41 3 A Refuge in War 47 4 The  Spiritual Father of a New Generation 59 1 The First Postwar Period 59 2 Peace at Home 68 3 Three young friends: Nello, Carlo and Ernesto 76 4 Antifascism: The Early Battles 82 5 1925–1933: Between France and England 93 5 1934–1941:  Cracks in the Family. Exile and the United States of America103 1 Toward New Lands103 2 Between Fascism and Antifascism111

xix

xx 

Contents

6 A  Union Ended (1941–1946)127 1 The Seduction of Power and the Sin of Ambition: The Case of Jean Luchaire127 2 A Family in the Eye of the Hurricane134 3 A Telegram from Ghita138 4 Jean Luchaire’s Trial: The End of a Union140 5 An Irreparable Break143 Selected Bibliography161 Index169

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Salvemini’s mother. Emanuela Turtur. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence) 25 Fig. 2.2 August 1901, Salvemini with his family. Salvemini, hat in hand, stands in the centre with his youngest son, Filippetto. His first wife, Maria, is sitting in the lower right-hand corner with one of their sons. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence) 26 Fig. 2.3 Messina after the earthquake, 1908. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence)27 Fig. 2.4 Salvemini’s house in Cairoli Square, Messina, after the earthquake. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence) 28 Fig. 4.1 Gaetano Salvemini (centre) in London in 1923, with Carlo Rosselli (on the right) and Nino Levi (on the left). (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence) 99 Fig. 4.2 The Non Mollare group, 1925. From the left: Nello Traquandi, Tommaso Ramorino, Carlo Rosselli, Ernesto Rossi, Luigi Emery, Nello Rosselli. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence) 100 Fig. 4.3 On the verso of this picture, Salvemini scribbled: “The rescuer motorboat.” Another annotation says: “Escape of Rosselli, Lussu and Nitti from Lipari,” 1929. AIRST, Fondo Salvemini XV7. (Courtesy of Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works) 101 xxi

xxii 

List of Figures

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3

Salvemini in front of Widener Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 1948. AISRT, Fondo Salvemini, XV 1/2. (Courtesy of Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works) 124 Salvemini on an ocean liner leaving for France, New York port, perhaps summer 1937. AISRT, Fondo Salvemini, XV 1/2. (Courtesy of the Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works) 125 Salvemini with the actress Ruth Draper and her daughter Anne, in Dark Harbor (Maine), probably 1944. AISRT, Fondo Salvemini, XV 1/2. (Courtesy of the Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works) 126 Salvemini with Marion Cave, Rosselli’s wife, and their son Giovanni [called Mirtillino]. Paris, Rues de Petis Champs, autumn 1937. AISRT, Fondo Salvemini, XV 1/2. (Courtesy of the Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works) 126 On the left Ghita Luchaire, on the right her husband Théodore Fraenkel, woman in the middle unknown. (Photo Courtesy Monsieur Jacques Fraenkel—Théodore Fraenkel’s nephew—Paris)158 Jean Luchaire during the trial. Paris, 1946. (Credit: BNF, Paris)159 Corinne Luchaire during the trial. Paris, 1946. (Credit: BNF, Paris) 160

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Much has been written about the work of Gaetano Salvemini. Rivers of ink have been dedicated to Salvemini and the questione meridionale,1 to his antifascism, to his anticlericalism and socialism. Only a few scholars— instead—have written on his personal and familiar vicissitudes; or when they have, they have done so rapidly, superficially, and in hushed, almost embarrassed tones, confining to only a few paragraphs an unwieldy and intricate story deserving of much more attention.2 This book aims to focus 1  “Questione meridionale” is the term used to refer to the socio-economic situation in post-unification Italy. In particular, it underlines the differences between the North and the South, and the state of backwardness, poverty, and misery in which Southern Italy was plunged at the time. 2  Over the years, many biographies of Salvemini have been published. None of these, however, has focused on his second family. Noteworthy biographies include E. Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini. Un profile biografico (Roma: Associazione Italiana per la Libertà della Cultura, 1963), and, by the same author, Gaetano Salvemini nel cinquantennio liberale (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1959). Of particular interest is C. Killinger’s excellent work, which carefully details the years Salvamini spent in North America: Gaetano Salvemini. A Biography (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002). Other useful contributions include M. L. Salvadori’s, Gaetano Salvemini (Torino: Einaudi, 1963); G. Quagliariello, Gaetano Salvemini (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007); I. Origo, Bisogno di testimoniare. Quattro vite e un saggio sulla biografia (Milano: Longanesi, 1985); P. Silva, Chi è Gaetano Salvemini? (Roma: La Voce Società Anonima, 1919); G. DeCaro, Gaetano Salvemini (Torino: UTET, 1970). The last of these received considerable criticism for its sarcastic tone—not always appropriate—and for the

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8_1

1

2 

F. FANTARELLA

precisely on this lacuna in Salvemini scholarship, and in so doing, make an innovative contribution to it. Few, perhaps, remember that in 1916, Salvemini remarried, taking as his second wife Fernande Dauriac, a French intellectual well-known in Florentine cultural circles for her collaboration with Prezzolini’s La Voce, not to mention an active feminist alongside women (who would later become her friends) like Elsa Dallolio, Sibilla Aleramo, Gina Lombroso Ferrero and Paola Lombroso Carrara. It bears recalling what Niccolò Tucci declares in a recollection of Salvemini written the day after his death: “Well-known ignored fact: Salvemini’s second marriage was to the ex-wife of the historiographer Luchaire, who had a son, Jean, executed in 1945 in Paris as a traitor to his country, and a daughter, Corinne, who, as Otto Abetz’s lover, became responsible for many terrible things. Salvemini loved these stepchildren as his own.”3 A story, then, certainly well-known among Salvemini’s closest friends and among the more attentive scholars alive at the same time as they, who were lucky to know them; but completely unknown to the general public. Fernande’s first marriage was to Julien Luchaire, professor of Italian language and literature at the Université de Grenoble and founder of the Istituto italo-francese in Florence in 1908. Two children were born from this marriage: Jean (1901) and Marguerite (1904), better known using the Italian diminutive Ghita. In the terrible days following the Messina earthquake of 1908, Fernande and Julien were among those who rushed to Sicily to help Salvemini search for his family under the rubble. But he was to find only lifeless bodies. And for weeks and weeks, he searched in superficial nature of the analysis it provides. Short biographical profiles of Salvamini are held at the Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana (Florence), in the Gaetano Salvemini archive (henceforth referred to as ‘ags’), Isabella Massey Folios. Among Massey’s documents is her own biography of Salvemini, which follows his life until the 1930s and is contained in the Iris Origo Folios. Isabella Massey (1880–1966) taught at London, at the Bedford College for Women. She became friends with Salvemini and helped him with the English translation of many of his works. 3  N. Tucci, Salvemini, in Controcorrente. Rivista di critica e di battaglia, 1958, 5, 19–24, more specifically, on p.  21. Tucci’s account contains an error that should immediately be corrected: Corinne was Jean’s daughter (Fernande was thus her grandmother, not her mother) and Jean was executed in February of 1946, not 1945. During the German occupation, Corinne was suspected of being Otto Abetz’s lover, and of having an incestuous relationship with her father, Jean. These rumours were debunked by her siblings and by Corinne herself after the war in her autobiography, Ma drôle de vie (Paris: Sun, 1949).

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

vain for Ughetto, the last of his sons to be exhumed. Salvemini wanted more than anything to believe in his son’s survival and looked for him at great length, but was ultimately forced to surrender to the harsh reality: that is, that none of his five children, or his wife Maria, or his sister Camilla, who had lived with them, had escaped harm. In the months following the Messina tragedy, Salvemini threw himself frenetically into his work to alleviate the crushing weight of his pain. Fernande became his friend and confidante. Her two children provided Salvemini with the illusion of the warmth of a family. He became particularly attached to little Jean, a vivacious boy passionate about politics, who Salvemini would affectionately call Giovannino. Of course, he never forgot his biological children, who died in Messina, especially Ughetto. As testified by the Bolaffio family, friends who lived in New York and often hosted Salvemini, when prey to night terrors, he would call aloud the names of his children or of his first wife, Maria, subconsciously in his sleep. Salvemini never forgot his first family, but he created another equally important and who gave him—at least for some time, as we will see—the illusion of a new and warm hearth. Meanwhile, the winds of conflict continued to blow over Europe. It was the dawn of the First World War; Salvemini and Jean would spend entire afternoons discussing politics animatedly. Jean found in Salvemini the passionate father that Julien, cold and distant, had never succeeded at being. Privately separated from Fernande for years and taken, since 1908, with a young lover, Julien divorced Fernande in 1915. And thus, liberated from a rather threadbare union, Mrs Luchaire was free to wed Salvemini and to form with him, Jean and Ghita a new family in Florence. Theirs was truly a close-knit and happy family despite the war, lack of money available to them, ascent of Mussolini to power, and their consequent exile to Paris. In 1925, Fernande and Salvemini settled in France, where Jean and Ghita had been living stably for some time. Though the family was reunited in the French capital, difficult times lay ahead for its members. Young Jean tried to assert himself in the world of journalism and politics while at the same time helping to sustain his small family (in 1921 and at only 20 years old, he became father to Corinne) on a low and unstable salary; Ghita, a voluble and very superficial youth, pursued her study of fine arts in Paris erratically; Fernande, sickly and frail, tried to help her family by working as a private tutor, and Salvemini found himself forced to spend long periods of time in England, where he more easily found work as a university lecturer, earning some money that way. In 1934, after two conference tours in the United States, Salvemini settled definitively in North America, more

4 

F. FANTARELLA

precisely in Cambridge, where he became a professor at Harvard University. Fernande, however, remained in France. At first, the distance between them did little to slacken their commitment to each other. Dividing them, instead, would be the change in Jean’s political orientation, which from 1933 onward increasingly approached reactionary status, prompting him to become a collaborator during Germany’s occupation of France. It is easy to imagine Salvemini’s pain: he had loved and raised Jean as his son; Fernande and her children had allowed him to rebuild the nest of familial affections destroyed in 1908. At the end of the war, Jean was arrested and executed for betrayal. In his article, Tucci recalls Salvemini’s state of mind the day after the execution: “He was living in Cambridge at the time; I arrived that day from New York. I wanted an account of the trial and execution, so I went to visit him immediately, there, in the library amidst the cages of books.” Tucci continues: “I sat down, while Salvemini attempted to get back to his work. ‘Give me a minute,’ he said, ‘I want to finish annotating a thing or two.’ I picked up a book, pretended to read it, watching him. He was unable to concentrate, that is, he seemed focused on something else and anxious about diverting his attention from it. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, ‘I’ve had enough for today.’ Leaving his study, I saw the newspaper there, on the ground. He stopped to look at it from afar, hesitated a little, then put on his hat angrily.” They left. Salvemini, sighed as he walked, continues Tucci. But on the library steps, he stopped and said, “Traitors must be punished. Of course. It goes without saying. He was like a son to me. But he wanted it this way, and it was right that he paid the price.” Still, Tucci concludes, “there were invisible tears in the air. Not in him, not in me, but everywhere around us, hung a suspended, unweepable pain. Before arriving at the Faculty Club, he said: ‘That poor woman.’ And then: ‘You know, I’m tired. I want to die.’”4 So, here, in these pages, this story, both well-known and ignored, of “suspended, unweepable pain” will be told. The story of Salvemini. Of Fernande. Of Jean. Of Ghita. Of the Fascism that divided them. We will rebuild Salvemini’s second family. We’ll start at the beginning, moving from their communal battles to their intellectual fellowship, all the way to their much suffered rupture at the end of the 30s. And we’ll do so through the analysis of the unpublished letters Salvemini and Fernande wrote each other over the years, kept today in the archives of Florence. Not only that. 4

 N. Tucci, Salvemini, 22–3.

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

We’ll also make reference to the letters that Salvemini exchanged with his closest friends, from which emerges a family drama closely intertwined with the fascist dictatorship of its time and the catastrophes of the Second World War. My visits to the archives of Rome, Florence, Paris, and Cambridge brought to light a story of love and war, offering a new lens through which to view Salvemini’s intellectual and political life. None of the pages in this book have been written with a flair for invasive gossip or were inspired by a teasing brand of storytelling. Instead, readers will discover here an extraordinary figure, fragile and contradictory, hidden well beneath the armour of a tireless soldier, self-fashioned and designed to shield him from life’s blows. Of which there were many, often very hard. Yet Salvemini picked himself up after each one. Moving forever forward. Forever following with implacable tenacity the motto that defined his life: Never give up. Never.

CHAPTER 2

Before Messina

1   From Molfetta to Florence Gaetano Salvemini’s most characteristic trait was, without a doubt, his intellectual intransigence, which often generated bitter rivalries with some of the best-known figures of Italian history, from Giovanni Giolitti to Benito Mussolini. His, however, were not the sterile complaints of one inclined to contradict for the sake of argument, but rather vigorous battles against the corruption of local customs, and in support of the achievement of a serious plan of social reform, sensitive to the needs of the humble (and above all the peasants of the South), and respectful of liberal and democratic freedoms. In Italy’s darkest years, Salvemini was among those who kept alive the “torch of freedom” even, perhaps especially, while in exile and living in the United States. It is not a coincidence that the term fuoruscito is defined as exactly that: he who “lives abroad for political reasons: Italian fuorusciti kept alive the torch of liberty during the years of Fascism.”1 It is a definition which, in reality, would not have displeased Salvemini, who, in his memoir, wrote: “I didn’t play the part of ‘the exiled.’ The idea of the exiled ‘sacred person,’ the exiled, calm in the dark 1  See Mimmo Franzinelli’s Introduction to G.  Salvemini, Dai ricordi di un fuoruscito. 1922–1933 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002), viii.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8_2

7

8 

F. FANTARELLA

night, lying with the lambs at pasture, irritated me to no end, indifferent as I am to such Romantic rhetoric. Nor did the term ‘refugee’ suit me particularly well: it called to mind a destitute figure, who had escaped some cataclysmic event naked and barefoot, looking for pity and shelter.” He later added: “When Turati was forced to leave Italy, he insisted on refusing to call himself exiled or in refuge, and instead was intent on calling himself ‘a fugitive’: a fugitive from the enormous prison that was Italy. I have always preferred calling myself a ‘fuoruscito’, re-appropriating a term that Fascists used as a mark of disgrace: fuoruscito, that is, out of my country to persist, by whatever means I could, in the resistance that had become impossible for me to sustain [in Italy].”2 Salvemini remained a fuoruscito for twenty-three years, first in France and England, then in the United States, where he relocated definitively in 1934. One might consider his entire life an example of political devotion and intellectual intransigence; he sacrificed everything, truly everything, in the defence of freedom—the freedom that, following the Matteotti crime, became so suppressed in Italy, day after day, by the beatings of the Blackshirts,3 by the Special Tribunal,4 by the fascist prisons, by border control, by continuous brutal violences against the weak and the marginalized. Only one person managed to soften Salvemini’s firmness: Jean Luchaire, son of Fernande Dauriac, the second wife with whom Salvemini created a new home and family in 1916 after the tragic demise of his first family in the Messina earthquake of 1908. We must rewind here the tape of Salvemini’s life and summarize the events leading up to the Messina earthquake, in order to delve deeper into his later, more intimate and personal affairs, and linger on the relationships that, recreated in 1908, were dramatically shattered during Fascism.

 Ibid., 70.  “Squadristi,” or Blackshirts, was the name by which members of the fascist militia, MSVN (Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza nazionale) were referred. 4  In 1926, the regime instituted the Special Tribunal for Crimes Against the State charged, in theory, with judging crimes committed against the constitutional order. In practice, however the Special Tribunal was a repressive organ, which opposed anti-fascism, punishable by incarceration, exile, or death. 2 3

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

9

Gaetano Salvemini was born in 1873 in Molfetta, Apulia, to a family of humble origins (Fig. 2.1). In 1890, at only sixteen years old, he moved to Florence to pursue his studies. Imagine what his life as a young intellectual must have been like at the end of the nineteenth century: he, a boy, son of Apulian peasants from a small village in Southern Italy. There were no academic or municipal libraries where he had grown up, neither was there any money with which to buy books. Salvemini had had to make do with the books of his uncle, a priest, or with the novels he’d managed to borrow from more fortunate classmates who could afford to buy them. His culture, early in life, was therefore ragged and approximate, based entirely on that which he’d been able to acquire here and there on his own and with the shortcomings of a self-taught person. His teachers, to use his words, had been “unfortunate hacks, who taught nothing, since they could not teach what they did not know.”5 The spiritual background he brought with him to Florence in 1890 consisted of the writings of the prophets of Israel and the Gospels—both courtesy of his priest-uncle— and the novels of Jules Verne. “An intellectual background,” he wrote, “horribly incoherent, rough, riddled with cavernous gaps […]. No one had ever spoken to me of Carducci or of D’Annunzio. Let’s forget about D’Annunzio. Not knowing about him wasn’t so bad. I’m convinced I hadn’t missed out on much. But arriving in Florence to study literature without ever having heard about Carducci!”6 Salvemini himself recounts how he came to Florence in the beautiful inaugural lecture, “Una pagina di storia antica”, held on November 16, 1949 when he again took up teaching Modern History after more than twenty years of forced distance from it. At the time, the Tuscan capital housed the Istituto di studi superiori pratici e di perfezionamento, better known as the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. It allowed students to “master” their discipline with an additional year of study. There, it was possible to apply for academic scholarships: the best students were awarded ninety lire a month; those in second place were allotted seventy lire and those in third place, sixty. I applied for the biggest prize,” recalls Salvemini. “But I came in last among the winners […] I am under the impression that I was only successful because of an answer, not altogether stupid, I gave during my oral examinations. One of the three examiners asked me to discuss the ‘heart of the leg G. Salvemini, “Una pagina di storia antica”, in Opere, VIII, Scritti vari. 1900–1957, ed. G. Agosti and A. Galante Garrone (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978), 42. 6  Ibid., 44. 5

10 

F. FANTARELLA

end of Aeneas’. I was taken aback. What on earth could the heart of a legend be? Half-hiccupping and feeling lost, I said that I hadn’t understood the question. ‘If you’d like, I can summarize the Aeneid; if you’d like me to translate the Aeneid making reference to the original text, I think I could manage that. But where I come from, no one is taught that legends have hearts.’ One of the three examiners smiled. They dismissed me and assigned me sixty lire a month.7

It is at the Istituto that Salvemini lived his famed annus mirabilis. There, he not only met mentors like Pasquale Villari, Augusto Conti, and Cesare Paoli, but he also became a member of an extraordinary group of friends who met up every evening in via Lungo il Mugnone to discuss the universe-­world with the ardor and passion that only socialist neophytes possess. “Come evening,” Salvemini recalled, “we would solve every social problem there was with such [fiery enthusiasm] that the owner of the house [we met in] threatened to evict Karl Marx and his congregation of men and women if it didn’t quiet down.”8 The Florentine years were intense, rife with intellectual fervour, but not without sacrifices. Although it was possible for Salvemini to borrow books from the university’s library as well as Florence’s National Library and Marucelliana library, the sixty lire a month he had been awarded failed to cover his living expenses. So Salvemini began to offer private Latin lessons: six hours a week for twenty-five lire a month. Doing so allowed him to make ends meet. At the end of the first year, by the unanimous decision of the commission, his sixty allotted lire were increased to ninety, and thus he could end his work as a Latin tutor. More than a paltry detail, these sixty lire are a crucial point in Salvemini’s story, because they lay the groundwork needed to understand his character, which will later inform his behaviour, both public and private.9 A penny, a bit of candle wax used as a  Ibid., 44–45.  Ibid., 56. 9  Elsewhere, a very young Salvemini had already shown his moral mettle in one of the more intimate—and perhaps for that reason, beautiful and poetic—letters he ever wrote. The text is rather long, but bears citing entirely. He responded as follows to Carlo Placci, his wealthy friend, who invited him to placate his passions and resign himself to the inevitability of his fate: “In this world, only those who can afford to resign themselves [to fate] do so. Resignation is the philosophy of he who can work without the fear of losing his position, do battle without concern for defeat, sleep without the worry of waking up one day famished [and without food]. Resignation is the philosophy of the satisfied. Among the advantages it procures, richness also provides the wealthy with the option of giving up. I believe that if you had suffered hunger as a child, and if you’d suffered it with your siblings and mother, if you 7 8

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

11

reading-light in the night’s darkness, a blanket for heat in a frozen room could not be taken for granted in those years. Salvemini himself confirms it, calling to mind his review of Le elezioni episcopali nelle chiese della Francia dal IX al XII secolo by Imbart de la Tour, commissioned by Professor Paoli: “Paoli printed those six pages and paid me 18 lire for them. In those years of formidable appetite, our currency was not lire but steaks: one lira for two steaks; 18 lire for 36 steaks.”10 He goes on: “He who has always had a reliable supply of bread will easily say that man cannot live on bread alone. This much is true. But without bread, one cannot live.”11 Florence, therefore, represented for Salvemini cultural growth and— albeit with purse-strings drawn tight—financial independence from his family, who certainly would not have been able to shoulder the burden of his university expenses. “Without those sixty lire,” Salvemini comments bitterly, “I would have had to return to ‘my hometown,’ the oldest son among nine brothers and sisters to become a priest—for such was the destiny, at the time, of the literate, and not stupid children of poor families in the Italian south. This school saved me from that fate and also, I believe, spared the bishop of ‘my hometown’ quite a few problems.”12 Thus, Florence became Salvemini’s second home. There, he was welcomed into the Apulian community in large part due to a letter of introduction one of his uncles had sent to an old acquaintance, Engineer Corrado Minervini. Years later, Lidia Minervini—his sister-in-law and then student—shared her memories of Salvemini’s first days in Florence: had to live in a constant state of uncertainty about the future, if you saw before you the threat of seeing your children malnourished and as hungry as you had been as a child, I believe that the idea of resignation would then be unacceptable to you. Obliged to fight every minute, you’d end up acquiring a habit for it; you would end up attributing great value to every small effort made, every minute of every day, to keep pain away and to come closer to happiness; you’d become convinced that man should not suspend himself from the tenuous thread of a supernatural force, while the storm of life threatens to overtake him […]. I would like to be able to give up, but I cannot. Even if I should become extremely wealthy and see with certainty my future [comfort] and that of my family, I would continue to be a rebel, because in these twenty-five years of life, my brain has become fully formed. Perhaps I would see my children enjoy the fruits of my labour and themselves become … resigners, born into a cradle already stuffed with cotton tufts, when I had found mine filled with hulls of corn.” G.  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, ed. E.  Gencarelli (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1968), 74–5. 10  Salvemini, “Una pagina di storia antica”, 53. 11  Ibid., 45. 12  Ibid.

12 

F. FANTARELLA

“Gaetano, at seventeen years old and having left the seminary […] came to Florence to apply for an academic scholarship at the Instituto di Studi Superiori. He came with a letter of recommendation for my father, who was also a native of Molfetta.”13 Here, Salvemini met Mr Minervini’s oldest daughter, Maria, four years his junior, and soon fell in love. “Maria,” Lidia explains, renewing the story of their first meeting so often retold in their family, “was only thirteen years old: she was just a girl. [Salvemini] began to spend time with our family then, long before I was born. Thus, he saw the girl blossom into a young lady and was taken with her sweetness and with the generosity emanating from her big black eyes.”14 Maria, as Lidia recalls her, was not beautiful, but she had lovely eyes and raven-­ black hair. She was not educated, but Salvemini loved her deeply. “In fact,” Lidia concludes, “they told me she was a very good person, and he adored her. He would call her ‘my Mariolì’. She was not cultured: in the South, at the time, women did not go to school, they learned how to keep a house. But she played the piano very well, and he listened to her, enraptured.”15 Salvemini and Maria became engaged when she was still a young woman, and married five years later, in 1897. He was only twenty-­ four years old. It was an important date in Salvemini’s life because it consolidated another of his major passions: politics. It was in 1897 that Salvemini became a member of the Italian Socialist Party, for which he fought many battles. He wrote a detailed letter about his marriage to Maria and his commitment to socialism and sent it from Faenza to his friend Carlo Placci.16 The letter is long, but it is worth reading in detail: 13  After Maria’s death, the Minervini family saw Salvemini only sporadically. He saw Lidia a few years later, at the University of Florence. Lidia describes their meeting as follows: “The years began to fly by quickly, with only a few fleeting glances [of each other]. Gaetano became a definitive part of my life when I became a student at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Florence” (L.  Minervini, “Amico e Maestro. Ricordi di Salvemini,” in Il Mondo, September 22, 1957, 11–2). 14  Ibid. 15  Ibid. “Maria,” Lidia writes, “[was] small, dark, not beautiful, with an olive complexion and raven-black hair. But her eyes were splendid, black, almost violet, very big, deep, and sweet. And her voice sounded musical and good” (ibid). 16  Salvemini encountered more than a few difficulties upon first moving to Florence. In 1894, the stress and pressure of studying led to a nervous breakdown so serious, Salvemini considered suicide. He studied with great sacrifice, both mental and physical, to retain his academic bursary and thanks to these many deprivations, he was able to put together some money to send to his family in Molfetta. Such painful self-sacrifice did not go unnoticed by his professor, Pasquale Villari, who was quite moved by it. Concerned with Salvemini’s health, Villari decided to refer him to his friend, Carlo Placci. The Placci family owned a

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

13

I am completely happy with my Maria. If you only knew how my character is now changed! Before getting married, I did nothing but torment myself: am I ready to start a family? Will my health allow me to do so? Financially speaking, how will I manage? What if I were to be fired by the government for my socialist convictions? […] Now all those thoughts have been quieted, I no longer think of the future, or rather, I think of it with certainty. I feel strong; I am sure to win at life. Maria is so good, and she loves me so much, that it would be impossible for things to go badly. As far as socialism is concerned, as a married man, I am more of a socialist than I ever have been. I told myself: why have you had to wait so long to find this happiness? Because you were penniless, and if you hadn’t found someone to help you out of your troubles, you’d still be sighing at the moon. […] So, down with society, and long live love!17

It is during those years that Salvemini began to teach in local schools. In 1895, at twenty-two years old, professor at the Liceo Garibaldi in Palermo and later, in 1898, in Lodi, near Milan. The two years he spent in Lombardy were particularly meaningful for the young instructor and greatly affected his interpretation of the Italian Risorgimento18 and the Southern Question. He recalled that two-year period in a later memory:

countryside villa, where Salvemini was welcomed with all the care given to a son. Carlo Placci, ten years his senior, was a wealthy man. Despite their political differences (he was conservative, Salvemini, a socialist), he became fond of the young Apulian, soon became his friend, and introduced him to all the most prestigious and cultured salons of Florence. It was thanks to Placci that Salvemini met the art historian Bernard Berenson, who became a dear friend he often visited in his villa in Fiesole. There, Salvemini met and befriended a number of women who later helped him with his troubles, including the writer Violet Paget and the noblewoman Elena French. French was particularly attached to Salvemini and often offered her villa near Pistoia for his holiday use. Salvemini never forgot the help and attentions of Mrs French; in fact, as Enzo Tagliacozzo notes in his biographical essay, he kept a photo of her on his desk at Harvard (Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini. Un profilo biografico cit., and Id., Gaetano Salvemini nel cinquantennio liberale cit.). 17  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, 67. 18  For many centuries, Italy was composed of many separate states dominated by various foreign powers, chief among them Austrian and French. The wars for the country’s unification (1848–1871) came to be known as the Risorgimento Italiano. Italy was declared a unified nation in 1861. Its first capital was Turin, as Rome, at that time, was still under the Papacy’s temporal power. Rome was annexed to Italy in 1871 and became its capital then. On this topic, among the vast bibliography available to readers, we recommend: G. Salvemini, Scritti sul Risorgimento (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1973); G. Fortunato, Il Mezzogiorno e lo Stato Italiano, vol. II (Firenze: Vallecchi editore, 1926); and L. Settembrini, Ricordanze della mia vita (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961).

14 

F. FANTARELLA

I began studying Mazzini in Lodi, in the winter of 1899. I had finished my work on Magnati e Popolani. I didn’t know anything about the history of the Risorgimento, except for that which I’d read in textbooks. I began my readings a little out of shame at my ignorance, a little out of a desire to set aside the Magnati for a few months, a little out of the curiosity of seeing whether or not the class struggles inherent to Florence’s history also appeared in the Italian history of the nineteenth century. Lodi’s municipal library is rich with stories of Lombardy’s history, of the Risorgimento. So that is how I came to know about Mazzini, Cattaneo, Ferrari. It was a revelation. It was 1899.19

It was in Lodi that Salvemini developed the thesis according to which, after the unification of the country, the South had been crushed by the power of the central government, and by fiscal pressure. His theory explains his fascination with the federalist ideas of Carlo Cattaneo,20 and his decision to defend local autonomy. Ten years later, when he met Giustino Fortunato,21 Salvemini, one might say, “softened”, his federalist position, and in 1911, called his journal L’Unità, which strongly indicated the need for cooperation between the Italian North and South.22 And it is precisely from within the columns of L’Unità that Salvemini launched frequent battles against the customs duties seriously hindering the economy of the South and in favour of universal suffrage: a fundamental weapon for the 19  Gateano Salvemini to Ettore Rota, Florence, March 23, 1919, now in G.  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1914–1920, ed. E. Tagliacozzo (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1984), 456–7. 20  On Carlo Cattaneo and on his direct and indirect influence on Salvemini’s ideas, see: N.  Bobbio, Una filosofia militante. Studi su Carlo Cattaneo (Torino: Einaudi, 1971) and C. Cattaneo, Le più belle pagine scelte da Gaetano Salvemini, postscript by L. Cafagna (Roma: Donzelli, 1993). 21  Salvemini met Giustino Fortunato, with whom he would develop a long and strong friendship, in 1907. It had been Fortunato to encourage him, in 1911, to found a new journal, L’Unità, which he himself funded with a contribution of 1000 lire until 1915. See Salvemini’s letter to Ernesto Rossi, dated October 7, 1922, in G.  Salvemini. Carteggio, 1921–1926, ed. E. Tagliacozzo (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1985), 90. During the First World War, Fortunato did not finance the journal because—as has been noted—Salvemini was in favour of intervention in the war, while Fortunato preferred neutrality. This divergent vision of the Great War did nothing, however, to harm their friendship, which had been rooted in a solid spiritual union, mutual appreciation, and a profound respect for each other, in addition to the sincere affection they felt for one another. As much is shown in a letter Fortunato wrote in 1925, when the fascist dictatorship forced Salvemini to leave Italy: “My dearest brother […] we were early bosom-friends, I frequently—not without good reason—repeating: would that we had met earlier!” (ibid., 513). 22  E. Tagliacozzo, Introduction to G. Salvemini. Carteggio, 1912–1914, ed. E. Tagliacozzo (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1984), xc–xx.

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

15

emancipation of peasants. Later, Salvemini not only revised, but completely reversed his view on the Southern Question.23 Nineteenth-century Italy, he wrote, and more particularly, the Italian South, was in a condition of such misery that a government based on local autonomy (following Cattaneo’s model) would have led to the ruin of the nation.24 In 1900, after his experience in Lodi, Salvemini began to teach at Liceo Galilei in Florence and in 1901, at twenty-seven years old, was awarded tenure in Medieval History at the University of Messina, where he delivered the inaugural lecture entitled Scienze storiche e Scienze naturali.25 In 1902, 23  While it is true that the primary concern of this text is Salvemini’s personal life, it is still fitting that it addresses, however briefly, these themes, already treated at great length by others. On the Southern Question, it should suffice to mention: G.  Salvemini, Scritti sulla questione meridionale. 1896–1955 (Torino: Einaudi, 1955); G.  Arfè, “Introduzione,” in G. Salvemini. Opere, IV, Il Mezzogiorno e la democrazia italiana, II, Movimento socialista e questione meridionale, ed. G.  Arfè (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1963), and L.  Basso, Gaetano Salvemini socialista e meridionalista (Manduria: Lacaista, 1959). 24  In Il Risorgimento Italiano, Salvemini writes: “an administration based on local autonomies and universal suffrage, as the democratic autonomist school of Cattaneo would have favoured, would have caused the imminent dismantling of the national regime.” Immediately afterwards, he added: “given the peasants’ cultural and political backwardness, electing municipalities by universal suffrage would have favoured conservative parties. Thus, the moderates rejected Cattaneo’s autonomist and democratic theory. Cattaneo remained almost entirely isolated, a strong and radiant character surrounded by only the desert.” This essay was published in 1925 for the first time, but Salvemini revised it many times after that. The citation here is drawn from G. Salvemini, Scritti sul Risorgimento, in Opere, II, eds. P. Pieri and C. Pischedda (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961), 432. 25  Salvemini developed the speech given at the University of Messina in a 1902 essay in which he treated the presumed epistemologies of historical knowledge. For more information, see “La storia come scienza,” in Rivista Italiana di Sociologia, January- February 1902, now in Salvemini, Opere, VIII, Scritti vari. 1900–1957, 107–35. In 1938, he returned to the subject in a series of lessons given in English at the University of Chicago, later published with the title “History and Science.” On that occasion, Salvemini reaffirmed the same concepts he had expressed thirty years earlier, contrasting the views of Benedetto Croce. As was the case in 1901, in 1938, Salvemini criticized Croce’s idea that history was separate from science. Salvemini, instead, believed that, just like naturally occurring facts, historical events could be explained through universal laws. In reality, Croce had already revisited his position on the subject, and in a stinging note, defined Salvemini’s essay “an example of incompetence furnished with foolery.” See B. Croce, Quaderni della Critica, March 1949, 13, 94; Id., Una nuova conversazione col prof. Salvemini, in Id., Opere, XI, Scritti e discorsi politici. 1943–1947, II (Bari: Laterza, 1963), 343; and G.  Salvemini, Historian and Scientist. An Essay on the Nature of Social Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), republished in Id., Opere, VIII, Scritti vari. 1900–1957, 135–85. A clear reconstruction of the debate with Croce now appears in G. Pecora, Socialismo come libertà. La storia lunga di Gaetano Salvemini (Roma: Donzelli, 2012), 200–2.

16 

F. FANTARELLA

Salvemini’s family joined him in Messina, where they lived for seven years, until 1908. One of his colleagues at the Sicilian university was none other than Giovanni Pascoli: among Italy’s most famous poets still today, and a sympathizer to socialism. In a letter to Placci, Salvemini painted the following colourful portrait of him: “Pascoli is a very kind man, large, poorly dressed, ever in motion; an at-times clumsy and asthmatic conversationalist, and at other times a warm and happy one. Up-close, he seems sincere in everything and about everything, an impression he does not give from afar, so that he seems much friendlier [to those who know him well].” Immediately after, with a touch of malice, he added: “Sincere, naturally, with the sincerity of an artist, who often first sees the image and then the idea, which he considers to be in the service of the image, and is prepared to forgive any number of errors in the content, provided it be presented in an original and beautiful form. A way of thinking, his, that I am unable to accept.”26 Despite the company of his illustrious colleague, Salvemini found the intellectual world around him in Sicily to be asphyxiating and backward. Though he first saw in Messina a great professional opportunity, he soon lamented the mediocrity of his academic environment. A careful reading of his correspondence from 1902 to 1908 reveals all the animosity and difficulty he had had to confront there. He had begun his career as a professor in Messina at a very low salary. He tried to apply the socialist ideals he’d learned in Florence, in via Lungo il Mugnone, to both his studies and his daily life. However, Messina, a narrow-minded city, reflected the limits and problems of the entire region of Sicily at the time, where the echo of the Sicilian Worker Leagues still reverberated strongly.27 He was particularly disappointed by the socialist circles there, finding abysmal differences between them and those in Turin or Milan. Workers on the island were still light-years away from the level of consciousness and organizational capacities of the Northern cities. The Sicilian reality further impressed upon Salvemini the jarring contrast between the rural world of his upbringing—characterized by ignorance, cowardice, and opportunism—and his ideals of liberty and social justice. He had previously written about this ­discordance to Carlo Placci, in November, 1895, in a reflection shadowed by the blackest sadness: “Consider the difference between the environment I have built for myself, with my studies and friendships, and that in  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, 196.  For more information on the Sicilian Workers League, see F. Renda, Il movimento contadino nella società siciliana (Palermo: Sicilia al Lavoro, 1956) and S. F. Romano, Storia dei fasci siciliani (Bari: Laterza, 1959). 26 27

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

17

which my mother lives: a small village in the countryside, where morality takes on a shape that to you and to me can but be considered second-rate; where, to give you an example, high school students go off robbing hens and chickens, thinking robbing is a joke rather than a punishable crime, and everyone believes the same.”28 The Sicilian experience exalted Salvemini’s combative spirit, leading him to become, in those very years, one of the most active figures in socialist reform in Italy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, together with Giuseppe Kirner, he founded the National Federation of Middle School Teachers (Federazione nazionale degli insegnanti delle scuole medie; Fnism), with the goal of improving the financial conditions of primary school teachers, surviving, nearly famished, on extremely low salaries.29 His political activism, however, in no way distracted him from his academic objectives. But his career as a university professor revealed itself to be anything but simple. The dissatisfaction he felt at being confined to Messina and his failed bids for positions at the universities of Florence, Turin, and Milan discouraged Salvemini. This affliction caused by missed opportunities alternated with eruptions of rage against all the wrongdoings he’d suffered, as evidenced by this letter to his friend Francesco Papafava: I admit that no matter how much I force myself not to be upset about the result of my application to Milan, I am. I feel I have been the victim of an arrogance to which I cannot adapt […] There were two open positions: one in Milan and one in Turin. To exclude me from both, they placed me third. Had there only been one position available, they’d have ranked me second. If there had been three, I’d have qualified in fourth place. And to justify their trick, do you know what rumour they started? They say with a certainty I, too, would find impressive, that I made two separate editions of La Rivoluzione francese,30 one for socialists and the other for my tenure applications!31

 Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, 8.  The Federation was founded by Salvemini and Giuseppe Kirner (1868–1905) in 1901. On Salvemini and primary school, see Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911; Id., Preface to Discorsi e scritti di Giuseppe Kirner, now in Id., Opere, V, Scritti sulla scuola, eds. L. Borghi and B. Finocchiaro (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1966), and G. Pecora’s essay, La scuola laica. Gaetano Salvemini contro i clericali (Roma: Donzelli, 2015). 30  G. Salvemini, La rivoluzione francese. 1788–1972, third edition, ed. F. Venturi (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1972), 325. 31  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, 331. 28 29

18 

F. FANTARELLA

This same choler and mistrust are seen in another letter addressed to Placci: “Academic swindlers, confining me to Messina and depriving me of any copious research material, have prevented me from being the great historian I have it in me to be. Just watch how this last bid closes every door for me for the next ten years. I have a right to be tired. At this point, I no longer intend to submit to the judgment of people I despise.”32 His intransigent attitude, his refusal of any compromise (including a push forward that might have assisted him) only further complicated his university affairs and became the trademark of his future battles. He wrote as much to his teacher Pasquale Villari, who encouraged him never to give up: The plan [to apply to the University of Rome] remained … a plan; because in order for it to turn into reality, I would have been forced to speak to such and such a figure, to call on the intervention of my politician friends, to ask favours that—no matter how just—would be wrong for me to expect as a right. I am not cut out for these kinds of machinations. That is the reason why I have abandoned any desire to leave Messina.33

His only comfort in the face of these academic disappointments was the warmth of his family, in which he took refuge every evening, for a few hours forgetful of his dark thoughts fuelled by the perverse academic dynamics around him. Salvemini lived with his sister Camilla, his wife Maria, and his five children: Filippetto, Corrado, Leonida, Ughetto and Elena. It was a large family that gave him the affection and courage necessary to keep him steadfast on his path (Fig. 2.2).

2  The Messina Earthquake The warmth of the hearth, the certainty of familial affection, the domestic peace in which Salvemini took refuge after a day spent, quite despite himself, in a rigged university environment, were all taken away from him, in a handful of seconds, in a clean sweep, in the terrible earthquake that destroyed Messina at dawn on December 28th, 1908. At 5:21 am, violent tremors shook Messina to its core. The earth trembled for thirty-seven excruciatingly long and frightening seconds that razed the entire city to

 Ibid., 337.  Ibid., 342.

32 33

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

19

the ground.34 That night, Salvemini got home late. In bed, in the dark of night, a deafening noise, at first remote, then whirling ever closer, caught his attention. Violent shocks threw him from his bed, while the entire building crumbled. He remembered these dramatic moments thus: “I was in bed when I felt everything wobble around me and heard a sinister noise coming from outside. In my nightshirt, as I was, I leapt out of bed and dashed to the window to see what was happening. I had just barely managed to open it, when the house precipitated, as if in a vortex, sunk down, and everything disappeared in a thick fog, pierced with the sounds of an avalanche and of the cries of people plunging to their deaths.” Later, with words still more swept with stupor, he concluded: “Everything disappeared except the load-bearing wall encasing the window to which I had flung myself in the frenzy of desperation. Underneath me—my apartment was on the fourth floor—the ruins had accumulated so high up that my fall was much weaker than I expected it to be. It injured me but didn’t kill me.”35 Unscathed and in disbelief, Salvemini escaped the call of death, which that night had taken thousands and thousands of lives. No one had imagined that Salvemini would survive such total destruction. The more prominent daily newspapers at the time announced his death and Benito Mussolini—the future dictator—sent his family a moving telegram expressing his condolences: “With the death of Gaetano Salvemini also comes the loss of one of the most beautiful figures of Italian socialism.”36 But fate had another half century of life in store for Salvemini. Other tremors, still more violent, were to strike him (and all of Italy) and tear him once more 34  On the earthquake of Messina, see: J. Dickie, Una catastrofe patriottica. 1908: il terremoto di Messina (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2004); Aa. Vv., Il dolore condiviso. Messaggi degli intellettuali del Novecento per il terremoto di Messina del 1908, ed. G. Chirico (Messina: Gbm, 2006); T.  Ostakhova, “Abbiamo visto Messina ardere come una fiaccola.” I marinai russi raccontano il terremoto del 28 dicembre 1908 (Reggio Calabria: Leonida, 2009); F. Riccobono, Il terremoto dei terremoti. Messina 1908, illustrated edition (Messina: Edas, 2007); Aa. Vv., “Il disastro è immenso e molto più grande di quanto si possa immaginare.” Il sisma calabrosiculo del 1908, ed. L. Caminiti (Roma: Aracne, 2010). 35  The quotation is taken from P. Grimaldi, “Apocalisse a Messina, il terremoto più drammatico nella storia d’Italia,” in Focus, December 28, 2016. 36  “I remember, too,” wrote Lidia Minervini in her testimonies on Salvemini, “a telegram from Mussolini. And still, almost half a century later, I can’t understand how those words have remained so impressed on my memory: ‘With the death of Gaetano Salvemini also comes the loss of one of the most beautiful figures of Italian socialism.’ Who would have thought that these two men, writing for the same newspaper, would later become such mortal enemies?” L. Minervini, “Amico e maestro. Ricordi di Gaetano Salvemini,” 11.

20 

F. FANTARELLA

from his roots, so laboriously replanted elsewhere (we will soon discover where and how), engaging him in a merciless fight against he who, in that very moment, had so affectionately paid homage to his legacy: Benito Mussolini (Figs. 2.3 and 2.4).37

3  The Thread of Hope Where on violet rivers flowed Messina, amid broken threads and wreckage you walk along the tracks and barter with your islander’s cockscomb. For two days has the earthquake boiled, a December of hurricanes and poisoned water. Our nights fall into the boxcars and we infantile livestock count dreams dusty with the dead broken by the irons […]38

37  In 1908, Salvemini and Mussolini were both members of the Italian Socialist Party and collaborators of L’Avanti! Salvemini left the party in 1911, while Mussolini was expelled from it in 1914 for having favoured Italian intervention in the war, against the party’s position of neutrality. On that occasion, Salvemini, in an overflowing of anti-socialist resentment, wrote to Mussolini from Faenza: “Dear Mussolini, I read your magnificent article on nonabsolute neutrality on the train. And I feel the need to give you my congratulations: your healthy and strong instinct has once again ushered you to the line of good conduct. Your [decision to] break with recommendation in order to save the spirit of internationalism, is no small act of courage in our country of sacristans and gossips.” (G. Salvemini, Carteggio, 1914–1920, 55). Three days later, on October 21, 1914, the letter was published in L’Avanti! Salvemini would later amend his words, not by way of rhetoric, but through a tireless battle against the fascist dictatorship. Still in 1914, a young Antonio Gramsci offered Salvemini a constituency among revolutionary socialists in Turin. Enthusiastic about the idea, Mussolini sent him a warm letter of support: “Last night, the secretary of the socialist section of Turin talked to me about the possibility of your candidature in the fourth constituency of that city. I immediately declared my enthusiasm for the following reasons: Giolitti hates you, thus you must make it to Montecitorio; your excellent cultural, political, and moral qualities make you a good fit for the Chamber; Turin—Italy’s most civil city—will show a magnificent display of civil and political solidarity with your poor and naïve peasants in Apulia. Should the candidature be promoted, you must accept. Avanti will do the rest.” (Ibid., 105). 38  The poem is called “Al padre” and Quasimodo wrote it in homage to his ninety-year-old father. Now found in S. Quasimodo, La terra impareggiabile (Milano: Mondadori, 1985).

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

21

Thus Salvatore Quasimodo immortalized in verse the pain of that time. Within the paternal figure celebrated here are so many fathers who, barehanded, with dark countenances and sad expressions, pulled lifeless bodies from the ruins. Salvemini was one of those fathers. With almost excruciating patience, unwilling to surrender to death, his friends, rushing to his side from all around, found him head down in a desperate search for his family. He extracted them one by one: his sister Camilla,39 his wife Maria, the bodies of his children. He’d found only lifeless bodies, of all but his youngest son, Ughetto, whom he continued to look for desperately among the ruins (as the friends closest to him following the tragedy attested). The earthquake, whose extremely high magnitude had hit Sicily and Calabria, had a profound effect on all of Europe. Many, from all countries, mobilized in a sign of solidarity for the places beaten by this tragedy. A tragedy which, indeed, had rained down on the countryside of the South, already in the depths of misery.40

 Tagliacozzo describes in the following way the profound affection Salvemini felt for his sister: “Gaetano loved his older sister Camilla dearly. She was a beautiful girl, blessed with great intelligence and a spirit of sacrifice. Profoundly religious, since the age of nine, she helped raise her younger brothers. Given her family’s limited finances, she was unable to attend school beyond the second grade. When Salvemini praised the obscure heroism of countless Italian women belonging to impoverished classes, he was thinking primarily of his sister Camilla”, Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini nel cinquantennio liberale, 5. 40  “All of Italy,” wrote Alessandro Galante Garrone, “was moved by the tragedy. Many abandoned their families and jobs to dedicate themselves first to rescue efforts, then to the rebuilding [of the city]. And the old ailments of the South resurfaced, aggravated by this last whipping. The Southern Question appeared, or rather reappeared, in all of its complexity”. Ed. A.  Galante Garrone, Zanotti-Bianco e Salvemini. Carteggio (Napoli: Guida Editore, 1983), 7–8. 39

22 

F. FANTARELLA

Among the friends who had rushed to Salvemini’s side were Julien Luchaire41 and his wife Fernande Dauriac.42 “One winter morning in 1908–1909,” Julien recalled, “the newspapers in Grenoble announced that the earth had trembled in Southern Italy and Sicily. Fernande and I immediately boarded the first train. A dear friend, Gaetano Salvemini, was 41  Julien Luchaire (Bordeaux, 1876—Paris 1962) belonged to a family of preeminent French scholars. His father, Achille Luchaire, was a highly esteemed historian, and his mother, Alphonsine Philippines Virginie Zeller, was the daughter of the famous historian Jules Zeller. Julien, too, embarked upon an academic career. He attended l’École Normale and studied in Rome, on an exchange programme, from 1897–1898. The years he spent in the Eternal City had been memorable for him. Fascinated by art, culture, and the Roman lifestyle, Julien left Italy with the firm intention of returning there soon: a wish which, as will later be shown, he fulfilled a few years later. In 1900, with his studies complete, he married Fernande Dauriac in Paris. The couple spent their honeymoon in Italy, among the canals and narrow streets of Venice. But it was here, in Venice, that Julien realized he’d married a dear friend, rather than a woman with whom he was truly in love. “We,” he confessed in his memoirs, “shared the same views on the statue of Colleoni, on Titian’s Venus, on the allegories of Giovanni Bellini […] [however] after five years together, we no longer had anything new to discover about each other. Not even the magic of Venice excited us.” J. Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen (Firenze: Olschki, 1965), I, 103–4. Julien wrote his memoirs at the age of 67. The first volume was published in 1943, the second, after his death in 1962. For more information on Julien Luchaire, please consult the beautiful and important biography that Cédric Meletta dedicated to Julien’s son, Jean: Jean Luchaire, L’enfant perdu des années sombres (Paris: Perrin, 2013). Of particular importance are chapters I, “Cosmopolis, une naissance 1900” and II, “Livret de famille”, 17–39. 42  Not much information about Fernande Dauriac is available. What is known must be sifted out from among unpublished archival materials and allusions to her character in scattered works to be later patched together with patience and care. Precious information on her life can be found, once again, in Meletta’s work, especially in chapters II, “Livret de famille” and III, “Firenzamente,” in Jean Luchaire, 26–55; in Jean Luchaire’s Confession and in Iris Origo’s essay, Bisogno di testimoniare. Fundamental to the study of Fernande are the archival documents concerning her father, Lionel Dauriac, held at the Victor-Cousin Library in Paris, as well as the unpublished correspondence between Fernande and Salvemini preserved at the Istituto storico della Resistenza in Florence, Tuscany. What is known about Fernande is her birth in Brest, France, in 1877, and her father’s fame as a noteworthy and brilliant musical critic. Lionel Dauriac taught at the University of Lyon and Toulouse before obtaining tenure at the University of Montpellier. In 1895, Lionel moved to Paris with his family, hoping to become an instructor at the Sorbonne. He did not succeed, however, and ended up teaching in a suburban high school. Tired with his career, he abandoned everything and dedicated himself to his studies in the Victor-Cousin Library of the Sorbonne, where his writings are still kept today. Lionel had two children, Fernande and Carle, who were raised in an intellectual environment both vivacious and open-minded. In Paris, Fernande studied economics and social sciences; it was during her years studying in the French capital that she met her future husband, Julien.

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

23

teaching history at the University of Messina. Other friends might have been hit as well. All of Italy had been. I had been deeply moved; I couldn’t but run to his side.”43 Julien and Fernande were welcomed to the city by a desolate and horrifying landscape: “Once inside the walls of Messina,” Julien wrote, “I breathed in the odour of sixty-thousand buried cadavers […]. I found Salvemini, who was looking for the bodies of his wife, his sister, and his five children in a mountain of rubble […]. In the eight days I spent with him, I never saw Salvemini lose his strength. The only thing I found there, roaming in that unimaginable misfortune, was his customarily steadfast face.”44 Despite the stench of death and piled bodies overwhelming Messina, Salvemini never gave up, continuing to dig among the ruins. Keeping the flame of hope alive was little Ughetto, whose body was never found despite the unrelenting search for it. On January 5, 1909—a week after the earthquake—Salvemini wrote to his friend Giovanni Gentile: “[I will return to Florence] once I’ve found my family. I’ve found and buried four children. But three people remain missing.”45 The missing bodies were those of his sister, wife, and his youngest child, Ughetto. After two weeks, little Ugo’s name still appeared on the list of missing persons. “I want to go back to Messina,” Salvemini wrote to Gentile on January 15, 1909, “to look, amid the ruins, for those of my three-year-old son, Ugo, which I have not yet found. Perhaps he was saved in my absence and is now wandering the world an orphan. As soon as I find his body, my soul will have some peace. If I do not find his dead body, I will search the world for him, alive.”46 In March 1909, a boy by the name of Ughetto was found in hospital at Palermo. For a moment, Salvemini’s heart, shattered by pain, swelled with new and strong hope: the description of that boy corresponded to that of his  Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen, I, 171.  Ibid., 172. 45  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, 395. Salvemini and Gentile met for the first time in 1907, in Naples, at the sixth congress of middle school teachers. “The congress in Naples,” wrote Salvemini to Gentile, “served to cement the friendship between us.” His friend promptly replied: “Only in Naples did I learn to recognize your soul as one of those very few that I’ve always searched for in my life: the only ones worthy of being looked for. I’ve always had very few friends; and finding a new one is always an important date and event for me.” (Ibid., 371 and 380). It was Gentile, in 1909, to have supported Salvemini’s candidature at the University of Pisa. Fascism, however, divided the two friends. As we know, Gentile was named Minister of Instruction by Mussolini in 1922 and joined the National Fascist Party in 1923. 46  Ibid., 396. 43 44

24 

F. FANTARELLA

lost son. Encouraged by the news, he immediately sent a telegram to Gentile: “Make certain that the child Ugo Bensaia in hospital is truly Bensaia or if he bears another family name.” The response from Sicily, however, had been yet another stab of pain that suffocated the last breath of hope Salvemini had safeguarded at the bottom of his heart: “You had understood,” he wrote, almost in a justification of his feelings, “the reason for my telegram. In Milan, I had been told that in Palermo, there was a child who corresponded to the description of my son, and who was called Ugo Bensaia. How had he been given this last name? I telegraphed you I know not whether with or without hope.” And then bitterly concluded: “But when I received your response from Volpe, my heart was pierced with pain. How weak is the thought of man, how vain and easy it is to fall subject to false hope.”47 The search was over. Until the end, Salvemini had believed he’d find someone alive. At least Ugo. And yet, no. He alone had survived that terrible night. Thus, Salvemini had had to surrender, throw up his arms in defeat, indulge the life that had so cruelly torn everything away from him, leaving him entirely alone to start over again. From nothing. But was it truly so? Had the Messina earthquake truly thrown Salvemini into darkest solitude? Had it truly defeated his fighter’s spirit?

 Ibid., 399.

47

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

Fig. 2.1  Salvemini’s mother. Emanuela Turtur. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence)

25

26 

F. FANTARELLA

Fig. 2.2  August 1901, Salvemini with his family. Salvemini, hat in hand, stands in the centre with his youngest son, Filippetto. His first wife, Maria, is sitting in the lower right-hand corner with one of their sons. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence)

2  BEFORE MESSINA 

27

Fig. 2.3  Messina after the earthquake, 1908. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence)

28 

F. FANTARELLA

Fig. 2.4  Salvemini’s house in Cairoli Square, Messina, after the earthquake. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence)

CHAPTER 3

After Messina

1   Among Salvemini’s Friends … In addition to the Luchaires, Salvemini’s friend Giovanni Cena1 also ran to his side in Messina along with his then-partner, Sibilla Aleramo.2 Salvemini became attached to many of the volunteers who had hastened to Sicily 1  Giovanni Cena was born in Montanaro, in the province of Turin, in 1870 and died in Rome in 1917. A socialist and editor-in-chief of the magazine Nuova Antologia, he is known not only for his works as a writer and poet, but also for his commitment to literacy teaching in the countryside of the Agro Romano. It was an ambitious and difficult project to realize, owing both to the state of misery in which the people there lived, and to the backwardness of their thinking. He succeeded, however, in putting together a group of intellectuals to intervene with concrete plans aimed at improving the literacy rate in those areas. Among them, we recall the physician Angelo Celli, known for his study of malaria, his wife, Anna Fraentzel, and, for a certain period, Sibilla Aleramo. Salvemini supported Cena’s initiatives via his journal, L’Unità. For more information, see the article “Per una scuola dell’agro romano,” in L’Unità, a. III, June 4, 1914, 23 (the text is also available on the website of the Gino Bianco Library: http://www.bibliotecaginobianco.it/?p=143&t+Per-­una-­scuola-nellagro-romano). Equally important to this topic is Salvemini’s correspondence, in particular Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, and Id., Carteggio, 1912–1914. On Giovanni Cena, see Giovanni Cena poeta e apostolo dell’educazione, by G.  Franzé, Manduria: Lacaita, 1976. 2  Sibilla Aleramo thus described the squalid and desolate scene presented to her alongside Cena and the Celli spouses on their visits to the Roman countrysides: “A stone’s throw from Rome [exist] hay sheds, [lined up] like bales of hay. They live in huts, without pavement,

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8_3

29

30 

F. FANTARELLA

after the earthquake. With one in particular, Umberto Zanotti-Bianco,3 he developed a strong and lasting friendship destined to engage them in many battles for the emancipation of peasants. Following the earthquake, as will be shown, Salvemini threw himself headfirst into political and social activity. And it is precisely in his indefatigable commitment to the emancipation of the poorest strata of society that he found the only reason not to fold in on himself, a reason to move forward even after the terrible tragedy that had struck him. Moving back to Florence, Salvemini had to start from scratch. To look for a new reason to live. To not let himself be conquered by pain when, at night, he found himself home, alone. Without the scamper of his children to welcome him, or the affectionate embrace of his wife, or his sister’s kind expression.4 His old friends, like Placci, who had welcomed him many they, too, look like they are made of mud […]. They sleep huddled together, in the smoke, in the stench. Today, it was sunny. But when it rains, how is it possible to live there? How? Cena looked at me trembling. I was crying. In those tears lay the seed of the schools of the Agro Romano.” Eds. B. Conti—A. Morino, Sibilla Aleramo e il suo tempo. Vita raccontata e illustrata (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1981), 47. The relationship between Aleramo and Cena lasted from 1902 to 1910 and Salvemini often visited them in their house in Rome, in via Flaminia, 45. Ibid. 3  Salvemini, Umberto Zanotti-Bianco, Giovanni Cena, and Sibilla Aleramo were among the intellectuals who travelled to the province of Reggio-Calabria in 1909, a few months after the earthquake, for an investigation on the state of the schools there. Their subsequent report testifies to the poverty and total abandon of those places, further marked by the earthquake: “The fall of all these classrooms [caused by the earthquake] is not, in the end, a bad thing. Most of them were “filthy mouse dens,” “centres and breeding-beds of infectious diseases,” many without flooring, a few without roofs, cramped, dark, dirty, ignoble. In them, children were tortured as they might be in “houses of pain,” four or five of them squeezed around desks appropriate for only two or three of them at the most, when they were not forced to sit on the ground or go off in search of a chair to borrow from a compassionate neighbour.” They conclude their report in the following way: “Of all the extant classrooms we visited, only one was adequate, though damaged by the disaster. We regret only that none of the others had been destroyed.” B. Serpe, Giuseppe Le Maire, “Passione civica, attivismo sociale, impegno educativo,” in Studi sulla Formazione, January 2013, 83–91, here cited is p. 87. It is available online at http://www.fupress.net/index.php/sf/ article/view/12040. In 1910, Zanotti-Bianco was among the promoters of the National association for the interests of the Italian South (Associazione nazionale per gli interessi del Mezzogiorno d’Italia—Animi), in which Salvemini was also an active participant. On the friendship between Salvemini and Zanotti-Bianco, see Zanotti-Bianco e Salvemini, cit., edited by Galante Garrone. 4  Salvemini’s sister-in-law Lidia Minervini described the darkness of those days as follows: “And here are other images. Our dining room at the time, in the villa in Via Dogali; the table set, and we, mute. Seated and ready to eat, but in silence. Because all of our faces had

3  AFTER MESSINA 

31

years earlier when he had arrived there as a student at the Istituto superiore, could now only guess at the atrocious loneliness that gripped him, hidden behind a discrete and muted pain; they kept him close to them, offering him the warmth of their own homes. Even those who had met him later in life and appreciated him progressively as he advanced in his studies, like the Luchaires, or the art history critic Bernard Berenson and his wife Mary, or Giuseppe Prezzolini, everyone around him lent him a hand. On December 20, 1908, only a few days before the earthquake, Prezzolini (with Giovanni Papini) had founded the weekly paper La Voce, inviting Salvemini to collaborate with them in those early phases, as the project began to take shape. “Dear Professor,” he wrote, “I would like, in the following year, for you to become a collaborator of our weekly or biweekly periodical, which I will direct with other friends; a periodical not unlike Il Marzocco, but much more open-minded and above all, honest and free, unaffiliated to and unaffected by either thugs or cowards.”5 plunged into darkness; and I see his [Salvemini’s] again, petrified, no longer wearing that dear smile of his, but closed in a hopeless pain; I see again his absent gaze, lost far away, his uncontrolled gestures. He would freeze with his fork in mid-air, when someone would ask: Gaetano, did you eat? Probably, he was unaware of how he could still be alive, the only survivor of a family destroyed. All that was left of his house was up there, in the attic, in a crate, a few touching objects: his children’s schoolbags, a few notebooks covered in infantile exercises, a syllabary, a few contorted books, a sock, a dress …” L. Minervini, “Amico e maestro,” 11. 5  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, 387. Salvemini wrote for La Voce until 1911 when, exhorted by Prezzolini, he founded L’Unità. For a decade (or at least until the beginning of the twenties), Salvemini and Prezzolini remained linked by mutual appreciation and friendship. In a beautiful essay dedicated to the theme of friendship, Prezzolini wrote as follows on Salvemini: “In our political and intellectual life, Salvemini’s name amounts to something more than his practical success […]. That which he obtained has more value for the resistance which it encountered than in and of itself; for the example of the battle, for the effect it obtained.” (G. Prezzolini, Amici, Firenze: Vallecchi, 1922, 127). As had been the case with Gentile, it was once again Fascism that interrupted the solidarity and any affection between them. Following Mussolini’s rise to power, Prezzolini defined himself “apota,” literally translated as “those who don’t drink it” (see G. Prezzolini, “Per una società degli apoti,” in La Rivoluzione Liberale, September 28, 1922, p. 28),—an indication of scepticism with which he placed himself above political events, without taking a firm stance for or against the Blackshirts. A sort of neutrality of which Salvemini was not fond—in fact, he deeply disliked it. That is why in 1925, immigrated to Paris, Salvemini refused to meet up with his old friend, who was also living in France at the time. “Our friendship,” he responded to Prezzolini’s invitation, “is built on many years of shared goals […] and I fear that I would compromise it, were I to meet with you in what is such a painful period for our country, during which we are on opposite sides” (Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 486–7). In 1930, Prezzolini moved to

32 

F. FANTARELLA

When Salvemini returned to Florence, Prezzolini immediately wrote him to renew his offer: I got news of you from Papini. It is good to hear that your spirit is still strong. You know how much hope for Italy I place in you. And what a pleasure it is to have you close, in Florence! I thank you for your agreement to collaborate with La Voce. My biggest concern is not being able to realize it as I would like to. Workers are lacking, believe me. And yet, even just as [the periodical] is now, it has managed to elicit great enthusiasm in Italy […] I am sending the most recent issues to you, and all extant issues to Luchaire, since he has expressed an interest in subscribing [to it] […]. Give my best to him and his wife if she, too, is in Grenoble.6

As is inferred by Prezzolini’s letter, the Luchaires opened their home in Grenoble to Salvemini in an effort to alleviate, as much as possible, their friend’s pain. Writing from France, Salvemini sent a moving letter to Placci: “In this tranquil, methodic, domestic life, which tangibly brings me back to happier days and almost gives me the illusion of having a real family, my health has much improved. And my nerves, too, have recovered. But at intervals,” he added, when the memory of what he had lost rained heavily on him, “the past takes hold of me. I see it before me in living fragments that give me an atrocious illusion of reality! I dream of it. I seem unable, at times, to master my thought, which takes me by the hand and leads me toward madness.” But then, as if almost to reassure his friend, he concluded: “These are but fleeting moments; less frequent, luckily, than they might have been. But they cause me a lot of pain. In any event, I am doing well enough. This moment, too, shall pass. Everything shall pass.”7 Everything shall pass, Salvemini wrote, hiding his pain within his iron suit of armour, carrying on in a tireless battle to find in it a reason—the last, ultimate reason—to move forward. “Life,” he wrote to Giustino New York, where he began to work at Columbia University’s Casa Italiana, which Salvemini considered to be an organ of fascist propaganda. This alignment further embittered their relationship to the point that in a 1954 article, Prezzolini completely reconsiders his earlier positive judgment of Salvemini, painting a portrait of his former friend with the colours of resentment and meanness. “A Southern bandit [sic!]” he wrote impetuously, “who opened fire on everyone, Giolitti, the Pope, the King, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, targeting with even greater gusto the friends and allies of yesterday once they had become ‘traitors’ in his view.” G. Prezzolini, L’italiano inutile (Milano: Longanesi, 1954), 288–9. 6  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, 396. 7  Ibid., 403.

3  AFTER MESSINA 

33

Fortunato, “can no longer have any other objective for me than to forget myself in works that tie me to others.”8 It was in this way that Salvemini focused all his efforts on the improvement of the South, denouncing the corruption of local administrators and the illegal methods they used during elections in caustic articles that spared no one, not even the prime minister Giovanni Giolitti, whom Salvemini defined, without any reverential fear, the “Minister of the Underworld”;9 Salvemini spared no one in his articles published one by one in Prezzolini’s La Voce or Filippo Turati’s Critica Sociale. It is in this very context and thanks to his Florentine friends that Salvemini made contact with the Luchaires. In 1907, a professor of Italian Language and Literature at the University of Grenoble, Julien was among the promoters of the Grenoble Italo-French Institute, founded in Florence in Via San Gallo 10, in historic Palazzo Fenzi. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Florence became the real pulsing centre of Italian (and not just Italian) avant-garde culture: in 1908, Prezzolini founded the magazine La Voce in Florence; in January of 1913, Giovanni Papini, Ardengo Soffici, and Aldo Palazzeschi gave life to Lacerba there. The cultural fervour in the Tuscan capital was such that every new trend in European culture (and especially French culture) became the object of study, scrutiny, and lively debates.10 Luchaire, with his wife Fernande and their two children, Jean and Ghita, moved to Florence in 1908, when the Institute was inaugurated—in April of that same year—and Julien became its director, a position he retained until 1920. All the biggest Italian and European intellectuals of that time were present at the inauguration: from Pasquale Villari to Guido Mazzoni, from Paul Sabatier and Pino Rajna to Robert Davidsohn. The Grenoble Institute hosted many scholars, like Benjamin Crémieux and the future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Romain Rolland. The Luchaires’ house became a meeting place for the intellectual elite: Jean-Richard Bloch, André Gide, and Rolland all met there regularly and assiduously. So, too, was the case for the Italian intellectual elite, of whom the aforementioned Villari, Papini,

 Ibid., 249.  G. Salvemini, Il Ministro della malavita (Firenze: La Voce, 1910). The book was republished by La Voce in Rome in 1919. 10  E. Gentile, 1908. Firenze capitale delle Avanguardie (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2013). 8 9

34 

F. FANTARELLA

Prezzolini, and Placci, the last of whom introduced the Luchaires to the inner circle of the Berenson family.11 Salvemini had met Julien and his wife Fernande in this context of mutual friends and had quickly become a friend of theirs himself. Not only that: Mrs Luchaire was also known in Florentine intellectual circles for her assiduous collaboration with La Voce, so regular, in fact, that she came to be defined “the ambassadress of vocianism.”12 Prezzolini in particular held Fernande in high esteem, both for her own culture and for her familiarity with Parisian salon culture. Fernande, who travelled frequently between Florence and the French capital, appeared to him as the perfect gobetween for information on Paris’s debates and cultural events and to promote the Vocian initiatives in France. From Prezzolini’s correspondence with Fernande also emerges the familiarity with which she speaks of Salvemini, demonstrating how deeply she had penetrated into the darkest and most hidden secrets of his soul. And it was so. Upon her return from a philosophical congress in Paris, Fernande, commenting on the event, wrote an amused letter to Prezzolini, in which, among other things, she states: “They said many correct and interesting things, but also many others that would make Salvemini’s hair stand on end.”13 Evidently, Salvemini’s intolerance for vague speech, his aversion to silly utterances disguised as philosophical thoughts14 in stark contrast with his concrete, empiric spirit built on attention to facts15 did not elude Fernande. This, then, was how Salvemini’s life in Florence unfolded following the Messina earthquake. He split his days between Pisa, where he resumed teaching Modern History at the university, and Florence, the city where 11  On the life of the Luchaires in Florence and on their network of friends, see Meletta, Jean Luchaire, in particular, pp. 39–55. 12  In La Voce e l’Europa. Il movimento fiorentino de La Voce: dall’identità culturale italiana all’identità culturale europea, eds. D.  Rüesch and B. Somalvico (Roma: Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Dipartimento per l’informazione e l’editoria, 1995), 334. 13  Ibid., 334–41. 14  Salvemini defined philosophical discourse “philosophical jibber-jabber” (“filofesserie”). On this topic, see “La non-­filosofia di Salvemini,” in N. Bobbio, Maestri e compagni (Firenze: Passigli, 1984), 31–48. 15  “Empirical learning (La lezione dei fatti)” is, not by coincidence, the name of the seventh chapter of Profilo ideologico del Novecento (Milano: Garzanti, 1995), 105–116, which Norberto Bobbio dedicated to Luigi Einaudi and Gaetano Salvemini. Here, Bobbio, with the crystalline clarity trademark of all his works, delineates Salvemini’s empirical approach against the doctrinaire nature of abstract reasoning.

3  AFTER MESSINA 

35

he lived and conducted most of his frenetic journalistic activity. Salvemini must have appeared to many as a man made of iron. To many. But not to all. And certainly not to Fernande, who was acutely aware of the pain that pierced his heart. “I am here [in Pisa],” she wrote in a letter to Sibilla Aleramo, “for a few days with Giovannino. I impatiently await news from you. Julien and Ghita are still in Grenoble. Soon, my girl will go off to the countryside outside Pisa with a friend of mine, and Julien will go to Florence. I am thinking of meeting him there around September 10th. The sea suits me, and my little boy, too.” And she added: “I was very tired—and rather unhappy, all things considered. After a period of general well-being, Salvemini seems to me to be sadder than ever. And it discourages me. But there’s nothing to be done. Life really does require a lot of effort!”16 Fernande had correctly deciphered Salvemini’s state of mind. The blackest despair took hold of him from time to time. And once—just once, but all the opportunity it took to reopen the gash on Salvemini’s tortured and desperate soul—once, he, so reserved and introverted, let himself feel the full turmoil of the sentiments that rioted within him. It was when he wrote to Gentile in words that make measurable the extent of the abyss of unhappiness that had swallowed him: “Dear Gentile,” Salvemini wrote, “if I had been asked to imagine a horrible tragedy that would strike me, never would I have thought of that which actually befell me. At least one. Would that at least even one of those beautiful children, who I said, a little jokingly and a little seriously, would become my cane in old age, had been left to me. At least Filippetto!” And then, the cloak of stoicism completely shaken, he continued: “I move forward, I work, I give talks, I prepare conferences, I throw stones at those who seem dishonest and insincere to me. In short: I live. And people think of me as strong. In reality,” and here readers almost feel on their own shoulders the gravity of the pain weighing on Salvemini, “I am a poor wretch, without a roof, without a home, who saw eleven years of happiness destroyed in two minutes. I have here on my table a few letters from my poor wife, from my sister, from the children. I read them a little at a time. It is as if I can hear their voices. And after having read a few, I must stop, because I am gripped by a terrible, desperate cry, and I want to die.”17 16  Letter from Fernande Dauriac to Sibilla Aleramo, without location, August 28, 1909. Archival source in Rome: Istituto Gramsci, Fondo Sibillla Aleramo. 17  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, p. 399.

36 

F. FANTARELLA

It wasn’t the first time that Salvemini had found himself starting over from scratch. Already at just seventeen years old, he’d had to familiarize himself with Florence, when he moved there from Molfetta to pursue his studies. And, as we have seen, it was no easy feat for him. His workload, his limited finances, his having to pinch pennies to manage to set aside savings for his family, all provoked a nervous breakdown from which he recovered only thanks to the care of his Florentine friends. Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, having moved to Messina with his family, he had had to acclimate to a narrow-minded environment, much too narrow when compared with his own progressive thought, and this, too, had not been easy for him. Finally, the earthquake had taken from him even that haven of familiar affections he had laboriously built and in which he had found shelter from all the academic and political disappointments in his life. Now, however, it was no longer simply a question of becoming accustomed to the rhythm of a new city, or forcing himself to swallow bitter pills regarding his academic difficulties. It was something else. He now had to pick up the pieces of what was left of his past. And it was impossible to put them back together. The Messina earthquake had created a deep void within him. Holding these broken bits of his life in his hands, he threw himself head-first into his work: teaching and writing feverishly, at times polemically (perhaps too polemically), but with rigor and care against the injustices he’d decided to battle in order to forget himself. It was in this very period that he built or consolidated friendships with the most important intellectuals of the time, from Giustino Fortunato to Benedetto Croce, from Giovanni Gentile to Giuseppe Prezzolini, to at last Filippo Turati (though not without friction, as will be shown) and Anna Kuliscioff. From time to time, however, when he slowed down the rhythm of his days, the echo of his solitude thundered within that black hole left over by the death of his loved ones. It was a painful nostalgia that gripped him most strongly when, a guest in the house of friends, he found himself observing the reassuring domestic routine of the family hosting him. “It must be a great happiness,” he wrote to Placci from France, where he was spending some time with his Tuscan friend’s relatives, “It must be a great happiness, that of a mother like yours, or your sister’s, who feel themselves surrounded by the affections of numerous offspring […] Watching those young men and women next to their mother, who seems like their older

3  AFTER MESSINA 

37

sister, I feel myself gripped by a great and painful sweetness.”18 Only the company of Mrs Luchaire and her children seemed to soothe Salvemini’s spirit. Thus, in fact, to comfort him, he wrote to a very worried Giustino Fortunato about the affectionate considerations he had received from his friends and especially from Fernande: “And besides, here I am not at all alone. I have friends who love me very much […]. I spend a lot of time with the Luchaires: especially with the wife, who keeps me …. in her attentions, and treats me with the patience of a saint.”19 Salvemini spent long periods of time with the Luchaires, whose children, Jean and Ghita, with their vivacious light-heartedness and the joy in the racket they made, surely reminded him of his Sicilian evenings, when, coming home from the university, his own happy children would run to greet him.20 Tying Salvemini to Fernande, however, were not only her loving attentions and the warmth of her children, but also a consonance of political ideas and a sensitivity toward questions of social responsibility. Fernande, like her father Lionel had been, adhered to liberal and reformist ideas, and already in France, she had alighted with passion at topics like early childhood education and mothers’ rights.21 It is no coincidence that Fernande had been quite stricken by the French translation of Sibilla Aleramo’s novel, Una  Ibid., 405.  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1912–1914, 83. 20  As previously shown, both the Luchaires and Salvemini were regular habitués of the Villa “I Tatti” of the Berenson family in Fiesole. Of the afternoons spent at Berenson’s villa, one very ironic and amusing description can be found in the memoirs (truthfully, infrequently consulted and rarely cited) of his assistant, Nicky Mariano, who remembers thus those meetings: “Salvemini and Fernande often spent the weekend at I Tatti when I was not there. But the few times that I was invited there alongside them, I had a lot of fun listening to the discussions between Salvemini and B.B.” And, underlining Salvemini’s charismatic allure, she continued: “Gaetano’s smile was irresistible, and his entire personality was extremely stimulating. There was a curious physical similarity between him and B.B., both with bald heads and short beards.” Fernande, by contrast, must have appeared to Nicky to be a rigid woman with a much less intriguing personality than Salvemini, austere and pedantic. Mrs Luchaire’s rigour was revealed to her in a fun sketch: one day, Fernande, having arrived for lunch at the villa well in advance, decided to take a walk in the garden. There, she ran into a host who, after a swim, had decided to let himself air-dry, nude, in the sun, walking up and down the garden. Scandalized, Fernande hid in the library, where she declared her “consternation” to Nicky at having met “some sort of savage, completely nude, walking about as if it were the most natural thing in the world!” In N.  Mariano, Forty Years with Berenson (New York: Knopf, 1966), 27–8. 21  On this point, please see the first chapter of the work of Meletta, Jean Luchaire, 26–32. 18 19

38 

F. FANTARELLA

donna.22 For Fernande, the story told by Aleramo testified to all of Italy’s backward attitudes toward women’s rights. Thus, even before meeting Sibilla in person, she wrote a very favourable review of her work in an article entitled Un cas de feminisme pratique et integral.23 Una donna, Fernande argued, raised important issues that affected not only the feminist movement, but society as a whole. Sibilla Aleramo’s novel, Fernande added, addressed a delicate theme: that of the role of the woman and the consequences of divorce in a country like Italy, where legislation on this issue was still lacking. But that which struck Fernande most deeply was that the novelist’s reflections had been born of a “particular case” (the events of her own personal life), rather than from an elaborate theoretical discussion. In Italy, thus, she concluded, the debate on women, on the role of mothers and their rights, was far behind with respect to its treatment in other countries, which rendered the process of female emancipation there still more drawn out and difficult. Once she’d settled down in Florence, Fernande became an intimate friend not only to Sibilla Aleramo, but also to other women known for their engagement in women’s causes, like Elsa Dallolio,24 Gina and Paola Lombroso.25 These women’s commitment to women’s rights included,  S. Aleramo, Une femme, trans. P.-P. Plan (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1908).  F. Dauriac, “Un cas de feminisme pratique et integral,” in Roman et Vie, June 1, 1908. The article is available at the Bibliothèque National de France in Paris, in the François Mitterand section, Département des Manuscrits, Tolbiac-Rez-de-jardin-magasin: MFICHE 8-Z-17677 . 24  Elsa Dallolio was born in Bologna in 1890. She was the daughter of General Alfred Dallolio, minister of Arms and Munitions during the First World War, and later senator. Elsa met Salvemini in 1912 thanks to Fernande, who was a good friend of her sister’s, Gina. Dallolio served as a nurse in the Red Cross during the First World War and after this conflict, became one of the most active members of Animi. In 1919–20, she was also the secretary of the Democratic League for the renewal of public life in Italy, founded by Salvemini. On Elsa Dallolio, see the beautiful portrait painted by Iris Origo, Un’amica. Ritratto di Elsa Dallolio (Firenze: Passigli, 1988) and Ed. F.  Cordova, Che vale moralmente l’Italia? Lettere di Gaetano Salvemini e Giustino Fortunato ad Elsa Dallolio (Roma: Bulzoni, 2001). Soon, Fernande became attached to Elsa, becoming one of her dearest friends—a friendship to which their unpublished letters (which will later be analysed) preserved in copies at the Istituto storico della Resistenza in Toscana (Ags, Carte Iris Origo) bears witness. 25  Gina (1872–1944) and Paola (1871–1954) Lombroso were the daughters of Cesare Lombroso. Raised in a rich and vivacious cultural environment, the sisters, though certainly influenced by their father’s studies, nevertheless managed to develop autonomous identities both as women and as militants within the feminist movement. Paola, who married the professor Mario Carrara—one of the few professors who, in 1931, refused to pledge allegiance 22 23

3  AFTER MESSINA 

39

mainly, a concern for childcare, assistance to mothers, and, as was the case with the schools in the Agro Romano sustained by Cena and the rural Libraries created by Paola, the promotion of education in more economically depressed areas, especially rural ones immersed in misery and poverty. A commitment and a sensitivity, those of Fernande, that did not leave Salvemini indifferent; he, too, had supported the schools of the Agro Romano; he, too, had participated with Cena and Sibilla Aleramo in the investigation of the schools in the province of Reggio Calabria that had been struck by the earthquake; he, too, finally, had become, together with Zanotti-Bianco and Elsa Dallolio, an active member of the Animi. However, Fernande’s approach to feminism and social responsibility was strongly philanthropical in nature,26 while Salvemini categorically refused to fascism—dedicated herself to children’s literature. She was, in fact, one of the creators of the Corriere dei Piccoli in 1908. It had been Paola, too, to create rural libraries and, during the war, “villas for children of soldiers” later transformed into “Casa del sole,” for children with tuberculosis. Gina, who married the historian Guglielmo Ferrero, cultivated the conviction that women were different from (different from, it must be noted, not inferior to) men and sustained that their sensitivity made them more adept at certain activities, such as charitable works, educational services, and social assistance. Titles by Gina Lombroso include: La donna nella vita. Riflessioni e deduzioni (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1923); Anime di donne. Vite vere (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1925); La donna nella società attuale (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1927); Le tragedie del progresso meccanico (Torino: Bocca, 1930). On the Lombroso-Ferrero family, recommended readings include the epistolary, Politica e affetti familiari. Lettere di Amelia, Carlo e Nello Rosselli a Guglielmo, Leo e Nina Ferrero e Gina Lombroso, eds. M. Calloni and L. Cedroni (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1997). 26  Philanthropical feminism promoted the emancipation of women and the betterment of conditions for children through the creation of night schools, hospitals, libraries, but also by providing assistance to single mothers, orphans, etc. The activities of these feminists, however, were not limited to charity. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many social circles were founded, like the Women’s Association (Associazione per la donna, 1897), National Feminine Union (l’Unione femminile nazionale, 1899), the National Council for Women (il Consiglio nazionale per la donna, 1903) and the Pro-Suffrage Association (Associazione Pro-suffragio, 1906), especially in cities like Rome and Milan. The Pro-­ suffrage association especially, in addition to its commitment to assistance, had a more specific goal: that is, that of making women sensitive to political issues and encouraging them to fight for the right to vote, still denied them at that point. It is, in fact, in those very years that debates surrounding universal suffrage first emerged, inspiring the Animi, and especially Salvemini, as will be shown. The activities of feminist associations at the beginning of the twentieth century has been excellently explained by Annarita Buttafuoco: “Even a cursory glance at the ensemble of the activities of emancipation organizations sheds light on the wide variety of initiatives that were put in place via programs that responded to different needs […] in fact, everywhere, [these programmes] not only co-existed, but were tightly co-­ dependent: campaigns for paternity research [went hand in hand] with [those oriented

40 

F. FANTARELLA

any interventions oriented purely toward financial assistance. “No charity,” he wrote to Elsa Dallolio, “but active participation in the life down there; illuminate the people on their real interests, battle privilege little by little and continue investigations, publish, spread awareness about certain problems.”27 Salvemini took a long view, aimed to denounce and battle problems at their roots—corruption, injustices, unfair distribution of wealth—and furnish the instruments—like education—required to emancipate the people in need. This is why, from his point of view, charity was nothing more than a palliative remedy, which would have alleviated the situation in the short term but would not have resolved the problems of those in difficulty in the long run. As has been shown, following the Messina earthquake, Salvemini dedicated himself body and soul to political activism to avoid being overwhelmed by his pain. The fight for the emancipation of farmers was one of the initiatives that absorbed all of his energy. The debate on universal suffrage exploded in Italy between 1909 and 1910. This issue must have resonated particularly strongly with Salvemini and, in fact, led him to battle even within his own political party for the extension of the right to vote to everyone: the illiterate, the poor, men and women alike. Salvemini was not alone in this battle, however, and his main ally was herself a woman: Anna Kuliscioff.28

toward] affording concrete help to single mothers; movements for the right to vote [went hand in hand with] professional courses or others offered on “political” instruction on the rights of women workers, laborers, and so on.” Nevertheless, concludes Buttafuoco, “the terrain of action, commitment to welfare, fail closely to express the newness of the conception of social relationships; thus, the instrument chosen [welfarism] to attract other women to the cause revealed itself, ultimately, to be ineffective and even counterproductive” A. Buttafuoco, “La filantropia come politica. Esperienze dell’emancipazionismo italiano nel Novecento,” in Ragnatele di rapporti. Patronage e reti di relazioni nella storia delle donne, eds. L. Ferrante, M. Palazzi, G. Pomata (Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1998), 166–87. 27  Origo, Un’amica, 36. 28  On Anna Kuliscioff, see, among others, P. Pilitteri, Anna Kuliscioff una biografia politica (Venezia: Marsilio, 1983); M. Addis Saba, Anna Kuliscioff. Vita privata e passione politica (Milano: Mondadori, 1993); R.  Colombo Ascari, Feminism and Socialism in Anna Kuliscioff’s Writings, in Aa.Vv., Mothers of invention. Women, Italian Fascism, and Culture, ed. R. Pickering-Iazzi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), and the epistolary: Filippo Turati—Anna Kuliscioff. Carteggio, collected by A.  Schiavi, ed. F.  Pedone (Torino: Einaudi, 1977).

3  AFTER MESSINA 

41

2   A Political Fight: Universal Suffrage Salvemini supported the battle for universal voting rights in contrast with the Socialist Party’s policy, which until then had committed itself to the realization of many, but only timid reforms, almost always limited to more evolved pockets of the proletariat. Salvemini, instead, demanded that the party not waste its energy on minor issues or details, and that it instead develop its programme around the activation of few but fundamental reforms among which, that for universal suffrage. It was thus that, during the eleventh national Congress in Milan held in 1910, Salvemini thundered against the flimsiness of socialists, spurring them to put in place a more concrete plan of action, whose impact would be effective for the entire working class. “It is necessary,” Salvemini affirmed, “that the party abandon the practice of inorganically asking for one or another reform, in a disorganized manner and without ever seriously insisting on any of them […] it must choose a well-determined and logically linked group of them and respond to the needs of the entire working class.” And he concluded thus: “The immediate party program must include the electoral reform whose foundation rests firmly on universal suffrage.”29 The cautious, if not downright reticent debate that followed this request showed just how little, in fact, the party felt itself involved in the fight for universal suffrage. Although the reformist wing of the Socialist Party sustained, on the one hand, that universal suffrage was the essential foundation of popular sovereignty, they feared, on the other, that extending the vote to the masses of agricultural workers, including women, would have resulted in favouring the clergy: parties less sensitive to socialist petitions for emancipation. On the contrary, Salvemini believed that the extension of the right to vote to all was the only way to liberate men, starting with agricultural workers. At the 1908 congress, Salvemini also urged the party, with all his soul, to turn its energy toward the most downtrodden of the proletariat: “We ask you,” he said on that occasion, “for a solidarity that it is your duty to grant us and that will cost you some sacrifices […] but this sacrifice is also your duty to make; because you are socialists, because not only the more evolved and powerful portions of the proletariat should exist for you; you must also pay attention to the less evolved portions.” And he concluded: “You can give us this solidarity, and you must give it to us. It is the only assistance worthy of free men: help us to  Salvemini, Movimento socialista e questione meridionale, 399–401.

29

42 

F. FANTARELLA

become free; the rest, we will do ourselves.”30 For Salvemini, the objective was absolutely clear: farmers, women could become emancipated only be emancipating themselves. But self-emancipation required the right to vote. At this point, the reader may be asking himself why so much attention has been given to the question of universal suffrage if the main goal of this essay is that of examining Salvemini’s most personal and intimate affairs in order to reconstruct his family life. In truth, Salvemini’s political position is in no way separate from his personal affections. The question concerning the right to vote, including women’s right to vote, in fact, demonstrates that Salvemini and Fernande belonged to the same circle of friends and shared the same ideals (even if Fernande was not actively involved in politics). Not only that: it was precisely the battle for universal suffrage that brought clarity to Salvemini about his own political objectives (shortly thereafter, he left the Socialist party) and that strengthened his personal ties, especially those to Fernande, who would later become his most intimate confidante and most loyal ally in many battles. It would, in fact, be Fernande to re-propose the question of universal suffrage to “Amici dell’Unità” (Friends of L’Unità) in 1919. The Socialist party, as was being shown, faltered before the question of voting rights, where Salvemini, instead, demanded decisive action in the fight for universal suffrage. In reality, the party’s hesitation reflected the divisions that ate away at it from the inside, where two factions faced off: the reformists (who believed it possible to improve the destiny of marginalized people through a plan of gradual reform) and the revolutionaries (who instead wanted to reverse the status quo altogether in one fell swoop). Salvemini belonged to the reformist group. However, he was a reformist of his own type, anything but aligned with the measured, almost fearing attitudes of his party, and above all, little inclined to parliamentary compromise with the liberal ruling class. Salvemini’s vehemence could not but conflict with the prudent and discrete pace of the leader of the reformist faction, Filippo Turati. In fact, Turati himself was a summary of all the reformists’ fears and perplexities surrounding the political capacities both of farmers and, especially, of women. One must remember that in those years, while the debate on universal voting rights rotated around the request to extend the right to vote to all male citizens, even illiterate ones, 30  Id., Resoconto stenografico del X Congresso nazionale del Partito Socialista italiano, Florence: 19–22 September 1908.

3  AFTER MESSINA 

43

no one or almost no one had much thought about the equivalent prerogative for women. Turati justified the party’s position citing as motive “the still lazy political class conscience of the masses of proletarian women.” An affirmation that provoked an immediate response from Anna Kuliscioff (“the strong woman of Italian socialism,” and, incidentally, also Turati’s companion) who clarified in Critica Sociale: “You will say, in your propaganda, that illiterate people are owed political rights because they, too, are producers. Are not women, too, workers, farmers, employees, more numerous every day? Is a mother’s function and sacrifice not equivalent to military service when she gives her sons away to the army or to the factory? Which of the arguments which have been put forth in favor of male suffrage may not be invoked for female suffrage?”31 On the question of universal suffrage, understood as the extension of voting rights to all, women and illiterates included, Anna Kuliscioff found in Salvemini a mirror of her own ideas, especially when, during the Socialist Congress, he openly criticized Turati with words echoing her own position. “Giving the right [to vote] to illiterates,” thus began Salvemini, with a precise analysis that left no room for excuses and dismantled opposing positions, “giving the right to vote to illiterates, the conservatives and many socialists cry, means abandoning the public cause at the mercy of the ignorant. From which one must deduce that in order not to be ignorant, one need only know how to read and write!” And he continued: “Being illiterate is a disgrace. But this should be no reason to load the illiterate with the additional disgrace of being considered a beast of burden, deprived of intelligence and incapable of defending his interests or exercising his rights.” And he then instigated: “There is not a single good argument in favor of universal male suffrage which is not also a good argument in favor of female suffrage. Neither is it to be sustained, against female suffrage, that in Italy, women have not asked for the right to vote; because this argument would be devastating to the fight for male suffrage, too.” And finally, going straight to the heart of the opposing argument, he concluded: “The reason for which in Italy, the mass of men and women have not yet asked for the right to vote is because no party has yet felt the need to go down among the women and men deprived of it to make them feel the necessity of it and to incite them to demand it.”32  Pillitteri, Anna Kuliscioff, 183.  Salvemini, Movimento socialista e questione meridionale, 412.

31 32

44 

F. FANTARELLA

While some were willing to cede on granting voting rights to peasants, the party remained wholly against extending the vote to women. Once again, this opposition saw Salvemini and Anna Kuliscioff reunited, holding the same positions. In fact, Anna had not only openly sided against the official positions of the Socialist party (and thus, those of Turati, too), but had also always demonstrated her scepticism of, if not contempt for, middle class feminism, which reclaimed the rights only of women belonging to certain social categories.33 Salvemini echoed her: “We must resolutely oppose every attempt to ratify incomplete measures that, masquerading themselves as abstract sex-based defences, might increase concrete injustices and strengthen the politics of the conservative class to the detriment of the proletariat class. This is what would happen should the right to vote be extended not to all women, but only to those who also own property or know how to read and write.” And he closed with force: “Our formula in the face of the feminist movement for electoral rights can be but one: to all women or to none.”34 Salvemini’s speeches, however, considerably irritated Turati, who complained about them to Anna. “Now,” he wrote, irritated, in a letter to Kuliscioff, “Salvemini writes to tell me that, if his project for suffrage is sound, we must adopt it, if it is faulty, we must present a better one, work quickly, be authoritative, and so on and so on with his usual impertinences, blah, blah, blah.”35 In still another letter, he again lost his composure: “Do you know that our friend [Salvemini] has become madder than mad? His article in Avanti!, which to you seems proof of his energy, etc. etc., seems to me rather crazy.”36 Kuliscioff did not, however, easily welcome Turati’s complaints. She, instead, revealed herself each day to be more and more perfectly sympathetic to Salvemini, with whom she shared a wide range of positions, from the condemnation of Giolitti’s politics to the need to extend the right to 33  The Mozzoni-Bennetti-Boncompagni petition, which requested the extension of the vote to women, was presented to the Chamber of deputies at the beginning of 1906. “When all those little feathered hats,” Anna scornfully commented, “at least within their elite are capable of siding with the political parties that battle [for women], and when the uncovered heads of women workers do, in fact, learn to reinforce the workers’ movement, then, we may hope for a second symbolic entrance to the Chamber a little less placid than the first” Eds. F.  Damiani—F.  Rodriguez, Anna Kuliscioff. Immagini, scritti, testimonianze (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978), 152–3. 34  Salvemini, Movimento socialista e questione meridionale, 433–4. 35  Pedone (ed), Filippo Turati-Anna Kuliscioff. Carteggio, 1037. 36  Ibid., 1088.

3  AFTER MESSINA 

45

vote to all. Anna replied in this way to the insufferable Turati: “You would have Salvemini […] and other Southern socialists to kneel, with great respect, to your Socialist bureaucracy, to your reasonableness, to your seriousness, when for them, all your qualities only serve to consolidate a state of affairs that increasingly subjugates their land […] but it would not displease me to see the creation of a revolutionist socialist party of the Italian south—no, more than that, I truly hope for it.” And, seeing in Salvemini the spirit of an unshakeable fighter, she concluded: “I believe Salvemini could head it, and with his talent, with his fervor, with his individual independence, without the ties or obligations of a family, he could undoubtedly, with other young people lit from the inside with the devil’s fire, organize a political movement for the proletariat that would send the unmovable and omnipotent Giolitti running […] and upheave his still predominantly medieval government.”37 Expectedly, Salvemini was certainly not ready passively to accept either Turati’s critiques or the vacillation of his party. It was then that his sharp polemical spirit pushed him to reply thus: “Turati does not limit himself to refuse my affirmations after having misunderstood them. He says: there is only one of you, but there are forty of us. Is it really possible that we are the imbeciles while you are the only savant? Isn’t it more likely that you are a little mad?” And with malice, he added: “Here, dear Turati, I am not as alone as you think. There is someone beside you, who is a big part of your life. She is with us and not with you. And this is the greatest joy that we have in such [an otherwise] sad moment for us. Since Anna Kuliscioff shares my beliefs, if I am mad, she must also be mad.”38 But it was Giovanni Giolitti, with an (apparently) unexpected move, who put an end to the discussion, approving in 1911 the reform of the electoral vote, which guaranteed the vote to all male citizens at least thirty years old.39 Why did he do it? He did it to ensure Parliamentary consensus regarding the conquest of Libya, which had captured and perhaps influenced his political sensibilities for some time. When faced with the politics of England and France, who had both consolidated their influences in North African coastal areas, Giolitti hoped, with his bid for Libya, to prove that Italy, too, was a world leader. The concession of male universal  Ibid., 1096–97.  Salvemini, Movimento socialista e questione meridionale, 412. 39  The vote reform was brought to Parliament in 1911 and was officially approved in 1912. In 1913, the first elections with extended suffrage were held. 37 38

46 

F. FANTARELLA

suffrage, then, took on a mercenary taste, where the extension of the vote appeared not as the sweaty, intentional victory of the Socialist party, but rather as a bargaining chip between the prime minister—who used it to guarantee Parliament’s support of his military expedition—and the socialists, who had finally received the vote for all men (with a resounding “oh well” for the women who had once again been excluded from it). Not only that. Not only did this incestuous barter with the socialists fill Salvemini with terror. But the result of it in and of itself fell under his sharpest criticism. In fact, Salvemini firmly condemned the expedition to Libya, which he defined a “box of sand,” in that it was extremely costly and above all useless to Italy. The country, he argued, had no need for imperialist adventures, but could be more efficiently served by anti-­ protectionist fiscal reforms for the relief of farmers, further impoverished by high duties on wheat. The full extent of Salvemini’s bitterness is clearly expressed in a letter written to Giustino Fortunato: “And our Italian South will not see any light for some time. It has been bought off, even in the electoral reform. It is, of course, clear by now that only those who know how to read and write will be eligible electors. That is: only electors in the North; and the status quo will prevail in the South. The Northerners will once again take the lion’s share.”40 It was thus that Salvemini, in open controversy with Filippo Turati’s reformists, decided to leave the Socialist party. In the same period, he also distanced himself from La Voce magazine, which he came to consider too concentrated on literary themes and not attentive enough to political issues (like the annexation of Libya). His friendship with Prezzolini, however, remained unimpaired. To the contrary. Prezzolini himself encouraged Salvemini to found his own journal. “Many read La Voce for your contributions,” Prezzolini wrote, “if you decided to start a political journal on your own, I would help you. You still have many sympathetic readers, and you could start the preparation of this work on your own, with other truly kindred spirits.”41 In December of 1911, Salvemini founded L’Unità. For almost ten years (L’Unità was last issued in 1920), from the columns of his newspaper, he battled principally for three causes: (1) the reduction of military expenses alongside a radical reform of the army; (2) the alleviation of fiscal pressure on farmers suffocated by taxes; (3) the slackening of protectionist hindrances via more strictly liberalist policies.  Salvemini, Opere, IX, Carteggi, I, 1895–1911, 454.  Id., Carteggio, 1912–1914, XIII.

40 41

3  AFTER MESSINA 

47

As will be shown, here, too, Salvemini might count on Fernande’s support; she would later take on a considerable role within the organization of L’Unità. Giolitti’s reform, which denied women electoral rights and conceded them to all literate men above the age of twenty-one and all illiterate men above the age of thirty, marked a bitter defeat for Anna Kuliscioff, too. “In 1912,” as Bruna Conti and Alba Morino have correctly noted, “Kuliscioff was forced to surrender to an evident reality: the Italian Socialist Party could not afford to risk its own political failure by favouring the birth of a female electorate [in its own opinion] opposed to it. Feminism in Italy had missed its historical moment: the alliance with the labor movement had failed, and the Giolitti era, with its reforms, had weakened and emptied feminism’s central arguments.”42 The debate on female suffrage thus receded backstage. In the meantime, dark clouds began to hover over the horizon as the winds of war blew over Europe.

3   A Refuge in War The commitment to lift the ill-fate of the Southern farmers and to shed light on the state of backwardness and misery in which they lived had always characterized Salvemini’s political activity. It had been so at the beginning of the twentieth century, when he created the Fnism with Giuseppe Kirner; it had been so during the investigation of the conditions in schools in the province of Reggio Calabria after the earthquake of 1908; it was so once again when Salvemini decided to monitor the elections in Gioia del Colle, a small town in Apulia, decrying any illegality and abuse of power found there;43 and it continued to be so when he became a candidate himself first in the Albano Laziale elections of 1910,44 and once again in the district of Molfetta-Terlizzi-Bitonto in 1913. This new adventure made for many long trips to Apulia for Salvemini in preparation of his  Conti-Morino (eds), Sibilla Aleramo e il suo tempo, 337–8.  See Salvemini, Il Ministro della malavita. 44  On that occasion, Salvemini found himself running against the candidate Domenico Valenzani. The night before the election, however, he withdrew from the race, having discovered irregularities among some of his supporters. And Salvemini, who had always denounced the corrupt methods used during elections, could certainly not accept them among his followers. On this point, see G. Salvemini, “Le memorie di un candidato,” now in Il Ministro della malavita, 163–212. 42 43

48 

F. FANTARELLA

electoral campaign there. It was arduous work that got piled onto his teaching activity at the University of Pisa and which left him little time to focus on his journal. It was on precisely this occasion that Salvemini placed all his faith in Fernande. Unable to dedicate himself to L’Unità in person, he decided to delegate its direction to his friend Gino Luttazzo. The supervision of the work, especially in “urgent” cases, however, was entrusted to Fernande with these words: “You [Gino] are the director of L’Unità this October. Should any doubt arise, please address it with Valente. In cases considered to be particularly critical or difficult, hold a war council with yourself, Valente, and Mrs. Luchaire.”45 In addition to their shared ideas, then, Salvemini recognized in Fernande an ability to temper the abrasiveness of his belligerent spirit and to mediate in all the polemical circumstances that require a well-­ roundedness and flexibility of spirit he failed to recognize in himself. The 1913 elections revealed once more the savage nature of electoral campaigns, especially in the Italian South. Salvemini found himself running against a republican candidate, Pietro Pansini, and one from Giolitti’s party, Domenico Cioffrese. Landowners mobilized their lackeys to intimidate the local populations and prevent them from voting for Salvemini. In a letter to Ugo Ojetti, Salvemini commented on the violence of which he’d been a victim during the elections: “Sunday evening,” he wrote, “three hundred women, knowing I was in danger, ran to the town square in swarms to make sure I hadn’t been harmed, heedless of the gun shots or policemen or soldiers present there.” Later, returning to the atrocious memory of the 1908 earthquake for a minute, comforted by this unexpected show of female solidarity, he added: “after five years of inner tragedy, atrocious to defend me against the desire to die, I found all my old will to live, for this people that can and must rise up again. I should have 4000 majority votes. 2000 for Pansini, 6000 for me. But as the enthusiasm for me grows, so too does the cruelty against me shown by the police and criminal underworld.”46 Salvemini lost the election. He did not, however, give up, and instead denounced the trickery and the climate of violence used against him in the electoral competition. Nevertheless, the result of the vote was unanimously declared valid by local authorities. “We have definitive proof,” commented Salvemini, embittered, “that the government in the Italian South is derived of a complicity among all the  Id., Carteggio, 1912–1914, 412–3.  Ibid., 417.

45 46

3  AFTER MESSINA 

49

political parties of the North, from the clerics to the socialists. We have no right to exist.”47 The brief recollection of these years of battle, from school reform to universal suffrage, from universal suffrage to municipal elections, lets a shimmer of light creep through from between the heavy curtains hanging over Salvemini’s private life. Peeking behind the scenes, then, one notices that between 1908 and the start of the First World War, Fernande became a discrete but constant presence in Salvemini’s life. She, with her children, had provided him with the warmth—however illusory—of a family. Beyond that, the two of them had collaborated on Prezzolini’s La Voce, which became enriched by its new mediator, Fernande, who ably mitigated Salvemini’s temperamental vehemence. Shortly thereafter, the protagonists of our story made official their union. But not without embarrassment. In fact, from the outside, Salvemini may have appeared to be a sort of Apulian womanizer (Rodolfo Valentino was from the same region), who availed himself of the tender attentions of his friend Luchaire’s wife, only to steal her away from him. It is necessary, then, to draw further back the curtain over Salvemini’s private affairs and more attentively observe the intimate life of these characters. Watching carefully, in fact, one will see a Fernande by then estranged from her husband Julien Luchaire, who, from 1908 onward, had taken Marie Padovani, one of his young students, as a lover.48 Moreover, as previously seen, Julien admitted in his memoirs that as early as his honeymoon, he’d realized his error in marrying a woman to whom he was linked more closely by friendship than by passionate love.49 Thus, when he met Marie for the first time, he was immediately taken by her youthful purity, by her timid expression, by her pale little face and her thick black mane of hair.50 “She knew how to keep quiet,” Julien wrote. “She knew how to stay still.”51 How starkly different from Fernande she must have seemed to him! Marie was young, delicate, almost vulnerable, while Fernande was a fully developed woman, sure of herself, with clear and well-articulated ideas. Everything about her seemed

 Galante Garrone (ed), Zanotti-Bianco e Salvemini. Carteggio, 19.  After his divorce from Fernande, Julien made his union with Marie official. In 1915, Marie gave birth to André, who, at the end of the Second World War, escaped to Canada, having become a member of the SS during the Nazi occupation of Paris. 49  Cfr. Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen, I, 103–4. 50  Ibid., 166–7. 51  Ibid., 168. 47 48

50 

F. FANTARELLA

alien to Julien, intolerant of a presence he found to be cumbersome at times.52 Fernande finally filed for divorce in 1914, at the start of the First World War. She was then free to express openly her feelings for Salvemini. Leaving behind her failed marriage and starting over, however, was not easy. Their love made people uncomfortable; they felt timid about sharing it openly, even with their closest of friends. It was a real dilemma. Salvemini, Fernande, and Julien knew, frequented, and collaborated with the same circle of people: how, then, could the new couple easily explain their relationship? How would they say that, in fact, Fernande and Julien had been separated behind closed doors for several years before their divorce? That Salvemini had not been the inconvenient lover that provoked the rupture of their marriage? That there had been neither trickery nor lies, nor betrayal in their coming together, that it had just been the meeting of two people who, in their solitude, had found their hearts to be in synchrony? Their feeling of embarrassment, their fear of others’ judgment if not prejudice against them was strong. Salvemini was the first to announce his relationship with Fernande; he started with his closest friends. “This,” he wrote to Umberto Zanotti-Bianco, “I felt the need to tell you, as you are one of my best friends, whose personal judgment of my actions means a lot to me.” And he continued: “On the subject of Fernande, in order that any misunderstanding be avoided, it is opportune that I tell you that she has been legally separated from her husband for a year, that soon their divorce will be official, that as soon as the legal practices make it possible to do so, I will announce properly my intention to marry her.” And later, anticipating any possible doubt on the causes of the end of the union between Fernande and Julien, he concluded: “There is no relationship of cause and effect between her divorce and second marriage. The divorce was brought about by a standard painful situation, which dated back to a time long before I knew her. Once she had been freed from her preceding relationship […] we were free to organize a new way of life for ourselves […]. She retains a cordial personal relationship with Luchaire, despite their divorce, in the best interest of the children, who will continue to live with her, and who will constitute my new family.”53 And so, in Europe’s darkest years, just as the world daily became crueler, preparing itself for a devastating international conflict, Salvemini’s desire to have his own family  Ibid., 103–4.  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1914–1929, 207–8.

52 53

3  AFTER MESSINA 

51

became reality, thanks to Fernande and her children. Finally, Salvemini could rebuild his familial nest. No longer would he need to search for the warmth of affection in the shadows of a foreign household, consolatory and second-hand. In the meantime, Austria had declared war on Serbia following the assassination of the archduke Francis Ferdinand. It was July 28, 1914. Italy expressed neutrality, splitting public opinion in half. The official position of the governing authorities, in fact, lit a violent debate between interventionists and neutralists. Among those to favour neutrality were Giolitti and his supporters (the liberals), the Catholics, and a large part of the socialists.54 Salvemini immediately expressed his approval for intervention, but against Italy’s old ally, Austria. But Salvemini’s interventionism had nothing in common with either nationalist fanaticism or Marinetti’s glorification of war as “the Only Hygiene of the world”. Instead, he considered the war both a moral imperative against Austrian oppression (Austria at that time still occupied territory in Trentino Alto Adige, Venezia Giulia, Istria, and Friuli), and the last authentication of Risorgimento ideals. He wrote to Fernande about “the beautiful war” from the front lines: “All they who profess the beauty and the aesthetic qualities of the war, would that they were on the mount, where we hold firm, in our trenches! But they prefer staying home instead.”55 When Italy entered the war in 1915, Salvemini suspended the publication of his journal and enlisted. He had hoped to lead the Apulian soldiers, but instead, after a period of training in Arezzo, was sent to command a group of soldiers from the Veneto region.56 Nevertheless, Salvemini was soon stricken by the good spirits of the soldiers around him, men from the countryside, courageous and strong before the danger of imminent death: “Had I not come [to war], I would have been killed by my own demons … You would not believe how much devout respect I have learned to feel 54  Literature on the First World War is, as can be imagined, vast. In the interest of saving space and especially in keeping with the themes with this specific essay, we recall here only P. Melograni, Storia politica della grande guerra 1915–1918 (Bari: Laterza, 1972) and E.  Gentile, L’apocalisse della modernità. La grande guerra per l’uomo nuovo (Milano: Mondadori, 2014). 55  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1914–1920, 216. 56  “Instead of sending me in a regiment in the district of Barletta,” he wrote disappointedly to Zanotti-Bianco in 1915, “they placed me in a regiment with soldiers from the Veneto. Not that these people are displeasing to me, no: they are excellent guys. But I had asked to fight with my people” (ibid., 187).

52 

F. FANTARELLA

here, for our people […] I have never been so proud and so happy to have fought for universal suffrage as I am these days. You should hear certain illiterate soldiers appreciate the tactical situation of our sector, with clarity, vision, and good sense.” And, admiringly, he continued: “As soon as the order to run to attack arrives, they rise, pale, calm, resolute, and go forth, disappear in a hole, and return half an hour later, beaten and bloody. Oh, our people, heroic and intelligent and good, when will you find a ruling class worthy of you?”57 Fernande followed the frontline events with great trepidation. She didn’t understand—or, perhaps more accurately, understood with her mind, but with her heart resisted—Salvemini’s determination, at forty-­ two years old, to expose himself to the perils of war. She wrote of her doubts to Elsa Dallolio, herself working at the frontline as a nurse for the Red Cross: “One day, I asked him why he had so insisted on going [to war]. He told me that he hadn’t insisted in the faintest! That he had submitted his application […] last year and wanted to keep his word: ‘I will do what is necessary.’ I understand that he finds it right and natural to take things seriously. He is right to do so. Whatever will be will be. I think we should all become fatalists.”58 Though many still believed in an imminent end to the war in 1915, a dark omen fuelled Fernande’s anxiety. News from the frontline had been anything but reassuring and the letters she received from Salvemini confirmed her worst fears. “We are in the midst of the most violent fires from the heaviest artillery,” he wrote her. “A diabolic night. Pouring rain, lightning, thunder, while not a hundred meters further cried the melee to the tune of bombs, gunshots, bayonet attacks.”59 Fernande spent her days in the grip of fear. At the time, she and her firstborn, Jean, then fourteen years old, were volunteering their services in assistance to children of soldiers housed at Florence’s Biblioteca filosofica (Library of Philosophy), and one day, in fact, she received news that Salvemini, gravely ill, had been taken to the military hospital.60 The doctors diagnosed him with heart and circulation problems, declaring him inept for military service.61 Once  Ibid., 216.  Fernande Dauriac to Elsa Dallolio, without location, September 16, 1915. Ags, Carte Iris Origo. 59  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1914–1920, 215. 60  Salvemini stayed at Petrarch Hospital in Padua from November 24 to December 3, 1915. 61  In reality, Salvemini had already been declared unfit for military service by Doctor Giuliano Daddi after his first preliminary medical visit to Florence’s Santa Maria Nuova 57 58

3  AFTER MESSINA 

53

released from hospital, he returned to Florence, where he immediately organized his work. Fernande’s anxiety, however, did not improve with Salvemini’s return. She was worried not only about his physical health, but above all about his mental well-being; the veil of sadness that darkened his face concerned her. So, once more, Fernande confided in her friend Elsa. Salvemini intended to resume the publication of L’Unità, appointing De Viti De Marco co-director. Fernande, however, deemed it too early for him to take on once more all the stressful work related to the publication of a journal (and, more particularly, to that journal), writing: Last night, in his absence, I interrogated the doctor, who, in Salvemini’s company, always called his health problems nothing more than neurosis. When pressed by me, he admitted that [Gaetano] had heart problems. Regrets are useless now: and perhaps this is the lesser of two evils. Besides which, I don’t believe I could have any regrets. But at the moment, I don’t know what to do. He will need to rest but doesn’t want to. He says he can no longer rest, that rest does him more harm than good […]. But even going out, seeing friends, talking, everything ‘irritates’ him. And when he sees that I am a little down, he repeats: “It’s because I’m not well.” This “I’m not well” is the only phrase I hear him say for hours, if I speak to him at all. Yes, it’s about relaunching L’Unità, the bimonthly periodical, with De Viti and Salvemini acting as co-directors. The idea does not displease me. I am only afraid that the weight of too much work will fall on his shoulders. He’ll be called in to Rome for every small decision. Hospital. What follows is the report from his visit: “On July 7, 1915, I saw Prof. Gaetano Salvemini and observed his x-rays. I found sclerosis in the superior lobe of the right lung and facts that indicate alterations of the caliber of large venous vessels. I discouraged Prof. Salvemini from enlisting as a volunteer in the war” (Salvemini, Carteggio, 1914–1920 cit., 563). This response greatly irritated Salvemini, who, furious, wrote to Zanotti-Bianco: “I am pulling my hair out with rage. And though my hair might be sparse, each individual strand is so thick, that it requires much pulling, indeed. To appease my friends here, I had the idea of going to consult with a military medic before going to one of those human meat-markets, where everyone is declared fit for war. I adhered to the idea of this officious visit, sure of my health, and happy to put at ease my friends and especially Mrs. Luchaire […] Would that I had never done it! This son of a dog found a scar at the top of my right lung with a murmur in a principal vein […]. Not convinced […] I went to Santa Maria Nuova Hospital […] and those doctors agreed [that I was unfit for service]” (ibid., 164–5). Nevertheless, Salvemini still enlisted as a volunteer.

54 

F. FANTARELLA

But he should be traveling as little as possible! On the other hand, how could I ever prevent him from taking these trips if they are necessary? What can I do?62

Fernande also worried about Salvemini’s wish to marry her as soon as possible. Though she was sure of her feelings for him and eager to plan their life together, she feared the sense of general disapproval that surrounded their union. Once more, it was Elsa Dallolio who received her embarrassed vent: When we are married, or rather, when he is beside me, then I will perhaps be able better to take care of him. That is my hope. But we haven’t yet set a date. I am paralyzed, in my desire to organize our existence together as soon as possible, by scruples I have been raised with and whose value I am unable to ascertain. That Salvemini, in favor of this war, is able, while others still battle, to think of planning his own personal happiness, seems to disrupt the haughty moralists! What I think of these “haughty moralists”—capable of judging and of behaving this way before a man who has had the life he has had, and who, after having paid for it personally, gave his health to the war—what I think of all this is not taken into consideration. But just as I would refuse to accept responsibility for a marriage of which, evidently, many people disapprove, nor do I wish to act with inopportune haste. Salvemini loves me and I love him: but it is up to him to decide the date of our wedding, which he so obstinately desires. For him, the sooner the better. Unfortunately, our plan to wed is already common knowledge, even though we never announced it using official invitations! Mrs. Luchaire’s wedding was promptly announced by journals: something which surely provoked great joy in the new Mrs. Luchaire….63

That was in April of 1916. A few months later, in July, Salvemini and Fernande were married. Salvemini also took up teaching Modern History again, at the University of Florence, where his presence had been requested after the death of Carlo Cipolla. He began to collaborate with La revue de nationes latines64 directed by Guglielmo Ferrero and Julien Luchaire, with whom he had maintained a cordial relationship; and finally, in 62  Fernande Dauriac to Elsa Dallolio, without location, April 12, 1916. Ags, Carte Iris Origo. 63  Ibid. 64  The magazine was published until 1919.

3  AFTER MESSINA 

55

December of the same year, he relaunched the publication of L’Unità. It was thus that Salvemini, together with Fernande and her two children, Jean and Ghita, began his new life in Florence: in the midst of a war and working still more intensely than before, indeed, working at a frantic pace rendered more manageable by the long-awaited warmth of a new domestic hearth. Salvemini and Fernande’s house soon became a meeting place, where all topics were discussed: culture, history, economics, and above all, politics. The best Florentine families at the time gathered there. What is meant by best is not richest or most powerful. But most illuminated, cultured, and attentive to Italy’s problems at the time. At any given moment, it was possible to find Amelia Pincherle and Guglielmo Ferrero with his wife, Gina Lombroso, in Salvemini and Fernande’s salon. Both families were much enriched by curious, intelligent, and vivacious children, around the same age as Jean (who, it should be recalled, was fifteen years old in 1916) and Ghita (who was then twelve): Leo and Nina Ferrero, Carlo and Nello Rosselli. Fernande’s children had lived in stimulating cultural environments, both in France and in Florence, especially once Julien became director of the Grenoble Institute and began hosting many of the most notable French intellectuals of the time. It was at Salvemini’s house, however, that the youngsters—and especially Jean—began to participate in political discussions. Schoolmate and playmate to Leo Ferrero (born in 1903) and Nello Rosselli (1900), Jean was an intelligent young man, quick and reactive, with a great passion for civic duty. Salvemini very quickly became attached to him. He used to call him “Giovannino” affectionately. Most likely, Salvemini had initially been linked to Fernande not only by the consonance of their ideas, but also by the fresh exuberance of her children, especially Giovannino, who must have reminded Salvemini of his youngest child, Ughetto, whom, as has been shown, he long searched for following the Messina earthquake. Jean grew attached to him, too. They spent many afternoons together talking about, or perhaps more accurately, animatedly discussing the political situation in Europe. Iris Origo describes one of their Florentine afternoons: The time had come: Salvemini had judged a life without children to be of unendurable sadness. Mrs. Fernande Luchaire, ex-wife of a French colleague, had become a family friend and gradually, Salvemini became increasingly attached to her two children; one beautiful girl and Jean, a very intelligent fourteen year-old boy. When they all came to visit my mother at Villa Medici in 1914, Jean was already managing a scholastic newspaper, in

56 

F. FANTARELLA

which he expressed his conviction for a united Europe, one that included both Germanic and Mediterranean peoples. Salvemini spent many hours commenting exhaustively on Jean’s opinions and he was very disturbed to realize, even then, that not only were they wrong, but also dangerous. He could not yet, however, predict the tragic end to which they would lead him.65

Even as a very young man, Jean supported strong political positions, in stark contrast—as will be shown—with Salvemini’s. While Jean found in Salvemini an attentive, open, and passionate listener, Julien, his father, was, instead, cold and refractory to his son’s political passion. Jean would have liked to share it with his father, discuss it, perhaps argue about it, just as he did with Salvemini, but Julien, contrary to the latter, was, as readers will soon see, an absent and disinterested father to his children. Julien himself admitted in his memoirs that the birth of his son Jean in 1901 had not moved him at all.66 More than that, he confessed to a “natural” predilection for his daughter, Ghita.67 Jean was greatly hurt by his father’s attitude, by his detached, almost frozen demeanour, especially toward his mother Fernande. Growing up, his relationship with Julien became more and more insufferable and conflictual. Jean simply could not understand his father’s reluctance to speak with him, the caution with which Julien shared an opinion or openly manifested his position on a given topic. In stark contrast with his father’s cautious and tense attitude, Jean once exclaimed: “I would rather eat stale bread for the rest of my life than keep silent about my beliefs.”68

 Origo, Bisogno di testimoniare, 159–60.  “My son Jean,” Julien wrote, “was born without incident, under the protective gaze of God and the divinities on the ceiling of the Gori’s house. I welcomed him with joy—but without excess emotion. I thought—especially because of my father—that he was the first of a new generation of Luchaires. Certainly, I did not believe, here is the one who will make the Luchaire name eternal.” Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen, I, 117. 67  On Ghita, instead, he confided: “I had a natural weakness for my daughter; Ghita—the Italian diminutive of her name, which stuck as a nickname—was extremely refined and kind, very sensitive, with an artist’s disposition, both vivacious and aloof at the same time, sound of judgment, devoid, at her age, of any prejudice, any traditional training; a beautiful white page on which life would write itself out in capricious, even a little haughty, lines, where grace was never lacking.” (Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen, II, 49–50). 68  G.L. Alden, The Road to Collaboration. The Life and Time of Jean Luchaire, Ph.D. diss, University of California, Los Angeles 1998, 15. 65 66

3  AFTER MESSINA 

57

In that instance, he had demonstrated a youthful impertinence that revealed a determined and audacious character that further strengthened his connection with Salvemini. Not only because Salvemini never turned his nose up at spending the afternoon with Giovannino, but also because he too, like Giovannino, would have sooner suffered famine than censor his ideas. It was thus that during the First World War Salvemini became a point of reference for Jean, at least initially orienting his political convictions toward socialist ideas of reform and in favour of the principle of self-­ determination for all peoples.69 Salvemini continued to encourage Jean’s journalistic activities in any way he could, following them every more closely. In 1915, at only fourteen years old, Jean created a student journal on political analysis (of which more will soon be said) in collaboration with his friends Leo and Nello. Paola Lombroso, Leo’s aunt, recalls thus the fraternal relationship that bound those young men to each other between 1915 and 1920: “They were friends, schoolmates, kindred spirits who spent their days together studying, discussing, making plans for the future. Destiny had a tragic end in store for all of them.”70 In an unpublished memory, instead, she wrote: “I can see them in my mind’s eye, a distant thirty years ago, in 1920, in the bright Ferrero Library in Viale Machiavelli in Florence, four young friends, schoolmates and kindred spirits: two blond heads—Leo’s and Jean’s—one vivacious brown-haired Nello, and one dark-haired boy with a wrinkled forehead, Sandro. They talk, discuss, cheer themselves on a merry-goround of precious, precocious, blooming intelligence.” And with choked words, concludes: “A tragic end ripped apart Leo Ferrero, Nello Rosselli, Sandro Pavolini, and Jean Luchaire. Still today, I am filled with hopeless pity at the thought of Leo and Nello’s end, and horror at the thought of Sandro’s and Jean’s. All four of them belonged to highly cultured families that exercised anxious vigilance over their children, who wanted them raised in an environment of study and comfort: all four of them, under normal circumstances, could have had ordinary lives, suitable to their natures, useful to their countries.”71 In this long and twisted circumlocution, Paola Lombroso tries to display the dramatic destiny of those young  At the end of the war, Salvemini declared himself against the annexation of Dalmatia to Italy. In 1918, Jean, in perfect agreement with Salvemini’s position, wrote an essay entitled “La Question yougoslave e le rapports franco-italiens”, ibid., 22–3. 70  Calloni—Cedroni (eds), Politica e affetti familiari, 161. 71  A.  Cabella, “Piero Gobetti e le riviste italo-francesi ‘Vita Latina-les Junes Auteurs’ e ‘Vita’ di Jean Luchaire,” in Piero Gobetti e la Francia. Atti del colloquio italo francese, February 25–27, 1983 (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1985), 102–3. 69

58 

F. FANTARELLA

men. Her memories rotate around one word. A word that was to subjugate Italy for the next twenty years. A word that, by the end of the Second World War, would cause great embarrassment to all who pronounced it. It was spoken of in hushed tones, as if to clarify one’s complete lack of involvement with it. That devastating word was fascism. Fascism had destroyed those lives. And it would destroy the domestic union that Salvemini had so long desired, the one he had so laboriously rebuilt. The son of a well-known antifascist family, Leo Ferrero died in a car accident in New Mexico in 1933. His relatives opted for exile in Switzerland to evade the regime’s grip over Italy. Nello Rosselli, along with his brother Carlo, was brutally killed by fascist assassins in France in 1937. At the other extreme, Sandro Pavolini had gone on to become a minister of the Duce, Mussolini, and was executed in 1945. As for Jean, fascism, with its promise of power, seduced him, too. It surrounded Jean until it suffocated him in a fatal embrace. Never would Salvemini have imagined the cause of his separation from Giovannino to be fascism. Never would he have imagined that shortly thereafter, a far greater tragedy was to afflict him and his family. It was still only 1916.

CHAPTER 4

The Spiritual Father of a New Generation

1   The First Postwar Period It was 1916. A young Jean Luchaire was commenting animatedly on the happenings of the war with Salvemini. He had already founded a sort of small club called “The Young Orators” in 1915, in which members discussed the requirements for a “future peace.” Enthused by this experience, the following year, Jean founded the bilingual magazine Les Jeunes Auteurs. It consisted of one Italian and one French section, and its goal was to promote collaboration among youth of both target nations. At the end of the war, in 1918, Jean founded La Ligue Latine de la Jeunesse, with his magazine becoming its official media outlet and taking the name Vita Latina, with Les Jeunes Auteurs as its subheading. Jean was its director, and Leo Ferrero its editor-in-chief. The journal was structured thus: one part of it was strictly political and served to promote the activities of the League, while the other part was cultural and literary. Vita Latina was an ambitious initiative and boasted illustrious collaborators both on the French and Italian sides of its organization.1 Among its authors, we recall—other than Jean and Leo—Nello

1

 See: Meletta, Jean Luchaire, 52–3.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8_4

59

60 

F. FANTARELLA

and Carlo Rosselli2 and Piero Gobetti, who contributed to the magazine with written portraits of Turgenev, Verne and Tolstoj.3 Notice the names around which Jean’s young activity turns: Salvemini. The Ferreros. The Rosselli brothers. Gobetti. Names which would later become emblematic of Italian antifascism. Figures who would profoundly influence Jean’s younger years. And to give just one example of how strong the influence of both the Florentine environment and Salvemini were on Jean in those years, it is sufficient to recall that his magazine was shut down when the Lega accused Jean of being a “renouncer” for his positions on Dalmatia: coincidentally, the very same accusation that had been hurled at Salvemini.4 And precisely because this accusation was hurled at Salvemini’s head intentionally to malign his character, we would do well to pause our reconstruction here and rest for a moment, but only for a moment, on Salvemini’s “slavophilic anti-nationalism.” As we know, Salvemini was among those who favoured Italy’s intervention in the war. The youth who gathered around him in the first postwar period were all interventionists themselves and had fought on the frontlines. Jean, extremely young at the time, had followed the conflict with fervour. He belonged to that generation of boys who had breathed the air of war, but who had been too young to fight in it. Aldo Rosselli, Carlo and Nello’s older brother, died on the Carnic Alps in 1916. Carlo was called to arms in 1917. The younger Nello enlisted in 1918, but did not fight, 2  To encourage the spirit of friendship among French and Italian youth, in 1920, Jean also founded Effort, an international youth union for the study of social issues, whose manifesto was penned by Nello Rosselli. On this point, see: Alden, The Road to Collaboration, 31–2. On Carlo, we refer to the 1919 article “Compito nuovo,” published in the second issue of the magazine. See: Cabella, Piero Gobetti e le riviste italo-francesi, 108. 3  On the relationship between Jean and Gobetti, Cabella points to a letter to Luigi Emery in which Piero demonstrates a certain diffidence toward Jean: “Another [guy] who could write [for the journal], although, in confidence, I do not trust him much (he never wrote back to me!) is Jean Luchaire.” Ibid., 106–110. 4  The influence of Salvemini’s L’Unità on the youth of those years is appropriately underlined by Enzo Tagliacozzo, who remembers how, in those years, “in various parts of Italy, other journals and magazines [were] published by youth formed by reading L’Unità, and who disseminated similar ideas. We will recall Volontà, Calabria, Energie Nove [by Gobetti], Ascesa, Educazione Nazionale, Vita [by Jean Luchaire], Risposta. Salvemini followed their development with great interest and hoped that after ten years of work, they might have contributed to a renewal of Italian politics.” Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini nel cinquantennio liberale, 213–4.

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

61

since the war was ended shortly thereafter. Ernesto Rossi, the other youth who would soon join their group, was also an interventionist, who had returned disabled from the trenches. Salvemini began discussing possible postwar scenarios before the conflict was even over. He wrote about them in his journal, in letters to friends, and debated about them vocally. From the start, his position on the issue of Dalmatia was clear. In November of 1917, on precisely this theme, he wrote to Bernard Berenson: When you say that Italy must give up every Yugoslavian territory, you are correct. But Western Istria is not Yugoslavian territory. It is mixed territory, in which Italians form the vast majority of cities […]. The fact that our stupid government built its strategy on Dalmatia, instead of on Istria, is no reason for them to insult us by having us believe that Istria would be better governed by Slavs than by ourselves.5

And then: If we truly wish for the formation of a sound Anglo-Franco-Italian threesome in the postwar period, then all three of these countries must come out of the war equally satisfied or dissatisfied. Should this equality not be achieved, that is, should Italians have the impression that they have fought not for themselves but for others […] Italian ex-fighters will explode with Francophobia and Anglophobia and […] [nationalists] will find it convenient to exploit their disappointment and anger […] while the rest of us, Anglophiles and Francophiles, will need to emigrate, because there will no longer be breathable air for us in Italy.6

Thus, already in 1917, Salvemini had clarified that, though Italy had absolutely no rights over Dalmatia, there were no doubts whatsoever about the Italianness of Istria and the legitimacy of the annexation of its territory to Italy. Not only that. In a polished political analysis, extraordinarily clear and precise as only he could be, in five short lines of this letter, Salvemini foresees the postwar scene: ill-humour surrounding the conditions of peace were to fuel delusions and grudges that would prove to be fatal to Italy. This is precisely what happened when, at the close of the conflict, the nationalists thundered against “the mutilated victory.”

5 6

 Salvemini, Carteggio, 1914–1920, 342–3.  Ibid., 341–2.

62 

F. FANTARELLA

Salvemini’s analyses had two distinctive traits: an almost geometric clarity of the facts he presented and the unpopularity of the ideas that derived from them. His position on Dalmatia was precisely both these things: extremely transparent and wildly unpopular. And the first to attack him on this point was Mussolini. He who in 1908—immediately after the Messina earthquake—believing him dead, had celebrated Salvemini as “one of the most beautiful figures of Italian Socialism.” He who in 1914 had written to Salvemini encouraging him to run for the electoral constituency in Turin. Both men had supported Italy’s intervention in the war. But despite these small sparks, apparently fuelled by the same fire, these two men truly had nothing in common. And the distance that separated them could already be measured in April of 1917, when Mussolini heavily attacked Salvemini on the question of Dalmatia.7 To better understand that facts, it is necessary to take a step back. In 1915, Italy broke its neutrality and agreed to participate in the war alongside England and France against Germany and Austria. The Treaty of London promised Italy the full restitution of Trentino, Venezia Giulia, and Istria (with the exception of the city of Fiume) and part of Dalmatia in the event of victory. However, at the end of the war, Italy’s expectations for a literal application of the Treaty were disappointed. During the 1919 Paris conference, in fact, American president Wilson—paladin of the people’s self-determination—failed to agree to all of Italy’s requests (which included the city of Fiume) and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Italy’s Prime Minister, left the conference in protest. The anger for what had happened in Paris—which Salvemini had correctly predicted—fuelled a general discontent, which nationalists ably exploited. An audacious Gabriele D’Annunzio took the helm at the army that marched on the city of Fiume.8 Mussolini applauded the undertaking.9 In those years of blind nationalist 7  In a letter addressed to Arcangelo Ghisleri dated April 18, 1917, Salvemini commented: “Il Popolo d’Italia is subsidized by the Masonry. And thus, in the question of the Adriatic, it is against us.” Ibid., 302. 8  Once again, we are forced to address summarily historical events that frame Salvemini’s personal narrative in order not to deviate too much from the main theme of our essay. Among the copious literature on this theme, then, we limit ourselves to propose the following: Gabriele d’Annunzio’s article, “Vittoria nostra, non sarai mutilata,” in Corriere della Sera, October 24, 1918; G. Salvemini, Scritti sul fascismo, III (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1974), and J.M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of The Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920). 9  Here, the sparks between Salvemini and Mussolini were white-hot. In 1920, during a Parliamentary reunion, Salvemini accused Mussolini of having stolen 480,000 lire of the money that Italian emigrants in America had saved and allocating it to the support of

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

63

fury, Salvemini was among the few opposed to the annexation of Dalmatia. It was thus that Mussolini was able to slap Salvemini with the pejorative nickname Slavemini,10 which was added to the earlier one, “renouncer.” And it was precisely with this reputation, known as a “renouncer,” that a very young Ernesto Rossi had his first encounter with Salvemini. Rossi narrates: “The first time I noticed his strange figure walking down the street (he was wearing black dolman sleeves, by then several years out of style, which not even coachmen wore any longer, and the small cone-­shaped hat characteristic of Apulian peasants), it was 1919, and I was riding the tram; a madman thrust himself from the door on the platform to yell out his insult at him: “Renouncer!”11 Curious, one Sunday, Rossi went to one of the weekly encounters that Salvemini hosted to promote L’Unità and to raise money for his journal. At the end of the meeting, Rossi walked over to Salvemini and, with candour, told him: “We cannot give even a single cent to L’Unità because we do not share its ideas on the Dalmatian issue. We do not wish to demonstrate any solidarity with a renunciatory journal.”12 Salvemini countered his young interlocutor’s insolence with an invitation to dialogue: “We are not asking you to do anything that goes against your conscience. We will be meeting here over the coming Sundays. If you would like to join us, please do, we would be pleased of it. Should there be issues on which we disagree, you will always be free to speak your mind or leave, at your convenience.”13 Rossi returned. So, struck by the boy, Salvemini asked him if he had read his book, La questione dell’Adriatico.14 Rossi replied thus: I read only a few of your articles in L’Unità. I have not read the book, nor does it interest me to read it because I am familiar with the theses it maintains. For me, it isn’t a question that can be answered with logic. It is a sentimental question. I am a disabled ex-serviceman. The war took my brother and my best friends […] Upon my return to a civil existence, I witD’Annunzio’s Fiume undertaking. Mussolini reacted by challenging Salvemini to a duel. At the time, according to Salvemini, Antonio De Viti de Marco suggested that Mussolini prove his innocence prior to the duel. He never did. And despite this, Mussolini stained Salvemini’s reputation with accusations of cowardice and villainy. See Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini un profilo biografico, 50. 10  In Italian, the term “Slavemini” recalls the sounds used in the adjective “slav,” used here by Mussolini in a defamatory manner: he who defends slavic peoples, going against Italian interests. 11  E. Rossi, in Il Mondo, September 17, 1957, republished by Quaderni Radicali, January– June 1981, 11–12. 12  Id., Un democratico ribelle, G. Armani (ed) (Parma: Guanda, 1975), 45. 13  Ibid. 14  G. Salvemini, La questione dell’Adriatico (Firenze: Libreria della Voce, 1919).

64 

F. FANTARELLA

nessed the disgusting uproar of so-called men of the Left against those who had defended their country. For me, the nation today is an organism that must above all else live, and so it is right that it also live at the expense of other national organisms. Justice, equity, are empty abstractions in international relationships, in which only strength counts. In foreign politics, he who lets himself be guided by those ideals weakens his country and does the bidding of foreigners […]. It is for this reason that I, too, took part in the demonstrations where it was cried “Down with Salvemini, down with Bissolati, Croat sympathizers.”15

Rossi’s spontaneous sincerity provoked Salvemini’s good-natured smile. They parted ways, but as soon as Ernesto got back home, he looked for Salvemini’s book. “What an imbecile I was!” he later commented. “And how generous Salvemini was to not squash me with his superiority […] and write me off as an ignorant and presumptuous boy.”16 It was thus that a new friendship was born. And what a friendship it was! It will be discussed further ahead. This was Salvemini’s behavior, even, or rather, especially with his younger friends. He refused to impose his ideas upon them. Nor did he take advantage of their inexperience to prevail over them. And often, those close to him were fascinated by his reasoning and wound up sharing it. So great was his influence that once, Carlo Rosselli confided in Ernesto Rossi, telling him that “he would have liked to take leave of his city for a while, because—despite Salvemini’s habit of never imposing his point of view onto his young friends, leaving them completely free to think what they believed was best (indeed, precisely for this reason)—he could no longer distinguish well which thoughts were his own and which, instead, were Salvemini’s.”17 The same went for Jean. At least in his more youthful years. Living with Salvemini, he had absorbed his ideas. After having abandoned the Lega, after the closure of Vita Latina, he gave life to a new journal called, simply, Vita whose programme was thus described: In matters of international politics: in favor of the fight for the League of Nations and for the Latin Union, with the abolition of arms and national armies, and customs duties (free trade), for the Wilsonian concept of self-­  Rossi, Un democratico ribelle, 46.  Ibid., 47. 17  Aa.Vv., No al fascismo, edited by E. Rossi (Torino: Einaudi, 1957) 12. 15 16

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

65

determination, for the observance of the right of Nationalities, for the suppression of nationalist egocentrism, for the Mazzinian concept of the homeland etc.; in matters of internal politics (regarding Italy, given that other campaigns will be made regarding France), in favor of suffrage by proportional representation, votes for women, the Southern Question, large estates, the campaign for honesty and political culture etc.18

These were all demands that Salvemini supported in L’Unità. As Geraldine L. Alden has noted, “Jean had always looked to Salvemini as his point of reference and as the most important figure in his life.”19 It was 1919. Salvemini had created a new family with Fernande. They were united both by affection and by a complete communion of ideas. Salvemini had been in favour of the war. He had fought it. And now, with his journal, he was battling against rampant nationalist fanaticism. In the meantime, brilliant young men gathered around him. We have already seen a few of them—those who would remain in Salvemini’s circle throughout his life and who would come to form his “spiritual family”: the Rosselli brothers and Ernesto Rossi. Let us stop here for a moment to summarize the events narrated thus far. We have seen how, after the Messina earthquake, Salvemini’s activity became more intense than it had ever previously been. We found him engaged in the fight for universal suffrage. We’ve seen him distance himself from the Socialist Party. Declare himself in favour of intervention in the war. Go to the front lines. Battle for a just peace. It is these tumultuous, frenetic years that frame his new family life. In Fernande—feminist, socialist, reformist—he found a supporter, a friend, a confidante and, finally, a life companion. They were married in 1916, in the midst of the war. With Fernande and her children, Salvemini would build a new family in Florence. He would become the point of reference for his stepson, Giovannino, as the latter made his first steps in the world of journalism, in contrast with the detached absence of Jean’s natural father, Julien Luchaire. We have spoken little of Ghita. In those years, she was still a child, but soon, it will be shown how even she becomes a central figure for Salvemini. Strong in the shelter of his new family, Salvemini dedicates himself tirelessly to the League for Renewal. Once again here, Fernande’s presence is discreet but crucial.  Cabella, Piero Gobetti e le riviste italo-francesi, 107.  Alden, The Road to Collaboration cit., 20–1.

18 19

66 

F. FANTARELLA

What was the League for Renewal? Following Italy’s general political deterioration, committees were formed in various Italian cities in support of Salvemini’s ideas: these were the Amici dell’Unità (Friends of Unità). Turin’s section was guided by another young man with a bright future: Piero Gobetti. The movement, though it never amounted to the formation of a political party in its own right, brought about the foundation of the Democratic League for the Renewal of Italian Public Life. Rotating around the League were all the young man we have seen until now: from Jean to Ernesto to Piero.20 Fernande lent a hand in thousands of activities: from organizing meetings to promoting them, from proposing new points of discussion to correcting drafts. The first congress of the Lega was held in Florence in April of 1919, followed by a second in Rome in June of the following year. It was precisely at this 1920 assembly that the question of female suffrage—whose flame, it bears recalling, had been lit between 1908 and 1911 to then be snuffed out almost entirely by Giolitti’s reform and the advent of the war— was once again brought to the surface. The first to raise it was Grazia Ferretti: Women sympathizing with the movement that heads the Conference on Political Renewal request that from this moment forward an explicit interest in the women’s question be manifested, and that it be at least mentioned in reference to the problems of education and social legislation […]. Women sympathizers ask that the legislation be increasingly seriously oriented toward guaranteeing more appropriate conditions for female workers, a more equal family constitution, and an ever more cautious protection of children and young mothers.21 20  It is important to keep in mind the year in which these events take place: 1919. Jean already knew both the Rosselli brothers and Leo Ferrero and had already made contact with Gobetti. Nevertheless, the Rossellis, Rossi, and Gobetti had not yet met each other. This network of acquaintances has been successfully reconstructed by Simone Visciola. “In 1919,” Visciola writes, “Gobetti participated in the first operational convention of the Amici dell’Unità, which took place in Florence from the 17th to the 19th of September and at which, on Salvemini’s impulse, the League for the Renewal of National Life was created. It was an attempt at uniting intellectual forces and younger forces within the movement of the ex-combatants in order to give a democratic solution to the serious postwar crisis […]. In those same years, the two Rossellis, Carlo and Nello […] entered Salvemini’s circle […]. On that occasion, the Rossellis did not meet Gobetti, even though he already belonged to Salvemini’s entourage. Carlo Rosselli met Gobetti a few years later, in December of 1922” (Aa.Vv., I Rosselli. Eresia creativa, eredità originale, edited by S. Visciola and G. Limone, Napoli: Guida, 2005, 74–5). On the activities of the League, also see Tagliacozzo, Un profilo biografico, 47. 21  “Il problema femminile al Convegno del Rinnovamento,” in L’Unità, June 24, 1920. See also Cordova (ed), Che vale moralmente l’Italia?, in particular pages 22–4.

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

67

Vincenzo Torraca, ex-combatant and founder of the magazine Volontà was tasked with incorporating the issues raised by Ferretti into Amici’s programme. Fernande took care of editing the document, which she found both generic and imprecise. To be rewritten from scratch, in other words. She reformulated it thus: Considering that the problem of the reform of social legislation interests to an equal degree all citizens of the nation without distinction of sex, observing that women today occupy a role in the life of the nation which, not feminist ideologies, but the economic, political and social necessities of the country have given them, and that it is just and necessary that new responsibilities be met with new rights; continuing to keep in mind that the reform of social and family legislation must contain solutions to problems which not only concern women directly, but in which they may contribute aspects of experience that differ from the experiences of men non-negligible to public interest, the conference retains: a) that women be called upon without delay to validate their interests and points of view, and enter into the electoral corpus; b) that in the interim, laws such as those regarding divorce and paternity tests must not be elaborated, discussed or voted upon by Parliament as ­expedients of political games or as distractions from more pressing issues and before women are given the opportunity to have their ideas considered and assume responsibility for them.22

In 1908, twelve years earlier, in her review of Sibilla Aleramo’s novel, Un cas de feminisme pratique et integral, Fernande had insisted on precisely these same points: the introduction of a legislation on divorce, the reform of family law in order that it promote support for mothers and wives, and the extension of the vote to women. The assembly, however, reacted tepidly to Fernande and her companions’ perorations. Their objection was once again based on the idea that women had not yet developed political consciousness, as evidenced, they said, by their scarce participation at the congress. But Fernande ignored their comment, responding coldly that if only few women had participated at the congress, it was surely because a greater number of them had not been invited to attend. It was a heated debate, but once again, the women’s requests were quieted and subsequently shelved. In fact, Fernande’s programme received only  “Il Problema femminile al Convegno del Rinnovamento.”

22

68 

F. FANTARELLA

Salvemini’s and Antonio De Viti De Marco’s votes. Amidst the postwar crisis, the Women’s Question was once again relegated to the background. It stayed there for at least twenty more years. More immediate on the horizon were the first retaliations of the Blackshirts. Soon, Fascism would revoke the rights and liberties of all. Men and women alike.

2   Peace at Home In November of 1919, the first elections built on proportional representation were held in Italy. That same year, Salvemini became a candidate with the group of ex-combatants of the Renewal.23 He shared with them a contempt for Giolitti and a ferocious aversion to D’Annunzio and Mussolini’s fierce nationalism. This time, he was elected with no fewer than sixteen-thousand votes. He was a very unpopular deputy: Catholics held him in poor esteem for his secular ideas; Socialists suspected him for his support of the emancipation of Southern Italian peasants, despite having estranged himself from the Party since 1911. And finally, the Nationalists hated him for his response to the issue of Dalmatia. Though long and belligerent, his list of enemies did not scare Salvemini. He obtained his seat in Parliament precisely to defend the reforms previously upheld by his L’Unità. But he abhorred Parliamentary practice. Few deputies took their work seriously. They deserted Parliamentary debates and made trips to Rome only to lend their votes to laws confectioned by notorious bigwigs. Often, they voted without having ever read the laws to which they were affixing their signature. Salvemini followed a specific line of conduct: he voted “yes” only for the provisions which he had been able to read attentively and with which he agreed; he voted “no” for all the rest.24 Nevertheless, he began to feel the effects of these many indefatigable battles and of the long trips between Florence and Rome. This effort did not escape the attentions of Gobetti, who on April 19, 1919, in a letter to his companion Ada Prospero, confided: “Salvemini is tired, he isn’t young anymore and he no longer feels it appropriate, at his age, to direct a

23  Salvemini left the group in February of 1920, when he learned that “the fascist colour had surfaced at one of the group’s meetings,” Tagliacozzo, Salvemini nel cinquantennio liberale, 229. 24  Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini, 49.

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

69

journal like L’Unità.25 In fact, Salvemini had offered the direction of the journal to Piero. But Gobetti had refused, affectionately encouraging Salvemini: “Try your best not to abandon L’Unità, [whose existence is] more necessary today than it ever has been.”26 Added to Salvemini’s fatigue, was his disgust for Parliamentary life. He acted as representative from December 1919 to April 1921, when Giolitti’s government came to a close. Salvemini decided then to leave behind him active political engagement and to not renew his candidacy at the following election. “Parliamentary life,” he wrote, “will no longer concern me.” He continued: I retained of it a memory of disgust and horror. Entire months of six-hour daily assemblies led by orators, almost all of them stupid and some of them crooks, held before an audience of brutes. And outside of the hours of assembly, the agitation of letters and solicitations: the cooperative who wants to take you to the minister or to some influential deputy to beg for some public contracts, and with whom you must spend hours and hours battling to explain why you cannot, you don’t want to, you mustn’t dishonour yourself for such a reason, and they not understanding you; the professor who requests to be substituted or moved and to whom you must respond that you are not responsible for such queries; the widow who has been waiting for her pension for the past two or three years and to whom you can do no justice. No, by God, they will not have me again.27

Hence began his isolation from public life. On December 30, 1920, the last issue of L’Unità was published. Four months later, Salvemini concluded his Parliamentary experience. Exhausted and disappointed by politics, he decided to dedicate himself exclusively to teaching and research. We might say that these postwar years, until the ascent of Fascism, were those in which Salvemini, Fernande, Jean, and Ghita were most united. Salvemini supported his stepchildren as though they were his own, as though they were made of his own flesh and blood, with affection and trepidation. A young and audacious Jean left Florence in 1920  in an attempt to build a journalistic career in France. There, he met the daughter of the painter Robert Besnard, the young and beautiful Françoise. When she got pregnant, Jean married her. He was only twenty years old. 25  P. Gobetti—A. Prospero, Piero e Ada Gobetti. La forza del nostro amore, P. Polito and P. Impagliazzo (ed) (Firenze: Passigli, 2016) 68. 26  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1914–1920, 520. 27  Id., Carteggio, 1921–1926, 28.

70 

F. FANTARELLA

In the meantime, he found work as editor of Le Matin. On February 11th, 1921, Corinne was born: a girl who, few years later, would grow to be a fascinating woman. Courted. Famous. More will be said about her further ahead. Suffice it to say for now that in those years of warm daily routine and family joy, no one would have imagined that that girl, whom everyone had welcomed into the world with a joyful and festive spirit, would have such a tragic end. Exactly like that of her father, Jean. In the meantime, Jean’s move to Paris had done nothing to disunite Salvemini’s family. On the contrary, he and Fernande frequently travelled to France to visit Jean and help him and Françoise. Those trips outside of Italy, where the political climate was becoming more asphyxiating every day, seemed to temper his spirits. “Fernande,” he wrote to a friend, “is in Paris: she is a grandmother now. Giovannino has married and is already father to a young girl, who is said to be charming.” He added: “I will go to Paris in mid-August. Who knows if, living outside of Italy for a few months, I won’t be able to recompose myself intellectually.”28 In Paris, Salvemini was gripped by a great tenderness upon meeting Giovannino’s family. Moved, in August of 1921, he wrote to Elsa Dallolio: Jean’s little one is so beautiful and vivacious and charming in nature. And even his young wife is friendly and lovely and good. The two of them, whose combined age even with their daughter between them amounts to less than forty, are so full of serenity, courage, good sense, and good will. I go to their house often, it is so endearing to see them together, all three of them could fit in a matchbox. And they cause me great melancholy: they need dolls and puppets, but they must scrape by just to make ends meet. Jean fixed up the whole house with his own hands and has turned it into quite a pretty gem; he changes the little one’s diaper and pushes her pram down the street. And he even keeps active in politics, naturally leftist politics, he goes to meetings, he even gives lectures! His little wife watches him wide-eyed; but I suspect that she is not without her concerns regarding this otherwise very calm and not at all excited political action. I said that they cause me great m ­ elancholy. At their age, I did the same: with only twenty-five lire in my pocket, I took a wife, and I was happy, even living on 150 lire a month. But so it is: I put myself in their shoes with all the fatigue of the 50 years to follow, and I feel myself close to tears.29

 Ibid., 22.  Ibid., 23–4.

28 29

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

71

Salvemini’s letter is far from short. But it was necessary to cite it in its entirety to testify to the affection and pride with which he wrote about Jean and their family’s union in those years. For him, Giovannino was not simply the son of his second wife, or an exuberant youth with whom to debate. He had watched him grow. Rather: he had helped to raise him. He had followed his first steps as a journalist. Now, he found him in Paris, still a boy, yet with a family of his own. And in that boy, Salvemini saw himself. He, too—at barely twenty years old—had married Maria. He, too, had done so with little money in his possession, like Jean. Observing that small family was like coming across an old slide from the past, from a time when he was still young, full of energy and hope for the future. Giovannino, with his daughter, filled Salvemini’s house with joy. Happy, he wrote to Elsa Dallolio: “We have Jean with his wife and daughter [here in Florence]. This little one year-old is a hoot.”30 Salvemini even managed to temper Fernande’s anxiety; like a mother hen, she tended to be overprotective of her children. He would chastise her, encouraging Jean and—as will soon be shown—Ghita, instead to walk their own paths with confidence. In 1922, Jean was in Turkey for Le Matin and Salvemini, knowing well his wife’s apprehensive nature, chided her for her exaggerated anxieties: I hope you have not told Françoise [Jean’s wife] of your worries […]. You would do well to convince yourself that every man is threatened everywhere, if not by seasickness, then by every other possible trouble. And it is just as absurd to ask yourself if Jean will return safe and sound—nothing less!—as it is to ask yourself if, upon his return to Paris, he will be crushed under the wheels of a car. And I dare you to advise the “young father” not to “risk so much!” Should he have waited until he was 80 years old to begin taking risks?31

Jean, then, was making a name for himself in journalism and beginning to take his first steps in politics. Though in 1921, in a letter to Dallolio, Salvemini had defined Jean’s political activity “very calm and not at all excited,” with the arrival in office of Raymond Poincaré, whose politics Salvemini mistrusted, he began to demonstrate his first fears regarding his

 Ibid., 50.  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, London, October 2, 1922. Ags.

30 31

72 

F. FANTARELLA

step-son’s position.32 And this time, it was he who shared his anxieties with Fernande: My dear, I hope that Jean knows how to take advantage of his new adventure. I especially hope that he refrains from letting himself be swept up in the inner workings of Poincaré’s politics. To me, Poincaré’s message is clear: use the Turks to annoy Lloyd George, just as Lloyd George annoys him regarding the question of Rhine […]. International politics has become so crooked that it is hardly worth the trouble getting involved. What is terrible is that pacifist movements […] in civil countries are convenient to the militarism of backwards countries, like Turkey, Hungary, Russia, and Italy.33

We begin here to detect Salvemini’s diffidence toward the pacifist ideas that instead greatly attracted Jean. Already in his adolescence, he’d promoted the idea of a united Europe and a friendship with the Germanic peoples. It was an idea that troubled Salvemini considerably during the long afternoons they spent together discussing politics, as Iris Origo noted in one of her testimonials.34 And if in 1919–1920 Salvemini had strongly influenced Jean’s political attitude, especially regarding the issue of Dalmatia, with his step-son’s move to Paris, he feared that French politics might blind him and trap him in its deceptive web of power, favours, and varied collusions. But he always accompanied his political recommendations with affectionate words. In fact, Fernande often went to Paris to be close to Jean’s wife and to support her in her moments of need, and Salvemini—understanding—would write her: “It goes without saying that it is natural that you should stay with Françoise, this being the first time that Jean takes leave of her for such a long period of time without any help.”35 And when he failed to receive news of his step-son, he would complain angrily. “I was thinking about going to Tronville,” he once wrote to Fernande, “before coming here. But neither your parents in Paris nor A. Prato [who was a friend of Salvemini’s] had Jean’s address. Only after twelve hours had gone by since I’d telegraphed with news of my 32  Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) was Prime Minister of France on several occasions. At the end of the First World War, the tension between France and Germany was extremely fraught given Germany’s inability to repay war debts, as required by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1923, then, Poincaré decided to occupy the region of Ruhr. 33  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 84. 34  Origo, Bisogno di testimoniare, 160. 35  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 85.

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

73

arrival did I receive a postcard from Françoise, from a farm, in Hennequeville, near Tronville.” And with a flourish of anger, he concluded: “That animal could at least share his address!”36 Just like a father, with affection, with some apprehension, and not without moments of rage, Salvemini followed his Giovannino. And when his grand-daughter Corinne fell gravely ill, anguished, he wrote to his wife: “My dear, as soon as the little one is out of danger, I beg you, please send me a telegram that says simply well.” Immediately afterwards, he advised: “They should send her here to us, with you, where she might spend the winter in a more favourable climate. And in the spring, they could all come here for a month and bring her back with them to Paris.”37 Salvemini’s desire to have his family close to him is all too clear. His longing for the warmth of their presence, enriched by the skirmishes of the little Corinne. And when Fernande was forced to prolong her stay in Paris in order to help her son, he wrote to her: “I embrace you. I hope these forty-five days fly by and that Ghita … fails to settle down and comes back [to Florence] with you.”38 With his family in France, Salvemini was overtaken by solitude. Precisely that solitude which had consumed him following the Messina earthquake, when he had found himself, like a beaten stray dog, deprived of a domestic focal point. He had rebuilt his family a little at a time in the years during the war. But now that the children were grown and following their own paths, the Florentine house was empty. And so Salvemini counted, one by one, the days that separated him from the return of his wife. And though he had encouraged Ghita’s studies, he secretly hoped she would be unable to find a suitable arrangement in Paris and returned to Florence. Yes: because in 1922, at eighteen years old, Ghita—the baby of the family—stated her desire to return to Paris to study art history. Fernande immediately voiced her opposition to the idea. Salvemini, by contrast, rather than opposing the girl’s desires, sought to persuade his wife of the better opportunities Paris might afford her. He demonstrated himself to be vocally against one single point: that Ghita should live with her father Julien in Paris. The letters exchanged between Salvemini and Fernande in the early 1920s reveal not only Julien’s complete disinterest in his children, but also a horrible description of his second wife, Maria. One  Ibid., 63.  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, Firenze, December 7, 1922. Ags. 38  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, Firenze, November 30, 1922. Ags. 36 37

74 

F. FANTARELLA

unpublished letter states: “To be rid of the weight of his daughter, [Julien] would even sell her to the first millionaire he encountered on the street for a night, pushed by his wife, who would buy herself a few extra dresses with the earnings. And you should not let her stay with her father even if he should accept: the company of her stepmother would only cause her harm. Maria would be delighted to see Ghita make some error in judgment: it would redeem her own mistakes to prove that she herself was no different than any other.” Having clarified his position thus, Salvemini tried to convince Fernande of Ghita’s good intentions. “It seems to me,” he wrote to his wife, “that Ghita is right to want to stay in Paris to learn how to work and prepare herself to live independently.” And underlining the advantages of such a move, he concluded: “In Florence, she would be limited to waiting for a husband, while muttering in English and sketching plates and glasses [Ghita liked to paint still-life paintings]. In Paris, she might be able to more satisfactorily pursue her studies, and perhaps even … find a better husband than she would in Italy.”39 In that period of ill-faith in and isolation from public life, Salvemini believed that France offered many more opportunities to a youth preparing himself for life. He stipulated only one other condition for Ghita’s move to Paris: by then established that she should not live with Julien and Maria, he clarified that Ghita would be going to Paris to study, not to work. And he presented the issue to Fernande without too many turns of phrase: “It is one thing to go to Paris to study, it is another to go to earn money, as her father wishes. Her father must provide her with an allowance commensurate with his social condition.” He went on: “Let go of the illusion of getting from him the 30 thousand lire promised to you for your children in the divorce settlement and defend right now your daughter’s standard of living. She should not be obliged to earn a living today, only for her stepmother to consume all of her father’s salary.”40 With the conditions for Ghita’s move defined, Salvemini began at once to worry about her lodgings. Certainly, he would never have permitted her to live in an unhealthy or frivolous environment that might compromise her moral fibre or cause her to lose her way. Under these conditions, he concluded, Ghita “is right and you must not stand in her way; as much as it might displease you and also me, who have grown used to having her with us and who love her. Our primary concern now is finding her healthy and  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, London, October 3, 1922. Ags.  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, London, October 3, 1922. Ags.

39 40

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

75

trustworthy accommodations […], choosing with appropriate criteria the family to whom Ghita should be entrusted: it should contain a few girls of her own age. Her environment should be neither boring nor pedantic, nor should it be too modern: a family like ours.”41 Finally, Fernande abandoned her protesting and agreed to her daughter studying in Paris. The expenses of this decision, however, fell to Salvemini. And Ghita was very grateful to him. In an unpublished letter, readers find all the young girl’s affection toward and recognition of Salvemini, in stark contrast with her father Julien’s negligence. “I am leaving our beautiful house,” she wrote, “where you live [to move to] a maison des étudiants (student house) where I will be alone. I am leaving Florence, my friends, the sunshine for Paris […]. I do not wish you to believe me so ungrateful as to not accept all that which comes of your affection, as I would do with my father, should he offer it to me. He does not offer it to me. This is the cause of my suffering […] and watching him refuse to do the things that you have done for me hurts me greatly.” She concluded: “I am profoundly grateful also for the discretion with which you have acted.”42 It was thus that Salvemini found himself far from his family at Christmas in 1922. He missed them all. He wrote to Fernande: “Merry Christmas, my dear old lady. The disorganized manner of our life is truly absurd. But it is coming to an end. And in a few weeks, at least the two of us will be reunited […] I embrace you. Merry Christmas to Jean and his clan, and to Ghita and to the whole nest at Rue Nouvelle.”43 Jean and Ghita were no longer children. They had grown and Salvemini watched as they distanced themselves from their Florentine family life. The beginning of 1923 was a very successful time for Jean in the world of journalism. Salvemini’s enthusiasm was dampened by a vague foreboding, which tormented him. He sensed that Giovannino had set out on a path that would estrange him from his family. “Affectionate greetings to Jean,” he wrote to his wife, “and congratulations on his new job. Alas! I sense he will become an authoritative character like his father, and that little by little—amidst many other such authoritative characters—he will become more like his father. In any event, we will have enjoyed him during his best years, when he was like us, and no one can take this advantage

 Ibid.  Ghita Luchaire to Gaetano Salvemini, Paris, December 12, 1922. Ags. 43  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, Firenze, December 1922. Ags. 41 42

76 

F. FANTARELLA

from us.”44 “When he was like us,” Salvemini underlines. In 1909, that eight-year-old child, so alive, so energetic, so stubborn, certainly: even in his stubbornness, that child had filled the void left by the death of Salvemini’s children. Salvemini had walked beside him in his best years, those of his carefree childhood and proud adolescence. Now, he watched him grow further and further from him. The face of the sky clouded over once more. Later, it would turn completely black. Ten years from then, the distance between Salvemini and Giovannino would become unbridgeable. But no one could yet suspect it.

3   Three young friends: Nello, Carlo and Ernesto At the beginning of the 1920s, Salvemini is a tired warrior. He has abandoned public office. He has closed his journal. His stepchildren have moved to Paris, though he continues to follow their work and studies. He spends long periods of time in France with Fernande. As will soon be shown in detail, these years also see Salvemini, among other things, learning English and frequently sojourning in England. He begins to become surrounded, in the meantime, by exceptional young people. More than that: young people who represent the best part of an Italy subjugated by fascism. We have already had a glimpse at them: Piero Gobetti in Turin and, above all, the Florentine youth, among whom the Rosselli brothers and Ernesto Rossi, who would surround Salvemini ever more closely, giving life to an indestructible spiritual brotherhood, a steady chain whose links would only be broken by the strike of the fascist hammer. One day, a clear-faced boy with a calm and slow voice approached Professor Salvemini. He was roughly twenty years old. It was Nello Rosselli, Jean’s childhood friend, who had studied at Florence’s Istituto di studi superiori (University of Florence) where Salvemini was teaching at the time: Nello wanted to work with Salvemini on his dissertation. Like a nineteenth-century painter, Salvemini recalled that meeting in large, colourful brushstrokes: the light in Nello’s eyes, the mildness of his spirit was as clear as the Florentine air. We can almost see them, Nello and Salvemini facing each other, discussing history. The timid pupil. The master intrigued by those discreet but gleaming eyes. “In the spring of 1920,” Salvemini wrote, “on one of those Florentine spring days, when the air is clear as crystal and you can almost make out from Florence the leaves of  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, Firenze, January 12, 1923. Ags.

44

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

77

the olive trees on the hills of Fiesole, a second lieutenant of the artillery division came to visit me at my home. His name was Nello Rosselli. He was enrolled at the university. He planned on studying history and asked for my advice. I knew him by name, and I knew him personally, a little; his mother [Amelia Pincherle] is a well-known author and a dear friend of a friend of mine.”45 The Rossellis belonged to a very illustrious family, of long lineage, who had participated in the Italian Risorgimento. Giuseppe Mazzini had spent his last years in Pisa, in the hospitality and care of Pellegrino Rosselli, Nello and Carlo’s great-uncle. Salvemini, then, thought of assigning Nello the study of Mazzini’s works as a research topic. A few days later, Nello arrived at Salvemini’s house with his brother Carlo. While Nello had immediately made a peaceful and sweet impression on his teacher, what Salvemini first noticed about Carlo, instead, was the exuberant pride he took in his own work. In fact, he’d arrived at Salvemini’s house with his dissertation in hand, for which he had received summa cum laude honours. Salvemini read it scrupulously. Nothing escaped his commentary: he trimmed the sections of text that were too rhetorical or rich in personal opinions; he eliminated all that which was superfluous and obfuscated the clarity of the presented facts; he covered the work in annotations and question marks where he judged a more detailed analysis of the topic necessary. That typewritten document, so flagellated, page by page, by pitiless erasures and critical commentary, was returned to Carlo, who reacted rather poorly.46 “He hated me for many days,” Salvemini wrote, “but he thought about it, recognized that the work needed to be redone, and published it in Paris with the title Socialisme Libéral.”47 Carlo’s work would become, and still is today, a building block for many Socialist movements that, it goes without saying, promote rather than contradict the achievements of a liberal civilization. It is no coincidence that Palmiro Togliatti did not hesitate to call Carlo’s book a “thin anti-socialist pamphlet” due to its liberal inflection, and to brand the author an “ideological reactionary who is no way linked to the working class.”48  Salvemini, Opere, VIII, Scritti vari. 1900–1957, 718–9.  N.  Rosselli, Saggi sul Risorgimento, Preface by G.  Salvemini (Torino: Einaudi, 1946) 9–10. 47  Ibid. 48  The article entitled “Sul movimento di Giustizia e Libertà” was first published under the name Ercoli (Palmiro Togliatti’s pseudonym) in Lo Stato Operaio in September of 1931, 9, 45 46

78 

F. FANTARELLA

Things had been no easier for Nello. He, too, had had his troubles with Salvemini. The development of his dissertation was no less laborious and difficult. “The first draft,” Salvemini wrote, “got buried under the onslaught of my criticism and requests for further research on the more obscure points. The second draft, too, was subject to such criticism. The third draft was acceptable as a dissertation, but much more work would be required to perfect it.” And, Salvemini concluded, “at this point, Nello told me that he would no longer give me anything to read.”49 An arrogant young man, spoiled by too strong a penchant for shameless self-­satisfaction, would have insisted too fervently on his own ideas and cursed Salvemini’s excessively meticulous and insufferably fastidious methodology. But the Rosselli brothers shared no part of those traits. Salvemini was the first to recognize as much. “Young people,” he said, “when they lack strength of character, feel offended by the criticisms of harsh teachers and stubbornly insist on their ideas or, discouraged, abandon their projects altogether. Carlo and Nello had character. They were modest and they were honest. They knew how to listen and learn.”50 Thus, Salvemini found two young friends in Carlo and Nello. “Or, more accurately,” he specified, “three: because they had been preceded by Ernesto Rossi, with whom they bonded in my house.”51 Ernesto, too, was humble, honest, and courageous. Salvemini’s close influence cleared away the smoke of nationalist propaganda that had previously intoxicated his mind. “If I had not encountered Salvemini on my path at the right moment,” Ernesto admitted, “who cleansed my mind of all the byproducts of baser passions and of the lies of government propaganda, I, too, would have easily lapsed into fascism.”52 463–7, and is now found in P. Togliatti, Opere III, 1929–1935, edited by E.  Ragionieri (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1973) 411–22. 49  Salvemini, Opere, VIII, Scritti vari. 1900–1957, 718–9. Nello later published his work in 1927. 50  Ibid., 120. 51  On the same page, Salvemini added: “I have worked as a teacher by now for more than half a century. During this time, I have known hundreds of young people, but I have never known more noble youths than those three. To them I owe the most beautiful experiences to have enriched my spirit, both as a teacher and as a man.” 52  G. Fiori, Una storia italiana. Vita di Ernesto Rossi (Torino: Einaudi, 1997) 47. From March 1919 to September 1922 (before the march on Rome), Ernesto Rossi wrote purely economic articles for Mussolini’s Il Popolo d’Italia. Over the years, Rossi has come under attack for these activities (despite having spent nine years of his life imprisoned for his involvement in the anti-fascist cause). But, not having written anything of which to be

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

79

Salvemini would prove to be an attentive teacher to those three boys; an example to follow in the storms of life. A father. Yes: a father, a spiritual father—an expression that is frequently used in reference to Salvemini and his disciples. In fact, all Salvemini scholars describe their brotherhood that of a “spiritual family.” Salvemini was a father to Ghita and Jean, too. But their closeness to him is more immediate and easier to understand; Gaetano had married their mother and with her, they had moved into their Florentine home; the establishment of a paternal (and filial) relationship among them is a natural consequence. But how might we explain the paternal affection that Salvemini nurtured toward this fresh and exuberant youth that filled his empty days, now that his stepchildren were far from him and he had abandoned the political scene? Ostensibly, just like Ghita and Jean, Nello, Carlo, and Ernesto, too, suffered from a lacking father figure. Amelia Pincherle had separated from her husband Giuseppe Emanuele Rosselli and in 1903 had moved to Florence with her children. The rift between Ernesto and his father— Antonio Rossi della Manta, a knight—was deeper still. Rossi della Manta was a rough military man. His son abhorred his authoritarian character and abrupt manners. In 1913, Sir Rossi discovered his wife, Elide Verardi, with a young lover, and shot him. Unharmed, Elide went to live alone with her children: Paolo, Claretta, Serenella, and Ernesto. Elide was an anti-conformist woman with a fearless and passionate character, whose influence on Ernesto was immense. Ernesto adored her, never judged her, and remained forever by her side.53 When, in 1922, Ernesto wrote to him ashamed, he wrote in a letter to his mother: “Still today, I can, without any scepticism, claim ownership of every article I wrote for Il Popolo d’Italia, from the first in which I supported proportional representation to the last in which I battled the compulsoriness of arbitration in collective conflicts.” Ibid., 42. 53  Those interested in a more profound examination of the bond that tied Ernesto Rossi to his mother are advised to read the beautiful and at times moving letters he wrote to her from fascist prison and collected (together with those he sent to his wife, Ada Rossi) by Manlio Magini in E. Rossi, Elogio della galera. Lettere 1930–1943 (Bari: Laterza, 1968). A wider selection of Rossi’s letters and edited by Mimmo Franzinelli appears in the volume: Nove anni sono molti. Lettere dal carcere 1930–1939 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2001). What follows is a taste of Rossi’s writing, of his touching humanity, taken from a letter written to his mother from prison in Rome on May 20, 1938. He had felt her discouragement, her fatigue, perhaps even her desperation. And he, whom prison had deprived of the embraces of his dearest loved ones, of the comfort of the most intimate affections, he, from whom so much had been taken away, cheered her up with these stupendous words, full of intelligence and generosity: “My dearest mother […] You tell me that your love for animals increases

80 

F. FANTARELLA

of his father’s death, Salvemini replied: “It was clear that you had a mother, a brother, a sister. I never thought it possible for you to have a father […] Physical parentage means nothing if they are not supplemented by spiritual parentage.”54 commensurately with your contempt for men. I am, I think, by nature, more pessimistic than you on the topic of mankind. But I am not a misanthrope and I find a general contempt for humanity unjustified. Man remains, for me, a subject of most vivid interest and the source of life’s purest and loftiest pleasures. Despite my studies of any and all science, it is the human spirit which interests me above all, and which I admire in its efforts to elaborate increasingly perfect instruments of knowledge, and to embrace with a rational interpretation ever more vast reaches of the universe. Even just an elementary knowledge of mathematics would suffice to prevent me from hating men. Wretched worms tossed into the void with nothing more than a lick of wind, tormented by thousands of misfortunes and thousands of repugnant cures, continuously agitated by the fever of their passions and by their ambitions, yet they have been able to erect, brick by brick, a building so harmonious and perfect in all its parts, whose spires rise up, up, until they are lost to the eye, finer than a ray of light, into the heights of infinity. Work [on it] has continued uninterrupted since time immemorial and when one falls, another takes his place, without asking where this latter was born, without sniffing the tools left behind by the first to see whether they reek of heresy or Christianity. They have built, not as one might build a bridge or a house, for the utility they may derive whence, but only for the pleasure of building something beautiful, only to satisfy their desire for perfect harmony, which, in the world of things, remained necessarily unfulfilled; without considering what use might be made of it, without considering, rather, that it may serve no purpose at all before the inevitability of death. And what are the millions of spineless fools and imbeciles that make up the applauding multitudes, cackling on command, when compared to just one man, to one Tolstòj? Tolstòj speaks, and you forget the millions of imbeciles and spineless fools; those millions making such a racket disappear, no longer exist, and you feel happy to be a man, to have a soul in which his word of love reverberates. Where are all the conformists, the cowards, the wretched, who pity those who don’t know how to live, who don’t enterprise, as they do, to hold a certain position, when, reading the diary of Captain Scott, you see him as if he were present before you, the last survivor among his frozen comrades, writing painfully, with fingers already rigid with death, the final retelling of his unfortunate and heroic expedition, in order that it serve as a call to action, an example for those to follow? What does it matter that the imbeciles, the spineless fools, the swindlers are so numerous and so predominant and so successful? Men do not submit to a headcount, like livestock for sale, and success proves nothing in the world of thought. Not only may we always be consoled in the contemplation of the human spirit’s accomplishments in the fields of science and art, in the contemplation of our past heroes, but, unless we live miserable lives devoid of all illumination, we are certain to meet on our path, on our search of what is right and true, other men made of flesh, like we are, moved by our same anxiety, in whom we may recognize brothers in a different, much deeper sense than is possible with other creatures. And even if, after this meeting, we part ways and never again see each other, the memory of when we looked each other in the eyes, when we shook hands with complete trust, sustains us, gives us strength and courage when we feel too disgusted and tired by the triumph of evil and bestiality” (italics mine). 54  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 89–90.

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

81

Therein lies the fundamental point of that which, alone, explains such a strong and enveloping bond: for Salvemini, a communion of ideas guaranteed a stronger bond than blood ties. This was exactly the case with those youths. Ernesto Rossi said of Carlo, “more than his disciple, he was [Salvemini’s] spiritual son.”55 But the most intense relationship he entertained was with Ernesto who, from Regina Coeli prison, told Salvemini: “You love me like a father. And in truth, I feel closer to being your son than if you had contributed carnally to my birth. What would my life have been if I had not had the good luck of meeting you?”56 His words echoed back to him from America, years later, when Salvemini, with an enlarged heart, confided: “If I could have fashioned a son made-to-measure, I would have made him exactly like you.”57 At this point, readers may be asking themselves: why? Why insist so heavily on the affections that tied Salvemini to his disciples, if this essay has other objectives, namely, that of reconstructing Salvemini’s intimate and personal affairs? Should the family he created with Fernande perhaps be compared to the fraternity he established with Ernesto, Carlo, and Nello? No, that is not this essay’s aim. It is not a question of comparing such diverse types of unions or of equating them to each other. They are incomparable relationships. So: if not to compare them or to equalize them, what for? Why not limit the scope of this essay solely to writing about Fernande? Why interweave Ghita’s and Jean’s stories with those of Carlo, Nello, and Ernesto? Why travel a different road rather than retrace the footsteps others have followed on Salvemini’s life path where usually, at this point in the story, in a tired repetition of clichés, Fernande’s role is diminished, Jean is isolated, and Ghita is set aside? Why? Because—whether we like it or not—Salvemini’s personal affairs are intricately interwoven with those of the most famous figures of antifascism in Italy. Consider: how are readers to understand the paradox or, perhaps better, the scandal of Jean’s political turning point (of which more will be said further ahead), if he is isolated from the Florentine context where he spent his youth? Jean was Nello’s schoolmate. Carlo was the one to report Jean’s political regression to Salvemini. And only Jean had the capacity to mitigate (albeit for a short period) Salvemini’s intellectual intransigence.  Aa.Vv., No al fascismo, 12.  Fiori, Una storia italiana, 49. 57  G. Salvemini, Lettere dall’America. 1944–1946 (Bari: Laterza, 1967), 300–1. 55 56

82 

F. FANTARELLA

Therefore: how are readers to grasp such a complicated story if its protagonists are isolated from each other, separated, as if their existences were not intertwined? How are they to interpret the duration (or the rupture) of certain affections in Salvemini’s life if Fernande, Jean, and Ghita continue to be relegated to the footnotes of his story? That being said, our story can now continue to unfold.

4  Antifascism: The Early Battles In Florence, Nello, Carlo, Ernesto, and Salvemini began to see each other regularly. They organized weekly meetings, which would soon be joined by other figures, like Piero Calamandrei and Piero Jahier. They would meet at the home of attorney Alfredo Niccoli, on Via degli Alfani. Thus was born a Cultural Circle which addressed, through discussion, themes that had always been dear to Salvemini: the backwardness and misery of the South, the necessity for electoral reform, the economic and social conflicts that, aggravated by the war, afflicted the country. Between 1920 and 1923, the number of the Florentine Circle’s members increased so drastically, that it became necessary to host meetings in larger and more capacious locations. The Rosselli brothers assumed responsibility for expenses and the selection of the locations used for their meetings. New headquarters were established in Florence, in Borgo Sant’Apostoli 27. Carlo’s enthusiasm was irrepressible. Piero Gobetti described it thus: “I met with Rosselli, he is euphoric and so completely taken with the idea of this Circle that he is personally moving furniture up the stairs to set up [their headquarters].”58 One night in 1923, a young and beautiful English woman joined the group. Her name was Marion Catherine Cave. A student at the University of Florence, fascinated by Italian culture, Marion paid for her studies by teaching English at the British Institute of Florence. Carlo immediately noticed Marion’s vivid eyes, which would soon ensnare him in a sentimental embrace.59 Toward the end of 1922, Salvemini decided to learn English 58  In Carlo Rosselli, Una vita per Giustizia e Libertà, historical documentary exhibit (June 9th–July 3, 2000), M. Tarassi and M.C. Vanetti (eds), panel 5. 59  Carlo and Marion were married in 1926. In those same years, Nello met his future wife, Maria Todesco, a friend of Fernande Dauriac’s. See Calloni–Cedroni (eds), Politica e affetti familiari.

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

83

and Marion became his teacher. His interest in learning the language was in part owed to politics. Salvemini envisioned a future for himself far from Italy. In fact, already on October 14 of 1922, he wrote to his wife: “I think, not jokingly, but seriously, that the fascists will remove me from my academic post.” He concluded: “I must prepare for another way to earn a living: and learning English, I might find one in England or in America.”60 At the end of that year, he travelled to London with Carlo Rosselli. So dark were his previsions for the future that he posed for a picture handcuffed to Carlo, both wearing pyjamas! (Fig. 4.1). His soul’s disenchantment did nothing to prevent him from describing his London sojourn with fun and spicy anecdotes. Once, for example, he told Rossi of one of his evenings spent with Carlo: Rosselli and I spent three enchanting weeks at Hindhead. Rosselli was very popular with the ladies; but he never took full advantage of his appeal. As the poor old man that I am, I cannot complain. We competed for the most beautiful woman of the community: a statuesque Irish woman, a war widow between 35 and 40 years old, truly beautiful and a charming piano player and vocalist, who … offered us table service, as the service was provided by students of Cambridge and Oxford, by professors of science and arts and letters, artists, and other similar characters. As I was saying, Rosselli admired that woman very much; and so did I. Rosselli jumped to attack with youthful bravado. I limped cautiously. On the last night, she invited us both to take a moonlit walk with her. Rosselli was aggressive; I, taciturn. Finally, the beautiful woman declared that she liked me more. Irreparable disaster! Rosselli left us there and took off. I stayed behind, lone captain of the ship. What happened then, in solitude, in the presence of only the moon, I cannot say: because nothing happened at all. English women are like Italy: nothing ever happens, and nothing ever lasts.61

Salvemini was certainly not an attractive man with an athletic, toned physique. His figure was anything but proportionate and recalled the typical Apulian peasant: medium height, robust, stocky build, large hands, round head framed by a white beard. He was, however, endowed with great charm. In conversation—especially when politics and education came under discussion—he revealed a strong and passionate nature, conquering his interlocutor with the clarity of his arguments and quick and  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 92.  Ibid., 240.

60 61

84 

F. FANTARELLA

wise retorts. He thus possessed a magnetic quality that attracted those around him, a detail quite plain to his wife, Fernande. Reading their unpublished correspondence between 1922 and 1923 (a copy of which is preserved in Florence’s archives), readers find small litigious cracks caused precisely by Fernande’s jealousy. She imagined her husband as a trombeur de femmes. Salvemini, amused by the seductive Casanova image his wife had attributed to him, defended himself thus: Dear Old Lady, Mariettina Pignatelli is … Mariettina Pignatelli, duchess of Terranova, unitarian and supporter of Leonida Bissolati. She is probably 27 or 28 years old. Being Sicilian, she has extremely black eyes. I wouldn’t say that she is properly beautiful; but she is not displeasing. She is the cousin of the duke of Avarna: it was she who procured me the documents for the Triple Entente, luckily. Should even she arouse your suspicions, it would mean that I am truly a Hercules. He satisfied Danao’s 100 daughters; [By your count], I tally up almost as many. And to think that the exact contrary is true. I am beginning to imagine a comedy: a victim of jealousy, that is, a husband, a scholar inapt at courting women and young ladies, suspected by his wife of being a Don Giovanni, who, ultimately and in desperation, begins to act like Don Giovanni to earn his wife’s reprimands, but is such a complete flop that his wife refuses to have anything to do with such an …. innocuous being, and finally gives him peace without, however, granting him her respect.62

Small arguments between spouses in which a joking tone prevails. Fernande’s jealousy bears witness to the strength of their union at that time. Despite the modesty of his sentiments and contrary to his discreet and reserved character, Salvemini let himself get carried away by occasional manifestations of affection. “Dear Old Lady of mine,” he wrote her tenderly, “you are probably right: we are both real characters; and at our tender age, we love each other.”63 At the end of 1922, then, readers find Salvemini armed with secure affections, following from afar the political events taking place in Italy 62  Ibid., 53–4. The correspondence in its entirety remains unpublished. Some letters, however, are published in Carteggio, 1921–1926. 63  Ibid., 90.

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

85

rapidly. He registered their violence. “There was a time,” he wrote, “when political thugs were limited to the South. Today, political thugs call themselves fascists, have spread throughout all of Italy, and are still more evil than their predecessors.”64 However, at least at first, Salvemini was not fully aware of the gravity of the danger and committed the error of underestimating fascism (an error which he amended in his memoirs). “The march on Rome,” he wrote, “surprised me in Paris while I was returning to Italy from England. From Paris, I wrote to Ernesto Rossi that, all things considered, Mussolini was preferable to D’Annunzio.” Discouraged by a government of old Italian politicians, he concluded: “It was to be expected that [Mussolini] would accumulate so many blunders as to make inevitable a return to the status quo ante; but nothing could be expected of antifascist groups in the fight against fascism; with no reason to prefer the new master to the old, or the old to the new, there was nothing left for me to do but to sit quietly in a corner and teach.”65 In his memoirs, he recalls how very wrong his prediction regarding Mussolini’s imminent failure had been.66 Despite his isolation from political activity, he felt that soon, it would no longer be possible for him to live in Italy, thus foretelling his exile. He wrote about it to Bernard Berenson: I sold a bit of commercial land in my hometown—inherited from my family—and I made enough money from the sale to live comfortably with my wife for six months […]. This year, Fernande and I will earn our living by working, protracting the possibility of [financial] independence, in the event that it becomes necessary to make use of [our savings]. I am returning to England in the spring, I am deepening my knowledge of English, preparing myself to lecture in English this coming fall, having already received an invitation to do so. In the meantime, the political situation will become clear: either the current regime will stabilize, contrary to my every expectation, or the world will fall apart. If it is my destiny never to return to Italy, I will have, in the meantime, learned English, and I will certainly be able to find dignified work in England or in the United States. Certainly, it isn’t any fun to have to rebuild your …. career at fifty years old. But having desired the

 Ibid., 10.  Salvemini, Dai ricordi di un fuoruscito, 3. 66  “No prediction,” he wrote, “I have ever made in my life has ever been as off-mark as the one I made of the imminent failure of the dictator” (ibid). 64 65

86 

F. FANTARELLA

war, it is right that I suffer the consequences […]. Luckily, Fernande is quite serene and is taking things as they come: this is a great help to me.67

Salvemini prepared himself for the worst. And he did so strengthened by Fernande’s support. In those months, in fact—as will be shown in the letters sent to his dearest friends—Salvemini several times emphasizes the importance of being able to count on the firm and steadfast support of his wife. He had always subscribed to the idea that marriage, a sharing of daily life—especially painful and laborious days—the companionship of a partner, helped one move forward with the awareness that his steps were neither solitary nor uncertain, but instead accompanied those of another, nearby, whose presence had the power to instil trust and support him in moments of discouragement or hesitation. It is no coincidence that he wrote to his friend Giacinto Panunzio on the occasion of the latter’s wedding in Molfetta, “I am sure that having a family will be a cause of more stable health and intense work for you. Life will not be easy for you and your partner, as it is not easy for anyone. But,” he concluded, “there is great strength in coupledom.”68 Initially, Salvemini had planned on spending the entire year in London, but in the end, decided to stay in England for only a few months in 1923, teaching at King’s College. He himself, in his correspondence, explained the reasons that had incited him to change his plans: despite the intensification of violent fascist activity, both his colleagues at the University of Florence and his friends deemed it safer for him to return to Italy. Sensitive both to the opinions of his most trusted friends and to the students that had implored him to stay in the city, and unwilling to appear afraid of the Blackshirts and their ferocious arrogance, Salvemini decided to shorten his projected stay in London.69 Nevertheless, during the summer, the fascists rejected his request for a passport, offering by way of justification that passports were “denied to those who are at risk of traveling abroad and speaking ill of the fascist government.”70 But Salvemini refused to yield and decided to leave anyway, as he explained to his friend Ugo Ojetti: “As you can well understand, the ‘absolute and categorical’ ban soon took an ‘absolute and categorical’ effect: I disregarded the ban, and tomorrow, I  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 110–1.  Ibid., 418. 69  See the letter that Salvemini sent to his wife on November 22, 1922, now ibid. 148–9. 70  Ibid., 231. 67 68

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

87

will be in London.” And he closed his letter with irony marked with resignation: “When I return to Italy, they will be unable to do anything to me, because I traveled abroad without a passport: doing so is no crime. At the very most, they will bash my head in, but that may happen at any moment, so there is nothing to worry about.”71 And it was so. No one molested him upon his return to Italy in 1923. “It would appear that the orders,” he wrote to Elsa Dallolio, “are to leave me alone and with my head intact. My students were very affectionate and cordial with me: and this is a great help to me.”72 1924 began, however, under the bloody emblem of fascism. The violence of the Blackshirts culminated in the assassination of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti who, in a courageous statement to the Chamber, had denounced the abuses of power made by the Blackshirts during the elections. His brutal murder shook the members of the Cultural Circle, inspiring them to organize themselves in a more coherent and decisive opposition to Mussolini.73 But it had been Salvemini to develop the conviction that the time had come to exit his shell and return, more aggressive than ever before, to active political battle. Only, this time, it was no longer the internal battle within a democratic assembly liberally (enough) elected, despite all its imperfections and deformations, that Salvemini faced, as he once had. Not a day went by, in fact, when Parliament’s prerogatives were not downsized at the hands of fascist blows. Salvemini faced a battle, yes, but a clandestine one. A hard one. A dangerous one. And yet, a necessary one. “The assassination of Matteotti,” Salvemini confided, “shook me to my core. I told myself that […] it was my duty not to let my inertia render me complicit with a disgraceful regime.” He added immediately afterwards: “Even on my own, I had to say no, resolutely and publicly, to that regime: do what you must, come

 Ibid.  Ibid., 283. 73  The members of the Cultural Circle decided to dedicate their energy to an anti-fascist association called “Italia libera” (Free Italy). Its activity attracted other young and courageous men to it, such as Professor Dino Vannucci, who came to represent its very soul. And the young tram driver Nello Traquandi, Ernesto Rossi’s brother, Paolo, and his sister Claretta’s husband, Bruno Pucci were also members. Their clandestine press materials were transported by the Rosselli brothers in their Bianchina cabriolet car. (Fiori, Una storia italiana, 52–62). 71 72

88 

F. FANTARELLA

what may.”74 Herein lies the Mazzinian motto he followed all his life: “do what you must.” So Salvemini went from the isolation of 1921–1922, during which years he observed his country’s politics with repugnancy (underestimating the risk of a fascist government) to a state of open and resolute opposition in 1924. He was first offered an occasion to protest against the truncheon’s swings at the anniversary of Cesare Battisti’s death. Salvemini, his students, and many members of the circle gathered in a Florentine town square to commemorate Battisti and at the end of the ceremony, fearlessly yelled: “Long live Matteotti!” It was a clear and open challenge to Mussolini. Two days later, on the night of December 31, 1924, the Blackshirts invaded the Circle’s headquarters in via Borgo Sant’Apostoli. Their fury spared nothing: furniture, books, newspapers, documents, everything was destroyed, hurled from the windows, and burned. On January 5, 1925, the prefect of Florence officially bolted its doors for “reasons of public order.” In the meantime, Salvemini’s classes at the University of Florence were continuously interrupted by fascist incursions, loud and threatening, so that he never knew if he would be leaving the classroom “with his skull intact.”75 In Florence, amid the desks of his classroom, Salvemini found Lidia Minervini, Maria’s younger sister. After the earthquake and under the weight of his political commitments and academic engagements, Salvemini’s encounters with his first wife’s family had become increasingly infrequent. It was thus with great pleasure that Salvemini found Lidia  Salvemini, Dai ricordi di un fuoruscito, 7.  Piero Calamandrei, another professor at the Florentine campus, witnessed one of those incursions and described it as follows: “The corridor of the Faculty of Letters had been invaded by a column of fascists attempting to irrupt into the classroom where Salvemini was holding his history lesson […]. A screaming mob that crowded in ripples, striking and hurling at the door of the history classroom; but the door held firm, because evidently, from the inside, the students, faithful to Salvemini, pushed against it with all their strength. […] Once the lesson was over,” Calamandrei continued, “the door opened and Salvemini exited, impassible, with his hat on his head, flanked by two rows of students. No one dared touch him.” Behind a column, hidden in a corner, Calamandrei surprised two renowned professors: Antonio Garbasso (also the city’s mayor) and Giovanni Brunetti, chair of the Department of Law. Fearfully, they had watched the scene from the safety of a corner, without interfering to stop the assault. They locked eyes with Calamandrei, whose expression was a mixture of disappointment and reprimand, and, embarrassed, returned to their office. See: Salvemini, Dai ricordi di un fuoruscito, 10. 74 75

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

89

among his students. In an article, his sister-in-law recalled the tense atmosphere in which he held his history lessons. She clung to the memory of Salvemini’s calm stoicism, the cadence of his step, secure, as he approached the podium one day. He set down his books, Lidia wrote, and said: “Neither applause nor boos change my opinion.”76 To the contrary: the fascists’ irruptions, which aimed to destabilize the peace of his lessons with their rudeness, impertinent insolence, and vulgar insults only further strengthened him in his indefatigable battles. On January 3, 1925, Mussolini—with a historical speech to Parliament— assumed all responsibility for the Matteotti crime, rendering useless the Aventine secession,77 which the oppositional parties had so insisted upon out of protest, in the hopes that Vittorio Emanuele III78 would side against his prime minister and in this way obtain his resignation. While in 1922, in the famous “bivouac” speech, the first he held in the House of Representatives as Prime Minister, Mussolini declared: “I could have turned this deaf and grey classroom into a bivouac of Roman legions: I could have bolted up Parliament and constituted an exclusively fascist Government. I could have: but I chose, at least initially, not to.”79 Now, however, the dictator assumed all “political, moral, and historical responsibility for all that which happened.”80 The day after the liberticidal speech of January 3, 1925, Salvemini gathered with his friends from the Cultural Circle: Ernesto, Carlo, Nello, and others. In his memoirs, he wrote, “We all agreed that the antifascist opposition, the deputies of the so-called ‘Aventino,’ had not understood that the ‘second wave,’ so often threatened by Mussolini, had by then already taken place and that it had overwhelmed them; it would be necessary to start over and prepare for a long and difficult resistance.”81 They arrived thus at the idea of giving a voice to the antifascist opposition via a clandestine journal.  Minervini, Ricordi di Gaetano Salvemini.  The Aventine secession (June 26, 1924) refers to the withdrawal of the parliamentary opposition from the Italian Chamber of Deputies as sign of protest against the killing of the deputy Giacomo Matteotti, with the aim of resetting the legality violated by Mussolini’s government. 78  Vittorio Emanuele III was the last King of Italy (1900–1946). 79  Benito Mussolini’s speech to the House of Representatives, November 16, 1922. 80  Benito Mussolini’s speech to the House of Representatives, January 3, 1925. 81  M.  Franzinelli (ed), Non Mollare (1925), with essays by G.  Salvemini, E.  Rossi, and P. Calamandrei (Bollati Birnghieri: 2005) 3–4. 76 77

90 

F. FANTARELLA

But: what should they call it? “We had reviewed the names of Italian and foreign periodicals that we knew, as far back as the Risorgimento,” Ernesto recalled. “In the absence of more suitable titles, we agreed on the name “Il Crepuscolo” (Twilight) but were unsatisfied with it. It was ambiguous: twilight referred not only to the break of dawn, but also to the dying light of dusk. And furthermore,” Rossi continued, “the noun recalled the adjective “crepuscolari” (crepuscular poets), by which we certainly did not want to be qualified… Nello Rosselli finally suggested calling it: ‘Never Give Up’ (Non Mollare). We all immediately agreed. It was exactly what we wanted to say. It was a reprimand, an incitement, a command to all the petty and wretched who, with a thousand reasons, sustained their argument that there was nothing left to be done, to all the cowardly souls who already accepted fascism as a done deal, adapting themselves to servitude out of fear of a worse fate.”82 Never Give Up strove to be the free voice that fascism daily and with increasing brute force repressed. And it aimed to debunk the lies that fascism used to deafen the Italian people and thus give courage to and incite to battle all those, who, frightened by the truncheon, rushed to genuflect before their new lord to serve him obsequiously. But the Never Give Up group was surveilled and followed. Spies infiltrated it like snakes despite its thousand precautions and the circumspection with which its members acted. In the end, they were betrayed by a typographer and confidential informant to the fascists. The Never Give Up headquarters were discovered and devastated by fascist forces. All copies were destroyed. Its authors were forced into hiding. Ernesto Rossi managed to cross the border and find shelter in France. Many others, however, were hunted down and arrested (Fig. 4.2). Among them was Salvemini, who was in Rome at the time. It was June 8, 1925. He spent part of the summer in prison, first in Rome, then in Florence. There, Lidia Minervini, omitting their kinship and presenting herself as nothing more than a simple student visiting her professor, managed to obtain permission to see him in the prison at Le Murate. She was thus able to inform him of the fate of his dearest friends. “Marion,” she wrote, “Carlo’s sweet wife was unable to risk going to visit him because she is under investigation […] so I occasionally threw in some sentences in Latin ‘Carolus Alpes transit,’ in response to which his blue eyes flashed beneath the gold rims of his glasses. He said to me once: tell our friend (Marion) that the doctors advise against [breathing in] the air of Florence;  Rossi, Un democratico ribelle, 73.

82

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

91

it is too heavy. I, too, would advise a change of scenery.” Released on amnesty granted in August of the same year, Salvemini understood that battling fascism from Italy was impossible and resolved to leave his country. Staying would have meant putting in danger not only his own life, but also those of his friends and champions. Marchetti, the lawyer who sided with him, for example, was brutally assaulted in Siena and died from the attack shortly thereafter. “Oh! It certainly was inconvenient” Lidia commented, “to be friends with Salvemini at that time.” He made his way to France, where many antifascists had gathered. “One morning,” Lidia continued, “he left with only one small luggage and a few documents, traveling in a closed car. Hence began his courageous life in exile.”83 It would last many years: over two decades. Salvemini was so despised by Mussolini and so unwieldy even from abroad that Mussolini, unable to tame him with the threat of physical harm, tried to buy him off. The government offered him a generous grant to continue his studies far from Italy. It goes without saying that accepting money from Mussolini would have precluded Salvemini from discrediting the dictator’s politics. “That offer,” Salvemini wrote, “was like a slap in the face to me. Had I accepted it, I would have ruptured my solidarity with the antifascists, I would have had to withhold all my criticisms of the regime; and while my friends in Italy risked their lives and freedom resisting fascism, there I would be, living it up, working and studying at the government’s expense.”84 In his characteristic neat, transparent, fearless and unyielding manner, he rejected the offer and prepared his letter of resignation from the University of Florence. A letter which bears witness, once again, to Salvemini’s political consistency. And it is a letter of such integrity, that it bears citing in its entirety: London, November 5, 1925. Distinguished Rector, The fascist dictatorship has by now completely suppressed the conditions of liberty in our nation without which the teaching of history at the university level—as I envision it—loses all dignity, as it is reduced from an instrument of liberal and civil education to a means for servile adulation of the dominant party, or to a mere exercise of erudition extraneous from the moral conscience of both the teacher and his students. I am thus forced to separate myself from my pupils and colleagues with profound pain, but with a clear conscience, convinced that I am acting dutifully both in loyalty to  Minervini, Ricordi di Salvemini, 12.  Salvemini, Dai ricordi di un fuoruscito, 31.

83 84

92 

F. FANTARELLA

them and with consistency and self-respect. I will once again serve my country within the school system once we have acquired a civil government.85

His letter of resignation was published in the English journal The New Stateman. Mussolini’s ire was so great that no Italian newspaper reported Salvemini’s words, as if in an effort to turn the tables and have it appear that the university had, of its own accord, dismissed him from his role of professor. Not only that: a law was approved with retroactive application, which revoked the citizenship of all those who discredited Italy’s reputation abroad.86 Thus, Salvemini became a fuoruscito (political exile) without citizenship. To “purify” Molfetta, the city of his birth, of the “shame of the traitorous Salvemini,” municipal authorities there offered Costanzo Ciano—father of Galeazzo, Mussolini’s future son-in-law— honorary citizenship in a ceremony that displayed all the pomposity, ostentation, and flourishes of rhetorical discourse which, however, had the final effect of elevating Salvemini’s figure as much as it tried to tarnish it, with the noise of the trumpets that festively welcomed the fascist hierarch. To be clear: it was unlike Salvemini to accept being victimized. As has previously been mentioned, he refused to be called “exiled,” a term too romantic and inflated for his taste and abhorred the term “refugee.” He instead preferred the term fuoruscito, “that is, having left my country in order to persist by whatever means available to me in the resistance that was impossible to me in Italy.”87 A resistance which, when viewed from an “external” point of view, say, from that of his public life, requires no proof beyond his political activity. This essay, however, will follow this resistance from another perspective, a more intimate, “internal” angle. It will be presented from a less explored vantage point: that of his family life. For Salvemini was to sacrifice everything to this resistance to fascism, even his second family. One might say that it—his second family—was perhaps not as important to Salvemini as it would appear to have been. At least not as important as the first had been. Or that it was in no way as important as the spiritual  Ibid.  The law declared: whoever committed “acts abroad intended to disturb the public order of the Reign, or to diminish Italy’s good name or prestige, even if the act itself did not constitute a crime” was to lose their Italian citizenship. 87  Salvemini, Dai ricordi di un fuoruscito, VIII. 85 86

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

93

solidarity he created with his dearest disciples. One might say that. But one would be wrong. The unpublished correspondence between Salvemini and Fernande disproves this theory. This next section will read, comment upon, and analyse those words. They cry out in pain. A pain which, as will be shown, Salvemini compares precisely to the despair that devoured him following the Messina earthquake.

5   1925–1933: Between France and England Salvemini’s imprisonment and exile found Fernande in poor health. In 1924, a few months prior to the events surrounding Never Give Up, she suffered a tuberculous fever, which forced her to spend long periods far from Florence, whose climate was unfavourable to her condition. She retreated for a few weeks, first to Marina di Pietrasanta, then to Forte dei Marmi, on the coast. In an unpublished letter to Mary Berenson, Salvemini wrote of his wife’s infirmity. Worriedly, he confided in his friend: “Fernande’s illness is rooted in tuberculosis […]. By now, it is impossible to delude ourselves that Fernande might return to her old self: an illness such as this one, at her age, will take many years off her life.”88 Seeing her exhausted with disease, Salvemini did not have the heart to leave her side. He responded to Filippo Turati, who had invited him to a congress in Paris, with great pain and regret, stating: “My wife was very sick, and is only now beginning to recover. Her illness will last a while, and my heart will not let me leave her, or place the border between us.”89 The mild sea air seemed to benefit Fernande, thus Salvemini judged it wise to keep her away from Florence, where the political turmoil might harm her. He thought a mild place, which would reinvigorate her health and preserve her serenity, would be better suited to her. He decided, then, to have her recover in France. “Fernande has been doing pretty well,” Salvemini explained to his friend Mary Berenson. “Given her improvement, evidently owed to the sea, the doctor advised us against returning to Florence; so, we decided to send her to Cannes, where she will be a paying guest with the family of a childhood friend of hers.” He concluded: “As you might imagine, life in this empty house come wintertime will be

 Gaetano Salvemini to Mary Berenson, Firenze, October 4, 1924. Ags.  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 303.

88 89

94 

F. FANTARELLA

unhappy for me; but it is important to have patience! Provided all goes well.”90 Salvemini here lets slip a bitter comment, predicting a long and solitary winter in Florence, far from his family. But his reserve prevents him from lingering on the pain that Fernande’s illness and her consequent separation from him cause him. His prospective solitude afflicts him, but he puts on a brave face. He gives himself strength, hoping for a happy ending. The worsening political situation around him, instead, brought with it other worries. Salvemini, as has been shown, was arrested. From prison, he sent his wife an affectionate letter. Serene. At times even witty. “I told you from Rome,” he reassured her, “that I was calm, serene, sure of myself. I confirm that same information after this week of experiences.” And later: “My lawyer, Marchetti, is an intelligent, good, active young man. So, all right.” Finally, guessing at the discomfort and preoccupation that likely tormented Fernande, he encouraged her affectionately: “I am sure, dear old lady, of you. I know that your intelligence and your character will lead you to face my clumsy adventure with strength and dignity, even if your affection and pride must suffer and feel hurt.”91 Resolute in his inflexible resistance, Salvemini began to eliminate all those friendships tarnished (or even only suspected of having been dishonoured) by an indulgence toward fascism. From prison, he exhorted Fernande thus at the close of his letter: “I beg you, my dear, to send news of me to all our friends: by that I mean to the friends who have kept themselves worthy of our friendship […]. Goodbye, dear old lady. Hug our children for me. With affection and immutable recognition.”92 Fernande did not always share Salvemini’s rigidity. She understood that not everyone possessed his temperament and courage. She recognized that men were … men, made of baseness and cowardice, made of flesh and bone, and that not all of them, in fact, very few of them were ready to have these bones crushed by the thrashing of the truncheon. So, she reprimanded Salvemini, albeit indulgently: “Gaetano … do not scold me but … I will not write to Sorani. No, old man, it is not good to put people to the test in moments like these: it is bad. What right do you have to put your friends at a crossroads: [you tell them,] ‘either immediately and openly declare war on all those who support fascism, or I will despise you?’”  Ibid., 313–4.  Ibid., 337. 92  Ibid., 338. 90 91

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

95

Shortly afterwards, she added: “Remember that he has a family to maintain, his position is unsure … Your contempt for humanity has, as usual, exceeded the acceptable limit. It would not be at all despicable if Sorani … were afraid. And you would despise him [for it]!”93 Oblivious to Fernande’s advice, the fight against fascism led Salvemini to break many of his ties. His relationship with Prezzolini is one example. Already in 1925, he refuted their friendship on the basis of Prezzolini’s not having taken a clear and definite position against Mussolini. A severity, an intransigence that, as the following pages will show, only his beloved stepson, only Giovannino, manages to soften (at least in part and at least at first). But in 1925, the unity of Salvemini’s family is still intact. And it is Salvemini himself, in letters to his closest friends, to remark on their union and above all on the strength that Fernande’s proximity lent him. “My wife,” he wrote, “is ready to face every risk. Why, then, should I be silent?”94 He confided their plans to live far from Italy to Mary Berenson: “With what I will be able to earn with my teaching, and with what Fernande will earn giving French and English lessons to American tourists in Paris, I believe we’ll find a way to overcome every difficulty [we face].”95 At this point, the reader may still have in mind the image of a young Salvemini. Full of that energetic bravado that, alone, enabled him to battle thus. But it was now 1925. Salvemini was fifty-two years old. Not old, one might say (especially judging by today’s criteria). But how many hard, difficult tests life had already thrown at him by then! And how much pain he had already endured. And still, he was ready to start over. Once again. To charge himself with a new fight. All because Fernande was by his side. “I am starting over,” he wrote “for the third time: I began life at 17 years old, when I arrived at Florence: I started over again at 35 after having lost everything in Messina; I am starting again now at 52 years old for the third time.” He concluded: “Fernande agrees with me fully and is full of courage.”96 Having Fernande beside him comforted him in the difficulty of exile. Salvemini had renounced his salary from the University of Florence, and Fernande had been gravely ill. He had work to do. Money to gather. For himself and for Fernande. But also for the fight against fascism which he  Ibid., 269–270.  Ibid., 490. 95  Ibid., 436. 96  Ibid., 437. 93 94

96 

F. FANTARELLA

never dreamed of abandoning from afar, and which, to the contrary, he deemed it necessary to face more resolutely than ever before from here, outside of Italy. In fact, Salvemini was convinced that fighting fascism from within his home country was impossible. All parties opposed to it had been annihilated, the free press had been silenced, and any dissenting voice had been suffocated by blood-stained hands. His disciples, however, upheld a different opinion. Ernesto Rossi, for example, wrote to him: “Opportunity for action, if there is any at all, will arise in Italy, not abroad.”97 Consequently, Rossi, following the closure of Never Give Up and a four-month stay in France, decided to return to Italy. Wanted by the police, he thought it best to exploit the commonality of his family name (quite common in Italy). Which authority, which police officer or Blackshirt would have ever thought that the Mr Rossi who presented himself in Rome at the national selection of teachers was that Rossi, the antifascist, extremely sought out by police, the one at the top of every Most Wanted List? Ernesto Rossi had had the audacity (and sang froid) to attend the selection with his very own name and family name. No one bothered him there. He even managed to place first among his competitors. “The Puppet [nickname used by his dear friends] has placed first in the selection. He has been offered a choice of 12 positions, none of them in Rome. He has chosen Bergamo. He is waiting to be called over there, any day now.”98 Thus Marion Rosselli shared the news with Salvemini. Bergamo was evidently the ideal base for Ernesto’s political pursuits: a small, provincial city where no one knew him, but close to Milan, where the antifascist network was still active. But Rossi’s enthusiasm was dealt a big blow when Carlo Rosselli was arrested in 1926, thus confirming Salvemini’s doubts, fears, and overall pessimism regarding the fight against the fascist regime from within Italy. Carlo had organized Filippo Turati’s escape to France. The old socialist leader reached Nice safely, but Carlo was immediately captured. Imprisoned in Como until 1927, he was subsequently confined to Lipari following a farcical trial. Nello, too, was arrested and confined to Ustica, where he stayed until 1928. His only fault was being Carlo’s brother. Dictatorships work precisely this way: trials are hasty or altogether nonexistent, and heavy convictions often burden innocent shoulders.

 Ibid., 535.  Ibid., 514.

97 98

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

97

It thus became necessary to raise money. In 1927, then, Salvemini agreed to host a conference tour in the United States. “On December 20, I will leave for New York,” he informed Umberto Zanotti-Bianco, “and stay in the United States for six months, apostrophizing on fascism from New York to San Francisco […] I intend to return to Europe in July, and then begin working concretely from across the border on the funds I will have gathered in America and with the help of friends.”99 Among his objectives was, obviously, assisting Carlo’s escape. Fernande did not follow him to America. They were unable to afford two trips. Already when she lived in Paris while he worked in London, where his work was better retributed than in France, Fernande joined her husband only for brief periods of time. The American tour must have exhausted him, for he wrote to his wife: “When I die, inscribe the three great triumphs of my life on my tombstone: I battled the annexation of Dalmatia, I learned English at fifty years old, and I survived a conference tour in America.”100 Once he returned to France, Salvemini did everything he could to free Carlo from his confinement. It was an audacious endeavour. They would have to elude the police’s extremely strict surveillance systems. They would have to hire someone to take them far from the Italian coast as quickly as possible by motorboat. Emilio Lussu, confined with Carlo, retells of their adventurous escape from Lipari in the book La Catena101: several times, they had had to return to their cell blocks soaked to the bone, risking being caught, their ears ringing with the noise of the motorboat sailing away, taking with it the hope of freedom. Finally, persistent in their attempts, they succeeded. It was the night of June 27, 1929. Carlo wrote of that night’s exhilaration thus: Hearts explode, lips smile involuntarily. As if we’d changed our skin. Eighteen hours earlier, we were in Lipari, and yet, it already seemed a distant memory. New interests, new hopes pressed on us. With lightning speed, our confinement became a thing of the past. We are now all reaching out toward the future. We want to work, fight, take back our place. One single thought was to lead us to hospitable territory: turning our personal freedom so laboriously won into an instrument for the liberation of all our people. Only thus

 Ibid., 544.  In Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini, 73. 101  E. Lussu, La Catena (Milano: Baldini & Castoldi, 1997) 73–81. 99

100

98 

F. FANTARELLA

did it appear right to us to trade imprisonment within our country to freedom in exile from it (Fig. 4.3).102

And it truly seemed as though nothing was impossible to those men, who gave everything, everything they had for freedom. Beating fascism now seemed possible. Now that their hands found, shook those of their friends, now that their eyes glistened with the light of camaraderie. “At the Lyon train station,” Lussu wrote, “they were waiting for us, seated outside a café: Turati, Treves, Modigliani and Salvemini and Cianca. At our arrival, Salvemini ran to us and hugged Rosselli, yelling: ‘Son of a dog!’, then me, yelling more simply, ‘Dog!’. It was as though fascism had crumbled with our arrival.”103 In Paris, they founded Justice and Liberty (Giustizia e Libertà). Among the heads of the movement in Italy was, naturally, Ernesto Rossi. But fascism was to bend the lives of many yet, to keep the heads of the Italian people bowed and, under the threat of the truncheon, to push them into the degradation of submissive, pusillanimous obedience. In 1930, the typographer Carlo Del Re betrayed the Milanese antifascist group. Its members were arrested (among them, Ernesto Rossi).104 A devastating blow. For Salvemini, too. Nothing seemed to tear down Mussolini’s power. Illiberal movements spread throughout Europe like the Black Plague. In 1932, António de Oliveira Salazar, chief of the National Union, was named Prime Minister of Portugal. He gave life to a dictatorship modelled on that of the Italian dictator. In 1933, Adolf Hitler ascended to power in Germany and Engelbert Dollfuss put an end to Austria’s parliamentary system. That same year, Jean consolidated his friendship with Otto Abetz, future Nazi ambassador in Paris. A black, steel hand cast its shadow over Salvemini and his family.  C. Rosselli, Fuga in quattro tempi, in Id., Opere scelte, I (Torino: Einaudi, 1973) 511–25.  Lussu, La Catena, 33. 104  The events that led to the arrests of 1930, following the Del Re’s betrayal, were reconstructed by Ernesto Rossi in Una spia del regime (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1955). There, with dutiful attention to detail, Rossi retells of the events that brought the members of Justice and Liberty before the Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State. Among those arrested with Rossi, we recall: Riccardo Bauer (who, like Ernesto, was sentenced to twenty years in prison), Vincenzo Calace and Bernardino Roberto (who received ten years in prison), Ferruccio Parri, Nello Traquandi, and Umberto Ceva. The latter killed himself in his cell during the trial. See D. Zucaro (ed), Socialismo e democrazia nella lotta antifascista: 1927–1939 (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1988) 35. 102 103

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

Fig. 4.1  Gaetano Salvemini (centre) in London in 1923, with Carlo Rosselli (on the right) and Nino Levi (on the left). (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence)

99

100 

F. FANTARELLA

Fig. 4.2  The Non Mollare group, 1925. From the left: Nello Traquandi, Tommaso Ramorino, Carlo Rosselli, Ernesto Rossi, Luigi Emery, Nello Rosselli. (Credit: Archive Ernesto Rossi, Fondazione Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini, Florence)

4  THE SPIRITUAL FATHER OF A NEW GENERATION 

101

Fig. 4.3  On the verso of this picture, Salvemini scribbled: “The rescuer motorboat.” Another annotation says: “Escape of Rosselli, Lussu and Nitti from Lipari,” 1929. AIRST, Fondo Salvemini XV7. (Courtesy of Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works)

CHAPTER 5

1934–1941: Cracks in the Family. Exile and the United States of America

1   Toward New Lands Life was not easy for antifascist emigrants. Forced to live on the razor’s edge, they steered a middle course to earn money and support both their families and the fight against dictatorship. Not only that. Hunted down by Mussolini’s sycophants, they often had to defend themselves from the regime’s propaganda, which accused them of being agents or instigators of terrorist attacks against the government. It was so for Salvemini, too, who was constantly targeted by the fascist press. In refuge in France after the Never Give Up arrests, Salvemini became more inconvenient a figure than ever before. For this reason, too, he often sojourned in England, where it was easier for him to earn a living holding conferences and writing articles for various newspapers (The Manchester Guardian more particularly). The aim of his speeches was always the same: to denounce the violent nature of Mussolini’s system and debunk the falsity of fascist propaganda. A real wedge in the regime’s wheels. Hence why after a lesson at the National Liberal Club of London held in January of 1926, Mussolini’s ventriloquists—the bribed press—incited fascists living outside of Italy to kill Salvemini.1 But the English newspaper Times 1  In the article entitled “Un santo pazzo che si incarichi di Salvemini”(A Blessed Lunatic He Who Endeavours [to kill] Salvemini), preserved at the Istituto storico della Resistenza in

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8_5

103

104 

F. FANTARELLA

printed these threats in an article entitled: London not Safe for Salvemini.2 The intimidations did nothing to stop Salvemini, who in 1927 travelled to the United States for his first conference tour, whose theme was once again Italy under fascism.3 With his American lessons, Salvemini not only intended to address English-speaking academics in order that they learn more—and more precise information—about the regime’s politics, but also hoped to reach the hearts of Italian emigrants, to encourage them to support antifascist efforts. But he was very disappointed with the ItalianAmerican community, completely subjugated by the roar and the sparkle of Mussolini’s propaganda. They were modest workers who had left Italy in search of fortune. They truly believed that Mussolini had finally turned their land into a rich and powerful nation and were therefore unwilling to listen to Salvemini, whom they erroneously believed to have approached them to denigrate their homeland. “Many,” Salvemini wrote, “were labourers, who had had to emigrate to the United States to avoid dying of hunger.” And then he added: “Almost all of them were relentless workers, tied to their families, near or far, by heroic bonds built on sacrifice. Arriving in America illiterate, shoeless, with only a sling-bag over their shoulders, they had had to overcome unheard of difficulties and sufferances, despised by all because they were Italian. And now they heard repeated to them, by Americans, too, that Mussolini had rendered Italy a great nation, where there was no unemployment, where every house had a bathroom, where the trains ran on time, and Italy was respected and feared throughout the world. Whosoever spoke the contrary not only destroyed their ideal homeland, but also attacked their personal dignity […]. To criticize Mussolini,” Salvemini commented, “was to fight Italy and offend [Italian-Americans] in person.” He concluded: Tuscany, this superb passage of fascist prose is found: “We are by instinct and by experience contrary to the complicated consultations of jurists. There is but one solution to the problem of Salvemini: dishonourable death. Unfortunately, the code will be unable to reach him and besides, the application of the code in these cases is a joke. We hope that the blessed hand of a mad saint finds a way, abroad, to close the most shameful workshop of betrayal: [with] cold iron.” Ags. 2  Article taken from Times, February 18, 1926. Ags. 3  See G. Salvemini, The Fascist Dictatorship, International Committee for Political Prisoners (Madison: 1926). The book was also published in England; in France, it was published under the title Le terreur fasciste (Paris: Gallimard, 1930).

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

105

“The work of truth could only be done in English-speaking environments, where the desire to learn was great, and where it was possible to disseminate honestly verified information.”4 Salvemini returned to America for other cycles of conferences and lessons. And precisely during his 1929 sojourn there, he met the young monarchist, Lauro De Bosis. De Bosis was ostracized by other antifascists for his support of the monarchy (which they viewed with suspicion and execrated for its inability to oppose Mussolini), but Salvemini was neither hard nor refractory with him and listened to his projects with sincere interest. “Our dissent,” De Bosis wrote, “never darkened our affectionate friendship. I was convinced that whomever intended to fight against the fascist dictatorship—whether he be monarchist, Catholic, republican, socialist, communist, anarchist—should be welcomed as a brother and collaborator. Everyone fought under his own banner and with his own methods: a divided marching and united striking. Once the common enemy had fallen, each of us would go his own way in a new climate of freedom for all.”5 Despite the dissonance of their ideas, a sincere friendship based on honest and frank dialogue formed between Salvemini and De Bosis. In one of their meetings, Lauro asked Salvemini what he would have thought should an airplane fly over Rome to exhort Italians to rise up against Mussolini. Salvemini recounts: “I told him that if it were possible, I would approve with all my heart.”6 Thus on October 3, 1931, with very few hours of training behind him, Lauro De Bosis left Marseille in a small plane headed toward Rome. In years in which aviation—through the works of Italo Balbo—represented the pride of the regime, De Bosis’s flight was a real slap in the face of the dictator. An inexpert aviator but an audacious youth, he sliced through Rome’s skies, flying over government buildings from Piazza Venezia to Via del Corso to, at last, Palazzo Chigi, dropping hundreds of antifascist pamphlets onto the streets of the nation’s capital. Some chanted:

 Salvemini, Dai ricordi di un fuoruscito, 90–1. See also Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini, 73.  L. De Bosis, Storia della mia morte e ultimi scritti, edited by G. Salvemini (Torino: De Silva, 1948) XXIX–XXX. 6  Ibid., XVII. 4 5

106 

F. FANTARELLA

Rome Citizens, You have set up an altar to the Unknown hero of Liberty, but you allow it to be desecrated by those who imprison everyone that still believes in Liberty. This Hapsburg in a black shirt has crept into his palace again and he is an outrage to all our dead. That Liberty for which they gave their life he calls “a putrified corpse,” and, unhampered, he tramples on it these past nine years. How long will you bear with the man who holds all Italy enslaved?7

It was sheer mockery. A bitter mockery of Mussolini who, furious, ordered De Bosis’s arrest. The fascist airplanes lifted up in flight to follow on the trail of that reckless lunatic who had dared to challenge Mussolini from his own skies. The airplanes returned without De Bosis, but his plane—short on fuel—crashed in the Tyrrhenian sea before its intended landing on the French coast. Another life snuffed out in an attempt to knock down the dictatorship. De Bosis succeeded in his intention only partially. Certainly, he punctured fascism in its proud arrogance, but the episode—silenced by the regime’s press—did nothing to depose Mussolini. On the other hand, however, De Bosis’s courage, his heroic sacrifice, made to shake Italians dizzied by the dictatorship, made the spark of the antifascist fight fly. It lit a tenuous but resistant flame. It needed to be nourished, to grow, to spread. While the fascists organized a conspiracy of silence surrounding the De Bosis undertaking, Salvemini managed to pay homage to that youth who died for freedom. He collected the pamphlets launched over Rome and published them in England, with an introductory and biographical note on De Bosis. In 1932, Salvemini returned to America. Giorgio La Piana, who taught the History of the Church at Harvard University, had invited him to give a series of lectures there. Salvemini wrote of him: “I met La Piana in Cambridge in 1929. His influence on me was enormous. Because he is a man of great good sense and perfect moral equilibrium. He always acted as a ‘stabilizer’ on me. I agree with all his ideas, [which I believe to be] fundamental to moral, scientific, and political life. But,” he concluded, “I am impulsive. He is quiet and meditative.”8 The following  Ibid., 9.  G.  Salvemini, Lettere americane. 1927–1949, edited by R.  Camurri (Roma: Donzelli, 2015) 584. On Giorgio La Piana, see also F. Torchiani’s beautiful and well-documented 7 8

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

107

year, Salvemini returned once more to the United States, this time by invitation to Yale University to give a course on Italian history. Salvemini would travel there thus, a little at a time, inserting himself into American academic life as a result. He was offered the opportunity to settle down definitively in the United States in 1934, following the initiative of Giorgio La Piana and Ruth Draper,9 a rich actress and De Bosis’s companion, who had donated a large sum of money to Harvard for the institution of a chair of History of Italian Civilization. Mussolini, relentlessly massacred in Salvemini’s public speeches, was obviously contrary to the offer. The regime, then, to prevent Salvemini from accepting the offer, accused him of being responsible for an exploded bomb in Saint Peter’s Square. The news was quickly spread by the fascist press and picked up by American newspapers. Salvemini then had to defend himself from these slanderous accusations, hurled at him by the Italian government. It was La Piana who suggested that he challenge Mussolini by requesting extradition: in this case, the dictator would have had to provide foolproof evidence of Salvemini’s guilt to an American judge, who only then would be able to deliver a verdict on the matter. Obviously, no such proof against Salvemini existed, thus leaving him free to accept Harvard’s offer and establish himself definitively in America.10 “Thus,” writes Enzo Tagliacozzo in his biographical essay, “thanks to Salvemini, Harvard University for many years became a place in which the study of Italian history, previously neglected, became honourable once more. He had reached a baseline of economic stability, but continued to live modestly, having to support his wife in France. And, as he had done in previous years, he spent every remaining cent leftover on the fight against fascism, helping in any way he could the relatives of his exiled friends in prison, and hiring exiled antifascists as research assistants” (Fig. 5.1).11

biography, L’oltretevere da oltreoceano. L’esilio americano di Giorgio La Piana (Roma: Donzelli, 2015). 9  On the life of De Bosis and his engagement to the American actress Ruth Draper, see the biographical essays written by Iris Origo now collected in Bisogno di testimoniare, 45–87. 10  Tagliacozzo, Gaetano Salvemini, 82. 11  Ibid.

108 

F. FANTARELLA

Tagliacozzo only cursorily mentions Fernande, who had stayed behind in France. As has been shown, she had been quite unwell, and for reasons of health, but also due to a scarcity of funds, she was unable to accompany her husband in his travels. Now, however, Salvemini found himself in a more secure position of employment: why, then, wouldn’t Fernande move to America, to Cambridge, with her husband? Tagliacozzo fails to explain her reasons. He limits himself to pointing out, in a brief note, that Fernande had remained in France and that Salvemini financed her living expenses there. And Tagliacozzo is not the only one to limit Fernande’s decision to one line. Other biographers and scholars of Salvemini denied the subject more depth. In his biography, Charles Killinger—for example—glosses over the details of this decision, summarizing it thus: “[At Harvard], Salvemini had enough income to support himself and Fernande, who, for reasons never publicly explained, stayed behind in France.”12 Neither does Cédric Meletta, Jean Luchaire’s biographer, provide any further detail, writing, in a note: “Fernande, Jean, and Ghita remained very close to Salvemini at least until their separation in 1936. Fernande Dauriac had categorically refused to leave Europe.”13 Even Iris Origo, the only writer to have dedicated considerable attention to Salvemini’s private life and to his relationship with Fernande (a good friend of hers, as it were), fails to explain why Fernande chose to remain in France.14 In 1945, the writer Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., on a trip to Paris, stayed with Ghita, and was surprised to discover her family ties to Salvemini. Schlesinger recalls their meeting thus: “‘What happened to your mother?’” ‘My father,’ Ghita replied, ‘left her in Italy. She remained there and was remarried to a professor of history at the University of Florence. That professor now lives in the United States.’ I asked for his name,” Schlesinger continues, “without any real interest. ‘His name,’ said Ghita, ‘is Gaetano Salvemini.’ Suddenly,” Schlesinger goes on, “everything became clear to me, the Salvemini-­ Luchaire connection. She had been raised in the house of Salvemini. And though her mother had not followed him to the United States, Ghita confided that ‘she was still very much in love with him and [that] they have found happiness in their own way.’ I told her,” Schlesinger concludes, “that it had been my own father to bring her step-father to America. Talking about life coming full circle!”15  Killinger, Gaetano Salvemini, 231.  Meletta, Jean Luchaire, 324. 14  See Origo, Bisogno di testimoniare, 177–8. 15  A.M. Schlesinger Jr., A Life in the Twentieth Century. Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (Boston: Mariner Books, 2000) 345. 12 13

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

109

Fernande, then, stayed in France. Yes: but why? Furthermore, had she and Salvemini separated (as Meletta affirms), or, as Ghita confided to Schlesinger, had their union stayed steady despite distance? A study of Salvemini’s private correspondence repeatedly reveals his distrust in the Italian political situation since as early as the 1920s, and his prevision of his need for an alternative future. Already in 1922, in an unpublished letter, he had confided to his wife: “I become increasingly pessimistic about the future and want to keep a savings fund.”16 At the same time, due to political instability and economic precariousness, Fernande tried to save as much as possible. Salvemini was aware of his wife’s sacrifices, and exhorted her to buy something for herself, too. “But I would like,” he once wrote to her, “for you to spend this money truly entirely on clothing for yourself.”17 Fernande’s moderation remained unaltered over the years and she persisted in her parsimony and frugality even when Salvemini settled down in America. In June of 1934, she wrote him: My poor old man, I am pained to worry you so. Perhaps it would be better not to think so far ahead…? For 1935, should you be able to assure me 16 000 francs and should I obtain another 6000 francs, I would be able to get by. Even perhaps with only 4500 francs instead of 6000. I do not intend to leave Paris this year, and perhaps I might be able to save a little money.18

The letter—it, too, unpublished—testifies to Fernande’s efforts to weigh as little as possible on Salvemini, reducing her expenses to the bare minimum. But it also affords a glimpse at her future plans, which, at least until 1935, centre on Paris, which she did not foresee leaving. At that time, Salvemini was already in America with a more stable future ahead of him thanks to his teaching engagement at Harvard. So then: why not join him? Her reasons are explained in that same letter: Me, in America? Do you think I haven’t considered it, at length, over long nights? Do you know me so little? If I never told you, it is because no matter my remorse and my pain, I believe that it would be the most disastrous solution for the two of us, from every point of view. Even the fact that we still love each other very much would do nothing but make us suffer still more. And with my health, which also makes it impossible for me to attend to housework, our expenses would only increase.  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, Firenze, November 29, 1922. Ags.  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, Brighton, September 8, 1922. Ags. 18  Fernande Dauriac to Gaetano Salvemini, Paris, Tuesday morning, 19/VI/1934. Ags. 16 17

110 

F. FANTARELLA

It is better for me to try to settle down here in the least expensive way possible. I do not wish to weigh on you more than I would should I be in America! […] I am also beginning to feel a great sense of regret! But such are matters of the heart […]. I send you a warm embrace.19

Fernande is in pain. Her choice was not an easy one. Her affection for Salvemini is profound. Her union with him is still strong. But, her health, being what it is (delicate, uncertain, on the brink of definitive decline) needs to be considered. So? So it was better to stay in Paris. Furthermore, readers may exclude the possibility of Fernande holding any illusions of an eventual collapse of the fascist regime and of her husband’s consequent return to Europe. In fact, in a later letter, she finally reveals all of her discomfort to Salvemini: I sit at the machine [the typewriter] in the hopes that the letter I am writing to you will not suffer the same fate as the others I started writing to you and even finished, but never had the courage to send. From the very day you wrote me of your departure to America, I have always held the very firm idea that I would never see you again, and I could not bear that thought at all.20

Nor can it be argued that Fernande preferred staying in France for the proximity of her children, Jean and Ghita. In the same letter, in fact, she adds: My old man, what should I tell you about myself? I am not at all well. I have been in bed for weeks, and the house has [fallen into disarray], as when its owner can only be counted on to pay for it. Had I not been saved by Mrs. Bernard, the one who used to host you, who gave me food to eat every day, I don’t know what would have become of me. Ghita works a lot and claims she cannot take care of me. The world is not made for the old. The “retraite” houses are all jam-packed. Besides which, even there, prices have become prohibitive. Life is a problem, especially when one is unwell.21

 Ibid.  Fernande Dauriac to Gaetano Salvemini, Paris, April 2. The year is not indicated in the letter, but it must have been written in 1935. Ags. 21  Ibid. 19 20

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

111

Let us summarize. A study of Salvemini’s correspondence in 1934–1935 confirms these three points to be true. First, that Fernande decided to remain in France due to her poor health.22 Next, that she felt alone, terribly alone, in the absence of her children, increasingly absorbed by their ambitions and workplace successes. And finally, that in the 1930s, despite distance, despite solitude, despite everything, her union with Salvemini was still strong. Salvemini, as it were, still visited Europe every summer (at least until 1938), so that, even when facing a thousand difficulties, he and Fernande truly were able to find “their own kind of happiness,” just as Ghita had told Schlesinger. Things, however, would change with the start of the war and the German occupation of Paris (Figs. 5.2 and 5.3).

2   Between Fascism and Antifascism Thus, Fernande stayed in Paris. It is the beginning of the 1930s and Jean and Ghita, who had left Florence around 1920 to pursue their journalistic aspirations and art history studies respectively, were adults by now, affirming themselves on their respective career paths. Jean’s was, in truth, quite precarious. Attracted by political life, his journalistic activity afforded him behind-the-scenes access to government affairs, which he followed closely without, however, obtaining a prestigious legislative position. Jean’s father Julien expressed his opinion on Jean’s ambitions in these words: “It [Jean’s passion for politics] was nurtured with the same incredible tenacity as other passions of the same nature, up until his entry into the world of journalism, the only career open to him, since his family could not procure him the means to attempt electoral competition.”23 Charged with the expenses of a large family (his wife gave birth to four children in five years) and distressed by the unstable economic position afforded him by an equally unstable job, Jean was soon overcome by debt. His financial difficulties were severe and tormented him for the rest of his (brief) life. They emerge in pronounced terms in his father’s memoirs and in the letters that his mother sent to Salvemini, too. In 1925, Fernande wrote: 22  As was shown in the last chapter, at the beginning of the 1920s, Fernande fell ill with a severe tuberculous fever from which she never completely recovered, and which left her physically debilitated. Nevertheless, readers may disregard any possibility of her not joining Salvemini in America due to visa issues linked to her state of health. The archives contain no evidence of Fernande requesting the legal documents required to move to the United States. 23  Luchaire, Confession d’un français moyen, 50.

112 

F. FANTARELLA

To tell you of my joy seems superfluous … having Jean here, in peace, all to myself, for four days, is better than a month in Paris. Except the little ones are all in Paris … Jean was with me when your letter was delivered yesterday. And as I read it aloud, I read your offer of a thousand lire, which put Jean in a great good mood and moved him to say a few touching words about you, occasioned rather than caused by those thousand lire.24

Salvemini, forever informed of his stepchildren’s lives, helped them however he could, even offering them money. They were small amounts, however, that certainly would have done little to fund Giovannino’s ever-­ growing exigencies and ambitions. It is important to insist on Jean’s economic conditions because this constant need for money and Jean’s correlated aspiration to success were among the causes of his derailment and eventual slide into fascism. It is no coincidence that Julien Luchaire used two adjectives to describe his son’s personality repeatedly in his memoirs (adjectives that, as will be shown, would appear in post-war press articles): fier (proud) and ambitieux (ambitious). This same pride and ambition had oriented him toward the world of journalism, where he began to collaborate with a number of newspapers, from Le Matin to L’Ère nouvelle, to Le Petit Parisien, to Voix, to Volonté, up to France de Nice et du Sud-Est and to Homme libre. Often in his memoirs, Julien highlights his son’s difficulties: He got married at nineteen years old to the painter Albert Besnard’s granddaughter, six children were born to them over short intervals of time; two were stillborn; he had to raise the other four, a difficult problem when one does not have a patrimony on which to depend; I could not help him, and since then, he has been proud to row his boat all by himself.25

Julien’s tone is that of a man seeking to justify his own cold penny-­ pinching (in stark contrast with Salvemini, who had supported and restored Jean and Ghita, albeit within the limits of his modest financial means). It is no wonder that Jean had quickly had to learn how to “row his boat all by himself.” And he did so in his own way: decisive to the point of unscrupulousness; obstinate to the point of recklessness.

 Fernande Dauriac to Gaetano Salvemini, without location, March 1925. Ags.  Luchaire, Confession d’un français moyen, II, 237.

24 25

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

113

In 1927, he founded his newspaper: Notre Temps: La revue des nouvelles générations européennes.26 In the same year, he came into contact with Aristide Briand, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1926 and influential French politician who, after the First World War and absolutely countercurrent to the general spirit of the times, distinguished himself for his staunch pacifism. At the end of the Great War, in fact, Europe was stifled by a culture of fear, which contributed to the spread of the most evil suspicions toward Germany. This is why, during peace negotiations, France maintained hard recriminations against its neighbour, leaving Germany entirely responsible for war reparations. Not only that. It also tried to weaken Germany’s territory and military forces, imposing upon it the restitution of Alsace-­ Lorraine (the region that had been annexed to Germany after the Franco-Prussian war of 1871), not to mention the divestiture of its colonies and a drastic downsizing of its armed forces.27 In this context of thinly disguised hatred and glaring resentment, Briand argued instead for unity among European nations, and more specifically promoted a reconciliation with Germany. Jean, who—as we know—had upheld the spiritual unity among all the youths of Europe since adolescence with his little newspaper (Vita Latina) was immediately attracted by this position, supported it warmly in his newspaper28 and, earning Briand’s trust, was finally awarded entry into the latter’s closest network of collaborators. In so doing, Jean not only 26  The events of Jean Luchaire’s life have been briefly summarized here in the interest of observing those with heavier consequences on his family and relationship with Salvemini further ahead and in more detail. For those interested in learning more about Jean’s journalistic activities and his life more generally, we recommend: J.-R. Maillot, Jean Luchaire et la revue Notre Temps (1927–1940), edited by Peter Lang (Berne 2013); R. O. Paxton, Les procès de collaboration. Fernand de Brinon, Joseph Darnand, Jean Luchaire; compte rendu sténographique (Paris: Albin Michel,1948); J. Luchaire, Une génération réaliste (Paris: Librairie Valois, 1929); C.  Luchaire, Ma drôle de vie (Paris: Sun, 1949); Luchaire, Confession d’un français moyen; Meletta, Jean Luchaire. 27  On the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and its consequences, the classic work of J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, remains fundamental (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1919). 28  Those interested in learning more about the pacifist movement in France between the two wars and the politics supported by Jean in his newspaper may see: J. Defrasne, Le pacifisme en France (Paris: Puf, 1994); J. Luchaire, Le désarmement moral (Paris: Valois, 1932); A. Briand, Aristide Briand. La Société des Nations et l’Europe, 1919–1932, edited by J. Bariéty (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2007); C. Lévy, “Jean Luchaire. Le cercle éclaté de Notre Temps,” in Entre Locarno et Vichy. Les relations culturelles franco-allemands

114 

F. FANTARELLA

­ enetrated the most secret mechanisms of international politics, but also p received substantial financing for his publication. “The journalistic activity,” Julien Luchaire commented, “that gave him access to the corridors of Parliament and the ministries, had multiplied. After many years [of trying], Jean, greatly appreciated by politicians […] and confidante of more than one minister, was finally intervening actively behind the scenes in almost every ministerial crisis.” And, recording his son’s desire for success, he concluded: “He was ambitious and justified in his talent. His ambition was not oriented toward ensuring him well-retributed work, which he probably could have obtained, but aimed at making him the head of a new school [of thought], at spreading and imposing his ideas. Launched on the great streets of national and international politics, he was unwilling, unable to distance himself from it.”29 Sustained by this ambition, Jean was determined to earn himself an important position in French politics at all costs. While his ideas had been influenced in youth by Salvemini, who, even if discretely, had rowed him toward the shores of the Reformist Left, once he returned to France, he became rather critical of his country’s politics, which, he maintained, should be open to reforms (which kinds, however, he never explained clearly; he only specified that they should be attuned to the expectations of the “new generation” he defined as the “realistic generation”). By A realistic generation30 (as he explained in his 1929 essay entitled thus), Jean meant all those who, like him, had lived through the First World War but at the time had been too young to fight in it. That conflict represented to him a neat line of separation between two eras—the era of fathers and the era of their children; the world of the old and the world of the new—where the new generation was charged with preparing “the world about to be born.”31 Though in matters of internal politics, Jean’s ideas came across as generic and rambling, in matters of international politics, he fully embraced Briand’s approach, supporting, like him, a reconciliation with Germany. It was thus that in 1929, a young German still grappling with the French language went to see Jean with a friend acting as his interpreter. That young man was a twenty-six year-old Otto Abetz. It proved to be a fateful encounter. An art teacher two years younger than his French colleague, Abetz, too, wished to tighten the relationship dans les années 1930, H-M.  Bock, R.  Meyer-Kalkus, M.  Trebitsch (dir.) (Paris: Cnrs Éditions, 1993). 29  Luchaire, Confession d’un français moyen, 238. 30  J. Luchaire, Une génération réaliste (Paris: Valois, 1929). 31  See. R. Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) 34.

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

115

between French and German youths through the bonds of friendship.32 And Jean, not yet thirty years old, but with ten years of journalistic experience behind him and unanimously considered one of the major exponents of the young French movement, was the perfect contact. The two youths, French and German, met for the first time in 1930, in Germany, in Sohlberg. Two more encounters followed, one in 1932 and one in 1933, in Rethel (in the Ardenne region) and Mainz respectively. But already in 1932, Abetz and Jean found themselves united by the ties of a strong friendship, so much so that later that same year, Otto married Suzanne de Bruycker, his French friend’s secretary. 1933 was the year that marked a change in Jean’s political approach. Until 1933, one might affirm with certainty that Jean was a convinced pacifist and antifascist. And how could he not be? Raised in Florence in Salvemini’s house, he had spent time with notable Florentine families, like the Rosselli and Ferrero families, bound by fraternal ties of affection to their children. It might be added that between 1920 and 1930, Salvemini and Jean’s childhood friends were not merely Mussolini opposers; no: they had became leaders of the Italian antifascist movement abroad. And even the Luchaire family in France had, in the meantime, become a seedbed for future antifascists. In fact, on February 27, 1933, his sister Ghita33 married the physician Théodore Fraenkel. A Russian Jew and one of the founders of Dadaism in Paris, Fraenkel would later become a member of the French Resistance. Strongly tied to antifascist environments first in Italy and later in France, until 1933, Jean was consumed by his journalistic activity and by the promotion of an international pacifist politics. However, after Briand’s death (in 1932), he found himself suddenly deprived of the substantial financing he had been receiving until then. He thus began to support the politics of 32  On the figure of Otto Abetz and his relationship with French intellectuals, not to mention his friendship with Jean, see M.  Mauthner, Otto Abetz and his Paris Acolytes. French Writers who flirted with Fascism 1930–1945 (Brighton-Chicago-Toronto: Sussex Academic Press, 2016). 33  At the beginning of the 1930s, Ghita became a member of French avant-garde circles. An art student, she had become an habituée of the artistic movement of Montparnasse, developing a strong friendship with the poet Robert Desnos (who later died in a concentration camp) and his partner, Yuki. It is in this context that she met her future husband, Théodore Fraenkel. Before her marriage to Fraenkel in 1933, Ghita had been sentimentally linked to René Moulaert, an artist ostensibly tied to the Parisian avant-garde. They had a son in 1930, also named Jean, who currently lives in Central America.

116 

F. FANTARELLA

Léon Blum (the Socialist at the head of the Popular Front in 1936 and, only ten years later, President of the provisory government). But even with Blum, Jean failed in his intention to occupy at last a prominent position in the French government. On his son’s frustrated aspirations, Julien wrote: “My son Jean had been in close contact with Léon Blum, he had helped him during one of his electoral campaigns. But he was not called to be a staff member of the new cabinet.”34 1933 was also the year in which Germany redirected its international politics, with the abrupt withdrawal—on October 14th of the same year— of the German delegation from the Geneva Conference (begun in 1932). Two days later, Germany abandoned the League of Nations. It was a true defeat for French foreign politics which, since the end of the First World War, had sought to diminish Germany’s political weight. Nevertheless, Hitler—who in fact aimed to reconstruct the German military power (as would occur shortly thereafter)—professed himself eager to respect the peace between the nations, while insisting on the necessity of revising the Treaty of Versailles, whose measures he believed to be excessively punitive for Germany. In this climate of international tension, Ribbentrop—at the time, the Führer’s foreign affairs counsellor—thought to enrol Otto Abetz in the ranks of the Hitlerian Youth, at the time guided by Baldur von Schirach.35 Notice the coincidence: Jean’s newspaper faced a new financial storm precisely when his friend Otto began to affirm himself in German politics. It was no coincidence, then, that in 1934, Jean’s newspaper became financed by the German Embassy: Abetz’s mediation had taken effect.36 In the same year, the University of Berlin invited Jean to give a talk on the extremely delicate topic of Franco-German relations and their  Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen, II, 237.  Baldur von Schirach was one of the most emblematic and charismatic figures of Nazi Germany. Having obtained Hitler’s favours, in 1933, he became head of the Hitlerian Youth. At the end of the Second World War he was condemned in the Nuremberg trials to twenty years in prison for crimes against humanity. On this theme, see H. W. Koch, The Hitler Youth. Origins and Development, 1922–1945 (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000). 36  As Alden has written, “Abetz was not the only source of money on which the eternally famished Luchaire could depend. He received a small stipend from Eugen Feilh, the German press officer, in exchange for information on French internal politics. On the French side, Bonnet and his predecessors at the Quai d’Orsay […] contributed around 10 000 francs per month to the publication of Notre Temps. And yet, these sums of money were far inferior to those he had received from Briand, and were in any event insufficient to satisfy his needs” (Alden, The Road to Collaboration, 149). 34 35

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

117

repercussions on French public opinion.37 The reaction of members of Justice and Liberty was immediate. Carlo Rosselli and Alberto Tarchiani wrote to Salvemini, informing him that Jean was accepting money from fascists. Salvemini reacted irately: “I can do only one thing,” he replied to both of them in March of 1934—“avoid meeting him personally from now on, so that I might be able to say that I have broken all personal ties with him on the day in which Mussolini publishes that Salvemini’s stepson has accepted money from [the fascist regime].”38 Nevertheless, only a few months later, Salvemini retracted his statement and in a letter to Carlo Rosselli justified thus Giovannino’s position: “My wife writes me that Nello [Rosselli] had arranged to meet Jean, but did not go to their appointment. What a pity. Nello, with his personal testimony, would have exercised a beneficial influence on Jean, who has lost all contact with Italy; he knows only that which he reads in French newspapers; he has neither the time nor the means to keep himself up-to-date; and a good conversation with Nello would have been precious to him.” Then he added, benevolently: “I do not believe that he is in any way linked to fascists. He is a pacifist at all costs. He wants peace with Mussolini, with Hitler, with the devil. These pacifists,” he concluded with a characteristic lash back, “are the death of the world.”39 This letter is important for at least two reasons. Firstly, it demonstrates that Salvemini’s trust in his stepson had not dried up (at least not at that point): in his view, Jean continued to be associated with the heedlessness of the pacifists. Which evidently, however, was different from the fascists’ bloodthirsty delinquency. Moreover, paternal affection softened Salvemini’s judgment, as he tried to explain his stepson’s position to himself by whatever reason available, even those less worthy of perspicacious intelligence. Like when, for example (as we have just heard), he affirms that Jean is ill-informed on Italian politics (really? He, a journalist?) and that he has neither the means nor the time to “keep himself up-to-date” on current events.  See. Mauthner, Otto Abetz and His Paris Acolytes, 139.  G. Salvemini, C. Rosselli, Fra le righe. Carteggio fra Carlo Rosselli e Gaetano Salvemini, edited by E. Signori (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2009) 198. 39  Ibid., 222. Written in the same tone is the letter dated a few years prior, more precisely 1922, as cited above, in chapter III, paragraph 2, Peace at Home, in which Salvemini had criticized the pacifist movement, writing of it to his wife thus: “What is terrible is that pacifist movements […] of civil countries are convenient to the military games of backwards nations like Turkey, Hungary, Russia, and Italy” (Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 84). 37 38

118 

F. FANTARELLA

Unlikely, truly quite unlikely. It not for the veil of affection through which Salvemini weighed Jean’s behaviour. It is important to bear in mind that since his arrest in 1925, Salvemini had cut ties with whoever seemed, to him, to betray the cause of liberty. Resigning from the University of Florence with that letter of great nobility and magnificent courage already previously cited,40 he began to end any friendship polluted, in his opinion, by the black stain of fascism. Things were different with Jean, however, whom Salvemini treated with more understanding and indulgence, acting towards him in a less definitive manner than he had with others. With Prezzolini, for example, whose attitude of detached neutrality41 in the face of fascism seemed to Salvemini a poorly hidden complicity with the dictatorship, hence the latter’s refusal to greet him in Paris. Let’s get back to Jean, who, aware of the accusations of his old friends, defended himself thus in his newspaper: “Many Italian antifascists in exile, some of them my childhood friends, have accused me of being paid by Mussolini only because I am in favour of the Four-Power Pact.”42 In June of 1935, Salvemini was in Paris. He was participating in the Congrès international des écrivains pour la défense de la culture (International Congress of Writers in Defence of Culture). He wrote his conference paper at the home of Carlo Rosselli. Salvemini’s presentation made clear the need to battle against all liberticidal forces; all of them, including communist ones.43 Salvemini saw Jean on precisely that occasion. He bears witness to their meeting in a letter to Isabella Massey.44 Unfortunately, Salvemini offers no detail of their meeting, nor have other letters been found in the archives (to his wife or friends) that reveal the content of their c­ onversations. But readers might intuit their subject. Salvemini, who had followed Jean since childhood and who had never denied him any advice or counsel,  See above, Chap. III, paragraph 4, Antifascism: The Early Battles.  On Prezzolini’s “apotism”, we recall what has been said above, in Chap. II, note 5. 42  Jean’s article in Notre Temps dated April 25, 1934, is cited in Alden, The Road to Collaboration, on page 150. Benito Mussolini promoted the Four-Power Pact among Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and France, as an alternative to the Treaty of Versailles. However, the French government never ratified that treaty. Carlo Rosselli and Alberto Tarchiani’s letter denouncing Jean to Salvemini is dated March 1934. Note: Salvemini’s reaction, angry in March of 1934, by September of the same year had already been diluted by feelings of paternal affection. 43  See. G. Salvemini, “La difesa della cultura,” in Id., Opere, VIII, Scritti vari, 668–70. 44  Salvemini, Lettere americane, 221–2. 40 41

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

119

must have warned him then of the perils of his pacifist ideas, absolutely incongruous with a world resounding with the drums of war. But Jean stuck to his positions. In 1936, with the success of the Popular Front in France and Léon Blum’s installment as Prime Minister, Jean found himself completely isolated. In a precarious professional position, further afflicted by wrecked finances and bank accounts in disarray, Jean openly attacked Blum, exalting—no less—the politics of Hitler and Mussolini: Dear Blum, destiny placed me in Italy at fascism’s birth and in Germany in the critical phase of affirmation of national-socialism. You are too well aware of my origins to suspect that I am attracted by the one [fascism] or the other [national-socialism]. But there is something in Italy and in Germany that struck me and prevents me from expressing a complete condemnation of these regimes: and that is that these totalitarian regimes have managed to save young people from the moral swamp in which they found themselves. Mussolini and Hitler most likely gave them no more bread to eat than the democratic regime had—certainly not more of it, on the contrary, perhaps less. But they gave them something to incite their enthusiasm, a cause to inspire their devotion, an ideal for which they were ready to suffer […] What is important is that they believe and that their mediocre lives seem to have a higher purpose.45

Jean’s article is quite interesting. It is 1936 and by now, the liberticidal nature of both fascism and nazism is well-known. He claims to find both of these movements unattractive, yet blatantly professes his admiration for Mussolini and Hitler, whom—by his estimate—had succeeded at giving the young people of their countries an ideal for which to die. Yes: an ideal. As though in a totalitarian system, ideals could be freely chosen by individuals, rather than decisions imposed top-down that promised incarceration and death to anyone opposed to them. And, given his origins and experiences, Jean, less than any other, could afford to equivocate on this point: because in saying no to Mussolini, in refusing the comforts and riches promised by compliance with the regime, precisely for these reasons, the Rosselli brothers, Salvemini, the Rossi family, everyone, everyone was where they were—some in exile, others imprisoned—bearing witness to the superior nobility of an absolutely free choice that was  J. Luchaire, in Notre Temps, May 31, 1936, cited in Alden, The Road to Collaboration, 165.

45

120 

F. FANTARELLA

neither demonstrated nor demonstrable, and that for precisely that reason revealed itself to be still more noble. Salvemini explains this inability to demonstrate his ideals, and therefore the irrationality of these same ideals, in his characteristic, direct, simple, straightforward manner: “You,” he said to Ernesto Rossi, “are not the only one to ask yourself why you have chosen to crack such a tough nut. I have been asking myself the same question from time to time for almost forty years. And the only answer I have found is that I was born this way and it would be too much work to change […]. At this point, you will tell me: but why is it in our blood? I swear, I do not know. Nor do I have any interest in knowing. Should I respond to this why, you would soon, a little further ahead, put forth another why. And so on and so forth. It is more time-effective to stop at the first. That said, the only reasonable thing to do is to plough ahead.”46 So, how is Jean’s infatuation with Hitler and Mussolini explained? It is explained—explained, that is, but not justified—by the punctures of personal resentment, by his frustrated ambitions on the wave of a driven and by then unrestrained careerism. This is what leads him to attack Leon Blum, with whom he had previously worked, but who had made the mistake of never offering Jean an important position in his government. This resentment leads Jean to attack Blum, it leads his opinion of the French Radical Party to sour, and, finally, it leads him to support, more obstinately than ever before, a reconciliation with Germany, which made him wildly unlikeable and surrounded him with the buzz of slander in political and cultural French circles. The consequence: from 1934 onward, Jean began to slide into reactionary positions and to find himself still more isolated for his ideas of appeasement, increasingly unpopular in France. The archives contain no letters in which Salvemini comments on Jean’s turn to the right. They do, however, contain letters that testify to how strong his union with Fernande was, still in 1936. In one such letter— unpublished, poignant—Fernande lets herself be swept away by affection and tenderness. Her feelings do nothing to hide the couple’s differences of opinion, which, however, are overcome precisely thanks to the sentimental ties that have bound them to each other for years at that point. She writes:

 Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 539.

46

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

121

Yesterday, your letter [brought me] such sweet joy. Thanks, my old man. Yes: by now, twenty-eight years have passed since you first took me by the hand and—would you believe it?—guided me through life. It is possible to lead in silence, and without knowing it […]. Our different points of view— you are right—take little away [from us] when there is such mutual trust and deep affection [between us], consolidated and rendered more precious by the passing of time.47

There is no record of the text Salvemini sent to her and referred to here. But her words clearly speak of a union that twenty-eight years of life together had done nothing to spoil. Except … except so much understanding and devotion were destined to be shattered by Giovannino’s politics. He, Jean, would deal the fatal blow to Salvemini’s second family, the one he had so desired and (re)built with so much work. But prior to this searing disappointment, Salvemini would experience another great pain (and what great pain he felt!), that is, when, on June 9th of 1937, Carlo and Nello Rosselli were assassinated at the hands of fascist hitmen in France.48 Ernesto Rossi, from prison and with the complicity of his wife Ada, sent a message of solidarity to imprisoned antifascists that reads thus: “For Carlo and Nello. For Justice and Liberty. We will never give up.” We will never give up: the reference to the clandestine folio founded in 1925 by Salvemini, Carlo, and Nello is clear. Salvemini, however, fearing the consequences that the spread of such a message would have had on Ernesto and his comrades, obstructed its publication. So many difficult ordeals. Destiny had reserved such suffering for Salvemini! The letter that Nello Rosselli sent him in 1925 when, deeming it impossible to battle fascism from the inside, Salvemini had left Italy to begin his peregrinations around the world comes to mind: It must be difficult, at your age, to start over in life. But this task will be lightened by the thought of all your younger brothers, who look to you with recognition, because you taught them to place sincerity and straightforwardness above all else, and who by now have become accustomed (all the worse for you, who have encouraged them to do so) to living by your example.49  Fernande Dauriac to Gaetano Salvemini, Paris, October 1936. Ags.  On the assassination of Carlo and Nello Rosselli, see M. Franzinelli, Il delitto Rosselli. 9 Giugno 1937. Anatomia di un omicidio politico (Milano: Mondadori, 2007). 49  Salvemini, Carteggio, 1921–1926, 502. 47 48

122 

F. FANTARELLA

And then: I can imagine your sadness. Because I know how big a part of your life and affections are held within those walls of Saint Mark’s Square. And how displeased you will be, after all, not to be surrounded by that group of intimate friends who, in moments of desperation, looked to you for the stamina and the courage required to move ever forward and who, in turn, pulled you up whenever there was the need to! How long will this separation last? […] I know that, in any event, your students will always follow you, and will feel ever more proud of you, and the same goes for your friends. And beautiful will be the day when, after years of isolation and opposition, converging from every direction, we are reunited in Florence.50

And instead. Instead, Carlo and Nello were never to return to Florence. Their bodies would, many years later, to be buried in the cemetery of Trespiano, beside those of Salvemini and Ernesto Rossi. The final blow for Salvemini, the one to tear his heart out, would arrive only after the German occupation of Paris, when he learned of Jean’s collaborationism. More will be said of that further ahead. For now, let us rest a while longer on the evolution of Jean’s political ideas between 1934 and 1939, which Salvemini, as we know, was reluctant to ascribe to the fascist sphere. Academic opinion on the matter is divided and the debate about it is ongoing. While Julien Luchaire had defined his son “proud” and “ambitious,” the post-Liberation French press dismissed him as a “lecherous opportunist” who sold himself to the Nazis in his insatiable need for money. Geraldine L. Alden is more cautious, affirming in her doctoral dissertation: “It is one thing to admit that Jean shared the ethical doubts of the French press, it is another, however, to demonstrate that his tireless support of an agreement with Hitler’s Germany was not the expression of a profound, radical conviction.”51 Cédric Meletta, instead, maps out the steps on Jean’s “journey of no return”: he took his first step toward fascism in Berlin in 1934, when he supported Hitler’s Germany; he took the second in 1940 in Vichy; and, finally, the third in 1943, which Meletta defines as “the year of total immersion.”52  Ibid.  Alden, The Road to Collaboration, 99. 52  G.  Darol, Cédric Meletta. Jean Luchaire et l’ultra-collaboration, January 24, 2013, online: http://salon-litteriare.linternaute.com/fr/interviews/content/1818465-cedricmeletta-jean-luchaire-et-l-ultra-collaboration-ii. 50 51

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

123

Julien, his father, did not hesitate to see in his son a meeting of two opposing spirits or to define him “moins nettement anti-fasciste” less clearly antifascist. He wrote: “He had childhood friends among the leading ranks of fascists; in particular, Pavolini (the son of one of my old colleagues from the University of Florence), who was minister and met the same cruel fate as Jean. More than one element of fascist ideology satisfied him. He never knew the liberal generation in which I had made my friends. And his “realism” rendered him less sensitive to the immoral aspects of the regime, which I did not support.”53 Thus, let us ask the question once more: was Jean already a fascist between 1934–1939? He was certainly antifascist until 1933 and up until then, he had also been a convinced pacifist. In 1934, he began to fall under the spell of illiberal movements and the years to follow precipitated him into the whirlwind of Nazi fascism, though he would eventually justify his own choices hiding behind a familiar shield, that is, the shield of the idea of peace with Germany. An idea he would support until the very end (without, however, his earlier intimate conviction); he would support it even after Hitler’s rise to power. And even when the politics of appeasement were opposed by almost everyone. It seems, thus, that Jean, more than a dyed-in-the-wool fascist, waved—knowingly or not—the banner of pacifism to adhere to the only politics that could guarantee him the power he had always desired and the money that he always desperately needed. Perhaps, as will be shown, the most fitting description of Jean is the one France affixed to him after the war: a cynical opportunist (Fig. 5.4).

 Luchaire, Confession d’un français moyen, 240.

53

124 

F. FANTARELLA

Fig. 5.1  Salvemini in front of Widener Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 1948. AISRT, Fondo Salvemini, XV 1/2. (Courtesy of Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works)

5  1934–1941: CRACKS IN THE FAMILY. EXILE AND THE UNITED STATES… 

125

Fig. 5.2  Salvemini on an ocean liner leaving for France, New York port, perhaps summer 1937. AISRT, Fondo Salvemini, XV 1/2. (Courtesy of the Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works)

Fig. 5.3  Salvemini with Marion Cave, Rosselli’s wife, and their son Giovanni [called Mirtillino]. Paris, Rues de Petis Champs, autumn 1937. AISRT, Fondo Salvemini, XV 1/2. (Courtesy of the Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works)

Fig. 5.4  Salvemini with the actress Ruth Draper and her daughter Anne, in Dark Harbor (Maine), probably 1944. AISRT, Fondo Salvemini, XV 1/2. (Courtesy of the Committee for the publication of Gaetano Salvemini’s works)

CHAPTER 6

A Union Ended (1941–1946)

1   The Seduction of Power and the Sin of Ambition: The Case of Jean Luchaire As has been shown, Jean Luchaire established a close friendship with Otto Abetz in the early 1930s in the name of Franco-German reconciliation. Between 1931 and 1934, both men promoted meetings between French and German youth. Jean attended the first meeting in Sohlberg and the second in Rethel. But he was unable to attend the third meeting due to his ailing health (he had been tuberculous for years). The meetings were quite productive and brought about the formation of the Comité France-­ Allemagne (French-German Committee). Jean never occupied an official position in the committee, but his newspaper, Notre Temps, became its semi-official press organ and in this way succeeded at receiving substantial financing from the German embassy.1 Jean strongly linked his fate to his friendship with Abetz and to the stubbornly defended cause of reconciliation with Hitler’s Germany. When, in 1939, after Germany’s invasion of Poland and Great Britain and France’s declaration of war, Abetz was expelled from the country as a persona non grata, Jean did not hesitate to defend his German friend in the columns of his newspaper:

 Mauthner, Otto Abetz and His Paris Acolytes, 139.

1

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8_6

127

128 

F. FANTARELLA

It would appear that Otto Abetz was recently invited to cut short his brief sojourn in Paris, where his presence was judged inopportune […]. Shamefully, we have treated Abetz like a spy. We have accused him of having received unfair advantages, which is ridiculous […] Thus, we have transmitted the most incredible avalanche of foolishness, lies, absurdity that one can imagine.

And he closed by reaffirming his friendship with and admiration of Abetz who […] little by little has become one of the principal collaborators of the German ministry of foreign affairs—in no part thanks to the meanness and intrigue [surrounding him].2

Always short on money and physically debilitated by disease, Jean suspended the publication of his journal and temporarily left Paris to receive treatment. When the Germans invaded France in June of 1940, he left the city with his family. Political events continued to mount: the French government sought refuge in Bordeaux. On June 16, 1940, Marshal Philippe Pétain was appointed head of government. On June 22, the armistice with Germany was signed. France was thus divided into two parts: the North, occupied by the Germans, and the South, the so-called “Zone Libre” (free zone), directed by a collaborationist government installed at Vichy and guided by Pétain.3 In this general chaos, Jean and his family chose to stay put in the south of the city for a while, before traveling to Vichy on July 15. There, Jean was contacted by Laval (a member of Pétain’s new government), who assigned him the task of organizing a meeting with Abetz. Once he returned to Paris, Jean found a message from his old secretary, now Abetz’s wife: “Otto would like to see you upon your return to Paris;” it was dated June 25. Under Laval’s orders, Jean began to travel between  J. Luchaire, L’Affaire Abetz, in Notre Temps, July 16, 1939, 1021. Paris, BnF.  On occupied France, see: H.R. Kedward, Occupied France. Collaboration and Resistance. Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944 (New York: Columbia UP, 2001); J.  F. Sweets, Choices in Vichy France. The French Under Nazi Occupation (New York: Oxford UP, 1994); D.  Venner, Histoire de la collaboration (Paris: Pygmalion, 2000); R.  Vinen, The Unfree French. Life under the Occupation (New Haven: Yale UP, 2006); J. Guéhenno, Journal des années noires, 1940–1944 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002). Many films have been made on occupied France. Particularly recommended are: Le corbeau by Henri-Georges Clouzot (1943); Le silence de la mer by Jean-Pierre Melville (1947); The Sorrow and the Pity, by Marcel Ophüls (1969). 2 3

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

129

Vichy and Paris as a semi or para-official messenger. Obviously, this intermediation between Laval and Abetz was well remunerated. Following Laval’s suggestion, Jean accepted a position on the editorial staff of Le Matin, an occupation which, in his words, would act as a cover-up for his “messenger” activities. But he left the position after only two months. Abetz, named ambassador, proposed that he reestablish the publication of Notre Temps. The newspaper was reprinted in October of 1940 under the name Les Nouveaux Temps.4 Les Nouveaux Temps became an instrument of propaganda for the collaborationist regime and Jean was named the first president of the Groupement corporatif de la presse quotidienne de Paris (Corporate Grouping of Daily Media Outlets of Paris) and then, from 1941 onward, president of the Corporation nationale de la presse française (National Corporation of the French Press). Thus, he finally obtained the position of prestige and power he had always wanted. And with it—it goes without saying—came lots of money. Soon, details of Jean’s private life (not all of them true) began to spread, accompanied by the image of him as a callous seducer and corrupt man. Rumours flew of him spending mad and lascivious nights at the German embassy or in Parisian bars, flitting from one the city’s most fashionable jazz clubs to the next in the company of many lovers, among whom, some even sustained, was his first-born, Corinne, an exceptionally beautiful actress, thought by some to be Abetz’s lover too.5 At this point, Jean’s childhood friends informed Salvemini of what was happening. Though Salvemini had raised Jean and followed him affectionately over the course of his career in the 1920s and—with increasing worry—in the early 1930s, while earlier, in 1934, he’d believed in the sincerity of Jean’s pacifism, he now recognized his stepson to be completely unrecoverable and began to take his distance from him palam et aperte. He reveals as much in a letter to Isabella Massey dated March 2, 1941:  Mauthner, Otto Abetz and His Paris Acolytes, 291–300.  In 1942, the London Daily Mirror defined Corinne the first lady of Paris, insinuating also that she had been Otto Abetz’s lover for quite some time at that point. See: Mauthner, Otto Abetz and His Paris Acolytes, 294. On Corinne Luchaire, see the documentary edited by Carole Wrona: Corinne Luchaire, une éclaboussure de l’Histoire (2008), and Wrona’s biography, Corinne Luchaire. Un colibri dans la tempête (Grandvilliers: Éditions La Tour verte, 2011). Corinne acted in the following films: Les beaux jours, by Marc Allégret (1935); Le chanteur de minuit, by Léo Joannon (1937); Prison sans barreaux, by Léonide Moguy (1938); Conflict, by Léonide Moguy (1938), Le dernier tournant, by Pierre Chenal (1939); Abbandono, by Mario Mattoli (1940) and Cavalcade d’amour, by Raymond Bernard (1940). 4 5

130 

F. FANTARELLA

Jean Luchaire is a lost man; pacifism has destroyed him. He was much better than you think. He began to degenerate in 1933, when Hitler rose to power. His pacifism turned to political cowardice. And from that point on, nothing has stopped him on his dishonorable path. When I was in Paris the last time, in 1938, I didn’t even meet him once. And in 1935, 36, and 37 I met with him only a few times. There was no longer any common ground between us. But it is absurd to think that he had anything to do with the homicide of Carlo and Nello. That event is clear in every part. A spy lived in Carlo’s house in 1937!6

The content of Massey’s letter is unknown, but from Salvemini’s response, readers may deduce that she had reported the rumours that weighed on, or rather, swirled around Jean, including the horrible gossip, the mere idea of it is terrifying, that he had been involved in Carlo and Nello’s assassination. Salvemini categorically excluded this infamy. And he was right to do so. But though Jean was in no way linked to his friends’ tragic end, the accusations Massey reported confirmed the growing rumours—and slander— around Jean’s figure, now become the “Führer” of the French press.7 At this point in the narration, readers may ask themselves: what about Fernande? And Ghita? What happened to them? Had they been involved in Jean’s politics? If so, to what extent? It is very difficult to reconstruct their lives with exactitude, especially Fernande’s between 1940 and 1945. The times were what they were, and the war caused even Salvemini to have a hard time receiving news from Europe. His correspondence with Fernande was interrupted for months and often, letters arrived with extreme delays. Scattered bits of news reached him from his friends, who had managed to learn something about France, or from Julien Luchaire, who kept Salvemini as informed as he could on the state of Fernande’s health, worsened by pneumonia. Cheered to know she was being looked after, Salvemini wrote to his wife: My dear Fernande, at last, I receive news of you in your own writing. Your letter dated October 12 arrived here on November 17th, a miracle of speed in today’s day and age. Julien had written me in July, telling me you had  Salvemini, Lettere americane, 221–2.  It would appear that Jean Luchaire, during his brief time at Le Matin, confided to his friend Weil-Curiel that the Germans wished him to become the Führer of the French press. The episode is retold in Mauthner, Otto Abetz and His Paris Acolytes, 292. 6 7

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

131

been ill with pneumonia, but that you are well now. After that, absolute silence. And still earlier, too, silence, no news of you for months. Finally, I see that you are still alive […] I was ill for four weeks in September and after that, I required three weeks of convalescence. Bronchitis and asthma. No danger, because my heart is still perfect. But [it was] very irritating, and I lost two months’ worth of work! In any case, my friends helped me. How positive it is not to be alone in this world of madmen. The idea that you are not alone there brings peace to my spirit. I embrace you with all my heart and I hope this letter reaches you.8

Julien Luchaire, too, suffered hardships. Father of the most active collaborationist, he left Paris after the occupation. Though he did not participate in his son’s politics, he could not break with him publicly, and explains his reasons in his memoirs: I saw him in 1941 and in 1942 on the only two trips I made to Paris during the occupation, and once in Vichy, where we met by chance. We did not argue. We knew that our respective positions were at extreme odds [with each other] […] There was a confrontation behind closed doors; because I could not have instigated an open rupture without placing my wife and her children in the gravest danger.9

His third wife, in fact, Antonina Vallentin, was a Jewish writer of Polish descent, forced to hide in order to escape German persecution. Jean, Julien writes, could have done nothing for her: He had warned me that he could not protect them, no matter his influence (he had been threatened, since he for a long time had refused to publish antisemitic articles in his newspaper).10

But Julien was not the only one to witness, powerless, Jean’s descent into the underworld. The other astounded spectator of this fallen destiny was Fernande. Her involvement, to any degree, in Jean’s collaborationist activities is to be categorically excluded. Ill since many years earlier, she spent her days in solitude. “I live,” she wrote to Elsa Dallolio, “like a nun

 Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, without location., November 17, 1942. Ags.  Luchaire, Confession d’un français moyen, II, p. 311. 10  Ibid. 8 9

132 

F. FANTARELLA

in a cell.”11 While she led her life in extreme retirement, Jean and his children lived lasciviously, as though spinning on a wild merry-go-round, heedless of the future or of the tragedy that would strike them shortly thereafter. Ghita’s position was no easier. Her husband, Théodore Fraenkel, was a Jewish antifascist. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, he joined republicans to fight against Franco’s Falangist regime. In 1934, in England, Fraenkel joined France Libre (Free France), the French movement organized by Charles De Gaulle. He then joined the Normandie-Niemen regiment in the USSR, which he left at the end of the war, at the rank of colonel.12 Ghita, thus, found herself in a very delicate position: at once sister of the head of the collaborationist press, wife of a Jewish antifascist, and Salvemini’s stepdaughter. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., her guest in Paris at rue Caulaincourt in Montmartre, wrote, in 1945: During the first year of the Nazi occupation, her son was sick; food was scarce; she felt the constant threat of seeing her belongings expropriated by antisemitic laws. Jean Luchaire offered her a job at his newspaper, Nouveaux Temps. She accepted it for the good of her son. The employees, few of whom were pro-Germany, suspected her of being her brother’s spy. The Germans, in turn, suspected her for her marriage to a non-Aryan man. Finally, she divorced her husband to save her apartment and properties.13

Salvemini, whose heart held the most delicate tenderness for Ghita, when he learned that his Harvard colleague and friend’s son was visiting her, wrote to him: “what good news it is to learn that you are close to my good Ghita. She is an exceptional woman, who has behaved magnificently in these years and while her husband was a refugee. I am truly happy that you are with a person whom I love profoundly.”14 Salvemini did not hesitate to express his faith in and affection for Ghita, whose behaviour he judged irreproachable. Cedric Meletta also gives a

11  Fernande Dauriac to Elsa Dallolio, Paris, January 15, 1948. Ags. As already seen, the theme of solitude first emerges from Fernande’s letters in the 1930s, many years before the occupation. 12  On Théodore Fraenkel and his marriage to Ghita, see further the Théodore Fraenkel and Ghita Luchaire dossier at the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques-Doucet, Paris. 13  Schlesinger Jr., A life in the 20th Century, 344–5. 14  Ibid.

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

133

more balanced image of Ghita, perfectly outlined by context,15 in still starker contrast to the attribution of licentiousness made by Jacques Fraenkel’s nephew.16 In the meantime, the Nouveaux Temps adopted a still more radical position, becoming the symbol of collaborationist journalism, with Jean often identified as “the most Hitlerian of all French journalists.”17 But why did Jean persist in his ideals, even once it was clear that he was no longer facing a nation capable of peaceful dialogue, but instead a single master—Hitler—to be obeyed submissively? “In the moderate German circles he frequented (he was in contact with the German embassy),” wrote Julien Luchaire, “they likely made him believe that everything would change at the end of the war […]. After many difficult years, [it is likely that] he built himself a palace of reasons, valid in his view, to give in to the temptation to occupy at last a headlining position.”18 Jean’s reasons remain nevertheless difficult to understand; it is impossible to know whether he was guided by mere opportunism alone, or if he was truly convinced that the only way for France to survive was by collaborating with Nazi Germany. 15  “During the war,” Meletta writes, “Ghita would use her brother’s ausweis (Identification cards), to attend some compromising events, but would remain faithful to Desnos [the poet who would later die in a Nazi lager], eternally tormented between two symbols: that of her brother the collaborationist and that of the martyrdom of her deported friend, the emblematic incarnation of the Poet of the Resistance” (in G. Darol, Cédric Meletta. Jean Luchaire et l’ultra-collaboration, online at http://salon-litteraire.com/fr/interviews/content/1818465cedric-meletta-jean-luchaire-et-l-ultra-collaboration-ii). 16  In Paris, in July of 2014 and July of 2015, I met Jacques Fraenkel, son of Michel Vladimir Fraenkel, Théodore Fraenkel’s brother. He described Ghita as an exceptionally beautiful woman, aware of her charms and seductive powers. According to Jacques, Ghita divorced Théodore due her numerous affairs (and not as a result of antisemitic laws, as sustained by Schlesinger). The portrait of Ghita that emerges from Jacques Fraenkel’s testimony is that of an “opportunistic [woman], whose ideas had no color” and who was often seen in the company of the Gestapo. In 1943, Fraenkel states, his family asked Ghita to hide him for a night, but she refused because, she said she had a prior social engagement at a party. Fraenkel found shelter right outside Paris thanks to a fake document given to him by Robert Desnos. Fraenkel’s words revealed a true, sincere, and lasting sense of gratitude toward Desnos. After the war, he told me, Ghita left France, where she would return only in 1966 as a guest at the apartment of Jacques’s uncle, Théodore. Leaving it, at least according to Fraenkel’s recount, she robbed it of Theodore’s most prized works of art. Fraenkel’s testimony, otherwise extremely valuable, is at times altered by rancour, making it entirely possible that his resentment of Ghita made him excessively critical of her. 17  Mauthner, Otto Abetz and his Paris Acolytes, 300. 18  Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen, II, 312.

134 

F. FANTARELLA

In 1944, a few days before the liberation of Paris and with the war unfolding contrary to Germany’s predictions, Jean followed his destiny and escaped with other collaborationists to Sigmaringen.19 There, he was named Minister of Information and director of the journal La France. And here, at Sigmaringen, Jean precipitated into the very depths of the abyss of his collaborationism and, on the radio’s airwaves, advocated for the extermination of members of the French Resistance. When Germany was finally defeated in 1945, Jean and his family fled, searching refuge in Switzerland. But they were not welcomed there and, expelled, were soon forced to leave. Thus, Jean officially became a fugitive, wanted by police. His friends wrote Salvemini of the drama besieging his family. A drama which, in reality, had begun in 1940, when Jean accepted Abetz’s proposal. Salvemini no longer harboured any illusions regarding his stepson’s future, and in an unpublished letter to his friend Bernard Berenson, wrote: “Unfortunately, Jean Luchaire is a man overboard.” And he continued: “I await news of his arrest, trial, and execution any moment now. It will come as a great blow to his mother, who will not survive his demise.”20 Naturally, in those days, mail delays made communication and the exchange of news slow and difficult. Berenson had written to Salvemini about Jean, wanted by the authorities, in May of 1945, but Salvemini received his letter only two months later. He mailed his reply on July 12, 1945: Jean had already been arrested by then. He had been captured by American soldiers in Merano, a city in Trentino—Alto Adige, on May 22, 1945. Evidently, dusting off his antifascist past, he had hoped to find refuge in the country of his childhood. Instead, he was arrested and brought to San Vittore prison in Milan, where he was kept for two weeks prior to his transfer to France. Arrested along with him was his daughter, Corinne.

2  A Family in the Eye of the Hurricane All of Salvemini’s biographers, from Enzo Tagliacozzo to Charles Killinger, recognize the paternal affection that linked Salvemini to Jean. Iris Origo wrote: “During his years at Harvard, Salvemini received the second hardest blow of his life, when his stepson, Jean Luchaire, was executed as a traitor for having worked under the Pétain government and for having collaborated with the Germans in France.”21 Origo has been cited here 19  On the years in Sigmeringen, see H. Rousso, Un château en Allemagne. La France de Pétain en exil, Sigmaringen, 1944–1945 (Paris: Ramsay, 1980). 20  Gaetano Salvemini to Bernard Berenson, Lowell House, Cambridge, July 12, 1945. Ags. 21  Origo, Bisogno di testimoniare, 184.

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

135

because she is the only Salvemini scholar to have hinted at Salvemini’s separation from Fernande after the war. Origo was an intimate friend of both Gaetano and Fernande, and in her biographical essay, entitled Gaetano Salvemini. L’anticonformista,22 she narrates the immense pain that Jean’s trial caused the couple, and the subsequent rupture of their union. Origo’s pages are noteworthy for the discrete elegance of her recounting and her measured judgments. Unfortunately, however, she restricts a story so complex, so rich in ambiguous shadows and half-shade, to a narrow reduction that excludes many, far too many details (to which Origo was most certainly privy). This chapter will attempt to lift the curtain of silence hanging over Salvemini and his second family; it will aim to go beyond the customary tone of submissive embarrassment with which these events are usually retold, to recount in their entirety the consequences of Jean’s political choices on Salvemini’s marriage to Fernande. To begin: what was Salvemini’s attitude like during Jean’s trial? And Fernande’s? The days following France’s liberation were chaotic. Jean and Corinne were imprisoned in Fresnes, and strong winds of fear regarding post-war retaliations whirled around Fernande, Ghita, and other members of their family. Ghita, as Jean’s sister, was arrested and detained for a night, but then released.23 Fernande’s house was subject to numerous police searches.24 Salvemini wrote to Julien Luchaire about the storm that rained down over the unfortunate family: “Dear Julien, your postcard dated October 28 [1944] arrived today, on March 17th. As you can see, it was in no rush  Ibid., 139–200.  According to Cédric Meletta, Ghita was protected by the French workers’ union Cgt des techniciens du cinéma, and shortly after her brother’s execution, was able to fly to Costa Rica. (Meletta, L’enfant perdu des années sombres, 394–5). Jacques Fraenkel, during our Parisian conversations, confirmed that Ghita—thanks to her first partner, René Moulaert— had obtained many contacts on the political left. Thus, after the war, she managed to obtain a position as a secretary at Cgt. On Ghita’s isolation after Jean’s death, Fernande wrote to Salvemini: “Ghita is working as a secretary. I barely see her” (Fernande Dauriac to Gaetano Salvemini, Paris, March 14, 1947. Ags.). And in another letter: “Ghita dines with me on Thursdays. She arrives at almost exactly one o’clock and leaves before two o’clock. She works a great deal. She speaks little. I know little about her life. But it is the best time I spend during the week” (Fernande Dauriac to Gaetano Salvemini, Paris, December 19, 1949. Ags.). Jacques Fraenkel confirmed that Ghita’s son, having deserted the military, had been forced to leave France, probably in 1949 (he could not recall the exact date). He settled down in Costa Rica, where Ghita, crushed in Paris under the weight of the Luchaire family name, soon joined him. 24  Gaetano Salvemini to Bernard Berenson, Lowell House, Cambridge, July 12, 1945. Ags. 22 23

136 

F. FANTARELLA

and I fear that my response, too, will travel with equal lack of haste.” And then, without hiding his pain, he continued: “I know Fernande has more or less managed to overcome the material crisis we have faced in these years. As for the tragedy that awaits her concerning her son and grandchildren, what should I tell you? It has caused me a great deal of pain and I can only imagine what it will do to that poor woman.” And he concluded, finally: “As for myself, I can tell you that I have withstood as best I could the pains and desperation of these years. My only comfort is being able to look at myself in the mirror every morning without spitting at my image.”25 Salvemini remembered the integrity that he had kept during those terrible years. Precisely that moral rectitude which his Giovannino had not deserved, only to yield to the spell of power, with consequences affecting every member of his family and tearing Fernande, above all, apart with pain. Salvemini tried in every way to help Fernande from America. He sent her money via Marion Rosselli’s French bank account. He sent her packages filled with food that were often lost or, worse still, stolen and never delivered.26 His ties to his stepson, however, had no power over Salvemini, who let himself be neither confused nor diverted by his affections. But they perhaps did slow him down. In 1934, as we know, he expressed judgments of Jean’s behaviour considerably less ferocious than those of others. In him, he had seen (or had wanted to see) only an obstinate pacifist. And yet, already in 1938, when it was clear that his and Jean’s positions were irreconcilable, he broke off all ties with him. No shadow, however, obscured the skies of his intransigence. But perplexities about Fernande emerged, and spread little by little, among all their acquaintances. Thus, though no one dared ask him to directly, Salvemini decided, sua sponte, to clarify his wife’s position to his friends: “Fernande,” he wrote to Bernard Berenson, “is living a life in Paris that, as you might imagine, is anything but happy. She has been visited repeatedly by police on account of her son, though she herself has never been involved in politics and hardly ever leaves home.” Salvemini’s letter continues, describing Fernande’s greatly worsened health. “She is perfectly lucid of mind,” he wrote, “but her flesh is ill. They have written me that she has aged considerably, that she has  Gaetano Salvemini to Julien Luchaire, without location, March 17, 1945. Ags.  See Gaetano Salvemini to Julien Luchaire, Cambridge, June 2, 1941, and Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, without location, October 8, 1945. Ags. 25 26

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

137

shrivelled, and suffers from fevers and sees no one.” It was at this point that Salvemini began to write and rewrite letters whose content was always the same: Jean’s politics, his position on Jean’s pacifism, Fernande’s condition. “That boy was ruined by pacifism and Anglophobia,” he never tired of explaining. “Pacifism and Anglophobia led him to support a Franco-­ Germanic alliance. But when Hitler occupied Paris, he failed to understand that what had once been called an alliance could now be described only as slavery. He continued on his way, ruining himself definitively.” And finally, harshly, he concluded: “For me, it is as if he never existed.”27 Another, more insidious question, arose from between the lines or from the depths of the letters he received, which, perhaps out of discretion, his friends never dared ask explicitly: how had she, Fernande Dauriac, reconciled her role as the mother of the “Führer of the French press” with that of the wife of one of the most implacable antifascists? Opening his heart wide, Salvemini responded honestly: “How Fernande could reconcile her affection for me with her blindness regarding her son is a great mystery to which I have no answer.”28 The same tone, a mixture of bitterness and pain, vibrates in the words he wrote to his friend Harriet Marple in 1945: Dearest Harriet,   Your letter of June 17 gave me joy and sadness. Joy because I saw you before me with all your generosity and grace; sadness because you spoke to me about my wife and the tragedy that has overtaken her.   I do not think she will survive her son. There has been in her a curious case of motherly blindness […]. How could she conciliate her love for me with her faith in her son is and always will be a great mystery for me. I think his father and his daughter did their duty in denouncing him in the press. But what would be the use of discussing this matter with my wife? I never write her anything about this matter.   I should like to tell her that there was no harm in what her son did until the moment of the French collapse. He might have decently wished for a Franco-German entente. But after France’s collapse, there was no longer a possibility of a decent entente. There was only French slavery under the German master. This no decent man can swallow. But what would be the

 Gaetano Salvemini to Bernard Berenson, Lowell House, Cambridge, July 12, 1945. Ags.  Ibid.

27 28

138 

F. FANTARELLA

use of writing her such things? My opinion would increase her unhappiness and not help her to see clearly.29

This letter offers the first sign of rupture with Fernande, to whom he abstains from sharing his opinion on Jean’s public activity. In the past, they had been united by their common ideas. He now knew that such a unified vision was dwindling. During the occupation, Fernande had completely isolated herself. “After 1939,” she wrote to Elsa Dallolio, “I withdrew [into total reclusion] due to my double situation as mother of J.L. and wife of G.S. [Isolation] was the only dignified and honest attitude to adopt.” Nevertheless, after the war, Fernande was the only one not to distance herself from Jean, and to believe and affirm—aloud—that many, indeed, too many lies had been spread about him. She wrote again to Elsa Dallolio: “I will not live long enough to see the whole truth told about Jean, but I have gathered all [manner of] documents, notes, memories.” Though Salvemini had kept his considerations of Jean to himself in order not to exacerbate Fernande’s pain, she nevertheless intuited his position of absolute condemnation. Thus, she concluded: “Gaetano has not understood, he has suffered, but he has not understood. I haven’t told him anything. Also because it is too early for him [to understand].”30 After thirty-seven years, after having shared so many initiatives and faced so many dangers together, at last, the union between Salvemini and Fernande was coming to an end, about to splinter forever. Its cause? Giovannino.

3  A Telegram from Ghita Far away from Italy, Salvemini had suffered greatly during the years of resistance to Mussolini’s regime. Fascism had hurled many misfortunes at him. In 1945, it dealt its last blow, no less painful than any of the others: Salvemini, the well-known anti-fascist and Harvard professor, once again saw his family destroyed. And he witnessed as it came undone at the hands of the dictatorship. He said not a word, however, about the personal storm 29  Gaetano Salvemini to Harriet Marple, Lowell House, Cambridge, July 3, 1945. Ags. It is worth noting that Salvemini often repeats the same ideas on this topic regardless of the language of correspondence, whether English or Italian. He was absolutely convinced of his ideas and repeated them to all his friends, in the various languages in which he addressed them. 30  Fernande Dauriac to Elsa Dallolio, Paris, Sunday, May 9, 1948. Ags.

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

139

that brewed within him. Salvemini maintained his reserved composure in letters to his dearest friends. He explained Jean’s politics tirelessly, with the same impassable lucidity with which he gave a history lesson. He never pronounced a word on his feelings, never once hinted at his state of mind. He demonstrated the same measured conduct in his correspondence with Ghita and Fernande. He tried to be their strength, to instill courage in them. He kept silent about his pain lest it increase theirs. “I will not speak to you about the tragedy that afflicts us all,” he wrote to Ghita in an unpublished letter in 1945. “Words serve no purpose.”31 When Jean was arrested, Ghita tried to help her brother. She was well aware of French citizens’ abhorrence of collaborationists. She was aware, too, of her brother’s faults, and likely imagined the sentence in store for Jean. She turned, then, to the man who, like a father, had raised her. To the figure who had always shown her affection. To him. To Salvemini. She recorded her last, desperate cry for help in the brief content of a telegram: that he should intercede with the Americans to save Jean. This time, however, Salvemini, unfaltering, replied to her immediately. Salvemini’s letter is far from brief. But it is unknown to the public and so important that it bears citing in full: Dear Ghita,   This morning, on July 14, I received the following text in a telegram: “Giovanni in Paris. Madame Fraenkel believes your intervention American authorities would be helpful preventing the worst. Harold Boyd. France.”   I imagine that Jean is in Paris, and that it is necessary to request the intervention of American authorities in order to prevent the worst.   Unfortunately, dear Ghita, my every attempt at intervention would be in vain. First of all, I hold no authority with the American authorities. Secondly, I have spent all of this year protesting the American authorities’ protection of fascists, when they should have left the Italian people to take care of their own affairs. How could I, with this precedent, ask them to intervene in favor of Jean?   Unfortunately, this tragedy is unavoidable. I saw it coming and was forever afraid this news would come from one moment to another. You know of the affection I felt for Jean. You can fully understand, then, how greatly afflicted I was by his political action from 1940 onward. As I wished for Hitler’s demise, and I desired it with all my heart, I hoped, too, for Jean’s death sentence and for your mother’s desperate demise. Should I have

 Gaetano Salvemini to Ghita Luchaire, Cambridge, April 17, 1945. Ags.

31

140 

F. FANTARELLA

hoped for better for them, I would have had to imagine Hitler’s victory, too, which would have been, to me, the most extreme disaster possible.   There is nothing to be done, dear Ghita. The only thing I can hope for Jean is that he faces his end courageously, as a man, and not like a little girl. I know that this will be a terrible tragedy for your mother. I fear that she will not survive her son. And if I could give my life to spare her this frightful disaster, I would gladly do so. But I am powerless, absolutely powerless. I embrace you with all my heart, Gaetano Salvemini.32

Salvemini does not reprimand Ghita for her telegram. But no, he could not intervene on Jean’s behalf. He had fought with indomitable stubbornness against fascism and had hoped for Hitler’s undoing until the bitter end; he had protested against American interference every time they had protected fascists. Could he now so disregard his own nature and history and make an exception for Jean? No, he couldn’t. Even if it meant condemning Jean to death and, by association, guaranteeing Fernande’s final collapse. And thinking of her, Fernande, Salvemini closes his letter with words that bear the weight and depth of his pain: “If I could give my life to spare her this frightful disaster, I would gladly do so.” The same crystalline conduct he had held in public office is found again here, in his private life, when he refuses to help his beloved stepson. Yes, Salvemini remained faithful to his inner demon until the very end. But the price he paid in doing so, as will be shown, was extremely high.

4   Jean Luchaire’s Trial: The End of a Union In January of 1946, wearing an elegant dark suit, Jean appeared before the French court for the first time. Hence began the trial of one of the most notorious collaborationists. Many rushed to witness it. Jean’s line of defence aroused much criticism. He presented himself as a pacifist who, in the name of peace, for France’s salvation, had chosen to collaborate with Nazi Germany. Because only through collaboration with the Nazis, he argued, would the French have been given any opportunity to survive. Thus, Jean played the role of the victim. Yes: but how, then, could he justify the mad extravagance of his lifestyle, his sybaritic pleasures, his 32  Gaetano Salvemini to Ghita Luchaire, Lowell House, Cambridge, July 14, 1945. Ags. Arthur Schlesinger’s recounting is slightly different: he believed that Fernande had been the one to write the telegram, Schlesinger Jr., A Life in the 20th Century, 345–6.

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

141

lascivious affairs, and, above all, the thousands of francs he received in those cursed years? Was all this, too, in the name of French salvation? The prosecution made swift and easy work of rejecting Jean’s line of defence, denouncing him as an immoral opportunist whose actions—in the exact words of the prosecutor—had been inspired not by fascism, “but only by corruption and putrescence, motivated only by money.”33 He was condemned to death. Salvemini correctly imagined the court’s sentencing of Jean when he refused to help him. “He will get the punishment he deserves,” he had told his friends. And yet, when he opened his newspaper and found there the announcement of Jean’s sentence, a surcharge of pain dragged him still further into the depths of his desperation. What should he do? Should he write to Fernande? And if so, what should he tell her? It is easy to imagine Salvemini, defeated, in his small Harvard office, staring at a blank sheet of paper, gathering his thoughts, giving shape to his sentiments. He writes a dry letter. He makes no attempt to hide his hesitation or pain. But he remains incapable of consoling Fernande. Below is the content of the letter (it, too, unpublished): Dear Old Lady,   I have thought of writing you constantly these last few weeks, but pain has continued to paralyze my hands, because nothing I could have written you would have helped you overcome this terrible period of your life.   I never had any illusion of the result of Jean’s trial. I had opinions on how it should have been conducted. But I was unsure whether those opinions were aligned with yours and with he who had most at stake [Jean]. And in this uncertainty, it seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to keep quiet and let things unfold as they had to, fatally.   Today, I read news of [Jean’s] sentence in the newspaper. And though it was all but unpredictable, you can well imagine my state of mind. No matter how much I continue to tell myself that there is no remedy for it, that things have gone as they had no choice but to go, and that everything, including death, is better than prison, especially in the absence of a clean bill of health, I can’t help but think of you and of the torment you must be feeling these days.   I will stop here, because I am convinced that silence is by far preferable to words in moments like these.34  Cited in in Origo, Bisogno di testimoniare, 185–6.  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, Lowell House, Cambridge, January 25, 1946. Ags. 33 34

142 

F. FANTARELLA

After his sentencing, Jean’s lawyers pled to the Court of Appeals, but their petition was denied. His family, then, begged for amnesty. Julien requested a meeting with Léon Blum—his old friend, as has been shown—, who had employed Jean in 1932. But Blum refused to see him.35 At that point, the Luchaires resigned themselves: Jean would not be pardoned. He was executed by firing squad for high treason on February 22, 1946. Prior to the execution, Jean asked to see a priest and converted to Catholicism. He wrote a brief prayer in French: God of infinite time and space, my soul is yours, Almighty God, my will is yours. God of love, I give you my heart. Deign to lean over me and guide my steps to eternal life. Forgive me the trespasses I have committed and those I inspired in others. Help me to protect, here on earth as from above, those whom you have made me love.36

It was the last day of his life. It was cold. He was trembling. So, he asked to borrow the priest’s coat: walking the final steps on the path of his destiny, he wished not for his shivering to be interpreted as fear.37 Jean Luchaire’s case was closed with the blasts of the firing squad and the thud of lifeless bodies. Such was the epilogue to his tragedy. The curtain fell heavily over him and his family members, completely ostracized in postwar France. Corinne Luchaire, Jean’s first-born, the family member most exposed to Jean’s public life (even if uninvolved in his politics) was sentenced to ten years in prison for indignité nationale.38 Ill, she died in 1950 at only twenty-nine years old. In 1949, Ghita left France for Costa

 Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen, II., 320.  Fernande Dauriac includes Jean’s prayer in an undated letter to Salvemini. Since it makes reference to the execution of her son, readers might affirm it to have been written in Paris in 1946. The original text reads: Dieu de l’infini des espaces et des temps, mon âme est à vous, / Dieu de toutes puissance, ma volonté est la votre. / Dieu de l’amour, je vous donne mon coeur. / Daignez-vous pencher sur moi et guider mes pas vers la vie éternelle. / Pardonnez-­ moi les pêchés que j’ai commis et ceux que j’ai fait commettre. / Aidez-moi à protéger, sur cette terre comme du ciel, ceux que vous m’avez fait aimer. Ags. 37  Testimony of Jacques Fraenkel. 38  This crime was introduced in France at the end of the Second World War and those judged guilty of it were deprived of their right to vote, to participate in public life, or to serve in the military. Punishment also included the confiscation of all personal belongings. 35 36

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

143

Rica.39 Julien was excluded from all French intellectual circles.40 Fernande was left completely alone in Paris (Figs. 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3).

5  An Irreparable Break Salvemini had followed Jean’s trial from America. News of his sentencing reached him there, too. He had kept his opinions on the debate from Fernande and Ghita. He knew his position would only hurt them, especially Fernande, alone in her belief in Jean’s innocence and unfailingly at his defence in her letters. With his friends, however, Salvemini was unrestrained in his harsh commentary on Jean’s trajectory. We cite here another long, unpublished letter written to his friend, Harriet Marple. It is dated February 19, 1946, three days before Jean’s execution by firing squad. Salvemini wrote it in English, and is cited here in full:   Dear Mrs. Harriet,   I hope that when this letter of mine reaches you, the tragedy of Jean Luchaire will be over. I guess that his mother and other relatives are doing everything they can to save his life through their old friends Herriot and Blum. But I do not know what the use is of living in jail when one is not even physically strong.   I did not dare to write anything about this horrible matter to Jean’s mother. I confided myself to writing her and Jean’s sister that I hoped he will behave like a man in his misfortune. But, unfortunately, I see that my hope had no foundation.   In his behavior, one should honestly distinguish between three periods. Before June 1940, he was of the opinion that France and Germany should combine against England. This, in my opinion, was wrong but tenable espe39  In Costa Rica, Ghita dedicated herself to her old passion: sketching. She wrote to a friend of her life in South America: “I must make peace with the fact that the sun cannot shine on every part of my heart at the same time. The parts that remained hidden in shadows in Paris are now filled with warmth and light, I am very happy, and I lead a full life […]. We are,” she continued, “fifteen minutes away from San José, in a small house […]. I successfully exhibited my pencil portraits at my son’s theatre recital—which, it seems, went well—, people complimented them vividly and, better still, I have already received three orders! I’ve just completed some decoration models for the marionette show we are trying to launch, so I will soon be able to dedicate myself to these portraits not without apprehension, because it has been a long while since I last made any.” Ghita Luchaire to Enzo (unknown person, whose family name is not indicated), December 2, 1957. Paris: Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet, Ghita Fraenkel Dossier. 40  See: Luchaire, Confession d’un Français moyen, II, 324.

144 

F. FANTARELLA

cially in view of the equivocal attitude that had been kept by the Foreign Office from 1919 to 1939. There has always been in France a split between those who wanted a pro-English and anti-German policy and those who wanted a pro-German and anti-England policy. If all those who wanted a pro-German and anti-British policy had to be tried and sentenced to death, half of France should be tried and sentenced to death. But this attitude was tenable only up until June 1940. When half of France had been stamped down by the Germans, the duty of every self-respecting French, even if he had been pro-Germans and anti-British, should have been to stand up and to refuse any cooperation with the victor. This should have been the duty of Jean Luchaire. Unfortunately, he did not understand this point which seems to me evident.   Thus, a new period is opened in his political career. This new period goes up until the moment when the Allies landed in North Africa, and the Germans occupied all of France. Even for this second period extenuating circumstances might be invoked which could excuse (I do not say justify) Jean’s attitude. One might have honestly believed that cooperation with the Germans was indispensable, owing to the fact that Germany was winning and would ultimately win the war.   But at the end of 1942 it was evident that Germany had lost the war. Just at this moment Jean became more and more entangled with the Germans. He should have at least not followed them into Germany and should have remained in France facing his responsibilities frankly. By going to Germany, he committed moral suicide. Everything he says to show that he was playing a double game has no significance at all. There are conditions under which a double game is as criminal as one-sided cooperation. If the Germans forced him to say on the radio what he did not wish to say or if they put in his mouth words that he never had said, he should have protested and force the Germans to send him to a concentration camp.   He did not do so. He did what Pétain and Laval did. How could he hope to escape Pétain’s [prison] and Laval’s fate [death].   Many times when the trial was coming up, I was on the point of writing to his mother and his sister that in my opinion he should have revendicated his right to do what he did until June 1940; to admit that he had been mistaken as a result of a miscalculation from June 1940 to November 1942 and therefore ask for extenuating circumstances concerning what he did during those 18 months, but as far was what he did from the end of 1942 on, he should have admitted frankly that he did not deserve any extenuating circumstances, that he had been wholly wrong and that therefore the judges should sentence him to death. Had he taken this attitude, he might have escaped the death penalty.

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

145

  I never wrote this to his mother or to his sister. It would have been useless. Now I see that he even made the indecorous blunder of bringing as his witness a man like Abetz. It is evident that not only he, but his relatives and his lawyers had lost all self-respect. What can I do under certain circumstances, dear Harriet? The only thing I can do is keep silent and to go on to helping Fernande not to starve within the limits of my possibilities.41

Salvemini’s letter is fundamental for a number of reasons. It comments on the events in real time, as they occurred, responding to friends that informed him piecemeal of the facts and asked his opinion about them. Salvemini replied to them frankly. He did not silence his own judgments. However, and herein lies the first reason why his letter is so important, Salvemini’s thought testifies to his real belief that Jean was not a fascist, at least not until the end of the 1930s. On this point, both his analysis of Jean’s pacifism and the way in which he delineates it to Mrs Marple coincide almost word for word with the earlier letter addressed to Carlo Rosselli in 1935, and to another sent to Isabella Massey in 1941. Salvemini contextualized Jean’s political activity within the French political debate of his time, when many in France (and not only there, one need only think of the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain) believed obtaining peace with Germany to be possible and advantageous. At this point, and herein lies the second reason for this letter’s importance, Salvemini moves on to examine Jean’s political activity after the German invasion. And here, his condemnation is harsh. And it is further soured, with a bitterness nothing could sweeten, when Jean follows the Germans to Sigmaringen. Jean was not forced to collaborate with the Germans in 1940. He had done so of his own free will, conditioned by his earlier acceptance to work as Laval’s intermediary and, later, to republish his newspaper at the proposal and with the financing of Otto Abetz. Nevertheless, Salvemini judged the second part of Jean’s trajectory (from 1943 onward) with a rigidity that prevented him from seeing his stepson’s ostensible motives for following the Germans until the very end: ambition, yes (of course!), but also fear. It is worth considering that perhaps Jean, a collaborationist, followed Nazi Germans in 1944 out of fear of the consequences of his refusal to do so. The point is that Salvemini measured Jean’s actions against the bar he had set for his own decisions, always intrepid and courageous, like when,  Gaetano Salvemini to Harriet Marple, Lowell House, February 19, 1946. Ags.

41

146 

F. FANTARELLA

for example, in 1925, he continued to hold lessons at the University of Florence, even at the risk that “the fascists break his skull” at any minute. He expected of Jean uncommon courage and mettle. And yet, Salvemini himself, pessimistic about human nature, had often complained about the cowardice evident in the vast majority of men. For example, and it is only one of many, in a letter to Armando Borghi dated 1945, he wrote: “If I believed humanity to be more intelligent and less indifferent to its own evil than it is, I, too, would be an anarchist. Unfortunately, humanity, as I see it around me, that is, nine-hundred ninety-nine thousand millionths of humanity, perhaps more, is interested only in eating, reproducing, and betting on dog races.”42 Thus, he did not understand, or if he did, he refused to accept the same failings in Jean. Finally, Salvemini exposed his thoughts on Jean’s trial to Mrs Marple. Those thoughts which, until then, he had hidden from Fernande. For Salvemini, Jean had completely dishonoured himself when—in his defence—he had invoked no less than the testimony of Otto Abetz. Let us pay attention here: Salvemini, who in the past had shared everything with Fernande, confident of the perfect harmony of their ideals (from the time he entrusted her with L’Unità to the time he decided to leave Italy in exile), now deemed their views to be irreconcilable. Thus, he decided to keep his ideas to himself, but to continue to support his wife financially. But in that moment of unspeakable torment, of absolute pain— a pain which no one but her husband could have understood—Fernande needed something more than simple financial assistance. She faced not only hunger. She was parched by a thirst to restore slackened affections. Salvemini denied her such restoration. And he denied it her when, in response to a letter in which Fernande transcribed Jean’s last words—he finally resolved to share with her the opinion he had for so long kept to himself. Let us proceed with caution. Let us not get the wrong idea. Salvemini did not, on that occasion, backslide into his antifascist intransigence to become remote and insensitive to Fernande’s pain. He, too, suffered from the tragedy that had taken place. But he suffered still more at the pain of seeing his communion with Fernande torn apart. So, he decided to write to her frankly. He had always acted this way in life: with crystalline clarity. But his resolution was now much more tormented because he knew that his words would come as a great blow to someone he loved so very dearly.  Salvemini, Lettere dall’America, I, 170–1.

42

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

147

That Salvemini was torn about whether or not to write to Fernande is testified by the discovery of two unpublished letters in the archives. The content of the first, hand-written, is brief. It consists of an unsent message, labelled with neither date nor location, but believed to have been written in 1946. In this letter overflowing with affection and understanding, he writes:   My dear Old Lady,   I have received your letter with Jean’s last words. It and your serenity make me feel more acutely than ever the horribleness of this tragedy. In the sadness of these days, I find only two reasons for comfort—if comfort can be spoken of … The first reason is that that boy is no longer closed up in that prison suffering a longer and more ruthless agony than the one he had to face. The idea of him leading that life far worse than death would be intolerable to me. I imagine that he himself preferred an immediate death to a horrible life. The second reason is that he knew how to face his fate with dignity and pride and sweetness and bounty. I should like to be able to do the same when my time comes.   I hope, my dear Old Lady, that you find within yourself the strength that he found in […] dying.   I embrace you Gaetano.43

As has been said, Salvemini never sent this letter. He thought about it over and over again. Jean’s words of farewell must have tormented him profoundly, however. And perhaps they had the catalyzing effect that a reactor has on a chemical mixture waiting to overflow. And thus, he picked up his short draft and completed it with a direct thought. Frank. Almost ruthless in its sincerity. This second letter (a reworking of the first unsent message) is long, but bears citing in its entirety:   My dear Old Lady,   I have received your letter with Jean’s last words. [Clearly, the beginning of this letter is the same as the first draft previously cited.] I never wanted to write you about this horrible tragedy. But the last words of that boy, and your serenity, have made me lose my mind. And it is necessary that I write to you from the heart, at the risk of hurting your maternal love and our friendship.  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, without location, undated, Ags.

43

148 

F. FANTARELLA

  Jean had nothing to apologize for regarding his political activity until June 1940. English politics toward France had been exasperating from 1919 onward and it was natural that the idea of coming to an agreement with Germany to obtain freedom from English servitude would occur to many Frenchmen. From 1871 onward, two schools of thought on foreign politics had always been present in France: the Germanophobic school, which favoured the English, and the Anglophobe school, which favoured Germany. English politics from 1919 to 1939 did all it could to exacerbate Anglophobia and Germanophilia. The French pacifists, constantly threatened by the reprisal of war, a war that would take place precisely between France and Germany, wanted to attempt an agreement with Germany to avoid war.   There was an error in this politic: not seeing that France was no longer a great power [in Europe]; that it had become a second-rate power in comparison to England and Germany; that it was necessary to choose whether to be servants of England or servants of Germany. Mussolini made an analogous error when he treated Italy like a first-rate power and, believing that placing himself on the same level as Hitlerian Germany would allow him to escape English and French servitude, thus ruined Italy.   In all this, there was error, but not crime. The error was perfectly legitimate. If all those who had adopted Germanophilic politics in France were to be sentenced to death, half of France and perhaps more would be so condemned. No one has any more obligation to excuse himself for that error than the conservative English have the obligation to excuse themselves for having done everything possible to provoke it. International politics are made entirely of errors of this nature.

Then, changing pace and moving from the general to the specific, he goes on:   Jean’s action begins to require apologies in June of 1940 with the dismantling of the French military. From that moment onward, there was no longer collaboration. Only servitude to those who held the neck of half of France under its boot was possible. You yourself had had to leave Paris. It seems clear to me that Jean, had he not been deviated by his absolute pacifism, should have closed himself in silence and not participate in any pact with the winner. But this error might be excused by those wishing to judge him honestly. It was legitimate to think that Pétain might obtain reasonable, not ruinous, pacts for a country that had been conquered entirely, especially in view of a predicted German final victory. Anticipating this victory, it was best to suck up to the master—though it should have been well-known what type of master Hitler was. Up until this point, no one would have condemned either Pétain or Laval or Jean, or any other collaborator.

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

149

  The error of all the collaborators became no less excusable when the Germans occupied all of France and, more especially, when the collaborators left for Germany.

And here, Salvemini’s pen bursts forth in all its intransigence:   Jean should not have done that [left for Germany]. Even if it meant being sent to a concentration camp, even at the risk of seeing his whole family destroyed, he should not have done it, he should not have done it, he should not have done it. He should not have spoken on the radio. He should have sat in stubborn silence, unmovable, even if he could not have associated himself with the Resistance.   Political trials are nothing more than previously pronounced condemnations. That was a political trial. The sentence was predictable. And if you tried to separate yourself from your maternal love, you would recognize that the sentence was as predictable as a stone’s fall as soon as it leaves the hand. Given the cause, the effect is inevitable.   Certainly, Pétain, Dentz, Esteva did not deserve to be pardoned. But this does not mean that they did not assume terrible responsibilities, and that given that cause, its effect should have been predicted.   I continued to think about that poor boy over and over these last few months. But I was never able to find any reasons to convince me that his conduct in Germany had been anything but absolutely absurd; he should have rebelled with the greatest violence possible against a politic with no possible justification.   I don’t know, my poor Old Lady, if I have done well to write you this letter. I am sending it to Ghita so that she might decide with Julien whether to give it to you or destroy it.

And here Salvemini closes the letter with the words read in his earlier drafted message:   In the sadness of this time, I find only two reasons for comfort—if comfort can be spoken of … The first reason is that that boy is no longer closed up, suffering; I believe that he himself preferred ending his life this way to continuing to live horribly. The second reason is that he knew how to face his fate with dignity, firmness, self-respect, bounty, and sweetness. I should like to be able to do the same when my time comes. If I were sure that the memory of me helped that poor child to face his end manfully and with dignity, I could believe that I had not wasted my life in vain.

150 

F. FANTARELLA

  As for you, what can I say, my poor Old Lady? I hope that you find within yourself the strength that he found in […] dying.   I embrace you,  Gaetano44

We cannot know whether Ghita transmitted these words to her mother. Thus, we cannot say whether Fernande truly read them. Perhaps she did, perhaps she didn’t. What is certain is that the letter presages a definitive rupture. The archives hold another important letter from Salvemini to his wife: a hand-written note, labelled with neither date nor location (and careless in its punctuation), which, from context (Jean’s last words are referred to here), is likely from 1946. It is a very valuable unpublished text. For the very first time, after thirty-eight years, Salvemini breaks the heavy iron shutter behind which he had locked away the terrible days following the Messina earthquake. Only on extremely rare occasions had he revealed the pain of his tragedy. He had lived his pain with such protective discretion. Yet now he openly turned his gaze to those chilling moments, returning with his memory to the loss of his children. A loss, a violent pain, that he now relived with Jean’s death. How great must his love for him have been to compare his death to that, for example, of Filippetto! To Fernande, who gave outlet to her pain in long, tenebrous letters, and who found in this venting an approximate consolation to her torment, the torment of a mother, Salvemini replied:   My dear Old Lady,   I have before me your letter dated August 23, Jean’s memoirs and news of you brought to me by Harriet, and your letter dated September 26.   From December 1908 to today, all my efforts at not losing my mind consisted of never, under any circumstance, letting myself think of what happened then. Still today, when I think of my first child, I lose all order in my thoughts, I lose all control of myself and if I did not immediately absorb myself in some all-engrossing occupation, I don’t know what I would do.   Your temperament is different than mine: you find, it would appear, comfort in opening and reopening your wound. You are more courageous than I.   What happened to Jean is just as painful to me as what happened to me on December 28, 1908. I am unable to think about it without suffering immea Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, without location, March 18, 1946. Ags.

44

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

151

surably. I must seek not to think about it if I want to save myself a torture at the bottom of which lies no utility for anyone.   Naturally, I read those memoirs, because I cannot resist reading anything written and printed within my gaze. I received no comfort of any kind from it, to the contrary, [it] augmented my pain.   At the end of his writing, that poor child admits that his own defence team would have accepted a sentence condemning him to forced manual labor. This sentence would have been far worse than death, for a sickly, frail man, who would have died little by little in who knows what kind of pain, in prison. Better immediate death. A moment and then the void—or Heaven, for those who believe in it.   Forgive me if I do not linger longer on this terrible topic. I would be grateful to you if you never, ever spoke to me of it again. I understand that it is selfish of me to refuse to help you bear your cross by speaking of it with you. But I repeat, I am not the same as you. For you, speaking of it alleviates your suffering. For me, speaking of it enhances mine. I do not, do not, do not wish to enhance it.45

After having spent entire days in angst, with all the events taking place around him, the news that reached him piecemeal and with long delays, after so many letters to friends—but also to Ghita, to Julien, to Fernande— on political vicissitudes more generally and on Jean’s trial more particularly, Salvemini was exhausted. That constant churning of events intensified his torment and made it unbearable to him. He could take it no longer. At the risk of seeming selfish, Salvemini implored Fernande to contain her grief, to refrain from fanning the flame with the fire of her words. They never spoke of Jean again. In 1947, Salvemini flew to Paris, but stayed there only for two days. Fernande suffered from this decision, and making no effort to hide her disappointment, wrote to her husband: “It will be sad, my Old man, to see you only for two days.”46 It was a brief encounter. One of the last between Salvemini and Fernande. They never officially divorced, but the end of the war did not bring with it their reunion. Fascism had created an unbridgeable distance 45  Gaetano Salvemini to Fernande Dauriac, without location, undated, Ags (cursive mine). It is needless to say more about the importance of this affirmation. Shortly after it, Salvemini completely changes the subject and asks Fernande about the packages of food he had sent her, how to send her more money, and mentions the great help he received from Mrs Marple in organizing the shipments. 46  Fernande Dauriac to Gaetano Salvemini, Paris, June 5, 1947. Ags.

152 

F. FANTARELLA

between them, the full extent of which is captured in Fernande’s words to Elsa Dallolio: “During the occupation, I was ‘Salvemini’s wife,’ after the liberation, I have returned to being ‘Jean Luchaire’s mother.’”47 In Fernande’s view, Jean did not deserve to die. His errors, to her, were no more serious than those committed by others (like Pétain, for example), who, instead, had received clemency. She felt misunderstood. She confided to Elsa: “Gaetano has not understood, he has suffered, but he has not understood.”48 Nevertheless, with fascism’s collapse, Fernande hoped for a new life with Salvemini. She lacked the heart, however, to ask him in a direct, honest letter, like so many others she had written in the past, if he wished to be reunited with her. And this fear of writing freely to her husband bears witness to a by then irreparable break. Fernande then asked her dear friend Elsa, friend also to Salvemini, for help. Not without embarrassment, she asked about her husband, his plans. She timidly asks her friend to discover—in the most discrete way possible—whether Salvemini shared her desire to get back together. The unpublished French text reads: Write me again, speak to me of Gaetano, of his plans. He speaks so little of himself. And—this I ask you in confidence—do you believe that, should my health permit it, he would like it if I returned to Florence with him? He will not ask me to. But do you think he would like that? Or would my presence bring him sadness? I so need to know. Were you able to figure it out?49

Dallolio’s response has not been found, but Iris Origo—who was intimately aware of the correspondence between the two women, with whom she was friends—confirmed the difficulty of Elsa’s task. With tact, with delicacy, she had had to write to Fernande that no, Salvemini would not have indulged her because he did not share her desire. Fernande accepts the choice with almost stoic resignation but laments the solitude to which she had been relegated due to her husband’s incomprehension. Embittered, she wrote to Elsa: You might ask yourself how miserable I must be to think of joining Gaetano. I ask myself the same thing today! But I have often done things beyond my strength … And if I had stuck with the idea that he would be glad of it, I  Fernande Dauriac to Elsa Dallolio, without location, January 15, 1948. Ags.  Fernande Dauriac to Elsa Dallolio, without location, May 27, 1948. Ags. 49  Fernande Dauriac to Elsa Dallolio, without location, November 1, 1947. Ags. 47 48

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

153

would have begun to desire it myself. But you surely got the right impression, and I endorse every line of your letter. In any case, he knows that I will do whatever he likes. I? I no longer have my own life […] I am alone, from morning to night, in my little bedroom, which seems like a nun’s cell. Two or three friends come to visit—sometimes, friends I have known for twenty years—and after twenty years, we still call each other “Madame.” O sweet France! My family? Everyone is so busy pulling themselves out of trouble and managing as best they can. Gaetano hasn’t seen any of this … and I don’t know how he could have in only two days! Why speak to him about that which he has never cared to know?50

A natural disaster, the 1908 earthquake, had destroyed Salvemini’s first family. Then Salvemini had built another fortress of affections with Fernande. But this one, too, was swept away by an even larger disaster: fascism and Jean’s collaborationism. Their separation was common knowledge (though Salvemini continued to take care of Fernande financially).51 But no one dared ask about it. Only Giuseppe Prezzolini, who had known Fernande during the La Voce years, in a venomous text criticized Salvemini’s severe intransigence and hard inflexibility, whose consequences Prezzolini had himself lived in 1925, when Salvemini withdrew his friendship with him owing to his rather accommodating attitude toward fascism. Perfidious from the title— Salvemini’s complaints—Prezzolini wrote: When I went to live in Paris in 1925, I sought him out; he replied that it was preferable not to ruin our friendship with discussions that would have led us to pronounce irremediable words. I remember, in comparison, the innumerable harsh conversations held with many others of my friends in Florence and understood the different nature of Salvemini’s passion. For him, politics were more important than friendship. One might say that he never had any friends;

 Fernande Dauriac to Elsa Dallolio, January 15, 1948. Ags.  Many letters attest to this fact, including one addressed to Giorgio La Piana, to whom Salvemini wrote: “My wife—poor devil—passed away on April second after a very sad and unhappy old age! I supported her last years with the pension I received from Harvard, while I covered my own expenses sufficiently on my stipend from the university. Now that I no longer have to provide for my wife financially, I ask myself whether it is morally correct to continue to accept my Harvard pension” L.  Sturzo—G.  Salvemini, Luigi Sturzo, Gaetano Salvemini. Carteggio. (1925–1957) (Soveria-Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2009), xxxv. 50 51

154 

F. FANTARELLA

only political allies, whom he threw overboard when they no longer agreed with him. He behaves the same way even with his family and relatives.52

And then, meanly, he concluded: “Salvemini remained ‘pure’ in politics, because he never did anything concrete.”53 Prezzolini’s judgment is soured by personal resentment, however. It was true that Salvemini was a quick-tempered man. But he readily recognized his mistakes. And his intransigence—which Prezzolini bitterly criticized—never led him to be intolerant. The proof is in his friendship with Lauro De Bosis (monarchist) or Luigi Sturzo (Liberal Catholic). In fact, Salvemini wrote of don Sturzo: I met him in London in the autumn of 1925, after having been forced to leave Italy. He had arrived there a year before me. And I immediately felt that this good man, who, naturally, was also intelligent, was not joking around. And I never did joke around with him, because when it comes to serious issues, I don’t have the capacity for certain behaviours! And I believe that from this common respect we had for serious issues was born a friendship that I consider to be among the most beautiful acquisitions in my life. We never argued. Before that Himalayan mountain of certainties and good will, arguing would have made no sense. Whenever we approached a grey zone, we instinctively agreed to avoid the topic, and go our separate ways. The grey zone consisted of religious opinions. Only once, I told him he was a Jansenist, and immediately felt I had offended him: he smiled, surprised, and I cut the subject short. He discussed and permitted the discussion of everything, with a freedom of spirit that I had rarely found among so-called freethinkers; but when the grey zone was approached, the iron curtain fell, and don Sturzo refused to discuss further.54

The same tolerance never led him to demonstrate himself superior to his students or younger friends. But for Salvemini, tolerance was not synonymous with moral weakness. Hence why when it came to questions of corruption, violence, swindling, he left no room either for discussion or 52  G. Prezzolini, “I fastidi di Salvemini,” in L’Italiano Inutile (Milano: Rusconi, 1983), 279–80. Prezzolini’s hatred toward his old friend is rooted in a 1940 dispute, where Salvemini accused him of being a fascist agent: an accusation which could have cost Prezzolini a fine of ten thousand dollars and a year of prison. 53  Ibid., 284. 54  G. Salvemini, Stato e Chiesa in Italia, E. Conti (ed) (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1966), 440–1. For a deeper examination of the relationship between State and Church during fascism, see D. I. Kertzer, Il patto col diavolo. Mussolini e Papa Pio XI. Le relazioni segrete fra il Vaticano e l’Italia fascista (Milano: Rizzoli, 2014).

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

155

for an exchange of ideas. Then, and only then, Salvemini reduced everything to a simple and firm opposition: “either here or there.” Some, perhaps, will judge his attitude toward Fernande cruel. She was a mother destroyed by grief, they might say, and he was unable to console her. But it was precisely this mother’s tormented complaint, her continuous dredging up of Jean’s past—on which the spouses had opposing and irreconcilable opinions—that made their reunion impossible. Salvemini’s marriage to Fernande had never been, to him, a simple union of sexes, an arrangement in which two people lived under the same roof, ate, and slept together. Something stronger had united them. It had been the consonance of their projects, that reciprocal permeation of ideals to bind them: an iron-clad union that Jean’s political activity had shattered. It was unthinkable, thus, for Salvemini to accept living with Fernande once more. In 1949, Salvemini returned to Italy and in 1953 travelled to Sorrento, staying as a guest of his friend Titina Benzoni at Villa La Rufola. Fernande, who was living out her days buried in the darkness of her moral segregation, wrote him:   I imagine you in Sorrento, among dear friends, as happy as possible under the present circumstances.   Here, people continue to die, which I think is the most intelligent thing to do […]. Write to me. Not seeing you this year was much more difficult than you might imagine. I embrace you with all my heart.   Your Fernanda.55

Her words are shrouded in a moving sadness. She must have suffered greatly for Salvemini’s distance, for her life of grey retreat, in contrast with that of Salvemini, illuminated by the sun of Sorrento and by the warmth of dear friendships. Fernande died shortly thereafter, in Paris, on April 2, 1954. Alone. Far from the people she had most loved. Salvemini passed away three years later. In a letter addressed to Fernande commenting on Jean’s demise, he had wished for himself serene death. And his had truly been a cloudless goodbye, tranquil, almost happy. So sweet as to recall the death of Socrates.56 55  Fernande Dauriac to Gaetano Salvemini, without location, March 14 [no year, but likely 1953]. Ags. Further ahead in the text, Fernande refers to Stalin’s death, which occurred on March 5, 1953. Thus, we might date the letter March 14, 1953. 56  E. Rossi, “Salvemini il non conformista,” in Il Mondo, September 17, 1957.

156 

F. FANTARELLA

In the last days of his life, as his strength lessened and his heart weakened, friends, students, colleagues ran to his side to pay tribute to him. Surrounded by affection, Salvemini’s last hours were filled with peace. It was the peace of the man with a clear conscience. With these words, annotated by his friend Maritza Bolaffio, Salvemini left life:   I was happy in life. Many faithful friends. Thanks. Thank you for everything. This is how one dies happily. How happy I am to die this way. Dear ladies, dear ladies, dear ladies, how I loved you; I was not in love with you.   Passing on to death, to death. I don’t understand why people are afraid of dying. Knowledge of this kind of end needs to be disseminated, so people would no longer be afraid.   Dear loved ones, how good you have been: I feel proud to know how, at the moment of my passage …   Thank you for everything, dying this way is worthwhile.   I am interested to know when, exactly, my death will occur.   The passage from life to death at times is nothing more than the putrefaction of the corpse. I recognize you all, one by one.   Having an eternally tranquil conscience is truly interesting. I would like to know, out of curiosity, know when one passes from life to death. Life’s problems are not easy to resolve, they are difficult problems.   To die smiling, that’s what I would like.   How happy I am, you have no idea how happy I am. I have been so lucky in life, and also in death. I could not have imagined a better death. I would like to hug each one of you. This is the most beautiful death I could imagine.   How happy I am to die this way, surrounded by friends, even by those who are not here. This is how one dies willingly.   I could not have had a happier ending than this one, surrounded by friends. How happy I am, how happy I am. And to think that I might have died a month ago. I would like to hug you all, all of you.   I would like to smile widely; I could not have predicted a more serene death than this one. How happy I am. And you, too, should be happy that it is over. Death is slow to arrive.

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

157

Thank you for everything, Concetta, how good you have been. We are truly at the end, but I am happy. Giuliana, a good friend until the end. It is difficult to establish the moment, but everything is ending serenely. How difficult it is to distinguish death from life. I still have the strength to shake a hand.   It is impossible to individuate the moment of passing, it is all one thing. There is no difference between death and life.57

It was September 6, 1957.

57  Salvemini’s last words were published as “Parole di commiato” in Il Ponte, XIII, 1957: 89, 1158; now in Salvemini, Scritti vari, 959–60.

158 

F. FANTARELLA

Fig. 6.1  On the left Ghita Luchaire, on the right her husband Théodore Fraenkel, woman in the middle unknown. (Photo Courtesy Monsieur Jacques Fraenkel—Théodore Fraenkel’s nephew—Paris)

6  A UNION ENDED (1941–1946) 

Fig. 6.2  Jean Luchaire during the trial. Paris, 1946. (Credit: BNF, Paris)

159

160 

F. FANTARELLA

Fig. 6.3  Corinne Luchaire during the trial. Paris, 1946. (Credit: BNF, Paris)

Selected Bibliography

Alden, Geraldine Lillian. The road to collaboration: the life and times of Jean Luchaire. Los Angeles: PhD University of California, Thesis, 1998. Amendola, Giovanni. La nuova democrazia. Napoli: Ricciardi, 1951. Barilli, Caterina. Un uomo e una donna: vita di Ernesto e Ada Rossi. Manduria: Laicata, 1991. Bechman, Arnold. “We go calling on Gaetano Salvemini.” P.M. (1943). Bobbio, Norberto. Fascismo e Antifascismo. Pinerolo: La Tipografia, 1965. ———. L’ideologia del fascismo. Roma: Quaderni della Federazione Italiana Partigiani, 1945. ———. Lo Stato Fascista. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1964. ———. Locke e il diritto naturale. Torino: Giappichelli, 1963. ———. Maestri e compagni: Piero Calamandrei, Aldo Capitini, Eugenio Colorni, Leone Ginzburg, Antonio Giuriolo, Rodolfo Mondolfo, Augusto Monti, Gaetano Salvemini. Firenze: Passigli, 1984. Bosis, Adolfo Lauro De. Storia della mia morte. Volo antifascista su Roma. Firenze: Passigli, 2009. Briand, Aristide. Aristide Briand. La Société des nations et l’Europe, 1919–1932. Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2007. Brinon, Fernand de, Joseph Darnand and Jean Luchaire. Les procès de collaboration: Fernand de Brinon, Joseph Darnand, Jean Luchaire; comte rendu sténographique. Paris: A. Michel, 1948.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8

161

162 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buttafuoco, Annarita. “La filantropia come politica. Esperienze dell’emancipazionismo italiano nel Novecento.” Ragnatele di rapporti. Patronage e reti di relazioni nella storia delle donne. Torino: Rosenberg&Sellier, 1988. 166–187. Cabella, Alberto. “‘Vita Latina—Junes Aureurs’ e ‘Vita’ di Jean Luchaire.” G. C. Bergami, B. Bittoni, N. Bobbio, A. Cabella, L. Campolonghi, R. Davico, P.  Dogliani, M.  Dreyfus, G.  Lombardi, P.  Milza, F.  S. Nitti, S.  Ortaggi Cammarosano, M.  Ostenc, G.  Padulo, A.  Poma, A.  Rosselli, P.  Vilar. Piero Gobetti e la Francia. Atti del colloquio italo francese. Milano: Franco Angeli Editore, 1985. Calamandrei, Piero. Diario, 1939–1945. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1982. ———. Il manganello, la cultura, e la giustizia. Firenze: Nuova Italia, 1968. ———. L’Avvenire dei diritti di libertà. Napoli: Opere Giuridiche, 1968. Calloni, Marina, Lorella Cedroni and Paola Ranzini. Politica e affetti familiari: lettere di Amelia, Carlo e Nello Rosselli a Guglielmo, Leo e Nina Ferrero e Gina Lombroso Ferrero (1917–1943). Milano: Feltrinelli, 1997. Chabod, Federico. L’italia contemporanea (1918–1948). Torino: Einaudi, 1961. Colella, Carlo. Salvemini si ritira sotto la tenda. Brindisi, 1966. Croce, Benedetto. Scritti e discorsi politici. Vol. II. Bari: Laterza, 1963. II vols. Dauriac, Fernande. “Un cas de feminisme pratique et intégrale.” Roman et vie (1908): 202. Defranse, Jean. Le Pacifisme en France. Paris: PUF, 1994. Diana, Rüesch, Bruno Somalvico. “La Voce” e l’Europa: il movimento fiorentino de “La Voce”: dall’identità culturale italiana all’identità culturale europea. Roma: Presidenza del Consiglio dei ministri, Dipartimento per l’informazione e l’editoria, 1995. Dilettoso, Diego. La Parigi e la Francia di Carlo Rosselli. Sulle orme di un umanista in esilio. Milano: Biblion, 2013. Dioudonnat, Pierre-Marie. L’agent nazi à la conquête de la presse française, 1940–1944. Paris: Èdition J. Picollec, 1991. Felice, Renzo De. Fascismo. Milano: Luni Ed., 1998. Fernande, de Brinon, Joseph Darnand, Jean Luchaire, France Haute Cour de Justice. Les procès de collaboration: Fernand de Brinon, Joseph Darnand, Jean Luchaire; comte rendu sténographique. Paris: A. Michel, 1948. Ferrero, Leo. Lettere europee: le lettere familiari di Leo Ferrero dal 1919–1933. Ed. Anne Kornfeld. Roma: Bulzoni, 1999. ———. Diario di un privilegiato sotto il fascismo. Torino: Chiantore, 1946. Filippo, Turati, Anna Kuliscioff. Filippo Turati—Anna Kuliscioff. Carteggio. Vol. II. Torino: Einaudi, 1977. II vols. Fiori, Giuseppe. Casa Rosselli: vita di Carlo e Nello, Amelia, Marion e Maria. Torino: Einaudi, 1999. ———. Una storia italiana: vita di Ernesto Rossi. Torino: Einaudi, 1997.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

163

Gaetano, Salvemini, Ernesto Rossi, Piero Calamandrei. Non Mollare (1925). Con saggi di Gaetano Salvemini, Ernesto Rossi e Piero Calamandrei. Ed. M. Franzinelli. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2005. Gaetano, Salvemini, Giustino Fortunato, Elsa Dallolio. Che vale, moralmente, l’Italia? Lettere di Gaetano Salvemini e Giustino Fortunato ad Elsa Dalloio (1912–1929). Ed. Cordova Ferdinando. Roma: Bulzoni, 2001. Gaetano, Salvemini, Luigi Sturzo. Luigi Sturzo, Gaetano Salvemini. Carteggio. (1925–1957). Soveria Mannelli: Rubettino, 2009. Garosci, Aldo. La vita di Carlo Rosselli. Roma: Edizioni U, 1945. Gentile, Emilio. Le origini dell’ideologia fascista, 1918–1925. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996. ———. Le origini dell’Italia contemporanea. Bologna: Il mulino, 1990. Gentile, Giovanni. Origini e Dottrina del Fascismo. Roma: Istituto Nazionale Fascista di Cultura, 1928. Gobetti, Piero. Piero Gobetti e la Francia: atti del colloquio italo-­francese, 25–27 febbraio 1983. Milano: Franco Angeli, 1985. Gobetti, Piero. La Rivoluzione Liberale. Torino: Einaudi, 1995. Gorguet, Ilde. Les mouvements pacifistes er la réconciliation franco-allemande dans les anneés vingt (1919–1931). Bern: Peter Lnag, 1999. Grazia, Victoria De. How Fascism Ruled Women. Berkley: University, 1992. Grimaldi, Paola. focus.it. 07 April 2009. http://www.focus.it/cultura/storia/ apocalisse-­a-­messina-­il-­terremoto-­piu-­drammatico-­nella-­storia-­d-­italia-­2342-­7 575646-­873843. Guehenno, Jean. Journal des anneés noires, 1940–1944. Paris: Folio, 2002. H.M. Bock, R. Meyer-Kalkus, M. Trebitsch. Entre Locarno et Vichy: les relations culturelles franco-allenades dans les années 1930. Paris: CNRS, 1993. Jackson, Julian. France: the dark years, 1940–1944. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Kedward, Harrry Roderick. Occupied France: Collaboration and Resistance, 1940–1944. Hoboken NJ: Blackwell Publishers, 1985. Kelsen, Hans. La democrazia. Bologna: Il mulino, 1981. Kertzer, David. The Pope and Mussolini: the secret history of Pius XI and the rise of Fascism in Europe. New York: Random House, 2014. Keynes, John Maynard. The Economic Consequences of the Peace. New  York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1919. Kuliscioff, Anna. Anna Kuliscioff. Immagini, scritti, testimonianze. Ed. F. Rodriguez F. Damiani. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978. Lambaueur, Barbara. Les collaborateurs. 1940–1945. Paris: Fayard, 2001. Lévy, Claude. Les Nouveaux temps et l’idéologie de la collaboration. Paris: Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques / A. Colin, 1974. Lottman, Haber R. The purge: the Purification of French Collaborators after World War II. New York: William Morrow & Co, 1986.

164 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Luchaire, Corinne. Ma drôle de vie. Paris: Sun, 1949. Luchaire, Jean. Une génération réaliste. Paris: Librairie Valois, 1929. Luchaire, Julien. Confesion d’un français moyen. Vol. I.  Florence: Olschki, 1965. II vols. ———. Confesion d’un français moyen. Vol. II. Florence: Olschki, 1965. II vols. Lunzer, Renate. “Making sense of the War (Italy), in: 1914–1918.” 30 04 2015. International Encyclopedia of First World War. http://encyclopedia.1914-­1918-­ online.net/article/making_sense_of_the_war_italy. Lussu, Emilio. La Catena. Parigi: Respublica, 1930. ———. Lettere a Carlo Rosselli e altri scritti di Giustizia e Libertà. Sassari: Editrice Libreria Dessì, 1979. ———. Marcia su Roma e dintorni. Torino: Einaudi, 2006. Maillot, Jean-Ren. Jean Luchaire Et La Revue “Notre Temps”, 1927–1940. Bern: Peter Lang Pub Inc, 2013. Mariano, Nicky. Forty Years with Berenson. New York: Knopf, 1966. Meletta, Cédric. Jean Luchaire, 1901–1946: l’enfant perdu des années sombres. Paris: Perrin, 2013. Minervini, Lidia. “Amico e maestro. Ricordi di Salvemini.” Il Mondo (1957): 11, 12. Monelli, Paolo. Mussolini, piccolo borghese. Milano: Garzanti, 1950. Mussolini, Benito. La dottrina del fascismo. Firenze: Vallecchi Editore, 1937. ———. Scritti e discorsi di Benito Mussolini. Milano: Ulrico Hoepli Editore, 1940. Origo, Iris. A need to testify: portraits of Lauro de Bosis, Ruth Draper, Gaetano Salvemini, Ignazio Silone and an essay on biography. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. ———. Un’amica; Ritratto di Elsa Dallolio. Firenze: Passigli, 1988. Ory, Pascal. Les collaborateurs. 1940–1945. Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1976. Papini, Giovanni. Un uomo finito. Firenze: Vallecchi, 1922. Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–1944. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Pecora, Gaetano. La scuola laica: Gaetano Salvemini contro i clericali. Roma: Donzelli, 2015. ———. Socialismo come libertà. La lunga storia di Gaetano Salvemini. Roma: Donzelli, 2012. ———. Uomini della democrazia. Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1986. Pillitteri, Paolo. Anna Kuliscioff. Una biografia politica. Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1986. Prezzolini, Giuseppe. Amici. Firenze: Vallecchi Editore, 1922. ———. La Voce: 1908–1913: cronaca, antologia e fortuna di una rivista. Ed. Emilio Gentile. Milano: Rusconi, 1974. ———. L’Italiano Inutile. Milano: Longanesi, 1954. ———. Vittorio Veneto. Roma: La Voce, 1920.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

165

Pugliese, Stanislao. Carlo Rosselli: socialist heretic and antifascist exile. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Robert, Brasillach, Marcel Bucard, Jean Luchaire, Jean-Hérold Paquis. Quatre procès de trahison devant la Cour de justice de Paris: Paquis, Bucard, Luchaire, Brasillach. Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1947. Rocco, Alfredo. La Formazione dello Stato Fascista. Milano: Giouffré, 1938. Rosselli, Aldo. La famiglia Rosselli: una tragedia italiana. Milano: Bompiani, 1983. Rosselli, Amelia. Memorie. Ed. M. Calloni. Bologna: Il mulino, 2001. Rosselli, Carlo. Giustizia e libertà e la concentrazione antifascista, 1929–1934. Ed. Costanzo Casucci. Torino: Einaudi, 1988. ———. I Rosselli: eresia creativa, eredità originale. Napoli: Guida, 2005. ———. Lessico familiare. Vita, cultura e politica della famiglia Rosselli all’insegna della libertà. Ed. Gian Luca Corradi and Zeffiro Ciuffoletti. Città di Castello [Roma] : Edimond Direzione generale per gli archivi, 2002. ———. Scritti dall’Esilio. Ed. Costanzo Casucci. Torino: Einaudi, 1988. ———. Scritti politici e autobiografici. Napoli: Polis Editrice, 1944. ———. Socialismo liberale. Torino: Einaudi, 1973. Rosselli, Carlo, Gaetano Salvemini. Fra le righe: carteggio fra Carlo Rosselli e Gaetano Salvemini. Ed. Elisa Signori. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2009. Rosselli, Carlo, Marion Cave. Dall’esilio: lettere alla moglie: 1929–1937. Firenze: Passigli, 1997. Rosselli, Carlo, Nello Rosselli. I Rosselli: epistolario familiare di Carlo, Nello, Amelia Rosselli: 1914–1937. Milano: Mondadori, 1997. Rosselli, Carlo, Nello Rosselli, Amelia Rosselli. Epistolario familiare: Carlo, Nello Rosselli, e la madre (1914–1937). Ed. Zeffiro Ciuffoletti. Milano: SugarCo, 1979. Rosselli, Nello. Carlo Pisacane nel risorgimento italiano. Milano: C. M. Lerici, 1948. ———. Mazzini e Bakunin. Dodici anni di movimento operaio in Italia (1860–1872). Torino: Einaudi, 1967. ———. Nello Rosselli, uno storico sotto il fascismo: lettere e scritti vari (1924–1937). Ed. Zeffiro Ciuffoletti. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1978. Rossi, Elide. Lettere ad Ernesto. Firenze: La nuova Italia, 1958. Rossi, Ernesto. Elogio della galera: lettere 1930/1943. Ed. Manlio Magini. Bari: Laterza, 1968. ———. Guerra e dopoguerra: lettere 1915–1930. Ed. Giuseppe Armani. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1978. ———. La forza di non mollare: Ernesto Rossi dalla grande guerra a Giustizia e libertà. Ed. Giuseppe Armani. Milano: F. Angeli, 2004. ———. No al fascismo. Torino: Einaudi, 1963. ———. Nove anni sono molti: lettere dal carcere 1930–1939. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2001. ———. “Salvemini, il non conformista.” Il Mondo (1957): 21–27.

166 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

———. Un democratico ribelle: cospirazione antifascista, carcere, confino. Milano: Kaos, 2001. ———. Una spia del regime. Ed. Mimmo Franzinelli. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2000. ———. Una spia del regime: documenti e note. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1955. Russo, Henry. Un château en Allemagne: La France de Pétain en exil, Singmaringen 1944–1945. Paris: Rasmay, 1980. Salomone, William. Introduzione all’età giolittiana. Torino: Einaudi, 1949. Salvatorelli, Luigi. Nazionalfascismo. Torino: Einaudi, 1997. Salvemini Gaetano, Rossi Ernesto. Dall’esilio alla Repubblica. Lettere 1944–1957. Ed. M. Franzinelli. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2004. Salvemini, Gaetano. La rivoluzione francese. 1788–1792. Ed. F. Venturi. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1962. ———. “Come siamo andati in Libia” e altri scritti dal 1900 al 1915. Ed. A. Torre. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1963. ———. “La dignità cavalleresca nel Comune di Firenze” e altri scritti. Ed. E. Sestan. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1972. ———. Carteggi 1895–1911. Ed. E. Gencarelli. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1968. ———. Carteggio 1894–1902. Ed. S. Bucchi. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1988. ———. Carteggio 1903–1906. Ed. S. Bucchi. Manduria: Piero Lacaita Editore, 1997. ———. Carteggio 1907–1909. Ed. S. Bucchi. Manduria: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2001. ———. Carteggio 1910. Ed. S. Bucchi. Manduria: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2003. ———. Carteggio 1911. Ed. S. Bucchi. Manduria: Piero Lacaita Editore, 2004. ———. Carteggio 1912–1914. Ed. E. Tagliacozzo. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1984. ———. Carteggio 1914–1920. Ed. E. Tagliacozzo. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1985. ———. Carteggio 1921–1926. Ed. E. Tagliacozzo. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1985. ———. Dai ricordi di un fuoruscito. 1922–1933. Ed. M.  Franzinelli. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002. ———. Dalla guerra mondiale alla dittatura. 1916–1925. Ed. C.  Pischedda. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1964. ———. Dizionario delle Idee. Ed. Sergio Bucchi. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1997. ———. “Fu l’Italia prefascista una democrazia?” Il Ponte (1952). ———. Il ministro della mala vita. Notizie e documenti sulle elezioni giolittiane nell’Italia meridionale. Ed. S. Bucchi. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2000. ———. La politica estera italiana dal 1871 al 1915. Ed. A.  Torre. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1970. ———. La questione dell’Adriatico. Firenze: Libreria della Voce, 1919. ———. “La storia considerata come scienza.” Rivista Italiana di Sociologia (1902): 54.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

167

———. Lettere Americane. 1927–1949. Ed. Renato Camurri. Roma: Donzelli, 2015. ———. Magnati e popolani a Firenze dal 1280 al 1295. Ed. E.  Sestan. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961. ———. Memorie e soliloqui. Diario 1922–1923. Ed. R. Pertici. Bologna: Società editrice Il Mulino, 2001. ———. “Per una scuola dell’Agro Romano.” L’Unità (III). ———. Preludio alla seconda guerra mondiale. Ed. A.  Torre. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1967. ———. Salvemini e i Battisti. Carteggio 1894–1957. Ed. V. Calí. Trento: Temi— Museo del Risorgimento, 1987. ———. Scritti sul Fascismo. Ed. R.  Vivarelli. Vol. I.  Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961. III vols. ———. Scritti sul Fascismo. Ed. N. Valeri and R. Merola. Vol. II. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1966. III vols. ———. Scritti sul Fascismo. Ed. R.  Vivarelli. Vol. III.  Milano: Feltrinelli, 1974. III vols. ———. Scritti sul Risorgimento. Ed. P.  Pieri and C.  Pischedda. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961. ———. Scritti sulla scuola. Ed. L.  Borghi and B.  Finocchiaro. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1966. ———. Scritti Vari. Ed. G. Agosti and A. Galante Garrone. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978. ———. Stato e Chiesa in Italia. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1966. ———. Sulla democrazia. Ed. S. Bucchi. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2007. ———. Tha Fascist Dictatorship. Madison: International Committeee for Political Prisoners, 1926. ———. Zanotti Bianco e Salvemini. Ed. A. Galante Garrone. Napoli: Guida, 1984. Schlesinger, Jr, Arthur M. A life in the 20th Century, Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000. Stille, Alexander. Benevolence and betrayal: five Italian Jewish families under fascism. New York: Summit Books, 1991. Sweets, John F. Choices in Vichy France: The French Under Nazi Occupation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Tasca Angelo, Salvemini Gaetano, Il dovere di testimoniare. Carteggio. Ed. E. Signori. “Collezione di studi meridionali”. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1996. Torchiani, Francesco. L’oltretevere da oltreoceano. L’esilio americano di Giorgio La Piana. Roma: Donzelli, 2015. Turati, Filippo. Scritti Politici, 1878–1932. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1979. Venner, Dominique. Histoire de la colaboration. Paris: Pygmalion, 2000.

168 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vinen, Richard. The Unfree french: Life under the Occupation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Wohl, Robert. The Generation of 1914. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. Wrona, Carole. Corinne Luchaire, un colibri dans la tempête. Grandvilliers: Èditions la tour verte, 2011.

Index

A Abetz, Otto, 2, 2n3, 98, 114–116, 115n32, 116n36, 127–129, 130n7, 134, 145, 146 Addis Saba, Marina, 40n28 Agosti, Giorgio, 9n5 Alden, Geraldine Lillian, 60n2, 65, 116n36, 118n42, 122 Aleramo, Sibilla, 2, 29, 29n1, 29–30n2, 30n3, 35, 37–39, 67 Allégret, Marc, 129n5 A. Prato, Carlo, 72 Arfè, Gaetano, 15n23 Armani, Giuseppe, 63n12 B Badoul, Lucie, said Yuki, 115n33 Balbo, Italo, 105 Bariéty, Jacques, 113n28 Basso, Lelio, 15n23 Battisti, Cesare, 88

Bauer, Riccardo, 98n104 Benzoni, Titina, 155 Berenson, Bernard, 13n16, 31, 34, 37n20, 61, 85, 134, 136 Berenson, Mary, 93, 95 Bernard, Raymond, 129n5 Besnard, Albert, 112 Besnard, Françoise, 69–73 Besnard, Robert, 69 Bissolati, Leonida, 84 Bloch, Jean-Richard, 33 Blum, Léon, 116, 119, 120, 142, 143 Bobbio, Norberto, 34n15 Bock, Hans, 114n28 Bolaffio family, 3 Bolaffio, Maritza, 156 Bonnet, Georges, 116n36 Borghi, Armando, 146 Borghi, Lamberto, 17n29 Briand, Aristide, 113–115, 116n36 Brunetti, Giovanni, 88n75 Buttafuoco, Annarita, 39n26, 40n26

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 F. Fantarella, The Family of Gaetano Salvemini Under Fascism, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28742-8

169

170 

INDEX

C Cabella, Alberto, 60n3 Cafagna, Luciano, 14n20 Calace, Vincenzo, 98n104 Calamandrei, Piero, 82, 88n75 Calloni, Marina, 39n25, 57n70, 82n59 Caminiti, Luciana, 19n34 Camurri, Renato, 106n8 Carducci, Giosue, 9 Carrara, Mario, 38n25 Cattaneo, Carlo, xiv, 14, 15, 15n24 Cave, Marion Catherine, 82 Cedroni, Lorella, 39n25, 57n70, 82n59 Cena, Giovanni, 29, 29n1, 29–30n2, 30n3, 39 Ceva, Umberto, 98n104 Chamberlain, Arthur Neville, 145 Chenal, Pierre, 129n5 Chirico, Gianpiero, 19n34 Churchill, Winston, 32n5 Cianca, Alberto, 98 Ciano, Costanzo, 92 Ciano, Galeazzo, 92 Cioffrese, Domenico, 48 Cipolla, Carlo, 54 Clouzot, Henri-Georges, 128n3 Colombo Ascari, Rosalia, 40n28 Conti, Augusto, 10 Conti, Bruna, 47 Conti, Elio, 154n54 Cordova, Ferdinando, 38n24 Crémieux, Benjamin, 33 Croce, Benedetto, 15n25, 36 D Daddi, Giuliano, 52n61 Dallolio, Alfredo, 38n24 Dallolio, Elsa, 2, 38–40, 38n24, 52, 54, 70, 71, 87, 131, 132n11, 138, 152

D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 62, 62n8, 63n9, 68, 85 Darol, Guy, 122n52, 133n15 Dauriac, Carle, 22n42 Dauriac, Fernande, x, xv, 2, 22, 22n41, 22n42, 82n59, 108, 132n11, 135n23, 137, 142n36, 151n45 Dauriac, Lionel, 22n42 Davidsohn, Robert, 33 De Bosis, Lauro, 105–107, 154 De Bruycker, Suzanne, 115 DeCaro, Gaspare, 1n2 Defrasne, Jean, 113n28 De Gaulle, Charles, 132 Del Re, Carlo, 98, 98n104 Dentz, Henri-Fernand, 149 Desnos, Robert, 115n33, 133n15, 133n16 De Viti De Marco, Antonio, 53, 63n9, 68 Dickie, John, 19n34 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 98 Draper, Ruth, 107 E Einaudi, Luigi, 34n15 Emery, Luigi, 60n3 Esteva, Jean-Pierre, 149 F Fantarella, Filomena, x, xii, xv, xvi Feilh, Eugen, 116n36 Ferrante, Lucia, 40n26 Ferrari, Giuseppe, 14 Ferrero, family, 115 Ferrero, Guglielmo, 39n25, 54, 55 Ferrero, Leo, 55, 57–59, 66n20 Ferrero, Nina, 55 Ferretti, Grazia, 66, 67 Finocchiaro, Beniamino, 17n29

 INDEX 

Fiori, Giuseppe, 78n52 Fortunato, Giustino, 14, 14n21, 32–33, 36, 37, 46 Fraenkel, Jacques, 133, 133n16, 135n23 Fraenkel, Michel Vladimir, 133n16 Fraenkel, Théodore, 115, 115n33, 132, 133n16, 158 Fraentzel, Anna, 29n1 Francesco Ferdinando D’Asburgo, 51 Francis Ferdinand, Hapsburg Archduke, 51 Franco, Francisco, 132 Franzinelli, Mimmo, 79n53 French, Elena, 13n16 G Galante Garrone, Alessandro, 21n40 Garbasso, Antonio, 88n75 Gencarelli, Elvira, 11n9 Gentile, Emilio, 33n10, 51n54 Gentile, Giovanni, 23, 23n45, 24, 31n5, 36 George, Lloyd, 72 Ghisleri, Arcangelo, 62n7 Gide, André, 33 Giolitti, Giovanni, 20n37, 32n5, 33, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 66, 68, 69 Gobetti, Piero, 60, 60n3, 66, 66n20, 68, 69, 76, 82 Gramsci, Antonio, 20n37 Grimaldi, Paola, 19n35 Guéhenno, Jean, 128n3 H Herriot, Édouard, 143 Hitler, Adolf, 98, 116, 116n35, 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 127, 130, 133, 137, 139, 140, 148

171

I Imbart de la Tour, 11 J Jahier, Piero, 82 Joannon, Léo, 129n5 K Kedward, Roderick, 128n3 Kertzer, David I., 154n54 Keynes, John Maynard, 62n8 Killinger, Charles, 1n2, 108, 134 Kirner, Giuseppe, 17, 47 Koch, Hannsjoachim Wolfgang, 116n35 Kuliscioff, Anna, 36, 40, 43–45, 47 L La Piana, Giorgio, 106, 107, 153n51 Laval, Pierre, 128, 129, 144, 145, 148 Lévy, Claude, 113n28 Limone, Giuseppe, 66n20 Lombroso Carrara, Paola, 2, 38 Lombroso, Cesare, 38n25 Lombroso Ferrero, Gina, 2, 38 Luchaire, Achille, 22n41 Luchaire, André, 49n48 Luchaire, Corinne, 142, 160 Luchaire, family, 115 Luchaire, Julien, xv, 2, 22, 22n41, 49, 54, 65, 112, 114, 122, 130, 131, 133, 135 Luchaire, Marguerite, said Ghita, xv, 2 Lussu, Emilio, xiv, 97, 98 Luttazzo, Gino, 48 M Magini, Manlio, 79n53 Maillot, Jean-René, 113n26

172 

INDEX

Marchetti Ferruccio, 91, 94 Mariano, Nicky, 37n20 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 51 Marple, Harriet, 137, 138n29, 143 Marx, Karl, 10 Massey, Isabella (Isabel), 2n2, 118, 129, 130, 145 Matteotti, Giacomo, 87, 89, 89n77 Mattoli, Mario, 129n5 Maturi, Walter, xiv Mauthner, Martin, 115n32, 117n37, 127n1, 129n4, 129n5, 130n7, 133n17 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 77 Mazzoni, Guido, 33 Meletta, Cédric, 22n41, 22n42, 108, 109, 122, 132, 133n15, 135n23 Melograni, Piero, 51n54 Melville, Jean-Pierre, 128n3 Meyer-Kalkus, Reinhardt, 114n28 Minervini, Corrado, 11 Minervini, family, 12n13 Minervini, Lidia, 11, 19n36, 30n4, 88, 90 Minervini, Maria, 3, 12, 12n13, 13, 18, 21, 26, 71 Modigliani, Giuseppe Emanuele, 98 Moguy, Léonide, 129n5 Morino, Alba, 47 Moulaert, René, 115n33, 135n23 Mussolini, Benito, x, xi, 3, 19, 19n36, 20, 20n37, 23n45, 31–32n5, 58, 62, 62–63n9, 63, 63n10, 68, 78n52, 85, 87–89, 89n77, 91, 92, 95, 98, 103–107, 115, 117–120, 138, 148 N Niccoli, Alfredo, 82 Nolte, Ernst, 98n105

O Ojetti, Ugo, 48, 86 Ophüls, Marcel, 128n3 Origo, Iris, 2n2, 22n42, 38n24, 55, 72, 108, 134, 135, 152 Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele, 62 Ostakhova, Tatiana, 19n34 P Padovani, Marie, 49 Paget, Violet, 13n16 Palazzeschi, Aldo, 33 Palazzi, Maura, 40n26 Pansini, Pietro, 48 Pannunzio, Giacinto, 86 Paoli, Cesare, 10, 11 Papafava, Francesco, 17 Papini, Giovanni, 31–33 Parri, Ferruccio, 98n104 Pascoli, Giovanni, 16 Pavolini, Sandro, 57, 58, 123 Paxton, Robert O., 113n26 Pecora, Gaetano, 15n25 Pedone, Franco, 40n28 Pétain, Philippe, 128, 134, 144, 148, 149, 152 Pickering-Iazzi, Robin, 40n28 Pieri, Piero, 15n24 Pillitteri, Paolo, 43n31 Pincherle, Amelia, 55, 77, 79 Pischedda, Carlo, 15n24 Placci, Carlo, 10n9, 12, 12–13n16, 16, 18, 30, 32, 34, 36 Placci, family, 12n16 Plan, Pierre-Paul, 36n22 Poincaré, Raymond, 71, 72, 72n32 Polito, Pietro, 69n25 Pomata, Gianna, 40n26 Prezzolini, Giuseppe, 2, 31–34, 31–32n5, 36, 46, 49, 95, 118, 153, 154, 154n52

 INDEX 

Prospero, Ada, 68 Pucci, Bruno, 87n73 Q Quagliariello, Gaetano, xn2, 1n2 Quasimodo, Salvatore, 20n38, 21 R Ragionieri, Ernesto, 78n48 Rajna, Pino, 33 Renda, Francesco, 16n27 Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 116 Riccobono, Franz, 19n34 Roberto, Bernardino, 98n104 Rodriguez, Fabio, 44n33 Rolland, Romain, 33 Romano, Salvatore Francesco, 16n27 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 32n5 Rosselli, Aldo, 60 Rosselli, Carlo, xi, 55, 58, 60, 64, 65, 66n20, 76–83, 82n59, 87n73, 89, 90, 96–99, 117–119, 118n42, 121, 122, 130, 145 Rosselli, family, 77, 115 Rosselli, Giuseppe Emanuele, 79 Rosselli, Nello, 55, 57, 58, 60, 60n2, 65, 66n20, 76–82, 82n59, 89, 90, 96, 117, 119, 121, 122, 130 Rosselli, Pellegrino, 77 Rossi, Ada, 79n53, 121 Rossi, Claretta, 79, 87n73 Rossi della Manta, Antonio, 79 Rossi, Ernesto, xi, xiv, 61, 63–66, 66n20, 76–83, 78n52, 79n53, 85, 87n73, 89, 90, 96, 98, 98n104, 119–122 Rossi, Paolo, 79, 87n73 Rossi, Serenella, 79 Rota, Ettore, 14n19 Rousso, Henry, 134n19 Rüesch, Diana, 34n12

173

S Sabatier, Paul, 33 Salazar, António de Oliveira, 98 Salvadori, Massimo, 1n2 Salvemini, Camilla, 3, 18, 21, 21n39 Salvemini, Corrado, 18 Salvemini, Elena Silva, 18 Salvemini, Filippo, 11, 23 Salvemini, Leonida, 18 Salvemini, Ugo, 23, 24 Schiavi, Alessandro, 40n28 Schirach, Baldur von, 116, 116n35 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., 108, 109, 111, 132, 133n16, 140n32 Scott, Robert Falcon, 80n53 Serpe, Brunella, 30n3 Signori, Elisa, 117n38 Silva, Pietro, 1n2 Socrates, 155 Soffici, Ardengo, 33 Somalvico, Bruno, 34n12 Sorani, Aldo, 94 Stalin (Iosif vissarionovič Džugašvili), 32n5, 155n55 Sturzo, Luigi, 154 Sweets, John F., 128n3 T Tagliacozzo, Enzo, 1n2, 13n16, 60n4, 107, 108, 134 Tarassi, Massimo, 82n58 Tarchiani, Alberto, 117, 118n42 Todesco, Maria, 82n59 Togliatti, Palmiro, 77, 77–78n48 Tolstoj, Lev Nikolaevič, 60, 80n53 Torchiani, Francesco, 106n8 Torraca, Vincenzo, 67 Traquandi, Nello, 87n73, 98n104 Trebitsch, Michel, 114n28 Treves, Claudio, 98 Tucci, Niccolò, 2, 2n3, 4

174 

INDEX

Turati, Filippo, 33, 36, 42–46, 93, 96, 98 Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevič, 60 V Valentino, Rodolfo (Rodolfo Guglielmi), 49 Valenzani, Domenico, 47n44 Vallentin, Antonina Vannetti, 131 Vannucci, Dino, 87n73 Verardi, Elide, 79 Verne, Jules, 60 Villari, Pasquale, xiii, 10, 12n16, 18, 33 Vittorio Emanuele III, King of Italy, 89, 89n78

W Weil-Curiel, André, 130n7 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow, 62 Wohl, Robert, 114n31 Wrona, Carole, 129n5 Z Zampini, Tania, xvii, xviin1 Zanotti-Bianco, Umberto, 30, 30n3, 39, 50, 51n56, 53n61, 97 Zeller, Alphonsine Philippines Virginie, 22n41 Zeller, Jules, 22n41 Zucaro, Domenico, 98n104