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Giuseppe Mazzini and the Origins of Fascism pp 49–67Cite as

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Mazzini in the New Century

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Abstract

From the early twentieth century onward, Mazzini’s thought was increasingly appropriated, ideologically transformed, and reinterpreted from spiritualist, irrationalist, authoritarian, and even colonialist points of view. Appropriation involved diminishing or neutralizing part of Mazzini’s political thought while emphasizing or idealizing other aspects. These processes not only affected individual readings of the patriot’s writings, but were also involved in the diffusion of Mazzini’s most well-known work in public schools—in the latter case, the State itself would be responsible for selecting or even censoring features of his thought. Yet in the same period precisely these authoritarian and irrationalist facets of his thought would undergo dissection, criticism, or rejection by writers, thinkers, and scholars whose historical and political analyses would have a lasting influence.

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Notes

  1. See Terenzio Grandi, Appunti di Bibliografia Mazziniana: La fortuna dei “Doveri” e Mazzini fuori d’Italia, Turin: Associazione Mazziniana Italiana, 1961, p. 37.

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  2. Ibid., pp. 38–39.

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  3. Ibid., p. 41.

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  4. Ibid., p. 42. Unorthodox Republican Arcangelo Ghisleri instead criticized the adoption of the Doveri, considering it to be “too theological and too dogmatic” (cited in Napoleone Colajanni, Preti e socialisti contro Mazzini (1903), Rome: Libreria Politica Moderna, 1921, p. 16). For the complicated evolution of the Ghisleri’s attitude toward Mazzini, which was critical of the theistic aspects and against the contemporary nationalistic interpretations of the war in Libya; then democratic interventionist also in Mazzini’s name; and finally defender of the factory councils in the 1919 turmoils of the so-called biennio rosso (the two-year “red period” of factory occupations inspired by contemporary events in the Soviet Union), and against the bourgeoisie and the government, in the name of a Mazzinian “education” of the workers, see Aroldo Benini, Vita e tempi di Arcangelo Ghisleri (1855–1938), Bari: Lacaita, 1975.

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  5. Two years later, though, a decree signed by the king, Victor Emanuel III, and by Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando gave orders for the publication of a national edition of the works of Mazzini, now recognized—in view of the centenary of his birth—as “the apostle of unification.” See Michele Finelli, Il monumento di carta: L’Edizione Nazionale degli Scritti di Giuseppe Mazzini, Villa Verrucchio (Ravenna): Pazzini, 2004, pp. 59–70.

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  6. See Colajanni, Preti e socialistic p. 22 (also for the citation of Treves), which responded to the Socialists’ harsh criticisms of the Doveri dell’Uomo and of the adoption of the text in schools. Colajanni’s pamphlet contains a reconstruction of the lively debate for and against Mazzini in this period. There is no mention of Preti e socialisti in the wide-ranging study by Jean-Yves Fretigné, Biographie intellectuelle d’un protagoniste de l’Italie liberale: Napoleone Colajanni (1847–1921), Rome: École Française de Rome, 2002.

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  7. Gaetano Salvemini, Mazzini (1925), in Gaetano Salvemini, Scritti sul Risorgimento, ed. Piero Pieri and Carlo Psichedda, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1973, pp. 200–201. As mentioned, I usually refer here to the English-language translation, Mazzini, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957, trans. I. M. Rawson, revised and enlarged by the author, with some changes of my own.

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  8. Tommaso Gallarati Scotti, Giuseppe Mazzini e il suo idealismo politico e religioso: Discorso, Milan: Cogliati, 1904, pp. 37 and 47.

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  9. Ibid., p. 18 (quotation marks in original).

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  10. Ibid., pp. 9–10.

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  11. Ibid., pp. 5–6.

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  12. See Antonio Fogazzaro, Lettere scelte, ed. T. Gallarati Scotti, Milan: Mondadori, 1940, p. 533, letter of July 21, 1904.

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  13. The main evocations of Mazzini in Pascoli’s verses are, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, Inno secolare a Mazzini (this poem, with a strong Carduccian inspiration, appeared in Il Marzocco in June 1905, and was later collected in Pascoli’s Odi e Inni, 1906) and, in 1911, two episodes of the Poemi del Risorgimento, an incomplete work published posthumously in 1913. See Mazzini nella poesia, ed. Terenzio Grandi, Pisa: Domus Mazziniana, 1959, pp. 192–201 and 272–281.

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  14. I follow and cite Mario Isnenghi, Le campagne di un vate di campagna: Fra mandati sociali e autorappresentazioni degli intellettuali, in Pascoli e la cultura del Novecento, ed. Andrea Battistini, Gianfranco Miro Gori, and Clemente Mazzotta, Venice: Marsilio, 2007, pp. 13–18.

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  15. See Una sagra, speech given at the University of Messina, June 1900, in Giovanni Pascoli, Pensieri e discorsi. MDCCCXCV–MCMVI, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1906, p. 216. In 1908 he would speak of “Latin socialism” (see Isnenghi, Le campagne di un vate, p. 16).

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  16. “Nell’Università di Bologna: Un’uomo di pensiero e un uomo d’azione,” 1908, in Giovanni Pascoli, Patria e umanità: Raccolta di scritti e discorsi, ed. Maria Pascoli, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1914, p. 24.

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  17. On nationalism as a “modern variant of Mazzinian Italianism,” which did however “alter its original spirit,” see Emilio Gentile, Il mito dello Stato nuovo: Dal radicalismo nazionale al fascismo, 2nd ed., Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1999, p. 9.

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  18. See Enrico Corradini, Discorsi politici (1902–1923), Florence: Vallecchi, 1923, p. 134. It should be remembered that Corradini, before Pascoli, had in that same year described Italy as a “proletarian nation,” speaking of the people’s “love of their fatherland” and of the “national conscience” as a “religion” and as a “school of discipline and duty” (Id., Le nazioni proletarie e il nazionalismo, January 1911, ibid., pp. 105 and 114). With the exception of these echoes of Mazzini’s religion of the nation, there are relatively few direct references to Mazzini in Corradini’s political writings.

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  19. See in particular Zeev Sternhell, Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, trans. David Maisel, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994 (orig. ed. Paris, 1989); Emilio Gentile, The Origins of Fasicst Ideology, 1918–1925, trans. Robert L. Miller, New York: Enigma Books, 2005 (orig. ed. Bologna, 1996).

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  20. See Georges Sorel, “Étude sur Vico,” Devenir Social, II, 1896, pp. 783–817, 906–941, and 1013–1046; Georges Sorel, Préface (1905) to Matériaux d’une théorie du proletariat, Paris: Rivière, 1919; Id., Considerazioni sulla violenza, trans. Antonio Sarno and foreword by Benedetto Croce, Bari: Laterza, 1909 (orig. ed. Paris, 1908).

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  21. Sorel to Croce, August 7, 1897, in Georges Sorel, Lettere a Benedetto Croce, ed. S. Onufrio, Bari: De Donato, 1980, p. 43. A few months earlier (May 14, 1897) Antonio Labriola wrote a letter to Sorel mentioning the friction between Mazzini and Marx and Engels, who had challenged Mazzini’s idealistic formula “la patrie et Dieu,” in Antonio Labriola, Socialisme et Philosophie (Lettres à G. Sorel), Paris: Giard et Brière, 1899, p. 58.

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  22. Sorel to Missiroli, April 1, 1914, ibid., p. 200 note (Georges Sorel, Lettere a un amico d’Italia, Bologna: Cappelli, 1963, p. 113).

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  23. Mario Missiroli, La monarchia socialista: Estrema destra, Bari: Laterza, 1914, pp. 34–35.

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  24. See the entire chapter “Il dissidio di Mazzini,” ibid., pp. 31–51 (the quotations are on pp. 42, 49, 50). This conclusion probably contains an echo of Salvemini’s interpretation that Missiroli was probably aware of, even if he does not cite it in his bibliography. His assessment of Mazzini’s antidemocratic slant was not linear because he also underlined the Mazzinian dream of a “universal democracy,” which Missiroli still defined as “mystic republic” at one point (ibid., pp. 33 and 50).

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  25. Benedetto Croce, Cristianesimo, socialismo e metodo storico (“A proposito di un libro di G. Sorel,” La Critica, V, 1907, pp. 317–330. This was an essay on Sorel based on his work Le système historique de Renan (Paris, 1906) and which Croce would republish the following year as the introduction to the Italian translation of Réflexions sur la Violence). On Croce and Sorel, Stefano Miccolis, “Il ‘sorelismo’ di Croce,” Nuovi studi politici, XV, 3, July–September 1984, pp. 29–42; Sergio Romano, “Georges Sorel et Benedetto Croce,” in Georges Sorel et son temps: Sous la direction de Jacques Juillard et Shlomo Sand, Paris: Seuil, 1985, pp. 249–262.

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  26. On this process, revolving around the concept of myth, see Zeev Sternhell, The Birth of Fascist Ideology, chapter I “Georges Sorel,” part Antirationalism and Activism, pp. 55–71. On the irrationalist, anti-intellectualist, activist, and heroicizing nature of the myth in Sorel, see S. P. Rouanet, “Irrationalism and Myth in Georges Sorel,” The Review of Politics, 26, 1, January 1964, pp. 45–69. See also, Jack J. Roth, The Cult of Violence: Sorel and the Sorelians, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1980.

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  27. Croce to Vossler, August 25, 1933, in Jack. J. Roth, “The Roots of Italian Fascism: Sorel and Sorelismo,” Journal of Modern History, 39, 1, March 1967, p. 43.

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  28. See Walter Adamson, Avant-Garde Florence: From Modernism to Fascism, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 64–79 in particular; Id., “Fascism and Culture: Avant-Gardes and Secular Religion in the Italian Case,” Journal of Contemporary History, 24, July 1989, pp. 411–435. See also mentions by Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics, p. 13, although mainly focused on Prezzolini and La Voce.”

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  29. Giovanni Papini, Un uomo finito (1912), ed. Anna Casini Paszkowski, Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1994. p. 112 (An English translation is The Failure, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1924).

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  30. Papini to Prezzolini, August 18, 1905 (concerning his emotional response to Bolton King’s biography of Mazzini), and Prezzolini to Papini, January 9, 1906 (who had also “read the King [book]”), see Giovanni Papini-Giuseppe Prezzolini, Carteggio. I. 1900–1907. Dagli “Uomini Liberi” alla fine del “Leonardo,” ed. Sandro Gentili and Gloria Minghetti, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003, pp. 424 and 515.

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  31. Papini to Soffici, September 9, 1905, in Giovanni Papini-Ardengo Soffici, Carteggio. I. 1903–1908. Dal “Leonardo” a “La Voce,” ed. Mario Richter, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991, p. 78.

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  32. According to Roberto Ridolfi, Vita di Giovanni Papini, Milan: Mondadori, 1957, pp. 38–39 (from which I have also taken the quotes).

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  33. Ibid., p. 41, quotation taken from Papini’s Passato remoto (1948).

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  34. See the unpublished fragment “Il dominio del gregge (Il socialismo)” dated March 1902, in Giovanni Papini, Il non finito. Diario 1900 e scritti inediti giovanili, ed. Anna Casini Paszkowski, Florence: Le Lettere, 2005, pp. 182–183. But the formula and underlying theory of this text are taken up again in Gian Falco [pseudonym of Giovanni Papini], “Chi sono i socialisti,” Leonardo, I, 5, February 22, 1903, in La cultura italiana del ’900 attraverso le riviste, ed. Delia Frigessi, vol. I, 2nd ed., Turin: Einaudi, 1960, pp. 120–128.

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  35. See Mario Richter, Papini e Soffici: Mezzo secolo di vita italiana (1903–1956), Florence: Le Lettere, 2005, pp. 24–26.

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  36. A couple of decades later, Papini, who had in the meantime undergone his conversion to Catholicism, dismissed Mazzini, writing, “[He] was one of the many lay prophets emerging after the French Revolution, immersed in a rather pedantic yet possibly sincere evangelism, a romantic, and ultimately unsuccessful follower of Lamennais—who did not live to see either the Republic or the Third Rome, and died while the monarchy was consolidating itself and Pius IX was beginning to appear a saint-like figure” (See Piero Bargellini-Giovanni Papini, Carteggio 1923–1956, ed. Maria Chiara Tarsi, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2006, p. 49, letter to Bargellini, August 31, 1928).

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  37. See also the contemporary recording: “I have just been reading all of Mazzini’s works […] This year I have only been reading works from the Italian Risorgimento. After so much Middle Age, a little contemporary age will do me good,” Salvemini to Arcangelo Ghisleri, [after April 18, 1899], in Gaetano Salvemini, Carteggio (1894–1902), ed. Sergio Bucchi, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1988, p. 216.

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  38. See Marino Berengo, “Salvemini storico e la reazione del ’98,” in Atti del Convegno su Gaetano Salvemini, Florence, November 8–10, 1975, ed. Ernesto Sestan, Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1977, pp. 69–85, although no mention is made of Salvemini’s interest in and works on Mazzini.

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  39. Salvemini’s interest in Cattaneo culminated, on the editorial level, in the editing of the book Le più belle pagine di C. Cattaneo, ed. Gaetano Salvemini, Milan: Treves, 1922. On his close ideal, methodological and political relationship with Cattaneo, see Norberto Bobbio. “La non-filosofia di Salvemini,” in Bobbio, Maestri e compagni, Florence: Passigli, 1984, pp. 39–40.

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  40. Gaetano Salvemini to Ettore Rota, March 23, 1919, in Gaetano Salvemini, Carteggio 1914–1920, ed. Enzo Tagliacozzo, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1984, p. 457.

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  41. Rerum Scriptor [pseudonym of Gaetano Salvemini] “Giuseppe Mazzini nel 1848,” L’Educazione Politica, March 31, 1900 in Id., Scritti vari, ed. G. Agosti and A. Galante Garrone, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978, p. 213; Giuseppe Giarrizzo, “Gaetano Salvemini: la politica,” in Gaetano Salvemini tra politica e storia, ed. Gaetano Cingari, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1986, p. 20.

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  42. Salvemini to Leonida Bissolati, March 17, 1903, in Gaetano Salvemini, Carteggio 1903–1906, ed. Sergio Bucchi, Manduria (Taranto): Lacaita, 1997, p. 47.

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  43. Ibid., p. 50. These worries and criticisms bring Salvemini closer to the position of Claudio Treves (mentioned favorably in the letter) who had on that occasion defined the Doveri as “a conservative moral tool.” For Treves Mazzini was “too much of a priest, too much of a prophet” (in Giarrizzo, Gaetano Salvemini: la politica, p. 21).

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  44. On the “finally historicized” Mazzini of Salvemini, while he had previously been a “divinity” for his “followers and admirers,” see Ernesto Sestan, “Lo storico,” in Gaetano Salvemini, Bari: Laterza, 1959, p. 19.

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  45. See Gaetano Salvemini, Il pensiero religioso politico sociale di Giuseppe Mazzini, Messina: Libreria editrice Antonio Trimarchi, 1905, pp. 1–3. For reasons of contextualization I refer here to the first edition of Salvemini’s Mazzini and mostly translate directly from there (though I have used also Mazzini, trans. I. M. Rawson, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957).

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  46. Ibid., pp. 34–35.

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  47. Ibid., p. 40.

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  48. Ibid., p. 42.

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  49. See “Italia e questione balcanica,” L’Unità, I, no. 47, November 2, 1912, in Gaetano Salvemini, Come siamo andati in Libia e altri scritti dal 1900 al 1915, ed. Augusto Torre, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1963, pp. 257–258.

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  50. See at least Alessandro Galante Garrone, Prefazione to Umberto Zanotti-Bianco, Carteggio 1906–1918, ed. Valeriana Carinci, Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1987, pp. VII–VIII, XI, and XV.

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  51. Zanotti-Bianco to Salvemini, July 18, 1913, and Salvemini to Zanotti-Bianco, July 21, 1913, in Alessandro Galante Garrone, Zanotti-Bianco e Salvemini: Carteggio, Naples: Guida, 1983, p. 69.

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  52. Ibid., pp. 29–31; Id., Salvemini e Mazzini, Messina-Firenze: D’Anna, 1981, pp. 174–179.

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  53. This is a passage from Salvemini’s lecture, “Le idee sociali di Mazzini,” for the third conference at the Università Popolare of Florence in 1922, quoted in Barbara Bracco, Storici italiani e politica estera: Tra Salvemini e Volpe, 1917–1925, Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998, pp. 172–173.

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  54. Galante Garrone, Salvemini e Mazzini, p. 450. On Salvemini’s extraneousness to the Mazzinian tradition, in response to the reading proposed by Galante Garrone, Roberto Vivarelli, “Salvemini e Mazzini,” Rivista storica italiana, XCVII, I, 1985, pp. 42–68. Following in the footsteps of Salvemini himself, Vivarelli underlinined Mazzini’s distance from the modern concept of liberty and from that of popular sovereignty (see also the response of Alessandro Galante Garrone, Mazzini e Salvemini, ibid., pp. 69–81).

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Sullam, S.L. (2015). Mazzini in the New Century. In: Giuseppe Mazzini and the Origins of Fascism. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137514592_4

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