THE ANARCHISTS’ PICNIC

I have written often about the Italian American press. It is a product that cannot be understood without direct experience; something that, once tried, can even be enjoyed with a little effort. But for someone who just arrived from Italy the first approach always produces a rather strange impression. Italians, even the more educated ones, have strange ideas about the population that emigrated from Italy or its descendents. But first we must clarify a fact that is often ignored: the descendents—who are much more numerous than the original migrants—grew up and were schooled in this country, not in Italy, therefore their native language is English and their education is American. Their memories of Italy are filtered through other people’s experiences, opinions and contaminations; derived from the image of Italy the way it was fifty or more years ago and very often the way it was in a little southern village.

The Italian American press was born with this framework of reference to serve this population and, therefore, it reflects in every way all the same qualities, shortcomings, limitations and aspirations. The fundamental aspect of its development is the fact that it is becoming more and more Anglophone, while what is left of the Italian-language press is read mostly by people at least 50 years old. It is therefore necessary to view it from this perspective of time and physiology, not from that of the Eternal Italy. One of the most promising signs of the interest by Italian Americans for suitable periodicals in English is the success of Philadelphia’s Italian American Herald,[1] a very promising weekly. The founder is Dr. Alexander Gregorian, a Romanian[2] who had previously spent many years in Italy as correspondent of British newspapers. The most apparent aspect of this type of press in English, in Italian or mixed languages; is its focus on reporting and celebrating the individual achievements of the descendants of a very humble people that has collectively made great progress and has attained a very high economical, political and social status. It is a remarkable result, particularly when one considers that, despite the foundations of a democratic system, in America the native dominant class—made of rich Anglo-Saxons—has kept foreign-origin populations away from the recognitions that in a democracy are a tangible proof of success. In the Italian American press we see column after column filled with stories of personal success, from college degrees to elections of judges to college professorships. We can also find, for instance, a baptism celebrated in a cathedral or a wedding reception in a top-notch restaurant. We read the announcement of a trip to Italy by an elderly couple that arrived here penniless thirty years earlier and can now afford to travel first class; and their return to the United States to a crowd of children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces. We should not smile condescendingly as if these were cases of infantile and provincial vanity. Behind the ostentation there is the revenge against silent social ostracism; along with pride for having overcome hardship, competition and pain. Italians, even cultivated ones, when they look at these people see only their economic success. However, one should bear in mind that immigration was an enormous tragedy with years of hunger, hard work, insecurity, death and—always—humiliations. The recent demonstrations of success could probably be more refined, less flashy and less focused on financial success. But if we look at the term of comparison, namely the country that took in the immigrants, we see that it was itself coarse, crude and purely interested in money; a place where everybody was judged by the size of their bank account. A good summary are, for instance, the impressions of count Carlo Vidua[3] in the first years of the century that were recently revealed in the journal Italica.[4]

Another aspect that surprises Italians who read these periodicals for the first time is the deep nationalistic tone of the publications. By nationalistic I mean that, without distinctions, the press always supports Italy, whoever may be at the helm of the country at any given moment. In the last century they were first for the Italy of Porta Pia;[5] the next day for the Italy of Rerum Novarum;[6] and yesterday they were cheering for Fascism. This is a phenomenon that Italians, no matter how well educated, cannot understand. Among the intellectuals puzzled by this mindset were Gaetano Salvemini[7] and Don Luigi Sturzo[8] who were stunned when they found that in a free and democratic country so many of their fellow countrymen, even without the bombardment of Fascist propaganda or the oppression of a dictatorship, were openly supportive of Mussolini. Those intellectuals did not understand this phenomenon from the very beginning of their American experience; they did not understand that for Italian Americans the exaltation of Italy in that period was revenge against the dominant Anglo-Saxon class that had humiliated them for decades. For the first time they felt they belonged to a nation that was asserting itself on the international scene. They were not disciples of Georges Sorel[9] or Alfredo Oriani.[10] Even today they do not follow any political theory, which they would not understand anyway. But even when a low-level representative of Italy comes to the United States, they revere him and project onto him their yearning to be part of a great country and a great nation, respected and honored even by those who maintain toward its sons an attitude of condescendence and superiority.

In previous articles I failed to discuss the daily L’Italia, founded in 1886 in San Francisco and still alive and well. It represents well the Italian-language press on the West Coast of America. The editor in chief is Renato Marazzini;[11] president of the publishing house is Frank de Bellis,[12] a true apostle of Italian culture and, in particular, music. I am looking at a special issue celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary. The periodical is written in good Italian with reasonable articles and good-quality print. It reflects, it must be said, the origins of the Italian immigration to California, composed mostly of people from Tuscany, Piedmont, and Liguria. From their ranks came the first big contribution to America, the banker Amadeo Giannini,[13] a Genoese who taught the art of fund raising to his competitors, both Anglo-Saxons and New York Jews.

There are other semi-dailies: for example Boston’s La Notizia,[14] which is still entirely in Italian. It was quite an impression to find out that the editor, an expert in economics, was also the publisher of The Boston Free Press,[15] a non-partisan paper which supports conservative causes (and that is getting more and more popular). Although the target audience is Americans of Italian origin, its content is decidedly national and even more interesting than what appears in La Notizia. In Boston there is also a periodical that I believe was the first to adopt English to speak to the new generations of Italians, The Italian News, founded in 1921, and “essential for every Italian family that reads.” When I visited the newsroom the interpreter was a skilled and polite Jewish gentleman. These newspapers have peculiar relationships with Italian periodicals. They claim to have correspondents in Italy but, frankly, I never heard about any of them. For instance, I saw the name of a certain C., a lawyer, who was touted to be a national personality in Italy. In another newspaper I read the announcement of an exchange of editors between two periodicals, one in Michigan and the other in Foggia.[16] The first would cover Michigan affairs for the Foggia publication and the other the Foggia affairs for the Michigan paper. The world, apparently, is getting smaller and smaller if Foggia is interested in Michigan, and – even more surprising—if Michigan is interested in Foggia.

Some of these periodicals are printed with offset technology, the cottage-industry standard of publication. And in fact it is a family in Dearborn, Michigan, that publishes a monthly periodical of this kind: Mondo libero. Owner and editor-in-chief is G. Oberdan Rizzo, administrator is Anna Rizzo. It is a literary magazine that publishes poems both in Italian and in English (a typical bad habit of many Italian American periodicals). Strangely, it also contains copy in Spanish and it claims to be the “only Italian American periodical of this kind in America.” I believe it. Among the advertisement I noticed one for the magazine Controvento published in Alanno, in the province of Pescara. This is the kind of news that makes me feel the burden of my ignorance, caused to my notoriously long absence from Italy. The Parola del popolo[17] (published in Chicago) is a bi-monthly socialist periodical that embraces humanitarian ideals typical of the period of Camillo Prampolini[18] and Filippo Turati.[19] My preference would be for more openly revolutionary ideals. Here I found an example of the cultural exchanges between America and southern Italy: a poetry contest “sponsored by the Columbian Academy of St. Louis, Missouri, and Pungolo verde [The Green Prod] of Campobasso.” I am not saying there is anything wrong with it, but maybe the problem is exactly that there is nothing wrong and that this production resembles too closely that of the bourgeois Farfalle[20] [Butterflies].

I have good feelings for the New York weekly magazine Adunata dei refrattari [Rally of the Reluctant], an openly anarchist publication. Nothing to be afraid of, here. I read the announcements of their rallies and I discovered that they consist of open-air picnics or dinners in a trattoria. The travel directions to those gatherings clearly imply that today’s anarchists own a car (yours truly, a bourgeois, doesn’t have one) and they have disposable income that allows them to eat out just like I do. I have no idea how the anarchists would be able to get a car in an anarchist society, since factories tend to be rather tyrannical. But this is their problem. They also have drama clubs that produce dewy plays on the fate of the proletarians. Since I was a kid I have always loved picnics and hated melodramatic theater; however, I support the opposition to tyranny in any nation, Russia included. I have always respected and I have dear memories of Camillo Berneri,[21] whom I met in Paris and whose writings are still being published by L’Adunata. The ever-present losses on the balance sheet prove that the publishers are not making any money. It is written in solid though a little antiquated Italian, still better than Il Progresso Italo-Americano. If I were not afraid of offending them, I would say they remind me of old professors.

In Boston there exists to this day a little magazine called Controcorrente [Upstream]. It survived the death of Salvemini, who, in the last years of his stay in America, enriched it with the fervor of his passion against injustice. It was the only publication Salvemini did not abandon. Here he had found a small group of narrow-minded, uncultured individuals always willing to tell him how right he was. They also allowed him to publish the fruit of his sourly spirit, progressively more and more embittered against the Italians who had refused to give him the same power they gave Mussolini.

The Tribuna italiana of Phoenix, Arizona, is probably the latest addition to the roster of Italian periodicals. The Italo-American News of Orleans [sic] instead must be one of the oldest ones (it claims forty five years of life.) Despite the fact that both are little more than leaflets, I always try to read them. The social announcements, the little news stories, the photos of the faces in those colonial banquets (unfortunately always too similar) tell a long story. If somebody wanted to write the history of Italian immigration to the United States, it would be impossible to find primary sources or original documents. The immigrants got rid of everything that reminded them of their past and the survivors don’t even want to talk about it. But for anyone with a bit of imagination, so much can be read on those faces, in those gestures, in the way they dress up for social events. Something that has survived since the era of Enrico Caruso,[22] who represented the ideal of Italian in America, is the monthly Follìa[23] [Madness]: it really looks like a barber-shop magazine from the era of the Italian King Umberto I.[24]

In Hartford, Connecticut, there is a group of publications that reflects the vitality of a flourishing population of Italian origin. The Italian Review is printed on glossy paper with so many illustrations that it looks like a fashion magazine. The editor-in-chief, Venerando Sequenzia[25] has chosen a range of Italian topics that goes from fashion to literature and from cuisine to theater. It contains short capsules, lots of addresses, a culinary dictionary, a list of new books and records and other curiosities. It is a mix of intriguing small items that must be very attractive to the readers. This reminds me of another journal of Italian studies that has been around for a long time, Italica, founded in 1924 by Professor Rudolph Altrocchi[26] and currently edited by Professor Joseph Fucilla of Evanston, Illinois, near Chicago. It is the official publication of the Association of Teachers of Italian.[27] The content is generally of the old stuffy kind, mostly historical and documentary. Recently it started publishing more modern critical contributions and functions as a forum for young teachers who want to show off their intellectual ability and get credit for their publications. In my opinion it should be required reading for teachers. The University of California Los Angeles, thanks to an initiative by Professor Charles Golino,[28] publishes the new journal Italian Quarterly,[29] which devotes each issue to one specific theme. It shows greater critical liveliness and more openness on the new horizons of Italian literature and social life. Both journals are to be admired for their efforts in the midst of a very strong competition from academic journals devoted to foreign languages, and at the same time in the midst of the general indifference of the Italian American public for anything that goes beyond the immediate and local social life.

New York, 8 dicembre 1961

P.S. I could only mention and describe the periodicals that I have received over the years. There are many others, but I have never seen them and I could not find them at the library.