Nicoletta Verna: "Colonialism is the great repressed theme of Italian history"
The Italian writer explains fascism in Italy through a woman born with bad luck in Romagna
BarcelonaLa Redenta, the protagonist of the novel Els dies de vidre (Amsterdam), by Nicoletta Verna (Forlì, 1976), is born on the same day that the socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti is assassinated by the fascist squads. “It is a crucial moment,” recalls the author, because that June of 1924 Mussolini assumed moral and historical responsibility for the crime before Parliament. “It was the beginning of the dictatorship. The birth of La Redenta becomes a tragic succession: if Matteotti was the political victim of fascism, she will be the civil victim,” says Verna.
The setting of the novel, published by Amsterdam with a Catalan translation by Maria Llopis, is also a rather special place: Castrocaro. "It is the town where my father was born and where I also grew up. My grandmother lived there; these are my roots and I wanted to reclaim them," says Verna. But beyond the personal connection, the choice of this rural environment responds to a historical reason. Castrocaro is in Emilia-Romagna, very close to Predappio, precisely the place where Benito Mussolini was born. Although the dictator was very attached to his homeland, Emilia-Romagna was from the beginning a profoundly anti-fascist region. "It was one of the few areas where fascism had to be imposed by force, because Romagna did not want it," explains the writer. It was an area with a very strong trade union movement, with a large presence of anarchists, socialists, and republicans.
La Redenta's life is linked to the prophecy of a real healer of the time, Zambutèn. This healer, to whom, paradoxically, Mussolini's wife, Rachele Guidi, also went, warns La Redenta's mother that the girl will live, unlike her three previous children, but will have bad luck. “In return, she will receive the gift of compassion, an extreme lucidity to see the pain of others, and a chronic limp resulting from polio that will connect her with her dead brothers –explains Verna–. This compassion will make it possible for her to resist even the cruelest violence. She teaches us that resistance is not born only of great gestures or the armed path, but that it can also be exercised by ordinary people”.
Furthermore, the protagonist talks to her dead siblings. “Nowadays death is a taboo, it has been eliminated from the public sphere and daily life. Grandparents die alone in hospitals and children see very violent games, but death cannot be discussed within the family. It used to be very different. Funerals were great collective celebrations and the dead continued to participate in life in a very natural way. Having lost this contact with the dead is, for me, an impoverishment,” states the Italian writer.
Tributes to war criminals in the 21st century
The tragedy in Redenta's life continues with marriage. Her father marries her to Letro, a man who is pure violence and who participated in the bloody Italian colonial campaign in Ethiopia, including the massacre of Addis Ababa under the orders of Rodolfo Graziani. Verna openly denounces that "colonialism is the great repressed theme of Italy's history." "It was a profoundly violent and racist episode that is not spoken about in schools," laments the author, who indignantly recalls that Graziani never spent a single day in prison. "Even in 2012, in Affile, a municipality near Rome, they dedicated a monument to him, which still stands. And the then-mayor [Ercole Viri] cited Graziani as an 'example for young people'," says Verna. For the writer, this barbarity in Africa and the sexist violence that characters like Letro inflict at home are inseparable: "Fascist violence is systemic and permeates everything, from geopolitics to the intimacy of the home," says the author.
Faced with this display of brutality, the novel contrasts a form of resistance that has often been sidelined from official textbooks, historically written by men: the civil resistance of women. Verna recovers the concept of maternity to describe the spontaneous and invisible network of thousands of women who, without taking up arms like the partisans, extended their protective instinct beyond the family. They welcomed, fed, and hid persecuted people. "Characters like Redenta or her grandmother, who takes in orphaned children, embody this resistance based on charity and cooperation, the only real way of survival in a hostile environment," says the author.
Predappio, a controversial pilgrimage site today
Predappio, Mussolini's birthplace, located in the same region where the novel Els dies de vidre takes place, continues to be a place of pilgrimage. "His crypt has fresh flowers every day," says the author. It is a tourist attraction, there are shops that sell souvenirs related to Mussolini and fascism, and many visitors, from the messages they leave, do not really know who the dictator was. "There is an economic and security crisis that generates fear, and makes us seek simple answers: the illusion of order, of the strong man, of belonging, and the identification of a common enemy. There is collective amnesia, but also a loss of awareness of the tragic and very dangerous consequences of this past," he affirms.
Even so, the Italian writer believes that we also have to change our perspective. “We must be able to see that today there are also many compassionate people. Today's young people are also very generous, but there is a problem of visibility, of information selection. The most scandalous information, which generates impact on people, is more evident,” she assures.