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Villa Altieri, the subject of the last post, has been, in addition to its antiquities museum, its archaeological siting, and its role asPalazzo della Cultura e della Memoria della Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale (Palace of culture and memory of the metropolitan capital city of Rome), home to many small and interesting exhibitions. "Pietà l'è morta: omaggio alla resistenza" ("Pity is dead: homage to the resistance") was the one that drew us to the villa in the first place.
The artworks were created mostly after the "Nazi-Fascist" period of World War II had ended, some immediately after (apparently some during that period as well) and others 2 decades later.
The main image in promotional materials for the exhibition is this somewhat strange caricature, at right, of Antonio Gramsci by Giuseppe Guerreschi, from 1967. Gramsci was a symbol of the opposition to Fascism, a founder of Italy's Communist Party (the mark on his forehead) and died in 1936 in a Fascist prison (note the chain and handcuffs), where he wrote his profoundly influential Prison Notebooks during his arduous 11 years of incarceration (evocation of Alexei Navalny). The iconography of Gramsci continues with wall paintings in Rome and his oft-visited burial site in Rome's Non-Catholic Cemetery (He was an atheist, hence his burial outside Catholic Church grounds). At the end of this post are photos of Gramsci, of his memorialized tombstone, and of one of the Roman wall paintings.
Many of the works, by some of the best artists of the period, are disturbingly graphic in their depictions of Fascist horrors.
Left, a print from Renato Guttuso's "Gott mit uns," a portfolio of 24 first issued in 1945, the year World War II ended in Europe. "Gott mit uns" ("God with us") was a slogan on German World War I and World War II uniforms, often on belt buckles. (Frederika Randall's review of an exhibition of Guttuso's work from 2013 is here.) Some records date the prints to earlier than 1945.
The writing at the bottom right says,"Compagni! vendicate i martiri di via Tasso," translated: "Comrades! Avenge the martyrs of via Tasso," referencing both the Nazi imprisonment of political prisoners at that notorious Rome locale (see below on the sponsorship of the exhibit in part by the museum now housed there) and the murder of more than 300 men, many taken from the via Tasso prison, at the caves of Ardeatine. For a post on that atrocity and the memorial now there, see here (also on an itinerary in our book, Rome the Second Time).
Below, another print from the same series.
Three pieces by Guttuso in the exhibit appear to reference the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) and are titled "Massacro" ("Massacre"); two are below. The artist has other, similar works with the same title from 1940, reflecting the Nazi horrors.
Below is Ugo Attardi's (another noted Italian artist, 1923-2006) "Questo Matto Mondo Assassino" ("This crazy, murderous world") from 1967:
A few of the prints depicted some hope from Resistance, among them Giacomo Manzù's "Partigiano con fazzoletto rosso" ("Partisan with bandana," no date), the red bandana to this day is a symbol of the Italian partisans, who still maintain an organization, ANPI (ANPI - Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d'Italia). Manzù is most remembered as a sculptor.
Another Attardi print shows a statue of Mussolini being dragged down and away:
Ugo Attardi, "Profile del duce e rivolta" ("Profile of the Duce and revolt"), 1951.
A small sculpture based on the iconic scene from Roberto Rossellini's 1945 "Roma, Città Aperta" was also on view.
Vincenzo Gaetaniello, "Roma, città aperta," no date
Also in the exhibit were photos by Margaret Bourke-White about 5 months after the liberation of Rome but before the end of the war in Europe. Some 80,000 leftists celebrated the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution and denounced the monarchy (which would be rejected in the June 2, 1946 plebiscite following the war). Both of the photos below are titled "Comizio sul colle Palatino 12 Novembre 1944" ("Rally on the Palatine Hill, Nov. 12, 1944").
The exhibit featured writings from Italians such as Cesare Pavese and Giuseppe Ungaretti.
Ungaretti's poem at right above is titled "To the dead of the resistance" and has been translated as follows:
Here,
They live on forever
Those eyes that have been closed to the light
So that everyone
Would have them open
For eternity
To that light
The exhibition was comprised mainly of works from "art books," portfolios of prints, all of them in private collections. Many were from the collection o the art critic Dario Micacchi. In some ways, exhibitions based on one or two private collections, which can lead to an increase in prices for the art, seem a capitulation to capitalism, rather than a curated presentation of art and philosophy. The instances of these are many these days, whether it's Ettore Sottsass at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or in Rome Olivetti at the GNAM (Galleria Nazionale del'Arte Moderna) or the Barbie exhibit at the Vittoriano. And yet, we are fortunate that these private works get any showing.
The subtitle of the exhibition - "Omaggio alla resistenza" - "Homage to the Resistance" - is from a 1964 artists' book edited by Salvatore Quasimodo:
The main title of the exhibition - "Pietà l'è morta" - "Pity is dead" - is from a Resistance anthem by Nuto Revelli, less famous than "Bella Ciao" but well-known to Italians. The theme of the song is that it's time to forget pity for the enemy and to go after them. Two lines read:
Combatte il partigiano la sua battaglia:
Tedeschi e fascisti, fuori d'Italia!
and a translation online is:
The partisan fights his battle:
Heinies and fascists, out of Italy!
"Tedeschi" means "Germans," and in our experience is not an epithet. A modern translation might read somewhat differently.
A modern version (performed on Liberation Day, April 25, 2013) by Ginevra Di Marco, with substantial changes in the lyrics, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMan5HwRV_0.
Dianne
Also contributing to the exhibition were the Togliatti archives and materials from the Museo storico della Liberazione (Museum of the Liberation) on via Tasso.(#3 on RST's Top 40). The museum and the Fosse Ardeatine are on the same itinerary in our book, Rome the Second Time: 15 Itineraries that Don't Go to the Coliseum.
Below, a photo of Gramsci from the early 1920s, when he was about 30, then a wall painting by OZMO under the train overpasse in Ostiense, and finally, Gramsci's much-visited (including by us) tombstone in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome.
Ostia, a town along the Mediterranean Sea not far from Rome - the new, not the ancient Ostia - is partly a creation of the Fascists. It was founded earlier, in 1884. Later the Mussolini government invested massively in it, resulting in many buildings of the 1920s and 1930s style architecture (the famous post office, among them).
Public housing ("case popolari") was first constructed in Ostia in 1926 and bears all the markings of the pre-modern architecture that was built shortly before the Fascists fell in love with modernism. The Ostia buildings most resemble those of Rome's Garbatella quarter, or of the quarter of Monte Sacro, built along the lines of a "garden city" in the1910s and 1920s. The state of the infrastructure is sadly poor, but the basic design of the complex is still lovely and worth exploring.
Above, one of the grand terraces, with an enormous Michelangelo-like cornice and citations to the Roman arches, that makes one think one is in Garbatella (as well as evidence of crumbling stucco).
The lead photo at the top gives a sense of the wonderful detail of early 19th century public housing, including small balconies, and especially portholes and the ship bas relief (top photo and photo at right), echoing Ostia's life as a port since Roman times.
"There exists in Ostia a place where one seems to turn back in time to find oneself walking through Garbatella in the '20s...." The architect was Camillo Palmerini, who designed the buildings "on the model of a building with an open courtyard. The arches, chimneys, the loggias, the small columns, the corners, the large cornices, all are examples of the so-called 'barocchetto romano,' a term coined by Gustavo Giovannoni in the '20s to identify the style used in Garbatella, today, an ideal dialog with the mosaics of Ostia Antica, colored with local elements of ocean inspiration - boats and marine animals."
In the basement (cantina) of the building complex were other reminders of history: exhortations to support Mussolini and the King, still visible on the walls of what was a bomb shelter for the residents. Below are two double V signs meaning "viva" or "long live" and then Il Duce and Il Re (the Duce, i.e., Mussolini, and the King) [love the brooms lined up against the wall too]/
We had a fairly intense discussion with a friend - a renown scholar of Fascism - who posits that retaining these "memories" of Fascism is not conducive to democracy. We appreciate the discourse, but in this case, disagree. [More photos of these 'writings' are at the end of this post.]
At left, the sign - in the same typescript - is an arrow pointing to the "Security Exit" (what Americans would term an Emergency Exit). Again, this is a leftover from the war, covered with modern electrical mechanics, and mostly ignored (like the one above) as text.
Above, our tour group in the basement/cantina.
The buildings also have beautiful staircases, with unusual angles, photo at right. We know the Romans love their staircases, witness the Bernini-Borromini Palazzo Barberini, as well as Luigi Moretti's in Trastevere's L'ex GIL (written about in our posts, as linked).
Our inside look at this complex, including its cantina, was courtesy of Open House Roma, which had a special focus on Ostia last year. At left, the crumbling arch through which we entered and sign at right of the OHR tour.
Adjacent to these beautiful, unrestored buildings is modern-day housing - which we eyed while having a coffee across the street. Not bad, but one can't imagine having a tour of these 100 years after their construction.
Another stop on our tour was a brief look at this column, which once marked the end of via del Mare, the "road to the sea" that Mussolini constructed starting near the Colosseum and ending here in Ostia. The plinth now sports a bust of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the once "bad boy" of Italian arts, who was murdered on the outskirts of Ostia (another RST post features the park in his memory - near the murder site) [small photo above from Google Street View]. It once - as we recall - sported a bust of Mussolini. How times change (thankfully)!
More of the writings on the wall, beginning with the one below: "Mussolini - today more than ever - is right."
Below: not all the "saying" is visible, because of the light fixtures put over them (and note garbage cans below), but something to the effect of "don't worry about...who, for YOU it's best...."
Dianne
PS - another post on a location adjacent to Ostia is RST's on the self-built, basically squatter community of Idroscalo.
As usual with Rome, we find some of the most interesting information - and add to our knowledge of history - just by walking around. Last year - when we were walking back from our intended destination of the Laurentina 38 housing project (about which Bill wrote in July 2019) we ran across this "monument" (top photo) - with the words "To the fallen, Giuliani Dalmati," placed on a large boulder from the Carso - a rocky region of Italy that was the subject of Italian/Austria-Hungary battles in World War I, and was a focus of competing armies and political interests again in World War II.
We also saw on a nearby building this plaque,
which basically reads:
March 1947: The Exodus of Italian Pola: Hospitable Rome welcomes the Istrian, Fiumean [Fiume is now called Rijeka] and Dalmation refugees. President Oscar Sinigaglia [a street in the map below bears his name], with the National Organization of Repatriated Workers and Refugees, gives life to the "Giuliano Dalmation Neighborhood" The plaque is marked as put up by the National Association of Venezia, Giulia, e Dalmazia (Venezia-Giulia and Dalmatia)
Quite difficult to make sense of this if one is less that fully knowledgeable about Italy's role in World War I, Fascism and World War II, plus some post-World War II history. In giving it a try recently, we ran across an article touting the restoration of the monument at the top of this post, "after years of neglect and degradation" (it didn't look so bad to us in 2019!) only this past October.
And, even more recent, on December 30 of this past year, the "Quartiere Giuliano Dalmata" (map at end of post) was welcomed - with a plaque and Q Code - in the tourist layout of Rome.
Not exactly readable here, but the plaque relates that the "quartiere" or neighborhood started in 1939 as workers' housing for laborers building Mussolini's E42 expo grounds (now the fully developed EUR zone, which is featured in our books) a few miles further south of Rome.
When the war brought Mussolini's unfinished international exhibition construction to a halt, the workers abandoned the housing. The Allies occupied the buildings for a while. When they left, in 1947, a nucleus of 12 families - fleeing their homes in Pola, which was ceded to Yugoslavia and is better known as the Istrian Peninsula - were settled here. The dorms were converted to small apartments, and in 1955 another 2,000 people from the ex-Italian Pola region settled here, giving the quarter its name.
There are still some political joustings and resentments over the "exodus." Apparently (I'm trying to tread lightly here) some of the Italians were settled in the Istrian Peninsula by the Fascist government, which claimed the area and wanted it settled by, and dominated by, Italians.
The boulder monument was put up in 1961, and in 2008 a sculpture (photo below, right) was erected in the nearby Largo Vittime delle Foibe Istriane ("Largo [something like a piazza] Victims of the Istrian Foibe"). Bill commented on the sculpture in a 2011 post here.
Delving into the foibe (deep sink holes into which victims were thrown, sometimes alive) and their political ramifications is beyond my pay grade at this point - perhaps for a later post. Because the Day of Remembrance for the victims and those in the exodus that resulted in the neighborhood described here is February 10 - not long ago - we offer a link to an Ansa article describing the reasons for the Day of Remembrance (and a bit of the politics).
In thinking about places we miss - and that are often missed period - my mind landed on Castel San Pietro, a small town above Palestrina. I planned to write that Palestrina (dating back farther than the 8th century BC) is one of the more important cities within 25 miles of Rome, but Wikipedia gives it short shrift.
It gives even shorter shrift to Castel San Pietro, calling it "now occupied by a few poor houses and a ruined medieval castle of the Colonna family." Whoa! Don't think the locals would like that description. In fact, they worked hard to make Castel San Pietro a much-used movie site, especially in the 1950s, because of its picturesque setting. One can see Rome from its heights. Gina Lollobrigida starred in the 1953 "Bread, Love and Dreams" (Pane, Amore e Fantasia), filmed in the town. There are a dozen or so placards around explaining the film sites in both Italian and English, though we've never seen a tourist of any nationality - or anyone speaking English.
We've always liked hiking up - and it's waaay up - to the "Rocca" or castle ruins (see photo at top) that form part of this small town above Palestrina. It's sort of (if you count going up and over the hill town when you don't have to) on our way to a hike we like that takes one down to ancient aqueducts - and Horace's tree - if we could ever find the latter.
What we found the last time we were wandering the town, looking for a coffee bar, were two war monuments, neither of which we'd seen in our previous walking around.
One monument was to the Italian combatants and Holocaust victims from the area who died in World War II, with this statue combining the two types of "caduti" - "fallen." Photo left.
The other monument, photo below, is accompanied by an inscription that reads, "In this place, on 6 July 1944, three young boys, playing with a war ordinance left over from the war, were made innocent victims. This monument is a testament to that incident, and stands against every war, past and present, against the shame of landmines and in honor of civilian victims. 8 December 2004." The Germans had left the area by early June, 1944
The two monuments together are a chilling testament to the horrors of war. And they make our casual escapade through the town, and down into the aqueducts, an after-thought.
More later on the hike, which we do almost every year when we're in Rome, and Palestrina, home to the great 16th-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, whose statue stands in a central town square, and to the fictional site where the pact with the devil was made in Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus." Mann spent some time in Palestrina in the late 1890s.
Isola Tiburina, location of the Fatebenefratelli hospital
The "partisan card" for Giacomo Cesaro,
father, Giuseppe, who shared this story.
Issued by the "Ministry of Occupied Italy,"
it shows the older Cesaro was a
member of the "Justice Freedom" brigade.
The story that follows appears in Pietro Borromeo's book, Il giusto che invento' il morbo di k. (Fermento Editori, 2007). Pietro is the son of Giovanni Borromeo, a protagonist in the events described. Giuseppe Cesaro, chief of the press office of ACI (the Italian AAA), and a writer, shared the story with family on April 25, a day celebrating the 1945 liberation of Italy from the German occupation. It is reprinted here--in English translation, followed by the Italian version--with permission.
[Update 4 May 2021 - this invented disease also is known as "Syndrome K" in English, and is the subject of a new documentary of the same name, with a release date of 1 June 2021 in the US.]
During the Second World War in [occupied] Rome, there was a terrible epidemic of an unknown and dangerous illness.
Isola Tiberina with its Fatebenefratelli Hospital.
It was known as "disease of K," it had very serious symptoms, and was extremely contagious, but thanks to the intuition of three exceptional doctors (Giovanni Borromeo, Adriano Ossicini and Vittorio Sacerdoti), there was not a single fatality. All those who were sick, put in isolation in a pavilion of the Fatebenefratelli Hospital, were miraculously saved, as were the doctors and nurses, notwithstanding that the "disease of K" was extraordinarily contagious.
It all began on the 16th of October, 1943, the "black Saturday" of the Roman ghetto, when the [Nazi] SS conducted a horrendous roundup, forcing 1024 people, among them hundreds of children, to board the trains of horror headed for the death camps at Auschwitz.
Dott. Giovanni Borromeo
However, some succeeded in avoiding the Nazis and saving themselves [from the trains], seeking refuge on Tiberina Island, where the courageous doctor Borromeo, head of the hospital, decided to shelter them all--almost one hundred. It was obviously necessary to compile medical records for these special patients. And so the three physicians, in particular Vittorio Sacerdoti (who, because he was a Jew, had already been victimized by the [1938] racial laws and was working at the hospital under a false name, protected by his supervisor, Borromeo), imagined a horrendous illness, devastating and highly contagious, the "disease of K," with the "K" referring to Kesselring, the ruthless Nazi official--or, according to other sources, Kappler, the inhuman Rome persecutor.
Those taken in--the fake sick--were put in a special ward, in isolation.
On the evening of October 16, 1943, when the Nazis arrived to search the hospital, they found the three doctors--Borromeo, Ossicini and Sacerdoti--with masks covering their faces, extremely worried about the scope of this unexpected and dangerous epidemic. The Nazis--there was a doctor among them--demanded to see all medical records, but, when asked by Doctor Borromeo to visit the sick in person, were fearful of this terrible "disease of K" and preferred, instead, to leave.
And so all the sheltered, pretend patients were saved from the Nazi horror.
But the story does not end there.
Borromeo, Ossicini and Sacerdoti continued to help Jews and partisans on a daily basis. They installed a hidden radio transmitter in the basement of the hospital in order to stay in contact with other partisans and with Radio London. They declared the pretend patients deceased from the "disease of K" and procured false documents to allow them to flee, exposing themselves to great risk in a sad historical moment in which denouncements to the Germans were the order of the day and the hospital was swarming with spies.
These three courageous physicians did not retreat before the horror and the fear, because, as Adriano Ossicini continued to assert in interviews after the war, "One must seek to be on the side of what is right, always."
Durante
la seconda Guerra Mondiale a Roma ci fu una terribile epidemia di una malattia
sconosciuta e pericolosa.
Si
chiamava morbo di K., aveva sintomi molto gravi ed era estremamente contagiosa,
ma grazie all’intuizione di tre medici eccezionali (Giovanni Borromeo, Adriano
Ossicini e Vittorio Sacerdoti) non ci fu nessuna vittima. Tutti i malati, messi
in isolamento in un padiglione dell’Ospedale Fatebenefratelli, si salvarono
miracolosamente e così anche i medici e infermieri, nonostante il morbo di K. fosse
molto contagioso.
Iniziò
tutto il 16 ottobre 1943, il “sabato nero” del ghetto di Roma, quando le SS
fecero un orrendo rastrellamento costringendo 1024 persone, tra cui centinaia
di bambini, a salire sui treni dell’orrore per andare a morire ad Auschwitz.
Qualcuno
però riuscì a evitare i nazisti e a salvarsi, cercando rifugio proprio
sull’isola Tiberina dove il coraggioso dottor Borromeo, primario dell’ospedale,
decise di ricoverarli tutti, quasi un centinaio.
Ovviamente
bisognava compilare una cartella clinica per questi pazienti speciali. E così i
tre medici, in particolare Vittorio Sacerdoti (che in quanto ebreo era già
stato vittima delle leggi razziali e lavorava sotto falso nome all’ospedale,
protetto dal primario Borromeo), immaginarono una malattia orrenda, devastante
e contagiosa, il Morbo di K., dove la K. indicava in realtà Kesselring, lo
spietato ufficiale nazista, o secondo altre fonti, Kappler, il disumano
persecutore di Roma.
I
finti ricoverati furono messi tutti in un reparto speciale, in isolamento.
La
sera del 16 ottobre 1943, quando i nazisti arrivarono a perlustrare l’ospedale,
trovarono i tre medici, Borromeo, Ossicini e Sacerdoti con delle mascherine sul
volto, preoccupatissimi per lo scoppio di questa improvvisa e pericolosa epidemia.
I nazisti allora pretesero di vedere tutte le cartelle cliniche, dato che c’era
anche un medico tra loro, ma alla richiesta del dott. Borromeo di andare a
visitare personalmente i malati, ebbero paura di questo terribile morbo di K. e
preferirono andarsene.
E
così tutti i finti malati ricoverati in isolamento si salvarono dall’orrore
nazista.
Ma
la storia non finisce qui.
Borromeo,
Ossicini e Sacerdoti continuarono quotidianamente ad aiutare ebrei e
partigiani. Installarono una radio ricetrasmittente clandestina negli
scantinati dell’ospedale per restare in contatto con gli altri partigiani e con
Radio Londra, dichiararono morti proprio per il morbo di K. i finti pazienti e
procurarono loro documenti falsi per farli fuggire, esponendosi così a grandi
rischi, in un triste momento storico in cui le delazioni ai tedeschi erano
all’ordine del giorno e l’ospedale pullulava di spie.
Questi
tre medici coraggiosi non arretrarono davanti all’orrore e alla paura perché,
come non smetteva di raccontare nelle interviste dopo la guerra Adriano
Ossicini: “Bisogna cercare di essere dalla parte giusta, sempre”.
(Pietro
Borromeo, figlio di Giovanni Borromeo ha raccontato questa storia nel libro: Il
giusto che inventò il morbo di k. Fermento Editori, 2007)
During the Second World War in [occupied] Rome, there was a terrible epidemic of an unknown and dangerous illness.
It was known as "disease of K," it had very serious symptoms, and was extremely contagious, but thanks to the intuition of three exceptional doctors (Giovanni Borromeo, Adriano Ossicini and Vittorio Sacerdoti), there was not a single fatality. All those who were sick, put in isolation in a pavilion of the Fatebenefratelli Hospital, were miraculously saved, as were the doctors and nurses, notwithstanding that the "disease of K" was extraordinarily contagious.
It all began on the 16th of October, 1943, the "black Saturday" of the Roman ghetto, when the [Nazi] SS conducted a horrendous roundup, forcing 1024 people, among them hundreds of children, to board the trains of horror headed for the death camps at Auschwitz.
However, some succeeded in avoiding the Nazis and saving themselves, seeking refuge on Tiberina Island, where the courageous doctor Borromeo, head of the hospital, decided to shelter them all--almost one hundred. It was obviously necessary to compile a medical record for these special patients. And so the three physicians, in partuclar Vittorio Sacerdoti (who, because he was a Jew, had already been victimized by the [1938] racial laws and was working at the hospital under a false name, protected by his supervisor, Borromeo), imagined a horrendous illness, devastating and highly contagious, the "disease of K," with the "K" referring to Kesselring, the ruthless Nazi official--or, according to other sources, Kappler, the inhuman Rome persecutor.
Those taken in--the fake sick--were put in a special war, in isolation.
On the evening of October 16, 1943, when the Nazis arrived to search the hospital, they found the three doctors--Borromeo, Ossicini and Sacerdoti--with masks covering their faces, preoccupied by the scope of this unexpected and dangerous epidemic. The Nazis--there was a doctor among demanded to see all medical records, but, when asked by Doctor Borromeo to visit the sick in person, were fearful of this terrible "disease of K" and preferred, instead, to leave.
And so all the sheltered, fake patients were saved from the Nazi horror.
But the story does not end there.
Borromeo, Ossicini and Sacerdoti continued to help Jews and partisans on a daily basis. They installed a hidden radio transmitter in the basement of the hospital in order to stay in contact with other partisans and with Radio London. They declared the pretend patients deceased from the "disease of K" and procured false documents to allow them to flee, exposing themselves to great risk in a sad historical moment in which the accusations of the Germans were the order of the day and the hospital swarming with spies.
These three courageous physicians did not retreat before the horror and the fear because, as Adriano Ossicini reccalled in an interview after the war, "One must seek to be on the side of what is right, always."
RST attended three April 25, 2015 Liberation Day ceremonies. At 2 of them, and possibly 3 (we left before the end of the 3rd one, televised by RAI 1), the "Bella Ciao" anthem was sung. To further understanding of the importance of the song and its place in Italian culture, we are republishing a revealing 2010 piece by writer and translator Frederika Randall. Following her commentary, Randall presents the song's lyrics in Italian and English. Frederika Randall returns as guest blogger with this post, that begins with a curious but telling incident at a Rome public school. Randall has written about Italian society, the arts, literature, film and culture for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and now reports on politics for the Nation and the Italian weekly Internazionale. She lives in Rome.
The G.G. Belli is a middle school in Prati, named, as state schools in Italy are, for famous men--in this case, the great 19th C Romanesco sonneteer Giuseppe Gioachino Belli. (Just about the only schools honoring famous women are those named after female saints and martyrs.) On an ordinary day, not much happens at the G.G. Belli beyond the usual stuff that happens in a school full of budding teenagers. But May 27 was no ordinary day.
The school orchestra had been invited to the Education Ministry in Trastevere, to give a special concert for several illustrious members of the Berlusconi adminstration including the Undersecretary for Education, a certain Giuseppe Pizza (I had to look him up, a former Christian Democrat politician, I learned from the Corriere della Sera, who never merited a single dispatch by the national wire service ANSA in his first forty years of service.)
And so the kids performed their program and after they had finished, they played, by way of an encore, a few bars of Bella Ciao, a rousing partisan song dear to the Italian Resistance, and a piece of music known around the world.
Bad choice.
Minutes later, the Belli’s principal was fit to be tied. She immediately dashed off a letter to the teaching staff, students and parents calling the encore rendition “a deplorable act” and suggesting it had been prompted by some unnamed adults.
So what was wrong with playing Bella Ciao?
Only a few years ago the anti-Fascist Resistance was practically sacred in Italy, for it was the resistance movement that had battled the Nazi invaders and the Fascist dictatorship and gave birth to the Italian Republic in 1946, and the constitution in 1948. But for some on the right, Berlusconi among them, the Resistance smacks of disobedience, of insurrection, of the Communist brigades among the partisans who fought Mussolini and who some once feared would inherit power after the war. Berlusconi--who regularly campaigns on an anti-Communist platform despite the fact that the Italian Communist Party was dissolved in 1991, before he entered politics—not only governs with the support of the former neo-Fascists, he has often had kind words for Mussolini, who he seems to think has an underserved bad rep. A lot of people on the right don’t like Bella Ciao. In parts of Northern Italy, where the extreme rightists-separatists of the Northern League govern, the song was banned this year on April 25, Liberation Day.
We can only guess that the Belli school principal had all these facts in mind when she chastised the kids for playing Bella Ciao. The performance had “cast a lingering shadow of discredit, placing the entire school in difficulty,” she warned. “We must never forget our duties toward our hosts,” she added, urging the parents to send letters of apology to the ministry. God knows these are grim days for school budgets, but her reaction seemed, well, a little excessive.
Prequel: In the summer of 2008 my husband and I were traveling through Montpelier, Vermont when we heard a busker playing Bella Ciao on the street. “It’s a beautiful old Italian partisan song,” the musician told Vittorio, who’s not only Italian but old enough (just) to remember the Resistance. They sang it together, Vittorio in Italian and the busker in English.
Strange to say, there is some uncertainty about the origins of the song. Although there’s general agreement on the lyrics, they do vary slightly from rendition to rendition. Those below come from Wikipedia, which also offers several English translations. Mine, below, is an attempt to provide a singable text that follows the meter of the Italian. To that end—sorry about that--some of the Italian words have been preserved.
Most musicologists believe Bella Ciao was adapted from a work song of the mondine, the women who worked in the rice fields of northern Italy, standing knee-deep in cold water, picking out tiny weeds. But recently, an amateur musical historian noticed that the melody of Bella Ciao was astonishingly similar to a klezmer song called Koilen, recorded in 1919 in New York by a Gypsy klezmer performer from Odessa named Mishka Tsiganoff. It was theorized that perhaps the song had made its way to Italy via returning Italian immigrants in the 1930s. Although an Italian origin is more likely, it does seem odd that a work song (and a stirring resistance melody) would be so melancholy, so minor key, as this one.
And now, for the good news: for the first time in many years, the National Association of Italian Partisans not only didn’t shrink in size as its members aged and died, but actually grew by some 20,000 members, many of them young people from 18-30 years of age.
So maybe there is a future for the Resistance after all.
Bella Ciao [this version is devoted to the Iranian dissidents]
Una mattina mi son svegliato,
o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao!
Una mattina mi son svegliato,
e ho trovato l'invasor.
O partigiano, portami via,
o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao!
O partigiano, portami via,
ché mi sento di morir.
E se io muoio da partigiano,
(E se io muoio sulla montagna)
o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao!
E se io muoio da partigiano,
(E se io muoio sulla montagna)
tu mi devi seppellir.
E seppellire lassù in montagna,
(E tu mi devi seppellire)
o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao!
E seppellire lassù in montagna,
(E tu mi devi seppellire)
sotto l'ombra di un bel fior.
Tutte le genti che passeranno,
(E tutti quelli che passeranno)
o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao!
Tutte le genti che passeranno,
(E tutti quelli che passeranno)
Mi diranno «Che bel fior!»
(E poi diranno «Che bel fior!»)
«È questo il fiore del partigiano»,
(E questo è il fiore del partigiano)
o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao!
«È questo il fiore del partigiano,
(E questo è il fiore del partigiano)
morto per la libertà!»
(che e' morto per la liberta')
--Anonymous
And here, in English is that “beautiful old Italian partisan song”
Early one morning, as I was waking
Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
Early one morning, as I was waking,
I found the foe was at my door.
O partigiano, please take me with you
Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
O partigiano, please take me with you,
For something tells me I must die.
If I should die then, as a partigiano,
If I should die in the hills, in the hills up there,
If I should die then, die in the hills there,
Then you must dig for me a grave.
Up in the hills there, dig me a grave then,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella cia, ciao, ciao,
Up in the hills there, lay me to rest there,
There in the shade of a flowering tree.
So all who pass by, so all who pass by,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
So all who pass by, so all who pass by,
Will see a splendid flowering tree.
The flower of freedom, of the partigiano,
O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao,
The flower of freedom, of the partigiano,
Who died so all may now be free.
It’s the flower of freedom, of the partigiano,
Who died so all may now be free.
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