Recalling Pietro Gori/1

An outdated figure
by Francesco Tacchi

An International conference held last January in Pisa, has provided many new features and historical interpretation about the anarchist most loved by the mob and Italian revolutionaries.

In Pisa, the city where he led Gori's university and met the anarchist ideal, there were two day symposium, with contributions from scholars of national reputation, to explore and rediscover the figure of the "knight-errant of anarchy."
One hundred years ago died Pietro Gori, lawyer, orator, writer, poet, but most ardent propagator of that ideal anarchist, embraced in the university years, he would accompany him throughout his life. A short-lived, cut short at only 46 years from tuberculosis, a disease that has long afflicted him and made it tragically ironic reference to his "iron lung", reported that some contemporaries coined to emphasize the skill, ability and strength Gori in making speeches in front of crowds - often meetings of 2-3 hours without a break. Just through oral communication, even more than through the written word, he entered Gori in the hearts of the populace who had opportunity to hear, especially in Tuscany Tyrrhenian. At a time when illiteracy remained at significant levels, especially among the more humble social strata, the meeting offered a time participation, emotional involvement with those - including women - often referred to the political dimension, and especially the opportunity to hear direct references to their existential condition, were being denied.
But Gori was not, as already mentioned, a simple orator. His was an intellectual profile in the round: despite the pressures that came with the passage of time because of his illness, which forced him to rest periods, Pietro Gori gave rise to a substantial written work, even though very diversified production , ranging from social and political pamphlet argument to statements of the processes that saw him involved, but which can also be found in the poems and plays, particularly those capable of penetrating the everyday life of common people that 'the lawyer of the poor "turned .
Witness their faith to the end, Pietro Gori died on 8 January 1911 in Portoferraio. The center still recalls the Elba have, by mostly the square on which stands the Town Hall and another building adjacent to where it is still clearly see the beautiful stone carved by the artist Arturo Dazzi: only one of many examples that we have received , testimony of a statement received an inheritance and who is to come to terms with today's indifference - if not with a real filibuster / revisionism - in relation to historical and cultural roots of territories and social bodies, a trend that increasingly gripped the whole Italian society and the West.
To commemorate - and revive - the figure and thought of Gori in exactly one hundred years after his death, Friday 14 and Saturday, January 15 were held at the Palazzo della Sapienza in Pisa, at the headquarters of the Law Faculty of the University and place in the Tuscan which studied Gori, two days of historical studies organized by the Library Serantini Franco, during which scholars of national reputation were able to provide their expert contribution to explore and bring to light the figure of the lawyer from Elba. The conference was preceded on the evening of January 13th by conference un'affollatissima / anarchist songs from the show and De Gori that Andre was attended by Paolo Finzi and Maurizio Antonioli - as speakers - and the popular chorus "Agora" with the musical group "Supramonte," cheered up the evening with a parade of beautiful libertarian songs.

Pisa January 13, 2011 - The hall of the Polo Carmignani (University of Pisa) during the conference / show "The Anarchist song from Gori De André, held the evening before the Conference on Pietro Gori.

The myth creation

The conference was the culmination of a series of celebrations which saw 8 to 22 January, at the University Library, the construction of an exhibition with a rich display of bibliographic works of Gori, including its argument Degree manuscript - titled The misery and crimes - discussed with Professor David Supino and published on the occasion for the types of BFS.
But let the merits of the two days of study. The event was an important result of the public, an audience not only with subject-matter specialists and activists, but also by people simply attracted by curiosity or cultural interest, there have been young people, especially college students.
If anyone present had even just for a moment questions about the meaning of the convention, they did the accounts, the opening session, with the intervention of Franco Bertolucci, director of the Library Serantini, which has claimed the ' scientific usefulness and necessity of this initiative, "Gori is a figure on which historians must continue to investigate, since often, after its death, the town Gori has been clouded by myth, by the construction, sometimes 'Folklore' , which has been formed around him. "
Already, the myth: a problem not easy to deal with, on which he has acted Maurizio Antonioli, professor at the University of Milan and author of several works on the figure of the militant anarchist and anarchism on the history of Italian (to name a few: Pietro Gori , the knight errant of anarchy, Pisa, BFS editions, 19952, The sun of. Anarchism in Italy from the origins to World War I, Pisa, BFS editions, 1999 - PC Masini -; Sentinels lost. Anarchists , death, war. Pisa, BFS Editions, 2009). What accounted for the Gori Tuscan and Italian anarchism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century? "Certainly at the time was the largest" paper "Italian Anarchism, possessor of a great symbolic power." Beloved by the crowds, with a charismatic personality and an ability to reflect on the social problems of his time that made him respected and even feared by political opponents, he soon came around him to create a sort of "personality cult" especially in the areas of Tuscany Tyrrhenian which came from Gori. This brought out some concern in the same row anarchist. "It outlined a two-way process - it is the opinion of Antonioli - On the one hand, the creation of the myth, the other challenging the emergence of a personal cult, echoed the same complaint Gori."
A prominent figure, then, raises the question what were the relationships with other "great" Italian of the early twentieth century anarchism, as Errico Malatesta. "The meetings between the two men were few, such as the Congress of Capolago in 1891 and then in London during the years of exile in Gori (1895-'96). There is little news about their relationship, but this was certainly of great respect and harmony, despite the considerable differences in character and style between these two characters. "

Pisa 14 to 15 January 2011 - Group of participants at the conference "Our homeland is the whole world."

Jesus Christ superstar?

After the death of Gori, the myth took hold firmly. The obituary went not infrequently the epithets of 'Hero', 'Apostle', 'Martyr': anarchist newspapers did the same. "The future of anarchism," born in Pisa only months earlier primarily at the instigation of Virgilio Salvatore Mazzoni, would be entitled after the death Pietro Gori lives!. The knight was dead, but his message no. If the body could be corrupted, it was not for the Ideal.
It should be noted that the use of a language of a religious nature was a feature of all socialist era: the subversive propaganda aimed at the masses to see the link between their message and the origins of Christianity, a message of revolutionary In their view, so, to "Christ Socialists" of the PSI Goriane echoed the definition of the Christ "anarchist red shirt." The relationship between Gori and Christianity has always spoken Antonioli, "Gori is moving in a trend that has distinguished antecedents, such as La Vie de Jésus of Renan, and takes a reading in which Jesus and the people close to him, the apostles are individuals who rebel against the order of their time taking a path to martyrdom in what he saw parallels with the life of the anarchist militant. " And that was the way chosen by Gori, choice maintained consistently throughout its existence, despite the difficulties - and dangers - that this choice entailed. On the topics covered by the employment of returned Antonioli also Umberto Sereni, a professor at the University of Udine, illustrating the influence of the image of Gori and in that particular historical context, territorial and human is unraveling came on horseback nineteenth and twentieth century in particular in the area that goes from the Versilia Pisa, land of the "prophets of the free world." A human and cultural universe that has helped to design the identity of the nascent libertarian movement as was also emphasized in the reports on the fortunes of Massimo Ortalli Goriane pamphlet is that of France and Holy Schirone Catania on the dissemination of the songs and plays of Gori in the lower classes of the time.
If Gori was the central figure of the study conference held in Pisa, however, this has focused not only on the life of a militant anarchist, but also on aspects relevant to understand the context in which he was to act. So, thanks to the contributions of Marco Scavino (University of Turin) and Stampacchia Mauro (University of Pisa), was cast a glance at the situation of liberal turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, an extremely difficult time for questions of type economic and social as well as those of a political nature. It is the era that has to deal with the aftermath of the First Great Depression known by industrial capitalism, which has dramatic effects on population groups, less protected, and that brings so, even in Italy, several significant events of onset working, but it is also the time that, politically, to assist government repression of the biennium 1898-1900 followed by the "new course" focuses on the figures of Zanardelli and Giolitti took action on these issues and Emanuela Minuto (Univ. of Pisa ) with an interesting report on the authoritarian tendencies in the Italian ruling elite and the struggle of the 'vanguard party' in defense of civil liberties and social issues.
As for a closer Gori, those are the years that see the final consume split between the Socialists called "legalists" and the anarchists. If the fracture was now widening since the early eighties, however, was in Genoa with the founding of the Party of Italian Workers (1892, 1895 by the Italian Socialist Party), it became irreversible. At a higher level, the same split would be enshrined in a few years later by the Second International Congress in London (1896). The way of revolution, if not in words, at least in practice was abandoned by the new Italian party of the proletariat. A choice in which anarchists, among them Gori, would not comply.

The power and crimes

The conference went to investigate the roots Goriano ideological orientation, trying to rebuild the cultural milieu of the university he attended in the late eighties, an environment essential to the embrace of anarchism Gori. This was the core of the intervention of Alexander Breccia (University of Pisa), who started from a simple quantitative data: for the entire period between the Unit and the end of the nineteenth century, more than 50% of total subscribers Ateneo Pisa he studied law - it goes without saying how the members to the total maximum degree of the education system had only a few hundred. Gori, therefore, from middle-class family, was found to carry out their studies in the heart of the University, in the presence of professors such as cages, Carrara, Supino, Toniolo. The city of Pisa, in whose veins flowed the lifeblood for a long time Republican-Democrat, had begun to discover the presence of increasing amount of 'international', which has grown thanks to the work of people like Orestes Falleri. It was therefore, to Pisa, an environmental "hot", highly stimulating for young people with intellectual talents. And it was not to be forgotten, the environment which bears the legend, already formed and settled, and Montanara di Curtatone. The street named after a nineteenth-May that it was just the path on which stood and still stands, the Faculty of Law, although the name was then spelled out, more recently, in "Via Curtatone and Montanara" because of the weakening memory, continue with the simple nineteenth May would only generate questions - or indifference - in the minds of passers-by.
As mentioned, the thesis which he graduated in 1889 Gori bears the title of Poverty and crime; on the title, you can read a maximum of Adolphe Quetelet, who clearly makes the idea of the content of this work: "The company is preparing the crime, the offender does nothing but run. " Aspects of the relationship between libertarians and law spoke at the conference Vincenzo Ruggiero (Middlesex University), starting from ideas of Kropotkin. He also stressed the importance of thinking positive for the formation of Gori, a factor which can be explained simply by considering the anarchist as a child of his time. The last two decades of the nineteenth century were in fact the years of comparison, in the legal field, including the classical school, whose bishop was Carrara, and precisely the positivist school, which was recognized Gori. Hence the notice in the crime base "pathological", but also the determining factor of social factors. On the cultural education of the generation of anarchists on which it focused Gori Alessandro Volpi, professor at the University of Pisa, with a detailed report on the knowledge and the spread of modern economic theory in the libertarian movment of the century.

The rooting in some areas

If Gori was an important figure for the Italian anarchist, however, its significance did not end within national boundaries. An exile for most of the period between 1894 and 1902, he was able to carry out its propaganda activities in the communities of Italian Switzerland, UK, USA and Argentina, and to intervene personally in the organizational processes of the proletarian classes local (think of the birth of the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina, in 1901) - On the influence of anarchism in the genesis and development of the Argentine labor movement and the role of Italian are interventui Katia Massara and Oscar Greek -.

The second day of studies at the Sapienza has placed its focus on Gori "border", exiled, yes, but not in foreign countries visited, in accordance with the idea of "our country is the whole world who provided under the initiative of Pisa. Just to mention some of the researchers intervened, Paola Di Pietro, an Italian researcher working in England, focused on the presence of Gori in London, while Maurizio Binaghi, a professor at several middle schools and high schools of Italian Switzerland, analyzed in its contribution to the Gori in the country of residence in Switzerland.
Arnaldo Testi, American specialist of the Department of History, University of Pisa, recounted the experience in the U.S. Italian anarchist in a particularly warm, from a social perspective, the giant across the Atlantic. We are in 1895-1896, and Gori has actively intervened in the Italian community in America came as a result of migration processes, which is carried by the old European tradition, recently, May Day. A tradition that made it difficult to have a mass following in the U.S., including the fierce competition of another Labor Day, Labor Day, especially dear to the workers of the previous generation children of immigrants, mostly from Central northern Italy. In this controversy should be seen intense Italian anarchist propaganda in favor of May.
At its conclusion, the meeting was then dealt with the spread of the anarchist movement in various areas of our country, from Tuscany to Sicily, relying on the contributions of Franco Bertolucci, Alessandro Luparini, Roberto Giulianelli Musa and Christmas.
The initiative, overall, has returned to the town of Pisa and the surrounding area a figure who played a leading role in the history of that area, so that he still remembered nell'onomastica road is the town of Torre many other towns scattered along the Tyrrhenian coast - we have already mentioned the case of Portoferraio - and not only, but all the celebrations in memory of Gori had shown the importance of collaboration between local authorities and cultural institutions as the Library Serantini, in a situation that unfortunately has to deal with "the disastrous conditions prevailing in the world of culture in Italy - these are the words of the culture of the Province of Pisa Pagnin Silvia, sent the opening of the conference - and for cuts direct and indirect field for local authorities. " Similar considerations were expressed by the deans of the Faculties of Law and Political Science, University of Pisa who came to greet the start of work.
Eventually, perhaps, lies one last question: Gori may be present?
Today, a century after his death, including the economic crisis and attack those social rights conquered - even blood - from workers in the twentieth century, in an age that sees falling apart ethics and public policy , has come to re-create the need for a figure like that of the "knight-errant of anarchy"? The question is not so easy for Antonioli: "You can not make comparisons, this compared with that of Gori, it is a different era. Among other things, the anarchist movement has long considered the figure of Gori as "outdated" in a period like the post-'68, especially fervent, he spoke of the figures such as Bakunin, a Kropotkin, but not in Gori, because you could not exploit it politically, and this was perhaps a mistake. However, in my opinion, every person belongs to his era: either no one is present, or all are present. "