The title of Sandro de Nobile’s volume eloquently states the main focus. De Nobile investigates the meeting point of letters and tanks, of poetics and politics, thus consciously reading context into text. The author overtly privileges the external and the political to counterbalance an image of (Italian) letters as a matter of autonomous, artistic principles alone. By choosing case studies with considerable thematic and chronological overlap, de Nobile presents a volume that is rich in historical detail as well as coherent. The 1950s are the focal point of the volume, and more specifically the years around 1956, in which the tension within the communist world was rising as a result of Stalin’s death, a development that had inevitable repercussions for the sizeable and culturally influential Italian communist scene. The exclusive mentioning of Il Contemporaneo in the subtitle of the book is slightly misleading, in the sense that de Nobile presents an admirably broad and apt range of sources, which cover many other important journals of this period, ranging from Ragionamenti to Officina. The single chapters deal specifically with four authors, albeit from different perspectives: some are merely silent objects of heated debate (Pratolini), whereas others are subjects and directors of debate (most notably Calvino).
The first chapter develops the case of Vasco Pratolini’s Metello, a novel that divided opinion and which like few other works of fiction met with considerable success and an equal amount of criticism. De Nobile convincingly argues that the unusually strong reactions with respect to the book were in large part due to the ideological fault lines along which the debate took place. Metello proved to be a catalyst for revealing the cracks in the communist intelligentsia, which were more and more divided between a conservative part (that clearly centred around Il Contemporaneo and which was more or less embodied by Carlo Salinari) and what we might term a more conversative part, the communist intellectuals who felt the pressing need to redefine and renegotiate the modes of Italian communism, following the destalinisation and ‘openness’ within the Soviet Union.
The second chapter addresses the case of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s problematic relationship with the more orthodox communist intellectuals, and more specifically the debates that arose around his Antologia della poesia popolare italiana and Ragazzi di vita. Pasolini denounces the reputedly merely philological arguments against his Antologia and turns the debate into what he feels it is basically about: an ideological divide, revolving around different ideas about the relationship of intellectuals to people and the ‘popular’. Accordingly, accusations are soon mutually harsh in the exchanges around these books of Pasolini, and de Nobile traces them patiently from different angles. The often uncompromising bipolarity (allegations of dogmatism, moralism and populism are rife in the debate) is interspersed with more nuanced commentaries of ‘outsiders’ like Franco Fortini and Italo Calvino.
The third chapter centres around the figure of Carlo Cassola, who after an initial collaboration distances himself from Il Contemporaneo. Cassola is not just an object of debate (like Pratolini in the first chapter), nor a militant opponent of the perceived rigid dogmatism of Il Contemporaneo (Pasolini), but instead develops gradually from proponent to opponent of Salinari’s line. De Nobile presents Cassola’s satirical side as key to a more complex, diversified reading of the Roman author. The scrupulous development of the source material makes for a convincing politicised portrait of Cassola in these pivotal years for Italian communism.
The final chapter is, rather characteristically, reserved for Italo Calvino. As in other chapters, the sources used are many and often original, in the sense that they do not pertain to the staple of ‘standard’ sources of Calvino criticism. Calvino’s communist years and his decision to leave the PCI are carefully reconstructed through the eyes of Calvino. However, the potential problem of this part of the volume resides precisely here: Calvino himself almost monopolises the chapter. Whereas in other chapters voices interlace to form a rich and dense historical portrait, in this case Calvino’s explanations acquire a high degree of self-sufficiency. This impression is confirmed by the lack of problematisation of when Calvino wrote his reappraisals of himself as a communist: the sources are treated fairly homogenously, following the thread of their inner logic, leaving little room for other voices or differentiation in time. Calvino, the ‘neutral’ voice who was already prominently present in other chapters, clearly helped establish important premises of de Nobile’s volume in the first place. The most ‘critical’ moment regarding Calvino is tellingly to be found in another chapter, about Cassola, who reproaches the Ligurian author for his ‘hypocrisy’.
Overall, this volume is a thoroughly researched, highly detailed account of the vicissitudes of four very different Italian authors around the important year 1956, when Russian tanks entered Hungary and brutally shattered the remaining faith of many in the communist cause. Lettere e carri armati is an important contribution to a more precise critical image of the relationship between literature and ideology in the Italy of the 1950s. This foregrounding of historical and political issues is a conscious choice of de Nobile which is admirably developed. As a whole, the volume is somewhat unbalanced because of the fundamentally different ways in which de Nobile approaches the various authors, giving the microphone to those most willing to speak, which in historical research can be as tempting as it is potentially equivocal. However, as case studies, these four chapters are intelligent, valuable contributions to revisiting the always porous boundaries between literature and society in a concrete historical and cultural context.
