Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
Loy, Rosetta
b. 1931, Rome
Novelist, essayist and short story writer
Loy made her debut in 1974 with the collection of short stories La bicicletta (The
Bicycle), winner of the prestigious Viareggio Prize. In many subsequent novels, among
them La porta dell’acqua (Water’s Door) (1976), L’estate di Letuqué (Letuqué’s
Summer) (1982) and All’insaputa della notte (Unknown to the Night) (1984), she
fashions characters and their milieu through detailed psychological exploration. Milieu
also plays a particularly important role in the successful novel Le strade di polvere (Dust
Roads of Monferrato), the saga of a family of Piedmontese farmers which in 1987 won
both the distinguished Campiello and Viareggio Prizes (see literary prizes). In her
fictional works, Loy has also focused on women’s experiences, most notably in the novel
Sogni di inverno (Winter Dreams) (1992), which investigates the relationship between a
mother and daughter in Rome. More recently, with La parola ebreo (The Word Jew)
(1997), she has also dealt with the theme of the Holocaust.
Further reading
Amoia, A. (1996) Twentieth-Century Italian Women Writers: The Feminine Experience,
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press (see ch. 7 on Loy).
VIRGINIA PICCHIETTI
Luchetti, Daniele
b. 26 July 1960, Rome
Film and theatre director
One of the representatives of the so-called New Italian Cinema, Luchetti received his
cinematographic training at the Gaumont film school, which he entered in 1980. In 1983
he directed Nei dintorni di mezzanotte (Around Midnight), one of the six episodes later
included in Juke-Box, a collective film made out of the Gaumont experience. He then
spent four years making commercials and working as assistant director to Nanni Moretti
on several of his films. It was Moretti’s new production company, Sacher Films, that in
1988 produced Luchetti’s first full-length feature, Domani accadrà (It Will Happen
Tomorrow). Il portaborse (The Factotum), released in 1991, starred Moretti in the lead
role as a corrupt socialist politician and seemed to anticipate many of the revelations of
Tangentopoli, just as Luchetti’s next film, Arriva la bufera (The Storm Arrives) (1993),
seemed to anticipate the legal clean-up of Mani pulite (Clean Hands). A director
Entries A–Z 481
committed to political and social issues, Luchetti returned to the theme of the Resistance
in 1998 with Piccoli maestri (Little Teachers), adapted from a novel by Luigi
Meneghello.
ANTONELLA FRANCINI
Luzi, Mario
b. 20 October 1914, Castello, Florence
Poet and essayist
One of Italy’s foremost poets, Luzi has maintained a constant and influential presence in
Italian literature for over seven decades with a poetry characterized by its intensity and by
an extra-ordinary wealth of themes and stylistic subtleties.
Highly influenced by French symbolism and Catholic modernism, which he had
studied at the University of Florence while earning a degree in French literature, Luzi
made his first appearance on the Italian cultural scene in the 1930s. He actively
participated in the hermetic movement by contributing to the Florentine journals
Frontespizio, Letteratura and Campo di Marte and through his friendship with Carlo Bo,
Piero Bigongiari and Romano Bilenchi, among others. In his early collections of poems,
from La barca (The Boat) (1935) to Un brindisi (A Toast) (1946), the poet’s search for a
transcendental truth is rendered by means of obscure language and images. In his poetry
of the 1950s, in collections such as Primizie del deserto (First Fruits of the Desert) (1952)
and Onore del vero (Respect for the Truth) (1957), Luzi would express on the one hand,
the existential desertification and temporal disruption caused by the war, and on the
other, the persistence of the ‘human
’
in the most humble and least ideological aspects of
everyday life. In this context, he highlighted the notion of Christian caritas, also
understood as social solidarity amongst people.
The contradictory coexistence of motion and stasis in both the individual and the
collective human experience, the flow of time and history conflicting with the revelation
of the eternal, became the leitmotifs of Luzi’s poetry in the 1960s and 1970s. His
participation in the ongoing cultural and political debate was documented in Nel magma
(In the Magma) (1963), while in Su fondamenti invisibili (On Invisible Foundations)
(1971) and Al fuoco delta controversia (Within the Fire of Controversy) (1978) Luzi
began to consistently fragment his language suggesting that poetry could no longer
reassemble the scattered pieces of reality but only express a plurality of voices. The
religious reflection underlying Luzi’s later collections—Per il battesimo dei nostri
frammenti (For the Baptism of our Fragments) (1985), Frasi e incisi di un canto salutare
(Phrases and Interpolations of a Hailing Song) (1990) and Viaggio terrestre e celeste di
Simone Martini (Earthly and Celestial Journey of Simone Martini) (1994)—testifies to
his never-ending search for a metaphysical origin of human existence.
As well as poetry, Luzi wrote several essays on literature—those on Stéphane
Mallarmé and Dante’s Commedia are particularly important—collected in L’inferno e il
limbo (Hell and Limbo) (1949), Studi su Mallarmé (Essay on Mallarmé) (1952), Tutto in
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 482
questione (Everything in Question) (1965), Vicissitudine e forma (Vicissitudes and Form)
(1974) and Discorso naturale (Natural Discourse) (1984). His essays, together with verse
drama like the Libro di Ipazia (Book of Ipazia) (1978), Rosales (1983) and Hystrio
(1987), complemented his lyric poetry by exploring history and tradition in order to trace
the origin of the present time.
Further reading
Jewell, K. (1992) The Poeisis of History: Experimenting with Genre in Postwar Italy, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press (a study on Pasolini, Luzi and Attilio Bertolucci focusing on the
representation of history and temporality in their poetry).
Panicali, A. (1987) Saggio su Mario Luzi, Milan: Garzanti (overview of Luzi’s poetics).
Specchio, M. and Luzi, M. (eds) (1993) Luzi. Leggere e scrivere (Luzi: Reading and Writing),
Florence: Nardi (interview with Luzi on his poetics, highlighting Luzi’s interest in European
and non-European authors and their influence on his poetry).
FRANC ESC A PARMEGGIANI
Entries A–Z 483
M
Maderna, Bruno
b. 21 April 1920, Venice; d. 13 November 1973, Darmstadt, Germany
Composer and conductor
A composer and conductor noted for his promotion of new music, Maderna entered the
Conservatorium Giuseppe Verdi in Milan after early lessons on the violin. This course of
study was cut short when he was sent to fight in the Second World War. On his return he
resumed his studies in Milan, and then in Rome, Venice and finally Darmstadt, where he
later lectured in new music and led the International Chamber Ensemble. He also taught
at the conservatorium in Rotterdam and at summer courses in Tanglewood. An enthusiast
of the possibilities of electronic music, Maderna founded an electronic music studio with
Luciano Berio at Milan Radio Station in 1955. This interest in electronic music is
strongly manifest in much of his later work.
Further reading
Fearn, R. (1990) Bruno Maderna, Contemporary Music Studies 3, New York: Harwood Academic
Publishers (a detailed study in English of Maderna’s work and influence).
ANDREW SCHULTZ
mafia
The term ‘mafia’ first appeared in popular and police usage in Western Sicily in the
1860s to name a new type of local criminal association. Today, any form of organized
crime inside and outside Italy is likely to be called ‘mafia’, and the popularity of films
(such as those by Coppola and Damiani) and novels (see Sciascia) testify to the topic’s
widespread and enduring fascination. Indiscriminate use of the term and media
mythologizing have helped to complicate an already controversial topic. Whether the
Neapolitan Camorra, the Calabrian ‘Ndragheta, America’s Cosa Nostra and gang
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 484
activities in Colombia, Russia and Japan deserve to be called mafias depends on what
‘mafia’ is taken to mean in Sicily itself, but fundamental disagreements over its name and
nature are as old as the thing itself.
Problems in defining mafia
Mafiosi use violence; but so do many other criminals. What, if anything, distinguishes
mafia from other forms of organized crime? Cultural, economic and political answers
have been given. Some interpreters (Hess, 1973; Duggan, 1989) accept that there are
mafiosi but deny that they belong to any kind of genuine organization: ‘mafia’ is just a
loosely-coupled network of independent local gangs (cosche), held together by personal
links of kinship and friendship, whose members gain respect by using violence in
accordance with Sicilian values in pursuit of their own wealth and power. Other writers
insist that mafia is a criminal organization but disagree over the kind of organization it is.
Is its core business more like that of a firm, or a state? If it is best described as a firm, is
its distinctive feature the company method—the use of violence to turn a profit from legal
and illegal activities (Arlacchi, 1986)—or its market—specialization in the supply of
protection for property rights and economic transactions which the state itself has never
managed to provide (Gambetta, 1993)? If, instead, ‘mafia’ is best seen as a quasi-political
organization, is it a competitor or an accomplice of the Italian state itself—an alternative
territorial system of justice and order, or a private militia used by political elites to extract
consensus and repress social protest (Blok, 1974)? Or perhaps, as Lupo (1996) argues, its
truly distinctive feature may be precisely its fusion of economic and political functions.
For more than a century after the mafia was first named, little reliable evidence was
available to resolve those questions. However, since the mid-1980s, successful judicial
investigations based on the first insider accounts (see pentiti), accompanied by detailed
historical research, have helped to establish a broad, if not complete, consensus on the
nature and evolution of mafia. It now appears as an organization with strict formal
boundaries, considerable continuity in its internal structure and long-standing reliance on
economic and political connections outside Sicily. Recent evidence has made it much
more difficult to write the history of mafia as the degeneration of a popular organization
defending the weak into a brutal gang of racketeers. From the very outset, mafiosi have
dealt in extortion, violence and the consequent reluctance of victims and witnesses to
collaborate with police and judges (omertà).
Social and economic origins
The fundamental rationale for mafia lies in low levels of trust in fellow citizens and state
institutions. From the mid-nineteenth century, the increasing number of Sicilians who
acquired land did not trust the police and judiciary of the new Italian state to defend
effectively their new property rights or punish damage. The protection offered by
mafiosi—initially former soldiers and hired retainers who were well-trained in
violence—was regarded as more reliable. However, credible threats of violence reduced
the level of trust between Sicilians still further, increasing the demand for mafiosi skills
Entries A–Z 485
and allowing protection to be imposed where it was not solicited. Mafia strongholds were
first created in three economic sectors where disputes were endemic: the landed estates
(latifundi) of Western Sicily, owned by absentee landlords who relied on ambitious local
men to manage their properties; the profitable fruit and vegetable markets in Palermo,
where opportunities for price fixing and for destruction of orchards and crops encouraged
cutthroat competition; and illegal activities (notably contraband and animal rustling) in
which agreements between participants could only be ultimately sanctioned by violence.
From these nineteenth-century bases, mafia methods spread out to dominate the
distribution of the most profitable twentieth-century resources in Sicily: construction and
commercial licences, public works contracts, industrial development funds and hard
drugs.
Connections and refuge, first in the USA and then further afield, were provided by the
extended networks of social relations created by a century of Sicilian emigration. The
competitive advantage provided by the readiness to use violence has therefore enabled
mafia to flourish at the leading edge of postwar Sicilian development, and severe
unemployment has helped to ensure a supply of initiates (picciotti) seeking wealth and
reputation as entrepreneurs in violence. As their interests have become more diverse and
more valuable, mafiosi have protected themselves by ensuring the complicity of
politicians, judges and policemen with the power to discourage competitors, block
investigations and influence court decisions. Arlacchi (1996:92) claims that 40 per cent
of all West Sicilian MPs elected to Parliament between 1958 and 1979 were actively—
and probably decisively—supported by Cosa Nostra. Allegations of the exchange of
political favours for mafia electoral support have long been levelled at the ruling
Christian Democrat party, in particular the Andreotti faction whose Sicilian leader,
Salvo Lima, was murdered in 1992 for his failure to organize the quashing of verdicts
against the leading mafiosi in the Palermo ‘maxitrial’ of 1987 by the Court of Cassation.
Territorial organization and conflicts
The basic mafia unit remains the ‘family’, a group of men who claim a monopoly over
the supply of protection for a particular territory Each family is run by a single boss with
the help of a small staff of advisers and professionals in violence. The unskilled labour is
provided by young men whose ritual initiation into the organization takes a form already
described a century ago.
In the mid-1990s, Western Sicily had some 6,000 mafiosi, organized in about 150
families, each with between half a dozen and a hundred members, controlling territories
mostly no bigger than an urban neighbourhood. Attempts to subordinate families to even
a province-wide supreme ‘Commission’ have always been short-lived, frustrated by the
rivalry within and between families over reputation and resources. However, in the early
1980s a group based in the town of Corleone and led by Salvatore (Totò) Riina attempted
to achieve absolute control by the systematic physical elimination of its rivals, thereby
flouting the traditional preference for keeping the actual use of violence below levels
likely to provoke widespread public concern and compel the political elite to react.
Defeat in the ensuing war prompted mafiosi from the losing side to retaliate by defying
the rule of omertà and collaborating with police and magistrates. Many mafia leaders,
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 486
including Riina himself, were arrested but not before they had managed to organize the
murder of the family members of many pentiti as well as the policemen and magistrates
responsible for investigative success (see Falcone).
Political and public responses
The mafia’s entanglement with Italy’s political, economic and judicial institutions has
long undermined attempts to extirpate it. Before 1945, the most direct effort at combat
was made by Mussolini whose prefect Cesare Mori, despatched to Palermo in 1925,
arrested many mafiosi but could not eliminate the social and economic circumstances
which continued to produce them. Thereafter, apart from the institution of a
Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry prompted by the murder of seven policemen in
1963, little consideration was given to a serious anti-mafia strategy Only when the
systematic murder of politicians (Mattarella, La Torre), policemen (Dalla Chiesa,
Cassarà) and judges (Costa, Terranova, Chinnici, Livatino, Falcone, Borsellino) began
after 1980—and political terrorism ceased to monopolize public concern with
violence—did mafia come to be generally seen as a national, rather than a merely
Sicilian, problem.
The resulting state initiatives were inspired by the determination to identify and isolate
mafiosi ever more rigorously. Laws passed in 1982 and 1992 gave greater precision and
wider application to the definition of specifically mafia crime, and efforts to create new
and more effective institutions of prevention and repression were made. In 1982 a High
Commissioner of Anti-Mafia Affairs was appointed, but the position was ineffective and
soon replaced by a Direzione Nazionale Antimafia (National Antimafia Bureau). A
permanent Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry was also established to co-ordinate
public action, and vastly more incisive judicial investigations were achieved by the
creation of specialist teams of local magistrates for all mafia cases. Serious attempts were
then made to sever the links between mafia and politics. In 1991 the Minister of the
Interior was empowered to dissolve local councils suspected of infiltration by mafia
interests—a power invoked in ninety-one cases between 1991 and 1996—and extortion
of votes was made a specific mafia offence in 1992. Measures to prevent mafiosi
competing for public works contracts, using banks to launder money and accumulating
wealth from suspect activities were passed: between 1982 and 1996, property worth more
than 6 billion lire was impounded (Violante, 1997:161). Defection was also encouraged:
reductions in sentences for mafiosi who turned state’s evidence and witness protection
programmes for their families became available in 1991, and covered about 6,000 people
in the mid-1990s.
As state commitment to repression became more visible, so popular anti-mafia protest
increased. In 1984, in revulsion against the growing number and importance of mafia
victims, a coordinating group for grassroots initiatives was formed in Palermo, where an
outspoken anti-mafia mayor, Leoluca Orlando, was elected by landslide in four
successive elections between 1985 and 1997. The party La Rete (The Network), which he
had created in 1993, became a significant force in Sicilian politics. Women, including the
widows of victims and the mothers of children destroyed by involvement in the mafioso-
run drug trade, were a novel and powerful presence in anti-mafia mobilization. Even the
Entries A–Z 487
Church—whose local leadership had long been reticent to the point of apparent parish
priests prepared to risk their lives by open tolerance—began to furnish examples of
young denunciation of mafia. By the late 1990s, such political and popular initiatives had
not succeeded in eradicating the organization, but they made it appear decisively less
‘Sicilian’ and more merely criminal than it had seemed at any time since its appearance
in the 1860s.
Further reading
Arlacchi, P. (1986) Mafia Business: The Mafia Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. M. Ryle,
New York: Verso.
——(1996) ‘Mafia: The Sicilian Cosa Nostra’, South European Politics and Society 1 (1):74–94.
Blok, A. (1974) The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, Oxford: Blackwell.
Capponnetto, A. (1992) I miei giorni a Palermo (My Days in Palermo), Milan: Garzanti
(indispensable account by senior colleague of Falcone and Borsellino).
Catanzaro, R. (1992) Men of Respect: A Social History of the Sicilian Mafia, trans. R. Rosenthal,
New York: Free Press.
Duggan, C. (1989) Fascism and the Mafia, New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.
Gambetta, D. (1993) The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Hess, H. (1973) Mafia and Mafiosi: The Structure of Power, trans. E. Osers, Lexington, MA:
Lexington Books.
Lupo, S. (1996) Storia della mafia. Dalle origini at giorni nostri (History of the Mafia From its
Origins Until Today), Rome: Donzelli, 2nd edn.
Schneider, J. and Schneider, P. (1994) ‘Mafia, Antimafia, and the Question of Sicilian Culture’,
Politics and Society 22 (2):237–59.
Stille, A. (1995) Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic,
London: Jonathan Cape.
Violante, L. (ed.) (1997) Mafia e società italiana. Rapporto ‘97 (Mafia and Italian Society: 1997
Report), Bari: Laterza.
DAVID MOSS
Magazzini Criminali
An experimental theatre company formed in Florence by four young art students (none
with theatre training), this company went by the name Il Carrozzone (The Big Cart) until
1979. The change in name to Magazzini Criminali reflected developments both within
the group and in the wider field of avantgarde performance, where the original
avantgarde movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Carmelo Bene, Memè Perlini,
Giuliano Vasilicò) had given away to what was termed postavanguardia or
transavanguardia (see transavantgarde).
While their early work reflected the visual arts background of the group members, its
dominant features were ritualistic, and can be included under the rubric of teatro-
immagine (image theatre). In the mid-1970s the group moved to a mode of performance
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 488
which linked a cerebral exploration of performance sign-systems (space, time, lighting,
performers’ bodies) with an obsessive and visceral focus on real, autobiographical (and
sometimes violently abusive) repetitive action. These elements were deliberately united
in a loose structure which ensured the uniqueness of any one performance.
Further reading
De Marinis, M. (1983) Al limite del teatro (At the Limits of Theatre), Florence: Usher, 101–5
(locates the group in the European avantgarde tradition).
Sinisi, S. (1983) Dalla parte dell’occhio, (From the Eye’s Point of View), Rome: Kappa, 131–49 (a
detailed description of the group’s productions).
TIM FITZPATRICK
Magistretti, Vico
b. 6 October 1920, Milan
Architect, furniture and interior designer
Magistretti studied architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan, completing his training in
1945. On graduating he joined his father’s studio and worked on architectural and design
projects during the years of reconstruction. His collaboration with the Cassina furniture
manufacturing company dates from 1960. Key designs for them include his ‘Chair 892’
of 1963. For Artemide, he produced an early set of plastic furniture items, namely the
‘Stadio’ table and the ‘Selene’ chair.
By the mid-1960s Magistretti was established as one of Italy’s leading designers, and
he went on to produce classics such as his ‘Sinbad’ chair for Cassina of 1981 which was
inspired by a horse blanket. His work in lighting has also been seminal and includes the
1967 ‘Eclisse’ table lamp by Artemide. Magistretti has been at the forefront of Italian
design for half a decade, and remains one of its key figures. He prefers to work alone,
with the assistance of a draughtsman.
Further reading
Pasca, V. (1990) Vico Magistretti Designer, New York: Rizzoli.
PENNY SPARKE
Entries A–Z 489
Magnani, Anna
b. 7 March 1908, Rome; d. 26 September 1973, Rome
Actress
One of the most celebrated film actresses of the early postwar period and universally
regarded as the diva of neorealist cinema, Anna Magnani began her career on the stage in
the late 1920s and achieved renown as a revue artist in the mid-1930s. After a supporting
role in De Sica’s Teresa Venerdì in 1941, she went on to play the most famous of all her
many roles, that of Pina in Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (1945). During a short-lived
sentimental relationship with Rossellini she performed the extraordinary monologue of
La voce umana (The Human Voice), one of the two episodes in Rossellini’s L’amore
(1948), and then went on to work with Visconti in Bellissima (1951) as well as with Jean
Renoir in Le carrosse d’or (The Golden Coach) (1953). She made several films in
Hollywood, amongst them Daniel Man’s version of Tennessee Williams’ A Rose Tattoo
(1955), for which she won an Oscar, but returned to Italy to create one of her most
memorable roles in Pasolini’s Mamma Roma (1962).
GINO MOLITERNO
Magrelli, Valerio
b. 1957, Rome
Poet
Among the most promising poets of the new generation, Magrelli signalled himself to the
critics’ attention with Ora serrata retinae (Closed Openings of the Retina), published in
1980. The dominant theme of these poems is the poet’s attempt to rediscover meaning in
the process of writing and in the reconstruction of one’s world through memory. His
second collection, Nature e venature (Natures and Venations), was awarded the
prestigious Premio Viareggio (see literary prizes) in 1987. Together with Magrelli’s
third book, Esercizi di tiptologia (Tip-Tapping Exercises), it continues his search for
meaning in poems that are ‘crumbs’ to find the way back through ‘the woods of years’
although increasingly the fear arises that ‘finches will come/to erase the tracks…and
devour you’. Magrelli, who writes for Il Messaggero, has also published essays and a
travel reportage.
Further reading
Magrelli, V. (1991) Nearsights: Poems, trans. A. Molino, St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press.
VALERIO FERME
Encyclopedia of contemporary italian culture 490