Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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Siciliano, Enzo

b. 27 May 1934, Rome

Writer and literary critic

An eclectic left-wing figure in the Italian cultural scene, Siciliano has served as president

of Italian Public Television (RAI) as well as contributing to newspapers, magazines and

literary journals such as La Stampa, L’Avanti, Il Corriere della Sera, L’Espresso,

Paragone, Tempo presente and Nuovi Argomenti. Like Pasolini, an intellectual he

particularly admired, Siciliano also experimented with film directing. His literary

production tends to be qualitatively uneven and includes several collections of short

stories, (Racconti ambigui (Ambiguous Tales), 1963, and Dietro di me (Behind Me),

1971), and a novel, La coppia (The Couple, 1966). His critical activity, on the other hand,

has always been particularly innovative and stimulating. With Prima della poesia (Before

Poetry) (1965), he constructively polemicizes against an established and fossilized idea of

literature, and then with Autobiografia letteraria (Literary Autobiography) (1970), he

successfully manages to combine a Marxist and a psychoanalytical approach into a

creative essay form.

Further reading

Martelli, S. and Di Pasqua, S. (1988) Guida alla lettura di Silone (A Reader’s Guide to Silone),

Milan: Mondadori.

DAVE WATSON

Sinisgalli, Leonardo

b. 9 March 1908, Montemurro, Potenza; d. 31 January 1981, Rome

Poet, editor and industrial engineer

After graduating in electronic and industrial engineering, Sinisgalli worked for the

Olivetti and Pirelli companies, and between 1953–9 also edited Civiltà delle macchine,

sponsored by Finmeccanica. As a poet he enjoyed the friendship and support of Giuseppe

Ungaretti, and his first poetic anthology, Vidi le Muse (I Saw the Muses), received

critical approval from Gianfranco Contini

Sinisgalli’s poetry derives some of its themes from Ungaretti and Quasimodo and,

ultimately, from Leopardi, but in terms of style and experiment Sinisgalli looks to

Surrealism, and not only to the literary avantgarde of Breton and Aragon but also to a

painter such as Libero de Libero. With I nuovi Campi Elisi (The New Elysian Fields)

Sinisgalli’s poetry changes to reveal affinities with Montale’s poetics of the ‘occasions’,

and the epigrammatic style of the fragments of his first collections, which recalled modes

of Oriental poetry, led him to experiments using the dialect of Lucania, transformed by

the poetic elaborations of the Italian language.

Further reading

Sinisgalli, L. (1982) Selected Poems, trans. W.S. Di Piero, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press.

ERNESTO LIVORNI

social welfare

In the postwar period, Italy developed a welfare system comparable to its European

neighbours. Social expenditures went through a continuous and spectacular growth and

allowed Italian welfare to completely recover its lag in adjusting to the international

average of protection. However, four main features stand out as peculiar to welfare

Italian-style. First, unlike the British/Scandinavian model (based on the egalitarian

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principles of universalism and uniformity of services, and financed through taxes), it

offered citizens a wide diversity of services according to their profession. Second, it was

based on the principle of compulsory insurance, so that contributions by both employers

and employees represented its main source of financing. Third, it consisted almost

exclusively of social security (pensions and social insurance) and health services, while

unemployment and housing policies were always considered fringe sectors. Finally, like

other continental countries (namely France and Belgium), it provided mainly cash

incomes rather than public services.

Beginning in the 1950s, minimum pension levels were extended from state and private

employees to many non-wage and salary earning categories (farmers and sharecroppers,

craftsmen, shopkeepers and all the professions), with each category creating an

autonomous fund or pension board, mostly managed by INPS, the state body also

responsible for other social security. Crisis loomed after the pension reform of 1969,

which improved the benefit level of old age pensions (in part by linking it to the official

cost of living index), introduced the so-called ‘social pensions’ (granted to all over the

age of sixty-five with neither income nor sufficient contributions, irrespective of any

previous salary) and enlarged the disability insurance programme as a means of income

redistribution in underdeveloped regions, especially in the South, where unemployment

was higher and political consensus was largely based on clientelistic relationships (see

clientelism). Moreover, besides traditional old age pensions, the system spread to provide

many others, such as the so-called ‘seniority pensions’ (given mostly to civil servants or

employees of state-owned companies, who were allowed to retire early, after only twenty

years of service) and disability pensions (paid to workers with physical or psychological

handicaps). As a consequence, the pension system became an inextricable labyrinth of

privileges and disparities. Finally, in the 1970s the Cassa Integrazione Guadagni

(Earnings Integration Fund, a government-funded system of benefits to workers

temporarily dismissed by their employers) was used extensively to ease social tensions

which stemmed from the crisis of industrial firms. As the number of retired grew

enormously (in the early 1990s almost 40 per cent of working-age Italians were over

sixty years old, compared to just 23 per cent in the 1950s) employment shrank (in 1960

there were 2.6 employees for each pensioner; in 1990 this had diminished to 1.2

employees per pensioner), and contributions began to cover an ever-decreasing part of

social outlays with the resulting deficit financed at the expense of the national budget.

Thus, given the inability of both governments and Parliament to pass reform bills and the

fierce opposition to change from many categories of workers, social security became,

together with the wages of state employees, the main item of the recurrent state

expenditure and, as a result, in early 1990s the system approached collapse.

The increasing unsustainability of the national deficit and heavy pressures from both

European partners and international financial organizations eventually forced change.

After long negotiations, a reform was initiated in 1995–6 aimed at slowing down the

growth of pension expenditure by raising the retirement age, reintroducing a generalized

system of capitalization and increasingly integrating state pensions with private pension

funds.

In the 1990s, reform was also instituted in the health system, which was the second

main item of Italian social welfare. Since 1978 Italy had been one of the few countries of

continental Europe (along with Denmark, Spain and Portugal) to have a national health

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system. The establishment of an NHS was aimed at overcoming the serious

disorganization of hospitals and health services, which had been provided until then by a

plethora of insurance funds, with heavy disparities of treatment among different

categories of workers. The NHS improved the average assistance received by citizens but

also produced new inequalities. The health budget was funded largely by contributions

from private employees (more than 65 per cent of total contributions at the mid-1990s)

and to a much lesser extent by state employees (17 per cent) and autonomous workers (13

per cent) but the system soon proved financially unsustainable. Fastgrowing demand of

treatment and prevention, ageing of population, emergence of new mass diseases

(tumours, cardiopathies and chronic pathologies) and social problems such as drug

addiction, caused a steep increase in expenditure. Furthermore, the burden was made

even heavier by serious wastage of resources through widespread bureaucratic

inefficiencies, heavy intrusion of political parties in management and clientelistic use of

health expenditure. Finally, since the state invested little and badly in hospitals and health

infrastructures, it had to turn increasingly to expensive arrangements with private

nursing-homes so that a substantial part of the private health system developed merely as

a subsidized sector with poor controls on its quality and efficiency This obliged

governments to ask citizens to pay ever more for worsening services or to rely

increasingly on very expensive private hospitals.

Then, as local health services continued to incur enormous deficits, the Tangentopoli

investigations revealed massive bribery, corruption and schemes for the private

enrichment of the ministers and civil servants who had ruled the Ministry of Health in the

1980s. These shocking revelations led to extensive reform in 1993. Controls on

expenditure were tightened, local authorities were asked to assume direct responsibility

for health services and to adopt a managerial approach and, at the same time, private

health insurance funds were introduced. Subsequent changes both in the pension and the

health system partially succeeded in stabilizing expenditure so that Italian welfare

appeared reasonably balanced and financially sustainable in the medium term, although

critics still maintain that it has some way to go before being truly equitable and efficient.

Further reading

Ascoli, U. (1996), ‘The Italian Welfare State Between Incrementalism and Rationalization’, in L.

Balbo and H. Nowotny (eds), Time to Care in Tomorrow’s Welfare Systems: The Nordic

Experience and the Italian Case, Vienna: European Centre for Social Welfare Training and

Research, 107–41 (a concise outline of postwar trends in welfare policies and the main features

of the Italian system such as particularism, clientelism, non-progressiveness and persistence of

poverty).

Cazzola, G. (1994) Lo stato sociale tra crisi e riforme: il caso Italia (The Welfare State between

Crisis and Reform: the Italian Case), Bologna: Il Mulino (a broad picture of the challenge to

reform facing the Italy welfare system in the 1990s).

Ferrera, M. (1997) ‘The Uncertain Future of the Italian Welfare State’, West European Politics 20

(1):231–49.

STEFANO BATTILOSSI

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Solbiati, Alessandro

b. 1956, Busto Arsizio

Composer

Solbiati’s compositional style turns the language of the avantgarde to poetic ends,

revealing a close familiarity with the traditions and aesthetic concerns of Italian music of

the past. His early studies under Sandro Gorli culminated in the award of a diploma from

the Milan Conservatory in 1982, after which he went on to study under Franco Donatoni

at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He won recognition in a number of competitions,

and was soon receiving commissions from the RAI and the Teatro alla Scala (see La

Scala) in Milan. Subsequently his compositions were performed at the Venice Biennale

and at the festivals of Lille and Avignon. Solbiati has consistently produced work of high

quality for a wide variety of instrumental forces. His concerto for violin and orchestra Di

luce (Of Light) (1982) shows a marked feeling for timbre and texture, while Studi

(Studies) (1983) for chamber orchestra explores further realms of colour and emotional

expression.

JOHN KERSEY

Soldati, Mario

b. 17 November 1906, Turin; d. 19 June 1999, Tellaro, Liguria

Writer, art critic and film director

Soldati’s early years studying in a Jesuit college and his experiences living in the United

States form the thematic basis for much of his literary output. Indeed, his works, often

psychological in nature, reveal a strong element of autobiography, written in a style

characterized by a witty urbanity, an unabashed sensuality and an unstudied freshness.

Many of his novels and short stories explore the contradiction between the urge to

give in to natural human impulses and the religious strictures that forbid doing so, a

dichotomy he ascribes to his own exposure to a repressive religious education. Soldati’s

characters, often belonging to the sophisticated upper classes, are caught in a bind as they

attempt to satisfy their own desires while obeying the social and moral laws condemning

such behaviour. The impossibility of reconciling these two desires typically leads to a

profound and debilitating sense of guilt. The novels La confessione (The Confession)

(1955), and La busta arancione (The Orange Envelope) (1966) both depict the negative

effects of a harsh religious upbringing.

Soldati’s experiences as an art student at New York’s Columbia University from

1929–31 are documented in America, primo amore (America, First Love) (1935).

Although this work captures Soldati’s fascination with life in the United States, the

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fascists pointed to its more critical sections as proof that America was morally

degenerate.

His most famous work, the novel Le lettere da Capri (The Capri Letters), follows the

experiences of two American expatriates living in Rome, Capri, Paris and Philadelphia.

The book, which garnered immense public and critical support, also won the 1954 Strega

Prize (see literary prizes). Other works include La verità sul caso Motta (The Truth

about the Motta Case) (1941), a psychological thriller, and A cena col commendatore

(Dinner with the Commendatore) (1950), a collection of three long stories set in the

world of art and music. The autobiographical novel Le due città (translated as The

Malacca Cane) (1964) portraying a young man interested in a film career, is set in both

Turin, which represents purity, and Rome, a symbol of decay. L’attore (The Actor), about

a television director, was awarded the Campiello Prize in 1970. In a more psychological

vein are novels such as Il vero Silvestri (The Real Silvestri) (1957), in which a dead

man’s lover and his best friend analyse his persona, and L’Architetto (The Architect)

(1986).

A talented and multifaceted personality, Soldati has been involved in a wide variety of

artistic activities, and has been at various times a journalist, art critic, radio lecturer,

television producer, an actor and has also written knowledgeably on food and wine. In the

1930s he collaborated with Mario Camerini on the screenplays of many of his best films

including Gli uomini, che mascalzoni! (Men, What Rascals!) (1932) and Il Signor Max

(Mister Max) (1937), both starring Vittorio De Sica. Between 1938 and the late 1950s he

also directed over thirty films, including elegant adaptations of two novels by the

nineteenth-century author Antonio Fogazzaro, Piccolo mondo antico (The Little World of

the Past) (1940) and Malombra (1942), and a moving film version of Moravia’s novel,

La provinciale (The Woman from the Provinces) (1952).

Further reading

Heiney, D. (1964) America in Modern Italian Literature, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University

Press (for a discussion of Soldati’s works, see pp. 29–34 and 87–104).

Mauro, W. (1981) Invito alla lettura di Mario Soldati (Invitation to the Reading of Mario Soldati),

Milan: Mursia (a critical overview of Soldati’s works).

LAURA A. SALSINI

Soldini, Silvio

b. 1958, Milan

Film director

One of the most impressive representatives of the New Italian Cinema, Soldini made his

directorial debut with a short entitled Drimage (1982), the title being a collage of three

words: dream, image, and age). In 1983 he created Paesaggio configure (Landscape with

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Shapes), but it is with his 1985 fifty-eight minute production, Giulia in ottobre (Julia in

October) that his cinema finally acquired its distinctive form, as Soldini found his own

particular characters in those individuals who live alienated lives in a desolate urban

environment. This is the characteristic landscape of his first feature, L’aria serena

dell’Ovest (The Serene Air of the West) (1990). Then, with Un’anima divisa in due (A

Split Soul) (1993), a startling and dazzling film in which a neurotic Milanese falls

desperately in love with an enigmatic gypsy, Soldini confronts a foreign culture and tries

to follow alternative existential and cultural paths as the tale is, at first, formally and

stylistically divided into two and then merges differences into one narrative and stylistic

flow. In 1997 he directed Le acrobate (The Female Acrobats).

MANUELA GIERI

Solmi, Renato

b. 27 March 1927, Aosta

Editor, translator and literary critic

Solmi, like his father Sergio Solmi, has left behind ample testimony of his dedication as

translator and literary critic. Renato Solmi’s interests, however, have centred more on

political-economic theory and on contemporary German philosophy, in particular the

work of Adorno, Lukács, Benjamin and Brecht, which he edited and translated and thus

helped to disseminate in Italy. Solmi also helped to found the journal Discussioni

(Discussions), and from 1951–63 was editor at the Einaudi publishing house. He

subsequently taught history and philosophy at the Liceo Scientifico Galileo Ferraris in

Turin.

SHERRY ROUSH

Solmi, Sergio

b. 16 December 1899, Rieti; d. 7 October 1981, Milan

Poet, art and literary critic

After graduating in law from the University of Turin, Solmi founded the Crocean-

inspired journal Primo tempo. His earliest critical contributions were on French literature

and included studies of Alain and Montaigne. During the Second World War Solmi

fought in the Resistance movement and was captured and imprisoned in the jail of San

Vittore, which served as the backdrop for much of the poetry of his 1950 collection, titled

Poesie. This was followed in 1956 by Levania and Dal balcone (From the Balcony)

(1968). Solmi’s visions of cosmic isolation, especially in these last two volumes, link his

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lyric work to the critical attention he dedicated to the genre of science fiction. An art

critic and translator (of among others, Valéry, Machado, W.H. Auden and Hesse), Solmi

also published perceptive studies of Leopardi.

SHERRY ROUSH

Sordi, Alberto

b. 15 June 1919, Rome

Film actor

Having appeared in almost 150 films, Alberto Sordi is one of the most familiar and best-

loved faces of Italian screen comedy, featuring most commonly as the protagonist of

comedies ‘Italian style’ (see commedia all’Italiana) in which he typically embodies the

hopelessly immature and mediocre Italian male. With many years of experience on stage

and radio—and having previously worked in films both as an actor and as the Italian

voice of Oliver Hardy Sordi was already well-established as a comic actor and a box

office draw when Fellini offered him the starring role in his first film, Lo Sceicco bianco

(The White Sheik) (1952). The film’s success led Fellini to cast Sordi as the funniest but

most pathetic of the five eternal adolescents in arrested development in his next film, I

Vitelloni (Spivs) (1953). Sordi subsequently went on to work with all the great Italian

comic directors from Monicelli and Comencini to Steno and Dino Risi, and also directed

himself in more than a dozen feature films, though none were as memorable as those in

which he was directed by others.

Further reading

Fava, C.G. (1993) Alberto Sordi: An American in Rome, Rome: Gremese International.

GINO MOLITERNO

Sorge, Bartolomeo

b. 25 October 1929, Rio Marina, Livorno

Priest, writer and editor

One of the most influential Jesuit intellectuals in postwar Italy, especially during the

reign of Pope Paul VI, Sorge had a particular impact on Sicilian Catholics involved in

the battle against the mafia. Educated in both Italy and Spain, he became a Jesuit in 1966

and edited the prestigious Jesuit fortnightly magazine, La Civiltà Cattolica (Catholic

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Civilization), from 1978 to 1985. A prolific author, his most notable works are

Capitalismo, scelta di classe e socialismo (Capitalism, Class Choice and Socialism)

(1976) and Uscire dal tempio (Leaving the Temple) (1989). Since 1985 he has been

director of the Istituto di Formazione Politica ‘Pedro Arrupe’ (Institute of Political

Training Pedro Arupe) and of the Centre for Social Studies in Palermo, where initially he

had a powerful influence on Leoluca Orlando, the ex-DC mayor who created the

breakaway party, La Rete, to fight the mafia but with whom he has since fallen out.

Further reading

Sorge, B. (1993) I Cattolici e l’Italia che verrà (Catholics and the Italy which is Coming), Milan:

Oscar Mondadori.

JOHN POLLARD

Sottsass, Ettore

b. 14 September 1917, Innsbruck, Austria

Architect and designer

An Austrian/Italian architect designer, Sottsass, more than any other, has challenged the

meaning and forms of modernism and introduced a radical note into Italian design from

the 1960s onwards. He was the son of a successful rationalist architect active in Italy in

the 1930s, Ettore Sot-Sas, who moved to Turin in 1928. The younger Sottsass studied

architecture at the Polytechnic of Turin from 1935 to 1939. In 1947, after several years’

involvement with the war effort, he established a practice in Milan, working on interiors

and furniture in the first instance. The Olivetti company employed him in 1957 to head

the design of its computer division, and he subsequently moved into the area of

typewriter design. He created some of Olivetti’s most notable machines at that time,

among them the ‘Praxis’ of 1963 and the ‘Tekne 3’ of 1964.

As well as working on these modern technological goods, Sottsass simultaneously

created ceramics and prototypes of furniture items which were influenced both by Indian

mysticism and American Pop Art. These radical personal exercises strongly influenced

the anti-design movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Sottsass was regarded

by many as the founder of that movement. In the late 1960s he produced an exhibition of

giant ceramics and a set of furniture pieces which he called his ‘Grey’ series.

While his reputation as a radical designer grew apace, Sottsass continued to work for

Olivetti, concentrating both on office furniture and systems in which his pop-derived

ideas began to become visible as well. By the 1970s he had worked with a wide range of

manufacturing companies—among them Poltronova—but at the end of that decade he

made the greatest international impact of all through his work, first with Studio

Alchimia, and subsequently with the ‘Memphis’ group (see Studio Memphis) which he

set up in 1981 with a group of younger colleagues and friends from his design firm,

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Sottsass Associati (established a year earlier with Aldo Cibic, Marco Zanini, and Matteo

Thun), and elsewhere.

The impact of the 1981 Memphis exhibition was enormous both inside and outside

Italy. It showed a new, radical way forward out of the culde-sac of modernism and

inspired many to emulate its work. Sottsass became an international figure and the hero

of young designers across the globe. Memphis continued to hold annual exhibitions until

1988, while Sottsass expanded his links with international companies even further.

During the 1980s he worked prolifically in the area of product design and also built a

house in the USA. He continued to travel extensively and to assimilate many eclectic

influences into his work. Now over eighty years old, Sottsass is still active in Milan. The

length of his career is such that he has moved through the whole period of postwar Italian

design and has consistently played a key, and highly individual, role within the dramatic

changes that have occurred since the 1940s.

Further reading

Di Castro, F. (ed.) (1976) Sottsass’ Scrap-book, Milan: Casabella.

Radice, B. (1993) Ettore Sottsass: A Critical Biography, New York: Rizzoli.

Sparke, P. (1982) Ettore Sottsass Jnr, London: Design Council.

PENNY SPARKE

Southern Question

In essence, what has come to be known as the ‘Southern Question’ consists in the

analysis of the economic, political, social, cultural and ethical differences between North

and South and the ensuing debate on how to reduce these differences. The role of an

apparently backward and economically underdeveloped South within a united Italy has

always been in question, and has remained for almost a century and a half ‘the most

intractable issue facing the development of the Italian state and society’ (Davis, 1996:53).

However, in the 1990s, the phrase ‘Northern Question’ has been used to describe a

distorted mirror image of the Southern Question, while the Southern Question itself has

undergone considerable redefinition, partly due to new studies and partly due to the

growing demand for some form of federalism.

Approaches to the Southern Question have changed considerably since the 1980s,

largely due to the work of the journal Meridiana and its associated research institute,

IMES (Istituto Meridionale di Storia e Scienze Sociali, or Southern Institute of History

and the Social Sciences). In these studies, the conventional image of the South as

uniformly agricultural and economically backward has been gradually dismantled and a

much more complex reality built up. The new studies have argued that, far from suffering

from lack of economic change, the South has had too much. Furthermore, those two

archetypes of a ‘traditional’ and even ‘feudal’ South, the latifondo (large estate; see

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