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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Giorgio Levi Della Vida (1886-1967) was not only an eminent Islamologist, he was also a man with solid roots in his own time. He taught in Naples and Rome, then for the ten years 1939-1948 at the University of Pennsylvania. He was one of the few university teachers who, when the oath of loyalty to the Italian fascist regime was introduced in October 1931, opted not to accept that act of submission. His memoirs, Fantasmi ritrovati, were published in 1966; the book, now out of print, conjures up a tableau vivant of half a century of intellectual encounters in Italy and Europe between the wars. Among the portraits he paints there is the astounding story of those crucial days in June 1924 when the fascist government became a full-blown regime. This article presents extended extracts from that story.
1. It should be noted that the same advice, in the name of continuity of the domestic opposition, was given by the then clandestine Communist Party. A philosophical analysis of the problem of freedom in the face of coercion can be found in an article by Imre Toth: ‘“… car comme disait Philolaos le Pythagoricien…”. Philosophie, géométrie et liberté’, Diogène 182, 1998, which approaches it from another fascist event, the dissolution of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 1939.
2. Using the formal ‘you’ (‘Lei’ in Italian) (translator’s note).
3. Literally ‘black souls’ (translator’s note).
4. ‘Someone who praises the past’ (Horace, Ars Poetica, 173) (translator’s note).
5. Members of violent fascist gangs (squadre) (translator’s note).
6. ‘Whom God wishes to ruin he first makes mad’ (originally attributed to Euripides) (translator’s note).
7. Fascio was the usual name for a political faction: ‘the Party of Order’ (translator’s note).
8. H. Heine, Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen, XVII (free translation).
9. ‘With a discriminating nose’ (translator’s note).
10. The words that the Czech reformer, who was condemned to be burnt at the stake for heresy in Constanz on 6 July 1415, is supposed to have spoken when an old woman came up to add her few sticks in exchange for an indulgence (translator’s note).
11. A handle reserved for aristocrats who do not have a title (translator’s note).
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