A scholarly biography of the prominent Italian antifascist
intellectual, writer, and activist who was stabbed to death by
political assassins in 1937. As many as 200,000 people attended the
funeral services for Rosselli in Paris. But today, as Pugliese
notes, Rosselli (a "prophet crying out in the wilderness") is so
little known outside his native land that this is the first
biography of him in English. Pugliese (history/Hofstra Univ.)
brings to this admiring portrait a formidable variety of tools,
including a thorough knowledge of Italian history, language,
literature, and landscape. After a brief introduction, the book
proceeds chronologically from Rosselli's birth in 1899 (his father
was a musicologist; his mother a playwright); follows him as he
studies, marries, becomes a professor of political economy at
Bocconi University in Milan; describes and assesses his increasing
hatred for Mussolini's fascist government; and details his
associations with fellow political radicals, his arrests and
imprisonment, his increasing involvements in antifascist
organizations and publications, and his exile to France. Most
engaging for general readers will be Pugliese's accounts of
Rosselli's activism: his fistfight with a pack of fascists in the
streets of Milan, his motorboat escape from the island prison of
Lipari, his battlefield exploits during the Spanish Civil War, his
participation in various attempts to assassinate Mussolini, and his
1934 meeting with Trotsky (who "appeared conservative" to
Rosselli). Pugliese's primary focus, however, is on Rosselli's
intellectual evolution, and though social historians may delight in
his many detailed exegeses of Rosselli's writings as he endeavors
to establish his hero's place in intellectual history, the
uninitiate may be bemused, if not baffled, to read, in a fairly
typical passage, that Rosselli was "ideologically positioned (not
trapped) between Antonio Gramsci and Piero Gobetti." Pugliese's
research is impeccable, though this important work at times demands
of nonspecialist readers an uncommon erudition. (Kirkus Reviews)
Carlo Rosselli (1899-1937) was one of the most charismatic and
influential of European antifascist intellectuals. Born into a
wealthy Jewish family, and abandoning a promising career as a
professor of political economics, he devoted his considerable
fortune and ultimately his life to the struggle against fascism. In
1925, he was instrumental in establishing the first underground
antifascist newspaper. While imprisoned for his subversive
political activities, he wrote his magnum opus, "Liberal
Socialism," arguing that socialism was the logical development of
the principle of liberty. After a daring escape, he made his way to
Paris and became the driving force behind a new political movement,
"Justice and Liberty." Rosselli was among the first to arrive in
Barcelona after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, in which he
commanded an armed column of volunteers in defense of the Republic.
When Italian fascists discovered Rosselli's plot to assassinate
Mussolini, they declared him the regime's most dangerous enemy and
had him murdered, along with his brother, noted historian Nello
Rosselli, on a country road in Normandy.
In this work, the first biography of Rosselli in English,
Stanislao Pugliese skillfully interweaves the strands of heresy,
exile, and tragedy in Rosselli's life. The drama and drive of his
narrative enhance the scholarly contribution that this work makes
to modern Italian history and to the study of European
antifascism.
General
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