Alfredo Oriani

File:Alfredo Oriani.jpg

Alfredo Oriani

For the Italian ship Alfredo Oriani, see Oriani-class destroyer.

Alfredo Oriani (22 August 1852 – 18 October 1909) was an Italian historian, poet and social critic. Often considered a precursor of Fascism, several of his books were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1940.

Benjamin Crémieux defined him as "the only political writer whose influence has been truly invigorating in Italy. He was also "an elegant translator of Plato".

Biography

Although he was descended from a family of the small aristocracy, he had a difficult childhood without affection. Born in Faenza, the young Oriani grew up grumpy and lonely, and later revealed these characteristics in his works.

His father sent him to Rome to study law at the Sapienza. From Rome he moved to Bologna, where he practiced in the office of a lawyer. In the meantime, his family had moved from Faenza to Casola, in the Senio Valley, where they owned a house, "Villa del Cardello", the ancient guest quarters of a convent. Oriani settled in Cardello and dedicated his whole life to the activity of scholar, historiographer and political journalist (as well as a local politician). He also owned some land: he called winemaker his official profession.

At Cardello Oriani lived with his sister Enrichetta. He had a relationship with a young maid, Cosima (Mina) Cavallari, who in 1891 gave him a son, Ugo. He had for confessor Don Lorenzo Costa, also a writer, who left a written testimony in memory of Oriani.

He died, alone, on October 18, 1909. He was buried in the small cemetery next to the church of Valsenio next to his father. In April 1924 his remains were moved to a funerary monument specially built by Giulio Arata. Here rest since 1940 the remains of Enrichetta, the writer's sister, and Mina Cavallari, Ugo Oriani's mother. At the hypogeum in front of the memorial lie the remains of Oriani's father, Luigi (1817–1896), his son Ugo (1891–1953) and his daughter-in-law Luigia Pifferi Oriani (1894–1979).

Writings

His works range from the novel to treatises on politics and history, from theatrical texts to journalistic articles and poetry.

His fame as a writer was for a long time linked above all to his works of historical and political nature: Fino a Dogali (1889), in which he analyzed the causes of the religious and economic crisis of the new Italy; Political Struggle in Italy (1892), which narrates the Italian historical events from the Middle Ages to the Risorgimento; Ideal Revolt (1908), in which the writer expounds his own political beliefs, affirming the need for a strong state that regulates social life with broad powers. Oriani’s system was very much influenced by a political thinker of the Risorgimento, Giuseppe Ferrari, and his Philosophy of Revolution.

Also important are the literary works, including authentic masterpieces such as Jealousy (1894) and Vortex (1899). One of his last works was Bicycle (1902), a collection of short stories in which he abandoned the emphatic and vehement style of his first writings for a more fluent and spontaneous writing. The work was based on an experience he had in 1897: in the summer of that year Oriani made a solo trip from Romagna to Tuscany, reaching Siena (in all about 600 km with over six thousand meters of elevation gain) in the saddle of a Bremiambourg racing fixed gear.

Until the World War I the work of Oriani was poorly appreciated. The only noteworthy consideration came from Benedetto Croce who, in an essay of 1909, acknowledged the merit of having criticized the positivism then prevailing in Italian culture and to have made reference to Hegel and historicism. A certain attention was also shown by Renato Serra, who dedicated two writings to him, as an eccentric element within the contemporary cultural scene of Romagna. In October, 1916, Giovanni Papini wrote an eulogy for the seventh anniversary of the death of Oriani.

But it was in the nationalist environment that Oriani found his greatest admirers. The exponents of Italian nationalism elevated Oriani to spiritual guide of their movement, finding in his writings the historical and ideal justification of the programs of national greatness and colonial expansion. As Luigi Federzoni wrote in a letter to Oriani's son, Ugo: "your father is — spiritually and intellectually — also my father. I love him, I admire him, I venerate him more than any other man in the world", and there were many nationalists who, like Dino Grandi and Gioacchino Volpe, took The Political Struggle in Italy with them to the front during the Great War.

After the end of the war, the Italian government took possession of Oriani's thought and tried to enhance and spread it with the publication of the complete works, published in 30 volumes by Cappelli. This work was edited by Benito Mussolini himself: the Duce identified in Oriani, a free thinker who had disdained the easy success, a precursor of the values of Fascism (the legitimacy of this recognition is still widely discussed in the academic historiographic debate). For this reason he was celebrated with the "March to the Cardello" on April 27, 1924. Mussolini himself, at the end of the celebration, elevated Oriani to "Poet of the Fatherland" and to "exaltor of all the energies of the race".

In 1924, the Cardello was declared a national monument; on April 14, 1927 the "Ente Casa di Oriani" was established (Royal Decree-Law, No. 721), in order to perpetuate the memory of the writer. Oriani's thought was also appreciated by Gramsci: Gramsci, reflecting on the lack of a national-popular literature in Italy, saw Oriani as one of the few Italian authors who were aware that the lack of encounter between the whole nation and the cultural class had had disastrous consequences: first of all the hegemony of the post-unification liberal ruling class.

After the Second World War, Oriani was blacklisted for political reasons. Only since the seventies, thanks to the work of eminent scholars such as Giovanni Spadolini and Eugenio Ragni, there has been a resumption of interest in his work, both non-fiction and fiction.

In 1975, the park surrounding Cardello was declared an area of considerable public interest by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. In 1978, the writer's heirs sold the villa-museum to the Ente Casa di Oriani. In the following years the Institution became a Foundation. The "Fondazione Casa di Oriani" (president Sandro Rogari, director Alessandro Luparini) continued the work of spreading the thought of Alfredo Oriani.

Works

• Memorie inutili (1876; novel)
• Al di là (1877)
• Monotonie: versi di Ottone de Banzole (1878)
• Gramigne (1879)
• No (1881; novel)
• Quartetto (1883; novel)
• Matrimonio e divorzio (1886)
• Fino a Dogali (1889; essays)
• La lotta politica in Italia. Origini della lotta attuale (476-1887) (1892)
• Il nemico (1894; novel)
• Gelosia (1894; novel)
• La disfatta (1896; novel)
• Vortice (1899)
• Olocausto (1902; novel)
• La Bicicletta (1902)
• Oro incenso e mirra (1904)
• La rivolta ideale (1908)
• Fuochi di Bivacco (1913)
• Punte secche (1921)
• Sotto il fuoco (1931)
• Ultima carica (1933)

Translated into English

• "The Moscow Theater Plot." In: Spanish, Italian and Oriental Tales (1909; reprinted in The Lock and Key Library, Vol. II, 1912, edited by Julian Hawthorne)

References

• Bianchi, G.B. (1938). Alfredo Oriani. La vita. Messina-Milano: Principato.
• Carrannante, A. (2009). "Alfredo Oriani a cento anni dalla morte", Giornale di storia contemporanea, No. 1, pp. 210–19.
• Cecchi, E. (1957). Ritratti e Profili. Milano: Garzanti, pp. 177–85.
• Debenedetti, M. (2008). Alfredo Oriani. Romanzi e Teatro. Cesena: Il Ponte Vecchio.
• Mangoni, Luisa (1984). "Alfredo Oriani e la Cultura Politica del Suo Tempo," Studi Storici, Anno 25, No. 1, pp. 169–80.
• Pesante, V. (1996). Il Problema Oriani. Il Pensiero Storico-politico. Le Interpretazioni Storiografiche. Milano: Angeli.
• Perolino, U. (2011). Oriani e la Narrazione della Nuova Italia. Massa: Transeuropa.
• Titone, Virgílio (1935). Retorica e Antiretorica nell'opera di Alfredo Oriani. Milano: Società Editrice Dante Alighieri.
• Tordi, R. (1974). "Alfredo Oriani tra Naturalismo e Antinaturalismo", Rassegna della Letteratura Italiana, Vol. LXXVIII, pp. 420–36.
• Tordi, R. (1978). Irregolari e isolati del secondo Ottocento. La normalità alternativa di Zena, Rovani, Nieri, Oriani e Imbriani. Bologna: Calderini.
• Zavoli, S. (1994). I giorni della meraviglia: Campana, Oriani, Panzini, Serra e «I giullari della poesia». Venezia: Marsilio, pp. 41–61

External links

• Works by Alfredo Oriani at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Alfredo Oriani at Gallica