<strong><em>Sprazzi di luce: pennelate di propaganda anticlericale.</em> New York: [n.p.], 1940.</strong>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">While the publisher is not listed, as such, the recto of the final leaf displays an advertisement for</span><i><span style="font-weight:400;"> Il Proletario,</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> published by the Federazione Socialista Italiana in New York. So it is possible, i fnot likely, that the federation also published this pamphlet, with its preface by Arturo Giovannitti. <br /><br />Pulvio Zocchi (b. San Giovanni Valdarno 1878) and Filippo Corridoni were leaders of major worker struggles in 1912–13 in Italy led by the Unione Italiana Sindacale (1912–1925). Vividly anti-clerical, this polemic </span><span style="font-weight:400;">contains almost ghoulish portraits of predatory priests, whose mellifluous and caressing voices hide their slipperiness and evil designs.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The unscrupulousness of priests is apparent from that most sacred of first rites, baptism, which Zocchi calls “the first act of the comedy” that is religion (23). “The mother feels the joy of a new life entering the earth, full of joy, hopes, worries and aspirations. But the priest doesn’t think this way; he keeps watch. He has no scruples. He’s the friend of the parents and the spiritual confessor of </span><span style="font-weight:400;">the mother, sometimes also the physical one. [The father is proud, he thinks he knows the score]. . . . But the priest is cunning. He works in the shadows. Just like the Jesuits” (23).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In providing a preface for this polemic, Giovannitti might have felt some ambivalence in implicitly blessing this scathing attack on the clergy, of which he was one (albeit a Protestant minister, not a Catholic priest). <br /><br />Unlike the case with Tresca and most of the other radicals, Giovannitti’s political beliefs did not include overt anti-clericalism or a rejection of Christian principles; indeed, some of his poetry reflects religious overtones.</span></p>
Pulvio Zocchi
[n.p.]
1940
19 x 12.5cm; 30 p.
Italian
<em><strong>Scritti politici e letterarii: raccolti ed ordinati da Giovanni Di Gregorio</strong></em> [Political and Literary Writings: gathered and ordered by Giovanni di Gregorio]. <strong>New York: Venanzi Memorial Committee, 1921.</strong>
This compilation of the writings of Flavio Venanzi (b. Roma, 1882; d. New York, 1920) has a book cover design by sculptor Onorio Ruotolo (q.v.), a eulogy by Enrico Leone, and an introduction by Arturo Giovannitti (q.v.). <br /><br />Venanzi was <em>Il Proletario</em>’s correspondent during the trial of Ettor, Giovannitti and Caruso in 1912, during the Lawrence, Mass., textile mill strike. He was also the director or manager of a short lived but sophisticated and beautiful magazine called <em>Vita </em>(q.v.) edited by Giovannitti, and an influential member of the Federazione Socialista Italiana (FSI). Published by the Venanzi Memorial Committee on East 12th Street, where the left had many of its offices; the printer was Avanti Publishing Company, whose name is otherwise unknown to me.<br /><br />These literary and political essays, gathered after Venanzi's early death in 1920 at age 37, probably from pneumonia, reflected his wide-ranging interests. Like his friend, Giovannitti, Venanzi was a voracious reader and writer who produced as many articles and essays on art and literature (including the classical Dante, Boccaccio, Ariosto, as well as more modern writers such as Foscolo, Leopardi and D’Annunzio) as he did on political subjects. By reading to her from Dante, Venanzi taught Italian to Italophile Helen Keller, who wrote an introduction to Giovannitti’s <em>Arrows in the Gale</em>.<br /><br />During the debate on whether Italy should enter World War I, Venanzi was a leading neutralist. He was also among those members of the FSI and the IWW who embraced communism, and who, on November 6, 1921, organized the Federazione dei Lavoratori Italiani d’America, a section of the American Labor Alliance (ALA), located on East 10th Street in Manhattan. The ALA aimed at “uniting all avant-garde elements of the Italian subversive movement in the U.S.”
Flavio Venanzi
Venanzi Memorial Committee
1921
22 x 16cm; 304 p.
Italian
<strong><em>Chi uccise Carlo Tresca?</em></strong> [Who Killed Carlo Tresca?] <strong>New York: Tresca Memorial Committee, [1947].</strong>
The cover of this pamphlet (as well as the English language version, in English) notes “Con prefazioni di Arturo Giovannitti e John Dos Passos.” In the earlier (1945) English language version, also in the collection, the goal is stated: to incite readers to “stir the authorities out of their lethargy in the Tresca situation,” urging them to contact Manhattan District Aattorney Frank S. Hogan and the newly appointed police commissioner to undertake a new and independent investigation. This Italian version, issued two years after the English version, also in the Collection, lacks this exhortation at the end, probably because it was no longer timely. <br /><br />As Giovannitti asks in his preface, “Who had any reason to have Carlo murdered? . . . For this man was everybody’s friend, tutor, and counselor; he really loved everybody from the derelict and the destitute up to the teacher, the healer, even the man of affairs. . . . He was a friend of the policeman who arrested him scores of times, of the District Attorney who denounced him as an enemy of society but ate and drank at his table, the jailer who locked him up for interminable days. . . .” <br /><br />Tresca’s attacks on Mussolini were almost surely responsible for his assassination. One evening in 1943 — the same year in which Mussolini was deposed — upon leaving the office of his newspaper, <em>Il Martello</em>, in Union Square, Tresca was gunned down. The circumstances remain mysterious to this day. Some say it was on direct orders from Mussolini because of Tresca’s unrelenting polemics against him. Others, such as union leader (and leading anti-communist) Luigi Antonini, blamed the Communists, and in particular, a former Tresca colleague with whom Tresca had become disenchanted, Vittorio Vidali (known in America as Enea Sormente). The more likely culprit was the then young hitman, Carmine Galante, possibly on orders from Generoso Pope, the pro-Mussolini publisher of <em>Il Progresso Italo-Americano</em>, the largest circulation and longest-lived Italian-language daily. <br /><br />The Tresca Memorial Committee included A. Philip Randolph, Edmund Wilson and John Dewey, as well as its chair, Norman Thomas, the perennial Socialist Party candidate for president.<br /><br />This pamphlet, far more common in its English version (issued in 1945) than in this Italian one (1947), was circulated with the exhortation that “those who believe with us that political murder in the United States must not go unpunished . . . help circulate this pamphlet widely . . . we have no thought of placing the guilt in the Tresca assassination at the door of any specific organization or individual.” <br /><br />While it's not clear who assassinated Tresca, it is certainly clear that Tresca’s assassination obsessed many who loved him.
Tresca Memorial Committee
Tresca Memorial Committee
[1947]
22 x 15.25cm; 31 p.
Italian
<strong><em>La vigilia: dramma in tre atti</em></strong> [On the Eve: drama in three acts]. <strong>East Boston: Edizione Del Gruppo Autonomo, 1917.</strong>
<span><em>La vigilia</em> is the first Italian translation “by A.M.G.” — who would be known by readers to be Arturo M. Giovannitti — of Leopold Kampf’s popular play written in German,<em> Am vorabend</em>. <br /><br />The work was intended to serve as entertainment as well as for the instruction of Italian working men and women, something that Giovannitti, who grasped the need for something more than political instruction, would understand. <br /><br />Italian American publishers, political and otherwise, published not only material written in Italian, but frequently translated works such as this one. Kampf’s play was widely popular, and was also published in Russian, English, and French translations.<br /><br />Edizione del Gruppo Autonomo was the publishing arm of the anarchist group to which Sacco and Vanzetti belonged, the Gruppo Autonomo (Autonomous Group), which also published Victor Roudine’s <em>Max Stirner</em>, q.v., translated from the French original, and Galleani’s<em> Faccia a faccia col nemico</em> three years earlier. There were many anarchist groups in Italian America; virtually each one picked its own “nickname” and many created their own imprints.<br /><br />The owner's name is on the front cover, "L. [or "T."] Bellisario."</span>
Leopoldo Kampf
Edizione Del Gruppo Autonomo
1917.
19.5 x 11.5cm; 63 p.
Italian
<strong><em>Manet Immota Fides: Omaggio all memoria imperitura di Carlo Tresca</em></strong> [Our Faith Remains Unshaken: In Tribute to the Everlasting Memory of Carlo Tresca]. <strong>New York: Il Martello (Gruppo Carlo Tresca), 1943.</strong>
Created in the wake of his assassination in Union Square, this work includes essays honoring Tresca by James T. Farrell, John Dos Passos, Roger Baldwin, Max Eastman, Norman Thomas; and poems by Ted Robinson and Arturo Giovannitti. <br /><br />The work includes a laid in portrait of Tresca in charcoal.
Felice Guadagni
Renato Vidal
Il Martello (Gruppo Carlo Tresca)
1943
30.5 x 22cm; 48 p.
Italian
<strong><em>Quando canta il gallo</em></strong> [When the Rooster Crows]. <strong>Chicago: E. Clemente & Sons, 1957.</strong>
<span><span>This copy was inscribed by Arturo Giovannitti in January 1958, one year before his death, to his good friend, Onorio Ruotolo and his wife, Lucia. Ruotolo was a sculptor, and teacher at and co-founder of the Leonardo Da Vinci Art School in New York for working men, whose most famous graduate was sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi. The Collection contains several chapbooks of Ruotolo.<br /><br />Giovannitti, one of the few truly bilingual Italian American writers, was as powerful a force in the literary and theatrical arena as he was in the political arena. The English language version of this collection of poetry is also in the Collection. This work is a sort of tribute rendered for him by his old companions at<em> La Parola del Popolo.<br /></em></span></span>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Giovannitti (b. Campobasso, 1884 - d. New York, 1959) immigrated to Montreal at 17, where he became a Protestant pastor; he then moved to Pennsylvania, preaching predominantly to miners. In Springfield, Mass., his interest in socialism began. In 1905, he arrived in New York, where he joined the Federazione Socialista Italiana. He participated in the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, </span><span style="font-weight:400;">Mass., where 25,000 workers went on strike, half of them women, who developed the slogan, “We want bread and roses too,” that gave its name to that strike. <br /><br />It was there that Giovannitti was accused falsely of homicide and arrested, along with Joseph Ettor and Joseph Caruso. Put on the stand in the legendary trial at Salem, he delivered an apologia, in English, that became famous and was published several times, in Italian as well, and which identified him as a charismatic leader. See </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">Pagine Scelte</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> for the text in Italian.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Unlike the case with Tresca and most of the other radicals, Giovannitti’s political beliefs did not include overt anti-clericalism or a rejection of Christian principles; indeed, reflecting his training as a Protestant minister, some of his poetry reflects religious overtones.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">In prison, meanwhile, Giovannitti had composed “The Walker,” which appeared in 1912 in</span><i><span style="font-weight:400;"> The Atlantic Monthly</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> and which was compared favorably to Oscar Wilde’s </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">The Ballad of Reading Gaol</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;">. Giovannitti, who became the director of </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">Il Proletario</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> in September 1909, was reconfirmed by the Utica, New York congress in April 1911. When the poet was arrested, the paper was temporarily run by Edmondo Rossoni, a colorful character who later returned to Italy under Mussolini and rose in the Fascist Party hierarchy.<br /><br />Martino Marazzi's <em>Voices of Italian America: a History of Early italian American Literature with a Critical Anthology </em>(Madison, 2004) contains an excerpt from <em>The Walker</em> and other works of Giovannitti.<br /><br />After he got out of jail, Giovannitti remained as director of <em>Il Proletario</em> until the summer of 1913, when he was replaced by Flavio Venanzi and later, once again, by Rossoni. Highly esteemed in the milieu of the political and intellectual left, and eminent proponent of the I.W.W., Giovannitti contributed to </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">The Masses</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> and </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">The Liberator</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;">; founded and directed </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">Il Fuoco</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;">; and was at the same time included in histories and anthologies of American poetry, for example, as compiled by Louis Untermeyer. After 1920, he was among the organizers of the committee for the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, one of the acknowledged leaders of the anti-fascist movement, in the leadership of AFANA (Antifascist Alliance of North America), and a member of the committee formed after the assassination of his friend Carlo Tresca (see in the Collection, </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">Chi uccise Carlo Tresca?/ Who Killed Carlo Tresca</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;">?).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">A complex intellectual figure, perennially astride two worlds, and equally comfortable in both English and Italian, Giovannitti is the rare case of an Italian American writer who, despite the extraordinary reception accorded him within the American literary culture, never abandoned the ambiance of the Italian community. His English-language poems were often translated into Italian, or even Sicilian dialect.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Giovannitti was as charismatic as Tresca, and had a similar capacity to cut through the divisions of the left. Because he was dear to both the anarchists and the more moderate trade-unionists, everybody tried after his death to claim him as one of their own. Giovannitti was not a fighter like Tresca. Rather, he was a poet, an orator, a man who knew how to confer a metapolitical, almost messianic depth to the fortunes of the labor movement.</span></p>
<span>The first of the poems here were written variously in New York, "Filadelfia," Chicago, San Francisco, and St. Louis.</span>
Arturo Giovannitti
E. Clemente & Sons
1957
21.5 x 15.5; 296 p.
Italian
<strong><em>Pagine scelte </em></strong>[Selected Works]. <strong>Brooklyn Libreria dell'I.W.W., 1930.</strong>
This work contains Giovannitti’s speech (entitled “Davanti ai Giurati di Salem, Massachusetts” [Before the Jurors of Salem, Mass.]) in 1912 to the jurors in the trial at which he, Joseph Ettor and Joseph Caruso were accused of the murder of Anna Lo Pizzo during the Lawrence millworkers strike in 1912. The strike is an event memorialized in a famous painting of Ralph Fasanella.<br /><br />The jurors rightly believed the defense that the police were instead responsible, and the arrest of strike leaders Giovannitti and Ettor, in particular, was a pretext to make them unavailable to lead the strike that crippled the factories in Lawrence. <br /><br />The work also includes <em>L’Evoluzione del Pensiero</em> (The Evolution of Thought) of Giovanni Gianformaggio (1859–1901) and Emma Goldman’s<em> Sindacalismo: Lo spettro del capitalismo</em> (Syndicalism: The Spectre of Capitalism), with a preface by Giovannitti. <br /><br />The volume also contains some poems in Calabrian dialect.
Arturo Giovannitti
Giovanni Gianformaggio
Emma Goldman
Libreria dell'I.W.W.
1930
17.5 x 10.5cm; 61 p.
Italian
<em><strong>Unionismo industriale e trade-unionismo: può un socialista e industrialista far parte dell'A.F. of L.?: resoconto stenografico del contradittorio tra [Ettor] and [Caroti] tenutosi a New York il 26 Marzo 1911 </strong></em>[Industrial Unionism and Trade Unionism: Can a socialist and industrialist belong to the A[merican] F[ederation] of L[abor]? Stenographic account of the debate between Joseph J. Ettor and Arthur Caroti held in New York on the 26th of March 1911].<strong> Chicago: I.W.W., [1911].</strong>
In the year following this “debate” between the revolutionary trade unions of the I.W.W. (and the Federazione) and the reformist A.F. of L., Joseph Ettor became one of the leaders of the Lawrence “Bread and Roses” strike of 1912. <br /><br />It was fateful that Giovannitti, who later joined Ettor and Joseph Caruso in that strike, would write the preface to the record of this debate. Arturo Caroti had long been the administrator of <em>Il Proletario</em> and the FSI’s official propagandist in 1904–05, as well as a strong partisan of Tresca personally and politically, admiring the latter as a “man of action, courageous to the point of recklessness . . . always in the front lines of the proletarian struggle. . . .” <br /><br />This is Mario De Ciampis’s personal copy, with his name written at the top of the front wrapper. See De Ciampis’ connections to <em>Che cosa è il I.W.W.?</em>, <em>Il Proletario</em>, <em>Unionismo industriale e sindacalismo</em>, and <em>Cinquantesimo Anniversario 1908-1958. La Parola del Popolo</em>).
Joseph J. Ettor
Arturo Caroti
I.W.W.
[1911]
20.5 x 13.5cm; 46 p.
Italian