Alberi e casolari [Trees and Barns]. New York: Edizione in esilio, 1943.
Title
Alberi e casolari [Trees and Barns]. New York: Edizione in esilio, 1943.
Description
Ezio Taddei (b. Livorno, 1895; d. Rome, 1956) was involved in Italian politics at an early age: at thirteen he was arrested for involvement in a demonstration connected with a nurses’ strike in a Roman hospital. When released from prison, he found the doors of his home closed to him, and began life as a vagabond. He was sentenced in February 1922, along with 32 other anarchists, by the Court of Assizzes in Genoa for conspiracy to destroy several private and public buildings.
Overall Taddei spent 18 years in Italian jails, first for his anti-bourgeois activities and later for his anti-fascist activities; these experiences animated and fueled much of his writing. War and imprisonment fostered his desire for social justice, reinforced by his reading, especially 19th-century Russian realist novels. The Russian radical Mikhail Bakunin, who arrived in Italy in 1864 and believed in immediate armed revolution, attracted intellectuals like Taddei; he and anarchist Errico Malatesta recur as models for the fictional alter egos under which Taddei wrote.
It goes without saying that publication of this work in Italy in 1943 would have been impossible. The cover illustration, while not signed (unless it's in the lower right corner that is chipped), is probably that of Costantino Nivola, based on the similarity in style to that of the interior drawings by that artist in Taddei's Parole Collettive.
Printed by Cocce Press, this work is dedicated to Nicola Brunori, a colorful and acclaimed Bronx physician who was tried and convicted in 1913 for extortion and served three-and-one-half years in prison. Ernesto Valentini tells Brunori's story - believing in Brunori's innocence - in Il ricatto, which was serialized in Valentini's Zarathustra, q.v.
Brunori appears again as the person to whom Armando Borghi inscribed the collection's copy of Mischia sociale.
This copy is inscribed by Taddei to "Paolina Krewer, nei giorni del Dniepper", dated N.Y., 20 September 1943. The Dniepper river in Ukraine was the scene in that year of one of the major campaigns and battles of World War II on the Eastern Front. It involved almost 4,000,000 troops stretched over a 1,400 kilometer front. The Red Army of Stalin ultimately recovered the eastern bank of the river from German forces.
Taddei receives extended biographical treatment from Durante as well as Marazzi, as well as excerpts in each.
Overall Taddei spent 18 years in Italian jails, first for his anti-bourgeois activities and later for his anti-fascist activities; these experiences animated and fueled much of his writing. War and imprisonment fostered his desire for social justice, reinforced by his reading, especially 19th-century Russian realist novels. The Russian radical Mikhail Bakunin, who arrived in Italy in 1864 and believed in immediate armed revolution, attracted intellectuals like Taddei; he and anarchist Errico Malatesta recur as models for the fictional alter egos under which Taddei wrote.
It goes without saying that publication of this work in Italy in 1943 would have been impossible. The cover illustration, while not signed (unless it's in the lower right corner that is chipped), is probably that of Costantino Nivola, based on the similarity in style to that of the interior drawings by that artist in Taddei's Parole Collettive.
Printed by Cocce Press, this work is dedicated to Nicola Brunori, a colorful and acclaimed Bronx physician who was tried and convicted in 1913 for extortion and served three-and-one-half years in prison. Ernesto Valentini tells Brunori's story - believing in Brunori's innocence - in Il ricatto, which was serialized in Valentini's Zarathustra, q.v.
Brunori appears again as the person to whom Armando Borghi inscribed the collection's copy of Mischia sociale.
This copy is inscribed by Taddei to "Paolina Krewer, nei giorni del Dniepper", dated N.Y., 20 September 1943. The Dniepper river in Ukraine was the scene in that year of one of the major campaigns and battles of World War II on the Eastern Front. It involved almost 4,000,000 troops stretched over a 1,400 kilometer front. The Red Army of Stalin ultimately recovered the eastern bank of the river from German forces.
Taddei receives extended biographical treatment from Durante as well as Marazzi, as well as excerpts in each.
Creator
Ezio Taddei
Publisher
Edizione in esilio
Date
1943
Format
21 x 14cm; 142 p.
Language
Italian
Citation
Ezio Taddei, “Alberi e casolari [Trees and Barns]. New York: Edizione in esilio, 1943.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed April 17, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/286.
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