Ho rinunciato alla libertà [I've Given Up Liberty]. Milano: Le edizioni sociali, 1950.
Title
Ho rinunciato alla libertà [I've Given Up Liberty]. Milano: Le edizioni sociali, 1950.
Description
Taddei published many works in the U.S. during the fascist era, when it would have been impossible to do so in Italy. Once the war was over, as is the case at the time of publication of this work, Taddei published in his native Italy.
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.
Martino Marazzi's Voices of Italian America: a History of Early italian American Literature with a Critical Anthology (Madison, 2004) contains an excerpt from this work in translation, as well as a fine biographical introduction. Durante also has an extended biographical introduction and appraisal of Taddei's special place in Italian American letters, as well as an excerpt from an amusing story about him and Tresca.
As is evident from the contemporaneous translations into English of several of his volumes, Taddei (unlike nearly all of the other writers in this exhibition) enjoyed a significant, however brief, success in American intellectual circles. A frequent critic of the racist and anti-immigrant fervor in the U.S., in New York he was welcomed by Carlo Tresca and, following Tresca’s assassination in February 1943, made an impassioned speech on the street outside the offices of the radical newspaper Il Martello about the need to find the assassin.
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.
Martino Marazzi's Voices of Italian America: a History of Early italian American Literature with a Critical Anthology (Madison, 2004) contains an excerpt from this work in translation, as well as a fine biographical introduction. Durante also has an extended biographical introduction and appraisal of Taddei's special place in Italian American letters, as well as an excerpt from an amusing story about him and Tresca.
As is evident from the contemporaneous translations into English of several of his volumes, Taddei (unlike nearly all of the other writers in this exhibition) enjoyed a significant, however brief, success in American intellectual circles. A frequent critic of the racist and anti-immigrant fervor in the U.S., in New York he was welcomed by Carlo Tresca and, following Tresca’s assassination in February 1943, made an impassioned speech on the street outside the offices of the radical newspaper Il Martello about the need to find the assassin.
Creator
Ezio Taddei
Publisher
Le edizioni sociali
Date
1950
Format
18.75 x 14.5cm; 126 p.
Language
Italian
Collection
Citation
Ezio Taddei, “Ho rinunciato alla libertà [I've Given Up Liberty]. Milano: Le edizioni sociali, 1950.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed April 19, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/288.
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