Stato e comune [State and City]. Newark: Biblioteca de l'Adunata dei Refrattari, 1946.

Stato e comune [State and City]. Newark: Biblioteca de l'Adunata dei Refrattari, 1946.

Gigi Damiani (b. Rome, 1876; d. Rome, 1953) was an author well published in the U.S., but there is no evidence that he ever set foot in this country. Other than a few plays published in Detroit, and one in New York, the plays of Damiani were all published in the U.S. in Newark by L’Adunata dei Refrattari, the Galleanisti publication started  by Raffaele Schiavina, who secretly returned to the U.S. (using the pseudonym Max Sartin) after he and Galleani had been deported in 1919 for their political views.

Damiani was an important anarchist figure in Italy; indeed, after the deaths of Galleani and Malatesta, he was considered by the fascist regime to be the most important (and thus dangerous) Italian anarchist leader. He was a compelling writer who as successfully as any, other than Cordiferro and Giovannitti, used the theatre as a means to promote anarchist ideas. He traveled throughout the world, including Brazil, France, Belgium, Spain and Tunisia.

As recently as 1991, a more philosophical and theoretical work, Damiani’s Saggio su di una concezione filosofica dell’anarchismo (An Essay of a Philosophical Conception of Anarchism) was first published in Pistoia, Italy, and is in the Collection. Its publication so many decades after World War II, and nearly 40 years after Damiani's death, suggests the continued vitality of his ideas.

The publisher, the Biblioteca de l'Adunata dei Refrattari, is one of the best represented publishers in the Collection, with about 16 works.

Gigi Damiani

Biblioteca de l'Adunata dei Refrattari

1946

18.5 x 11.5cm; 23 p.

Italian