94
PARTISAN REVIEW
Like the Church, however, the CP is infinitely sensitive to schism,
even when it involves only an isolated intellectual. Last September,
for example, Elio Vittorini, the novelist, after having kept silent for
four years dared to explain in an article why he had had to abandon
the illusion, formed during the Resistance period, that the CP could
serve the cause of human freedom and justice. Immediately, no lesser
authority than Togliatti took the pains of writing some two thousand
words to assure the readers of the party's intellectual organ,
Rinascita,
that Vittorini was a failure in the first place and that, in the second
place, anybody who left the CP betrayed the only true bulwark to human
freedom
and
reason (not to speak of peace).
In beginning this letter, I did not mean to write so much about
politics. It is not that current politics is not important, or that the
people feel indifferent to it, but rather that today more than ever
political passion appears to the ordinary Italian as a kind of forbidden
luxury: something one would love to have if one only could afford it.
But one cannot. The mass parties have established too firm a monopoly
on it. Yet people still remember nostalgically the days between 1943
and 1947 when one did not feel foolish in being passionate about
political issues.
The most important political event in recent months has been
the expropriation of the Fucino region, which the State has at long
last taken away from Prince Torlonia. Do you remember him? Fonta–
mara used to send its
«
cafoni"
down the hill to work for him.
If
carried
out properly, this reform will be one of De Gasperi's substantial achieve–
ments. Yet, people hardly paid attention to the event. Why? Mainly,
I think, because they don't expect much from the Demochristian Gov–
ernment in the way of efficient, or even honest, administration. While
roe Gasperi was making good (however slowly) his promise of a land
reform, in Viterbo a few Sicilian bandits were doing spectacular
damage to his government by telling the judges about their deals with
the local bosses, the police, and the Ministry of the Interior (if not
the Minister himself, Signor Scelba). In Viterbo, the main defendant is
Pisciotta, the man who betrayed Giuliano to the police. He is on trial for
having taken part in the machine-gunning of a May Day parade of
Sicilian peasants in 1947. While defending himself rather successfully
against that accusation, Pisciotta is making the police (and the central
administration) pay dearly for what he obviously considers a dishonorable
breach of promise on their part. In other words, he is spilling a lot of
beans. One of the minor facts that has come up is that Pisciotta cir–
culated freely for three years thanks to a special pass which bore the
