64
PARTISAN REVIEW
appear here. Italian newsstands groan under these monthlies and quarter–
lies, virtually none of which seem to be read outside of the tiny, geo–
graphically dispersed cells that produce them. (How they support them–
selves is another Italian mystery.) Despite the almost uniform fealty of in–
tellectuals to the ideal of
fa sinistra,
there is no single magazine or review
that commands universal critical attention, surely nothing to rival the
centrality of the
New York Review of Books
in the United States, or
Le
Debat
in France.
The only periodical that comes close is a relatively new one titled
MicroMega .
This gorgeously produced review is well worth reading, even
for foreigners interested in keeping up with more general European cul–
tural developments.
It
was launched in 1986 by Paolo Flores d' Arcais, a
young journalist, and Giorgio Ruffolo, a Socialist politician who cur–
rently serves as Italy's Minister of the Environment. To judge by the re–
view's subtitle ("Le ragioni della sinistra"), and by the early numbers, the
review was apparently conceived as yet another springboard for re–
launching the Italian left. Although a significant proportion of its articles
still echo this theme, the great attraction of
MicroMega
is that it takes
European and world politics more seriously than the horse race in the
Italian campo. And for just that reason it has brought a breath of fresh
air to the cramped, stale debates about institutional reform and the place
of intellectuals in Italian politics.
From the start, the editors of
MicroMega
have brought its readers into
contact with some of the most interesting thinkers and writers in Eastern
Europe, Germany, Spain, France, and Israel. (They seem somewhat indif–
ferent to American and English developments.) The contents of the latest
number give one a sense of how undogmatic
MicroMega's
approach is and
how lively it can be. Among its translations are Leo Strauss's important
1950 article on Heidegger (imagine that in
The Nation
or
Dissen t!)
and a
bare-knuckled debate between Perry Anderson and Carlo Ginzburg over
the historian's task. Several articles concern the recent war in Kuwait,
which
MicroMega
had supported. There are some replies here to the edi–
tors' position, but also a stinging rebuke to the pacifist culture of the
left, titled "Pacifism is a Nihilism." More interesting still are two articles
by German writers who chronicle the hysterical irrationality of the Ger–
mans and the cowardice of their government leaders as the war devel–
oped.
With pieces such as these, and a lead article titled "The Seven Mortal
Sins of the Greens' Culture,"
MicroMega
is hardly a predictable magazine
of the left. The happy fact is that, apart from the occasional foray into
the back-alley fights of party politics, the editors have managed to cata–
pult their magazine from Italian parochialism into the class of the most
