Mazzini and Italian Nationalism
Ascoli, Mar
Mazzini and Italian Nationalism By Mar Ascoli This Italian Liberal Had Intellectual, Moral and Political Integrity ONCE riding on a stagecoach across the Alps. Guiseppe Maxsini started an...
...Ressell got s doctor to coll on the old dying Mr...
...AFTER Rome, the great zenith of his lire, ht wasi on living in exile and came back to Italy only what there was s chance of really fighting and working hs the independence of Italy, no matter how hard the conditions might be...
...God and people...
...Saint Peter looked at the Intent communique fron Berlin...
...Thia waa the reason for his uncompromising opposition to socialism, and particularly to Marxian socialism...
...Brown and th) doctor "marvelled at the fluent, polished Italian of th) old Englishman...
...Yet he was not a transcendent a list...
...aa waa the enslaved and divided Italy of his youth...
...During the various wars fw Italian freedom, he offered to suspend his repubban agitation...
...On soch eccssions, aunt at not Ight for power, they fight for principles, hi order to leave nomething that stay survive sad wkt after they are defeated and dead...
...Yet, after a few weeks the people of teas adored Mazzini...
...He was a firm believer in God, a Christian in the most literal sense of the word—a Christian who finds in mankind the Anal embodiment of his God...
...God and People is the final formula of hia faith...
...Sometimes also he fell victim to the romantic disease of his time, the tendency to explain ideas by using capital letters for their key words...
...But for him independent national existence ia not a goal in itself...
...There ia not the shadow ef ? doubt that for Mazatni, Italian imperialism, drenass of aggrandisement at the expense ef other peoples—all this wsa equivalent te the rain ef Italy...
...But this never meant for him that the people are God...
...The reason we should not classify Maxsini with various mm k* A, ? and F in the museum, of history, the reason we still need him even if we have made auch a bad use of what he has given to us, is his wholeness, his absolute intellectual and moral and political integrity, and the fact that these three integrities have been lived as one...
...Guiseppe Maxsini started an argument with a young German professor who defended slavery as a healthy institution...
...Thought end action...
...Th IS la the first of a seria* of artklse on The Prophets of Our Time," which were delivered ss lectures st the Rand School of Social Science...
...The pert of his work that he biases actually did was over...
...From Germany...
...That's a lie, according te your own govern ment...
...Italy had to do it not in obedience to abstract ideas, hut for reasons of hard reality...
...If we read hia pages now, we realise how many forebodings he had t>f what came to paaa in our days...
...MAZZINI knew also that our industrial development, our economic dynamiam, too, could choose the road of good or the road of evil...
...In this particular field he waa singularly unsuccessful...
...Sometimes this orgy of idolised words is almoat bewildering: Duty, Association, People, Nationality, Italy, Mankind...
...It nil depends on what a people actually does with Its political independence, Italian unity was Jure than a goal, the solid establishment of s premise...
...was ruling on borrowed time one of the most skepnjaj or even cynical cities of Europe, ? people who* a, scarcely knew and who scarcely knew him, »he« I» took office...
...Saint Peter asked them, "Where are you from...
...He hated both the idea of the inevitable revolution and the organisation of movements to hasten the inevitable...
...He knew that there was the danger of a terrible future ahead for Italy if ehe wasted her freedom on the road of evil...
...All the activities that he succeeded in carrying on, alt the roles that h«-played are linked by that little word "and...
...These articles will later he printed as a booklet They will deal with the major political and cultural leaders of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who have molded eew thinking and action...
...bought and action...
...The essence of his thought is that everything we are, everything we have, is a function of something greater which is within our power to attain...
...It is a very unfair and offensive way of dealing with Mas-zini...
...zini rushed to Italy rather than go on plotting and sn> testing from outside...
...But association itself should have done some-thing more than improve the conditions of labor, of the workers, or broaden the range of their citizenship...
...It has been said too often that Maxzlni's real greatness was in his character, that he waa, so to speak, first rate as ? man, aecond rate as a thinker and a flop aa a politician...
...The sick man smiled wearily "Yes,' he said, "I have always loved Italy," CeaflJctinf Reports Fifty German airmen arrived at Heaven's gates...
...The rent of it, 1 believe, is st to us, men of our generation...
...But Max-sini was a man of thought and a man of action...
...Many years later NieUsche waa still talking of Masaini with devoted admiration, as one of the noblest men be had ever met The secret of his life waa bis wholeness...
...Its people were trained as no ether people on earth to pisy naiveres...
...He spent most of his life in agitating, in carrying on plots, in escaping from the traps sot for htm by spies...
...Under the threat of the enemy Km and of constant internal treachery, Rome enjoyed to sctual freedom such as it had seldom known in its hk> tory...
...Ha was certainly and whole-heartedly in favor of the organization of the workers for the protection of their own interests,' because, to his mind, association was the answer to the anarchic individualism of a capitalistic society...
...all the rest leturnW safely...
...A petty Italy saade by lowly ambitions into an eleasont of intrigues end etatarhsnces, a nationalistic or a militaristic Italy, were to Mataini ne revolting and abnewia-able...
...He knew that Rome was doomed, destined to be crushed by the French troops of Louis Napoleon...
...He want to Pisa, to stay at tat house of Pellegrioo Rosselli, the great uncle of Car* and Ncllo Rosselli...
...Less than two years after Rome was conquered sni the greater part of Italy formally united, Mazzini nil a very sick man...
...Yet he cannot be called by any stretch of the imagination a professional agitator...
...He had refused to accept the smnesty thst th Royal Government had granted him, but he could an stay away from Italy...
...All this is philosophy and almost theology...
...King Carlo Alberto had banished him, ps> secuted him, killed hia friends, evert sentenced hin ? death, but in 1848 when the King took up the fight fit Italian unity, Mazzini carried his principles so far si to offer the King his collaboration...
...A united Italy wss destined te he between the greet and the asssll powers, geographically located in the very heart ef the Mediterranean, that sen where no many of the great straggles of histsty have been decided...
...It resalazhi one of ether defease* o( ,r*», bteieged cities -for instance the defense ef Pans daring the Commune...
...Maisini spoke of the brotherhood of men...
...Brown, an English businessman...
...But to bo free means to be in condition to choose either the road of good or the road of evil...
...Of course he was impressed by technical progress, but ho never stopped asking: Technical progress, for what...
...We were all shot down today ovw London...
...But for est own salvation, we must rediscover his spirit, his ideeb, and fill them with the content of our experience aid needs...
...Italy had a great chance when she gained her political freedom...
...Nobody was persecuted for his opinions, thtaf were no mass arrests, no purges, no massacres of aris, oners...
...oniutic to Massini, was harmed There Is scarcely a more gtsgis— page ia history than the defense of Roma, of which Mazzini »„ the seal...
...Max Ascoli is a Professor of Political Philosophy snd a member of the graduate faculty at the New School of Social fiisstrch...
...Sometimes this overstretched end was burdening him with responsibilities almost unendurable...
...Sometimes, when he insists on morality and on religion, bis teaching seems to evaporate into mysticism...
...Association, to bis mind, was' an instrument for the morel betterment, the self-reliance of each of its individual members...
...Italy, according to Maztini, should have-become an example te all nations, an essential maker of international harmony...
...It meant that without God people are a rabble, and without the people God ia but a name, it meant that constant pragr***, con-stoat ttmggU /er Justie* end Freedom, are the ways thtougk u kirk th* people can unfold a divine plan...
...Every time Italians were flgsnsf on their own soil and the nation was in danger, Ms...
...He was living under an assusasi name—a Mr...
...when he held power as virtual dictator in Rome in the final net of the 1848-1849 revolu-t ions...
...The Italy of 1872 was not his Italy and had no rota for him...
...Mazzini always knew this...
...I ET us take the one of hia key words that became later on moat thoroughly soiled snd perverted— nationality...
...The Pope was the major enemy of the Rosns} Republic, yet the places of worship were religiously spotted and not ? single priest, no matter how aau...
...Hie name «aa Nietzsche...
...His lifo wan, aa his thmrfgp san...
...Yet his life is there to make real what he meant...
...He fought on ail fronts, all hia life...
...His most recent book is fascism for ITaWmT with Arthur Seiler as co-author...
...It is difficult for st to accept his words and the formulations of his ahm literally, just as we cannot copy his attitudes and gestures in the new situations of our times...
...rains and to werk for the esUbUskmeat of intsrnatioaal bonds...
...As a man of action he worked untiringly iri the thick of the most dangerous and explosive kind of politics, although ht had actual possession of political power only onca in his life, for a few months...
...It was clear to his mind that in the interest of peace and of progress every people should have been granted independent national existence...
...We men of Italian birth and education have had the tragic experience of realising how completely right Massini was, how wise not only as a prophet, but na ? statesmsn...
...Italy and mankind...
...Only three were shot down...
...It was in 1849...
Vol. 28 • April 1945 • No. 15
