Carlo Muscetta

Carlo Muscetta (22 August 1912 – 22 March 2004) was a poet who became better known as a literary critic and, later, as an editor of literary magazines. He also had a parallel career in teaching, employed as a university professor of Literature successively at Catania, Paris (as a "visiting professor") and Rome. During the 1960s and 70s he came to wider prominence as a free-thinking Marxist commentator.

Biography Provenance and early years Carlo Muscetta was born and grew up at Avellino, a midsized town with a rich history, located approximately 50 kilometres (30 miles) inland to the east of Naples. Angelo Muscetta, his father, was an energetic businessman with a wide range of commercial interests. Between 1925 and 1928 he attended the Liceo Pietro Colletta (technical secondary academy) in Avellino, which according to one evidently unimpressed commentator might have led him to a career as a cost accountant. He then switched to the "Liceo classico Pietro Colletta" (secondary school) He had already, as a teenager, established a "respectful" relationship with Benedetto Croce, to whom he frequently submitted written questions and from whom he received written answers. In 1932 he transferred to the University of Florence, where he was taught by Luigi Russo. a subject to which he returned in his subsequent writings. Muscetta returned to the south in 1935, settling in Molfetta, where he taught at the "istituto pubblico" (secondary school". (Party membership had been a precondition of application for a public sector position since, formally, 1933. )

Lucia Galeota In April 1935 Carlo Muscetta married Lucia Galeota. The two had met at the University of Naples a few years earlier. The births of their sons Mara and Sergio followed in Bari (1936) and Pescara (1937). He had decided to participate in "the games" because he was "tired of provincial life, and wanted to live in Florence or Rome". Meeting with the National Education Minister, Giuseppe Bottai led to the teaching job at the "Conservatorio di S.Cecilia". The politicised context of his arrival in Rome involved a sudden celebrity and/or notoriety within Rome's intellectual class.

In Rome Muscetta quickly became part of a network of young literati. He teamed up with one of these, Mario Alicata, to compile and publish "Avventure e scoperte: nuove letture per i ragazzi italiani della scuola media", an anthology of "adventure and discovery stories", aimed at younger teenagers. In 1940, together with the antifascist journalist Giaime Pintor, Muscetta became a member of the judging commission for the "Prelittoriali", a sub-section of the annual "Littoriali" in which he had competed with such success in 1939. However, Muscetta took the idea of going along with fascism one step further, contributing during the early 1940s to the fortnightly literary magazine "Primato" which was launched in March 1940, and thereafter directed by Giuseppe Bottai, the Fascist Education Minister in Mussolini's government between 1936 and 1943. There are, indeed, references to Muscetta having found and shared words indicating "great intellectual admiration" for leading fascist hierarchs. Nevertheless, "Primato" was a literary journal for intellectual readers: not every article appearing in it was an unqualified paeon of praise for the Fascist government. After 1943, Muscetta was able to insist forcefully that he had never fully conformed, even in his contributions to "Primato", to the characterisation which he imputed to Velio Spano, that he had been seen as a "young redeemed anti-fascist" ("un giovane antifascista redento"). They also wrote regularly for La Ruota, a monthly magazine on literature and the arts which, following a two-year hiatus, was relaunched in 1940.

He also became an "Azionista", part of a broadly based political association, with some of the features of a political party, and a shared focus on antifascist resistance. Another prominent activist member was Leone Ginzburg. During 1942/;43 the two men helped to set up "L'Italia Libera", an underground (at this stage) monthly newssheet presented as the party newspaper of the "Partito d'Azione" and produced in various places. Despite its being printed, initially, in tiny numbers, the circulation of L'Italia Libera grew, while its repute grew still more rapidly: it became an important source of encouragement and intellectual nurture for anti-government groupings and organisations throughout Italy. At a "Partito d'Azione conference" held in Florence in September 1943. it was determined that "L'Italia Libera" needed to become single nationally produced publication, produced in Rome. Various premises were used, including the basement at "Via Basento 55", a couple of hundred meters from the Villa Borghese in central Rome. This was where, by November 1943, the printing press had been installed. Following the arrest of Mussolini at the end of July 1943, relations between the replacement Italian government became increasingly fractious. It was only in September 1943, after the Italian government entered into an armistice with representatives of the Anglo-American armies advancing from the south, that the German army moved quickly to overwhelm the Italian army and install a German puppet state covering northern and central Italy. Rome therefore remained under something close to German military occupation between September 1943 and June 1944. That was the situation during the night of 18/19 November or 19/20 November 1943 (sources differ as to the date) when a substantial police detachment broke into the basement premises at "Via Basento 55", where another edition of L'Italia Libera was being produced. Those arrested included the newspaper's printers, contributing editors and distribution personnel, Muscetta and Ginzburg among them. Those arrested were all taken to the political offices of the "Questore" and subjected to the usual interrogation procedures. They were then transferred to Rome's celebrated/infamous Regina Coeli prison, while remaining available to their political interrogators. Their situation appeared grim, but all was not blackness: many years later a fellow inmate, Sandro Pertini would confide that whenever he came across Muscetta during the post-war decades he would think back to the image he retained in his mind of the literary critic from the Irpinia sitting on an upturned bucket robustly declaiming the stanzas of Orlando Furioso for the entertainment of fellow inmates in cell 339.

During his period of detention Muscetta was assigned to work at the labour camps of Anzio and Nettuno, along the coast to the south of Rome. He was also sent to work at the barracks of the so-called "città militare" (army complex) at Rome-Cecchignola. As the armies that would liberate Rome from the south, the situation inside the city grew progressively more chaotic, and on 26 March 1944 Carlo Muscetta managed to escape. He "disappeared" into hiding, and resumed his activities as a contributing editor to L'Italia Libera.

New beginnings Directly after the war ended Muscetta worked with increasing intensity for the Einaudi Publishing business. The would be no return to life as a school teacher. With effect from 4 January 1945 he was entrusted by Giulio Einaudi with the running of the firm's Rome office.

Free spirited party member In 1953 Muscetta was entrusted by Party Secretary Togliatti with the directorship of "Società", the party's review magazine on politics, arts and culture, published in Florence four times a year. The appointment, which provided a platform of significant influence among party members, was a joint one, shared with Gastone Manacorda. "Società" was in some respects a rival publication to "Rinascita", a monthly political and cultural magazine directed on behalf of the party by Togliatti himself between 1944 and 1964. In 1955 Muscetta published an essay of his own entitled "Metello e la crisi del neorealismo" ("Metello and the crisis of neorealism") which turned out to be problematic for him. "Metello" was a newly published novel by Vasco Pratolini, a twentieth century writer who was, it turned out, much admired by Togliatti. Muscetta failed, in his 30-page essay, to acknowledge Pratolini's novel as a manifesto for the new realism. With "Metello", Pratolini had, indeed, constructed a mediocre protagonist in a novel devoid of narrative. "Metello" had already proved controversial among party members, serving to highlight existing differences over the party's approach to literature. Muscetta, with his contribution in "Società", was rubbing at an open sore. From letters and biographical data that surfaced later, it is clear that Togliatti was bitterly angry.

Former party member Carlo Muscetta formally resigned from the party in July 1957, though the caustic spirit that had led him to join it ten years earlier remained undimmed. By most criteria Muscetta remained a sharp witted, and where appropriate sharp tongued, Marxist intellectual for the rest of his life. ("...supplemento scientifico-letterario" During these years, possibly already in contemplation of a career switch towards the universities sector, he focused on a close study of Leopardi's fifteen year diary, Zibaldone.) It was also at around this time, in 1961, that he published his lengthy book on the "Cultura e poesia di Giuseppe Gioachino Belli".

Catania In November 1963 he accepted an appointment to join the Faculty of Literature at the University of Catania (Sicily), where he took charge at the Faculty of Modern Philology. His arrival at Catania faculty was quickly followed by an expansion of the teaching space allocated to the Italianists where researchers, students and teachers could come together to discuss new books, new teaching programmes, theories of learning and critical methodologies on a national and international scale. Faculty members were encouraged to publish at every level. The 1968 student protests marked a clear watershed, however. Student leaders looked to Muscetta as a source of spiritual inspiration and guidance, but of course they also took their cues from university protestors in the rest of Italy. Muscetta was entirely in favour of modernisation in terms of university life as a basis for rejuvenating teaching methods. But the protests also unleashed unhelpful changes in the relationship between students and teachers. The teaching body as a whole – including its most respected members – suffered a collective loss of perceived charismatic status. The informal but powerful pact that had existed between the more avant-garde of the professors and the students was suddenly worn out, not just in terms of cultural bonds and didactic empathy, but also on the political level more broadly. In the longer term the student protests ran out of steam, and after 1972 certain teachers and students in Catania "paid the price" following a succession of impressive electoral successes by individuals identified by pro-Muscetta commentators as part of the "fascist right". Muscetta's interest in the university and in the Catania more generally faded visibly. an hour or so north of Rome, which again became the focus of his professional life. In 1977 he accepted the professorial chair in "Sociology of Literature" ("sociologia della letteratura") and then, following the death of his colleague Carlo Salinari in 1977, that of "Italian Literature" at the Sapienza University in Rome.

Later years Carlo Muscetta retained his professorship at Rome till 1983, the year during which, having reached 70, he definitively retired from teaching. During May and June of that year he undertook what amounted to a series of farewell lectures at the University of Calabria at Arcavacata (Cosenza) on the nineteenth century patriot-poet Vincenzo Padula. In 1988 was granted honorary citizenship of Acri in recognition of his contributions to the cultural enrichment of Southern Italy and, in particular, Calabria.

During two decades of retirement Muscetta sustained contact with the intellectual networks of which he had become a part. The first edition of his book "L’erranza: memorie in forma di lettere" ("Wanderings: Memories in the form of letters") was published in 1992. It comprises 40 open letters addressed to his family and friends, and to important figures from the worlds of literature, politics and academe.

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