the book
NoonJune 21, 2022 – 1:01 pm
In her book Lorenza Foschini denies the episode that inspired Casablanca. But many confirm
from Marco De Marco
GThanks to a good book by Lorenza Foschini we return to talk about Renato Caccioppoli, the brilliant mathematics professor who committed suicide in 1959 who was the faithful mirror of an exasperated, disappointed Naples, possessed by a creative and self-destructive force at the same time, cyclically in need of myths and legends to survive. Always current theme, as you can guess. The book is titled The friction of life (La nave di Teseo), Mariella Pandolfi has already talked about it. If I return to the subject only to address a specific question that I have dealt with several times. I’m talking about the now famous episode of the Marseillaise. Caccioppoli and Sara Mancuso, his future wife, sing it at the time of Hitler and Mussolini’s visit to Naples. The story of 1938 has always suggested to me the idea of an anticipated future, because what happens in Casablanca happens in Naples, the film by Curtiz, which for 1944.
Lorenza Foschini now writes that this story is false, made up from scratch. And she doesn’t grant appeal. On the contrary, he adds that it would be interesting to know by whom and why it was invented. However, even from the documented reconstruction that the book offers, I draw more confirmations than denials, so I try to resort equally to invoking the clemency of the court. Foschini talks about a fake and wonders about its origin. He is looking for a source. I have a name: Ermanno Rea. he who, knowing well the political and cultural environments frequented by Caccioppoli, codifies the myth of the Marseillaise and fixes it in a written version after having gone up the stream of primeval orality. He talks about it in about ten pages of the Neapolitan Mystery, a 1995 novel that Foschini mentions several times, but about other events. Si say: novel, therefore literary invention. Attention: those who know Rea’s style know well that everything in him always comes from a real, personal or in any case witnessed fact. And there are many, in fact, the testimonies left by the contemporaries on the mess of the Marseillaise. I myself have heard this story told several times in my youth, and not only in the sections of the PCI or in the editorial staff of L’Unit. The details changed, not the substance. Had it happened at the Grottino, in Mergellina, or at the Lwenbru in Piazza Municipio? Was there a piano played by Caccioppoli or an orchestra that Caccioppoli had asked to play?
Rea reports it following this pattern. May 1938, Lwenbru brewery, protagonists Renato Caccioppoli and Sara Mancuso. Sara sings the Marseillaise, Renato plays the piano, the fascists respond with their choirs. Final: the police arrive, Caccioppoli is stopped and then interned in a mental hospital. Here, however, is the reconstruction of Lorenza Foschini. October ’38, not before, but after the visit of the Fhrer. The protagonists are the same, the place changes: now the Grottino. The fascists are there, recognizable by the pins on the lapels of their jackets, there is dancing, singing and for sure there is music that resounds in the room. Final: the police arrive, the professor is first interrogated and then interned at the Bianchi. What is the same? A lot, I would say. What is striking? That among the many episodes with special effects attributed to Caccioppoli, thanks to the work of Lorenza Foschini, this now becomes one of the least legendary, one of the few truly documented. What is missing? The revolutionary anthem, it doesn’t rain. There is no mention of it in the police reports. But also other stories, equally disruptive, and accepted as true, there is no trace in the police reports. It is said, for example, of a morning when the professor goes around with a rooster on a leash to ridicule the fascist directive that forbids men to take dogs for a walk. In the book we read that this episode is only mentioned in a medical record, that is, in a reference ex post which was to serve to strengthen the thesis (founded?) of Caccioppoli’s madness.
Yet we know that the professor was constantly under surveillance by the men of the regime. Her gesture – sensationally pre-situationist – escapes the watchful spies. How come? Thus, something strange also happens that evening at the Grottino. The minutes tell what Sara does and says, but nothing about what the illustrious mathematician does or says. she who invites you to drink and dance, she who asks for an account of the fascist pins on the jackets, while he, the great provocateur, is silent and does not move a finger. Only later, under interrogation, Caccioppoli went into a rage. That’s all. The impression, in short, that once again the police have tried to square the circle: on the one hand, they dutifully inform the ministry and the rectorate of the episode, proving the fact that the fact is not irrelevant; on the other hand it downsizes and depoliticizes the role of the professor. How can this be explained?
Rea suggests an answer. The story – he writes – even without particular damage to anyone. Even with one of those compromises typical of Neapolitan fascism which had no interest in exasperating its relations with the most influential circles of the city bourgeoisie. And in mentioning the specific role of Caccioppoli’s mother, he adds: Sophia Bakunin obtained the couple’s release on condition that her son was declared insane and locked up for some time in an asylum. Conversely, nothing could have avoided both a trial and, at best, a shorter or longer period of confinement. therefore the communist rhetoric that feeds the myth of Caccioppoli? Or the fascist diplomacy that softens the tones? The question is still this. The minutes do not close the case. If anything, they finally stabilize it in a real context. In Foschini’s book, then, Caccioppoli never intones the Marseillaise on the piano. In Rea’s book, however, this recurring image. Sometimes you can almost hear the sound, as in the catacomb afternoon of June 13, 1940 at the Caccioppoli house. The Germans had entered Paris. Renato unexpectedly raised the lid of the piano and, standing up, with only his right hand, hinted at the motif of the Marseillaise: very few notes only, but without rhythm, exhausted, similar to a feeble breath. A few notes. But enough to make the climate of those years. And perhaps, in part, the character of a city.
21 June 2022 | 13:01
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