April 25 is almost here…#lestweforget
| CONTRO OGNI RITORNO Piero Calamandrei Inermi borgate dell’alpe asilo di rifugiati prese d’assalto coi lanciafiamme arsi vivi nel rogo dei casali i bambini avvinghiati alle madri fosse notturne scavate dagli assassini in fuga per nascondervi stragi di trucidati innocenti questo vi riuscì. S. Terenzio Bergiola Zeri Vinca Forno Mommio Traverde S. Anna S. Leonardo scrivete questi nomi son le vostre vittorie ma espugnare queste trincee di marmo di dove il popolo apuano cavatori e pastori e le loro donne staffette tutti armati di fame e di libertà vi sfidava beffardo da ogni cima questo non vi riuscì. Ora sul mare son tornati al carico i velieri e nelle cave i boati delle mine chiaman lavoro e non guerra. Ma questa pace non è oblio. Stanno in vedetta queste montagne decorate di medaglia d’oro al valore partigiano taglienti come lame immacolato baluardo contro ogni ritorno. | AGAINST ANY RETURN Piero Calamandrei Defenceless hamlets of the alps asylum of refugees attacked with flamethrowers burned alive in fires in farmhouses the children gripped to their mothers nocturnal graves dug by assassins on the run to hide the massacre of slaughtered innocents this you could do. S. Terenzio Bergiola Zeri Vinca Forno Mommio Traverde S. Anna S. Leonardo* write down these names they are your victories but expunge these marble trenches from where these Apuan people quarrymen and shepherds and their women staffette** all armed with hunger and freedom defied you mockingly from every crest this you could not do. Today on the sea sails return to the charge and in the quarries the thunder of mines call work and not war. But this peace is not oblivion. They are on the lookout these mountains adorned in gold medals of valour of the partisan as cutting as blades immaculate bulwark against any return. Translation © Matilda Colarossi 2024 |
Piero Calamandrei was a jurist, writer and politician. In 1925 he signed Benedetto Croce’s Manifesto degli intellettuali antifascisti. He was among the founders of the Partito d’Azione. A scholar of civil law, an anti-fascist, he was one of the very few professors and lawyers who did not apply for the National Fascist Party membership card. He was among the architects of the Constitution.
More about Piero Calamandrei here: https://paralleltexts.blog/tag/piero-calamandrei/
* In all of these small hamlets in the Carrara Alps massacres were carried out: San Terenzo Monti, between 17 and 19 August 1944, 159 civilians lost their lives during the massacre. In Bergiola Foscalina on 16 September 1944, 61 civilians were slaughtered, almost all women, young people and children. In Zeri, 3-4 August 1944, 19 people were massacred. In Vinca, two separate episodes on 24-27 August, 9 and 162 people were massacred. In Forno on 13 June 1944, 60 men were massacred. In Mommio on 4-5 May 1944, 22 people were massacred. In Sant’Anna di Stazzema on 12 August 1944, fascist and nazi units surrounded the area of Sant’Anna while a quarter stood further down the valley, above the village of Valdicastello, to block any escape route: there 560 people, including many children, were massacred in little more than three hours. In San Leonardo al Frigido, on 16 September 1944, 149 people were killed.
You can find an account of the Sant’Anna massacre here: https://paralleltexts.blog/2020/08/21/the-massacre-at-santanna-di-stazzema-the-account-of-enio-mancini-by-giulio-cavalli/
**Stafette is literally “relays”: they helped the partisans by carrying news between factions of the resistance, usually on bikes.
You can search the Italian towns and cities where massacres were perpetrated by nazi-fascist troops in the “Atlante delle stragi naziste e fasciste in Italia” [Atlas of nazi and fascist massacres in Italy] here: https://www.straginazifasciste.it/?page_id=363
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
parallel texts: words reflected 
Dear Mati,
It seems that poets [and their translators/ interpreters] have the art of making us realize the connectedness of things. Their reflections reflect through us.
It was he whom the English-speaking peoples call The Bard who wrote in the eulogy, “I come to bury Caesar, not to praíse him,” and it was the trans-Atlantic poet TS Eliot who wrote, “April is the cruellest month.”
And we have now to consider your post of April 21 and the heart-searing free verse of Piero Calamandrei in his child-innocent account of the tragic massacre at Sta. Anna.
Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, grandmother of Jesus, is also the patron saint of Santa Ana, California, where my younger brother was born. I myself was born in [El Pueblo de Nuestra Dama, Reina de] Los Angeles in March, 1943.
Four months later in July 1943, our late father, also named Joseph, was a young sailor, 21 years old, who was aboard a destroyer in the US Sixth Fleet that began the Allied bombardment of Sicily to prepare for the landing of the Allied armies in Europe.
The “success” of the Sicily Campaign lead to the political and military events to follow, including the retreat of the Nazi-Fascisti into the northern territories of Italy. Their scorched-earth withdrawal practices as witnessed by the boy Piero and reported in the simple verse of the adult Calamandrei, are what in today’s realpolitick are antiseptically labelled collateral damage.
And yet, and yet somehow, unaccountably, I feel the guilt for what was perpetrated by the evil incarnate that swept over that poor people and town.
Is it because I did not know of the specific details of this tragic memory of Sta. Anna as rendered by your poet and parallel voicing? Partly, I think it must be. But should I have known these details already? No.
But did I, do I need to know them? Yes.
As that fragile innocent child who fortunately grew to adulthood taught, we are morally, physically bound to resist it happening again. And yet events beyond our reach today are repeating it, when I myself am an old man, and feel the guilt of doing nothing to resist.
So let me add my voice to yours, dear Mati, to ask that these memories not fade, and to resist, whenever possible.
Joseph
Joseph Alan Roberts, Oliva, Spain
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Thank you so much, Joseph.
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