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Il Capo Di Tutti Capi Strikes Again
by Alexandra Pereira
2009-06-06 09:13:46 |
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“You publish a book if it is good, you don’t if it is bad”
Giulio Einaudi, on his aversion to publish (or not) a book due to financial or political reasons
No: all the scandals, the cases of corruption and conflicts of interests, censorship, attacks to the Italian Constitution, manipulation of the media, intimidation of jurists, abuse of power, national and international humiliation and embarrassing episodes, his advertised misogyny, private life self-marketing campaign and constant newspapers’ soap-opera, all those were not enough… when you think you have had it all, Berlusconi comes and censors… Literature Nobel laureates! Through “his” publishing house!
 It doesn’t matter if Saramago was published by Einaudi for 20 years and could always keep good relationships with his publishers throughout the world, it doesn’t matter if he won the Literature Nobel prize, it doesn’t matter if he is an eighty-seven year-old much more lucid than any Berlusconi supporter or Berlusconi himself… the only thing which does matter is that he doesn’t agree with the supreme capo and (oh misery) the supreme capo now owns Einaudi! The Italian Prime-Minister thinks that because he now owns Italy’s most important publishing house he is the boss of the “Clean Literature” and the censor of all writers inside Italy! So if Saramago doesn’t agree with him, he doesn’t allow Saramago’s latest book (which mentions many more international public figures besides Berlusconi) to be published by Einaudi!
It doesn’t even matter if the brother of the publisher Giulio Einaudi, Mario Einaudi, was a prominent anti-fascist and their father once a journalist, a President and a supporter of European Federalism. Giulio Einaudi founded reading councils of which were part Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini, Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, among others. He belonged to a rare type of editors which are able to mark future generations (as Gallimard, for instance, did), gather a strong group of good writers around them, defend their authors before the public, make risky choices, introduce the readers to new forms of art and different tastes, show a great deal of dynamism, honesty and, above all, love for literature. In sum, a unique set of talents which Berlusconi has proved he or his partners in crime will never ever be able or willing to show. Einaudi loved books and cared for them – from their content and merits (he didn’t allow his reading councils to use arguments like “the reader’s taste” or “what will the public think?” when discussing if a book should or should not be published) to the covers designed by Bruno Munari, the careful pagination and his patented fonts which other editors could never (in spite of their efforts) imitate. It breaks my heart (and the heart of all Literature lovers) to see Einaudi publishing house, one of the greatest symbols of Italian 20th century culture, in such dirty hands, with its name rolling on the mud.
 Nor does the irony of things matter. The building which hosts Saramago's Foundation today, originally from 1523, had as a model the Diamonds Palace in Ferrara, after a trip to Italy by its first owner. The original Palace is today the Pinacoteca Nazionale and Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Ferrara. The other one, built in 1523 and inspired by it, is currently Saramago's Foundation and Library. Contrasting deeply with Saramago, clearly Berlusconi has no respect for the appreciation and influence of Italian arts and culture in the world. I even doubt he knows who Rossetti was. Well at least the architect does not come on IKEA’s catalogues – probably the most complex pages which il capo di tutti capi ever tried to read.
Still he and his “capangas”, as the Brazilians would say, feel free to go around censoring books, in such a fashion they make us wonder how long will it take for them to start burning all undesirable volumes. "The Notebook", the book by Saramago which gathers literary and political texts from his blog, including reflections on Bush and Blair, Carlos Fuentes, Garzón, Pessoa, the Global warming, Israel, Rosa Parks, Davos, Obama, Wall Street, Aznar, Darwin, the Pope, Fidel Castro and Guantanamo was released in Portugal in April, this week in Spain (in both Castillan and Catalan) by Alfaguara, will soon be released in Brazil and in the other South-American countries, while after the Summer it will be available in the UK and US as well. Einaudi refused to publish other critical texts in recent times, for example the political posthumous poetry by Giovanni Raboni or "The Body of the Capo," by Marco Belpoliti. Saramago believes that the censorship of Einaudi is due to the fact that he wrote without any mooring on Berlusconi as a head of government and the problem is that he also owns the publishing house and many other media in Italy.
 According to the author of "Memorial of the Convent" and “Stone Raft”, the situation would be quaint if it did not mean that the accumulation of all powers in the hands of one politician puts at risk the quality of the Italian democracy. On December 4, 2008 Saramago said: "I am insignificant before the dignity and courage showed by Roberto Saviano, a professor sentenced to death for having written a book ("Gomorrah") complaining against a criminal organization capable of kidnapping a city and its citizens." The reason for the rupture with the publishing house of Silvio Berlusconi seems to be that the book contains “critical judgments and disqualifications” of the Italian Prime Minister. The author of "Essay on Blindness" writes, among other things: "In the land of the Mafia and the Camorra, how important can the evidence that the Prime Minister is a criminal be?" Saramago, 87 years, follows closely the Italian reality in recent months. At some point he compares Berlusconi with a "capo" of the Mafia – when approached about this epithet, Saramago answered simply: "Do you really think it is exaggerated? Are you sure? At least let's agree on the fact that he has a mafia mentality."
Qualifying Berlusconi as a criminal is one of the reasons which, according to an official note issued by the Einaudi, part of the Mondadori publishing empire, justify their refusal and censorship. For Saramago, the greatest risk of figures such as Berlusconi is the fine line which does not allow certain limits to be met: "The limits which exist between his private businesses and the public sphere. Someone able to promote bribery and buy the will of his people is able to do anything. Berlusconi has done it before. One cannot say somebody is not a criminal just because he didn't murder anyone or because he wasn't directly involved in armed robbery. There are many other ways of being a criminal.” He adds: "What I say about him is more or less what everybody thinks, except for his voters. We say that democracy is the best system, which is true. But its weakness is enormous. When a man like this appears, a man who uses the worst methods and manages to get millions of votes, the strangest thing happens only if outraged voices don't rise and protest, if a social movement of rejection does not happen, for the mere fact that he ruins the reputation of his country."
José Saramago “fully understands” that the publishing house Einaudi, which maintained with him a relationship of two decades, did not publish his book: "It's normal. I can understand. If they did [publish it], they would be dismissed," he said on Friday to "El País". In any case, he feels at peace and prefers to break his relationship with the publishing house owned by Silvio Berlusconi. "For me it is a relief. It may be that this will end my relationship with them for good. I am very loyal to my publishers in the whole world, but if I have to do something, I do, and that's it. I don’t want to contribute indirectly to his [Berlusconi’s] fortune."
The methods of the Italian Prime Minister, to Saramago, go beyond many limits. "It must also be the European Union to draw people’s attention for this. They should say that there are ways to behave in the public sphere and cases like this discredit politics." Even more now, on the campaign trail, "An average European citizen has every right to ask what kind of Europe is this, which welcomes a man who behaves with such poor education in international meetings. They did not refrain him in time, and people quite rightly begin to wonder, as Cicero did: 'Until when will he continue abusing of our patience?' "The Notebook" will be published in Italy by Bollati Poringhieri of Turin instead. And Saramago announces: "My next novel, which will be published in the Fall in Portugal, Brazil and Spain, will not be released by this publisher [Einaudi] in Italy. I feel very sorry for this, because in the past they always treated me with utmost respect and consideration."
Sources: El País and Pilar del Río, Spanish journalist and Saramago’s wife, in the Blog of Saramago’s Foundation
Photos:
1) Giulio Einaudi, Italo Calvino, Guido Bonino, Elio Vittorini and Carlo Levi in Corfù for the 1963 International Editors’ Award (by InternetCulturale) 2) Elio Vittorini, Daniele Ponchiroli, Italo Calvino e Giulio Einaudi. Casa Einaudi, San Giacomo di Dogliani. Sixties (Archive Agnese Incisa, by InformatissimaFotografia) 3) José Saramago and Pilar del Río: an Iberian marriage which begun 22 years ago with the shared love for literature, an unlikely meeting and a visit to Pessoa’s tomb
Saramago Berlusconi Literature |
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