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) which held out the likelihood of a more academically oriented set of qualifications. While still living in Avellino he came to know Guido Dorso, who exercised a lasting influence on his thinking, both politically and more broadly.
Student and young school teacher In 1931 he enrolled as a student at the University of Naples Literature faculty. 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. Croce is widely seen to have been instrumental in steering Muscetta towards literary criticism as a career path and historicism as an important philosophical prism. In 1932 he transferred to the University of Florence, where he was taught by Luigi Russo. He graduated in 1934, successfully concluding his student career with a dissertation, supervised by Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, concerning the nineteenth century literature scholar Francesco de Sanctis, 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". It was during his time in Molfetta that he became friendly with the left-wing intellectual Tommaso Fiore. He was dismissed from his teaching post after he was overheard criticising the colonial war in Abyssinia, but found a new position at the "Istituto Di Cagno Abbrescia", a secondary school in nearby Bari through the intervention of Fiore.
There are indications that even when he was a literature student in Naples, during a period in which Italy was increasingly governed as a one-party dictatorship, there were members of the university who regarded Muscetta as politically suspect. He association with Benedetto Croce and others of a liberal mindset may have been one of the factors behind his transfer to Florence in 1932. Nevertheless, in 1937 he became a party member. (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).
In 1937 the couple relocated to Pescara (Abruzzo) where Muscetta had been offered a more secure (and better paid) job at a "scuola magistrale" (secondary school with a strong academic focus).
Rome In 1939 Muscetta succeeded in obtaining a transfer to Rome, on the far side of the mountains. Here he began teaching Italian literature at the "Conservatorio di S.Cecilia". The job offer resulted from his participation, on 10 November 1939, in the government's "Littoriali" festival. He secured first place in the "Education Policy" competition category. The theme that year was "Independence of Italian literature". He also secured fourth place in the "culture and arts" category. 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. Sources imply, in addition, a certain ambiguity or fluidity about Muscetta's political attitudes during the later 1930s. He had "very publicly" abandoned his open hostility to the government in 1937, but would nevertheless, according to his own subsequent attestations, remained active as an "underground antifascist".
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").
During these year Muscetta was simultaneously increasingly to be found among members of the conspiratorial antifascist circles associated with the Einaudi Publishing business. Fellow members of the circle included Giaime Pintor, Cesare Pavese and Leone Ginzburg, each of whom on occasion made their own contributions to "Primato". 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.
War years As in the First World War, so in the second, the Italian government avoided military involvement for more than half a year following the outbreak of hostilities between the major power north of the Alps. When Mussolini signalled support for his Germany allies by means of a brief (and militarily inconsequential) invasion of France from the south in June 1940, there was a polarising impact on public opinion. Many who had managed to avoid displaying much interest in politics since 1922 now found themselves feeling the need to choose a side. Muscetta turned increasingly towards an intellectualised form of Marxism, though it is impossible to pin down quite when and to what extent his political opinions changed and crystallised.
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.
Becoming increasingly alarmed about their prospects, the men from "L'Italia Libera" appealed to Amedeo Strazzera-Perniciani, Chairman of the Prison Visitors' and Assistance Commission, who had been able to meet them on 10 December 1943 and was then evidently able to arrange subsequent contacts. At great personal risk, Strazzera-Perniciani gave them instructions to feign illness in order to secure transfer to the prison infirmary, thereby avoiding further interrogation sessions. He even urged them to resort to injections that triggered high fevers, in order to enhance/exacerbate their symptoms. Natalia Ginzburg and Lucia Muscetta submitted their own appeals to Strazzera-Perniciani, who undertook to look after their husbands; and he was able to take steps that prevented the two men from being picked up in a truck for transported to Germany. Leone Ginzburg nevertheless died at 8 in the morning on 5 February 1944 in the prison infirmary at the Regina Coeli. His causes of death were given as acute cholecystitis and cardiac paralysis. Carlo Muscetta survived. Later Muscetta would dedicate his scholarly study "Cultura e poesia di G. G. Belli" to Ginzburg. It was, in terms of copies sold, the author's most successful book.
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