This essay represents the culmination of a long-term research project on Luigi Settembrini (1813-1876), Neapolitan patriot and academic. Publishing the first annotated English edition of I Neoplatonici (pp. 147-183)—a pseudo-translation of a Milesian tale, written by Settembrini himself alongside the Ricordanze—the authors can finally bring to the attention of the international public the intellectual, political, and human trajectory of a classicist, now unknown to most, who was one of the leaders of the Revolutions of ‘48 in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, as well as a prominent figure in southern Italy in the aftermath of the state’s Unification.
The Preface (pp. vii-ix) anchors the volume’s contents to the concept of ‘relationship’, which, understood in all its semantic richness, provides a useful key to exploring Capra and Graziosi’s work in depth. While setting themselves the goal of “exploring the relationship between classical scholarship and revolutionary thinking, underlining the role that love can and—we even argue—should play in both” (p. vii), the authors describe their very own research as the achievement of both a friend-relationship and a dense network of scientific collaborations, capable of crossing the boundaries between states, roles, affiliations, and disciplines. The method of investigation they adopt, based on Barbara Cassin’s ‘dedicated comparative’,[1] then succeeds in making the reception of the ancient world a truly multidisciplinary field of study, insofar as different skills come into play within it. It is no coincidence that Capra and Graziosi’s effort to carry out a parallel reinterpretation of Settembrini’s life and works highlights the relationship between them, bringing out the humanity of the Neapolitan patriot and his legacy for today’s classicists (pp. 19-22).
The introductory section of the volume (“Introduction: Truth and Fakery”) traces the editorial history of The Neoplatonists. Rediscovered in the National Library of Naples in 1937, alongside the autograph of the Ricordanze, the manuscript of the tale was left unpublished. Raffaele Cantarella (1898-1977)—the director of the Officina dei Papiri who discovered the manuscript—understood that this fake translation of a homoerotic story, written by Settembrini and attributed to Aristaeus of Megara, could have irreparably compromised the fame achieved by the classicist under fascism (pp. 3-8). The publication would therefore only take place in the 1970s, in an Italy profoundly transformed by the emergence of sexual and homosexual liberation movements:[2] Cantarella died before completing his edition. Hence, the publishing house Rizzoli entrusted the task of writing a foreword to Giorgio Manganelli (1922-1990), who transformed the first release of The Neoplatonists in 1977 into a veritable literary ‘case’, to publicly expose the homosexual tendencies of one of the fathers of the Risorgimento (pp. 8-15). So, if fascism and post-war Italian culture had made him a model of heroic and paternal virility, prompting Cantarella to hide the manuscript, Manganelli’s attitude reveals his tendency to see literature as a tool to transform reality into scandal, effectively projecting his categories onto the object of study.[3]
In light of the above premises, the diachronic examination gives way to the synchronic one, inaugurating the first section of the essay—“Autobiography and Revolution”—in which Capra and Graziosi examine Settembrini’s life, placing him at the center of a sort of visual triangle, characterised by the coexistence of different perspectives: that of Settembrini himself in his Ricordanze; that of his wife Raffaella Luigia Faucitano (1818-1881); and finally that of the Risorgimento tradition centered on the ‘fathers of the fatherland’. In this intersection of perspectives, aimed at capturing the historical complexity of Settembrini’s public and private life, his experiences as a political activist and as a prisoner on the island of Santo Stefano are closely examined. In their analysis of the Ricordanze, Capra and Graziosi observe Settembrini’s subjectivity, highlighting how he focused on the dimension of relationships in constructing his public image. This chapter also has the merit of pointing out Faucitano’s agency concerning Settembrini’s political project and the diffusion of his ideas beyond the prison walls. A fundamental aspect—which highlights the relevance of Settembrini’s political activism and which Capra and Graziosi can bring to light by analysing his story through Faucitano’s perspective—concerns his denunciation of the living conditions of prisoners in Bourbon jails, which attracted the attention of public opinion. The last section of the chapter is devoted to a comparison between the Ricordanze and the vast repertoire of autobiographies written by the great protagonists of the Risorgimento. It emerges that Settembrini, in stark contrast to his contemporaries, expressed remarkable originality of views and content in his writings: taking up the studies of Giulio Bollati and Silvana Patriarca,[4] Capra and Graziosi dwell on how other intellectuals of the late 19th century had made the classics a tool for constructing a new ideal model of the homeland, based on masculinity, against those who blamed the decadence of an Italy feminised by its weaknesses. They contrast all of these with the example of Settembrini: he had learned from the Greeks an open and egalitarian conception of relationships, which he did not hesitate to transpose into political action and to express in his way of being a man.
Moving from the history of studies to the reception of antiquity, the second part of the volume delves into an exploration of Settembrini’s literary works. In this section, Capra and Graziosi show how the use of the ancient world and the recourse to literary fiction allowed the author to further detach himself from the cultural context of his time. To better understand how this is possible, the text of The Neoplatonists is introduced by a new reading of the Dialogue on Women, another Platonic text written by Settembrini in prison and dedicated to his wife. Within it, a denunciation of the subaltern condition of women takes shape. Due to their revolutionary scope, this book still challenges the interpreters, so much so that the multidisciplinary approach adopted by Capra and Graziosi has exposed glaring errors in the tradition of studies (99-100). The most concrete case is that of the first edition of the text, published in Settembrini e l’antico by Marcello Gigante:[5] the critic’s addition of a negation in the sentence “how true it is that the man who does not despise women never suffered a misfortune” is explained by Capra and Graziosi as a sign that he intervened without considering Settembrini’s experience and his gratitude towards Faucitano, the only link between him and the world outside prison, expressing a view of women opposed to that of the Dialogue. As had happened under fascism and in the 1970s, the Neapolitan classicist and patriot once again became the victim of manipulation because of a gender bias. In fact, it was precisely his innovative view of the relationship between men and women, developed thanks to his reinterpretation of Plato, that led him to distance himself from Jean Jacques Rousseau and highlight the contradictions in his thinking: the equality promoted by the philosopher fundamental to all patriots ready to build a new Italy proved to be only apparent, insofar as women remained excluded. Another aspect in which the Platonic inspiration of the Dialogue on Women allowed Settembrini to draw a line between himself and other intellectuals of the Risorgimento concerns the use of antiquity towards the construction of the new Italian identity:[6] as Capra and Graziosi point out, the Greek cultural background is not presented as proof of a supposed ethnic superiority, but as a component of a mixed identity, derived from a long tradition of encounters that for centuries found an exceptional cradle in Magna Graecia.
Continuing their investigation of Platonic-inspired works, Capra and Graziosi finally come to a re-examination of The Neoplatonists. Specifically, this tale about a homoerotic love stands as an exaltation of the equality and parity that should characterise all human relationships, against all forms of hierarchy, supporting the development of the concept of reciprocanza. The latter, in Settembrini’s view, seems to go beyond the ideal of equality at the basis of democratic systems, insofar as it presupposes not only equal rights but also reciprocity in recognition between equals, not to mention that, being based on the sexual act, it reevaluates the contribution that bodies can give to political reflection.[7] In this sense, Settembrini’s use of the Platonic model constitutes a real provocation against the Church and other theorists of the nation who, like Gioberti, had drawn on Platonic thought to imagine an Italy of opposite sign: the account of The Neoplatonists unmasks an asceticism designed not to elevate the spirit, but to use it as a means of discrimination between bodies and an instrument of oppression, useful only to legitimise hierarchies and, with them, the inequalities caused by power. Plato himself, in the Timaeus, had resorted to pseudo-epigraphy to imagine an ideal society: Settembrini takes up from antiquity this kind of aspiration to mutual respect and love at a historical moment such as the Risorgimento, when Italy was building itself as a nation and was engaged in intense debates on the idea of the state. Another significant aspect of the chapter in question, in which Capra and Graziosi explore Settembrini’s political use of literature, concerns his relationship with the genre of the ancient novel. Long interpreted as a form of escapist literature, this genre originated and spread in the socio-cultural context of Christianity, in open defiance of its bigoted morality. Similarly, in The Neoplatonists, the appearance of erudite divertissement conceals its political message of radical equality. As proof of this insight, Capra and Graziosi compare Settembrini’s work on The Betrothed, linking it to the cultural context of late 19th-century Italy. At the time, the novel was undergoing a rediscovery, both as a literary genre and as a vehicle for political messages intended for the masses, so that they could become protagonists of their history through a process of consciousness-raising that passed through the pleasure of literature. Finally, the post-classical feature of The Neoplatonists depends not only on the way Settembrini reuses an ancient model to express new and revolutionary ideas but also on how he manipulates Plato’s text. In a passage where he explicitly mentions his model, Settembrini exchanges a quotation from the Phaedo with Socrates’ palinode contained in the Phaedrus. What Cantarella and Gigante considered a misquotation turns out to be a convinced intervention on the text, in which the praise of heroic death replaces that of love, establishing a relationship with Settembrini’s own life:[8] thanks to Faucitano’s efforts, he did not die a revolutionary martyr, pursuing his political activity in prison, cultivating love for his cellmates and for the classics, from which he drew inspiration to imagine a different society based on reciprocanza.
The penultimate chapter of the volume (“How to Live and How to Read”) establishes a link between the first sections of the volume and the last, dedicated to the translation of The Neoplatonists, but also between the critical work carried out by Settembrini himself as a scholar and that carried out by Capra and Graziosi on the post-classical works he composed. This three-dimensionality reflects the intersectional approach adopted by the authors and represents the best lesson in methodology that can be drawn from Classics, Love and Revolution. In its pages, Settembrini appears both as a subject who turns antiquity into a tool for criticising the present and producing the ideas to revolutionise it, and as the object of a history of studies, which can finally be freed of misunderstandings and political uses, offering useful hints for setting new trajectories within the discipline. In sum, by rediscovering Settembrini’s legacy, this work of ‘critics of criticism’ sends a strong and clear message to classicists: Settembrini was able to turn the study of literature into a moment of activism and ideological elaboration, so now it is up to us to make that way of experiencing the classics our own, first and foremost by avoiding establishing hierarchies between disciplines, genres, and methods, and by not putting up barriers between study and engagement.
References
Barsotti, E. M. 2021. At the Roots of Italian Identity: ‘Race’ and ‘Nation’ in the Italian Risorgimento, 1796-1870. Routledge.
Bollati, G. 1972. ‘L’italiano’. In Storia d’Italia: i caratteri originali, vol. 1(2). Einaudi: 949-1022. Repr. in G. Bollati, 1996 (1983), L’italiano: il carattere nazionale come storia e come invenzione, 2nd ed. Einaudi: 34-123.
Brisson, L. 2012. ‘Women in Plato’s Republic’, Études platoniciennes 9: 129-36.
Settembrini, L. 1977. I neoplatonici: racconto inedito. Edited by L. Settembrini. Rizzoli.
Cassin, B. 2014. Sophistical Practice: Toward a Consistent Relativism. Fordham University Press.
Gigante, M. 1977. Settembrini e l’antico. Guida Editori.
Manganelli, 1967. Letteratura come menzogna. Feltrinelli.
Patriarca, S. 2005. ‘Indolence and Regeneration: Tropes and Tensions of Risorgimento Patriotism’. American Historical Review 110 (2): 380-408.
Spolato, M. 2019. I movimenti omosessuali di liberazione : documenti, testimonianze e foto della rivoluzione omosessuale. Asterisco.
Notes
[1] Cf. Cassin 2014.
[2] For a general overview, see Spolato 2019.
[3] Letteratura come menzogna is Manganelli best known essay. Cfr. Manganelli 1967.
[4] Cf. Bollati 1972 and Patriarca 2005.
[5] See Gigante 1977: 142-3.
[6] For an in-depth analysis of this phaenomenon, see Barsotti 2021.
[7] Capra and Graziosi refer to Brisson 2012.
[8] Cf. Cantarella 1977 and Gigante 1977.