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The historian Antonino Radice

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Antonino Radice

Antonino Radice, historian, writer, was born in Bronte in 1917. Has lived and worked in Trento, wrote, in particular, essays on the cultural and political area of the Trentino-Alto Adige making historical researches on the Trentine resistance and the Enlightenment from Alto Adige.

Between his works,

"The Trentine resistance and the institutional problem" (Milan 1954),
"The resistance of Trentino" (Rovereto 1960),
"Authoritarianism of other times" (Trieste 1968),
"Resistance armed in Trentino" (Trento 1978),
"Israel-Ant Israel, Diario1938-1943" (Trento 1984),
"Memory of a lesson - Guido Calogero" (New Anthology 1994),
"Risorgimento Perduto (Lost revival) - Ancient origins of the national indisposition " (published by the De Martinis & C., Catania 1955, with Giancarlo Vigorelli preface).

Radice, in this last work, through the careful analysis of trial records and letters, tries a not conventional interpretation of the Garibaldian expedition to Sicily, rebuilding the figures of Vittorio Emanuele II, of Bixio, the deep disagreement between Cavour and Garibaldi, their questionable consistency and their poor knowledge of the island problems.

The dream of Sicilians, writes Radice, was that the Garibaldi landing, more than the political unity of Italy, would have been bearer of the social freedom in Sicily.

The biggest part of Risorgimento Perduto (lost revival), almost a book in the book, is dedicated to the facts of Bronte of 1860 with the addition of unpublished historical documents (letters and proclaims of Bixio and Garibaldi, decrees, political and military correspondences, acts of the process, etc.).

Interesting the letters and the correspondences of the English Consul In Palermo, John Goodwin, turned to Garibaldi and to Crispi, Minister Of The Interior, with the pressing invitation to protect the farming-patrimonial interests of the English family of the Nelson.

«The time has come to say - writes Giancarlo Vigorelli in the preface - that the two historians - Benedetto, author not only of the Nino Bixio in Bronte but also of the two ponderous volumes of the Historical Memoirs of Bronte, and Antonino - come from a single family lineage of ancient date in that of Bronte and in the Etna region.
Passionality is therefore founded on solid hereditary roots (that is, civil Sicilianity, which Nievo found to the point of transcribing this lament of an old man who greeted the Garibaldians thus: "You are right to come and console us, because since we were born that we cry"), passion, I repeat, never blind but rather careful and revealing, which never abandons this work, and even abounds in it, which validly contributes to critically revisiting our Risorgimento, where unfortunately it was compromised, deviated and became "lost". We are still paying for the lacerating errors."

Radice dedicates Risorgimento perduto (Lost revival) "to Sicily and to the southern populations whose aspirations to become and feel Italian fell since 1860 in front of the false prophets of the national unity".

In relation to the 1860 Bronte facts, Radice (who liked to call himself "brontese citizen") in "Risorgimento perduto" (Lost Risorgimento), defines Garibaldi, Bixio, Cavour and Vittorio Emanuele II: «central personalities of the Garibaldian expedition to Sicily, in the softened reconstruction of their actions, made by superficial historic and politic observers, have become true sacred monsters about whom nobody ever talks but in a partial and, somewhat, reductive form.»

Translated by Sam Di Bella