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; In Movimento di liberazione in Italia, 1958. - n. 52-53, p. 136-145). "Perhaps not everyone, scholars and the general public, is sufficiently aware of the contribution given by Trentino to the Italian Resistance from September 1943 to May 1945, from the beginning to the end of German domination in our territory". - "La resistenza del Trentino: 1943/45" (The resistance of Trentino, Rovereto 1960), a look at one of the most tormented periods of Trentino and an acknowledgement of those who died in the name of their ideals of freedom and Italianness, examples to remember and share. With this book Radice won the competition announced in 1953 by the Museo Storico del Risorgimento in Trento for a historical work on the Trentino Resistance. The volume was published in 1960 in the Museum's monograph series. It represents the first organic work on the subject after the various occasional commemorative publications published largely at the initiative of the Museum itself. - "Authoritarianism of other times" (Trieste 1968), - "Armed resistance in Trentino" (Trento 1978), - "Israel-Antisrael - Diary 1938-1943" (Trento 1984), the Israelite communities persecuted by fascism, in the diaries of Ernesta Bittanti, widow of Cesare Battisti, historical study by Antonino Radice;
 - "Memory of a lesson - Guido Calogero" (Nuova Antologia 1994), - "Risorgimento Perduto" (Lost Risorgimento) - Ancient origins of national malaise" (published by De Martinis & C., Catania 1955, with a preface by Giancarlo Vigorelli).
Antonino Radice dedicates the book «To Sicily and to the southern populations whose aspirations to become and feel Italian fell since 1860 before the false prophets of national unity.» (Read a comment by Gino Saitta)
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.» |
The chapters of "Risorgimento perduto" that Antonino Radice
dedicated to the Events of August 1860 that occurred in his hometown
are available on our website
in PDF format (only in italian language).
Read a commentary by Gino Saitta on
"Risorgimento perduto", an analysis of the Events written with the
disenchanted eye of the historian. |
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