The review of the book “Raskolnikov’s library – books and ideas for a democratic identity” published by Einaudi (218 pp., 18 euros)
The best books – as we know – are the worst. Smoking bilge and unfrequented attic, filthy basement or illegal terrace from which to spy untold glimpses, the novel is all the silent multiple. The novels that have settled forever within us, shaping the home that, willingly or unwillingly, they have taken with our complicity, are those written with the tone of someone who is confessing something unspeakable in our ear and that it would be unbecoming to admit to anyone. out loud, certainly not the reasonably “constructive” ones and least of all those who landed in bookstores with the burning voice of sung masses and the ferocity of a mission – usually that of improving ourselves, making us more “aware” and transforming us into creatures more sensitive (no, worse: sensitized) to immaculate, i.e. weak, fetishes.
Thus, glimpsing among the shelves “Raskolnikov’s library – books and ideas for a democratic identity” (Einaudi, 218 pp., 18 euros), at first (be careful, here’s a bit of sincerity – it’s surprising in a review, right?) prejudice prevailed. Instantly, the glands produced an a priori cocoon of suspicion, if only for that vague smell, with which the title seemed to be pearled, of redemptive pedagogism. Then, however, since one has been well-educated by rude books, the list of unforgettable books appeared in his mind, thanks to that very diligent internal lawyer supplied to well-educated and rude people, not so much for what they silently revealed to us about ourselves themselves, but for what they told us that we had never conceived of about everything else, showing us a way of being in the world, a way we had never questioned ourselves about. And here comes the “Apology” of Socrates and the “Ecclesiastes”, the “Ethics” of Spinoza and the Kierkegaard of “Fear and Trembling”, “The Truce” and “Life and Destiny” – works of colossal historical lighting technology, philosophical and moral.
“Without Raskolnikov we wouldn’t know what goes on in the head of a murderer”, reads the beautiful introduction by Simonetta Fiori, editor of this volume of sentimental paths through the pages proposed by Luciano Canfora, Franco Cardini, Elena Cattaneo, Anna Foa, Nicola Lagioia, Marco Revelli, Aldo Schiavone and Gustavo Zagrebelsky. And it’s true: without Raskolnikov (who made Revelli, the author of one of the most interesting chapters, feverish) we would not have known anything about our double. But it is even more surprising to suspect that without Marx (via LucioCollettiana, “Marxism and Hegel”) we could not understand democracy, which is not a formal practice with no intended use never put to the test of everyday choices, but the ‘exactly the opposite – the emptying of this meaning from within (the creaking, as Fiori says very well) demonstrates this very dangerous weakening of reality.
“The Library of Raskolnikov” brings to life numerous apostates, Deliocantimorian heretics, ardent Mazzinians, those marked forever and the marchers who break lines to draw new ones; there are Carlolevian clocks (one wishes Anna Foa’s chapter would never end), Werfel’s “The forty days of the Mussa Dagh” in which to read the fate of the Jews, Ada Gobetti with her “Partisan Diary”, Rita Levi Montalcini who praises the imperfection. And also Paul Celan, a victim who wrote in the language of the executioners: he threw himself into the Seine from the exact point sung by Apollinaire.
