Today marks the 87th anniversary of the death of Antonio Gramsci, which occurred on 27 April 1937.
The Sardinian politician, born in Ales in 1891 and raised between Ghilarza, Santu Lussurgiu and Oristano, died of a cerebral hemorrhage that struck him at the age of 46. Shortly before, the fascist regime that had kept him in prison for 11 years had granted him conditional release.
A life on the front line, his, which led him to become, as well as an established scholar and academic, also a great animator of Italian political life.
In 1921 he was among the founders of the Italian Communist Party and of the newspaper L’Unità and soon, due to his ideas, he came into the sights of Benito Mussolini and the fascist censors. Arrested in 1926, in violation of parliamentary immunity (he had been elected deputy in 1924), from prison he never gave up making his voice heard as a protester, writing the famous “Prison Notebooks”, a collection of political, economic and philosophical reflections , which still today represent an inimitable testimony of a free, deep and unconventional voice.
«I have never wanted to change my opinions – he wrote to his mother – for which I would be willing to give my life and not just stay in prison. I would like to console you for this displeasure that I have given you: but I could not do otherwise. Life is like this, very hard, and children sometimes have to cause great pain to their mothers, if they want to preserve their honor and their dignity as men.”
Gramsci, sentenced to twenty years by the regime, was in the prisons of Regina Coeli in Rome, San Vittore in Milan and Turi, in Puglia. From 1931 his physical condition began to worsen: in addition to Pott’s disease, which he had suffered from since birth, he was struck by a form of arteriosclerosis to which hypertension and gout were later added.
The longed-for freedom, thanks to the amnesty, arrived on 21 April 1937. But he did not have time to enjoy it, he died six days later.
(Unioneonline/L)
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