Lattes, Franco [Franco Fortini] (1917-1994)

Marxism [from Salvage, #1]

July, 2015 [1983]

"Marx taught us in fact to understand once and for all what implacable work the unknown, the infinite vanquished victors, carry out in the societies that would prefer to ignore them, as well as within ourselves; what tunnels they dig, what blast-holes they prepare even inside those who hate them for having wanted something that entire oppressed peoples continue, dead and living, to want."

As for the brilliant mind that died a hundred years ago, it is also thanks to it that the role of great personalities and their burial places has been put into a different perspective. Yet I have paid moving visits to the Communards' Wall in Paris and the Rain Flower Terrace or Memorial Park of the 100,000 Revolutionary Martyrs in Nanjing; were it possible, I would also go to honour the dead of the Gulag: they are all on the same side, which remains a side; not the hypocrite embrace between victims and murderers. Marx taught us in fact to understand once and for all what implacable work the unknown, the infinite vanquished victors, carry out in the societies that would prefer to ignore them, as well as within ourselves; what tunnels they dig, what blast-holes they prepare even inside those who hate them for having wanted something that entire oppressed peoples continue, dead and living, to want. The whole of human history, he tells us, must still be fulfilled, interpreted, 'saved'. And either it will be or there will no longer be -- we know it is possible -- any history. Either you interpret yourself, overcome yourself, 'save' yourself, or you will have never existed.
(p. 41)

War::Blast-Holes Architecture::Tunnels

Reading

Franco Fortini, "Marxism," Translated by Alberto Toscano Salvage, #1 (July 2015): 37-41. <Link to salvages.com>

01/22/2016