By Roberto Gervaso

ABSTRACT: Non-violence and hunger strikes; arrests and police detainments. A party in provisional liberty.

(Rome, October 22, 1977)

(An unusual encounter with the Radical leader in a new book "Il dito nell'occhio" that gathers together thirty eight interviews with famous or particularly popular figures in Italian life.

In a few days Rusconi publishers will bring out Roberto Gervaso's new book "Il dito nell'occhio", an anthology of interviews with thirty eight famous or popular Italians, from Gianni Agnelli [Fiat] to Guido Carli [Bank of Italy], From Pannella to De Carolis [DC deputy], from Indro Montanelli (journalist and historian) to Giuseppe Prezzolini (writer), from Carla Fracci (ballerina) to Monica Vitti (film actress), from Federico Fellini to Franco Zeffirelli (film and stage director).

* * *

Who is Marco Pannella, a crusader or a ball breaker, a martyr or a shrewdy? People talk about him and he makes himself talked about a lot. Italy has been divided by his civil rights battles, unleashing a landslide of polemics. He is attacked from all sides - the Communists go so far as to slap him - and he attacks everyone, turning the other cheek, but only up to a certain point. They say that his hunger strikes are not strikes but agitation, diets rather than fasts. He defends himself calling on the testimony of doctors and scales. Who is right, Pannella or his detractors?

Q. When did you hold your first hunger strike?

A. In 1968 against the tanks invading Prague.

Q. How long did your longest hunger strike last?

A. Sixty-two days.

Q. When was that?

A. In the summer of '74.

Q. How much weight did you lose?

A. Thirty-two kilos.

Q. They accuse you of striking "all'Italiana", or better "alla Romana" with cappuccinos and pastries. Rather than fasting you were dieting, in short.

A. Even dieting is fasting. What are 180 calories in comparison to the 3,500 we need? And then my last hunger strikes were total.

Q. They call you Ghandhi "alla matriciana" [a popular pasta sauce, ed.].

A. They're right. Gandhi fasted and so do I.

Q. Is there any relation between a political hunger strike and those who don't eat because there is no food?

A. Yes, the atrocious difference is between liberty and the filthy violence that some are subjected to.

Q. In your hunger strikes isn't there an element of self pity?

A. No, when I fast I shave every day and I put on clean undershirts. I don't want to arouse anyone's pity.

Q. If there wasn't so much talk about your hunger strikes would you keep on doing it?

A. I strike so that they will no longer talk about my fasts but about "our" ideas. "Ours" and those of "others".

Q. Have you ever had indigestion?

A. No.

Q. And have you ever stuffed your belly?

A. Often.

Q. If you were a minister, would you hold a hunger strike?

A. I might and then again I might not.

Q. How often have you been detained by the police?

A. Countless times.

Q. And arrested?

A. Once in Bulgaria at the time of the tanks in Prague, and once three years ago for drugs.

Q. Been put on trial?

A. At least a hundred and fifty times.

Q. And found guilty?

A. Definitely, once.

Q. So then, you are a party out on provisional liberty...

A. Provisional? Very provisional!

Q. Who are your political friends

A. All unaffiliated, libertarian and humanistic Socialists.

Q. And your enemies?

A. Personally no one.

Q. And impersonally?

A. You decide.

Q. Without you would there have been a divorce referendum?

A. Without "us", no.

Q. Who finances you?

A. We do.

Q. Do you get help from abroad too?

A. Yes. From our emigrants.

Q. How do you get by?

A. Through working for newspapers and publishers.

Q. What are your monthly expenses?

A. Forty thousand lire for rent and thirty thousand for cigarettes.

Q. And food?

A. The same amount.

Q. Where do you live?

A. In an attic near the Fontana di Trevi.

Q. Attic or penthouse?

A. Attic.

Q. Is it true that you weep when you are happy?

A. I am moved by my happiness, and at times a little tear can

leak out.

Q. Were you expecting to get slapped in front of the Botteghe Oscure? [Seat of the Communist Party headquarters, ed.]

A. No, but it didn't surprise me at all. On other occasions representatives of the government have even broken our heads.

Q. What would you do if the Radicals, now an elected minority, were to become the majority?

A. We would dissolve into broader libertarian and Socialist units. But we Radicals already speak for majority groups.

Q. Do you like appearing on television?

A. At the price it is costing me, no.

Q. What time do you get up in the morning.

A. It depends on when I go to bed.

Q. And when do you go to bed?

A. I don't know about tonight. Last night at three.

Q. Did you take first communion?

A. Yes.

Q. And second communion?

A. I don't recall.

Q. What kind of a society do you want?

A. A libertarian, Socialist, humanistic, Voltairean society. A society without violence, neither public nor private.

Q. In the name of non-violence you threaten suicide daily, that is hunger strikes to the death. But isn't that also a kind of violence?

A. No, because in each case it a reaction against an attempt to murder us or "our" ideas.

Q. They have called you a "disarmed prophet", as Machiavelli termed Savanarola. Aren't you afraid of meeting the same end as that Dominican friar?

A. No. There is a bit of Savanarola in us, a bit of "The Prince", a bit of Machiavelli, but we are a new kind of people.

Q. How many other referendums have you got cooking?

A. At least eight. The Constitution must be put into practice.

Q. I don't know if you like women, but I know that women like you. Why?

A. Ask the women that, and ask the men too. Better still ask "people".

Q. They have accused you of contempt, defamation, calumnising the Pope, the judiciary, the armed forces, the DC. Do you have any other "betes noires"?

A. They aren't "betes noires". We don't injure anyone and I don't defame anyone.

Q. What do you have in common with the small fringe groups?

A. Perhaps the thirst for justice. But we go about it in a radically different way, by constructing...

Q. And they?

A. Often by self-destruction.

Q. Have you ever thought you might win the Nobel Peace Prize?

A. The readers of a weekly thought of it. If you think about it too that will make three of us.

Q. Do you prefer the role of antagonist or protagonist? Or both?

A. Have you read my article?

Q. Which one? You write so many.

A. The one with the title "From Radical Antagonist to Socialist Protagonist". Its all part of one programme.

Q. Do you do the rounds of the salons?

A. No, even though I have nothing against them. I would gladly have done so during the French Revolution.

Q. Do you feel you have a mission?

A. No. Vocations and missions are Catholic concepts, not Radical ones.