Defamation as a Means of Cultural and Political Struggle

By Leonardo Sciascia

ABSTRACT: Taking as a point of departure an act of defamation against his book »L'affaire Moro , Leonardo Sciascia states that it is no longer possible in Italy for an honest man to oppose this crime. The laws relating to abuse, defamation, and calumny can in fact be considered to have fallen into disuse. This is because present political life in Italy is dominated entirely by the search for unanimity, for unanimism.

(THE DEFENCE OF THE HONOUR AND MEANS OF MASS COMMUNICATIONS, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Publishers, October 1979)

The title of this message is rather inappropriate because what I am going to say is sufficiently confused. The ministerial report of 1887, recalled to mind here by the attorney Mr. De Cataldo in his introduction to the conference, considered the crime of defamation as even worse than assassination. But in practice I do not think Italian society has ever taken in that seriously. And I believe the reason for this lies in the fact that what I am calling Italian society is not and has never been a well-defined society in its relationships, traditions, habits, behaviour and even its interests. It has been rather something amorphous, inconstant, fluctuating, and uncertain, ruled by only one precept which is the power of the bully.

In this precept defamation, what the law defines as the crime of defamation, is not only the habitual weapon the strong use against the weak, but is also more sporadically and involving more risk the weapon the weak use against the strong. I mean to say that against the endemic and always triumphant bullying of the strong, against the lies of the strong, it can occasionally happen that the weak imprudently, at great risk, reply with the same weapon. The same, obviously, with respect to the law, only with respect to the law. Because here a distinction must be made: that the strong can always use the lie with impunity, whereas the weak have only one, slim margin of defence or the illusion of defence which is the truth.

To say it more clearly and more tritely, in this country of ours it is not possible for an honest man to take an abstract stand against the crime of defamation, consider it at all times and in all cases a crime to be severely punished, but each time he must, the honest man, case by case, evaluate its substance and its mischances, form an opinion and a judgement of its particularity aside from the question of the laws that govern it and the courts that judge it. And this is all the more true today when it seems that the laws of abuse, defamation, and calumny can be considered to have fallen into disuse by the strong while still in force for the weak. I know that I am speaking inappropriately, especially since I am speaking before experts in law. But I think that a discussion of the crime of defamation, of how one should define and punish it, cannot do without a vision of the problem of the outcast which is taking form in Italian non-society.

It is easy to see that Italian political life is dominated by only one tension, which is in fact the negation of politics: the search for unanimity, for unanimism. A non-society composed of syndicates and corporations, parts and parties, the strong and the privileged, was already worrisome enough, but it had its weak point, at least - and from our point of view this was reassuring - in being, as it were, centrifuged, invertebrate. But a non-society that begins to make itself vertebrate through compromise and compromising itself and proceeds through unanimity, is totally worrisome. But this is only a small and imprecise digression. I have come here only in order to relate a recent experience of mine, to present an example of defamation in the sense in which self-compromise, compromising and unanimity give shape to the necessarily corresponding outcast of the future.

This experience regards my recently published book »L'affaire Moro . Without doubt arms have been pointed against this little book which have nothing to do with criticism and everything to do with defamation. On October 14, for example, ANSA (2) sent out this communique: "Leonardo Sciascia's latest pamphlet has only just appeared and it is already surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery story. The book, published by Sellerio of Palermo had been announced as being 250 pages long and costing £. 5,000. Instead it contains 148 pages and costs £. 3,500". The most surprising comment is that the book is presented as the second edition, although the first was never circulated.

The volume only appeared in bookshops today and immediately found a very favourable readership. Now the "announcement" makes one believe that the publisher really said that this book was 250 pages long and would cost £. 5,000. Such a declaration was never made, absolutely never. The book was written as it was published. One cannot understand where they got this news item, but it is reported in such a way as to make it appear that it came from the publisher. Furthermore, I have never written a book 250 pages long. My length is never over 150 pages. The ANSA communique, despite the denial made by the publisher the same day, was most widely picked up by the newspapers.

One must also say, with regard to the first and second editions, that the publisher, small but elegant, as the saying goes and as the newspapers always say, small but elegant, is equipped to publish at most 4-5,000 copies of a book at a time. This time they had decided to print 40,000. The printing was entrusted to a printing office that turned out 1,000 copies a day. At a certain point, from the requests of the Messaggerie (3), they realised that 40,000 would not be enough and so they employed another printing office to print a few thousand more copies, calling them a second edition because they came out about ten days after the first. However, this communique about a non-existent mystery story surrounding the book was picked up by almost all the newspapers with headlines such as these: "Sciascia's book selling like hot cakes, but there is a mystery". "Sciascia's book in reduced form". "Little (advertising) mystery - Sciascia cuts 120 pages from his book on Moro". "Big cuts in Sciascia's book on Moro".

"Sciascia - L'Affaire Moro, an authentic mystery". And so on.

And then there is everything that appeared in the newspapers and which really needs to be studied and analysed. In a critique that is supposed to be a literary critique, for example, one finds things like this: "Sciascia never names another state- worshipper, Sandro Pertini (4). Perhaps the omission is due to the fact that in the meantime Pertini has become President of the Republic". This is a curious, a very strange insinuation, because I make no list of state-worshippers. On the contrary, in my book I don't even remember once naming Berlinguer (5). Why Pertini's name should appear I don't understand. Then there is another question, which is actually an affirmation, formulated somewhat scrupulously and rather elegantly by a critic I believe has made an address or is going to do so at this conference: "And finally, there is no exhaustive reply to the question: what besides pity and contempt has impelled Sciascia to write L'Affaire Moro?" A curious question, because pity alone would be enough to make on

e write a book, and so would contempt. Both of them together would be enough to make one write books for the rest of one's life. If a critic asks himself what makes me write a book besides pity and contempt, I think the reply of the one who reads the review must be that.

I remember a story by Corrado Alvaro just after the war when Rome was still occupied by the Americans and when to publish a book you had to go to the police for permission and to explain why you wanted to publish the book. Alvaro enters the police station and sees scenes of terrible humanity - then, when he faces the official, the latter looks at him and asks: "You want to publish a book? Why?" And Alvaro: "to make money." So then this question finds only this reply: to make money. Naturally almost everyone has ignored the fact that the rights to this book are going to the University of Palermo for research on the behaviour of the press during the Moro case.

To continue, one might never stop finding things to quote: one literary critic speaks of a "battage", of an extraordinary publicity campaign by the publisher. Just imagine that: there was no publicity campaign at all. Everything happened like this: I was staying in the country about 130 km from Palermo, journalists came, and I, since that was their job, felt it almost to be my duty to give an interview, to give them the piece they wanted, and so on. The publisher had nothing at all to do with it, nor could he have. This reviewer, for instance, concludes thus: "If the economic outcome of operation »Affaire Moro should, as is certain, be of the best, who knows if it will not occur to someone to pass at least a part of the proceeds on to the heirs of the Via Fani victims, the most needy!" And then one reaches this level of stupidity, which for now is used in a defamatory sense: "The book is of an extremely irritating ambiguity. Even its typographical presentation concurs in this which has been treated by

the Sellerio publishers with rare elegance, the cover bearing an etching by Fabrizio Clerici, the paper being heavy, the text well spaced and clean, but at a very accessible price!" With an exclamation point! As if the book had been financed by the CIA or the KGB. One doesn't understand what is being insinuated.

Now then, I wanted to tell you about it like this, with a few indications. But to read everything that has been written becomes a dramatic entertainment, almost a tragic one, I would say. I wanted to tell you about this experience. This is defamation - I think that I have been the object of defamation for this book. And so I believe that similar cases can and will occur more and more often as one proceeds gradually towards unanimity.

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) The Piero Calamandrei Centre of Juridical Initiative

2) ANSA - An important Italian press agency.

3) Messaggerie - A book distribution service.

4) Pertini, Sandro - (Stella 1896 - Rome 1990) Italian statesman, Socialist, was imprisoned and exiled by the Fascists. From 1943-1945 he was active in the Resistance. Secretary of the Socialist Party, deputy, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies (1968-1976), President of the Republic (1978-1985).

5) Berlinguer, Enrico - (Sassari 1922 - Padua 1984) Italian statesman. Deputy from 1968, General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1979 until his death. After the crisis and assassination of Allende, he became the author of the "historic compromise" which produced from 1976 to 1979 the so-called "majority [coalition] of the non no-confidence", the high point of the Togliatti-type strategy for an organic agreement with the Christian Democrats. It was his project to give birth to so-called "Eurocommunism", an attempt to produce in the West a kind of reform which would not entirely repudiate the Communist experience.