SUMMARY: Extended and comprehensive interview with the daily newspaper "Lotta Continua" given in his own home in Racalmuto. Sciascia talks about his sudden decision to run for the Radical Party (PR) list in the approaching elections ("I do believe that my presence in the PR list will have its own meaningfulness"). He disagrees with those who fear that the Parliament will not be able to regularly operate due to the presence of twenty radicals. He assures that, although he will not manage any personal electoral campaign, he will fully exert his possible role as a member of the Italian Parliament. He expresses his comments on the Moro event and the terrorism issues ("a phenomenon of despair" ... "someone says that my presence in the radical list will be able to collect terrorists votes"). He thinks that electoral results will not be affected by apathy. Finally, he dearly talks about the value of "truth": "Truth exists...right here".

(LOTTA CONTINUA, May 4, 1979)

We went to see Sciascia as soon as we learned about his decision to accept the candidacy to run for the Radical Party list. We were happy about such a good news, an unexecpetd sign of promising times, even apart from the electoral occasion and the list including his name. In Palermo, we were welcomed and offered refreshment by two of the writer's closest friends, the Sellerio couple, then we drove with other friends to Racalmuto, in the rural area near Agrigento, where Sciascia owns a house. There we spent a long evening, chatting about, enjoying fresh fava beans, grilled sausages and good wine.

Two days later, one of us went back to show him our notes and to ask him a few more questions. What we are publishing below as an interview are actually excerpts from our conversation, mostly concerning Sciascia's decision to run for elections and related matters. Therefore, our questions have occasionally been added later, to provide a better order to our discussion-interview.

C. M. - E. D.

Question: »The news about your candicacy arrived suddenly and unexpectedly. How happened you made this decision?

Answer: »That's correct, I did not expect to see myself making this decision: I had many good reasons to exclude it. However, an half-hour talk with Pannella (1) has been sufficient to make me consider these reasons as... shameful. Pannella made me realize that my reasons had a real meaning, not in the sense of vanity but in a certain way of ...suffering. Then, I understood that it could have been a shame to still refuse his offer by saying no......Maybe it will be an illusion, but I do think that my presence in the PR list will have its own meaningfulness .

Q.: »Were you also influenced by the fact that many other independent candidates are running in the same radical list? And by the fact that these cartel is, in a certain way, a "no-party" list?

A.: »It is exactly what I was saying to a newspaper I cannot recall the name of: when you are running as an indipendent candidate for a great party the word "indipendent" is just like a ......pure sound. Not simply because that party tells you to do some things instead of others, but just because you are feeling ......you are psycologically overwelmed by the votes you had in and for that party. Instead here there is the good perseption of a "party of indipendents", where everybody really is indipendent: we are then more free, you know that tomorrow in Congress or at a town meeting or wherever you will be elected inside that list you will be indipendent and you will be able to make your own decisions and initiatives. This can give a different perspective to the election itself, to politics and then it's when the Parliament becomes the Parliament...I read an article today by a well known journalist that goes like this: "Will the Parliament be able to work with 20 radical representatives?"... Has the Parliament

as Parliament been working at all so far? I don't see that it has been working when Pinto (1) states things that could have been discussed, argued, and he is left alone to debate in front of an empty audience on the Moro case (2) ....this is not a Parliament, it hasn't been functioning as a Parliament.....on the contrary it needs to be helped back at work. I think by now the entire movement should stand for the affirmation, the reinstatement the functioning of the Constitution: because the only thing we can grip on to is the Constitution.

Q.: »So you are really considering being a representative once elected.

A.: »Yes, of course, if my health will allow it....Once you have agreed to do something you also have to do it... I would have preferred, for my own peace of mind, for my job of writing, not to find myself involved in this, but since I took this step...

Q.: »Will you also enter the campaign? will you go around delivering spechees and political meetings?

A.: »No, I don't think I could do that... I can no longer be where there is too much crowd; I feel lost, I am frightened... some while ago it wasn't like that, I enjoyed it then to attend a convention, to meet people. Years back I did give a public speech during the divorce campaign, for the administrative elections... it was heavy on me even then but now it has become absolutely impossible to step up on a stage to give a speech. In Racalmuto there was a time when the whole town used to attend public speeches, balconies were always loaded with people as in a celebration for the village saint, stories were going around about each candidate.....I remember once we arranged a public meeting with Guttuso (3) in a small mafia town in the province, in Corleone. There were about 50 young people right under the stage and the rest of the audience way in the back, as if to say "we are here just to listen, not one of us is considering voting for this party... " On top of that carabinieri radiowaves were constantly inter

fering with our loudspeakers .

Q.: »Although it is typical of Sicily and of some small villages for people to watch and listen from a distance, without really hinting at either approval or disapproval.....

A.: »Yes, because they also pay great attention to rhetoric fanno anche una valutazione di pura retorica, listening to what you have to say according the rules of rhetoric... Sicilians are expert listeners. I remember a public speech in Sciacca delivered by some liberal, I guessit was Arpino, Giuseppe Arpino. He was talking quite well and there was this peasant who was listening to him with owe; at the end, turning to who was to him said: "cumpê, sapiti che disse? cu ave mangia e cu unn'êve talia": eats the one who doesn't have to watch over who is eating, which was in fact a perfect comment .

Q.: »In your decision to accept the candidacy is there a willingness on your part to keep in touch with the people and the world at large, instead of keeping to oneself?

A.: »Yes of course, my decision to run is linked to this as well...the willingness to be alive, to feel alive...to not give up, to do something.... Because, you know, at my age it's easy for me to find myself already contemplating death, especially being sick as I am... And then I suddenly I wanted to burst open, to crack my illness, to crack my desire for death.... to crack down the releaving feeling one has at the thought of not being here anymore. It was then when I decided to strive for the opposite way....

Q.: »How has the last year been for you?

A.: »It was terrible for many reasons....for me especially for the Moro case, which haunted me for quite a while and it still does. Usually when I write a book I soon forget about it, I never read it again, as if someone else had written it. So much so that the film versions don't impress me at all, as the subject didn't belong to me. Two books though have left a mark on me in my so-called career. One is on the pure filological level, I would say, as a research work and that is ''Morte di un inquisitore..." and the other is this one about Moro. But this is different because is about a story that hasn't come to an end yet, it's an on-going reality. Yesterday I was told that Melega (4) is running also because he expects to be part of the commission on the Moro case. I hadn' t thought about that right there on the spot. But I do understand that who was involved in this whole story and wanted to see more deeply into the mechnanism that brought about Moro's death cannot accept that the truth remains unveiled. Plu

s the fact that people want to soon forget about it, the sense of uneasyness there is in talking about it... This is to prove that some trace is still there. Nobody can lightly talk about it, as it usually happens in Italian tragedies... I am not sure, what happened in Vajont was terrible, but after a while those dead under the mud appeared not to be so important anymore...more relevant was the court case, those responsible for it.... here we have a dead body which is becoming heavier and heavier every day and people don't want to have anything to do with it, they would want to delete everything but can't.

Q.: »Maybe even with the ones responsible for Moro's death, within the BR (Red Brigades) (5), there is a trace that cannot be erased. Today there is this talk about "general terrorism", terrorism as a social phenomenon, as a spontaneous offspring.....

A.: »I see terrorism as a phenomenon of hopelessness. A small town like Racalmuto, all the youth go to college and what will they do? They go about with no future at all... In a big city things are a bit more desperate. Terrorism as a social marvel is indeed rooted in the lack of confidence for the future in young people, but there are also those who fuel it and plan on it. Often these days I have people telling me that my name on the ballot will serve to collect votes by terrorists... First of all I would like to know who is saying that, maybe it's the same people that stated that I am a conservative terrorist... but then all I have been writing since the'50 is there for everybody to read... against intollerance, against violence, against the death penalty. If they vote for me it's because they are those that have repented. Then I appreciate their vote.

Q.: »I remember last year you said that, at a time when there weren't many, a positive sign was something to worry about: that there were so many worried people. And now? What are the results of all this worrying?

A.: »All the worries are still there alright. A disturbance by now... People has had enough of these moody parties that keep on as nothing had happened... People are not convinced i think about the latest arrests and have probably given up to look on newspapers for the truth. This is also another thing that happened lately, the death of the press. Whoever buys the daily newspaper does so by now just as a mere habit... doen't even expect to find the slightest news about anything, he is very skeptical. And it is so that people don't know anymore whether those arrested could eventually be guilty or not.... It's like Fedro's tale about the wolf and the fox, whereas if one is capable of violence the other is capable of fraud, and therefore between justice and the maybe-terrorists people find themselves exactly in this situation, they don't know... Now, whether this intollerance will manifest in the vote or whether it will remain just what it is... we will be able to tell later. I think one of the most difficult t

hings in this country is an analysis of the vote.

Q.: »According to an electoral poll a good 48% of voters appear to be totally indifferent about it, people who don't even know whether they'll go to vote or not...

A.: »I don't much believe about the indifference issue. The indifference thing comes out only in the polls. People do care. I think that indifference hides something shameful behind... those pretending not to care have already made up their mind about what to do and it's not true that they don't care.

Q.: »Why shameful?

A.: »Because they'll end up voting the same way as before and they know that now it wuoldn't be right to vote as they always did. This 48% I think it's the people who have always voted in a certain way and will always do... but don't want to admit it. I don't believe in indifference, nobody is indifferent. I would rather make a distinction between who is dissatisfied and who is indifferent. Those who say "I don't care, I am not interested, I am not going to vote''.Those are fake indifferent people. I think instead there is a vast majority of Italians that is hopeless, disillusioned, that would like to locate just a dim hint of truth...

Q.: »Let me again ask you a stupid question: how do you define "truth"?

A.: »Truth? Truth is... the truth. When Pilate asks Christ about it Christ does not answer about what truth is... but truth exists,it is there. You have facts. Of course you find ambiguity in facts too, there is the possibility to interpret them, to shape them as you want, to make them disappear... Yet a fact is a fact. Here facts are mystified. It is hard to understand what the fact is... Dinner at that judge's home, where Alessandrini went, that is a fact. And yet I couldn't really understand what it all was about, having carefully read all possible newspapers. You see... journalism should at least attempt to give a view of a fact, the "terms of the fact" so to speak. But this doesn't happen anymore.I think the best example of journalism, for honesty in the journalism profession, is what that ''New York Times" correspondent, Mattews, writes about. He recounts on a time when commentators in favor of Franco during the Spanish Civil War wrote that some village had been conquered by Franco when instead he thou

ght it to be still under the Republicans. Mattews jumped on a car and drove to that village and from there he sent a telegram to the ''New York Times''. As he was leaving the post office Franco troops were just entering the village. But he had just proved false a given news: the previous day Franco wasn't there yet. this is the truth about facts. A certain truth power is there. This is how journalism should be about: report on what's happening at the moment. Journalism is like a tribunal where facts are what really matter. In today's journalism, instead, facts disappear, what lawers call "the merit'' disappears and only the form remains...

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Translator's Notes:

(1) PINTO MIMMO. (Portici, Naples 1948). Militant of Lotta Continua and leader of the movement of the unemployed in Naples, elected in parliament in 1979 on the radical party ticket.

(2) MORO ALDO. (Maglie 1916 - Rome 1978). Italian politician. Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (1959-65), mastermind of the Centre-Left policy. Several times minister as of 1956, Prime Minister (1963-68, 1974-76) president of the Christian Democratic Party as of 1956, he favoured the participation of the Communist Party (PCI) in the government, outlining the hypothesis of a so-called "third stage" (after those of "centrism" and "centre-left") of the political system. He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 16 March 1978 in Rome and found dead on 9 May of the same year.

(3) GUTTUSO RENATO. (Bagheria/Palermo 1912 - Rome 1987). Painter, exponent of the neorealist movement, member of the Italian Communist Party, celebrated for his works with a strong political and social inspiration.

(4) MELEGA GIANLUIGI. (Milan 1935). Journalist, editor of "L'Europeo", head of the political section of "L'Espresso". He was fired by "L'Europeo" for his inquiries on Vatican property speculation in Rome. With his press campaign on the Lockheed scandal, he contributed to forcing the President of the Republic Giovanni Leone to resign.

(5) RED BRIGADES. (Known as BR). Clandestine terrorist organization of the extreme Left, born and operating in Italy as of 1969. By proclaiming the revolution of the working classes, the organization tried to open several fronts of armed revolt against the State and the political establishment, carrying out a series of attempts, wounding, kidnapping and assassinationg politicians, journalists, magistrates and industrial executives. Its leader was Renato Curcio. In 1978 the organization kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro.