SUMMARY: Lively chat ("Now, I would like to talk about Chateaubriand... It's the main theme of this campaign. Who's on the right? Who's on the left?"), where Sciascia replies to Guzzanti's question: "Don't you think this sounds too much like something typical of the silent majority?" and he states that if he were "the head of the cabinet" he would readily dismiss Andreotti, he would promote "a bit of poverty", he woul send to jail "quite a few people" and replace them with "gentlemen", he would try to "win back" the violent individuals to the "nonviolence" area. In Parliament he will pursue to stop the tricks of the Palazzo (the government headquarters) people with the Radical's weapons and try to give rise to "a conscience of opposition". He states that nowadays "paradox, humorism, irony" are luxury concepts, "forbidden goods", that the "silent majority symptom" is embodied by the PCI and finally rejects the eventuality of escaping into the private.

(LA REPUBBLICA, 18 may 1979)

Question: »Sciascia, are you bored by interviews?

Answer: »Yes, terribly. It's always the same things repeated over and over again.

Q.: »How would you like an interview to be? Imagine you were to interview yourself .

A.: »Chateaubriand. Yes, I would like to talk about Chateaubriand .

Q.: »Readers and voters would have difficulties believing it an urgent subject, don't you think?

A.: »I don't think so. It is exactly what the main subject of this campaign is about. Who is on the right wing? Who is on the left wing? Who doesn't care? the boundary between right and left is practically non-existent. You see, Chateaubriand is usually readily dismissed as a rightist, just as Vittorio Alfieri, to give another example, is usually considered a leftist. Maybe just because he was count and the Italian left doesn't dislike nobility titles.

Q.: »Are you referring to the allegation that all Radicals are believed to be qualunquisti, willing to accept votes from the right wing and being anti-communist?

A.: »See, Chateaubriand, a rightist, understood revolution and acted accordingly. A lot of people is lightly dismissed as being reactionary, unworthy of consideration, as that pharmacist in my hometown who will vote radical as a break with tradition, as a protest.

Q.: »And you don't think this is carelessness?

A.: »Could be. But you need to consider carelessness, see where it comes from, who caused it, where it could lead to.

Q.: »Let's talk about politics. Do you believe in good government?

A.: »Yes.

Q.: »What would you do if you were head of the government?

A.: »As starters I would send Andreotti (1) home, who is the highest expression of the very worst in the centuries of Italian history. (I can imagine the history books of the future: under Andreotti corruption in Italy's every day life reached its peak, while human life was worth exactly as at the times of Cesare Borgia.

Q.: »How come you hate him so much?

A.: »Because of his paranoia a' la Macchiavelli. Because of his cynicism he inherited from the Roman Church, the same cynicism we find in Belli's sonnets and in the characters played by Alberto Sordi. Shortsightedness towards the good and longsightedness towards the evil.

Q.: »What happens when the monster is eliminated?

A.: »A bit of poverty wouldn't hurt. Not for the poor, though, who have enough already. Poverty for the middle class, I am thinking about some professionists, some doctors.

Q.: »So you too come up with this Christian recipe of austere poverty. This is what the PCI preaches.

A.: »I am not talking about poverty as punishment. I am thinking about poverty of thought, to love one's own job, the re-discovering of decorum, the pleasure of intellectual work.

Q.: »What about the workers?

A.: »Well, they have a right to not love work. A FIAT worker who hates the bolt and considers it just as a means to earn his salary has my understanding. I simply do not understand a doctor doing the same with the patient.

Q.: »What else would Sciascia the writer do, or would like to see happen, once inside the "Palazzo" (2)?

A.: »Well, something that I would never have the power to do but that I would actually love: I would send to jail quite a few people and replace them with gentlemen.

Q.: »Would you send them to jail morally speaking?

A.: »No, penally speaking.

Q.: »What would you do against violence?

A.: »I would try to do my best to win back the violent individuals to the nonviolence area. It's not an impossible thing to do, but it's not profitable to the power, because it does need violence in order to watch over and punish.

Q.: »You will most probably become a Parliament member. What will you do?

A.: »What all radicals will do:make the Parliament work with indictment and constant nuisance .

Q.: »You stated many times that in the Parliament everything has been decided behind closed doors. What is the use of indictment and constant nuisance?

A.: »To prevent this from happening. We won't be able to totally succeed, but we will give rise to a new awareness.

Q.: »Of what kind?

A.: »An opposition awareness. This country is starving for opposition. Communists and democrats are not merely allied: they are like two reflected images, mirroring each other. It's been like so for thirty years. It is time to put an end to this: let finally be there someone in charge on one side and someone to set a control over it on the other.

Q.: »But ours is not a two-party democracy.

A.: »Instead it is a democracy running toward totalitarism. The everlasting call for universal agreement doesn't serve its purpose when it only isolates and then criminalizes those not willing to comply? This is the Communist scheme so appraised by the Christiandemocrats.

A.: »Do you like the paradox? Being into politics I mean.

A.: »Humorism, paradox: it's offlimits now. At the least there is the risk of being misunderstood. By now I must avoid those amenities.

Q.: »What is this lack of involvement in your view?

A.: »It's the lack of ideas and beliefs. It's the PCI.

Q.: »What about the Christian-democrats: would you spare anyone?

A.: »Moro (3). He fooled them all, by refusing to die.

Q.: »How would you define politics, what takes place in the 'Palazzo'?"

A.: »A huge criminal experiment. Politics must be reworked.

Q.: »Do you regret you Radical choice?

A.: »No, I feel even more alive. See, I am one of those writers close to direct action. Direct action gives me strength, enlivens my soul.

Q.: »Does literature work for politics?

A.: »Absolutely. I'd say only literature can actually have a political function. The writer brings unbalance, quite true. But we shouldn't forget that the most perfect and stable of all balance is death. You see that unbalance is a life factor. Even if it means hard life.

Q.: »Do you believe that escaping into the private sphere is an ultimate version of carelessness, as everybody says?

A.: »I don't think so. I think this thing about the private looks like a publicity boost to me. I would even call it an invitation: there is this effort of pushing people into the private sphere. The private sphere as the other side opposite to criminality. It is expected of us to unanimously agree on giving up the right to opposition. You need to criminalize in order to eliminate dissension. Escaping into the private is needed for not seeing, not knowing, not refusing. You got to break this loop before it's too late.

(»La Repubblica , May 18, 1979, interview by Paolo Guzzanti)

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Translators' Notes:

(1) ANDREOTTI GIULIO. (Rome 1919). Exponent of the Christian Democratic Party. Secretary of A. De Gasperi, very young, as under-secretary of the Presidency of the Council, he began an uninterrupted career as minister: Interior (1954), Finance (1955-58), Treasury (1958-59), Defence (1959-66), Industry (1966-68), Budget (1974-76). Prime Minister from 1972 to 1973, then from 1976 to 1979 and from 1990 to date.

(2) PALAZZO. A typical Italian expression do indicate, both in hyronical and popular ways, the center of the political power; litterally, the building where Parliament and Goverment have their usual meetings.

(3) 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.