SUMMARY: Sciascia replies to L.L. Radice's article [text no.4504] on"La Repubblica" which criticized his political choice to run for the Radical Party. He talks about the group of young PCI's members who had been invited to school in Moscow for classes on Marxism-Leninism and deplores that L.L. Radice "regards as hilarious some things that actually really happen in his own Party". He discusses the fact that L.L. Radice "gloomily" reads "Candido" and whether this could signify "his fear, fear of having to give up hope, fear of having to dispair?"

(LA REPUBBLICA, June 1, 1979)

I receive, here in Amsterdam, Lucio Lombardo Radice's article published on »La Repubblica on May 29. In its brevity, it is an excellent article. It requires to be studied and it needs a long reply. Here and now I merely want discuss a few points with ingenuity, as Lombardo Radice does much better than me, than my character and than the character Voltaire.

It might seem of minor importance, but the passage where he touches the maximum of ingenuity is when he states that, among the critical notes I write about the Communist Party, some are »hilarious inventions , as the one about the group of young PCI's members invited to school in Moscow for classes on Marx an Lenin.

I must here tell Lombardo Radice that I can be even more hilarious and am quite more imaginative in inventing. What I mean is that had I invented the detail of the young kid going to school in Moscow for classes on Marx and Lenin in 1977 I wouldn't have proved too imaginative, since that fact is unfortunately quite true.

This is how it happened in the story. I was in the country and from a neighbor I casually hear about the son of another neighbor who had recently returned from Moscow, where he had been going to a Party school for four months. Sometime afterwards that young person came to visit me and told me about his stay in Moscow and about the school he had attended there.

I had already in mind »Candido but only a few months later, as I was writing it that that detail emerged fully in the book; A Communist Parliament member came to visit, accompanied by some friends, and we talked about the indipendence of the PCI from Moscow At some point I began telling about that young person who had been sent to school in Moscow. »Impossible , said the Parliament member. I offered to introduce him to my neighbor. The Parliament member thought about it for a moment, then he said what I later included in the book: »Well, then it means that they send the dummiest over there. If Lombardo Radice is interested I can take him to the fellow that went to Moscow and to the Communist Parliament member, a friend of his I believe.

The fact that Lombardo Radice regards as hilarious things that actually happen inside his own party, leads me to consider his argumentation under an odd light. I'm saying this without irony. As Guttuso himself thought that there is no hope outside the PCI and who moves away from it, even if he was never really in it, does so out of desperation and will be condemned into despair for ever.

I cannot otherwise explain the way he interpreted my novel entitled Candido; as it were a story of defeat. It's abook I wrote with great joy and with joy it must be read: yet Lombardo Radice reads it in a gloomy way, assuming tht's my way of thinking, a hopeless way of thinking. Instead I think I have quite a bit of hope: in fact I am actually forcing myself into something that is alien to my temperament.

And so here is a heartfelt question for him: could it be that behind his seeing me as hopeless, deep in despair, in interpreting this book as sad, which is not, we can perceive a fear, his own fear? Fear of having to give up hope, fear of having to dispair?

(»La Repubblica June 1, 1979)