Abstract
In the Turi prison (in the region of Puglia), on February 8, 1929, two years after his arrest, Gramsci began writing the Notebooks. In prison, studying is a method of resistance to intellectual brutalization, an instrument of physical and political survival. As Valentino Gerratana wrote, the tension between these two needs gave rise to the Notebooks, a work composed of notes and reflections that were intended to be better defined later, but still extraordinarily rich, to the point of being considered indispensable for many different scientific fields: from literary criticism to linguistics, from history to political science, from pedagogy to theater. This work is the object of in-depth scientific studies in the United States, England, Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico, as well as Italy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Carlos Nelson Coutinho, Il pensiero politico di Gramsci (Milan, Unicopli, 2006), 146.
- 2.
Antonio Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere (Turim, Einaudi, 2020), p. 110–11.
- 3.
Primo Carnera (1906–1967), world heavyweight champion between 1933 and 1934, was a very famous Italian boxer and wrestler in the first half of the twentieth century.
- 4.
Antonio Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere, cit., 560.
- 5.
Ghilarza personalities quoted in the letter.
- 6.
A small mountain town located in the inner zone of Barbagia, in the interior of Sardinia.
- 7.
Logudorese is the dialect of Logudoro, a region located in the inner and central part of northern Sardinia, while Campidanese is the dialect spoken in Campidano, a floodplain that extends from the South to the center of the island.
- 8.
Antonio Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere, cit., p. 590.
- 9.
Idem, Quaderni del carcere (Turin, Einaudi, 1975), 1026.
- 10.
Ibid., 1187.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
The work L’Allemand: Souvenirs et réflexions d’un prisonnier de guerre [On German nature: memories and reflections of a prisoner of war] was published by Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française in 1918, but it is likely that Gramsci read the excerpts published in La Fiera Letteraria. Giornale Settimanale di Lettere, Scienze ed Arti (founded in Milan in 1925 by Unitas publishing, under the direction of the writer Umberto Fracchia), in the April 1928 issue, three years after the death of Jacques Rivière, as he himself notes in paragraph 70 of Notebook 1 (“Impressioni di prigionia”, Quaderni del carcere, Turin, Einaudi, 1977, 79).
- 13.
Ibid., 80.
- 14.
Ventotene was one of the islands where the antifascists were kept.
- 15.
Paolo Spriano, Storia del Partito Comunista Italiano, v. 2: Gli anni della clandestinità (Turin, Einaudi, 1969), 286.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fresu, G. (2023). The Notebooks: The Difficult Beginnings of a “Disinterested” Work. In: Antonio Gramsci. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15610-6_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15610-6_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-15609-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-15610-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)