Maximiliano Cimatti

Brigandage was an endemic scourge of the Papal States as well as of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; between 1860 and 1870 the phenomenon took on a strong anti-unification character, not so much out of an attachment to the old regimes, but rather as a reaction against a State that portended to be centralist, bureaucratic, and repressive toward the lower classes. The clash between the outlaw bands and the army of the newly formed Italy was violent; recourse was made to summary executions, which engulfed the civilian population accused of aiding the brigands. *Lʼuomo di Elcito* is set in the Marche region in 1866. It is not a historical novel: the historical backdrop serves merely as the occasion to examine how a man transforms from an “empty shell” into possessing an identity of his own—not through conscious choice, but swept along by the current of events. The protagonist is Sergeant Toschi. With consummate narrative skill, the novel opens with the account given to Colonel Negri of the cholera epidemic that ravaged Ancona in 1866. Toschi, along with a few soldiers, had remained in the Marchigiano city while its inhabitants and the rest of the troops fled for fear of contagion; in truth, Toschi had not followed the others because he and his comrades had been thrown into prison. To the colonel, however, the sergeant spun a different tale: with immense valor, his squad had held the city. From the outset, the protagonist’s manipulative faculties emerge—talents that will resurface in the correspondence between Toschi and the colonel, and later in the half-truths our sergeant will feed to the notorious, formidable brigand Olmo Carbonari. Once again, the imagination proves to be a resource, as well as an aesthetic pleasure found in inventing, telling, and listening to stories. Precisely on account of the devotion to duty displayed during the events in Ancona, Toschi and his squad were entrusted with an important mission: to track down, capture, and exterminate > pockets of brigands (...) who have no interest whatsoever in living under a single Nation . It is an assignment the sergeant and his men pursue with an almost fanatical zeal, perpetrating violence, rape, and murder. Why such relentless ferocity? From the incessant references to his father, we understand that Toschi was driven by an unremitting urge for vindication: > I became a sergeant at thirty-two, I defended the Nation in Piedmont with the Hunters of the Alps, and I fought alongside Garibaldi. Is that enough for you? No, I know it is not enough for you... During nights plagued by nightmares, Toschi sensed that what he was doing gave no meaning to his life. > He walked along a dusty road under a huge white moon that illuminated the night, the hills, and the fields. He encountered the band of the brigand Colucci. The men marched in single file, each holding a finger inside the hole in his head. Why do you keep a finger inside your head?, Toschi asked. To keep our thoughts from escaping, one of them replied; if we lose our thoughts, we forget where we are supposed to go . And precisely to furnish himself with a purpose, to “catch a fly that isn't there,” the sergeant decided to continue the hunt for the brigands even after his discharge, when he could have simply returned home. It felt natural for him to do so. Events led him to become embroiled in a shootout, culminating in his acceptance into the mountain community founded by the brigand Olmo Carbonari within an ancient monastic settlement. > The room where he was confined became the empty belly of an inverted world, a hidden place where (...) his identity was no longer his own. And despite this, the brigand had restored to him his name: Anselmo . With subtle mastery, from the moment Toschi is welcomed into the community of Elcito, the author begins referring to the protagonist by his given name, as if to signal that he had finally attained his true self. There he discovered solidarity and ancestral—and therefore profound—bonds of friendship; he lived in a natural world in perfect harmony with humanity, and he even uncovered selfless love; yet something remained missing: he was still “incapable of recognizing himself.” Along with some of his new companions, Anselmo took part in an expedition that found shelter with a peasant sympathetic to the brigands. Spurred first by a mundane call of nature and then by the urge to slip away and return home ( > the choice to flee had always been there, timid, drowsy ), Anselmo stole away into the night; he thus saved himself, for in the meantime the soldiers, tipped off by the treacherous peasant, slaughtered his companions. What was he to do? > The radiant morning light illuminated the verdant crowns of the trees, the terraced vines cascading down the hills, and a few distant peasants. (...) For once he envied the total lack of prospects that punctuated their days... But how could he continue waking up every morning and sleeping every night, knowing his companions had been betrayed and butchered? > The novel concludes on an open, unresolved note. The final events seem to unlock numerous possibilities, both political and existential. I like to think that the protagonist ultimately found inner peace: balance and serenity born of a conscious choice, not merely prompted by solidarity toward his fallen comrades or, worse still, by revenge. This hoped-for resolution also stems from the book’s most compelling section, where the author depicts Olmo Carbonari’s community: a marvelous, perhaps imaginary realm where humans, beasts, and nature coexist in flawless harmony—a sort of elemental communism in which human consciousness, shattered today by the oppression of man over man, has been made whole again. Or perhaps, Anselmo’s fate simply mirrors that of the monks of the ancient settlement, who shut themselves inside their dwellings and let themselves die, because “they could not accept the hatred that had taken root within them.” It is an excellent novel. The narrative architecture is solidly built and engaging; the author adroitly deploys literary devices now common among many successful novelists: the protagonist delineated through dreams and recollections, shifts in perspective, stories within the main story, the epistolary format, framing characters, and narrative twists. It brings to mind, for instance, Faletti at his best. As is often the case in contemporary Italian literature, the prose is matter-of-fact, discursive, failing to conjure an atmosphere that is not strictly rooted in the plot. An exception is the description of the town of Elcito: one senses that the author is writing of something he feels deeply—the simplicity of life immersed in the natural world. A bolder willingness to depict nineteenth-century Marche, to truly inhabit this landscape, convey its peculiarities, and grant greater room to the setting would certainly not have gone amiss. Why read it? It is a contemporary tale that conjures an enduring utopia.