Armando Verdiglione interwiews Enzo Nasso (abstract)
Enzo Nasso, where were you born, exactly?
In a small town called Taurianova, in the province of Reggio Calabria. When I was born, it was called Radicena.
Is Taurianova an older name?
Yes, it seems that Taurianova originates from the period of Magna Grecia, when groups of Greek democrats opposed to Sparta were expelled from the Island of Naxos. They went to Sicily, where they founded the city of Naxos (ca 734 B.C.), which still exists. The "daughters of Naxos" still exist... There they brought all their symbols: the bull, coins... The inhabitants of the Island of Naxos were all coin minters. But in Sicily, too, they came into conflict with the tyrant of Syracuse and were compelled to flee again. They went to Calabria, which at that time was a kind of desert. There they founded Taurianova.
A "kind of desert"?
At that time, the area wasn't inhabited, apart from Reggio Calabria.
Apart from Reggio, apart from Locri, apart from Caulonia and apart from Crotone, which were inhabited.
In that part of the Gioia Tauro plain, they built Taurianova and brought their symbols, in particular the bull. The inhabitants were called the Nassos(1), because they came from that island. I was born in that land. My home is right in the centre of Taurianova. A few years after the war, Radicena, as it was called at that time, resumed the Greek name of Taurianova.
What year were you born?
In 1923, April 1923.
How long did you stay there?
I left when I was eight or nine years old. Till high school I came and went, though. I spent part of the time in Potenza and part of the time in Rome. I returned to the town during the summer. When I was around fourteen or fifteen years old, I went to Rome for good.
That must have been about 1938.
More or less, 1937-1938.
And where did you stay in Rome?
I lived in a furnished room in Rome.
Was your father in America or in Calabria?
My father came back from America in 1937-1938.
But he used to come from time to time when you were a child...
Yes, he came, had children and then left. Till, one time, he returned with a little money. He started trading in alcohol for processing oranges, and later he opened a shop. He had fought in the war...
Where?
In America, with the Americans.
Was he an American citizen?
Yes, he was.
What kind of schooling did you have in Taurianova, Enzo?
I went to junior high school and then the high school in Rome. In Potenza I had attended the magistrali(2). I started with junior high school, but had changed over to the magistrali because I was a bit "wild". There was a headmaster from my town, a very strict man, who had advised me to change, both on account of my conduct and my aversion to mathematics and geometry. So I went to the magistrali and got my high-school leaving certificate in Rome. Then I enrolled at the faculty of Letters, but I didn't go on...
So, at high school, there was mathematics!
Yes, there was. At that time, though, because I was very good at literary subjects, they forgave my aversion to mathematics in a certain sense.
And how come you had this aversion to mathematics?
It was a natural aversion, an inability to concentrate perhaps, or an inability to understand how it worked.
But wasn't it you perhaps who convinced yourself of this when it wasn't actually true?
For the job I was preparing myself for and that I wanted to do, it had no importance whatsoever.
You mean, you didn't attach any importance to it. Was there any episode with your father that was significant for you? If you were to remember only one episode with your father...
When adolescence starts, conflict, as you know, is automatic.
No, it's not automatic.
First of all, there is the cultural difference. One of the first episodes of great conflict was due to the fact that they used to breed rabbits near my home.
I had become very attached to a little rabbit; I used to take it to sleep with me secretly. One day, they killed it to eat it.
I got a knife, I must have been six or seven years old, I waited for my father on the stairs and jumped on him thinking I was going to stab him.
Of course, being a very strong man, he threw me off. Another significant episode, that still has an effect now, was this: at some point, I don't remember when, I was six or seven years old, at my mother's insistence, he bought me a bicycle. All the boys had one at the time.
On this bicycle, I went tearing through all the surrounding villages. Till I fell and I hurt my knee. I was left with a bent leg.
My father didn't believe it. He told me: "Look, if you manage to stretch out your leg, I'll buy you two of Crucitti's cakes"-Crucitti was a pastry cook who was known throughout the whole area. I made an enormous effort to stretch out my leg.
When I actually succeeded, he got hold of me and gave me a thrashing, because he thought I had told him a lie. And he smashed the bicycle into smithereens.
Many years later, when he died, it was ten or fifteen years ago, I went to Calabria with my wife and when I arrived home this leg went stiff.
We called the doctor who was unable to make a diagnosis. They took me to Gioia Tauro, ten kilometres from the town, and my leg went back to normal.
This happened to me another time, too. So I went to a psychiatrist and told him about my leg and he said it was to do with the episode with my father.
He gave me a load of drugs, tranquillisers...
Why did you go to a psychiatrist?
I went to a psychiatrist to understand...
That's stupid. And even more stupid to take..
Yes, stupid. But it was a moment of great turmoil for me, because of my father's death... But I threw away all the drugs.
I had an attic, I shut myself away in there for a while and got over it by myself... On that occasion, I wrote.
I hadn't been writing for a long time, and I wrote the poems of Dissidio [Dissension, 1972], about my town and about the rebellion of Reggio Calabria.
When you were still in Taurianova, did you read books?
When I was a boy a curious thing happened to me. I was four or five years old, I think, and I couldn't read properly.
My father wanted me to study primary-school stuff, whereas I wanted to read other books, and to do this I used to shut myself in a wardrobe.
One day, suddenly, when I came out of the wardrobe, miraculously, I started reading and I even read Renato Fucini's stories.
What were you reading when you were fourteen years old?
At fourteen I was reading the Russian authors.
Were you reading the great novels?
Russian novels.
Any philosophy?
Philosophy less...
Poems?
Those poems that were available in book form: Pascoli, Carducci. When I was sixteen or seventeen years old, when I arrived in Rome, I went over to Rimbaud and Verlaine; I started reading the symbolists assiduously, studying them almost.
In other words the whole of French poetry. No Anglo-American poetry?
Not much. Modern Anglo-American poetry, as we understand it wasn't available then. During the Fascist period, I read Ezra Pound, those works of his that had been translated. Pound had been to Italy, to Rome...
Rome, then Potenza... But why Potenza?
As far as conduct was concerned, I was considered a very bad pupil. There was a headmaster whose name was Greco, a friend of my father's, who had been transferred from Reggio Calabria to Potenza. He had said to my father, in the way that friends do when they try to help each other out: "Send him to me in Potenza, and I'll try to get him his school leaving certificate". The issue was not so much studying for its own sake as getting a qualification in order to find a job.
So how come you ended up in Rome instead?
I ran away from Potenza, at one point... I went to Rome because two of my aunts were there.
You had two married aunts in Rome?
Yes.
How many brothers and sisters have you got?
One brother and one sister, who are dead, and three sisters who are still alive...
Were there six of you in all?
Yes.
And where do you come in order of age?
I am the eldest. The eldest, brought up with brutal, strict ways...
Was your father a bit brutal and a bit strict...
He was dreadfully strict, according to simple moral principles.
Was your mother strict too?
My mother, poor thing, was a victim of my father at that time. I was the only one who rebelled...
You weren't a victim of your father though?
No, I never felt a victim, not even then. I felt the whole thing as a situation of conflict. I knew that I would leave.
And I tried to escape from the physical violence of this man.
How did high school in Rome go?
It went well.
And what were you reading at high school, what were the set texts at school? Russian authors and French poetry still?
Russian authors, French poetry, and Italian texts too.
Did you read the French authors in French?
Yes, partly. I even tried to write a book about Rimbaud and Verlaine.
When did you write your first poems?
At eight or nine years old...
Did you keep a diary?
Yes. I had some notebooks, rather than a diary...
Notebooks of poems?
Yes. Dreadful ones, that my mother kept and gave back to me some years ago. They were poems that copied Pascoli and the Divine Comedy-I first tried to write verse that copied the Divine Comedy when I was eight or ten years old.
So when did you write the first poems that you recognise as real poems?
Around 1939.
So, when were you sixteen years old?
Yes. Then I won a poetry competition. It was a competition in which Cecchi, Baldini and D'Amico were judges.
You mean Emilio Cecchi, Antonio Baldini and Silvio D'Amico.
They gave me a prize of five hundred lira. At that time it was an enormous sum. So I started mixing with all the young intellectuals of the time who were all on the editorial staff at the GUF [Gruppo universitario fascista] newspaper, which was called Roma fascista.
And after high school?
I started working at once.
What job did you do?
The first job I did was counting rationing-card coupons in a ministry, I don't remember in which office, during the war.
Then, after I won this poetry competition (Milena Milani came second and Sinisgalli third), I met Leopoldo Trieste and enrolled-you could enroll free of charge-for the Accademia drammatica [Academy of drama], for a playwriting course directed by Cesare Vico Ludovici, who was a very important playwright.
Did you meet Anton Giulio Bragaglia?
Yes, later on. He was a great friend of my father-in-law's, before he died...
Who was your father-in-law?
Cipriano Efisio Oppo.
He was a friend of Anton Giulio's?
Yes, he was a close friend. During the war, Oppo did the scenery for the first performances at the Teatro degli Indipendenti. Oppo was a very important figure, he had been an Accademico d'Italia(3), and a member of parliament for many years, during the Fascist period…
So you started working...
That's how I started working. Then I was given the task of producing a school magazine called Ursa Minor, produced by the pupils.
In the meantime, I had resumed contact with the young Roman intellectuals.
I got rid of all the contributors and I produced this magazine by calling in Manlio Cancogni, Carlo Cassola, Sandro Penna, Ennio De Concini and the brothers Giorgio and Massimo Petrocchi, all young and promising...
I also published Antonio Vangelli's and Renato Guttuso's drawings. Gottuso and I had become great friends.
He was very interested in my poems, but above all in the girls that surrounded me at that time. […]
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