Erri De Luca's Freedom of Speech
- By Ariane Chemin and Raphaëlle Rérolle
Erri De Luca didn’t make that trip he’d planned to the Frankfurt Book Fair on the October 14. He just didn’t feel like it … didn’t feel like talking about “that subject… in a marketplace atmosphere,” didn’t feel like hearing his case brought up, between one sale and another, and he certainly didn’t feel like letting these events take his French editor Antoine Gallimard hostage, even if the author had been invited to appear at the bookstand of his prestigious publisher. Instead he’d wait at home—in that long and narrow house just north of Rome, built with his own hands back in the days when he was a construction worker, surrounded by mimosa bushes and tree trunks whitened with lime to keep insects away.
Monday, October 19 will certainly mark a key moment in his life. That morning in Turin the court will decide whether or not the most-read Italian writer in France is guilty of “instigating sabotage.” And whether the sixty-five-year-old will be forced to wrap up his affairs and serve out time in prison. The prosecution has asked for a jail term of eight months.
The case dates back to September, 2013. Back then, in an interview with the Italian site of the Huffington Post, Erri De Luca described his fight to stop the drilling of a thirty-four mile long tunnel for a projected high-speed train between Lyon and Turin. For nearly ten years, this enormous project—its construction is slated to last until 2030 and cost more than twenty-five billion Euros—has been opposed by ecologists and local residents of the Alpine valleys, particularly those from the Susa Valley in Piedmont, Italy. The mountains are laced with asbestos, they say, and sources of water may dry up, plus the train they already have isn’t being used to capacity, and, anyway, this new line will pass fifteen miles outside Lyon… The writer and mountain climber has stood under the banners of the No TAV activists (TAV stands for Treno ad Alta Velocità, i.e. a high-speed train). And he has closely followed the clashes between police and demonstrators, which have at times been violent, and the attempts to occupy the construction site. “Sabotage is what’s necessary to make it understood that the TAV is harmful and useless,” he explained in the interview.
As soon as this sentence was spoken, the leadership of the construction firm pounced. Lyon-Turin Ferroviaire (Lyon-Turin Railway, or LTF)—a combined French and Italian company with its headquarters in Chambéry, now Tunnel Euralpin Lyon-Turin (Euroalpine Lyon-Turin Tunnel, or TELT)—is directed by a senior French government official, and the French state owns fifty percent of its shares. The other half belongs to Ferrovie dello Stato (Italian National Railways, or FS). The company has charged De Luca with “instigazione a delinquere” (instigation to commit crimes). This judicial charge, based an article from the Italian criminal code drafted in 1930 (“during the height of facism,” De Luca emphasizes), is used to punish crimes of terrorism. The novelist defends his own right to express his “opinion” and does not hesitate to repeat, “the TAV should be sabotaged.” At the start of 2015, a long trial began in Turin; the hearing on Monday will be its fifth and final day. “A trial with cinque stagioni, a bit like our pizzas,” the writer laughed, seated on a bench at a Montparnasse café, his willowy Giacometti silhouette bundled up in climber’s fleece, his face etched in lines by the mountain sun—and, he says, “by the life of a worker, and the tools you have to use.”
Though they scandalized the railway company, De Luca’s comments hardly surprised anyone who knows him. Before his success as a writer, the solitary Neapolitan was a left-wing militant during Italy’s “years of lead.” In 1968, when he was eighteen, this bourgeois child from the South joined the Maoist group Lotta Continua, and even became head of its security staff in Rome. His wing of the group never advocated violence, and he himself came out of that era without falling prey to it. Yet, as he says, he is part of “Italy’s most imprisoned generation.” After Lotta Continua dissolved in 1976, De Luca got a job with Fiat in Turin and then worked here and there as a mason, including on the construction site of that Parisian beltway that he traveled on last Tuesday, before catching a plane and returning home, after his day in Paris.
De Luca calls France his adopted country, the homeland of his affections. He likes the revolutionary fierceness in the lyrics of its Marseillaise, he pays taxes here on the copyrights to his translations. From Pas içi, pas maintenant (“Not here, not now,” published by Rivages in 1992) to his last work, translated in 2013 and published by Gallimard, Les poissons ne ferment pas les yeux (“Fish Don’t Close Their Eyes”), all of his novels and short stories—written in a lyrical, radical style—have been translated into French: this is a record, and an exception. On this side of the Alps, he has also been awarded every sort of prize: Prix Femina étranger in 2002 for Montedidio, the French Medal as a Knight of Arts and Letters, a jury member at the 2003 Cannes Festival, with Patrice Chéreau presiding, a jury member as well for the Piolet d’or, an award that is given each year in Chamonix for the best feat of mountain climbing… All done under the French flag.
A Hostile Press
In Rome or Turin, in contrast, there have been no honors or awards, and few fanfares or ceremonies. “In Italy,” he jokes, “I get demoted,” and his smile makes the hollows of his ascetic face even more pronounced. Oddly enough, though, it’s as if that notorious word, “sabotage”—the echo that he has given to the No TAV cause and its judicial struggles—has finally earned him recognition from the elite he has always kept at a distance. “It’s as if I’ve received a literary prize,” he comments. On October 8 in Rome, three hundred musicians gave a concert that lasted six hours straight. In various places his readers, of which there are a great number, have organized public readings of Le parole contraire (A Dissenting Word, published in France by Gallimard; in Italian and English by Feltrinelli), a pamphlet written just before his trial opened.
Yet intellectuals and the press remain indifferent, if not hostile (with the notable exception of the mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, a former judge). Italy is still traumatized by the 70s, those years of lead filled with assassinations and three hundred deaths. The political stance taken by Erri De Luca on the TAV reminds some of his public support for the Italy’s former left-wing militants who took asylum in France, such as Cesare Battisti. The writer defended his former comrades and argued against the Italian state requests for their extradition, without ever disavowing his own past. Much of the political elite in Italy, including those from the center left, haven’t forgiven him for this. “This has certainly been a factor. Part of this judicial affair has been about ‘getting the last word,’ something more personal than political,” the writer comments.
You Don’t Put Voltaire in Prison
This story has played out differently, seeping into different layers of society on both sides of the border. “You can’t comprehend the annoyance of the judges and other authorities in Italy if you don’t keep in mind the different relationship the two countries have with literature.” So says a high-level French official with Italian ancestry, “In France, ‘you don’t put Voltaire in prison,’ as De Gaulle used to say, and today we can still have endless debates about the sentencing of Robert Brasillach. In Italy, the idea that writer ought to be allowed a sort of moral immunity is far from accepted, even on the left.”
And then, in France, at the beginning of 2015, there was Charlie Hebdo. The opening of the De Luca trial occurred twenty days after the bloody murders that killed twelve people at the headquarters of the satiric weekly magazine. Since the end of February, all the French petitions on his behalf have invoked “freedom of expression” and asked that the charges be dropped by both the French and Italian governments, the two stockholders. Writers (such as Annie Ernaux, Daniel Pennac, Philippe Claudel), artists (including the sculptor Daniel Buren), filmmakers (such as Pascale Ferran, Arnaud Despléchin, Jacques Audiard, Wim Wenders, and Costa-Gavras), actors (including Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Amalric), but also nearly a hundred lawyers (and among them Georges Kiejman et Eric Dupond-Moretti) have signed petitions for Erri.
The spirit of Charlie? In March, at the Paris Book Fair, the French president caused rejoicing among friends of the Italian novelist when he affirmed that authors “should not be prosecuted for their works.” But since then François Hollande has kept silent; he hasn’t responded to the demands of French supporters that he meet, ten days ago, this “protector of the Académie française.” Ségolène Royal, the current French Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development, and Energy, is responsible for the project, given that it is directed by the French and Italian governments. Last Wednesday, having never before expressed an opinion on the subject, Royal responded that it “wasn’t possible for France to drop charges that are currently pending in the Italian courts.” On October 16, the former Minister of Social Affairs and ex-mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, placed her signature on a De Luca petition, just below that of some leaders of the French Green Party.
“I know quite a few people in prison”
On Saturday October 17, Erri De Luca planned to go climbing about an hour and half by car from his home. “It’s always been my way to stay in shape.” This evening, he’ll come back to his kitchen, the walls papered with the labels from wine bottles, before heading up to Turin the next day. Unsure about the verdict, he seems resigned, almost amused by his fate, with a bit of bluster as well. “The only certainty I have is that, if the judge in Turin finds me guilty, I won’t appeal the verdict. I’ve explained fully everything that I had to explain, and, I repeat, it is necessary for that railway to be sabotaged. I know how to climb, and I know how to employ words. Words are my turf.” He searches the Bible for a verse from the “Book of Proverbes.” Since he learned Hebrew, in order to read the Old Testament each morning in the original text, he cites the line in his own translation: “Open your mouth for the mute.” He isn’t claiming mitigating circumstances, but he does regret that his role as a writer is judged to be an aggravating circumstance.
“A Neapolitan proverb says that ‘A wolf that’s been slandered has shiny fur.’ I’m in better health today than I was before all this began.” If he does go to prison, he’ll try “to make it into a sort of vacation. I know quite a few people inside. I go there frequently for readings or meetings. I write letters to prisoners, and I’ve written prefaces for books written by some of them. There’ll be a place for me at the table.” “If I have to, I’ll keep him company!” smiles Antoine Gallimard. From the bookfair in Frankfurt, the publisher once again paid tribute to “the remarkable views of a man who stands up for what he thinks is right, and stands behind his words.” After their lunch last Monday, Erri De Luca asked only one favor from his editor: a book. He selected a thick volume, one full of wisdom and beauty, just in case: an Anthology of Chinese Poetry, the “Pléiade” edition.
Translated by Jim Hicks
