News from Italy
An Italian knight: Feltrinelli…
City lights – Giangiacomo Feltrinelli
by Ayfer Selamoğlu
The first thing that comes to mind when Italy is mentioned is “Art, history, culture, cities on the theatre stage, squares, pastel colours, Renaissance, immortal artists, culinary culture. Such as pizza, pasta, wine and expresso…” However, one of the most important values that make Italy ‘Italy’ is ‘La Feltrinelli’. That is our second home in Italy. Our journey is this magical ship of discovery that welcomes everyone who enters with the same warmth. It gives us unforgettable moments during the journey and sends us into life as another human being.
This bookstore chain, which wraps around the country like an elegant diamond necklace, has another essential feature. No matter which branch we enter, the spirit of the knight Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, nicknamed Osvaldo, greets us. Feltrinelli’s name always comes up with the publishing house and bookstore chain he founded. However, he continues his journey in the “Global Immortal World” as a hero.
Feltrinelli was born in Brescia, Lombardy in 1926. The aristocratic family was very wealthy. His grandfather, Giacomo, was the most prominent timber merchant in Venice. He had made a fortune on Lake Garda as a lumber supplier in the heyday of industry and railroad construction. His father was Carlo Feltrinelli, one of the country’s most critical financial representatives. He was a successful entrepreneur. He was president of many companies, notably Credito Italiano and Edison. He continued his father’s international timber trade and construction and industrial businesses. In the 1920s, they were among the wealthiest families in Italy and Europe. Giangiacomo lost his father in 1935. Five years later, her mother married Corriere della Sera reporter Luigi Barzini. He embraced Fascism in his early childhood when he was called Giangi. The greatness of this love was seen in the propaganda posters of the period he hung on his room’s walls.
His interview with Antonello Trombadori, a journalist and future deputy of the Italian Communist Party, was a pivotal moment in his life. The profound impact of what he learned led him to actively join the resistance movements. He bravely stood in the line of resistance during World War II, earning the name ‘Osvaldo’, symbolizing his divine power. His political journey continued under the Italian Socialist Party, a door that opened in 1945 and marked a significant turning point in his life. It was during this time that he met his first wife, Bianca Dalla Nogare.
Feltrinelli begins to realize his dreams of social benefit after the war. He wanted to revive an economically, socially and psychologically collapsed society with a new enlightenment movement. For this purpose, he began to collect all the information and documents related to the history of the labour movement and the period of Enlightenment. After a while, he laid the foundations of his dreams with the Feltrinelli Foundation. He had fulfilled his dream of selling cheap books to the young and the poor. In 1951, he opened his first library on Via Scarlatti 26 in Milan. He founded the “Workers’Movement” magazine with the materials he collected with the support of young historians and prestigious intellectuals. Three years later, he joined the Communist Party in 1954. He founded the “Feltrinelli Editore Publishing House” in the same year. He started to make an international impression with his first book. It entered the “best-seller” list with the autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru, who fought for the country’s independence and became his country’s first prime minister.
In 1957, he published a banned book on an operation that would become the subject of a Cold War spy movie. Soviet writer Boris Pasternak wrote a book called “Doctor Zhivago”, but it was not published in his country because “the official opinion of the USSR did not write it”. The novel takes place in twentieth-century Russia. Pasternak, who was 27 years old at the beginning of the 1917 Russian Revolution, tells the pain and great love that the Russian people felt during the revolution in his novel, which includes sections from his life. He sent his book, which he finished in 1956, to the Novi Mir publishing house he was affiliated with. At that time, Josef Stalin had left the Soviet Union and was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev. Although Khrushchev was a more open leader to the West, Boris Pasternak’s novel was rejected. Then, the adventure began, and a copy of the book reached Giangiacomo Feltrinelli through Sergio D’Angelo, who worked on the Italian service of Radio Mosca. The revolutionary Marxist Feltrinelli decided to publish Zhivago. The book quickly gained international fame. Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 for this book but was forced to turn it down due to pressure. Feltrinelli was also expelled from the Communist Party, of which he was a member, after this event.
A trip to Cuba in 1964 opened another window in Feltrinelli’s life. There, he met Fidel Castro, who wanted to publish his memoirs. He had the opportunity to discuss everything with Castro, from agricultural production to the Red October crisis, from Latin America to the conflicts with the United States, from Marxism to the economy, to youth and women. Photojournalist’s second wife His second wife, Inge Feltrinelli, describes those days years later: “Castro chose us among many international publishers. Lacking a wealthy bourgeois charm, Giangiacomo initially disappointed Castro. We would go to her early in the morning and find her still in her bedroom outfit. Giangiacomo, Fidel, and I met in our pyjamas to discuss women and politics.” Stating that Fidel Castro greatly influenced the political life of publisher Giangiacomo, Inge said, “It even had an explosive effect. In the initial phase between 1964 and 1965, Giangiacomo’s interest in Castro was limited to the book he was about to write. But the second phase, from 1967 to 1970, was another phase that had more to do with Giangiacomo’s political militancy.”
Feltrinelli travelled to Bolivia in 1967, where he met French journalist Regis Debray, who was actively involved in guerrilla actions led by Che Guevara. However, in a CIA-backed operation, local authorities arrest him and his new wife, Sibilla Melega. He is tortured during this arrest. Roberto Quintanilla Pereira, a Bolivian army officer responsible for amputating Che’s hands, arrested Feltrinelli! A short time later, on October 9, 1967, Che Guevara was caught and killed in an extrajudicial execution. This tragic death became one of the most crucial turning points that shaped Feltrinelli’s future political life.
Che kept a diary in Bolivia. After his death, Castro gave notes from Che’s diary to his friend Feltrinelli. These unique and valuable notes were published as “Che’s Bolivian Diary”, and the book entered Feltrinelli’s bestseller list.
The sequel was coming, and publishers in other countries lined up to publish the book, which had a worldwide resonance. Feltrinelli did not claim the book’s copyright from different publishers but instead encouraged publishers in other countries to publish the book.
After this book, Feltrinelli was also interested in the memories of Che’s close friend, Bolivian guerrilla Inti Peredo. To this end, he was in personal contact with Peredo. He aimed to convey the methods used by the CIA in Bolivia to the world’s public opinion. He also met with journalists to investigate the CHE murder and write a book. He wanted to tell the public the truth behind CHE’s murder in a well-written and solid book.
Feltrinelli then published the iconic photograph of Guerrillero Heroico taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960. “I am responsible for promoting the figure of Guevara and the figure of Guerrillero in Italy,” he said.
While Feltrinelli Publishing produced highly successful literary works, it was also interested in brochures and documentaries about the guerrilla tactics and strategies of various revolutionary movements and organisations in Latin America. These unique publications, including Guevara’s statements, extended to the rooms of the left organisation of the Red Brigades.
Feltrinelli, who wanted to follow in the footsteps of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, was in contact with Sardinian activists. His candidate dreamed of making the Cuban Mediterranean. It was a time when secret services and terrorist organisations were in the middle of nowhere in Italy. Just these days, on December 12, 1969, a bombing occurred in Piazza Fontana, near Piazza Duomo in Milan. The balance sheet was heavy. There were 17 dead and 80 injured. Italy had suddenly changed from a cheerful and colourful Christmas mood to a pitch-black house of mourning. The crime was attributed to terrorist organisations. Feltrinelli, who was at the chalet on the day of the explosion, said that the state was behind this terrible attack. He decided to return to Milan. But he was also worried that plain-clothed police officers were waiting for him outside the publishing house! He meets Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini, the founders of extreme left groups and the Red Brigades, and decides to go underground.
Then, inspired by the Italian Resistance Patriotic Action Groups formed in the country, partizan established the ‘GAP’ Action Groups. The GAPs, like other resistance groups, believed that they had been deceived by the words “the communist revolution will be made” and now followed the line of Che Guevara.
Feltrinelli could not go any further. Before he could publish the books containing Che’s death and Castro’s memoirs and realise his ideals, he suddenly fell silent one day. On March 15, 1972, his body was found in the deserted area of Segrate, outside Milan. At the bottom of the high-voltage pole… An explosion shattered it… Defenceless… Unarmed…
His death was recorded as follows:
“The man torn to pieces by an explosion under a high voltage pole in the countryside of Segrate, near Milan, is the publisher and industrialist Gian Giacomo Feltrinelli. The body was recognised tonight in the Milan morgue at 11.30 by his ex-wife Inge Schoental in the presence of Pomarici, head of the political office of the Allegra police station and chief prosecutor of the Carabinieri Rossi “.
Some called it “murder” back then. However, some claimed that Feltrinelli exploded in his hand while trying to plant a detonator to commit a terrorist act. Would it make sense for someone like Feltrinelli to achieve a “terrorist act single-handedly”? He had no weapon at the scene. He was alone and unprotected… Moreover, his body was taken to the morgue without the prosecutor’s arrival and without following legal procedures. An hour before the body was found, the Milan police commissioner called a funeral home and asked them to retrieve it!
After his death, his wife, Inge Feltrinelli, expressed the following about Osvaldo:
“He supported all the independence movements in the world. For example, he defended Palestine’s independence despite Israel’s reaction. He gave open support to the Palestinian struggle. He met with Arafat. He was expelled from the Italian Communist Party, of which he was a member, after publishing the book ‘Doctor Zhivago’ by Pasternak, a banned author in the Soviet Union. He published Che’s famous portrait, The Hero, Guerrilla, and made it widely known in a very short time.”
Giangiacomo… Giangi or Osvaldo… Was the gain worth the loss? At least he lives among us as an “immortal”…