Diario del 1947

The first complete edition of the account of his travels between London, Paris, Berne, Salzburg and Italy, after twenty-two years on the other side of the ocean.In 1947 Gaetano Salvemini was seventy-four years old and had been absent from Italy since 1925, when he had been forced to expatriate due to the judicial vicissitudes connected with the clandestine anti-fascist sheet ‘Non Mollare’. In the decade leading up to his final settlement at Harvard, he fully lived what he called his ‘third life’ to his friend Mary Berenson, i.e. the expatriate season between London and Paris that made him a cosmopolitan intellectual. During the American period, he took on a central role in the American academic and cultural world, without, however, losing his ties to the European and Italian situation. The text published here for the first time in its entirety is the account of the first two months of Salvemini’s journey from 15 July to 21 November of that year. The historian, two days after his arrival in England and up to 17 September, systematically transcribes meetings with newfound friends and occasional acquaintances, jotting down reflections from the conversations he had. It is interesting to read the complete version of the writing, accompanied by a selection of Salvemini’s articles closely connected to the journey (some of them unpublished or little known), because it appears as an exceptional source to better understand the many activities undertaken and the new interests that Salvemini would cultivate with his return to Italy on a permanent basis in 1949.