Epistole e favole. L’albero del riccio e Favole di libertà

An Antonio Gramsci great educator. This work by Gramsci unites two collections: of epistles (L’Albero del Riccio) and translations of fables (Favole di Libertà); and highlights the link between his political and sentimental life. Gramsci deserves to be remembered not only for his writings, but also for how he lived and how he suffered. In him, reason proper and the reasons of the heart manage to coexist, generating a complete individual, whose intellectual depth is played out on the basis of a balance of opposites and contradictions. As the curator of the work, Fabiana Caserta, describes, here one has the impression of being in front of the hidden face of the moon: an often heroicised historical figure, as is the case with Antonio Gramsci, who shows his more human side. Filled with small glimpses of his Sardinian youth and everyday stories from prison, L’Albero del Riccio brings to light family ties, both with his wife and children and with his mother, characterised by great affection, but also by obvious moments of pain. Every existing element becomes pregnant with meaning, worthy of attention, has a higher emotional value. In Favole di Libertà, on the other hand, the sharing of fables and folk tales is the communicative medium Gramsci establishes with the family. Nothing is left to chance: every specific choice made in Gramsci’s translation compared to the original version by the Brothers Grimm is based on the need to ‘secularise’ and make the fairy tales more topical and didactic.