In a work similar to this one,1 five ‘founding fathers’ of modern Italy were singled out, and three characteristics attributed to them: commitment to the growth of the nation, presence on the international scene, and roots in the South. De Viti de Marco is not among them, but he belongs there.2
Active in politics and in economic theory in various fields, in many respects he was in the forefront of the national scene in Italy. There was also a very strong global dimension about him, both because he was influenced by international—especially Anglo-Saxon—culture, and because he in turn influenced it himself, being for a long time the only author in the Italian public finance school to be translated into other languages.3 The local dimension, too, was always very important since he was born and lived in the South, he set up business activities there, he wrote about it, and he promoted its interests.
So like the other five figures, there are three sides to him, geographically speaking: the national, the global and the local. Now, these three sides to his life, also mark his memory: today de Viti de Marco is in fact remembered in all three of them but each one contains an evocation of him that differs from the others. To make this clearer, it will help if we look at the geographical areas in relation to his main spheres of activity: his scientific, political and private life.
De Viti de Marco’s Threefold Fame
In Italy, de Viti de Marco is well-known for his economic thought, reconstructed by the scholars of public finance, banking and the problems of the South.4 His political battles, too, are well-known.5 However, apart from some recollection by Ernesto Rossi, Gaetano Salvemini and Luigi Einaudi,6 his private life is completely unknown, a gap I find, to say the least, disconcerting, but I will come back to this.
On an international level, his scientific contribution is known about, either directly (thanks to the translations mentioned above), or through the literature in English about the Italian school of scienza delle finanze 7; but anyway a limited knowledge, being confined to this one aspect. Nothing is known beyond his national borders about his political thought, while his private life, already unknown at home, cannot even be imagined by non Italians: even if they could read Italian, in fact, the scarcity of existing information would not tell them anything about places, or periods, or atmosphere.
The local memory of this illustrious son of Salento (the south-eastern extremity of Italy) focuses mainly on the activities of his family8; of his political involvement there is some awareness, while despite the interest, his scientific works are inaccessible to the non-specialist. There is no clear idea of what great effect his achievements had on the international scene.
The memory of de Viti de Marco is therefore quite well preserved taken as a whole; but it is clearly a different one in each geographical area, and limited only to some of his spheres of activity. This has a striking implication, namely that there was never any communication between these spheres: if each of them is unaware of the content of the others’ memory, it means that the different worlds did not speak, let alone listen, to each other.
How then could de Viti de Marco’s personal and local history be made known outside the Salento, and at the same time his scientific achievements be explained to his local countrymen? How could they be made aware of the respect he enjoys outside Italy and the world be informed of his political activities and the range of his ideas?
The Project
To reach all these non-communicating worlds, the written word is not enough. In fact the written word fails to evoke his private life and conjure up the places, the people, the scenes that evoke his daily actions. And the written word is even less capable of breaching the walls around his specialist field so that the general public could access and enjoy his scientific thought.
That was what prompted this project, which consists of a documentary9 as well as a book. The documentary contains selected parts of eleven interviews carried out in 2007 and 2008, and the book contains the entire text of all the interviews, except one. The only interview which is not transcribed in its entirety is the one with Emilia Chirilli10; later on this introduction I will explain why.
I met Emilia Chirilli in April 2003. I was introduced to her at the University of Lecce by the then Dean of the Economics Faculty,11 which bears the name of Antonio de Viti de Marco, after a conference on the relevance of his thought today.12 Emilia was writing a book on the ‘prehistory and protohistory’ of the illustrious economist13 and wanted to talk to the Dean about it; I had given a paper at that conference,14 so the Dean suggested I go with him to meet her. From that day on Emilia and I met almost every week for more than five years, and she shared many of her memories with me. From the same town as the de Viti de Marco family, at the age of twelve (in the early Thirties) she had been sent by her father to learn English in their house,15 and she had become firm friends with Carolina, Antonio’s youngest sister, and especially with her daughter Giulia.16 Emilia often told me about the long conversations she had had with this sister, Carolina, who died in 1965 at the age of 102, and she talked to me about all the members of the family she had known, including Antonio, as well as of the times she had met him in his house in Rome when she was at university there. She had also happened to receive some of the family papers, on which she was basing the book she was writing, in the style of The Manzoni Family.17
History in Pictures: The Documentary
There is no point in my dwelling on Emilia’s qualities, on the beauty of her language and the vigour of her story-telling, because fortunately both this documentary and book give us a very good idea. What counts are her stories, always so extraordinarily evocative that I sometimes reported them to other people. One day (May 2004) a colleague18 said it would be a good idea to record our conversations; so I started to think about the documentary and about the importance of capturing her memories, because I realised that she was not only the last, but also the only witness on de Viti de Marco. Emilia was in fact a voice crying in the wilderness: certainly in the usual wilderness surrounding all those who survive their peers, but above all in the deep wilderness surrounding the memory of Antonio de Viti de Marco’s private life. Nobody prior to Emilia had revealed anything, nor are there any written documents or letters; there is nothing at all. If it had not been for her, there would not have been a single source to tell about the private life of the great economist. To spread this testimony beyond the barriers surrounding his native town, I then found it essential to use the pictures of her and of all that still exists: the few remaining photographs of people and places, the scenery, the boarding school, the walls of Antonio de Viti de Marco’s houses19—they at least are still there, unlike their original contents which have disappeared in repeated burglaries. The documentary would therefore serve to weave together the few remaining fragments so as to conjure up a past on the verge of vanishing and to allow them to emerge from their local confines.
At this point we open another intense chapter of the history of this project. I suggested the project to Carlo Massa, the well-known documentary director,20 whom I knew personally; I told him the story of Emilia and gave him the only then existing biography on Antonio de Viti de Marco.21 Carlo was very impressed by the political side of the protagonist of this biography, and immediately said that in his view the documentary should be based on two mainstays: his private life (by interviewing Emilia) and his political life (by interviewing Antonio Cardini, the author of the biography). We then started looking for funding,22 but soon afterwards this became a matter of some urgency, because Carlo discovered he was ill. And when we had to provide some information on the project for a funding submission, Carlo did far more: he actually wrote the whole script, including the music. I was surprised by such premature zeal, but then I understood, because the illness soon absorbed his attention entirely.23 Carlo left everything in order, including the documentary, asking the director Ugo Adilardi24 to complete it. Concerning their friendship I will only say that thanks to Ugo in July 2007, even before the funding was granted, we started filming; that we managed to share with Carlo the work done, and to receive his last tips just before he died.25 In making the documentary we followed his directions as far as possible given the inevitable unpredictabili...