Renzo Novatore
Encyclopedia
Life
Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in ArcolaArcola
Arcola is an offshoot of the record label Warp Records. It was set up in late 2003, and takes its name from the Arcola Theatre, Arcola Street in Dalston, London where Warp held the launch party for the label....
, Liguria
Liguria
Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions. Its capital is Genoa. It is a popular region with tourists for its beautiful beaches, picturesque little towns, and good food.-Geography:...
, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self educated
Autodidacticism
Autodidacticism is self-education or self-directed learning. In a sense, autodidacticism is "learning on your own" or "by yourself", and an autodidact is a person who teaches him or herself something. The term has its roots in the Ancient Greek words αὐτός and διδακτικός...
himself with an emphasis in poetry and philosophy. Around his town, he was surrounded by a vibrant anarchist scene which he started to come close to.
He discovered Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta
Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarcho-communist. He was an insurrectionary anarchist early in his life. He spent much of his life exiled from his homeland of Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. He wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of...
, Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
, Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
and Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, who Novatore often quoted, and especially Max Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
. From 1908 on he embraced individualist anarchism. In 1910, he was charged with the burning of a local church and spent three months in prison, but his participation in the fire was never proved. A year later, he went on the lam for several months because the police wanted him for theft and robbery. On September 30, 1911, the police arrested him for vandalism. He justified refusal of work
Refusal of work
Refusal of work is behavior which refuses to adapt to regular employment.As actual behavior, with or without a political or philosophical program, it has been practiced by various subcultures and individuals. Radical political positions have openly advocated refusal of work. From within marxism it...
and he thought, in his personal philosophy of life, that he has the right to expropriate from the rich people
Individual reclamation
Individual reclamation is a form of direct action, characterized by the individual theft of resources from the rich by the poor...
what he needed for his daily survival, and using force wasn't a problem for him.
In 1914, he began to write for anarchist papers. He was drafted in 1912 but quickly discharged for unknown causes. As the Great War approached he deserted his regiment on April 26, 1918 and was sentenced to death by a military tribunal for desertion and high treason on October 31. He left his village and fled, propagating the desertion from the Army and the armed uprising against the state. Novatore was married with two children at the time andwhen in the last months of 1918, his younger son died, Novatore came back to his home, risking the arrest only to give him a last goodbye.
He was involved in an anarcho-futurist
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
collective in La Spezia
La Spezia
La Spezia , at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the Liguria region of northern Italy, is the capital city of the province of La Spezia. Located between Genoa and Pisa on the Ligurian Sea, it is one of the main Italian military and commercial harbours and hosts one of Italy's biggest military...
which he led (along with Auro d'Arcola) to be active in the militant anti-fascist Arditi del Popolo
Arditi del Popolo
The Arditi del Popolo was an Italian militant anti-fascist group founded at the end of June 1921 to resist the rise of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party and the violence of the Blackshirts paramilitaries...
. He was close friends with Enzo Martucci and Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi , was an Italian individualist anarchist writer and activist who collaborated in the Italian individualist anarchist magazine Iconoclasta! alongside Renzo Novatore....
. Renzo Novatore wrote for many anarchist papers (Cronaca Libertaria, Il Libertario, Iconoclastal, Gli Scamiciati, Nichilismo, Pagine Libere) where he debated with other anarchists (among them Camillo Berneri
Camillo Berneri
Camillo Berneri was an Italian professor of philosophy, anarchist militant, propagandist and theorist....
). He published a magazine, Vertice, which has unfortunately been lost apart from few articles. Novatore collaborated in the individualist anarchist journal Iconoclasta! alongside the young stirner
Stirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
ist illegalist
Illegalism
Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi
Bruno Filippi , was an Italian individualist anarchist writer and activist who collaborated in the Italian individualist anarchist magazine Iconoclasta! alongside Renzo Novatore....
On May 1919, the city of La Spezia felt under control of a self-proclaimed Revolutionary Committee and he fought alongside it. On June 30, 1919, Novatore was hidden in a hut in the countries near the city of Sarzana. A farmer told the police about him and he was sentenced to ten years in prison, but was released in a general amnesty a few months later. By the early 1920s Italy was about to be taken over by Fascism. He decided to go underground and in 1922 he joined the gang of the famous robber of anarchist inspiration: Sante Pollastro.
He was killed in an ambush by carabinieri
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri is the national gendarmerie of Italy, policing both military and civilian populations, and is a branch of the armed forces.-Early history:...
in Teglia, near Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
, on November 29, 1922 while being with Pollastro but Pollastro managed to escape. On Novatore's body the detectives found some false documents, a Browning gun with two full magazines, one hand grenade and a ring with a secret container filled with a lethal dose of cyanide
Cyanide
A cyanide is a chemical compound that contains the cyano group, -C≡N, which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Cyanides most commonly refer to salts of the anion CN−. Most cyanides are highly toxic....
.
The individualist anarchism of Novatore
Novatore talked of the "heroic beauty of the anti-collectivist and creative I" which is beyond both bourgoise and proletarian manners and morality. He spoke of his individual situation as living "In the Reign of the Phantoms" recalling StirnerStirner
Stirner:* Max Stirner, pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt , German philosopher and journalist* Karl Stirner , painter, illustrator and poet...
. He summarizes his view of his situation as existing among social conformism saying "The world is one pestulant church covetous and slimy where all have an idol to fetishistically adore and an altar on which to sacrifice themself."
In this way he speaks of religion saying "if you will patiently await the desolate calvary to then nail yourself on the cross, becoming the image of ME that is the ManGod, you will be the perfect human creature worthy of sitting at the right of my father who is in the kingdom of heaven.". As far as democracy and the legacy of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
he says "the French Revolution says to you: I have proclaimed the rights of man. If you will enter devoutly in the symbolic cloister of human social justice to sublimate and humanize through the moral canon of social life, you will be a citizen and I will give you the rights I proclaimed to man." "Progress (?) and Civilization (?), Religion (?) and the Ideal (?), have closed life in a mortal circle where the phantoms most grim have erected their viscid reign. Time to end it! We must break the circle violently and exit".
As en exit of this situation he proclaims "revolution is the fire of our will and a need of our solitary minds; it is an obligation of the libertarian aristocracy. To create new ethical values. To create new aesthetic values. To communalize material wealth. To individualize spiritual wealth. Because we-violent celebralists and passional sentimentalists at the same time-understand and know that revolution is a necessity of the silent sorrow that suffers at the bottom and a need of the free spirits who suffer in the heights." He summarizes the three options in life as "The stream of slavery, the stream of tyranny, the stream of freedom! With revolution, the last of these streams needs to burst upon the other two and overwhelm them. It needs to create spiritual beauty, teach the poor the shame of their poverty, and the rich the shame of their wealth."
Nevertheless he has an individualist permanent conception of revolution which he thinks could at some point come into conflict with the masses. He says "You are waiting for the revolution! Very well! My own began along time ago! When you are ready — God, what an endless wait! — it won’t nauseate me to go along the road awhile with you! But when you stop, I will continue on my mad and triumphant march toward the great and sublime conquest of Nothing!". Alongside this, he manifests an insurrectionary
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
point of view such as when he manifests that "Every society you build will have its fringes, and on the fringes of every society, heroic and restless vagabonds will wander, with their wild and virgin thoughts, only able to live by preparing ever new and terrible outbreaks of rebellion!".
He says he views "Only ethical and spiritual wealth" as "invulnerable.
This is the true property of individuals. The rest no!
The rest is vulnerable! And all that is vulnerable will be violated!" Novatore sees thoses similar to him as "anarchists. And individualists, and nihilists, and aristocrats." and as "the lovers of every miracle, the promoters of every prodigy, the creators of every wonder!"; "the enemies of all material domination and all spiritual leveling."
He adheres to nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
but denies "christian nihilism" as he sees it denies life. He says instead "Since the only serious people are those who know how to be actively engaged laughing." and so the individualists must go "Forward, for the destruction of the lie and of the phantoms! Forward, for the complete conquest of individuality and of Life!".
Novatore is critical of the individualism of Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
which he thinks "it is true that he fights against the state, but he fights against it only because the state as it is doesn’t function as he would like". He also sees that Spencer "does not penetrate or understand the mysterious, aristocratic, vagabond, rebel individual!".
And so he is critical of thinkers such as "Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
, Spencer and Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
" which he sees as sociologists who will tend to not being "able to understand the varied, the particular,... sacrifices the one or the other on the altar of the universal." Instead he takes sides with authors who are for him "the giants of Art and Thought like Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, Stirner
Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt , better known as Max Stirner , was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism...
, Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, Huysmans
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...
, Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
, Mallarmé
Mallarmé
Mallarmé can refer to:* Stéphane Mallarmé , French poet and critic.* François-René-Auguste Mallarmé , politician during the French Revolution....
...".
Influence
The notorious Italo-Argentinian anarchist Severino Di GiovanniSeverino Di Giovanni
Severino Di Giovanni , was an Italian anarchist who immigrated to Argentina, where he became the best-known anarchist figure in that country for his campaign of violence in support of Sacco and Vanzetti and antifascism.- Italy :Di Giovanni was born on March 17, 1901, in the town of Chieti, in the...
dedicated a poem to Novatore shortly after knowing about his death. Later he will establish the "Anarcho-individualist Group Renzo Novatore" which enters the “Italian Anti-fascist Alliance” in Argentina.
Renzo Novatore has received attention recently in post-left anarchy
Post-left anarchy
Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism's relationship to traditional leftism. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology in general also presenting a critique of organizations and morality...
and insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes the theme of insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and...
as can be seen in the writings of Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher
Wolfi Landstreicher is the former nom de plume of a contemporary anarchist philosopher involved in theoretical and practical activity...
. In his introduction to "Towards the Creative nothing" by Renzo Novatore, Landstreicher writes "It is difficult to find anarchist works in English that are at the same time "individualist" and explicitly revolutionary, that emphasize the centrality of the aim of individual self-determination to a revolution that will "communalize material wealth" as it will "individualize spiritual wealth". For this and other reasons I chose to translate Toward the Creative Nothing by Renzo Novatore and publish several of his shorter pieces." In an article called "Whither now? Some thoughts on creating anarchy" Wolfi Landstreicher writing as Feral Faun says "Then we can cease to be merely on the margins of society and will each, as unique wild beings, become the center of an insurrectionary project that may destroy civilization and create a world in which we freely live, relate and create as our unique desires move us. We will become--to quote Renzo Novatore again-- "a shadow eclipsing any form of society which can exist under the sun."
See also
- Individualist anarchism in EuropeIndividualist anarchism in EuropeIndividualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his or her will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems.European individualist anarchism proceeded from the roots laid by...
- Biennio rossoBiennio rossoThe Biennio Rosso was a two year period, between 1919 and 1920, of intense social conflict in Italy. The Biennio Rosso was followed by the extremely violent reaction of the Fascist blackshirts militia and eventually by the March on Rome of Benito Mussolini in 1922...
- IllegalismIllegalismIllegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
- Post-left anarchism
- Anarchism and Friedrich NietzscheAnarchism and Friedrich NietzscheThe relation between Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche has been ambiguous. Even though Friedrich Nietzsche criticized anarchism his thought proved influential for many thinkers within what can be characterized as the anarchist movement...
External links
- NovAtore.it Sito dedicato alla memoria di Renzo Novatore mostly in Italian with a small section in English and includes many of Novatore's works in English
- Archive of Renzo Novatore´s writings in english at the Anarchist Library
- "Twilight Dance" by Renzo Novatore a long poem
- "The expropiator" by Renzo Novatore an essay in praise of illegalismIllegalismIllegalism is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of individualist anarchism...
and individual reclamationIndividual reclamationIndividual reclamation is a form of direct action, characterized by the individual theft of resources from the rich by the poor...