On the creation of a communist poetic tradition through the review <i>Officina</i>

This article examines the cultural and literary review Officina to show how, between 1955 and 1959, the editors (Roberto Roversi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Francesco Leonetti, Gianni Scalia, Angelo Roman?? and later Franco Fortini) worked to construct a non-party communist poetic tradition. These authors used Antonio Gramsci’s recently published- Prison Notebooks in order to re-read the Italian literary tradition (from Giacomo Leopardi to Giuseppe Ungaretti), through re-considering the relationship between intellectuals and society and between poetry and politics. The article uses the activities of the Officina group to analyse the cultural dominance of the notionally apolitical models then in force: in particular, Crocean idealism, novecentismo and Hermetic poetry. Through a direct reading of the editors’ articles and their correspondence, the fundamental traits of this new poetic tradition that Pasolini defines as ‘Neo-experimentalism’ are outlined. Analysis of the magazine’s development is intertwined with discussion of the events of 1956 and the effects in Italy of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The article argues that the shift in the cultural-political debate in 1956 marked a turning point in Officina’s work. From here on it became more involved in intellectual protests, but failed to reach a larger audience and to join forces with parties or with the masses.