Nanni Balestrini E-Book

Nanni Balestrini

• Herausgeber: Hatje Cantz Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: E-Books
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 183

Beschreibung

 » 30 years later we find that we are all still like we were in '45 .« Der Künstler, experimentelle Dichter und Schriftsteller Nanni Balestrini (*1935) beschreibt in fieberhaften Rückblenden die miserablen Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen im Nachkriegsitalien, sowie die grauenhaften und traumatischen Erlebnisse in einem SS-Kriegsgefangenenlager in Deutschland aus der Sicht eines desillusionierten, doch kämpferischen Überlebenden. Er berichtet detailliert und ohne Punkt und Komma. Nachdem er bei der Rückkehr in die Heimat wegen seiner politischen Gesinnung vielfach abgewiesen wird, findet er Arbeit in den Minen von Carbonia. Die rücksichtlose Ausbeutung der Arbeiter und die reuelosen Faschisten rufen Erinnerungen an den Krieg wach und entfesseln seine kommunistischen Ideale. Der Streik der Bergarbeiter von Carbonia wird  » sein Streik « , denn für ihn ist der Kommunismus die einzige Möglichkeit, sich mit Kameraden zu vereinigen und das Schweigen zu brechen.  » Carbonia (We Were All Communists) «  ist das Zeugnis eines Mannes der mehrere Leben in Sardinien, Deutschland und Australien gelebt hat und noch immer bedingungslos für Gerechtigkeit kämpft.    Sprache: Deutsch/Englisch  

Leseprobe

100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken

Nº070: Nanni Balestrini

Carbonia (We Were All Communists) /

Carbonia (Eravamo tutti comunisti)

dOCUMENTA (13), 9/6/2012 – 16/9/2012

Artistic Director / Künstlerische Leiterin: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Agent, Member of Core Group, Head of Department / Agentin, Mitglied der Kerngruppe, Leiterin der Abteilung: Chus Martínez

Head of Publications / Leiterin der Publikationsabteilung: Bettina Funcke

Managing Editor / Redaktion und Lektorat: Katrin Sauerländer

Editorial Assistant / Redaktionsassistentin: Cordelia Marten

Proofreading / Korrektorat: Stefanie Drobnik, Sam Frank

Translation / Übersetzung: Mike Harakis

Graphic Design / Grafische Gestaltung: Leftloft

Junior Graphic Designer: Daniela Weirich

Production / Verlagsherstellung: Monika Klotz

E-Book Implementation / E-Book-Produktion: LVD GmbH, Berlin

© 2012 documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH, Kassel; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern; Nanni Balestrini

llustrations / Abbildungen: p. / S. 1: II. documenta, 1959, Orangerie, installation view with / Installationsansicht mit Norbert Kricke, Raumplastik, 1958 (detail / Detail), photo / Foto: © Günther Becker/documenta Archiv; © Nachlass Norbert Kricke; p. / S. 2: © Nanni Balestrini

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ISBN 978-3-7757-3099-0 (E-Book)

ISBN 978-3-7757-2919-2 (Print)

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Cultural Foundation

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Nanni BalestriniUltimi, 2012Collage and acrylic on canvas / Collage e acrilico su tela40 × 40 cm

Nanni BalestriniCarbonia (We Were All Communists) / Carbonia (Eravamo tutti comunisti)

Nanni BalestriniCarbonia (We Were All Communists)

Translated by Mike Harakis

1

I actually went to work in the mines in Carbonia to run away from a girl I had got back from prison camp on August 29 I had got back home from Germany I had a bit of a holiday at home I was really emaciated I was really down I stayed at home all the time I didn’t do anything I read some newspapers some books some stuff I found lying around I passed the time like that but then I needed money and I couldn’t find any work and so I went to sea I traveled around just about everywhere the first steamer I took was called the Gennargentu it did La Maddalena–Cagliari Cagliari–Palermo Palermo–Trapani it transported wine and passengers and that was the first steamer I went on

it was a ship that used to go up and down the coast but now the war had destroyed almost all the ships and the crossings they made us do out there were real adventures once we went 36 hours without contact we ended up who knows where we were off Sicily and then a storm a terrible storm that lasted for days pushed us back toward Cagliari she was a really old ship the Gennargentu initially only used on the Palau–La Maddalena service a short trip but we had to do some real voyages with an old ship like the Gennargentu

I went on other steamers after that I was stopping off in La Spezia on July 14 and I was walking with some soldiers whose ship was in dry dock when a ship is in dry dock if they lower the flag at the stern the ship is out of commission and when it’s out of commission the crew goes to the barracks on land and they take everything down but when it’s fit to sail even if it’s in dry dock then there’s still the radio and so at midday the captain receives the order to let the water back into the basin and set sail immediately and so the ship departed leaving nearly all the sailors on land apparently because the navy back in Rome had heard that something was happening apparently

shortly afterward the workers also received the news that there had been the assassination attempt on Togliatti and 13,000 workers walked out of the shipyards and the factories they all walked out and they crowded along the waterfront after a while a column of police arrived and was immediately attacked at three different points there was an enormous throng of people workers and sailors all together and all were in a fury the first five vans were rolled over and burned the police used their machine guns and two workers fell wounded but the police officers were immediately swept away and had one casualty and five wounded they ran away and barricaded themselves in the station they all ran away

the police force no longer existed the crowd assailed the offices of the DC and the Front of the Ordinary Man the doors and windows were smashed in people rammed them with tractors and then went in and destroyed everything red flags flew everywhere and all the roads were full of enraged people there were groups of workers and armed sailors wearing red neckerchiefs everywhere there was this great anger this desire to put an end to it once and for all and you could tell that the moment had come after all these years of defeats of disappointment of humiliation the moment had come to assert our will and we knew that this was what was trying to be done all over Italy assert our will

it was not because of Togliatti because Togliatti was only an opportunity because there’ll be other leaders but everyone had started on their own accord to put an end to it once and for all and the partisan brigades had quickly reorganized weapons were seen everywhere even machine guns anti-tank guns everything was being pulled out but then the next day the PCI MPs arrived bringing orders to stop everything and that’s how without an organization everything ended the weapons were laid down and everything ended all over Italy it ended with a lot of dead and wounded and a lot of people in prison that was my last crossing then I went to work in the mines my last crossing at sea

when this period here was over I went back to my hometown I didn’t have a job for a while then a friend found me a job in Carbonia so I went there but before going to work in the mines I worked for a while in the woods planting trees for the Forestry Department it would take too long to say all that happened in that period anyway I went to Carbonia mainly because I had to get out of marrying this girl that’s the truth in short this girl was expecting and I didn’t have any money I didn’t have a job I didn’t have any prospects I was also really tense very touchy I had been like that since I had got back from prison I was like that

I wasn’t very well I felt strange I was also drinking a lot if I didn’t drink I couldn’t have a good time I was always sad and it took years before I was really able to get over prison but the thing that really made me angry was the fact that when I got back to my hometown I found that there were still all these Fascists for example there were these people who used to play these Fascist records Faccetta Nera and songs like that there was a place where you could dance and all sorts of people used to dance there rich and poor there was a big hall and everyone used to go there then once there were some Fascists who played these records and I didn’t want them to play those records

I told them not to play those records anymore but they played them again and so I went round there and I smashed all the records and the gramophone too I smashed all the equipment all of it into pieces out of anger I made a real mess that time my blood boiled when I heard something that had anything to do with fascism with Mussolini with all those things because I’d just got back from the prison camp in Germany there were three of us in my town who had been in the camps two had been with the Wehrmacht but me I had been with the SS and the SS was something totally different

and there I still found all those people who were in charge before half Fascist and half Christian Democrat as they are called now after the end of the war they had filled my head with all that stuff that everything had changed that there were no more bourgeois masters and that they shouldn’t be in charge anymore and instead they were still there they had only changed from black to white but they were still in charge for Christ’s sake and they were the ones who told me you are a Communist and so because I was a Communist in the town I couldn’t find a job anymore and I had to leave my town because I was a Communist

but I had already become a Communist before Germany when I was sent to sea during the war in the navy because I had some mates who were Communists they were Genoese sailors and even though I was very young then I’d understood one thing I’d understood that we couldn’t win the war because it didn’t concern us that war was a war that the Fascists and the bourgeois masters made us fight that nobody wanted to fight and we had all understood that then as our navigation became more and more difficult and more and more dangerous the enemy airplanes could sink us whenever they wanted we no longer doubted that the war was by now lost nobody doubted it

once in Naples we were on the quay where there were the anti-aircraft batteries in Pozzuoli and there were some soldiers in these batteries who were barefoot they only had some cloth wrapped round their feet and they came to us with their frightened thin faces asking for something to eat then I remembered when we had picked up some British pilots at sea who weren’t in such a bad way because they were all well dressed with boots and they had enough to eat and so we wondered but how on earth can we win a war that nobody wants to fight and that we don’t have the equipment for we don’t have any of the things we need not even shoes we don’t have anything

then once during the war I went back to my hometown for a few days when I was given leave because the ship had been bombed and partially destroyed and there in my town there were these Fascists who were still saying these things about winning and that we were going to win et cetera but I knew that that was only foolishness because by then I had realized that we were heading toward a rout that it was all over and that that was the best thing and then there was the fact that I knew I really hated the Germans for example when there were some of them on board with us I couldn’t stand them I didn’t like them they made me edgy I didn’t like the way they behaved

one time for example when we were going to Tunisia we were going to Bizerte and there were seven or eight Germans and two who were engineer officers had embarked with some equipment that wasn’t called radar back then but were those devices to see airplanes from a distance and these Germans were putting on airs they always kept to themselves but then when we were attacked by formations of American torpedo bombers and bombers and the bombs were hailing down all around us then these German engineers huddled there the whole time white as sheets and crying from fear hugging their equipment and this made us laugh in a way because we were hardened to those things in a way

I had made love to a girl and I cared about her I had met her when she was very young I was also really young back then she was a nice girl she had knitted me a sweater but I was very edgy back then because of the prison camp I had been in in Germany and in that period my situation was definitely not that of someone who was comfortable and had enough money to be able to get married I was penniless and jobless and it was to run away from that situation that I went to Carbonia but before that I had managed through a friend to find something to do on a farm in the woods planting trees for the Forestry Department in the woods

because her family was not badly off the girl’s father used to be a marshal in the Forestry Department and they had their own house she was a student in fact now she’s married to a doctor and she’s happy but then the girl’s brother who was a carabiniere found out where I was and came to the farm to see me but I immediately convinced her brother who had come with belligerent intentions all I did was take him to where I slept there in the wood and I asked him would you let your sister live here can’t you see that I don’t have anything I don’t even have a bed here

in fact I didn’t even have a bed I had laid two pieces of wood on the ground and put some branches and twigs on top of them and that’s how I slept on those two pieces of wood I don’t have no money I got nothing I told him I’ve got a job that just about gives me enough money to eat do you think it’s right that your sister marries someone like me and comes to live in a place like this and then her brother the carabiniere lost all of his belligerent intentions and was apparently convinced and I worked in that wood for another six or seven months I worked for the Forestry Department planting trees all around there until I managed to find something better and I went to work in Carbosarda as they called it then the mines in Montecatini I went to work in the mines

but I didn’t work as a miner for long only seven or eight days I went down there to dig I spoke a little German that I had picked up in Germany in the camp it wasn’t like I spoke that well I got by and there were some German engineers in the mine who were putting in some new equipment and so for that reason and because during the war in the navy I had been an electrician they transferred me straightaway I was transferred to Seruci and there I worked a bit with those Germans and then they gave me shifts as an electrician down there in Seruci and since then I have always worked as an electrician and that’s my job

I work as an electrician now too on the site where I’m working they’re digging a tunnel in a hill where the Rome–Florence high-speed train will pass there’s an enormous fully automated machine that digs into the hill and gives you a totally finished tunnel the American engineer told me that it’s the biggest digger in the world it has a really long conveyor belt behind it that goes on forever the digger moves on its own it’s all hydraulic it bores into the earth and digs out the whole height of the tunnel and the earth is automatically brought out and a space opens up inside the hill that is big enough to put the enormous cement arches that one after the other form the internal walls of the tunnel

there are the naphtha locomotives in the tunnel that take the carts back and forth it’s hell the noise is dreadful the air is stifling it’s worse than the black dust in the mines because of the smoke of the locomotives that are put under strain and that they hardly ever do maintenance it burns your eyes your throat your lungs and down there we earn 28 percent extra for working underground while you normally earn 48 percent because they say that it’s an agricultural area there but it’s not like we’re planting potatoes and onions in the tunnel it’s obvious that underground is the same thing in the city or in the country and so why shouldn’t they give us 48 percent and that’s why we’re starting the struggle

to begin with there’s the struggle for housing for the reduction of rent that has now spread to the whole neighborhood all you need to do here is look out of this window at the hideous houses in this neighborhood where they make us live to see what the living conditions are all these buildings look like badly built army barracks without a certificate of occupancy they say that there’s a slump and the rent we have to pay will go up but wages are very low and so it works out that they take back half of your wages just on rent that’s why we are angry and have the hate we have and that’s why we have to rebel against this state of things and first of all these pigs can forget about being able to carry on like this calmly stealing all this money from us and they can also forget about being able to throw us out of the houses when they want with their police

that’s why here now with this housing problem I say to those who want to fool themselves by waiting for government intervention I say that the elections the governments the parties the unions are all just a total waste of time all our experience has taught us that there’s only one way to solve our struggle and it is first of all that we all have to be united together in the struggle and then that we have to move forward with total determination and it has to be a violent struggle if we really want to win these are the three main rules that we have to always bear in mind and that we must never forget

this struggle in the district is a struggle of organization more than anything else it’s not easy for it to become a violent struggle of the masses like what happened in the mines in Carbonia or like what happens in factories or in other places where the workers are compact it’s a struggle that won’t mean there’ll be a big risk for us if it’s well organized of course if they start using tear gas and beating people up we too know how to answer to that it’s not like we’ll just sit there and take a beating we also have what we need to defend ourselves and we know what to do we too know how to use violent means if they make us if it’s necessary

after the struggle for liberation we didn’t continue with the struggle we’d started to lay at least the foundations of communism instead nearly 30 years later we find that we are still like we were in ’45 actually even further behind because back then there was the hope that things would change straightaway but now if you don’t start a determined all-out struggle things will go on like this forever because those who are in charge today are the same for Christ’s sake they’ve actually become stronger they’re getting better organized while they first made us fight their war and then they got us to do their reconstruction and then their economic miracle all of which they kept for themselves and now we have to bear the brunt of their oil crisis and so we always get it rammed up our asses

when there was the war I went into the military I went into the navy I had fought in the war until my steamer was broken in two by the bombs just off Pizzo Calabro and that’s how it caught fire it was a cargo steamer that hauled goods to Messina by which time Sicily had been occupied by the Allies and the Germans crossed the strait in Bette MZs they wanted to establish a bridgehead in Calabria but there was the Anglo-American aviation that had absolute dominion above them and then there was the fact that the Italian troops were in complete disarray which we could plainly see all around us and nobody wanted to carry on with that war we could plainly see that all around us

we had departed from Genoa we went to La Spezia then we stopped in Salerno where there had just been the heavy bombardments of Battipaglia and Salerno and it was totally deserted there wasn’t anybody around you didn’t see a soul in the streets in all of Salerno there was only a brothel open with two women inside then we found an abandoned little boy in a garden we gave him something to eat we brought him on board we wanted to take him with us but the commander didn’t want us to then there was also a small fire on the ship but anyway we managed to depart and from then onward there was endless fighting airplanes repeatedly attacked us until they hit us in Pizzo Calabro and there the ship was hit

we were in a convoy there were four or five steamers but we sailed separately for example in Salerno there were two steamers the other two arrived the next day we were armed with small-bore guns and machine guns but they weren’t any good only one steamer had a four-barreled German machine gun that was any good and when we reached Pizzo Calabro which is in front of Messina right there in front of the lighthouse there is a mountain and the Hurricanes came down from there they were the most feared fighter planes they were British fighter-bombers and they came from the part of the mountain where the sun was and they dived down and dropped their bombs from 400 meters they were bombs with fuses that made them explode when they reached a certain height