Il numero di Agosto-Settembre 2008 - Associazione Nazionale ...

14 DIFESA ADRIATICA Agosto-Settembre 2008The Special Italian Identity of Venezia Giulia:reflections of the Great Historian, Ernesto SestanThe historian Ernesto Sesan (1898-1985) was born in Trieste to a middleclass Istrian family. In 1948 he becamea university professor of Medieval andModern History, and began teachingat the Normal High School of Pisa in1949, as well as being a contributor tothe prestigious “Enciclopedia Italiana”.Then, in 1954, he joined the historyfaculty of the Ateneo College of Firenze.Even today, his work entitled VeneziaGiulia. Lineamenti di storia etnicae culturale (Venezia-Giulia: Noteson Ethnic and Cultural History),published in Rome in 1947, isfundamental in its field, being an accurateand heartfelt study of the factssurrounding the history of histormented land of origin, up until thetragic epilogue of Istria’s being cededto Tito’s ex-Yugoslavia, sealed by thepeace treaty of February 10th, 1947.On March 7th, 2008, in Trieste, aconference dedicated to Sesan’s noblefigure was held: it was a studyconvention that analysed hisnumerous works. Stelio Spadaro,author of The Civil Culture of VeneziaGiulia: an anthology, 1905-2005 (LEGEditors, Gorizia, 2008) contains thePremise of Sesan’s second edition,published in 1965, a reflection bothrigorous and touching on the originsof the special kind of Italian identitythat exists in Venezia Giulia, as uniquein its expression as it was dramaticallymortified by the Yugoslav plans forannexation and the totalitarianCommunist regime that it suffered inthe second post-War period. WhenSesan’s book first appeared, in 1947,the epic events that had torn apart VeneziaGiulia were still very recent, andin fact continuing to take place, andSesan’s work was witness, in itsconclusions, to the shock wave thatstruck people, places and destinies,written with the intellectual honestyand scientific correctness of anauthentic master of History.p. c. h.It is not always clear to Italians ofother regions – and even less toforeigners! – what exactly the Italianlinguistic and cultural identity of VeneziaGiulia truly is. The postponementof half a century, that the Italians ofVenezia Giulia had to wait throughbefore they, too, could become part ofthe nation that had already become aunited entity; the bitter disputes, athome and abroad, over the so-called“Adriatic Matter”, (…) the never-endingciting of statistics and ethnic data; theconstant reference to Roman archwaysand Saint Mark’s lions (the symbol ofVenice) which, while raising theaverage Italian’s sense of nationhood,also worked against the perpetratorsof such propaganda, by giving theopposition the idea that Italian identityin the region was more historicalmemory than modern reality; (…); thefact that, when one passes through thisregion, one constantly meets Italiansof the most loyal and patriotic kind,who, though, have such atypical Italiansurnames; the existence of a strongattachment to certain juridical andadministrative institutions of the longgoneAustrian government, along witha certain diffidence towards theassimilation of Italian administrativeinstitutions; (…) all of these factors, andothers that could be added, still weighupon the usual judgement of the VeneziaGiulia Italian identity, as one ofspecial characteristics. And it is indeedspecial, but special as the Italianidentity of Sardinia is special, or thatof Sicily, or Piedmont, in this Italy ofours, so strongly attached to its regionalvariations. Judgements are wrong,when they place the Italian nationhoodof Venezia Giulia in a sort of secondhandcategory: it is wrong to view it assurpassed, or too recent, less noble interms of antiquity of origin and lessgrounded, with its roots, in time andin foundation; almost a colonial typeof identity, transplanted on the otherside of the Adriatic, as an expansionof central Italian nationality andnothing more. No concept could bemore false.Here we must underline the basictruth that Venezia Giulia, as an Italianregion, is Italian for the same reasons,and by effect of the same historicaldevelopment, for which Veneto,Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia,Campania, Puglia, etc. etc. are Italian.Its Italian identity is not a phenomenonof importation, such as the Swedes inFinland or the English in Ulster, but itis rather a native phenomenon, just asit is all over Italy. In Venezia Giulia,the imported culture was the ancientRoman culture, but this is true for allof Italy, without mentioning that the“Romanization” of certain regions ofItaly, as a contrast to the Greek identityof certain southern regions, was stillsuperficial or imperfect, when thecultural “Romanization” of VeneziaGiulia was already complete. TheItalian identity of Venezia Giulia , asthe Italian identity in general, is theresult, by now residual, of Romancultural identity in this area ofMediterranean Europe which is Italy,and which forms a unique block, interms of origin, development, andquality, with Italian identity, withoutulterior specifications.But it is also a marginal Italianidentity, placed, that is, at the extremelimits of the territorial expansion of theItalian identity, where it comes intocontact and contrast with other ethnicgroups and languages, and it peters outand dies: this is its marginalcharacteristic, one of living on theborder, that makes it difficult to beunderstood by other Italians of morecentral regions: for these, language isfixed, and not subject to fluctuations,contrasts, and symbiotic fusions whichare familiar phenomena for peoplewho live at the margins of any linguisticsphere. Because language, along withthe national culture expressed with thatlanguage, is a living organism, but onein which the forces which preserve andtransform it are constantly active,constantly producing new forms, butalso progressing and regressing withinits own limits of space, meaning itsterritorial expansion.Venezia Giulia is one of the spheresin which this centuries-old matter ofItalian identity is carried out, and thisis a major aspect of its historical interest(…) it is a region which did not have auniform historical development (…);the reason for historical interest consistsof its being a region of transitionbetween three worlds: Latin, Germanicand Slavic, living together, in variousdoses, according to time and place,number, force of expansion, culturalsubstance, ability to civilize, tendingin vain towards a sort of superiorsynthesis that the progressive nationalconscious has tried to champion.This age-old matter has itsmilestones, which can be summarizedas follows: “Romanization”; thepassage from Roman identity to Italianidentity; Germanic infiltration; Slavicexpansion and importation; theVenetian push for domination; theattempts of the Hapsburgs to re-Germanize; the Italian Risorgimentoand Irredentism; the rise of Slavicnationalism; the victory of the Italianidentity and the forced solution of theSlavic problem attempted by Fascism.Ernesto Sestan(traduzioni di Lorie Ballarin)Even today, members of amateur historical societies re-enact the life of Italianand Austrian soldiers in the trenches, as in this photo taken near Monfalcone (Gorizia)Trentino-Alto Adige, near Moena,an Italian trench from the First World WarPost card circulated by the “National League”, an Italian association committed to propagandaand assistance for Italians of the Eastern Adriatic who were Austro-Hungarian subjects.This card shows a portrait of Dante Alighieri and a quote from the Divine Comedy.Printed in Trieste in 1899, illustrated by Giuseppe Barison