Inquisitori, Don Abbondi e Italiani: Sciascia e la Storia della colonna infame

This article surveys the evidence of Sciascia” extensive, sustained interest in La storia della colonna infame and identifies at its base not only a moral meditation on the relationship between collective and individual histories, but also a rigorous celebration of individual responsibility. This is what greatly distances the rarely- understood text from the prevailing, too often self-absolving, national spirit. Sciascia finds in Manzoni’s explicit polemic against the individual who conforms to the will and identity of the collective (be it the majority or the general zeitgeist), and in the arduous, heroic individualism he depicts, the highest model of intellectual and civic engagement as well as the terms of his own contention with idées regues and the shortcuts they entail. Having already inspired Morte dell’inquisitore (1964), Manzoni” Colonna and its influence return significantly — between Affaire moro (1978) and La strega e il capitano (1985), and in a pointed series of critical essays — in a moment of serious crisis in Italian politics and the civic spirit of the nation.