Abstract
This chapter examines the prison experience of Antonio Gramsci, focussing on his awareness of the changes to his ‘self’ which he had feared from his observation of the effects of prison life and his struggle to maintain his relationship with his wife Giulia and their sons. Her silences tormented him. Using not only Gramsci’s Letters from Prison, but those of Tatiana, his sister-in-law and favoured correspondent, and unpublished letters from Giulia his wife, I shall also look at her situation. Did Gramsci come to realise that the ‘other prison’ he complained of, the ‘unforeseen’ one, the loss of control, the effects of prolonged illness, the sense of isolation, hostile pressures, might also describe Giulia’s life?
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References
The translation of the letters from Giulia and Tania Schucht is my own.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Dott. Francesco Giasi, director of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci in Rome for his permission to use archive material from Giulia Schucht. I am indebted to him and to Luisa Righi and Eleonora Lattanza for their interest and useful discussions, and to Giovanna Bosman, Cristina Pipitone and Dario Massimi for their help in negotiating the archives and the library.
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(A.G., T.S.) Gramsci, A. and Schucht, T. (1997) Lettere 1926–1935. Eds. Natoli, A. Daniele, D. Torino: Einaudi.
(L.P.1) Gramsci, A. (1994) Letters from Prison. Vol. 1. Ed. Rosengarten, F., Trans. Rosenthal, R. New York: Columbia University Press.
(L.P.2) Gramsci, A. (1994) Letters from Prison. Vol. 2. Ed. Rosengarten, F., Trans. Rosenthal, R. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Nicholson, J. (2020). The ‘Other’ Prison of Antonio Gramsci and Giulia Schucht. In: Parsons, J., Chappell, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Auto/Biography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31974-8_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31974-8_18
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