Family Background and Humour in the Writings of Rinaldo De Benedetti

applyparastyle “fig//caption/p[1]” parastyle “FigCapt” Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019, pp. 439–525 © 2019 Ephraim Nissan - DOI https://doi.org/10.3726/PHIL042019.18 2019 Materials Family Background and Humour in the Writings of Rinaldo 4 De Benedetti, with an Interdisciplinary Analysis of “Racconto occitano” about Castelmagno in the Alps around 1910 00 Ephraim Nissan 439 London 525 Abstract Rinaldo De Benedetti, also known by his pen names Sagredo and Didimo, was mainly known because of his long career as a science journalist in Italy. He managed to 2018/2019 write and publish even under the racial laws, with the connivance of a publisher in Milan. His being in a mixed marriage probably enabled more successful survival tactics. Rinaldo De Benedetti also was a literary writer, publishing as such in old age, and his memoirs have been published posthumously. His childhood in Cuneo, as the son of a secular Jewish family, comes across in his memoirs. In particular, we translate and discuss aspects of a short story of his (which has only previously appeared in a communal publication), set around 1910 and whose protagonist was a relative Amadio Momigliano, faced with the mayor and councillors of Provençal hamlet of mountaineers in Piedmont’s western Alps, who came on visit on a Saturday of all day, decided to become Jewish because the parish priest, opposing their drunken dancing in front of church on the day of the patron saint, had challenged them to do that much. Momigliano alerted the diocesis, and the parish priest was ordered to con- Contents done dancing. That episode is part of a long campaign against dancing, which in that period in France pitted the clergy against some mayors. Whereas in the Kingdom of Italy, before PHILZeitschrift für Germanistik0323-79822235- World War I, there was a decades-long struggle pitting, e.g., bishops and province prefects (it was precisely in Piedmont that the archbishop of Turin was imprisoned in 1850 and then 1272Peter Lang GmbH 439 exiled to France), arguably the awkward episode described in “Racconto occitano” is better explained with reference to the state of affairs at the municipal level in France, as far as 2019_17_Nissan_2 439 clerical but also anticlerical Brittany. Materials 439 1. Introduction Family Background and Humour in the Writings of Rinaldo De Benedetti, with an Interdisciplinary This study in is Italian, Romance, and Jewish Italian studies,1 as well Analysis of “Racconto occitano” about Castelmagno as concerning Piedmontese Provençal communities of the Cuneese Alps. in the Alps around 1910 439 1 Some expertise in traditional Jewish literature (in particular, Talmudic references) is also involved. Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 440 Ephraim Nissan The interdisciplinary interplay is between the history of textual genres (sci- entific journalism, literary writing,2 and autobiographical writing), history, and folklore or popular culture (the latter, on the one hand in respect of ethnic stereotypes, and on the other hand in relation to aspects of Church history, in particular, late antique to modern attitudes to dancing, as well as the relations between the clergy, at both the parish priest and diocesis level, and local administrations, in both Italy and France, in the early years of the 20th century. As for history, we are concerned with Italian and French history of the 20th century, of Italian history between the country’s unification and the eve of the First World War, as well as of the Fascist Ven- tennio, the racial laws and Holocaust, and the after-war period, especially in respect of the history of publishing. We are going to pay special attention to a particular short story based on family memories, published posthumously (reproduced here by kind permission, translated passage by passage, and analysed). We show that this is an important document for understanding social dynamics around 1910 at the junction of southwest Piedmont and France’s Alpes-Maritimes, in respect of ethnic, language- and faith communities against the backdrop of strengthened secularism in the public sphere in both Italy and France. Interestingly, it appears to be the case that it is to the relations between mayors and the low clergy in France in those years that we are to primar- ily look, rather than to the strained relations of the “Italia dei prefetti” with the clergy in years that saw further confiscation of church property (arguably in partial emulation of French governments during the secular- ist revenge following the Dreyfus Affair, in the mid-1910s), that we are to look, when trying to make better contextual sense of the surprising, indeed comic events in an Alpine hamlet as described: a pugnacious parish priest challenged the parishioners to become Jews, if they were to continue their drunken dancing of men and women in front of the shrine on the very day of town’s patron saint; in those times of illiteracy up in the mountains, the mayor and councillors took up the challenge. On a Saturday, from the upper settlement in their valley, down dale they went, to meet an honest and esteemed, as well as very devout Jewish merchant they knew. The Catholic servant (she was versed in Jewish ritual requirements) warned 2 Literary writing by Rinaldo De Benedetti in his old age, but also (because of his pennames) Ugo Foscolo’s Notizia intorno a Didimo Chierico (A Report about the Cleric Didymus), and writings by Galileo Galilei. Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Family Background and Humour in the Writings 441 them he would not desecrate the Sabbath discussing business. But they had come for something else. To his amazement, they asked to be con- verted to Judaism. Then they explained why. He went to the bishopric of Cuneo, which gratefully took the cue and pacified the townspeople. This “Introduction” is followed with the following sections: 2. “Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Ancestry and Relatives”; 3. “Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Early Life”; 4. “Rinaldo De Benedetti During the 1930s, and During the Racial Laws”; 5. “Rinaldo De Benedetti after the Second World War and up to his Death”; 6. “Rinaldo De Benedetti as a Literary Author”; 7. “The Short Story about Amadio De Benedetti and the Mountaineers of Castelmagno”; 8. “A Discussion of the Geography of ‘Racconto occitano’”; 9. “A Discus- sion of the Bone of Contention in ‘Racconto occitano’: Dancing in Front of a Church, Popular Religion, and Attitudes”; 10. “More Concerning Amadio Momigliano, According to Arnaldo Momigliano”; 11. “A Parallel of a Pas- sage from ‘Racconto occitano’ in the Memoirs of Rinaldo De Benedetti”; 12. “On Some Other Passages from the Memoirs of Rinaldo De Benedetti”; 13. “Freethinkers and Socialists”; 14. “Concerning the Story ‘L’orecchio di porco’ from Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Memoirs”; 15. “Concluding Remarks”. 2. Rinaldo De Benedetti’s Ancestry and Relatives Rinaldo De Benedetti (March 1903 – January 1996) was a science reporter and a science popularisation writer. He also was a literary writer and a poet, and some of his literary output in prose is humorous. Arguably a short story of which I provide a translation in this section belongs in the same category as the best prose conveying Jewish humour in the 19th and 20th centuries. For part of his output, De Benedetti used the pen-names Sagredo and Didimo (the latter name is stressed on the antepenult). His memoirs are entitled Memorie di Didimo, and are humorous; rather than a continuous autobiography, they are a sequence of shortish chapters (stories written at different times) which provide sketches or events or of themes. Rinaldo Lazzaro De Benedetti was born in Cuneo, a city in Piedmont, into a Jewish family. He had a Jewish middle name, Lazzaro: Lazzaro De Benedetti was his paternal grandfather. The father, Celestino De Bened- etti, was a socialist by conviction, and an insurer by profession; he was Philology, vol. 4/2018/2019 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 442 Ephraim Nissan from another town in Piedmont with a Jewish community: Casale Monfer- rato. The mother instead was Giuditta Momigliano, the daughter of Salo- mone Momigliano; she died in childbirth while her only child, Rinaldo, was aged two, and his father later wed Linda Cavaglion, from whom he had a daughter and a son. Rinaldo attended a Jewish kindergarten, and was taught how to read Hebrew while he was aged four. The philosopher Felice Momigliano (Mondoví, Piedmont, 1866 – Rome, 1924)3 was a maternal uncle to Rinaldo De Benedetti, and a cousin to the famous historian of antiquity, Sir Arnaldo Momigliano (Caraglio, Piedmont, 1908 – London, 1987). Arnaldo Momigliano’s Jewish forename was Aronne. His full name was Arnaldo Dante Aronne Momigliano. He was raised in the same house in Caraglio where his great-uncle Amadio or Amodio Momigli- ano lived (Mondoví, 1844 – Caraglio, 1924), a businessman and landowner who was a strictly observant Jew, conversant with the Talmud and the Zohar (a major mystical book) who taught Arnaldo Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible, and had him learn by heart the Book of Proverbs and the Maxims of the Fa- thers (Pirkei Avot). This was much more than the typical education in Jewish matters that Italian Jews of his generation used to receive. Rinaldo De Bene- detti devoted to Amadio Momigliano a humorous short story, about when, around 1910, the inhabitants of an entire little valley, angry at their priest who had forbidden dancing near the church’s entrance on their saint’s day, deter- mined to become Jewish and turned to Amadio Momigliano.

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