On trial

Demographic decline and an increasingly ageing population are two factors that are radically shaping the policies and outlook not only of Italy, but of the whole of the West. The elderly hold power firmly in their grasp, whilst young people are reduced to a minority – and not even a particularly combative one – crushed by a future that seems increasingly devoid of opportunities and full of nothing but dangers, as the relentless rhetoric on artificial intelligence also insists on suggesting, perhaps precisely because it is the brainchild of those governments of the elderly, fearful that something might finally change for real. Erri De Luca has always lived, both in his writing and beyond, within a radical nostalgia for youth as an ideal and as the potential pinnacle of existence. A youth which, in his case, was one of fierce struggle and yet, even then, already tinged with nostalgia, almost as if foreshadowing an imminent defeat because it was still set within a twentieth-century world, at a time when the twentieth century itself was calling for its own total exhaustion. Certainly, at least back then, no one would have imagined that this defeat would extend to what today takes the form of premature ageing, with the young people of yesteryear leading a world that is in decline, yet still holds out. It is also on these premises that the novel Sotto processo is based, a work that in reality takes the form more of a moral fable. Sotto processo is the dramatisation of a trial, that of a handful of young people against an old man, an exemplary figure of a world that refuses to come to an end. The volume, accompanied by illustrations by Paolo Castaldi, is followed by a number of scattered essays centred on the concept of civic conscience, which bears a strong resemblance to the language of Erri De Luca, who, year after year, has become increasingly solemn, almost to the point of dryness, to the extent of draining away every slightest nuance. The author moves through the pages as if suspended in a fragile balance, for in some respects he inevitably finds himself – due to his age and stature – comparable to the old master, yet also close to, if not fully aligned with, the spontaneous and urgent boldness of twenty-somethings. This balance, however, appears to dissolve as De Luca assumes the role of judge, using the trial to seek a radical form of salvation. Like the ‘old guard’, the author comes from a long history, but like the young people, he no longer seeks any future, only a possible present – a presentable coherence that brings peace to the past and meaning to the present.

Erri De Luca
: On Trial
, Feltrinelli, 172 pp., 18 euros