It was 1971, I was approaching my sixteenth birthday when I first heard about the “Paris Commune” and in a bookstore I bought “The Paris Commune” by Lenin, from the series Le Idee by Editori Riuniti. It struck me deeply, the text certainly played its part in my then political education. The story of the insurrection, Lenin’s assessment of its strengths and mistakes, together with those of Marx and Engels, had a great effect on me; I felt like one of them, a communard I mean, an eager, inexperienced revolutionary of 1971. Now, 50 years later, rivers have flowed under the bridges and rather than being inflamed by the memory of that experience, I am moved by the sacrifice of those women, those young people, and those men. In the second half of last year, I wanted to study those months of 1871; it felt like a debt to be paid. To whom? To no one, except my own conscience, which still preserves a space for “La Commune de Paris.” I am not a historian, but I still feel compelled to talk about it and remember it with some notes. This is not a historian’s task, I repeat, it is rather a poetic action that accompanies an artistic production I started with Lia. Both will continue in the coming months.
