Free: Coming of Age at the End of History

by Lea Ypi

As a result of these events, which he only ever watched on Italian or Yugoslav television, my father had developed his fascination with revolutionary groups, those who rejected legal rights and parliamentary democracy altogether and believed that without the violence of the people one could never overcome the violence of the state. He was fascinated by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who’d set up a publishing company and whose stance he said he admired because it had catered neither to the family’s capitalist interests nor to the democratic rhetoric of the liberal state. He told me the story of how Feltrinelli had died carrying his own explosives during an operation of the Gruppi di Azione Partigiana revolutionary group. He described his death with such narrative precision and refined psychological detail that you would almost think he had been present and had narrowly escaped. He told me the story before I could really understand what the operation was about, or why it was necessary to blow up electricity pylons to spark a revolution.