Fifteen Things I Learnt About Beppe Fenoglio (1922-63), Italian Resistance Author,
from Donatella C. (Museum Curator) When I Went to Visit Fenoglio’s Old House in Alba
and Which I Didn’t Put into My PhD Thesis

By Dr Ian Seed

1. His father, Amilcare, an atheist, ran the family butcher’s from their house. His mother, Margherita, a Catholic, sold condoms under the counter.

2. As a twelve-year-old, Margherita was sent as a domestic servant to Marseilles, but wept and wept until she was sent back home.

3. Beppe often quarrelled and broke up with Luciana, his fiancée. Sometimes he wouldn’t stop weeping until a mutual friend got them back together.

4. Luciana was faithful to him after he died, but not while he was alive.

5. Beppe was jealous of Cary Grant and tried to imitate him with the overcoat he wore and in the way he held his cigarette.

6. Luciana’s family was much wealthier than Beppe’s. She lived on the other side of the square from Beppe, the posh side. They could see each other from their balconies.

7. After the war, Beppe illegally kept hold of his rifle, pistol and British army belt, ignoring the Allies’ demand that all weapons be handed over. Like many other partisans, he was ready for the call if the Fascists tried it on again.

8. But he also held on to them because he was a romantic who spent the rest of his life reliving the experience of the Resistance, including all its traumas, through his writing.

9. Beppe’s role in the Resistance was a minor one, but he was the only partisan his friend and commander Piero Ghiaccio said he could rely on one hundred percent.

10. ‘Schegge di bronzo’ – bronze shrapnel. Not just one of Beppe’s metaphors: the church bells, almost next door, are made of bronze and are ear-splittingly loud.

11. Contrary to popular opinion, Beppe was not anti-clerical. He had a deep respect for the clergy, and that is precisely why, in spite of the conformity of small‑town 1950s Italy, he refused to get married in church. As a non‑believer, he did not want to insult the local priest by acting hypocritically.

12. In one of the photos, Beppe and Luciana are wearing trousers and skirts made from the same material. ‘Si usava molto in quei giorni.’ That’s what people did in those days. From whence the expression, ‘cut from the same cloth’.

13. Donatella knows the Fenoglios well. When her phone rings, its author’s daughter, Margherita. Giving me a complicit smile, Donatella tells her that she’s with an Englishman who’s come all the way to Alba for his PhD research.

14. Margherita, who works as a lawyer and who was born in the year her father died, doesn’t look her age, Donatella tells me, wondering with envy how Margherita keeps herself looking so young.

15. When it’s time for the museum to close, she invites me outside to smoke a cigarette. Beppe kept smoking right up until his death from lung cancer, she says, even though he wanted to stop. I gave up years ago myself, I say, leaning my face forward so that she can light the cigarette she’s given me. It’s cold, isn’t it? she says. Our cigarettes glow in the oncoming evening.

Citation:

Ian Seed, ‘Fifteen Things I Learnt About Beppe Fenoglio (1922-63), Italian Resistance Author, from Donatella C. (Museum Curator) When I Went to Visit Fenoglio’s Old House in Alba and Which I Didn’t Put into My PhD Thesis’, Notes on Literature: For Readers and Writers, www.notesonliteraturechester.blogspot.co.uk [accessed Day Month Year].

About the Author:

Dr Ian Seed is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Department of English, University of Chester. He is programme leader of the BA (Hons) Creative Writing, on which he teaches the modules: Life Writing; Poetry: Other Voices, Other Forms; Writing Poetry for Publication; Writing the Past; and The Writing Project.

On the MA Creative Writing: Writing and Publishing Fiction, he teaches on the modules: Writing Novels for Publication; Getting Published; and The Writing Project.

He is editor of the Department of English’s online magazine Pandora’s Inbox and general editor of its sister print magazine, Pandora’s Box.

Ian’s books of flash fiction and prose poetry include New York Hotel (2018), Identity Papers (2016) and Makers of Empty Dreams (2014), all from Shearsman. Distances (2018) was published by Red Ceilings. His short stories include Italian Lessons (LikeThisPress, 2017) and Amore Mio (Flax, 2011). Work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry (Valley Press, 2019), The Best Small Fictions 2017 (Braddock Avenue Books) and The Forward Book of Poetry 2017 (Faber and Faber).