Una burbera parrhesia. Diaz, Venturi e la Rivista Storica Italaina

The "Rivista storica italiana" has decided to devote five essays to the late Furio Diaz. The first essay is by Marcello Verga, a former pupil of Diaz at the Scuola Normale of Pisa. Verga focuses on Diaz as a young man, starting from the encounter with Guido Calogero, his role as Mayor of Leghorn and as a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Verga also illustrates the development of his interests after he left the Italian Communist Party: historiography, the philosophy and politics of the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century France. Giuseppe Ricuperati examines the essay on Pietro Giannone which he submitted to the journal Società, but which was never published. Diaz, aggrieved by this rebuff, wrote to Palmiro Togliatti, the head of the PCI, who had encouraged Diaz to study the Enlightenment and its historiography (the article reproduces the text of two letters from Diaz to Togliatti). Girolamo Imbruglia stresses the importance of the encounter with Calogero. Antonello Mattone and Piero Sanna examine his intellectual and political biography. Edoardo Tortarolo focuses on Diaz's contribution to the "Rivista storica italiana". The unpublished article by Diaz on Giannone contains an interesting reflexion on the strengths and weaknesses of idealistic historiography on Giannone, underlining the role of Giannone's Triregno and his materialism.