Vittorio Di Russo. The charisma of arousing a historical movement from a scattered youth.
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"Mondo Beat Numero Unico" (Issue 1) - November 15, 1966 - Edition: 860 copies.
Contributors and comments on the articles:
page 1-
- The "Mondo Beat" logo was drawn by Enea, a 17-year-old Milanese boy who traced it with a pin on a mimeograph matrix.
- Translation of what is written under the Mondo Beat logo: Management, Administration, Advertising, Milan, Piazza del Duomo, at the equestrian statue of (King) Vittorio Emanuele II - This issue is sponsored by the world citizen Vittorio Di Russo, mimeograph assistant and street vendor - Cooperation open to all, with the exception of mental masturbators.
This strip and the editorial were written by Melchiorre Paolo Gerbino (M.P.G.). In the editorial, I advocated nonviolence as a necessity for the survival of humanity, therefore the need for a new morality and, in perspective, the development of a higher human nature.
page 2-
- Continuation of the editorial by Melchiorre Paolo Gerbino (M.P.G.);
- On the same page 2, "NON POETICHE MA POETI" (No poetics but poets) by Edoardo, on the need for a renewal of Italian culture. Edoardo was a colleague of Melchiorre Gerbino in the Alitalia airline.
- On the same page 2, a quote by Boris Vian.
page 3-
- "FENOMENO BEAT" (Beat Phenomenology) by Renzo Freschi, a 18-year-old Milanese who attended high school.
page 4-
- Continuation of "FENOMENO BEAT" (Beat Phenomenology) by Renzo Freschi. This high school student harbored the hope of achieving literary fame, so he had tried to participate in the literary salon of Fernanda Pivano, but he had been ignored. Then Renzo Freschi came to Mondo Beat, where we welcomed everyone. And this attitude of welcoming everyone would have been Mondo Beat's great strength and great weakness.
page 5-
- Continuation and end of "FENOMENO BEAT" (Beat Phenomenology) by Renzo Freschi.
Renzo Freschi was too naive to realize that Fernanda Pivano was doing business by promoting a deafening blah blah about the Beat Generation. Thus, Renzo Freschi wrote pages and pages on the Beat Generation, almost entirely copying what Fernanda Pivano had already written. The comical side of this situation was that Renzo Freschi believed he was an avant-garde intellectual.
- On the same page 5, "PERCHÉ MI RIFIUTO DI DIVENTARE SOLDATO" (The reason why I don't want to undergo compulsory military service) by Ivo della Savia. He was a Sacco e Vanzetti anarchist. In this article, Ivo della Savia rigorously set out the reasons for his objection.
page 6-
- Continuation of "PERCHÉ MI RIFIUTO DI DIVENTARE SOLDATO" (The reason why I don't want to undergo compulsory military service) by Ivo della Savia. He lived in hiding, supported by the Milanese anarchists.
page 7-
- Continuation and end of "PERCHÉ MI RIFIUTO DI DIVENTARE SOLDATO" (The reason why I don't want to undergo compulsory military service) by Ivo della Savia.
Ivo della Savia was the first Italian conscientious objector to compulsory military service for ideological reasons. Before him, some Jehovah's Witnesses for religious reasons.
- On the same page 7, a miscellany of quotes on pacifism, by Pope John XXIII, Albert Einstein, Arthur Koestler.
page 8-
- "I BUDDISTI E LA GUERRA. Lettera di un risuscitato a J.P. Sartre" (Buddhists and war. A letter from a resurrected man to J.P. Sartre) by Ho Huu Tuong (translation from French into Italian by Gerbino).
This was an open letter to Jean-Paul Sartre written by a Vietnamese intellectual who was forced by circumstances to live among Buddhists during the Vietnam War.
page 9-
- Continuation of "I BUDDISTI E LA GUERRA. Lettera di un risuscitato a J.P. Sartre" (Buddhists and war. A letter from a resurrected man to J.P. Sartre) by Ho Huu Tuong.
At the time of publication of this open letter, the Vietnam War was in one of its worst escalating moments.
page 10-
- "OMBRE AL SOLE" (Shadows in the sun) by Renzo Freschi.
As you can see, Renzo Freschi was incontinent. He wrote endlessly and insisted on being published.
page 11-
- "MILANO BEAT" by Giuseppe Poppi Ranchetti, the famous set designer. He attended Mondo Beat in the beginning. In this writing, the young Poppi expressed his annoyance of being in Milan among robotic people.
- On the same page 11, some verses by Nazim Hikmet, who had died 3 years earlier.
- On the same page 11, Renzo Freschi again, with "FUOCHI D'ARTIFICIO" (Fireworks).
Note. This issue was made up of 14 pages, 4 of which were entirely covered by the writings of Renzo Freschi, besides a fifth one, which was partially covered by his poem "FUOCHI D'ARTIFICIO". Now, if from Renzo Freschi's writings we could have removed the 3 pages of "FENOMENO BEAT" and the page "OMBRE AL SOLE", this issue would have been 10 pages, instead of 14, and it would have been more characterized and stylish. But Mondo Beat, by its constitution, accepted anyone who followed the commandments of no drugs, no theft, no violence, and, consequently, Mondo Beat magazine never refused any article submitted for publication. Amazing, huh!?
page 12-
- "ANIME PRATICHE" (Practical souls) and "RESTIAMO NEL NOSTRO MONDO" (Let's remain in our world) by Cina (China). In these two poems there are the bitter memories of someone who had been locked up in a reformatory in the tender years of his life. Cina, whose real name I never knew, was a close friend of Vittorio Di Russo.
page 13-
- "IL PRESIDE TARDO MENTALE" (The mentally retarded principal) by Gennaro De Miranda. In this writing, there was a harsh criticism of the school education system in Italy. Gennaro De Miranda, a 36-year-old Neapolitan, was the Magazine's oldest contributor.
- On the same page 13, "IL SIGNOR TODISCO E L'AMORE" (Mr. Todisco and Love) by M.P.G. (Melchiorre Paolo Gerbino).
page 14-
- Continuation and end of "IL SIGNOR TODISCO E L'AMORE" (Mr. Todisco and Love) by M.P.G. (Melchiorre Paolo Gerbino);
- On the same page 14, "IL SIGNOR DI TOSCO E LA GUERRA" (Mr. Di Tosco and War) by Vittorio Di Russo.
With these two writings, Melchiorre Gerbino and Vittorio Di Russo, respectively, made fun of Alfredo Todisco, a journalist from the Corriere della Sera who wrote nonsense about the Beats. Note that this writing by Vittorio Di Russo is the only one published in Mondo Beat magazine. In fact, Vittorio carved and painted assiduously but did not write much.
- On the same page 14, "QUIZ", signed "La Redazione" (The editorial staff). It was written by Melchiorre Gerbino. It was a controversy with the editor Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who exploited the Beat phenomenon by marketing protest slogans printed on buttons to be stapled on clothes.
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Concerning Giuseppe Pinelli
About Giuseppe Pinelli, who helped us print this first issue of the Magazine and flanked the Movement throughout its path, I want to describe the death, or rather, the assassination, which occurred when the Contestation spread throughout Italy and France.
On the night between December 15 and 16, 1969, Giuseppe Pinelli was killed with a karate blow to the neck, in a room on the fourth floor of the Milan police headquarters. Later, his body was thrown out of a window, to simulate suicide.
Giuseppe Pinelli's murder occurred three days after a bomb had exploded inside the Banca dell'Agricoltura, Piazza Fontana, Milan, which killed 17 people and wounded 88. This was the first act of the so-called terror strategy (strategia del terrore), conceived by the Vatican and the NATO to end the Contestation in Italy.
What we know for sure about the death of Giuseppe Pinelli is that, during 3 days, in the police headquarters, they had put pressure on him to obtain a false testimony, as they wanted to blame an innocent anarchist for the terrorist attack in the Banca dell'Agricoltura. The innocent anarchist was Pietro Valpreda, who had been selected as a scapegoat because he was a double of Antonio Sottosanti, known as Nino il Fascista (Nino the Fascist), who had actually placed the bomb in the Banca dell'Agricoltura.
At the police headquarters, they wanted Giuseppe Pinelli to declare that on 12 December, that is to say the day of the explosion of the bomb, he had seen the anarchist Pietro Valpreda in Milan, who usually lived in Rome, so that Valpreda could be blamed as the executor of the attack and all suspicion regarding Sottosanti would have been removed. Obviously, at the police headquarters, they knew that Sottosanti was the culprit. As I said, the attack on the Banca dell'Agricoltura was the first act of a strategy, a state strategy, aimed to contain mass contestations with the explosion of bombs in banks, stations, squares crowded with people, and blaming the anarchists, or the fascists, or both together, while the bombs were placed by the Italian secret services. In fact, a few years later these events, magistrate Giancarlo Stiz, who had to shed light on what had happened, wrote that all the traces had led to NATO.
Returning to Giuseppe Pinelli, he had been under pressure for 3 days and 3 nights at the police headquarters, but, as he personally knew Pietro Valpreda and Nino il Fascista, he understood what the imbroglio was and, at one point, he said aloud who the real culprit was. At that, the police commissioner Luigi Calabresi, fearing that their plan would be thwarted by Pinelli, killed him with a blow of karate in the neck. The body was then thrown out a window to simulate suicide.
In the room where the murder took place, there were Giuseppe Pinelli and five other people, including four police commissioners, Luigi Calabresi, Antonino Allegra, Antonio Pagnozzi, Marcello Guida, and a lieutenant of carabinieri, Sabino Lo Grano, who compiled a report on the murder of Giuseppe Pinelli and handed it to a general, his superior. In turn, based on the testimony of lieutenant Sabino Lo Grano, this general made a public statement on the murder of Pinelli and he did so because, in Italy, bad blood always flows between the carabinieri and the police. The statement made by this general, which is consistent with what I am declaring here about the death of Giuseppe Pinelli, cannot be erased, since it was published in the newspapers.
Furthermore, a few days after the explosion of the bomb in the Banca dell'Agricoltura, everyone in Milan knew that the culprit was Nino il Fascista. He was a gay, and a few days before the bomb exploded, he told a group of very young guys that he would have done something that every newspaper in the world would have written about. These young guys quickly ended up in a rehabilitation institute and when the bomb exploded, having understood that was placed by Nino il Fascista, they informed their guardians. Then the news spread. The publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli declared: "Sottosanti places the bombs but they blame the anarchists" and this statement was published verbatim by the weekly L'Espresso. But after 50 years of trials, the judiciary having found no culprit, the relatives of those who died in the explosion in the Banca dell'Agricoltura were ordered to pay the court costs. Italian jesters are famous, especially those with wigs.
Antonio Sottosanti, nicknamed Nino il Fascista (Nino the Fascist)
