Between private matters and public engagement: Conflicted partisan fighters in the resistance novels of Vittorini and Fenoglio

Abstract

In this article I explore the representation of partisan fighters provided by Elio Vittorini and Beppe Fenoglio in their novels Uomini e no (1945) and Una questione privata (1963), through the lens of Hannah Arendt's reflection on totalitarianism’s exploitation of the weakened boundaries between public and private, and on partisans’ reappropriation of the public realm during the Resistance struggle. I argue that partisan characters Enne 2 and Milton display the psychological burden derived from their choice to engage in the public realm, and from the subsequent necessity to act and use violence in order to pursue the goal of Liberation from totalitarianism. Basing these literary figures on their own engagement in the Resistenza, Vittorini and Fenoglio offer a counterargument to Arendt's claim that the private becomes a sad and opaque dimension for those who reappropriated the public – their paper partisans experience the unbearable weight deriving from public engagement, and struggle with a desire to find refuge, respectively, in their personal and interior dimensions.