Luciano Bianciardi (1922–1971) and Carlo Cassola (1917–1987): Bianciardi, a native of Grosseto, and Cassola, who chose Grosseto as his home.
Luciano Bianciardi was born in 1922 in Grosseto, where he completed his studies, attending both middle school and high school. Later, he enrolled at the University of Pisa to study Literature and Philosophy. In January 1943, however, he was called to arms. During the final months of the Fascist government, he was stationed in Puglia, where he witnessed the dramatic bombing of Foggia. After September 8th 1943, he joined a unit of English soldiers as an interpreter, which took him to Forlì.
After the war, Bianciardi returned to Grosseto, resumed his studies, and graduated in 1948 with a thesis on John Dewey. He spent a few years teaching English in a middle school before becoming a professor of History and Philosophy at the same high school he had attended as a pupil. He also took on the role of director of the Chelliana Library in Grosseto. In 1954, he left Tuscany for Milan, where he joined Giangiacomo Feltrinelli’s project to establish the famous publishing house. However, by 1957, he was dismissed from Feltrinelli for “poor performance” and began working as a freelance translator and journalist. Over his career, he translated 120 novels and published an impressive 964 articles.
Bianciardi also pursued fiction writing. After Il lavoro culturale (1957) and L’integrazione (1960), he achieved great success with La vita agra (1962), published by Rizzoli. Set in Milan during the economic boom, the novel portrays the protagonist-narrator’s realization of the great illusion hidden behind the facade of prosperity. The novel’s fame was amplified by Carlo Lizzani’s 1964 film adaptation, starring Ugo Tognazzi and Giovanna Ralli.
In later years, Bianciardi moved away from contemporary themes in his writing, revisiting his passion for the Risorgimento with works such as La battaglia soda (1964), Aprire il fuoco (1969), and the posthumous Garibaldi (1972). In 1964, tired of the hustle of Milan, he relocated to Rapallo, Liguria, where he lived until 1970. He died in November 1971 in Milan, a month shy of his 49th birthday.
Carlo Cassola, though not born in Grosseto, became closely associated with the area. Born in Rome in 1917 to parents with deep ties to Tuscany (his mother was from Volterra, and his father, originally from Parma, had lived in Grosseto for many years), Cassola was the youngest of five much older siblings. A solitary and introverted child, he developed an early passion for reading, with Emilio Salgari and Jules Verne as his favorite authors.
He completed his studies in Rome, attending a classical high school. In 1933, he joined the Italian Novist Movement, a youth dissidence group against Futurism founded by Vittorio Mussolini, among others. That same year, he began contributing to the student magazine La penna dei ragazzi and made his literary debut in 1935 with poetry exercises.
Aware of his literary calling, Cassola chose to study Law at university to have time for writing. After graduating, he began teaching but was drafted into the military in 1941. Soon, he decided to join the anti-Fascist resistance. Between 1943 and 1944, under the alias “Giacomo,” he operated in the 23rd Garibaldi Brigade in the Volterra and Grosseto areas.
After the war, in 1948, he moved to Grosseto, where he became a History and Philosophy teacher at the local scientific high school, a position he held until 1971. The 1950s and 1960s marked the peak of his literary output, with works like Fausto e Anna (1952), Il soldato (1958), and his masterpieces La ragazza di Bube (1960) and Un cuore arido (1961). La ragazza di Bube won the 1960 Premio Strega and was adapted into a film by Luigi Comencini in 1964, starring Claudia Cardinale as Mara.
Cassola’s major works reflect his biographical experiences during the Resistance and post-war reconstruction, focusing on deep emotions, inner struggles, and personal relationships. His later works, including Paura e tristezza (1971), earned mixed reviews, with some critics accusing him of producing formulaic best-sellers. After leaving Einaudi, his subsequent works were published by Rizzoli, continuing to garner acclaim, including the Bancarella Prize in 1976 for L’antagonista and the Bagutta Prize in 1978 for L’uomo e il cane. Cassola died in 1987 in Montecarlo di Lucca.
Bianciardi and Cassola began to associate in the early 1950s in Grosseto, where they participated in the creation of thePopular Unity Movement, taking a stand against the so-called “fraud law,” an electoral law proposed by Mario Scelba to guarantee a 65% majority bonus to those who surpassed 50% of the votes. Together, they then devoted themselves to an investigative report on the living conditions of miners in the Maremma region. Initially published as a series of articles between 1952 and 1954 inl’Avanti! and later in 1954 inNuovi Argomenti, this work culminated in 1956 with the bookThe Miners of the Maremma, published by Laterza.
The essay is divided into two sections: the second part recounts the biographies of seventeen miners from the area—complete with information about their work performance, wages, occupational diseases, and political orientation—reconstructed through documentation gathered by the two writers travelling and meeting the workers. The first and main part of the book retraces the history of the lignite and pyrite mines—Gavorrano being the oldest pyrite mine in the Maremma—before focusing on the workers’ conditions, including low wages, union struggles, diseases, and workplace accidents. Regarding the history of the Gavorrano mine, Bianciardi and Cassola wrote:
“Since the mid-nineteenth century, an outcrop of “brucione”,’ that is, iron limonite, had been noted, and attempts were made to exploit it for metallurgy (a locality near Gavorrano, still called ‘I Forni,’ demonstrates this). But in 1898, workers from the ‘Praga’ company, conducting research in the area, discovered that the “brucione” was nothing more than the outcrop, altered by atmospheric agents, of a large deposit of pyrite. It was enough to dig into the hill at an elevation of 215 meters, and after advancing a few meters, they found themselves in the heart of a massive lens-shaped deposit enclosed in granite, which was followed at greater depths by an enormous deposit extending hundreds of meters below sea level. The deposit, as mentioned, was discovered at an elevation of 215 meters, but its peak was about 20 meters higher, and explorations conducted so far have found the mineral down to about 200 meters below sea level. The vertical extension is thus over four hundred meters, with millions of tons of pyrite already extracted and more to be mined for decades to come.”
Of several mining accidents, the most severe and tragically famous occurred in the Ribolla mine in 1954. On May 4th, at 8:40 in the morning, shortly after the first shift began, an explosion in the Camorra Sud shaft claimed the lives of 43 miners. Despite workers’ warnings about the poor maintenance of the shaft, the mine’s management ignored the concerns and forced the miners to descend for their shift.
With regard to Gavorrano, as well as Ribolla, Baccinello, and Niccioleta, Bianciardi and Cassola analyzed the phenomenon of “mining villages,” real residential centers built from scratch by the Montecatini company to house the miners. In addition to the original medieval village, new settlements, such as Filare and Bagno, were established further down the valley. The Miners stated: “Overall, we are convinced that the most advanced of the Maremma mining villages is Gavorrano: here the environmental situation is more complex. Gavorrano is an ancient town, of medieval origin (like almost all Maremma villages), perched atop a hill. When it became clear that more manpower was needed for the mine (the largest in Europe to date), the Montecatini company decided to build new houses along the road climbing from the plain to the village. First came Filare di Gavorrano, halfway up the slope, followed by Bagno, on the lower slopes of the hill. Bagno took its name from a thermal spring; now the miners’ cooperatives, the strongest in the Maremma, have built a swimming pool there, surrounded by their headquarters, stores, and a cinema. The road connecting the village at the top with the two settlements below is constantly traveled by miners’ motorcycles. In short, the village has gradually shifted downward, following the process of flatland development that modern economies are driving almost everywhere in the Maremma.”
Special attention is given by the two writers to denouncing the harsh and difficult living conditions of miners, particularly in Gavorrano. As reported in an article from Risveglio cited in The Miners: “There are jobs where lamps won’t stay lit due to a lack of air… there are hundreds of meters of tunnels where dripping water is so intense that miners must change clothes three or four times in eight hours… Occasionally, it’s true, engineers from the Royal Mining Corps come to inspect… but, poor fellows, they’re all nearsighted… they see nothing… But we, in Gavorrano, can tell; many comrades have already had to leave the mine, their health ruined forever.”