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 of which recounts the biographies of seventeen local miners — complete with information about their work performance, wages, occupational illnesses, and even political orientation. These biographies were reconstructed through the compilation of documentary evidence by the two writers, who travelled and met the workers directly.
The first and main part of the book, however, retraces the history of lignite and pyrite mines, focusing on the workers’ conditions, including low wages, union struggles, illnesses, and accidents in the workplace. “The Ribolla mine was discovered in 1843 and, until around 1890, had sporadic and very modest production, around 500 tons per year. In 1895, new shafts were opened, and annual production increased to 24,000 tons. Even then, fires and combustion were frequent, as Ribolla has always been the most difficult and troubled among the mines in the Maremma,” write Bianciardi and Cassola in Minatori.
Among these incidents, the most serious and tragically infamous was the one in the Ribolla mine in 1954. On May 4th, at 8:40 in the morning, shortly after the start of the first shift, an explosion in the Camorra South shaft killed 43 miners. Despite the workers’ warnings about the poor maintenance of the shaft, the mine’s management refused to listen and forced the miners to begin their shift.
In a 1956 letter to Laterza, Bianciardi wrote: “The Ribolla disaster, I believe, is one of the most important events in my life: from the moment of the explosion until the victims’ funeral, I never left the old houses in the village. That disaster left a mark on both Cassola and me: the book is implicitly dedicated to those who died, our miner friends.”
From these, memorable figures emerge, particularly Otello Tacconi, a character who would later appear in La Vita Agra. “Today in Ribolla, there is a definite sense of liquidation. The last time we visited, in August 1955, we encountered Tacconi Otello right at the village entrance. Small, stocky, and bare-chested, he was shoveling dirt on the roadside. He had been hired by the provincial administration as a road worker after several months of unemployment. He had once been one of the best and most combative workers; he was appointed secretary of the Internal Commission. Then Montecatini fired him for denouncing in the press and at a public meeting the dangers of the mine and the cultivation methods being used there. […]
Recently, in connection with the trial for the Ribolla disaster, Montecatini summoned him to Milan and promised him ‘concrete financial support’ on condition that he declared his earlier statements had been driven by the fervour of the ‘election climate.’ A compromise statement, as you can see, and in exchange, Tacconi would have had long-term stability and security for himself and his family. But Tacconi did not sign and never would.”
Bianciardi knew the miners of Ribolla because the village was one of the destinations he visited as director of the Chelliana Library, travelling there with the Bibliobus, a van that—accompanied by the notes of Luci della Ribalta—brought books to the countryside, where they otherwise would never have arrived. Since Bianciardi was not well-versed in library cards and loans, many books were never returned. However, the writer from Grosseto firmly believed: “A stolen book is better than an unread book.”