{"id":12671,"date":"2015-01-03T10:04:10","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T14:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=12671"},"modified":"2015-01-03T10:04:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T14:04:10","slug":"antonio-gramsci-i-hate-the-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/antonio-gramsci-i-hate-the-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Antonio Gramsci “I Hate the New Year”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gramsci\"<\/a>This text was first pub\u00adlished in\u00a0<\/em>Avanti!, Turin edi\u00adtion, from his col\u00adumn \u201cSotto la Mole,\u201d Jan\u00adu\u00adary 1,\u00a01916.<\/em><\/p>\n

Every morn\u00ading, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year\u2019s day.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I hate these New Year\u2019s that fall like fixed matu\u00adri\u00adties, which turn life and human spirit into a com\u00admer\u00adcial con\u00adcern with its neat final bal\u00adance, its out\u00adstand\u00ading amounts, its bud\u00adget for the new man\u00adage\u00adment. They make us lose the con\u00adti\u00adnu\u00adity of life and spirit. You end up seri\u00adously think\u00ading that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new his\u00adtory is begin\u00adning; you make res\u00ado\u00adlu\u00adtions, and you regret your irres\u00ado\u00adlu\u00adtion, and so on, and so forth. This is gen\u00ader\u00adally what\u2019s wrong with\u00a0dates.<\/p>\n

They say that chronol\u00adogy is the back\u00adbone of his\u00adtory. Fine. But we also need to accept that there are four or five fun\u00adda\u00admen\u00adtal dates that every good per\u00adson keeps lodged in their brain, which have played bad tricks on his\u00adtory. They too are New Years\u2019. The New Year\u2019s of Roman his\u00adtory, or of the Mid\u00addle Ages, or of the mod\u00adern\u00a0age.<\/p>\n

And they have become so inva\u00adsive and fos\u00adsil\u00adis\u00ading that we some\u00adtimes catch our\u00adselves think\u00ading that life in Italy began in 752, and that 1490 or 1492 are like moun\u00adtains that human\u00adity vaulted over, sud\u00addenly find\u00ading itself in a new world, com\u00ading into a new life. So the date becomes an obsta\u00adcle, a para\u00adpet that stops us from see\u00ading that his\u00adtory con\u00adtin\u00adues to unfold along the same fun\u00adda\u00admen\u00adtal unchang\u00ading line, with\u00adout abrupt stops, like when at the cin\u00adema the film rips and there is an inter\u00adval of daz\u00adzling\u00a0light.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I hate New Year\u2019s. I want every morn\u00ading to be a new year\u2019s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. No day set aside for rest. I choose my pauses myself, when I feel drunk with the inten\u00adsity of life and I want to plunge into ani\u00admal\u00adity to draw from it new vigour.<\/p>\n

No spir\u00adi\u00adtual time-serving. I would like every hour of my life to be new, though con\u00adnected to the ones that have passed. No day of cel\u00ade\u00adbra\u00adtion with its manda\u00adtory col\u00adlec\u00adtive rhythms, to share with all the strangers I don\u2019t care about. Because our grand\u00adfa\u00adthers\u2019 grand\u00adfa\u00adthers, and so on, cel\u00ade\u00adbrated, we too should feel the urge to cel\u00ade\u00adbrate. That is nauseating.<\/p>\n

I await social\u00adism for this rea\u00adson too. Because it will hurl into the trash all of these dates which have no res\u00ado\u00adnance in our spirit and, if it cre\u00adates oth\u00aders, they will at least be our own, and not the ones we have to accept with\u00adout reser\u00adva\u00adtions from our silly ancestors.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Trans\u00adlated by Alberto Toscano<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This text was first pub\u00adlished in\u00a0Avanti!, Turin edi\u00adtion, from his col\u00adumn \u201cSotto la Mole,\u201d Jan\u00adu\u00adary 1,\u00a01916. Every morn\u00ading, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1617],"class_list":["post-12671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever","tag-antonio-gramsci"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12671"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12674,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671\/revisions\/12674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}