‘One of the last secret maestros’: Nicola Chiaromonte between Europe and America

ABSTRACT

The article describes the transatlantic cultural mediation performed by Italian editor, critic and political activist Nicola Chiaromonte, focusing specifically on his relationships with figures from the mid-twentieth-century U.S. cultural formation known as the New York Intellectuals. Drawing heavily on unpublished correspondence and archival materials, it highlights how Chiaromonte – who in the 1930s belonged to influential Italian and French intellectual networks, as well as to the antifascist movement ‘Giustizia e Libertà’ – publicly and privately transmitted political ideas forged in the debates of the Italian antifascist diaspora and the intellectual matrix of interwar Paris to leftwing 1940s New York circles associated with literary and socio-political magazines such as Partisan Review (P.R.) and politics. After exploring Chiaromonte’s years as a refugee in Manhattan as a scene of formal and informal cultural mediation, it turns to his post-war role as co-editor of the Italian Congress for Cultural Freedom (C.C.F.) magazine Tempo Presente (T.P.), foregrounding this institutional role as a site of idea circulation and exchange that leveraged Chiaromonte’s transnational cultural knowledge and connections. The article emphasizes the significance of interpersonal relationships not only to Chiaromonte’s political vision but also as sites of transformational intellectual labour.

RIASSUNTO

Il presente saggio descrive la mediazione culturale transatlantica svolta da Nicola Chiaromonte a partire dai primi decenni del XX secolo, analizzandone in particolare i rapporti con i membri del circolo culturale statunitense noto come i ‘New York Intellectuals’. Attingendo a una corrispondenza finora inedita e a materiali d’archivio, il saggio evidenzia il ruolo di mediazione

svolto da Chiaromonte nella diffusione di alcune idee all’interno dei circoli della sinistra newyorkese degli anni Quaranta legati a riviste letterarie e socio-politiche come Partisan Review (P.R.) e politics. Mostreremo come Chiaromonte – che negli anni Trenta era stato coinvolto in influenti reti di intellettuali sia italiane sia francesci, nonché nel movimento antifascista

‘Giustizia e Libertà’ (G.L.) – diffuse sia pubblicamente e privatamente tra gli intellettuali americani idee politiche provenienti dai dibattiti della diaspora antifascista italiana e dal panorama intellettuale interbellico di Parigi. Dopo aver esplorato gli anni di Chiaromonte da rifugiato a Manhattan, ci rivolgeremo al suo lavoro nel dopoguerra come codirettore della Tempo Presente (T.P.), rivista italiana del Congress of Cultural Freedom. Metteremo in luce come questa posizione istituzionale abbia permesso a Chiaromonte di agire da nesso di circolazione e scambio di idee, grazie alle sue conoscenze e alle connessioni culturali transnazionali. Il saggio sottolinea l’importanza delle relazioni interpersonali non solo per la visione politica di Chiaromonte, ma anche come luoghi di lavoro intellettuale.

KEYWORDS:

• Nicola Chiaromonte
• New York Intellectuals
• Congress for Cultural Freedom (C.C.F.)
• exile
• transatlanticism
• Tempo Presente (T.P.)

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Nicola Chiaromonte
• New York Intellectuals
• Congresso per la Libertà della Cultura
• esilio
• transatlanticismo
• Tempo Presente (T.P.)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. Ascoli facilitated Chiaromonte’s passage and visa. P.R. originated in relation to the communist John Reed Club but dissociated from organized communism within its first years of existence. Its early debates with communist periodicals regarding the relationship between art and the official party line marked its identity. By the late 1930s, the P.R. milieu was engaging heavily with Trotsky. Always anti-Stalinist, by the early 1940s it continued to be influenced by Marxism but had begun advocating some liberal positions. On the New York Intellectual milieu’s intellectual positioning, see Wald (2017), Cooney (2004), Wilford (1995) and Jumonville (1991); also see Jewett (2011, 2016) and Hollinger (1996).

^2. Chiaromonte met Camus at the pier during his 1946 U.S. visit, subsequently ‘guiding him a bit around New York’; he also hosted him for meals and conversation with friends and attended Camus’s ‘The Human Crisis’ speech at Columbia University (Bresciani 2012, 305; Camus 1990).

^3. Despite its short five-year run and limited subscription base, politics developed fame in radical circles and constituted a point of reference for several later leftist magazines – including Dissent and Liberation, magazines conceived in its wake that became associated with the ascendance of civil rights, non-violent protest and the American ‘New Left’. Many came to associate Macdonald with politics and consider it his best work. See, for instance, Arendt (1968). Macdonald founded the magazine around the time he met Chiaromonte, after a tense departure from the editorial board at P.R. (Sumner 1996; Chiaromonte 1943; Swain forthcoming).

^4. The inaugural issue asserted Macdonald’s intentions to create ‘a center of consciousness on the Left’ that would evaluate events ‘with the yardstick of basic values’ and ‘broaden political comment … to include all kinds of social, technological, cultural and psychological factors’, including art and popular culture, finding ‘[m]ost political writing today … superficial because it limits “politics” too narrowly to the policies of certain parties and leaders, and … concerns itself too largely with the immediate future’ (Macdonald 1944, 6–7). ‘The Responsibility of Peoples’ opens with reference to Chiaromonte (Macdonald 1945a). ‘The Root is Man’ was born from conversations with Chiaromonte conducted in the wake of the atomic bombings (Macdonald 1946a, 1946b, 1947). Though criticized by Chiaromonte, ‘The Root is Man’ reflected Chiaromonte’s and Caffi’s interest in the political potential of small groups (Macdonald 1945b; Sumner 1996; Chiaromonte undated). Caffi’s correspondence with Chiaromonte also became an important content source for politics.

^5. E.A.G. participants Lamberto Borghi, Salevmini and Milano were likely brought in by Chiaromonte; the initiative also included Barrett, Elizabeth Hardwick, Sidney Hook, H.J. Kaplan, Alred Kazin, Macdonald, McCarthy, Nicholas Nabakov, Philips, Philip Rhav, Issac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz, Steinberg, Dorothy Thompson, Tucci and Bertram Wolfe. For an introduction to the C.C.F., see Saunders (2000), Scott-Smith (2002) and Warner (1995).

^6. Chiaromonte worked at U.N.E.S.C.O. from 1949–1951 but was deeply unhappy in the bureaucratic role. The Kaplan home was frequented by U.S. expats and visitors, including Stephen Spender, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Farrell, Abel, Philips and Hook. Abel recalls dining in Paris with Chiaromonte, Sartre and Beauvoir and frequenting circles that included Giuseppe Ungaretti, Wahl, Caffi and Chiaromonte.

^7. The C.C.F. originated from intellectual mobilization in response to pro-Soviet cultural programming which drew the attention and clandestine support of the U.S Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) – thanks to covert contacts between the U.S. government and the transatlantic intelligentsia. The C.C.F. Executive Committee was elected in Berlin in 1950 and included Arthur Koestler, Irving Brown, David Rousset, Silone and Carlo Schmid.

^8. In addition to Silone, Chiaromonte knew Malraux, Hook, Raymond Aron, Farrell and Manes Sperber. Later revelations of the C.C.F.’s C.I.A. backing deeply hurt Chiaromonte, catalyzing what friends considered a depression. His awareness of the C.I.A.’s clandestine support for the organization is uncertain.

^9. Koestler had opposed Chiaromonte’s nomination as Silone’s alternate, correctly recognizing that Chiaromonte was unlikely to support the sort of ‘effective action which must be the first goal of the Executive Committee’; as a result, Silone allegedly ‘came close … to offering his resignation’ (Scionti 2015, 316–317). The Italian committee also included several figures Chiaromonte already knew, including Adriano Olivetti (brother-in-law of Mario Levi), Salvemini and Venturi. It also included Ferruccio Parri, Elio Vittorini and Eugenio Montale, among others.

10 The conference ‘popularized the notion of the “end of ideology,” which posited the exhaustion of ideologically driven recipes for social progress in the West, replaced by pragmatic improvement through technological and scientific expertise’ (Scionti 2020, 90). It was therefore a political mobilization of the sort of pragmatist thinking and assumptions about science Chiaromonte had strongly opposed in New York. Chiaromonte knew Arendt, a close friend of McCarthy and Macdonald, from his New York circles. On Chiaromonte’s and Arendt’s relationship, see Carlucci (2011).

^11. Macdonald explained ‘my friend good friend, Nick Chiaromonte of T.P., printed the piece precisely because 1) he – and Silone – are most recalcitrant to [the C.C.F. Executive Committee in] Paris and love to show their independence (and indeed their contempt) of Josselson, Nabokov et al. and 2) they are much more critical of America (and of other aspects of the status quo, including DeGualle) than the Encounter boys and certainly far more so than the Paris office’ (Wreszin 2001).

^12. In addition to closer friends (like Schapiro, Arendt, Abel, McCarthy and Macdonald), U.S. intellectuals such as Fred Dupee, Lionel Trilling and Christopher Lasch saw Chiaromonte when they visited Rome (Philips 1983). Chiaromonte spent summers in Bocca di Magra from 1953–1970 and sat on the board of Amici di Bocca di Magra, an organization which also included Giulio Einaudi, Franco Fortini and Vittorio Sereni, among others (Marcenaro 2019; Macdonald 1961). The area near Bocca di Magra was frequented by many Italian intellectuals, including Calvino, Valentino Bompiani, Gianni Agnelli, Montale, Vittorio Sereni and Soldati. Chiaromonte became an especially important entry point to Italian intellectual life for McCarthy, as she visited him in Italy often and became acquainted with Moravia, Alberto Arbasino, Piovene, Calvino and Gaia Servadio, among others.

Additional information

Funding

Some of the archival research appearing in this work was supported by the Romeyne Robert and Uguccione Sorbello Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Amanda Swain

Amanda Swain has a PhD in twentieth-century U.S. literature and culture from the Department of English at the University of Chicago, where she was a Mellon Humanities Dissertation Fellow and a Doctoral Fellow affiliated with the Franke Institute for the Humanities. In 2023, she was the Romeyne Robert and Uguccione Sorbello Fellow. She is currently the Assistant Director at IES Abroad Milan, where she teaches and oversees academic affairs. Her scholarship explores mid-twentieth-century U.S. intellectual, literary and political cultures, with an emphasis on their transatlantic dimensions. Her research is published or forthcoming in American Quarterly, Modern Intellectual History and the ‘Intrecci’ series by Ronzani Editore.