Andy Merrifield, Gramsci’s Goblin

It’s easy to miss the Fondazione Gramsci, tucked away off the street in a little building along via Sebino, at number 43A, in Rome’s Trieste neighborhood. Its glass door entrance lies at the end of a discreet courtyard, modestly beyond the gaze of any undiscerning passersby. On the afternoon of my visit–a mild, gray, late January day–things were brightened by the warm welcome I’d received. I said I was a big Gramsci fan, had written a few things about him, and came curious about the Fondazione’s resources. I’d heard about their extensive library, crammed with every Left book under the sun, in scores of languages, which I now saw filling the glass cabinets on the walls of the main biblioteca. I said I wanted to tap Gramsci’s digital archive as well, especially those legendary prison notebooks, whose real thing, I knew, were housed in a special vault somewhere on the Fondazione’s premises…

I saw the notebooks when they were in London in 2017.