Gramsci’s prison letters persist through deprivation without self-pity
Evidence
These letters are an extraordinary document of human tenacity, and are justifiably reckoned one of the classics of modern Italian literature. Occasionally querulous, more often resigned, they rarely lapse into self-pity but instead are buoyed up constantly by an urgent desire to communicate information, ideas, projects or simply affection. Most striking of all is the sense they give of continuing perseverance in the face of deprivation and appalling physical suffering. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 232
Categorization
- XREF: The stoic, will-driven perseverance here echoes the Sardinian peasant-identity roots of Gramsci’s thought and prefigures the ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’ stance that later frames hegemony theory as a practice of endurance.