The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore

by Renzo Novatore, Wolfi Landstreicher (Translator)

Renzo Novatore is the pen-name of Abele Rizieri Ferrari who was born in Arcola, Italy (a village of La Spezia) on May 12, 1890 to a poor peasant family. Unwilling to adapt to scholastic discipline, he only attended a few months of the first grade of grammar school and then left school forever. Though his father forced him to work on the farm, his strong will and thirst for knowledge led him to become a self-taught poet and philosopher. Exploring these matters outside the limits imposed by the educational system, as a youth he read Stirner, Nietzsche, Wilde, Ibsen, Baudelaire, Schopenauer, and many others with a critical mind.

Renzo died on November 22 (1922), at the hands of the police.

We are very excited to present this collection of all of the known writings of Renzo Novatore, newly translated by Wolfi Landstreicher. It contains the fiery polemics, poetry, and willful play that readers of "Toward the Creative Nothing" are already familiar with. For those new to the writings of Renzo prepare for an emotional cavalcade of egoism, nihilism, and hatred for democratic mediocrity. To life!

Genres: Poetry, Politics, Philosophy, Italian Literature

273 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Renzo Novatore is the pen-name of Abele Rizieri Ferrari (May 12, 1890 – November 29, 1922), an Italian individualist anarchist, illegalist and anti-fascist poet, philosopher and militant, now mostly known for his posthumously published book Toward the Creative Nothing (Verso il nulla creatore) and associated with left wing futurism. His thought is influenced by Max Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Palante, Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Schopenhauer and Charles Baudelaire.

Reviews

[xDEAD ENDx · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find it incredibly important to see Novatore's writings published. When so much anarchist history is based upon "classical" syndicalist and anarcho-communist ideas, egoism and individualism are often (intentionally) obscured. Novatore, writing in the early twentieth century, makes it clear that he is a steadfast individualist, only acting for himself and divorcing from the collective when it does not suit him. Many of the pieces are poetic, but at the same time retain the fiery rhetoric of an iconoclast prepared to live and die for anarchy.

Highly recommended, especially for those struggling to find a form of anarchism that resonates where councils, meetings, and organizations do not.

[CivilWar · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know... This kind of writing was tolerable as, say, a short pamphlet, like Towards The Creative Nothing and even then it was nothing special, but 273 pages of it is really, really stretching it.
Novatore is not really a philosopher, since he presents no actual arguments or criticizes anything. He just makes himself and those like him to be superior and nothing else. His disdain for revolution in favor of simple petty crime is laughable, and in wanting to negative every system, he ends up negating himself too because at the end of the day he believes in absolutely nothing but doing small crimes in order to "live intensely".

This prose too, it's meant to be poetic, but it's largely composed of extremely cheesy and overblown self-importance and half-thought metaphors. So it fails both as philosophy and as poetry.

There's not much to it, Novatore's willingness to disregard all forms of authority is admirable, but his pretensions and delusions of grandeur don't just get in the way, they consist of most of the content.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma coletânea de textos de um poeta anarquista de origem italiana, juntamente com uma pequena biografia e comentários pós-morte. Desertor, astuto, criminoso, iconoclasta, mata-fascistas e engenhoso, nestes textos podemos saborear nada mais nada menos de que um recheio de pura potência, humor e escárnio, destruição e criação. Um livro que só pode ser apreciado pelos mais sensíveis e até diria, somente pelos loucos. Não é algo que recomendaria ao ser humano comum, é requerido mais do que inteligência para desfrutar das palavras de Renzo Novatore.

[Woke · Rating 3 out of 5]

And if I call myself an individualist anarchist, an iconoclast,
and a nihilist, it is precisely because I believe that in
these adjectives there is the highest and most complete expression
of my willful and reckless individuality that, like an
overflowing river, wants to expand, impetuously sweeping
away dikes and hedges, until it crashes into a granite boulder,
shattering and breaking up in its turn. I do not renounce life.
I exalt and sing it.

***

I—anarchist and individualist—don’t want to and
cannot embrace the cause of atheist communism, because
I don’t believe in the supreme elevation of the masses and
therefore I refuse the realization of Anarchy understood as a
social form of human life together.
Anarchy is in free spirits, in the instinct of great rebels,
and in great and superior minds.

***

These two passage nicely encapsulate Rezno’s ethics and style, which could be described as a synthesis of Nietzschean aristocracy of the soul, Wilde’s dandyism, above all, Stirner’s egoism—a philosophy--the latter, I must confess, I know more of through its critics.

As becomes increasingly clear, Rezno privileges the individual over society; the anarchists, the outcasts, the poets, the queers , over the malleable working class—a pack of exceptional equals (Union of Egoists) over what he views as impossible or even undesirable collectivism. Rezno equates the proletarian with Nietzsche’s all-too-human herd animal and deserves as much disdain as the decadent bourgeois swine.

To paraphrase, “I’ll fight the State alongside you, but no way in Hell am dying for any cause,” or more aptly, phantom—the church, the Fatherland, society, etc. It’s easy to see how Rezno became a poet laureate the post-political, post-Left. Were he a lesser poet, the repressed Marxist in me would have made stopped at passages where places socialism and fascism and the same footing, but then I remember the history of Italian fascism.

The prose is youthful and romantic, often employing the pathetic fallacy--with the Nietzschean imagery of heights and depths, peaks and abysses flowery language of Baudelaire--the translation, smooth. Curious to know how Rezno would have turned had his death not been so premature, this poet of the fall. 3 1/2 stars

[Stephanie McGarrah · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I understand that since Individualism is neither a school nor a party, it cannot be “unique”, but it is truer still that Unique ones are individualists. And I leap as a unique one onto the battlefield, draw my sword and defend my personal ideas as an extreme individualist, as an indisputable Unique one, since we can be as skeptical and indifferent, ironic and sardonic as we desire and are able to be. But wen we are condemned to hear socialists more or less theorizing in order to impudently and ignorantly state that there is no incompatibility between Individualist and collectivist ideas, when we hear someone stupidly try to make a titanic poet of heroic strength, a dominator of human, moral, and divine phantoms, who quivers and throbs, rejoices, and expands himself beyond the good and evil of Church and State, Peoples, and Humanity, in the strange flickering of a new blaze of unacknowledged love, like Zarathustra’s lyrical creator, pass as a poor and vulgar prophet of socialism, when we hear someone try to make an invincible and unsurpassable iconoclast like Max Stirner out to be some tool for the use of frantic proponents of communism, then we may certainly have an ironic smirk on our lips. But then it is necessary to resolutely rise up to defend ourselves and to attack, since anyone who feels that he is truly individualist in principle, means, and ends cannot tolerate being at all confused with the unconscious mobs of a morbid, bleating flock.”

Oh boy, is this relevant. The internet may have destroyed more in depth understanding of Egoism, as new followers of Lord Almighty Stirner learn their dogma from memes, the new language of ignorant imbeciles doomed to follow others, or a become a charlatan leading these idiots to believe in a communist Egoism that is merely a sheep dressed in wolves clothing, ready to defang Stirner by censoring his harsh words for Humanity in order to make him palatable for their followers and new recruits. I gave this book such a high rating for a number of reasons. First off, there just isn’t enough Egoist material out there that isn’t dense academic work. If your a lover of prose and don’t mind a bit of aggrandizing language, don’t hesitate to pick this up. As you read through the book, you can see his ideas evolve as he distances himself further and further from social justice and proletarian organizations. By the end he is a raving lunatic denouncing everything and everyone and seems a lot less interested in fighting for even the black flag he also romanticizes. His influences are obvious: Stirner and Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde and Bruno Filippi. He lived a full and dangerous life before dying in a shootout with the police, which is someone I, and hopefully you, can’t help but admire. The short piece on Individualism that the above quote is taken from alone is worth giving this book high praises.

Novatore touches on something very important: that humanity isn’t sacred and that it is the biggest phantom of all holding back the individual from escaping slavish conditions in the name of bettering ‘society.’ This is enough to recommend this book to anarchists disillusioned with activism and its attendant politics. To merely be against humanism is not fascism, even if some fascists want to use it to spout their disgusting ideology. Humanism is a Western concept that has been the shit legacy of Christianity and capitalism, it’s aim is to erase those on the fringes and integrate them into the global society, remake us all into ‘global citizens’. But anarchists, like Novatore, must unshackle themselves from the grovelling populace, not for anybody else, not to spend an eternity unshackling others from their own chains, an impossible task, but in order to live the freest lives possible, even under these trying circumstances we find ourselves in today.

[6655321 · Rating 4 out of 5]

like i appreciate this as "breaking with the history of insisting all anarchist history is about unions and being to good and kind for this world and trusting the wrong people" but like, is it bad to say that i absolutely hate poetry and it is the worst part of Nietzsche and the worst part of Novatore (who likes Nietzsche a lot).

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This small collection was translated by my old friend, and former roommate, who gave me a copy at or around the time of its publication. Twelve years later, I finally read it (never give a book to a librarian!). I must admit it didn’t have much to surprise me – a few conversations with Wolfi told me pretty much what to expect, and if anything my imagination made it more interesting than the reality of reading it. Novatore was an individualist anarchist at the beginning of the twentieth century, and all these poems and articles were written during the years 1917-1923. He is enamored of Ibson, Wilde, Nietzsche, and, of course, Stirner, and if you have a passing familiarity with those authors, you can guess what he’s going to say well in advance. It struck me as ironic, actually, that individualist anarchism, which ought to be the most liberating of philosophies, seems to result in so much predictable conformity. For the most part, he speaks in broad metaphor (not to say “platitudes”), and it’s hard to get ahold of any specifics in his writing. Some of the more interesting bits are when he takes up his sword to attack a contemporary – at least then he gets specific about current events, which as a historian I find interesting. Unfortunately for my interests, there is really only one piece in which he talks much about the rise of Fascism in Italy.
This review looks somewhat harsher than I intended. It isn’t terrible, and if you’re interested in anarchist writing or radical poetry, this is a solid example of that. If you’re new to this sort of thing, this would probably be a breath of fresh air or at least stimulating challenge to your previously-held ideas. It just didn’t offer me much I hadn’t already gotten from “My Own,” Wolfi’s old zine/newsletter, which I heartily recommend.

[Fortuna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal... A book so filled with such a raging intensity that it can't help but pull the reader in with strong claws into wanting to read more, to understand the man behind the words, to want to reach the same summits and the same darkness he had.

[Aritra Ahamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is the rage, and not the depth, of Nietzsche in Novatore's writings. Much of his writings are simply 'pamphlet literature' full of repetitive themes and an angry excitement that becomes utterly boring for the readers after reading only a few of his essays.