Enzo Martucci (1904–1975)

ENZO MARTUCCI – THE TRAGIC END.
Renzo Ferrari and S.E.Parker

From Renzo Ferrari has come news of the death on July 17, 1975, of Enzo Martucci (Enzo da Villafiore) at the age of 71. Born at Caserta (Naples) on March 20, 1904, Martucci became an anarchist at the age of 16 and ran away from his bourgeois home and studies. In his wanderings around Italy he met Renzo Novatore (Ricieri Abele Ferrari , an anarchist individualist, poet and illegalist who was killed in 1922 in a battle with the police) and from then on devoted himself to the advocacy of anarchist individualism. He was imprisoned by the fascist regime and its democratic successors: He wrote several books, including Put Qltre (1947), La Bandiers dell’ Anticristo (1950) La Setta Rosse (1953, new edition 1969). From 1965 until the year before his death he issued his own paper, virtually written by himself. Each issue had a different title in order to evade the Italian printing laws. Several translations of his articles were published in MINUS ONE (among them the notable “In Defence of Stirner”) and a biographical article on him by Stephen Marietta appeared in No.17, Jan-Feb.1967.
Martucci had a strong and impetuous temperament and was a difficult person to get on with. All too often his writings digressed into attacks on people he believed to have wronged him and, like many individuals who have suffered real persecution, he tended to have a paranoiac attitude towards life. Nevertheless he had a first class mind and I, for one, profited from his ideas even when I disagreed with him. Two or three years before his death he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for reasons which he never divulged. After his release, he wrote to Stephen Marlette on January 8, 1974 announcing his intention of reviving his paper. This he did shortly afterwards, publishing one final issue with the title of La Ribellione. From then nothing was heard from him. Why this was so may be found in the following account of his death by Remo Ferrari, son of his friend and mentor Reno Novatore:

I learned of his death by chance and it was not possible to find out in which way it came about. I know that he suffered from psoriasis, an illness that often tormented him, but I cannot say if this was the only cause. His life was always irregular, restless, assailed by the material needs of daily existence. Endowed with A vast culture, a profound and critical thinker, he could not but be against each and every-one. Nevertheless, profiting from his frequently desperate condition the Spider of the Church of Rome attempted by every means to catch him in its trap. He was invited to Assissi where, in the presence of authoritative priests, it sought to negotiate his conversion to Christianity in exchange for a comfortable living. There Martucci had a moment of bewilderment and weakness. He wrote a book entitled Out of the Abyss that afterwards, recovering himself, he did not publish, but the manuscript of which fell into the hands of those who had ordered it. r. Jesuit who had lent him money took the work as a pledge for the restitution of the loan. Martucci was unable to repay the loan and the manuscript was kept by him who had helped so Christianly. But here one would have to go into more detail and this, in a hastily written letter, is impossible. In brief, from that time Martucci, though continuing to struggle, could not free himself from their clever trap and remained there, I believe, until the end….

Martucci also believed too much in the disinterestedness of some Christian Democrats of the Italian government who appeared topelyhim attention. Andreotti, the present President, when he was Minister of Defence showed himself to be gen reue to the point of entrusting Martucci with the task of an – . ry into agrarian reform,putting all at his disposal: money and means: And so Martucci, the irreducible critic, finished up as a victim of Christian charity!

With the late Renate Latini he had two daughters and a son. Under whose protection are they now? And his book Il Diavolo Ha Pinto, for which he could never find a publisher,into whose hand has it fallen? These arc questions I cannot answer because I do not know where to write for clarification and the one who told me of his death was unable to sear much more. In Italy, anarchist individualist thought
has now completely disappeared…