Edited and translated by Joseph A. Buttigieg
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
In the latter part of 1996, Columbia University Press published the second of a projected five- volume, integral English-language translation of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Joseph A. Buttigieg, whose labors have resulted in an invaluable contribution to Gramsci studies. Like his counterparts in Germany, France, Mexico and several other countries, Buttigieg has assumed the task of providing not only an accurate translation of the Prison Notebooks but also critical notes and commentary that go far beyond what Valentino Gerratana provided in his four-volume Italian edition published in 1975. In other words, while drawing much information and certain interpretative notes from Gerratana, Buttigieg has added many new notes and has expanded on existing ones with a view to helping the English-language reader to penetrate Gramsci's densely analytical and richly allusive writing. Whenever desirable, he also includes in his notes passages from Gramsci's Letters from Prison, and from critical essays that have appeared in recent years, which serve to enrich the already abundant research done by Gerratana.
Readers of Volume I (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992) will recall the way in which Buttigieg has organized the material of his great project, which is repeated in Volume II. The 736 pages of Volume II are arranged as follows: a four-page preface; the complete text of Notebooks 3, 4, and 5 (pp. 3 to 402); informative and critical notes for these three Notebooks (pp. 405 to 705); a guide to Gramsci's Notes by title or opening phrase (pp. 707 to 718); and a Name Index (pp. 719 to 736). The sequence of notes by title or opening phrase allows the reader to find the specific topics that are of special interest to her/him. These consist of proper names, the titles of topics to which Gramsci returns throughout the Notebooks, such as "Father Besciani's Progeny," "Past and Present," and "Marx and Machiavelli," as well as a large number of miscellaneous topics. The Name Index to Volume II reveals that among the persons to whom Gramsci devotes a great deal of attention in Notebooks 3, 4 and 5 are Benedetto Croce, Dante, Francesco De Sanctis, Fredrick Engels, Giovanni Gentile, Machiavelli, Alessandro Manzoni, Marx, Mussolini, and Georges Sorel. These names reflect Gramsci's strong interest in these Notebooks in literature and philosophy, the nature and role of intellectuals, and popular culture. An especially important aspect of Notebook 4 is the predominance of philosophical issues connected to Gramsci's elaboration of a [END PAGE 27] philosophy of praxis that builds on the thought of Marx and Antonio Labriola and on German and Italian idealism.
As Buttigieg points out in his Preface, Notebooks 3, 4 and 5 were composed during the years 1930 to 1932, which was "a period of intense activity for Gramsci who, in spite of the great physical and emotional stress he was under, had practically transformed his prison cell at Turi di Bari into an intellectual workshop. . ." (Preface, p. ix). Two of Gramsci's ongoing projects, which are pursued vigorously in Notebook 4, are his reflections on the philosophy of historical materialism, and his literary-critical analysis of Canto X of Dante's Inferno. Both of these sections are exceedingly difficult to translate without seeming to betray the original. Buttigieg overcomes this obstacle in translations that, I think, will stand the test of time.
There is of course ample room in Gramsci studies for highly personal and even idiosyncratic interpretations of his ideas, provided that they are acknowledged as such. Yet the need for careful reading and philological rigor is of paramount importance in dealing with a text as complex and fragmentary as the Prison Notebooks. On this score, it seems to me that Buttigieg's work is faithful to the spirit with which Gramsci himself committed himself to intellectual endeavors.