Autobiografia e «storia segreta»: le memorie perdute dell'ultimo De Gasperi

Alcide De Gasperi dealt with several proposals of drafting and publishing hismemoirs, which nevertheless did not achieve their editorial goal. A rising penchantfor autobiography led him to multiply private and public references to hispolitical background. The hindrance that prevented De Gasperi to convert theminto a full memoir opera was the self-censorship on the "secret history" related tohis underground trouble with the Holy See. On one hand, he refused to authorizeportraits and biographies proposed him by journalists and insiders, out offear they could misrepresent his political laity as religious disobedience. On theother hand, he delayed to write his memoirs which were at last interrupted byDe Gasperi's death, but started over by his daughter Maria Romana and mergedin her book of 1964, De Gasperi, uomo solo. This essay reconstructs the interweavingbetween the attempts to autobiographical reconnaissance that arose fromDe Gasperi's political rethinking and the biographical and memorialistic oneswhich could not reach him as interlocutor.