Mamma Togni is a dramatic monologue by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, set in Italy after the Second World War. It was performed in 1973. [1]
Dramatic monologue, also known as a persona poem, is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character. M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the dramatic monologue as it applies to poetry:
- The single person, who is patently not the poet, utters the speech that makes up the whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment […].
- This person addresses and interacts with one or more other people; but we know of the auditors' presence, and what they say and do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker.
- The main principle controlling the poet's choice and formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its interest, the speaker's temperament and character.
Dario Fo was an Italian actor, playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, painter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his time he was "arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre". Much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell'arte.
Franca Rame was an Italian theatre actress, playwright and political activist. She was married to Nobel laureate playwright Dario Fo and is the mother of writer Jacopo Fo. Fo dedicated his Nobel Prize to her.
The monologue is a tribute to Giuseppina Modena (known as Mamma Togni), partisan gold medalist of the Italian Resistance, who during the Second World War lost her husband and 22-year-old son Lorenzo "Enzo" Togni, to whom a Garibaldi partisan brigade was named. On April 9, 1972 during the campaign for the 1972 Italian general election, the woman interrupted a meeting of the deputy Franco Servello, hitting him with a walking stick: for this reason the woman was arrested along with eight other people (including Rinaldo Nalli and Luigi Pastorelli, respectively municipal councillors of the Socialist party and Communist party) and tried, but eventually she was acquitted in 1976.
General elections were held in Italy on 7 May 1972, to select the Sixth Republican Parliament. Democrazia Cristiana (DC) remained stable with around 38% of the votes, as did the Communist Party (PCI) which obtained the same 27% it had in 1968. The Socialist Party (PSI) continued in its decline, reducing to less than 10%. The most important growth was that of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, who nearly doubled its votes from 4.5% to about 9%, after its leader Giorgio Almirante launched the formula of the National Right, proposing his party as the sole group of the Italian right wing. After a dismaying result of less than 2%, against the 4.5% of 1968, the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity was disbanded; a majority of its members joined the PCI.
It was performed for the first time during the Liberation Day in the square in Pavia on 25 April 1972, played by Franca Rame, and then published by Einaudi in Guerra di popolo in Cile (1973). The monologue was performed by Franca Rame also on 31 December 1975 in Piazza del Duomo, Milan.. [2]
Italy's Liberation Day, also known as the Anniversary of the Liberation, Anniversary of the Resistance, or simply 25 April is a national Italian holiday commemorating the end of Nazi occupation of the Country during World War II and the victory of the Resistance. This is distinct from the Republic Day which takes place on 2 June.
Piazza del Duomo is the main piazza of Milan, Italy. It is named after, and dominated by, the Milan Cathedral. The piazza marks the center of the city, both in a geographic sense and because of its importance from an artistic, cultural, and social point of view. Rectangular in shape, with an overall area of 17,000 m2, the piazza includes some of the most important buildings of Milan, as well some of the most prestigious commercial activities, and it is by far the foremost tourist attraction of the city.
Plot summary
Mamma Togni is a seventy-year-old former legendary partisan nurse from the Apennines hills of the Oltrepò Pavese. One day some boys called her into the street that Senator Franco Servello was holding a political rally in the square of Montù Beccaria (province of Pavia, Lombardy), where during the Second World War the fascists had killed 14 partisans in front of their mothers eyes.
The Oltrepò Pavese is an area of the Province of Pavia, in the north-west Italian region of Lombardy, which lies to the south of the river Po. It is oltre (‘beyond’) the Po, when considered from the provincial capital Pavia and in general from the rest of Lombardy.
Montù Beccaria is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Pavia in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 50 km (31 mi) south of Milan and about 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Pavia. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 1,736 and an area of 15.6 km2 (6 sq mi).
The province of Pavia is a province in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy; its capital is Pavia. As of 2015, the province has a population of 548,722 inhabitants and an area of 2,968.64 square kilometres (1,146.20 sq mi); the town of Pavia has a population of 72,205.
Mamma Togni rushed in front of the stage of the rally, unleashing her stick and hits the microphone and then the knee of the politician and offending him as fascist.
The captain of the Carabinieri tries to stop Mamma Togni's trouble, who reiterates that she cannot tolerate the presence of a fascist in that place, since the fascists have killed her son. Eleven guys who followed the scene from the arcades of the square approach, but are loaded and beaten in blood by Carabinieri for no reason and finally arrested and loaded on a truck to police station.
The Carabinieri are the national gendarmerie of Italy who primarily carry out domestic policing duties. It is one of Italy's main law enforcement agencies, alongside the Polizia di Stato and the Guardia di Finanza. As with the Guardia di Finanza but in contrast to the Polizia di Stato, the Carabinieri are a military force. As the fourth branch of the Italian Armed Forces, they come under the authority of the Ministry of Defence. In practice, there is a significant overlap between the jurisdiction of the Polizia di Stato and Carabinieri, who are contacted on separate emergency telephone numbers. Unlike the Polizia di Stato, the Carabinieri have responsibility for policing the military, and a number of members regularly participate in military missions abroad.
Mamma Togni, together with a communist councillor, runs to the police station to talk to the Questore and tell how the whole thing happened, but the marshal stops them and at a certain point he falls pretending to have been hit by someone. Fifty Carabinieri arrive and begin to truncheon the councillor and Mamma Togni, who are arrested and tried immediately, while dozens of citizens of the village arrive outside the police station to ask for the release of Mamma Togni.
The trial takes place in a farcical manner, with the judge trying in every way to avoid the conviction for Mamma Togni, who instead proudly claims to have deliberately gone to the main square to throw a beating at Senator Servello screaming "fascists killers". The judge, however, does not feel up to continuing the process and makes everyone free: it is a great joy, similar to the Liberation Day.
Mamma Togni remembers the war, when she saved 32 wounded guys from the great raking of the winter of 1944-1945, placing them in a farmhouse and feeding them every day, with the good ones (receiving the help of farmers and mountain dwellers) or with the bad ones (robbing the wealthy with her pistol P38). One day a partisan told her that his son Enzo Togni had been killed on 18 September 1944 in Varzi by the "black robbers". Addressing her boys, the nurse tells them that, having no one left, from now on she would become the mother of all: Mamma Togni.
The monologue ends with Mamma Togni who, answering to those who tell her not to get in the way anymore, because she is too old and had already done her duty, says that as long as there will be fascist killers around, we must go to the streets to tell the young people what happened during the war. While only those who give up fighting are old, remaining warm at home with a cap lent by the old and dead Christian Democrats as Amintore Fanfani and Giulio Andreotti. [3]
Christian Democracy was a Christian democratic political party in Italy.
Amintore Fanfani was an Italian politician and the Prime Minister of Italy for five separate runs. He was one of the best-known Italian politicians after the Second World War, and a historical figure of the left-wing section of the Christian Democracy party; he is also considered to have been one of the founders of the Italian centre-left.
Giulio Andreotti was an Italian politician and statesman who served as the 41st Prime Minister of Italy and leader of the Christian Democracy party; he was the sixth longest-serving Prime Minister since the Italian Unification and the second longest-serving post-war Prime Minister, after Silvio Berlusconi. Andreotti is widely considered the most powerful and prominent politician of the so-called First Republic.
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