Born: Racalmuto, Sicily, Italy, 8 January 1921. Education: Educated at the Istituto Magistrate ”IX Maggio” [9th May], Caltanisetta, Sicily, 1935-38. Family: Married Maria Andronico in 1944, two daughters. Career: Clerk in Ucsea, organizing collection of wheat, barley, and oil, 1941-48; teacher, elementary school, Caltanisetta, 1949-57; writer and journalist from 1953; on attachment to the Department of Education, Rome, 1957-58; moved to Palermo, 1967, and taught there until 1970; contributor, Il Corriere della Sera, from 1969; independent councillor (on the Communist Party list), Palermo commune, 1975-77; elected as Radical Party Deputy to the European (subsequently given up) and Italian parliaments, 1979: member of the commission of enquiry into the murder of Aldo Moro, 1979-83; co-editor, with Alberto Moravia, q.v., and Enzo Siciliano, Nuovi Argomenti, 1982. Awards: Pirandello prize, 1953; Libera Stampa prize, 1957; Prato prize, 1960; Crotone prize, 1956, 1961; Seguier prize, 1975; Foreign Book prize (France), 1976. Died: 20 November 1989.
Publications
Collection
Opere, edited by Claude Ambroise. 3 vols., 1987-91.
Fiction
Leparrocchie diRegalpetra. 1956; as Salt in the Wound, translated by Judith Green, 1969.
Gli zii di Sicilia. 1958; enlarged edition (includes ”L’antimonio”), 1961; as Sicilian Uncles: Four Novellas, translated by N.S. Thompson, 1986.
Il giorno della civetta. 1961; as Mafia Vendetta, translated by Archibald Colquhoun and Arthur Oliver, 1963; as The Day of the Owl, translated by Colquhoun and Oliver, with Equal Danger, 1989.
Il consiglio d’Egitto. 1963; as The Council of Egypt, translated by Adrienne Foulke, 1966; as The Council of Egypt, translated by Adrienne Foulke, 1998.
Morte dell’inquisitore. 1964; as Death of the Inquisitor, in Salt in the Wound, translated by Judith Green, 1969; also translated in Death of an Inquisitor and Other Stories, 1990.
A ciascuno il suo. 1966; as A Man’s Blessing, translated by Adrienne Foulke, 1968; as To Each His Own, translated by Foulke, 1989.
Racconti siciliani. 1966.
Il contesto. 1971; edited by Tom O’Neill, 1986; as Equal Danger, translated by Adrienne Foulke, 1973, and with The Day of the Owl, 1989.
Eufrosina. 1973.
Il mare colore del vino. 1973; as The Wine-Dark Sea, translated by Avril Bardoni, 1985.
Todo modo. 1974; as One Way or Another, translated by Adrienne Foulke, 1977; also translated by Sacha Rabinovitch, 1989.
I pugnalatori. 1976.
Candido; ovvero un sogno fatto in Sicilia. 1977; as Candido, or, A Dream Dreamed in Sicily, translated by Adrienne Foulke, 1979.
Dalle parti degli infedeli. 1979.
La sentenza memorabile. 1982.
Storia della povera Rosetta. 1983.
Una commedia siciliana. 1983.
Occhio di capra. 1984.
Chronachette. 1985; as Little Chronicles, translated by Ian Thompson, 1990.
1912 + 1. 1986; as 1912 + 1, translated by Sacha Rabinovitch, 1989.
La strega e il capitano. 1986; as The Captain and the Witch, translated by Ian Thompson, 1990.
Porte aperte. 1987; as Open Doors, translated by Marie Evans, in The Knight and Death and Other Stories, 1991.
II cavaliere e la morte. 1988; as The Knight and Death and Other Stories, translated by Joseph Farrell and Marie Evans, 1991; as Knight and Death: Three Novellas, translated by Farrell and Evans, 1992.
Una storia semplice. 1989; as A Straightforward Tale, translated by Joseph Farrell, in The Knight and Death and Other Stories, 1991.
Death of an Inquisitor and Other Stories, translated by Ian Thompson. 1990.
Verse
Favole della dittatura. 1950.
La Sicilia, il suo cuore. 1952.
Cola Pesce. 1975.
Plays
L’onorevole. 1965.
Recitazione della controversia liparitana dedicata ad A.D. 1969.
I mafiosi, from a play by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaspare Mosca (produced 1972). In L’onorevole, Recitazione della controversia liparitana, I mafiosi. 1976.
Other
Pirandello e ilpirandellismo. 1953.
Pirandello e la Sicilia. 1961.
Santo Marino. 1964.
Feste religiose in Sicilia, photographs by Fernando Scianna. 1965.
La corda pazza: Scrittori e cose della Sicilia. 1970.
Atti relativi alla morte di Raymond Roussel. 1971; as ”Acts Relative to the Death of Raymond Roussel,” in Raymond Roussel: Life, Death and Works, 1987.
Emilio Greco. 1971.
Jaki. 1975.
La scomparsa di Majorana. 1975; as The Mystery of Majorana,translated by Sacha Rabinovitch, with The Moro Affair, 1987.
Les siciliens, with Dominique Fernandez, photographs by Ferdinando Scianna. 1977; Italian edition, as I siciliani, translated by Maria Vittoria Malvano, 1977.
L’affaire Moro. 1978; as The Moro Affair, translated by Sacha
Rabinovitch, with The Mystery of Majorana, 1987.
Nero su Nero. 1979.
La Sicilia come metafora: Intervista, with Marcelle Padovani. 1979; as Sicily as Metaphor, translated by James Marcus, 1994.
II volto sulla maschera: Mosjoukine—Mattia Pascal. 1980.
Il teatro della memoria. 1981.
Conversazione in una stanza chiusa, with Davide Lajolo (interview).1981.
Kermesse. 1982.
La contea di Modica. 1983.
Stendhal e la Sicilia. 1984.
Cruciverba. 1984.
Mediterraneo: Viaggio nelle isole (mainly photographs), with Enzo Ragazzini. 1984.
Per un ritratto dello scrittore da giovane. 1985.
Ignoto a me stesso: ritratti di scrittori da Edgar Allan Poe a Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Daniela Palazzoli. 1987.
Alfabeto pirandelliano. 1989.
Ora di Spagna, photographs by Ferdinando Scianna. 1989.
Editor, with Salvatore Guglielmino, Narratori di Sicilia. 1967.
Editor, Catologo della mostra antologica dell’opera di Francesco Trombadori, with others. 1976.
Editor, Torre di guardia, by Alberto Savinio. 1977.
Editor, with Giuliano Briganti, Alberto Savinio: Pittura e letteratura. 1979.
Editor, Delle cose di Sicilia: Testi inediti o rari. 1980.
Editor, Opere, by Vitaliano Brancati. 2 vols., 1987-92.
Translator, with Salvatore Girgenti, La vegliaaBenicarlo, by Manuel Azana. 1967.
Translator, Ilprocuratore della Giudea, by Anatole France. 1979.
Translator, Morte del sogno, by Pedro Salinas. 1981.
Critical Studies:
Leonardo Sciascia by Walter Mauro, 1970; Leonardo Sciascia e la Sicilia by Giovanna Ghetti Abruzzi, 1974; Invito alla lettura di Sciascia by Claude Ambroise, 1974, revised edition 1978; Due scrittori siciliani by Filippo Cilluffo, 1974; La Sicilia di Sciascia by Santi Correnti, 1977, enlarged edition, 1987; Leonardo Sciascia: Introduzione e guida allo studio dell’opera sciasciana by Luigi Cattanei, 1979; Sciascia Issue of L’Arc, 77, 1979; Leonardo Sciascia 1956-1976: A Thematic and Structural Study by Giovanna Jackson, 1981; ”Sciascia,” in Writers and Society in Contemporary Italy edited by Michael Caesar and Peter Hainsworth, 1984 and ”Leonardo Sciascia,” in Association of Teachers of Italian Journal, 52, 1988, both by Verina R. Jones; Leonardo Sciascia: La verita, l’aspra verita by Antonio Motta, 1985; Pigliari di lingua: temi e forme della narrativa di Leonardo Sciascia by Aldo Budriesi, 1986; ”The Metaphysical Detective Novel and Sciascia’s Il contesto: Parody or Tyranny of a Borrowed Form?” by Carol Lazzaro-Weiss, in Quaderni d’Italianistica, 8(1), 1987; Leonardo Sciascia: Tecniche narrative e ideologia, 1988, and La fede nella scrittura: Leonardo Sciascia, 1990, both by Onofrio Lo Dico; ”Literal Insularity Versus Literary Universality: The Case of Sciascia” by Tom O’Neill, in Literature and National Cultures edited by Brian Edwards, 1988; ”Of Valiant Knights and Labyrinths: Leonardo Sciascia’s Il cavaliere e la morte" by Susan Briziarelli, in Italica, 68(1), 1991; Sciascia: Scrittura e verita: Atti del convegno, Novembre/Dicembre 1990, 1991; Sciascia: La storia ed altro, 1991; La ragione di un intellettuale libero: Leonardo Sciascia by Lucrezia Lorenzini, 1992; Leonardo Sciascia by Joseph Farrell, 1995.
In the 1967 preface to the reprint of his first work, Le parrocchie di Regalpetra (Salt in the Wound), a series of ”essays” on various aspects of his native Racalmuto, Leonardo Sciascia claimed that it contained, in essence, all the themes that he would ever deal with:
All my books in effect are simply one. A book on Sicily touching on the sore points of its past and present and which ends up taking on the shape of a story of an ongoing defeat of reason and of those individuals who were personally caught up in it and destroyed by it.
The claim is, up to a point, true. Bellodi, the protagonist of Il giorno della civetta (The Day of the Owl), Sciascia’s first detective story (his preferred genre), ”has played his part in a revolution and has seen law created by it. This law, the law of the Republic, which safeguarded liberty and justice, he served and enforced.” In the end, though, he will be defeated, like a whole series of other, no less committed, protagonists—from the Jacobin lawyer Di Blasi in Il consiglio d’Egitto (The Council of Egypt), a historical novel set in late 18th-century Palermo (arguably his best work), to Laurana, the teacher-detective in A ciascuno il suo (To Each His Own), and Rogas, the investigator who ”had principles, in a country where almost no one did,” of Il contesto (Equal Danger).
The antagonist to the law safeguarding liberty and justice is the Mafia, and in the earlier realistic novels it is the historically recognizable criminal organization, involved in protection rackets in the building industry (in The Day of the Owl), and implicated politically at both local and national level (To Each His Own) which dominates. In the later works, however, where sober realism gives way to a more fantastic elaboration of themes (precisely because fact is often stranger than fiction), it is clear that the Mafia has become more a metaphor for something much more universal, ”power anywhere in the world,” as Sciascia defines it in an endnote to Equal Danger, which ”in the impenetrable form of a concatenation that we can roughly term mafioso, works steadily greater degradation,” and where we may recognize Kant’s affirmation in his Principles of Politics that ”the possession of power inevitably corrupts the free judgement of reason.”
Liberty and justice, law (”a rational thing born of reason” notes Sciascia in The Day of the Owl), power and corruption (including that Kantian reason) are all concerns that underline the moral quality of Sciascia’s work. But we should not allow them, important though they be, to blind us to the imaginative manner in which they find expression. ”No flights of fantasy,” Bellodi’s superior had warned him; but Sicily, as the captain realized, ”is all a realm of fantasy and what can anyone do there without imagination?” It is unbridled imagination that sustains Vella in his invention of an ancient Arabic chronicle (the Council of Egypt of that novel’s title) which justifies baronial privilege and restores to the Kingdom of Naples all power over the island. And it is Di Blasi, prior to his beheading for having attempted to overturn just these privileges, who provides the gloss: ”there is so much fraud in life,” but, Vella is told, yours ”has at least the merit of being a zestful one, and even, in one sense, . . . useful.” And, adds the messenger, Di Blasi ”admires your imagination.”
Sciascia’s work is replete with fraud, particularly of the written, imaginative kind. To Vella’s historical fabrications can be added such others as the forged confession in The Day of the Owl, or the threatening letter composed of words cut from a copy of the Vatican daily newspaper with which To Each His Own opens. But, beyond these specific examples there is a broader concern with the nature of literature itself. The penultimate chapter of The Council of Egypt concludes:
Because he felt that he could not and should not write all the true and profound things that stirred within him, Di Blasi began to write verses. The concept of poetry then prevalent held that the poet is free to lie. Today the concept of poetry no longer permits this, although perhaps poetry itself allows it still.
And early on in Equal Danger, Rogas becomes convinced ”that it was not difficult, all told, to distinguish on dead papers, in dead words, truth from falsehood; and that any fact whatsoever, once fixed in written form, repeated the problem which scholars consider belongs only to art, to poetry.” (The passage has been inexplicably omitted from the English translation.) Poetry and literature, truth and falsehood. This concern may in part explain why many of Sciascia’s works—including Morte dell’inquisitore (Death of an Inquisitor), La scomparsa di Majorana (The Mystery of Majorana), on the disappearance in 1938 of a promising young nuclear physicist, and L’affaire Moro (The Moro Affair) on the kidnapping and assassination of the Christian Democrat leader, Aldo Moro—may be classified as historical reconstructions of important events or intriguing cases. No less true, however is the degree to which writing and writers may be called upon to help unravel the ”truth” as, for example, in the Majorana case with its frequent recourse to Pirandello, Shakespeare (Majorana’s own favourite writers) and, especially, Stendhal (Sciascia’s favourite).
George Steiner defines heresy as ”unending re-reading and revaluation” (Real Presences), and Don Gaetano, the priestly protagonist of Todo modo (One Way or Another) who, like Stephane Mallarme, has read all the books, is also in this sense heretical. ”Perhaps it’s possible today,” he asserts, ”to rewrite all the books that have ever been written. . . . All of them. Except Candide.” Don Gaetano’s creator, Sciascia, was to do just that and rewrite Candide, in 1977—the ultimate heresy, but it confirmed an ever-growing belief on Sciascia’s part that literature and truth were one. He used literature heretically, to examine reality in such a way that our orthodox view of it gave way to more sophisticated and consequently more illuminating perceptions.
