Leonardo Sciascia and the Mafia

Writing what he knew, Leonardo Sciascia fascinated readers with his knowledge of Mafia and unusual manner of writing. His youth and professional background allowed him to gain a comprehensive knowledge of Mafia, including its rationale and necessity to some extent. He wrote of his beloved Sicily, in a way that highlighted both its positive and negative aspects. Sciascia's detective novels included an in-depth exploration of the Mafia not only as a concrete entity but also as an image of corruption applicable everywhere. He used it as a cornerstone in writing about ethical and moral concerns in society. Later in life, he eventually chose to write only of contemporary issues, such as the assassination of Aldo Moro. For his work he was proclaimed a great critic of Italy and modern society; "the entire inefficient, corrupt system of Italian justice found one of its most lethal critics in Leonardo Sciascia, from whom there could be no defense, only retreat" (Salerno).

Sciascia's unique peek into the world of the Mafia is a fantastic journey into the human psyche. His works are a great depiction of the inner workings of a secret society, its influence and flagrant abuse of power through psychological manipulation. They are a great tool for political science, psychology, history and law classes; in that they portray the realities of the so-called Mafia mind-set.

Leonardo Sciascia was born in Racalmuto, near Agrigento, Sicily on 08 January 1921 (Sciascia Handout). Mafia was all around Sciascia as a child; growing up in Sicily it was a part of life, and he came to know it well. He became more politically involved after studying to become an educator under a teacher with Communist ideals at the Istituto Magistrale. Until he retired from teaching in 1970, he held various administrative and teaching positions. At one point, he moved to Rome to work at Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, where he remained for a year.

Five years later, still imbued with Communist principles, he ran for Palermo City Council and was successfully elected (Sciascia Handout). From there he became an active politician, serving in both the Italian Parliament and the European Parliament representing Marco Panella's Partito Radicale (Moraldo 1999). Sciascia's critique of the Christian Democrats as the responsible party for the political scandal surrounding kidnapping and murder of Secretary General Aldo Moro allowed him to become a member of the Committee of Enquiry investigating the affair while serving as a Member of the European Parliament. On 26 June 1983, he decided to give up politics, citing poor health. On 20 November 1989, Sciascia died in Palermo after a severe illness (Moraldo 1999).

Growing up in Sicily, Mafia was an easy subject for Sciascia to use in his novels. As a literary backdrop, it is an intriguing world shrouded in mystery and full of deceit. However, it was not only the criminal operations one sees in movies, it was also an abstract body of corruption linking the State and the people (Sciascia Handout). "For Sciascia, the Mafia was less an organization than a mind-set, and what is most striking about his work isn't just how pervasive its influence is, but how ambiguously [he] relates to it" (Abramovich). Using this assumption, one can presume that the Mafia phenomenon has been existent throughout history. It would not be a far fetch to also include the clergy in such a corrupt organization as well. The Church has been a pillar of faith and direction to people for over two thousand years; the men who controlled it also wielded considerable amounts of political power. Sciascia once stated himself that although the Church has denied the existence of Mafia, their "silence" has been a "back-up, a complicity" (Sciascia Handout).

Under Fascism, Sciascia understood that Mafia was a necessary form of existence, and that it was above all a silent revolution under the confines of the Fascist state. It seems that in this perception of reality, Mafia played both the protagonist and the antagonist. After World War II, Fascism in Italy crumbled. It had been the original foundation for the existence of Mafia, and when it was removed Mafia transformed into a more crooked and dishonest form. At this point, Sciascia no longer understood its existence, because to him its existence was based on the common threat posed by the State. Mafia initially consisted of those in positions of high authority in connection with families or other groups to use State assets for its own initiatives and to maneuver around certain obstacles posed by it. After the fall of Fascism, Mafia became a more self-interested machine, with greed and personal vendettas as the underlying motives; like those depicted in Hollywood films such as The Godfather. As he stated so eloquently in his own words, "I don't understand [M]afia today, it has got mad, if I compare with the old one. The old [M]afia was criminal, but it has some rules, it was rational" (Sciascia Handout).

Sciascia's novels break with the established tradition of detective mysteries, the form is broken at several critical points and the final blow often involves the demise of the detective. The initial crime is only the beginning of a vast web of deceit, encompassing nearly the entire population (Jackson 1981); thus the Mafia. The detective in Sciascia's novels is the only entity that is not apart of those who are aware of or suspect the true motive of the crime. His detective is ethical and moral, but in the end he cannot separate himself from those involved with the Mafia to maintain a logical perspective. "The detectives of Sciascia are gifted with all the abilities of a Dupin or Sherlock Holmes, yet they consistently fail to bring order from chaos and to re-establish the balance that the crime had destroyed" (Jackson 1981, p. 12).

Mafia presence can be established in every piece of Sciascia literature, be it of the original form or the more contemporary version. According to Giovanna Jackson, there are three manifest identities of Mafia in Sciascia's novels: places, language, and Mafia by definition (1981). The locations within Sciascia's novels are intended to be a reflection of a real place in Sicily, or Italy, or an abstract parallel of the Mafia described in the novel. One of the more intriguing characteristics of Mafia, is its use of jargon; a secret society with its own language is extremely fascinating to the general public. Both definitions of Mafia are present in all of Sciascia's works; however, in his detective novels "he confined himself to capturing the psychology, rather than the details" (Abramovich).

Each of the locations in Sciascia's novels plays a role in suggesting Mafia. However, he does not directly reveal the name of the town, but there are always allusions and clues to identifying a real place. In some cases, the names of the town are flat out indicators to the real place linked to the novel. In other cases, Sciascia uses identifiers such as monuments or implies a town using a time relation to another he does specify. In his literary movement from the specific to the comprehensive, he will completely leave out any detailed description of the setting to parallel the universal applications of his novel.

"The towns involved in the action of the detective novels are never explicitly named but they are sometimes referred to by various devices" (Jackson 1981, p. 81). Sciascia's book, Salt in the Wound (La parrocchie di Regalpetra), is generally accepted to symbolize his hometown of Racalmuto. In the book To Each His Own (A ciascuno il suo), the name of the town is never given; however, a bronze statute of Mercuzio Spanò is mentioned in the book as well as the distance to the county seat by bus (Sciascia 1992). According to Jackson, this suggests that the town in which the novel is set is Agrigento, the town of Sciascia's youth (1981). However, in the book One Way or Another (Todo modo), the setting is vague and is used as an analogy for the definition of Mafia described in the book.

Subtly revealing a mysterious language that is not readily available to an uninformed public is a great way to seize their interest on a subject. "There is a necessity to 'read between the lines' when one speaks to a Sicilian: in their need to hide and to be always defensive, they use a coded language that will be understood only by a few initiates" (Jackson 1981, p. 79). Sciascia mimics this coding model throughout the structure of his novels. He even employs authentic expressions used by the Mafia to introduce the reader to the language of Mafia, and draws on known proverbs to further educate them in the slang terminology.

In his novels, Sciascia carefully reconstructed the Sicilian dialect to introduce the reader with their secretive world; his detective works are filled with idiomatic expressions and grammatical phrases unique to the island (Jackson 1981). The language is somewhat different from that of common Italian; in some cases, so much so that often northern Italians would find it difficult to make sense of the distorted phrase. For instance, "astutatu means spento in Italian or extinguisthed in English. However, in the jargon of the mafiosi the word asutatu is used to indicate a person who has been killed" (Jackson 1981, p. 71-72). As for proverbs, one found in the novel Salt in the Wound (La parrocchie di Regalpetra) asserts that one should be wary of men of the cloth, as they are both powerful and corrupt outside of their duties to the church. Such expressions are indicative of the attitudes and lifestyles displayed by Sicilian citizens and thus a vital part of the environment surrounding the Mafia.

Sciascia's technique in the writing of his books is very coherent and the relationship is unmistakable; he first wrote strictly of the Sicilian Mafia, as related to the family, and then gradually moved out to a broader definition (Jackson 1981). He understood that Mafia is more of a psychological state of mind rather than an association and that it can be found in nearly every sector of society. In the series of his novels, the Mafia progressively becomes synonymous with violence (Abramovich), a violence that is not necessarily condoned but one that is accepted because of potential repercussions.

In his first critique of Mafia in the book Salt in the Wound (La parrocchie di Regalpetra), Sciascia pointed out some specific strata of Mafia, as well as allowing the reader a glimpse into the private world of their secret society (Jackson 1981). He even indicates the behavior of the localized mafiosi and the evident ties they have with more influential powers. In To Each His Own (A ciascuno il suo) he does nearly the same thing, illustrating a fairly isolated crime but hinting at ties to the county seat and beyond. As stated earlier, the book One Way or Another (Todo modo) Sciascia has progressed to a more abstract Mafia, one that is applicable to a broader section of society.

"Writers are always squaring up to reality. It is the unpleasant confrontation with reality that makes them write. Someone who is content with himself and the world is hardly going to spend his time sitting at a typewriter," Leonardo Sciascia once said (in Moraldo, 1999). It is for this reason that he must have set about informing the world of the dishonest and criminal behavior occurring in Italy. He wrote in a way to take on the Mafia itself; he has forever immortalized and scorned its existence in fiction. Sciascia's comprehensive critique of Mafia also included events from reality; later in his career, he published his case against the Christian Democrats in book form regarding the Aldo Moro affair. Considering this, and that each of his books have some basis in reality, it is of great curiosity whether he was mocking certain individuals or events he was knowledgeable to as a youth.

Sciascia's literature has been around for nearly half a century and he is revered for his unique style of writing mystery novels and crime stories. His books are used in law classes (Salerno) to illustrate the fragile balance of good and evil in the human mind when it comes to the Mafia, whatever the relevant definition. He invented a whole new genre of detective mystery, in which Sandro M. Moraldo asserts Sciascia's depiction of Mafia in his novels include "starkly realistic stories about the orchestration of crime, intrigue and corruption, vested interests, the failure of human reason, the downfall of justice and the triumph of evil" (1999).

Works Cited

Abramovich, A. Metaphysical Mafia. Village Voice Literary Supplement. Accessed 27 Nov 2004. http://www.villagevoice.com/vls/171/abramovich.shtml.

Jackson, G. (1981). Leonardo Sciascia: 1956-1976, A Thematic and Structural Study. Longo Editore: Ravenna.

Leonardo Sciascia. Bastulli Mystery Library. Accessed 27 Nov 2004. http://www.bastulli.com/Sciascia/Sciascia.htm.

Moraldo, S. M. (23 Dec 1999). Sciascia Exhibition "La Sicilia, il suo cuore" Opens at the University of Heidelberg on 13 January. Press Release. University of Heidelberg. Accessed 28 Nov 2004.

http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/press/news/press59_sciascia_e.html.

Salerno, V. Best of Sicily Magazine. Accessed 26 Nov 2004. http://www.bestofsicily.com/mag/art31.htm.

Sciascia, L. Sciascia on Mafia. Handout.

Sciascia, L. (1992). To Each His Own. Transl. A. Foulke. SRP Ltd: Exeter, England.