«La nostra parzialità appassionata». Note su Renato Serra

The critical-literary profile of Renato Serra (1884-1915) is always traversed by a philosophical, conceptual dimension. It is, however, a troubled, open dimension, continually moving and rethinking. Serra's early education was based on positivist culture, historical materialism and socialism, in the reformist Turatian variant. From his early years at university, this formation was abandoned, without, however, becoming fully identified with any other cultural movement: not with Francesco Acri's spiritualism, not with Croce's idealism and not even, properly speaking, with Bergsonism or the anti-system philosophies of the friends gathered around the magazine 'La Voce'. In the background there is always the conviction, on the one hand, that no culture (and no politics) can really control and order the complexity of reality, but also, at the same time, that any human experience is impossible apart from the partial and intermittent mediations of knowledge. The result is not the (unattainable) 'truth' of any experience, but its 'intensity', its 'authenticity'. It is on the basis of this position that one can explain his adherence to the war, which is absolutely particular and original, with its dramatic epilogue.