This week’s timely Sunday Reading list addition comes from the Italian Marxist, Philosopher and Politician Antonio Gramsci. Titled ‘I Hate New Year’s Day,’ the text was one of Gramsci’s articulate and highly personal writings under his ‘Sotto la Mole‘ column.
Published in 1916 as part of the Turin edition of the Italian Socialist Party’s official organ Avanti!, the publication which would appoint Gramsci as its co-editor, the text sees Gramsci express his discontent with the concept of New Year’s Day and dates in general as they lead one into living a budgeted life with ‘spiritual time-serving’. He ends the piece keen and eager, awaiting socialism – to trash these dates and set in stone the new ones.
Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s day. That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management. They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit. You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates.
The English version of the text has been made available on Viewpoint Magazine due to the translation by Alberto Toscano.
You can read the full transcript of the piece on Viewpoint Magazine here. (https://www.viewpointmag.com/2015/01/01/i-hate-new-years-day/)