LA SUBDIRECCION GENERAL DE TECNICA TRIBUTARIA Y COORDINACION JURIDICA

Giordana must have looked at Peppino’s relationship with his parents drawing a parallel with Pasolini. However, while for Pasolini, by his own admission, this relationship may be at the origins of his erotic life and

preferences, there is no element that leads us to ascribe the same to Peppino. We can return then to the questions that Giordana raises in the scene in which Peppino recites the poem to his mother: is this scene talking of

Peppino’s homosexuality? Or has Giordana inappropriately constructed a total identification between Peppino and Pasolini? In addressing this issue of Peppino’s sexual orientation, Peppino’s brother, Giovanni, categorically stated: “No, I tell you clearly. He was not homosexual.”259 _{He then tells about}

a radio program in which Peppino defends Pope Paul VI saying that “even if he was a bit homosexual, one should not attack him, since everybody is, ‘me too.’”260 _{Peppino, according to Giovanni, wanted to provoke the audience, and}

was often very contradictory, but, based on what he knew about him, he was not homosexual. Without dismissing Giovanni’s statement, let us take into consideration first of all some pages of a short diary that Peppino wrote in November 1977, while he was recalling the period in which he became a member of the PSIUP (1965):

I joined the PSIUP with the anger and desperation of who, at the same time, wants to break with everything and look for protection…Soon after that I madly fell in love with a young comrade: I never expressed my desires, but I tumultuously built a large part of my political

dimension on this schizoid condition.261

259 _{Giovanni Impastato, my interview (Cinisi, 1 July 2007). “No, te lo dico chiaramente, non lo} era.”

260 _{Impastato, my interview,“Anche se lui era un po’ omosessuale, non bisognava attaccarlo} perchè siamo un po’ tutti omosessuali, ‘lo sono anch’io’.”

261 _{Impastato, Lunga è la notte, 116. “Approdai al PSIUP con la rabbia e la disperazione di chi, al} tempo stesso, vuol rompere tutto e cerca protezione. Mi innamorai subito dopo e fino alla

Peppino here admits that he had fallen in love with a male friend, and that had not been able to express his feelings; he also defines this state of mind as ‘a schizoid condition.’ He finally adds that the relationship with his partner ended two years later, in 1967.262 _{Talking about the impact of the 1968 on his}

life, Peppino confesses once again “I _______ once again with a young ‘comrade’. This period was perhaps the most heartbreaking and at the same time the most thrilling of my existence and of my political life. I passed smoothly and without interruption from phases of dark desperation to

moments of true exaltation and creative power.”263 _{As you may have noticed,}

Peppino leaves a blank in which the verb “to fall in love” is missing.

Furthermore, he puts in quote the word ‘compagno,’ that in Italian indicates not only the political comrade, but also a private partner. Finally, some pages later, he writes that he coped with his depressive ups and downs until 1971, “when I decided to move myself out of the condition in which I floundered, and away from politics.”264 _{Once again, notice the quotation marks around the}

verb “decisi (I decided)”. It is now that he announces that he fell in love with a girl, but the result was not positive: “…I only managed to construct a very long and schizofrenic relationship which was ununderstandable, even

follia di un mio giovane compagno di partito: non espressi mai i miei desideri, ma su questa condizione schizzoide ho costruito larga parte della mia dimensione politica,

tumultuosamente.”

262 _{See Impastato, Lunga è la notte, 116.}

263 _{Impastato, Lunga è la notte, 118. “Mi _______ ancora una volta di un mio giovane ‘compagno’. E’} stato forse quello il periodo piú straziante e al tempo stesso più esaltante della mia esistenza e della mia storia politica. Passavo con continuità ininterrotta da fasi di cupa disperazione a momenti di autentica esaltazione e capacità creativa.”

264 _{Impastato, Lunga è la notte, 120. “quando ‘decisi’ di fuoriuscire dalle condizioni in mi cui mi} dibattevo e dalla politica.”

Kafkian. The result: we broke up and I was devasted and even more incapable of relationships with the external world.”265

Emerging from Peppino’s diary is a man who is profoundly tormented not only by the political situation that characterized those years, and by the mafia’s illegal activities, but above all by his personal life. Though Giovanni maintains that Peppino’s love for his male friend was only a platonic affection to a friend, one can argue that Peppino’s torture and anguish go well beyond a friendly attachment. They seem to hide especially Peppino’s deep fear of being misjudged by a society in which homosexuality was still a taboo.266 _{He never}

spoke with any of his friends about his feelings, admitting them only to the hidden pages of his diary, where at times he was afraid to use compromising verbs such as ‘fell in love’ (mi innamorai) and preferred adopting the

ambiguous quotes to describe his will to ‘change his mind’ (decisi). He was well aware, knowing the case of Pasolini, what being stigmatized as a homosexual, or a bi-sexual, entailed. In addition, in Sicily, island to the

extreme South of Italy, the prejudice against homosexuality was even stronger than in the rest of the peninsula.

In a 2007 interview with Umberto Santino, president of Centro Siciliano di Documentazione ‘Giuseppe Impastato’ in Palermo, Santino reported

accurately the story of the publication of Peppino’s diary. It emerges how problematic and discriminating being a homosexual was at the time in which Peppino was killed and for a long time thereafter. Apparently, only Giovanni Impastato, Salvo Vitale, and Umberto Santino knew about Peppino’s diary.

265 _{Impastato, Lunga è la notte, 120. “… riuscii a costruire soltanto un rapporto lunghissimo e} schizofrenico, incomprensibile, kafkiano addirittura. Il risultato: ne uscii con le ossa rotte e ancora piú incapace di rapporti col mondo esterno.”

After Peppino’s murder, when Peppino was accused of being a terrorist or a suicide and public opinion was against him, his brother decided to keep the diary secret and avoid further social hostility.267 _{Santino states: “We learned}

about Peppino’s homosexuality quite early. In order to avoid that the court of inquiry got some documents, he [Giovanni] immediately gave me Peppino’s notebook (diary) and planner.”268 _{From then on the diary has been shelved at}

the Centro di Documentazione Siciliano, and nobody has access to the text except for Umberto Santino and Giovanni Impastato. In the first edition of Salvo Vitale’s Nel cuore dei coralli. Peppino Impastato. Una vita contro la mafia (1995), a book on Peppino’s life and political commitment, the author omitted the parts from the diary that dealt with his friend’s homosexuality.269 _{Only in}

2003, when Umberto Santino decided to publish the third edition of Lunga è la

notte, he obtained Giovanni Impastato’s permission to publish Peppino’s diary

in its entirety, and finally “farlo conoscere e rispettarlo così come era (to present and respect him for what he was).”270 _{Giordana’s film however was}

released three years earlier, so Giordana knew about Peppino’s homosexual tendencies while conceiving his film. Salvo Vitale, at odds with Santino and Giovanni, talked with Giordana while he was working on the screenplay and, though he could not show him Peppino’s integral diary, certainly gave the filmmaker important information regarding Peppino’s private and political life.

267 _{See my interview with Umberto Santino (Palermo, 4 luglio 2007).}

268 _{Umberto Santino, my interview (Palermo, 4 luglio 2007). “L’omosessualità di Peppino è} una cosa che noi abbiamo scoperto abbastanza presto. Per evitare che alcune carte cadessero nelle mani degli inquirenti, lui [Giovanni] mi ha dato subito il taccuino e l’agenda di

Peppino.”

269 _{Though the book was published in 1995, Salvo Vitale started working on it right after} Peppino’s death.