Two Real Life Mysteries
Review of the NYRB Classics English language paperback (2004) translated from the Italian originals "L'affaire Moro" (The Moro Affair) (1978/rev.1983) & "La scomparsa di Majorana" (The Disappearance of Majorana) (1975)

The Moro Affair is likely the better known of these two cases and was the March 1978 kidnapping of Italian politician Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades terrorist group, resulting in his death after 55 days. The Mystery of Majorana (as the title is given in the NYRB translation) was the disappearance by apparent suicide of physicist Ettore Majorana (1906-1938 (presumed) while on a ferry boat from Palermo to Naples.

The mystery element of The Moro Affair is why his own ruling party the Christian Democrats abandoned Moro to his fate and how much of the police investigation was bungled in order to avoid saving him. The otherwise ruthless Red Brigades (who apparently account for 75 murders in their time of activity according to Wikipedia) obviously kept him alive with some apparent hope of negotiation and trade. What is most surprising here is the amount of correspondence that Moro was allowed to send during his time of captivity, almost all of which is reproduced by Sciascia. In the beginning he is hopeful of a resolution, in the end he is condemning his own party for turning away from him. Overall, this is very inside baseball about Italian politics at the time, but perhaps not about the cutthroat world of politics in general.

The Mystery of Majorana attempts to provide an alternate solution to the physicist's disappearance by proposing that he was actually planning to disappear in order to avoid working on an atomic bomb for the then ruling fascist party of Italy and its allies in Nazi Germany. Sciascia's evidence is actually quite compelling including the vague wording of Majorana's letters to his family, his withdrawal of all his money from the bank prior to departure and perhaps even a sighting in a Cartusian Monastery in later years. This was the more intriguing part of this double real-life mysteries translation, although it is only about 1/3rd of the book and isn't even entitled to cover billing. ( )

This edition actually contains two nonfiction works:
• The Moro Affair, in which Sciascia examines the 1978 kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, a former Prime Minister of Italy, who was kidnapped and then killed weeks later. He was kidnapped on his way to present a historic compromise he had engineered between the Socialist Democrats and the Communist Party. Sciascia looks at both police and governmental responses, as well as the letters received and media coverage.
• The Mystery of Majorana, about the disappearance of Ettore Majorana, genius physicist, in 1938. Sciascia looks at theories and coverage.

So, knowing nothing about either of these events before reading this book (I was a kid in 1978, I suspect my grandparents must have been very aware of these events being in regular contact with first cousins and a godchild in Italy, but did they not discuss it in front of me?), I spent a fair amount of time on Wikipedia reading up. Which was difficult as Sciascia assumes a certain amount of knowledge about 1970s Italian political parties and participants. I found both sections to be quite dry, but I also don't have the background knowledge to read them easily. I found The Mystery of Majorana was much easier to read, perhaps because it is shorter and the whole situation seems much clearer. ( )

Romanzo-saggio non sempre scorrevole. ( )

The first chapter of the Moro section was an essay, elegiac in tone, about fireflies. Then it segued into historical and political allusions that I couldn't quite remember, couldn't quite grasp. Such is journalism forty years later. I gave it up as inaccessible and turned to the section on Ettore Majorana.

This was a great deal more readable, but highly speculative. It would have made a compelling novel, either of the mystery or the speculative fiction/ alternative history genre. The atomic research theme and the writing style reminded me strongly of science fiction of the postwar era. On its own terms, it was a rather compelling study of how some physicists percieved the possibility of destructive nuclear fission and its moral dimension, and how Majorana in particular may have reacted to it.

In The Moro Affair, Sciascia is in analytical mode, describing the kidnapping and murder of Italian politician Aldo Moro through the letters, articles and statements of Moro and others. The Mystery of Majorana gives Sciascia’s take on another disappearance, that of Ettore Majorana, a well-regarded physicist who was never found after supposedly travelling from Palermo to Naples. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions in the two cases – occasionally it seemed like he made large leaps based on the available evidence. In The Moro Affair, it really would have helped to be more familiar with the kidnapping of Moro as well as the political situation at the time. However, both pieces were interesting. The Moro analysis still provides some political points relevant today and Majorana is a lively portrait of an intelligent man in a difficult time.

Aldo Moro was the president of the dominant political party at the time, the Christian Democrats, but he was a man amenable to compromise and had brokered an agreement with the Communists for the formation of a new government. On March 16, 1978, he was attacked while on the way to open the government and his bodyguards and chauffeur were killed. The perpetrators were a leftwing terrorist group called the Red Brigades and they issued a number of communiqués during the two months that they held Moro. The police investigation was ineffectual and Moro’s party refused to negotiate for his release. He was found murdered in the trunk of a car in early May. Sciascia’s analyses were written several months after so he expected that his readers would be familiar with the events – saturated with them in fact.

I found the book slow going at first even though the sections are very short. Instead of the terse style found in his novels and short stories, some of the analysis is more rhetorical and abstract. The author looks at Moro’s speeches, his letters from his prison, declarations issued from both the Red Brigades and Christian Democrats and, at the end, the material associated with the police investigation. It was a bit hard to keep all the politicians straight – Sciascia attributes a significance to the fact that Moro had addressed some letters to one man rather than another, for example, but it didn’t mean that much to someone unfamiliar with all the players. Sciascia dismisses most of the Red Brigades communications as bravado and implies that their claimed trial of Moro was worthless. He is critical of the Christian Democrats and their refusal to exchange Moro and spends a lot of time discussing Moro’s justification (he had previously said that the government should act to save lives even against the principle of negotiation with terrorists) as well as the unproductive actions of the politicians. His analyses of Moro’s state of mind are interesting. I’m not sure how much significance I’d give to all the codes that Sciascia finds in Moro’s words. Examples of politicians stalling and blindly sticking to their talking points are still relevant today.

The life and career of Ettore Majorana is related in several short chapters – he switched from engineering to physics, had a complicated relationship with Fermi, befriended Heisenberg and met Bohr, was in Germany to see the rise of the Nazis, returned home and stayed secluded until taking a university chair position. While travelling from Naples to Palermo, Majorana sent off several odd letters suggesting that he was thinking of suicide. He had a ticket back to Palermo but never made it. Investigators thought it was most likely suicide, but his family and some friends believed he was still alive. Sciascia has some fun describing the bureaucracy involved and the doubts of the police as well as the ‘madness’ that afflicts the family of anyone who has gone missing. I found the life of Majorana involving and read this one straight through. I did think that Sciascia makes some leaps of logic here. He provides some good points in defending Majorana against the charge of being a Nazi-lover and the evidence does suggest that it wasn’t suicide (withdrawing a large amount of money before leaving, for example), but I found Sciascia’s suggested motivation and final fate of Majorana unconvincing. ( )