Italia Irredenta

BREAD AND WINE -- Ignazio Silone -- Harper ($2.50).

As far as U. S. readers are concerned there are no writers left in Germany. And Italy's literary cupboard is just as bare. But whereas Germany has many an extraterritorial writer to disregard, Italy has only Ignazio Silone. Nevertheless, he is enough to make the Fascist eagle scream with rage.

After the march on Rome (1922), when Mussolini's blackshirts were persuading their fellow-countrymen to join the Party, the Silone brothers had to stop work on their labor paper. Ignazio took to the mountains, was sheltered by the Abruzzi, peasants for three years. His brother was imprisoned, died from a beating. Exiled near Zurich, Ignazio Silone now writes books about his native land which no Duce-fearing Fascist could possibly approve. In Fontamara (1934), in Bread and Wine Exile Silone yearns as bitterly over his redeemed country as all patriotic Italians used to yearn over Italia irredenta. Fascists will not like Bread and Wine. Everyone else will.

Of the former pupils of old Don Benedetto, most had gone with the wind of the times. Only one, Pietro Spina, refused to conform. When, weary of exile, he came back to Italy to see how the land lay. he found his former comrades scattered, missing or "reformed." A friendly peasant hid Spina in a shed, an old schoolmate had just enough courage to get him a disguise, send him off to a mountain village. Garbed as Don Paolo, a priest on vacation. Spina slowly got his bearings again, gradually began to sound out the political temper of his neighbors. Against his stubborn will he finally had to admit that ignorance and fear had drained all the political temper out of them. Here & there he found an old comrade still willing to work for freedom, or a youngster who suspected that there was something rotten in the state of Italy; but among people so burdened with fear that they dared not even pronounce the Leader's holy name (they referred to Him as ''Etcetera Etcetera") nothing could happen.

Spina's yearning for action became so violent that he went out at night chalking up subversive messages: "Down with government soup! Long live liberty!" Only result was that he had to run for his life. At book's end he was still running. Author Silone holds out little hope that he will not be caught.

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