Farewell to Alberto Asor Rosa : the most famous ''palindrome'' of Italian literature died today in Rome at the age of 89.

A combative, workerist intellectual, always hovering between study and social struggle, who came out many times from the communist party by slamming the door.

“It was supposed to come out this Friday. He seemed to be doing better but had a sudden cardiac arrest. In the last two years my father has had shaky health due to heart and lung problems», explains Angela Asor Rosa, one of the two daughters, with her sister Laura .

He was born in Rome on September 23, 1933, to graduate from the Liceo Classico Augusto in Rome, he then graduated from Sapienza, supervisor Natalino Sapegno. Sloping mustache and flowing hair, as if to underline the rebellious character. But above all renowned scholar, professor of history of literature at Sapienza, an intellectual of Marxist training who has always been involved in the dialectic between culture and power and in the analysis of social reality .

He left the PCI in 1956, like many other intellectuals who reacted horrified to the Hungarian tragedy, and returned only in '72: he worked on its transformation and was several times a parliamentarian (elected in '79). A scholar of modern Italian literature and of the Baroque period in particular, he conceived and directed the monumental History of Einaudi literature , and many monographs and crowded university courses dedicated to the great protagonists of Italian literature.

(Unioneonline/D)

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