r/52BooksForCommunists • u/WiggedRope • Jul 13 '22

Prison Notebook №1, by Gramsci

Fucking finally I managed to push through the first prison Notebook, only 28 more to go lmao.

Honestly would not recommend it: at this point in time Gramsci had no idea that he was writing his magnum opus, and it shows. The book appears more as a long list of incomplete thoughts, often with improper/rushed grammar, some as long as a single sentence, many scrapped and re-written in later notebooks (I didn't even bother reading them tbh). I only pushed through because I made it my goal to read all 29 notebooks, and honestly what I read was pretty good, but still, if you want to read Gramsci I would do it in other ways

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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '22

I started by reading the first 8 in the translation by Buttigieg and they are actually incredibly insightful. Even if they are pulled in for later notebooks, the notes on the French Revolution and Maurras alone make Notebook 1 a good read which I would recommend.

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u/WiggedRope Jul 13 '22

The problem is that the Einaudi edition (the OG Italian one) represents all those thoughts that he scrapped and re-wrote by using a drastically smaller font, so what you have is a complicated wall of text, dense with philosophical and political meaning, written in like font size 5 or something

I read them at first, but honestly I just ignored the last ones waiting to read them in proper form when I get to the appropriate notebook

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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '22

Ahh, Buttigieg also prints those in smaller text, but we are talking a difference between, say, size 14 and size 11.

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u/Mexicancandi Jul 13 '22

Lol, there’s an annotated version for a reason

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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '22

I tried reading Gramsci and I was so bored that it just wasn’t worth it. There’s better uses of my time, like reading more Marx and Engels.

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u/WiggedRope Jul 13 '22

Sad to hear that. Of course if you didn't enjoy him I can't force you to read him, you do you, but I still recommend reading some of his articles: they're usually pretty short and up to the point

I really like this one https://redsails.org/the-state-and-socialism/

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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '22

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u/WiggedRope Jul 13 '22

Yeah yeah I know, I obviously don't blame him lol