Among the many initiatives and publications that have marked the centenary of Gabriele d'Annunzio's expedition to Fiume and the Carta del Carnaro, we highlight today the work of Consul Federico Lorenzo Ramaioli "Quis contra nos? History of the Regency of Carnaro from d'Annunzio to the Constitution of Fiume", of which we publish the Author's introduction.

For decades, in recent history, the Carnaro region has been at the center of disputes and disagreements that arose with reference to the question of the eastern border of Italy, with alternating events around which the lives of those who, coming from various contexts, have fought for the fate of the city of Fiume and the surrounding lands have intertwined.

That Sinus Carnarius, which already under the reign of Emperor Augustus was made to coincide with the end of the Regio X Venetia et Histria, and which Dante mentions in his Comedy as the final limit of Italy, in fact represents that frontier land, that extreme eastern border which has inflamed, from time to time, personalities from the military, artistic, political and literary world, who claimed possession of it for one side or the other, imagining now this now that institutional and social structure for the construction of a new civilisation.

In all this, one is the experience that perhaps more than all the others has marked the lands of Carnaro with its brief and lightning-fast adventure, made of violent passions and unresolved tensions, latent contradictions and fierce joys, and, above all, an uncontainable desire for innovation and experimentation. This is the experience of the Italian Regency of Carnaro, proclaimed by Gabriele D'Annunzio following his capture of the city, at the head of his legionaries and of those who, together with him, cultivated the myth of the "mutilated victory" at the end of the First World War. The proclamation, as is known and as we will have the opportunity to examine in more detail, made Fiume an independent city-state, given the impossibility of proceeding with the annexation of Carnaro to the Kingdom of Italy, and gave rise to a unique and extraordinary political and legal experience, which would also have important repercussions in the following decades, even beyond the eastern borders of Italy.

It was something unique, because of the differences, and sometimes contradictions, that existed among those who launched themselves into the enterprise of taking possession of the “unredeemed” city, giving life to a social model that was completely different, in its own way, from the previous and subsequent ones. It was, again, the extreme will to experiment, to build, to construct new social structures, new institutions, to draft new statutes and new norms, beyond any possible rule and conditioning, in a forge of visions and radical conceptions aimed at building the ideal city, to bring into existence the myth that soon became known as the “city of life”.

It was a kingdom of fantasy, a government of poets and adventurers, soldiers and artists, where futurists, revolutionary trade unionists, nationalists, Italian and foreign patriots met to give life to something that, until then, the world had never witnessed. Something that, despite its short life, in the minds of its creators should have launched its own challenge to the society of the time, in a breath of absolute freedom that, precisely because it was utopian, could not have lasted long.

One of the most particular aspects of the Regency was undoubtedly that of its Statute, or rather its Constitutional Charter, which, even today, is a legal document of extreme interest and extreme relevance, due to some key principles that, in addition to revolutionizing the Italian legal panorama of the time, anticipated in some respects several later innovations, not least those incorporated into the Republican Constitution of 1948. In this case too, in fact, it was a question of experimenting with the drafting of a fundamental Charter that should not simply regulate the reciprocal relationships between the powers of the new State, but rather outline the features of a new form of civilization, suspended between dream and reality, between legend and myth, between future and past.

It was, as we shall see, something unique, that is, a legal document that, pursuing an imaginative and absolute ideal, mythical and extremely innovative, almost ended up getting lost in a world of utopias and verses, art and legend, and, above all, a life lived at the extreme of possibilities. It was, again, a text that, precisely by virtue of the height of its aspirations and the various souls of its protagonists, seemed unable to relegate its disruptive contents to a coherently legal framework, according to the logic of a law that, until then, did not seem to have been able to provide exhaustive answers to that inexhaustible hunger for freedom and experimentation that served, precisely, as inspiration for this particular experience. It almost seemed, on closer inspection, that the instruments of law were not in themselves sufficient to express a vision so vitalistic and at the same time so contradictory, so high and at the same time so visionary. It was a constitutional text which, in its own way, was much more than a constitutional text, to the point of being at one point a political manifesto and a poetic proclamation, a popular exhortation and an artistic document, a reminder of distant civilizations and an incitement to build the future.

This text, after analyzing the historical context in which the proclamation of the Regency takes place, aims to examine the fundamental principles of its Statute, the organization of powers that emerges from it, the role of citizens and their rights and freedoms, the concept of work and workers, and everything that from the statutory rules has influenced, more or less consciously, subsequent legal experiences. A rereading, therefore; a rereading of a legal document sometimes relegated to the realm of the extravagances of its "imaginative" creator, here the protagonist in his dual role as poet and soldier, but also the rereading of a document too often forgotten, in a context that from its examination can still draw notable food for thought in terms of the theory of Law and the State. And this is especially true in a time, such as our contemporary age, in which very important challenges are emerging on the horizon that are capable, in themselves, of calling into question important principles, already considered acquired, of the Western legal heritage.

A rereading of a text, in conclusion, which acquires even more value today, in a legal context characterized by numerous uncertainties and latent contradictions, and in which rediscovering a document of similar importance can only stimulate interesting reflections for the years to come.

 

Federico Lorenzo Ramaioli, Who is against us? History of the Regency of Carnaro from d'Annunzio to the Constitution of Fiume, Historica, Rome 2018, 304 pp.