On 8 November 1926 Antonio Gramsci, in violation of his parliamentary immunity, was arrested in Rome and imprisoned in the Regina Coeli prison. The trial of twenty-two communist defendants also began in Rome on 28 May 1928; Mussolini had instituted the Special Fascist Tribunal on 1 February 1927. Antonio Gramsci is accused of conspiratorial activity, incitement to civil war, apologia for crime and incitement to class hatred. On 4 June Gramsci was sentenced to twenty years, four months and five days imprisonment; on 19 July he went to prison in Turi, in the province of Bari. The public prosecutor concluded his indictment with this sentence:
‘For twenty years we must stop this brain from working’.
The letters from prison are full of references, even crude ones, to the situation of the chained body, its molecular transformations, the progressive decay of the prisoner’s vital functions. In addition to their literary value, they are a vibrant testimony to the journey of a man who, locked up in the solitude of a prison, going through moments of discouragement and suffering, did not stop pursuing his political and human battle.

Duration: 40 min