‘Benedetto Croce is of interest in China, and an encyclopaedia about him will soon be published’

The midday light streams in through the large windows. This place feels like a lived-in home. It is not – as can sometimes be the case in such situations – a ossuary full of ghosts. Memories come to life and thoughts are renewed. The pasta served is remarkable. Spaghetti with pesto, with an abundance of crushed cashew nuts that make it almost sweet, without being cloying. In the 1980s, Benedetta co-hosted a cultural programme on Radio Tre, first called *Spazio Tre* and later *Prima Pagina*, a forerunner to *Fahrenheit*. Guests included Gian Arturo Ferrari, Ernesto Ferrero, Giorgio Manganelli, Anna Foa, Emilio Gentile, Massimo Cacciari and Giuliano Ferrara. Benedetto Croce had long been out of step with the spirit of the times. ‘At that time, interest was centred on psychoanalysis, the Annales School with its Nouvelle Histoire, and Structuralism. It was understandable that Laterza should prioritise these new fields of research, whilst neglecting the reissue of Croce’s works. I realised during the afternoon radio discussions that a great deal was changing and that publishers such as Einaudi and Mondadori were considering republishing him. At my mother’s request, I sought advice from Luciano Foà and Roberto Calasso on which publisher would be the right choice for this reissue. And they, much to my surprise – given Adelphi’s catalogue’s general aversion to historicism and its focus on leading philosophers (starting with Nietzsche and Heidegger) – replied that they would be delighted to publish it through Adelphi because, as Calasso put it, Croce was among the ‘indispensable’ writers. That is why we left Laterza and moved to Adelphi.’

The results of this decision were significant: in 1989, the first title, *Contributo alla critica di me stesso*, was published, followed by a further twenty-six books, totalling three hundred thousand copies, which gradually enabled Croce to emerge from the obscurity into which he had been consigned.

The pasta is absolutely delicious. I take another double forkful from the bowl. Benedetta was born and brought up in Rome. But – in the classic anthropological and cultural context of the intellectual classes of the twentieth century – she was torn between the city and the countryside, Italia and Europe, microcosms and the wider world. The Croce family has always had close ties to Piedmont. She recounts with the delight of someone who nourishes her inner self with memories: ‘As a child, I used to spend the very long summers between school years with my brother Piero in Piedmont, in Colleretto Giacosa, at the home of my grandmother Paola Giacosa, daughter of Piero, an entomologist and brother of the playwright Giuseppe Giacosa, and at Grandfather Enrico Craveri’s, a lawyer who had been swept up in the collapse of the financial ventures of that mad genius from Biella, Riccardo Gualino. In Colleretto Giacosa and Parella, the other small village in the Canavese where our family’s holiday homes were located, we spent wonderful months reading Alexandre Dumas, Walter Scott and Russian novels, catching crayfish in the streams and cycling, popping down to Adriano Olivetti’s Ivrea and going on excursions in the Aosta Valley to Cogne, Champoluc and Gressoney.”

The mozzarella, served with tomatoes, is exceptional. I stop at the third slice. Everything here speaks of this story, but Benedetta has had the strength not to be overwhelmed by a personality who shaped an era and who, indeed, has been rediscovered over the last few decades. A few metres away from us, Russian furniture has replaced the original pieces destroyed in 1926 by a raid carried out by a fascist squad, whilst on the other side of the house, Croce’s books, letters and notes are preserved. Unlike many other great families of material and cultural wealth, the daughters, granddaughters and grandsons of the author of *Why We Cannot But Call Ourselves Christians* did not suffer any form of annihilation: ‘I’ve had to grapple all my life with an inferiority complex regarding the family tradition. The way others looked at us was very real. I remember my brother Piero, who, in his A-level exams, did not do well in the oral philosophy exam. To the examiners, it was inconceivable that Croce’s grandson should not be a brilliant debater.”

I dip a piece of bread into the oil, the whey and the salt on my plate, in keeping with that down-to-earth quality – neither rhetorical nor vulgar – which made Benedetto Croce – ‘the Senator’ to everyone in Naples – so beloved by his fellow citizens. Craveri, after completing her degree under Giovanni Macchia, established herself as a scholar and writer, publishing ‘Madame du Deffand and Her World’ for the first time in 1982 with Adelphi: ‘I suggested to Calasso a selection of letters by this great letter-writer, but he encouraged me instead to write her biography. It was his vote of confidence that helped me overcome my chronic fear of embarrassing my family.” Since then, drawing on meticulous bibliographical and archival research, she has published six books with this publisher, which have been translated into numerous languages. The next one, due out in the spring, will be about seven French, German and Baltic women who belong to the European nobility, and who all write and, often, think in French, have the same upbringing, and are involved in the workings of power: ‘My working method is based on historical documentation and on reconstructing the literary culture to which the protagonists of my books belong. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to write a single line of my own invention.’ Their lives brush against one another and intersect in a Europe dominated by the Napoleonic era and marked by the Congress of Vienna. ‘The nineteenth century, which had the Napoleonic Code among its cornerstones, was a misogynistic century which – as Craveri notes – restricted women’s sphere of influence far more than the Ancien Régime did, subjecting them to male authority. Already under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French Revolution had confined women to the hearth. The Jacobins abhorred the influence of women – mothers, sisters and lovers. But as we know, and as I have also sought to document in my own books, women did not give up.”

Grapes and some delicious mini babà are brought to the table. The coffee is made in a moka pot. From the labyrinth of Naples’ streets, a murmur of voices drifts in. In this room, as Benedetta Craveri and I drink our coffee, there is a silence full of life, memories and the future.