Elena Melli Tribute [1946]

Not unexpectedly – in that we had guessed from her recent letters at the awful, relentless ailment that was eating away at her – news has reached us of the death of Elena Melli, the loving companion and, over his last twelve years the devoted nurse of Errico Malatesta who owed it to her that he did not end his life as a battler in the direst loneliness.

In the hospital in Carrara where she was being treated, she did not have access – due to the lack of medicines and a diet appropriate to her illness – to all the treatments and remedies she needed to ease her suffering. She was not yet 56 years old. Young, sturdy and daring, she could be seen in the years after the first war in the front ranks in street demonstrations, imbued with an ardent belief that made her heedless of danger. When fascism came to power, she found herself, so to speak, sequestered in Rome with Errico. Two policemen kept watch on their apartment day and night and followed them through the streets when they ventured outside. Not that that stopped Mussolini from announcing that the dangerous anarchist Malatesta, feared by all the world’s police forces, was living as a completely free man in Italy!

After Errico died in 1932, poor Elena suffered the grief of seeing her daughter marry a fascist. He must have been the one to forward to the Duce Malatesta’s letters and books; in spite of an offer made through the Dutch Legation to purchase them at a good price, he destroyed them. After that Elena did not rest until she had Errico’s body lifted from his grave and placed in a columbarium. After which she had her own ferocious persecution to contend with. Since there were no grounds on which to clap her in prison or banish her, they had her declared mad and locked up in an asylum in Rome. The doctors treating her declined to diagnose her as mentally ill and had time and again signed her discharge papers, but on reaching the gate lodge she was turned around. How long this disgusting game was played out we do not know and whenever she was finally released, along came the war and all correspondence was interrupted. Once it resumed, she wrote to us from Apuania, to where she had been reassigned pending leave to go back to La Spezia. She still displayed the same belief, the same love and enthusiasm, but then illness overcame her, an extremely painful disease that destroyed her sturdy physique.

‘Our bereavements: Elena Melli’ from Il Risveglio Anarchico (Geneva) 03/01/1946

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.