Renzo Novatore - Life

Life

Abele Ricieri Ferrari was born in Arcola, Liguria, Italy on May 12, 1890 in a poor peasant family. He did not adjust to school discipline and quit in the first year never coming back after that. While he worked in his father's farm, he self-educated himself with an emphasis in poetry and philosophy. Around his town, he was surrounded by a vibrant anarchist scene which he started to come close to.

He discovered Errico Malatesta, Peter Kropotkin, Henrik Ibsen and Friedrich Nietzsche, who Novatore often quoted, and especially Max Stirner. From 1908 on he embraced individualist anarchism. In 1910, he was charged with the burning of a local church and spent three months in prison, but his participation in the fire was never proved. A year later, he went on the lam for several months because the police wanted him for theft and robbery. On September 30, 1911, the police arrested him for vandalism. He justified refusal of work and he thought, in his personal philosophy of life, that he has the right to expropriate from the rich people what he needed for his daily survival, and using force wasn't a problem for him.

In 1914, he began to write for anarchist papers. He was drafted in 1912 but quickly discharged for unknown causes. As the Great War approached he deserted his regiment on April 26, 1918 and was sentenced to death by a military tribunal for desertion and high treason on October 31. He left his village and fled, propagating the desertion from the Army and the armed uprising against the state. Novatore was married with two children at the time andwhen in the last months of 1918, his younger son died, Novatore came back to his home, risking the arrest only to give him a last goodbye.

He was involved in an anarcho-futurist collective in La Spezia which he led (along with Auro d'Arcola) to be active in the militant anti-fascist Arditi del Popolo. He was close friends with Enzo Martucci and Bruno Filippi. Renzo Novatore wrote for many anarchist papers (Cronaca Libertaria, Il Libertario, Iconoclastal, Gli Scamiciati, Nichilismo, Pagine Libere) where he debated with other anarchists (among them Camillo Berneri). He published a magazine, Vertice, which has unfortunately been lost apart from few articles. Novatore collaborated in the individualist anarchist journal Iconoclasta! alongside the young stirnerist illegalist Bruno Filippi

On May 1919, the city of La Spezia felt under control of a self-proclaimed Revolutionary Committee and he fought alongside it. On June 30, 1919, Novatore was hidden in a hut in the countries near the city of Sarzana. A farmer told the police about him and he was sentenced to ten years in prison, but was released in a general amnesty a few months later. By the early 1920s Italy was about to be taken over by Fascism. He decided to go underground and in 1922 he joined the gang of the famous robber of anarchist inspiration: Sante Pollastro.

He was killed in an ambush by carabinieri in Teglia, near Genoa, on November 29, 1922 while being with Pollastro but Pollastro managed to escape. On Novatore's body the detectives found some false documents, a Browning gun with two full magazines, one hand grenade and a ring with a secret container filled with a lethal dose of cyanide.