Workers' Hymn
[1][2] It quickly became popular,[1][3] and is considered one of the most significant historic songs of the Italian workers' movement, alongside Bandiera Rossa, The Internationale, and the Hymn of the First of May [it].
Turati later declared the poem "a juvenile poetic sin",[1][5] while Galli kept his authorship of the music unknown, and was tormented by fear and stress in his later life due to its popularity and censorship.
[5] For the text, Lazzari commissioned Filippo Turati, a young lawyer associated with the Milanese Socialist League, which was recognised for its intellectual character.
[1] Years after the song's publication, in his trial for the Bava Beccaris massacre, Turati was asked to declare his authorship of the anthem, which he affirmed.
[1] He said that the anthem was a "juvenile poetic sin",[1][5] and retorted:[3] They have put me on trial so many times for those verses as incitements for class hatred.
[2] The composition was auditioned among Lazzari's comrades "in a cheerful carneval evening, which we held in the modest trattoria Iresoldi in Via Bocchetto", and immediately caught on.
[1] The song became popular, particularly in republican and socialist opposition to the Marcia Reale, the Kingdom of Italy's official national anthem.
[1] In 1888, Lazzari sung the song to an international trade unionist congress in London, in the presence of John Burns, to a warm reception.
[13] During the Biennio Rosso, two years of intense social upheaval in Italy between 1919 and 1920, the song was popularly sung by socialists alongside the Bandiera Rossa and The Internationale.
Fascist squads parodied the opening lines: Come brothers, come comrades, / Come, come, in a thick crowd was replaced by Come people, to the rescue / To communists, we break their bones.
[14] The Workers' Hymn received official censorship even before it was ever performed: five days before its premiere, the prefecture of Milan had communicated to the party that the song was not to be sung nor its conference hosted, in the interests of public order and safety.
[1][5] Singing the Workers' Hymn was quickly banned in public,[3] and from 1892, it incurred a custodial sentence of at least 75 days as well as a fine of 100 lire.
[3] The application of the prohibition varied by province: during the early 1890s, the public prosecutor's office in Milan merely seized 9,000 printed copies of the anthem, on the pretext of legal irregularities among the publishers, while the police station of Reggio Emilia went further and arrested singers.
[4][15] A note from the Ministry of the Interior to the prefecture of Bologna, dated 28 December 1986, affirmed that "by the judicial orders of Parma, Catania, and Milan", "it is beyond any doubt that the printed version of the Workers' Hymn must always be seized".
[3] On 23 August 1940, the anarchist Ciro Musiani was reported in Rimini for humming the hymn in a tavern, leading to a short imprisonment.
[1][2] After the Battle of Caporetto in autumn 1917,[6] the prefecture of Milan forced Galli to withdraw copies of the hymn from the market at his expense.
Nelle pene e nell'insulto ci stringemmo in mutuo patto, la gran causa del riscatto niun di noi vorrà tradir.
L'esecrato capitale nelle macchine ci schiaccia, l'altrui solco queste braccia son dannate a fecondar.
Lo strumento del lavoro nelle mani dei redenti spenga gli odii e fra le genti chiami il dritto a trionfar.
Ogni cosa è sudor nostro, noi disfar, rifar possiamo; la consegna sia: sorgiamo troppo lungo fu il dolor.
Agli imbelli, ai proni al giogo mai non splenda il vostro riso: un esercito diviso la vittoria non corrà.
Panzini recounts passing a group of socialists singing the anthem, with a postman in the crowd asking him: "Don't we scare you now, rich man?"
Panzini suggested that an additional verse in the hymn should be dedicated to the farmers of Romagna, and advocate "diligence and passion for agricultural work...two qualities [that are] not in excess".
That note that grows and then breaks like a hurricane in the verse "The sun of the future shines": it has an indisputable effect.Il sol dell'avvenire, a 2023 Italian-French comedy-drama written and directed by Nanni Moretti, shares its title with a phrase from the third line of the Workers' Hymn.
