Armando Odenigo
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Biographical notes
Born in Rijeka on 9 September 1885 to Antonio and Ersilia Sillich, he was known as a writer, poet, journalist and politician. His maternal grandfather was from Labin, his grandmother was from Venice.
He was one of the inspirers of the "Young Rijeka" in 1905, starting the irredentist movement. His father would have wanted him as his successor in the family business, but his love for politics and art led him to journalism.
In 1910 he took over the editorship of the newspaper "La Bilancia", later taking the place of Emilio Marcuzzi as director of "La Voce del Popolo" when he had been banished from Fiume as an active member of the Giovane Fiume. In 1914 he was elected councillor of the Municipal Representation, dissolved immediately after Italy's entry into the war, and in 1915 he managed to arrive in Rome to enlist as a volunteer. Many of his publications date back to the war period, as he had been chosen by Dante Alighieri to prepare documentary material on Italian claims.
Returning to Fiume in the summer of 1919, while the preparation of D'Annunzio's enterprise was underway, he founded with Iti Bacci "La Vedetta d'Italia", which he directed until November 1920, when D'Annunzio sent him to Rome as a delegate of the Italian Regency of Carnaro to the Italian government. He resumed leadership in October 2021 to lead the polemical campaign against the government of Zanella, then head of the Rijeka Free State.
In May 1923 he was called to Rome as editor-in-chief of the Corriere Italiano, which he then left due to disagreements with Avv. Filippelli, later involved in the Matteotti crime. He then moved to the "Mezzogiorno" of Naples, and then ended his journalistic career in Milan, as editor-in-chief of "L'Ambrosiano".
His career then took a diplomatic turn, starting to work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1928, first as consul in Bratislava, then as first secretary of the embassy in Warsaw. From 1935 onwards, after a brief interlude at the Ministry of Press and Propaganda as deputy director general, he was consul in Graz and then in Toulon until Italy's entry into the war in 1940. In September 1944, he was taken prisoner by the Russians with his wife, and held for six years in prisons in Moscow. When he was released, he learned that his wife had died a few months after the beginning of his captivity. In the long months of confinement, he wrote a lot both in verse and prose, but he was not allowed to take anything with him. He managed to reconstruct in part, from memory, in "Little Romantic Odyssey".
He died in Milan in July 1969, where he lived next to his daughter.
Critical notes
In Moscow Prisons, Odenigo bears witness to the tragic adventure he lived in Moscow. He recalls with detachment, sometimes even with subtle irony, the sufferings endured with a virile soul. All this in a lively and tense language in the incisive re-enactment of the facts. As an admirer of Piero Foscari, an important politician in the first two decades of the twentieth century, he dedicated a biography to him, in which, among others, he reports Foscari's attitude during the negotiations that preceded the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo with Yugoslavia, in 1920.
Bibliography
- Hungary and the Magyars in the War of Nations, Fratelli Treves Editori, Milan, 1915
- Fiume, ville italienne et son role antigermanique, Zurich, Paris, 1917
- Fiume italiana e la sua funzione antigermanica, Athenaeum, Rome, 1917
- Moscow prisons. Six years of experience sovietiche, L. Cappelli, Bologna - Rocca S. Casciano, 1955
- Piero Foscari. An exemplary life ,L. Cappelli, Bologna, 1959
- Piccola odissea romantica, Del Bianco, Udine, 1964
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