Against the current

For the philosopher Immanuel Kant, "Everything has a price, or has dignity." If what has a price can be replaced with something else of equivalent value, every human being possesses dignity, is irreplaceable, and cannot be considered a means to achieve someone else's ends.

More recently, Piero Calamandrei stated that the political goal of our Constitution is "to give all men human dignity." Nowadays, that goal seems increasingly distant, because in our sick society, many more people have a price than those who have dignity. In his essay titled "Dalla Parte del Torto" (On the Side of the Wrong), Tomaso Montanari writes that "worse than war have been the decades of market dictatorship and the primacy of money over man: war is raging among the poor, fueled by the entrepreneurs of fear." Our social and economic system is incompatible with human rights, because it denies the dignity of the individual. "It takes courage to see it and say it," Montanari continues, "a courage we once had and then lost when we let ourselves be convinced that becoming adults meant accepting the world as it is." An invitation to be aware of the dogmas and compromises imposed by capitalist society and to act responsibly as individuals, with a hint of that anarchic and rebellious spirit that always characterized Fabrizio De André.

In the song "Smisurata preghiera," his spiritual testament, the singer-songwriter celebrates all those who have the courage to travel in a stubborn and contrary direction, despite the superficiality and arrogance of the majority, "to deliver to death a drop of splendor, of humanity, of truth." The lyrics, co-written with Ivano Fossati, are based on the verses of Colombian poet Alvaro Mutis. De André prays to the same God he doesn't believe in, so that He won't forget the servants who disobey the laws of the pack, deserving of help "as an oversight, as an anomaly, as a distraction, as a duty." The invocation can only be boundless because, as the author himself says, "it probably won't be heard by anyone, but we'll try anyway." De André sings for all those who have chosen solitude in the name of freedom, the so-called marginalized, seemingly "losers" because they are excluded from society, but in reality true winners, capable of grasping the depths of life. A song that remains relevant today, a tribute to the courage of individuals, written by a man who lived by words, always chosen and conceived with love and precision. As De André himself said, "Words are a powerful tool of creation. They give an identity to the world I live in, a fluid, magmatic, and elusive world. I want to know the world, everything about it, I want to enter it to liberate and to liberate myself. I combine words with music to tell the story of this world. The only possible one, the only one that can be sung, and the only one that can be narrated. I am a storyteller with guitar strings as my fingers and the wings of imagination to fly on the swing of the world.


Mauro Tabasso
NP October 2025