The past is often a place of violence and misery; that's true. But it is past, not forgotten – or not always – but done. Dealing with it can be troubling, and painful as well. But I'd say present violence and misery offends me more, as I think it should.

No matter how horrifying a historical event, we can hardly be at fault for failing to prevent it, as we almost invariably weren't alive back then to begin with. We are obviously alive now, though. And the impact of our actions weights on the people around us.

I have at home a set of linens, quite valuable – even if they would have been considered more valuable back in the day when handcrafting was a more distinguished trade. They come, I believe, from somewhere in Spain, late XIX Century. They were meant, as tradition went, for a newlywed bride – a family heirloom. But the person who kept them had seen her whole family destroyed over a few months during 1944-45, and she had no one left by the end of her life but the person who helped carry her to bed. Even in the kindness and generosity of this gift, I can't help but see how disgraceful it is that a young women, barely eighteen at the time, had to spend the rest of her life mourning such irreparable losses.

If you are familiar with the conceit of inter-generational trauma (or trans-generational trauma – I don't remember if there is a preferred term), this means that past violence and misery is not, strictly speaking, past. At least, is not the same past nor past in the same way for everyone. Thus past events can affect present generations, both conditioning their psychological health and social and economical environment. In this sense, acknowledging and understanding the past does represent an element – besides any moral obligation one may feel – for a process of reconciliation, for mitigating the degree of violence and misery in our present.

I am certain there are people who specialize in this aspect of history that might discuss the topic far more thoroughly than I could; but I wanted to at least raise the issue that a study of the past is not exclusively the examination of a dead object, no matter how horrifying. And thus it is not just a question of whether we want to dig it up or not: it's already out there in some form.

Unfortunately, the past is not there to help us mend our issues. Where there is violence, misery, trauma, there's also divisiveness, conflict, often petty and callous, indifferent and shallow. Most of the time, trauma is not – despite one's best intentions – a learning experience.

It can teach us something. Growing up I had never understood my grandfather fixation with not wasting bread. He was definitely able to afford fresh bread, and indeed he always provided his family with it. Yet, no matter how stale, he'd scrape off the mold and cheerfully eat the leftover bread. Indeed it is difficult, especially for a child, to understand the extreme psychological impact of hunger, of progressive starvation even, of seeing the men around you – people you had known – falling apart.

There is a letter (there's obviously more than one; that's one I remember) from an Italian prisoner of war – written in 1918 – wishing death upon his mother, because despite his many previous letters, she had not yet sent him one piece of bread. Her starving son. Her dying son. Not that she could have.

As to why families had a hard time sending food to their relatives during the war, that was a contentious issue back then, and one that's unlikely to find composition by means of historical research. Just as the past is not there to assist us, we can't – or so I believe – fix the past. We can't mend the divisions and conflicts that existed, but we should at least learn to take a respectful and considerate approach to them. To treat them with the great degree of intellectual modesty and moral sincerity that the contemplation of horror and tragedy should inspire.

On the 27^th of January, 1916, the old meridionalist Giustino Fortunato wrote to his younger fellow southerner Gaetano Salvemini, discussing the ongoing Italian war. It's one of my favorite letters from the period. Fortunato – who was an ailing liberal-conservative, and held rather pessimistic views – had never been convinced, unlike Salvemini – who belonged to a newer and more progressive political generation – of the necessity for Italy to join the war.

Since my fourteenth year, when I had to fight with my father, a supporter of the Bourbons, I have thought I could see things clear, and straight. […] But in these last two years, I have been feeling like I should rather get myself committed […]

I fear for tomorrow. I do, since I know, I know much better than any of you can, what misery, economical and moral, truly and effectively is, and its unspeakable consequences over that half of Italy […] that saw us onto the world […] I, that have always wished, always called for us […] to give up on our dream of being a “great power”; a dream to which you all, by God, have brought your offerings, and every generation more fanatically than the previous one...

Anyways, I won't complain […] I accept everything [you have to say], save for one thing, that saddened me, and that I feel I don't deserve.

How am I wrong in publishing the pictures of the poor folk from my hometown that have fallen on the Carso! And why would that be? Because it contributes to turn people against the war! By God, that's the exact opposite! You go. Go to Rionero and see for yourself the gratitude of those poor people that see the dear, lost images of their loved ones reliving “on the news”, what comfort, what meek, kind smile. How! How comes that others have the right to reproduce their bourgeois “heroes” […] and I cannot collect and memorialize the loved ones of my townsfolk, who fell for nothing but the call of duty, ignorant and indifferent to that “European balance”, the emptiness of which you experienced yourself in those dreadful nights in the trenches?

Yes. I do collect their images – and their humble, beautiful letters to their wives and mothers – and both I'll bestow to my family as a memory of this extreme age of my life.

And you, my dear friend, don't sentence me, like Colajanni does with Croce, as he goes saying “Croce and the other spies”! […]

Which brings us back to the original point. I understand that this is largely my opinion, but I feel that cattiness, shallowness, a note of senseless verbal violence tend to pervade the way we engage with historical subjects – especially in a public setting. And while I believe that there is a point in popularizing history, including dismissing the often phony rules of professional courtesy, I also think that there is a difference between acknowledging the dramatic reality of conflict and perpetuating a parody of it. History cannot redeem us of our sins, but this is a fairly modest lesson, that I fear we don't want to learn.

This – more than history itself – is what I find disheartening, if you ask me.