Manlio Cecovini

A charismatic personality, a protagonist of Trieste's political and cultural life, Manlio Cecovini was a jurist, magistrate and later State Lawyer, a painter and a fencing enthusiast. A person of vast culture, he was a mason of great commitment and prestige.

Born in Trieste in 1914, Manlio Cecovini graduated from high school and graduated in Law. He was a magistrate and State Lawyer, and during the nine years of Allied Administration in Trieste he acted as legal advisor to the Allied Military Government. Founder and historical leader of the autonomist movement 'Lista per Trieste', he was mayor of the city from 1978 to 1983, member of the first European Parliament (1979-1984) and regional councillor of Friuli Venezia Giulia. He founded the Julian Institute of History, Culture and Documentation, of which he was president for a long time.

Essayist and novelist, he has written over forty books. In 1986, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the annexation of Trieste to Italy, he signed 'Del patriottismo di Trieste. Discorso di un triestino agli italiani' ('Trieste's patriotism. Speech of a Triestine to the Italians'), deeply committed to defending the interests of Trieste with the aim of restoring to the city, too often marginalised by the great flows of history, its function as a hinge in the connection of the European Community with the Mediterranean and - beyond Suez - with the East.

He was initiated into the Masonry of the Grand Orient of Italy in 1949 and became its Honorary Grand Master. Co-opted in 1952 to the 4th degree of the Scottish Rite, in 1967 he became a full member of the Supreme Council and held the position of Sovereign Grand Commander from 1977 to 1986.     

Remembering Manlio Cecovini

Manlio Cecovini was with his charismatic personality a protagonist of Trieste's political and cultural life.

He was an outstanding jurist, a State Lawyer, a valiant officer in World War II, a legal advisor to the Allied Military Government, Mayor of Trieste and Member of the European Parliament. Two of his great passions were his sporting activity, he was an excellent fencer and his activity as an artist. Cecovini was a talented painter and draughtsman, while talking on the phone he would jot down wonderful sketches on flying sheets of paper. Above all, he would have liked to be remembered as a painter.

A person of great culture, he was a mason who always declared his membership openly, a mason of great commitment and prestige, inside and outside the Institution, so much so that he was recognised as Honorary Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy. He joined Freemasonry according to an illustrious Trieste tradition - as Cecovini himself wrote - and was an active member locally, nationally and internationally. He lived through the complicated years of the re-establishment of Freemasonry in Italy and in Trieste in particularly difficult times: for the city, separated from the homeland and subject to an allied military government, where political and social tensions were very strong. He experienced equally difficult moments for the Institution in the decade 1979-1989, guiding the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite through the P2 masonic lodge storm with a sure hand. In recognition of his work in favour of Freemasonry and the Scottish Rite in particular and in recognition of the great merits he had acquired, the Supreme Council of the Rite decided to confer on him the title of Sovereign Honorary Grand Commander Ad Vitam and the honour of Knight of the Grand Cross Member of the Court of Honour of the Scottish Rite.

He was always interested in culture and liberal politics, especially in defence of Trieste's interests. Active in the emerging Circle of Culture and the Arts, the one chaired by Giani Stuparich, and formed by the leading figures of the cultural Trieste of the time, he established important ties with cultural personalities such as Stelio Crise, Bruno Maier and the poet Biagio Marin, to whom he was bound by a lifelong friendship based on deep, mutual esteem. After serving as a municipal councillor, in 1976 he was one of the founders of the Lista per Trieste, the Italian autonomist movement, better known outside Trieste as 'Il Melone' (The Melon).

An essayist and, above all, a master of life and ideas, Cecovini was a writer like few others, endowed with great inner strength who 'always had a special way of approaching life during his long and complex journey through life, a way that went straight to the essence of things, never fixing his gaze on the episodic or the contingent'. In fact, he was able to keep himself rooted in the sphere of being with his roots firmly planted in the ground, like 'The Tree that Must Not Die' from the symbolic title of one of his novels, drawing sap to live and operate in the world of history and politics. In the meantime, he was able to draw strength from his thoughts and meditations on which he loved to dwell, almost in the pursuit of continuous refinement. His phrases, his ironic aphorisms, sometimes disturbing or reassuring, left a trace in those who listened to him or read him.

He was also ahead of his time, ever since he wrote and published 'Del patriottismo di Trieste. Discorso di un triestino agli italiani' (On the Patriotism of Trieste. Speech of a Triestine to the Italians). This was on the 50th anniversary of the annexation of Trieste to Italy. It was a 'cahier de dolèances' as the author himself called it, intended for the 'Italians on the other side'. It was a piece of writing out of the chorus and was a great success; the first edition sold out in a short time and a second one was immediately published and, as Mario Soldati wrote at the time, it should be read by every Italian and adopted in schools.

Moving with extreme consistency along these lines, he carried out an intense activity in defence of Trieste's interests as an 'Italian city and international port'; in the first European Parliament he succeeded, among other things, in getting his 'Trieste Project' approved. The aim was to restore the city's function, too often marginalised by the great flows of history, as a land-sea hinge connecting the European Community with the Mediterranean (and beyond Suez).

As a writer, and as such he said he wanted to be remembered, he published over forty books, both fiction (novels and short stories) and non-fiction. In these works, there is no lack of explicit references to the history and fundamental principles of Free Masonry, and also to his personal experience. The volumes 'Testimone del Caos', 'Nottole ad Atene' and the 'Carteggio Scazonte' are a few examples in which all his attention to the great problems of culture, the spirit, understanding and recognition of the other through knowledge emerge. It has been written of him: 'his lucid intelligence is the basis of his personal, clear historical and philosophical vision, which is seen as a lifelong "recherche"'.

A personality characterised by a logical and rational nature, tending to pinpoint the core of problems and to solve them in a persuasive manner, he was a political leader, but above all a man of high and extensive culture, of openness and European projection, as is evident in his correspondence, which he described as 'scazontic', with the Slovenian writer and intellectual Alojz Rebula. In his love of books, both in writing them and in composing and publishing them, in his desire to link his name to cultural institutions such as the Julian Institute of History and Documentation, he was able to perfectly reflect what was, in its highest profile, the most important form of the Julian cultural tradition.

Today, his entire work is the great legacy that he left behind and which should be enhanced with appropriate initiatives that encourage its study and reading, and can be a valid point of reference for those involved in a personal quest, which is a quest for knowledge, as he himself liked to specify.

In a conversation with a journalist, which became an almost posthumous interview, he said, among other things: 'We have fantasy, imagination, poetry, but we will never arrive at the truth', but this does not exempt us from continuing to search for it.

• L'autogoverno della Venezia Giulia: progetto di statuto, Trieste, F. Zigiotti, 1946
• Ritorno da Poggio Boschetto, Firenze, La Voce, 1954
• La rotta del sole, Udine, Del Bianco, 1960
• Farina fina e altri racconti, Milano, Nuova accademia, 1963
• Ponte Perati: la Julia in Grecia, Firenze, Vallecchi, 1966 e ristampa Milano, Longanesi, 1973
• Breve storia del porto industriale di Trieste, a cura del Rotary Club di Trieste, 1966
• Del patriottismo di Trieste: discorso di un triestino agli italiani nel cinquantenario della redenzione, Milano, All'insegna del pesce d'oro, 1968
• Straniero in paradiso, Trieste, Lint, 1970 e ristampa Trieste, MGS Press, 1995
• I migliori di noi, Udine, La Nuova Base, 1971
• (con Dino Menichini), L'autostrada Trieste-Udine-Venezia, Trieste, Autovie Venete, 1972
• Burlesque, Trieste, Italo Svevo, 1973
• SGT Centodieci anni, Trieste, Società Ginnastica Triestina, 1973
• Per favore chiamatemi von, Trieste, Lint, 1976
• Discorso di un triestino agli italiani e altri scritti politici, Trieste, Lint, 1977
• Racconti scelti, Trieste, Lint, 1981
• Un'ipotesi per Barbara, Milano, Vallardi, 1982
• Dalla Comunità all'Unione europea, 1979-1984: interventi al Parlamento europeo, Trieste, Stella, 1984
• Longitudine ovest, Tricesimo, C. Lorenzini, 1984
• Trieste Ribelle, Milano, Sugar Co. 1985
• Dialoghi con Mascherini, 1987
• Tesi a confronto sul confine orientale: le ragioni d'un esodo, Archeografo triestino. 4. ser., vol. 48 (1988)
• Il Rotary a Trieste: 1924-1989, Editreg, 1989
• Testimone del caos, Gorizia, Istituto giuliano di storia, cultura, documentazione, 1990
• Escursioni in Elicona: scritti su Barni, Marin, Saba, Joyce, Benco, Kandler, Stendhal, Sangiglio, Alessi, Fraulini, Sanzin, Mattioni, Salam, Fitzgerald, Beckett, Trieste, Lint, 1990
• Scritti e discorsi politici, 1946-1979, Udine, Del Bianco, 1991
• Vittorio Vidali: un triestino nel mondo, Quaderni giuliani di storia, 1993, n. 1-2
• Scritti e discorsi politici (1980-1983), Udine, Del Bianco, 1993
• Nottole ad Atene, Milano, Libri Scheiwiller, 1994
• Dare e avere per Trieste: Scritti e discorsi politici (1984-1994), Udine, Del Bianco, 1995
• Assieme all'albero che deve morire, Pordenone, Zibaldone, 1996
• Refoli, Gorizia, Istituto giuliano di storia, cultura e documentazione, 1996
• Scrittori triestini del Novecento - Una cultura di frontiera, Trieste, Lint, 1997
• Due romanzi: Un seme per il corvo, Zadig, Trieste, Istituto giuliano di storia, cultura e documentazione, 1999
• Carteggio scazonte con Alojz Rebula, Provincia di Trieste, 2001
• Dizionarietto di filosofia quotidiana, Roma, Edizioni mediterranee, 2002
• Coi Sofi in paradiso: memorie di un eclettico, Trieste, MGS
• Press, 2002
• Il romanzo di Trieste. Storia di un autonomismo, Foggia, Bastogi Editrice Italiana, 2005

• (edited by Circolo di Studi Sociali e Filosofici, Torino) Manlio Cecovini, scrittore e uomo politico, Torino, Ispettorato Regionale del Piemonte, 1985
• Bruno Maier, Cecovini in Trieste nella cultura italiana del '900: Profili e testimonianze, Trieste, Ed. Moderna 1985.
• (edited by Cecovini) Mario Nordio, Inviato speciale in Europa, Trieste, Istituto Giuliano di Storia, Cultura e Documentazione, 1992
• (foreword by Cecovini) Ermenegildo Olenich, Non è giorno per morire, Trieste, Istituto Giuliano di Storia, Cultura e Documentazione, 1998
• (edited by F. Salimbeni) Manlio Cecovini, Da Poggio Boschetto a Padriciano, Testimonianze degli amici per i suoi novant'anni, Trieste, Istituto Giuliano di Storia Cultura e Documentazione, 2004