L'"ultimo paesaggio" della Storia sereniana: la sua costruzione culturale e materiale

Sereni’s History closes with the outcome of the peasant struggles for the land: the landscape designed by the Agrarian Reform. Political ideas about the reform are different, as are the cultures from which they come, that influence the physical and institutional construction of this policy.
The fear of new peasant struggles causes the centrist government (especially the Prime Minister), through agencies located throughout the area that are responsible for land reform, to privilege a scattered settlement pattern, with detached houses isolated in the parcel. This model belongs o the tradition of the Po river plains, but not to that of Southern Italy.
The leftists plead that the scattered model helps the control of peasants’ social behavior, while the majority of government does own some agronomic theses, according to which the residence of the entire family on the farm allows optimal management and ensures the hygienic conditions of the service center. The isolated farms, in fact, refer to centers built and operated by the same bodies, where means are distributed, and social services and education are provided: these places, in fact, have no inhabitants and therefore are experienced only during daylight hours.
The case of rural villages is different: these are centres in which, among the functions, there is also the residence, making them lived throughout the whole day. The main character, in these landscapes, is a sort of “intimacy”: the only landmark is the bell tower, as if to indicate a willingness to gather a community otherwise dispersed. In this sense it is possible to identify elements of caesura with the past: if, during the fascist land reclamation, houses dissolved in the landscape in favor of the bombast of major infrastructures, with land reform prevails an intimate sign and a modest sense of community.