Non C'È Italia Senza Spine / There's No Italy Without A Thorn

There’s no Italy without a thorn, says the drawing by Alessandro Mendini.

- Fulvio Irace

“A rose is a rose is a rose” goes a famous line by Gertrude Stein, as popular as it is enigmatic. The rose/Italy to which this special section is dedicated aims to reflect the call of this brilliant American poetess to see things for what they are. It is a kind of enunciation of the law of identity to which Mendini has added the realistic touch of a heartfelt but realistic analysis. Gertrude Stein composed her line in 1913 for the poem Sacred Emily. Two years before, in a speech held in 1911 for an audience of suffragettes in Cleveland, the feminist leader Rose Scheiderman declared, “The woman worker needs bread, but she needs roses too.” The admonishment that beauty is a right and an obligation is some