Becoming 'sovversivi': compassion, literature and imagination at the origins of revolutionary militancy in late-nineteenth-century Italy.

How and why does one become a revolutionary? And how and why do so many young bourgeois become revolutionaries? Exploring ego-documents, in particular diaries and autobiographies, this article analyses the self-portrait of the Italian revolutionary Left between the end of the nineteenth century and the First World War, and it shows how the primacy of the element of ethics and feelings was a key characteristic of the first anarchist and socialist communities. The most politically charged of these feelings was that of compassion, in an expanded concept that extends the concern for the suffering beyond purely one-to-one relationships into areas where group suffering becomes a political issue. Finally, the article explores how novels and poems helped cultivate these feelings, deeply shaping the mindset of militants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]