www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-dialectical-imagination
1 correction found
“The old world is dead; the new world is not yet born; now is the time of monsters.”
This is a misquotation of Gramsci. The widely repeated “time of monsters” line is a later paraphrase; Gramsci’s actual wording was about the old dying, the new being unable to be born, and “morbid symptoms” appearing in the interregnum.
Full reasoning
This sentence presents the "time of monsters" wording as a famous maxim by Antonio Gramsci, but that phrasing is not what Gramsci wrote.
The strongest readily available evidence is a 2026 Guardian article devoted specifically to this quotation. It states that although the line is widely attributed to Gramsci, "Gramsci never said or wrote such a thing" in that wording. The article gives the original Italian from the Prison Notebooks and notes that the standard English translation renders it as:
“In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
A second source quoting the Prison Notebooks gives the fuller sentence as:
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appears.”
So the problem is not just a tiny wording change. The article’s version replaces Gramsci’s actual language about an interregnum and morbid symptoms with the much later and much punchier “time of monsters” formulation. That makes the quoted sentence inaccurate as a Gramsci quotation.
2 sources
- 'The time of monsters': everyone is quoting Gramsci - but what did he actually say? | The Guardian
The only problem is, Gramsci never said or wrote such a thing... In the original Italian, he wrote: “In questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi più svariati.” The most widely used translation ... renders this as: “In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
- Antonio Gramsci and the Recasting of Marxist Strategy
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appears. -Gramsci: Prison Notebooks