A special thanks to the "IoDeposito" organization and in particular to Chiara Isadora Artico, Tancredi Artico and Joshua Cesa. They kindly accepted the invititation to reply to the below interview about their special project dedicated to Mario Puccini, an Italian writer whose legacy is particularly connected with the First World War in the Eastern front between the regions of Friuli and Veneto and Slovenia.
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| Mario Puccini |
Would you briefly explain who is Mario Puccini to
the International audience of World War I Bridges and could you state why he is
a crucial point in the understanding and study of World War I in Italy?
TANCREDI ARTICO: Mario
Puccini was a prolific and versatile Italian writer: born in 1887, he voluntarily
took part of the WWI and eventually became an officer, between 1915 and
1918. He wrote thousands of pages: not only novels and collections of short
novels, the genres for which he’s best known, but also poems, essays,
translations, articles.
In
a large quantity of his works he depicts the war experience, and he is able to
do that in a poignant way, that touches the soul of the reader. His pen is
emotional and precise, shows us not only the most terrible aspects of the
conflict, such as death and human degradation, but also highlights what conflict
- not only war - means to people, and how it destroys the simplicity of humanity.
Puccini describing the WWI speaks to the present: he teaches to respect diversity
and each form of life.
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| "Davanti a Trieste" |
TANCREDI ARTICO: The aim of
the project is to print Davanti a Trieste,
the third (and least) Puccini’s war book, in the hope that this could be the
first step of a Puccini’s “renaissance”. With that book I want to give to the
reader the full text of this war diary (which is very difficult to find in libraries
and is not available online), but at the same time I expect to give a general
idea of Puccini’s three war books and a complete discussion of bibliography.
This is not an useless operation, if we consider that the last research on
Puccini’s literary production was done in the early 80’s, and that it doesn’t
give an overview of his war books.
Q: This project
is not only on paper. There's a multimedia side of it. Is it bilingual or are you
planning to make it available as a multimedia bilingual project soon?
JOSHUA CESA: Technically
speaking, the integration of a multi-language system is quite simple: the heart
of the multimedia system created is a database which, because of its nature,
lends to the cloning of the individual fields, automatically predisposing the
translation.
Nevertheless,
there is an issue intrinsically tied to the specific contents we want to
propose in the project: Davanti a Trieste
is a very complex work of literature, the interest of the project lies
specifically in the nuances of the Italian language used by Mario Puccini:
pulling up alongside a didactic apparatus in a different language besides the Italian
one, could be a dangerous operation, if seen from the point of view of the Italian
studies.
We
are reflecting on the possibility of a multi-language hypertext, but the first
step would be to prepare an accurate translation of the Puccini's text, which
captures all the specificities of the author's writing style (and than, it
would be possible to create also a critical apparatus in other languages).
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| "Il soldato Cola", a popular novel by Puccini |
Q: How are
you going to promote your project? Are you planning presentations also outside
Italy?
TANCREDI ARTICO & JOSHUA CESA: We have already started the promotion of
the project: we have just organized a tour presentations in Italy (in
libraries, universities and museums mainly in the region of Veneto and Friuli
Venezia Giulia) and in Slovenia, interesting areas for our projects, rich of
materials and experiences connected the theme of the world's conflicts.
We plan to continue the presentations
again next year in Italy and abroad. The project has always had an
international vocation: it was presented in London, and we are planning
presentations and book trailers projections in Canada, United States,
Australia, Belgium (leveraging on our network of international research
partners).
This project is strongly connected with
the area of the Italian studies, and as you know is not yet multilingual, but
the methodologies we are using, and the author's literary production itself, it
is raising a lot of interest in the international research community and
towards the audience from different countries.
Q: What are your personal points of view on
the several initiatives popping up for this Centenary?
TANCREDI ARTICO & JOSHUA CESA: We see around us that people are critical towards the idea of the
Centenary: it is happening a moltiplication of the activities on the theme, and
sometimes these activities seem a little bit forced. But we also see
that the Centenary is bringing a new sensibility, which is more and more
necessary today.
We believe that this centenary represents a real opportunity to give
voice to the collective memory and to the investigation of the human experience
during the First World War, exploring other perspectives on the conflict,
looking at the individual and collective point of view, searching for the 'B
sides' of the story, not considering anymore only the nationalist visions.
The centenary is a possibility to help us in facing the contemporary
legacies of the conflict (invisible but still very present in our daily life)
of which the today's generations are heirs.
INFO:
IoDeposito Ong:
Direct links to the web page about this project:
