The Lost Generation: some reflections upon "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway

«You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason».

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (Chapter 4, People of the Seine)

Each epoch has to face its lost generation, it seems an unwritten historical rule. Inventor of this popular definition is the famous writer Ernest Hemingway, referring to the European and American youngs who have come of age during the World War One. Hemingway loaded the expression in the epigraph to his first novel Fiesta and then in his well known book of memories, A Moveable Feast.

In Hemingway’s pages “lost generation” marks the inability of the young survivors to become part of the society, serving it usefully and actively. It was the strict and indifferent position of the "fathers". This point of view carries an ethical opinion that Hemingway discussed and refused. In his idea, running the different human ages, no group can assume the role of critic, judging the other generations, above all attacking the youngs.

Staring at a new kind of struggle that was going on to shake the after war Occidental societies, the great novelist felt compelled to evidence the controversy, defending all the youngs who lived the big drama at the front.

But there’s another declination of Hemingway’s tag. A lost is something that never comes back. Talking about soldiers are the ones who were defeated by death. Many eminent artists and intellectuals disappeared, as Franz Marc, Umberto Boccioni, Egon Schiele, the sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon, brother of Marcel Duchamp, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, killed by the 1918 flu pandemic – the corpse was discovered at home by his friend and colleague Giuseppe Ungaretti – the anthropologist Robert Hertz, scholar of Émile Durkheim, killed in action (April, 1915) while volunteering for active service. And it’s just only a sample list.

Such a situation reminds us of the shock for the Black Death, when human and cultural energies were destroyed by the virulent plague of 1348. Each perturbant and large scale spreading event, has an  impact on a society and it’s destinated to prolong the effects.

A selection of Italian World War One songs (and a book about the Italian war)

Today the buzz around World War One and its Centenary is all for Italy entering the war. It was exactly a century ago on the 24th of May. It's propably silly to live today this remembrance time frame as a repetition of what happened one hundred years before. At the end of day, it's the logic of mass and social media mixed with the one of celebration or commemoration. We're not saying that all commemorations or celebrations are pointless, otherwise we should rapidly admit that even this site is totally meaningless (on the other side we're not praising it, but we believe that at least some contents that we post from here can make sense). So what to do in such a day from our outpost? Basically we think we can suggest two things. The first is a book by Gian Enrico Rusconi. Its title is L'azzardo del 1915. Come l'Italia decide la sua guerra ("The Hazard of 1915. How Italy Decided Its Own War"), a compelling and detailed analysis of ten months of Italian neutrality and about all the whirling games of the diplomatic corps. As far as we know, this book has not been translated into other languages. We strongly support its translation in case people are really interested in understanding the role of Italian neutrality and the meaning of the breakage of the alliance between Italy and the Central Powers.

Secondly, for this day that gave the name to many streets in Italy, we were thinking to offer a selection of Italian First World War songs. People around the world, when asked about Italian people and what they can do, they usually say or think that they are good at singing (like many others are). The one below is just a selection of some popular war songs like the ones that all belligerent countries had. A site where you could grab some interesting *.mp3 of Italian songs is this "repository". Our selection of today includes only six of these.

"Sand to Snow: Global War 1915". Interview with Doran Cart, Senior Curator at the National World War I Museum

Q: Special Exhibition "Sand to Snow: Global War 1915". Where does the exhibition concept come from?
A: When we were discussing how to observe the Centennial of WWI we decided that each year from 2014-2019 would feature critical events of each year. When I arrived at the idea for 1915 of a truly global war by that time with the entries of Italy and Bulgaria and with the contributions of neutral nations like the USA and Spain and the world-wide setting for battles and other actions, it was a natural fit.

Q: I was thinking about the title you chose. It seems that geography is a preeminent driver in this title. Do you confirm this also for the exhibition project and layout?
A: The title Sand to Snow reflects the physical geography and environments of the globe where the war was taking place, but also an example of where this occurred in a small area like Gallipoli where there was sand and also blizzards within the period of 1915.  Also I wanted to feature nations not normally discussed.

Q: Could you say something about the layout of "Sand to Snow: Global War 1915"?
A: There are eight exhibit cases and each deals with a different front from the Western Front to the African Front. There is no chronological layout so the visitor can explore the years through each of the case studies.

Q: Your attention is on the "special year" 1915 and both on belligerent and neutral countries. What's interesting while analyzing the case of neutral countries and what does the exhibition point out in their cases?
A: Even though the United States was technically neutral in 1915, support for the Allies was ongoing. While many did not support any efforts to aid the Allies or even think about going to war, the Preparedness Movement in the U.S. started in 1915 with the Plattsburgh training camp. Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood were the principle proponents of this movement. 

In the summer of 1915, under pressure from the National Security league and other patriotic groups, the War Department opened a training camp in Plattsburg, New York, where regular Army officers prepared the sons of well-to-do businessmen, at the trainees’ expense, to become future officers in the event of war. 1200 young men attended that first summer. There was a preparedness camp for women at the Women’s National Service School Camp near Washington, D.C.

Americans almost immediately volunteered for humanitarian and military service primarily with the Allies after the war broke out. They volunteered as ambulance and truck drivers, as hospital workers, as doctors and nurses. They crossed into Canada and received military training and were sent to Europe to fight under Allied flags. Americans joined the French Foreign Legion.

The connections between Belgium and the United States in World War I began long before America became a combatant and continued after the Armistice. Almost immediately after the war started, relief and volunteer organizations were created to provide food and other means of support for the people of occupied Belgium.

Switzerland’s neutrality, while stated in the Treaty of Paris of 1815, was more substantiated by its traditional position as the “Good Samaritan of the nations.” The Federal Council had issued a Declaration of Neutrality in August, 1914 that the country was “firmly resolved to depart in no respect from the principles of neutrality so dear to the Swiss people.” With Italy’s entrance into the war in 1915, all of Switzerland’s borders were surrounded by belligerents.

Switzerland did care for refugees, assist in prisoner exchanges and in 1915 placed at the disposal of the belligerents the services of the Swiss Red Cross. Even though Switzerland maintained a defensive force, it did not represent a threat to her neighbors. Military service was compulsory for men aged 20 to 48 years old. In 1915, the Swiss Army numbered around 200,000 men.

Lusitania paper weight

Spain was neutral as far as being an active combatant in the war, but by 1915 Spanish arms manufacturers, especially in the Eibar region were major suppliers of weapons, especially pistols and revolvers. France, Italy and Great Britain purchased a large number of weapons from Spain. The most popular pistol was the variant of the Colt 1903 Pocket Auto in 7.65mm. They were sold under many names including the “Lusitania.”

The Netherlands remained neutral throughout the war, but the war affected the country in many ways including their economy and making plans for the defense of her borders. Hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees sought safety in the Netherlands.

The RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner built in 1906 and owned and operated by the Cunard Company. Lusitania sailed on her maiden voyage out of Liverpool, England on 7 September 1907 and arrived in New York, United States, on 13 September.  On 7 May 1915, Lusitania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by the U-20, sinking in 18 minutes.  Of the, 1960 people on board, 768 survived and 1,192 perished.

Lusitania was carrying a number of Americans, women and children and citizens from other neutral countries including Mexico, Spain, Brazil and Sweden. It also carried war materiel including rifle and machine gun cartridges. The sinking of the Lusitania and resulting deaths of civilians and neutral nationals aboard the ship is considered one of the first modern examples of “total war” and a turning point in World War I.

Australian uniform and equipment

Q: Could you also anticipate other initiatives coming from National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial for the upcoming Centennial years? Thanks for your time.
A: The Museum will have several additional special exhibitions during the course of the Centennial. In July, the Museum opens a special exhibition featuring a large collection of Australian War Art, currently on display at the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C. In May 2016, the Museum will debut another special exhibition called “They Shall Not Pass: The Somme and Verdun.” That will be followed in 2017 with “Change the World: America Goes to War” and “Posters as Munitions.” In 2018, we will debut “The Human Record of War” and “Art and World War I.” In addition to the special exhibitions on display at the Museum, we have also curated online special exhibitions during the Centennial. To date, the Museum has launched  three interactive online special exhibitions: War Fare: From the Homefront to the Frontlines, The Christmas Truce, Winter 1914 and Home Before the Leaves Fall.

(We would like to thank Mike Vietti, Marketing & Communications Manager at the National World War I Museum, for his precious help in collecting this interview)

"Neutrals at war, 1914-1918. Comparative and transnational perspectives" (CfP)

Source: Legacy Americana

What about neutral countries in World War One? In this month, May 2015, Italy will probably remember one hundred years after the beginning of its war (May 24). This means that for Italy the war begins after ten months of neutrality. It's quite a long time. All people having even a small familiarity with the Italian history know about the never ending debate between interventionism and neutrality. Beside the extremely singular case of Italian neutrality period in 1914 and early 1915, what could we say about countries like Switzerland, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands? Which was the role of Albania and who remembers the point dedicated to Albanian territory in the Treaty of London of 1915?  What did being neutral mean in the first global war? There are several questions that could rise around the status of neutrality after the escalation of war declarations coming after July 1914. The Call for Papers we recommend today is about these and many other aspects (the first deadline for abstracts is 15 June 2015).

See here for the complete text of the Call for Papers.

The journals of the trenches: an Italian gallery

Born during World War One, the Italian trench journasl were items distributed to the army. In a first time they’re written in war zones and circulated through battalions and regiments. No signs of propaganda and patriotism are noted. Only you can find a light satire tolerated by military authority. Most important themes were treated in humoristic, recreative, cultural tone, in any case adapted to each context. Readers’ circle was extremely limited, considering the lack of resources and, in consequence, the low run. It not seldom caused the lost of these rare exemplares. Later, in every country, journals gained attention from authorities and Italian army, for its part, decided to encourage this activity. Run and readers increased, even because the delivery was planned togheter with private correspondence. The articles became a strategic instrument for propaganda: their task consisted in supporting troop’s mood.

If we look at the Italian front, we can see an increase of publications after the Battle of Caporetto (October 1917). In that period is established the so called service P (P stands for propaganda) which curated many aspects bound to media.In spite of a stronger attention, a complete view of such extended phenomenon is very hard to achieve. Infact the item kept its original volatility. Something similar you can meet on the opposite front under Austrian Command: the «Tiroler Soldaten-Zeitung» directed by the famous writer Rober Musil from 1916 to 1917. However it was an anomalous experiment compared to the standards of this kind of publications, because had a weekly issue and counted about 20-22 pages. Some main collected titles at the Library of Resurgence Museum in Bologna are: "La tradotta", "La Trincea", "La Ghirba", "Signor sì", "Il Razzo", "Il Montello", "Il San Marco", "Sempre Avanti", "La 50a divisione" and "La Giberna".

We want also introduce some Italian projects and multimedial useful spaces to deepen this matter. Francesco Maggi, blogger and scholar from Genoa, has written for his website many detailed articles on different reviews of the period. Each journal is object of well-curated analyses and long commentaries. A link is here. Then we suggest to visit the this link where you find a list of many reproductions of the originals. Finally, don’t forget to enter the website of the aforementioned Resurgence Museum in Bologna – WW1 section is here – a necessary guide to this fascinating war publishing planet. Last but not least we could end suggesting a contribution, namely "I giornali di trincea", in Da Caporetto a Vittorio Veneto by Fiorella Bartoccini (Trento, Arti Grafiche Saturnia, 1970).

The poets and the world war: "When We Were Soldiers" by Giacomo Noventa

Let’s try an experiment today. Giacomo Noventa was the pen name of the Italian poet and essayist Giacomo Ca’ Zorzi (Noventa di Piave 1898 – Milano 1960). In Italy he is read mainly for his contributions to the great debate rising after the fall of Fascism, but we cannot forget he was a great poet. A limit to the diffusion of his poetry was probably the use of his dialect, the one spoken in the Venice area, precisely the dialect of the lower course of river Piave. He was a young volunteer in the First World War (like in other parts of the world, also in Italy the youngest generation called to arms was the one born in 1899). The poem we propose today is of course in dialect. That’s why we try to give three versions: English, Italian and the original text that is for sure an interesting example of recollection of memories where all is supported by the simile between older fellows in army and the beloved poets (Giacomo is Giacomo Leopardi, Francesco is Francesco Petrarca). Beside of that, in parenthesis, that aside (“Well, we learnt to die…”) that wedges in as the real, dense nucleus of this short poem.


WHEN WE WERE SOLDIERS

When we were soldiers in the trenches,
resting marching or at the hospital,
and our older fellows talked to us,
no matter if it was about their country,
about the fields and about the unfinished work,
a love story,

a lot of us still did not know
how a woman was, and we listened to them,
we invented a name, and we died,
(well, we learnt to die...)

Reading today, like if they're alive,
in Giacomo, in Francesco, in Dante and in other
beloved poets, no matter if Italian or foreign,
a thought came to my mind:

that we are like the conscripts
in a great war, and the poets
are like those soldiers talking to us,
no matter if it was about their country,
about the fields and about the unfinished work,
a love story.


QUAND’ERAVAMO SOLDATI IN TRINCEA

Quand'eravamo soldati in trincea,
a riposo in marcia o all'ospedale,
e i compagni anziani ci raccontavano,
parlassero pure del loro paese,
dei campi e dei lavori lasciati là,
una storia d'amore,

eravamo in tanti a non sapere ancora
come fosse fatta una donna, e si ascoltava,
ci inventavamo un nome, e si moriva,
(si imparava a morire...)

Leggendo oggi, come fossero vivi,
in Giacomo, in Francesco, in Dante e in altri
cari poeti, italiani o stranieri,
mi è venuto un pensiero:

che noi siamo come i coscritti
in una guerra grande, e che i poeti
siano come quei soldati che ci raccontavano
parlassero pure del loro paese,
dei campi e dei lavori lasciati là,
una storia d'amore.


CÔ SE GERA SOLDAI...

Cô se gera soldai dentro in trincea,
O a riposo o marciando o a l'ospeal,
E i compagni più veci ne diseva,

E parlàsseli pur del so paese,
Dei campi e dei lavori lassài là,
Una storia d'amor,

Gèrimo in tanti a no' saver ancora
Quel che fusse una dona, e se ascoltava,
Se inventàvimo un nome, e se moriva,
(Se imparava a morir...)

Ancùo lesendo, come i fusse vivi,
In Giacomo, in Francesco, in Dante e in altri
Cari poeti, o nostrani o foresti,
Me xé vignùo un pensier:

Che noialtri se sia come i coscriti
In una guera granda, e che i poeti
Sia come quei soldai che ne diseva,
E parlàsseli pur del so paese,
Dei campi e dei lavori lassài là,
Una storia d'amor.

Signs of War. An exhibition at Palazzo Blu, Pisa (Italy)

The Blue Palace Foundation in Pisa gives hospitality to an interesting photographic and documentary show in memory of the World War One. The exhibition has its focus on how inhabitants were influenced and conditioned by war atmosphere. From the “radiant days” to the military mobilization, besides the material and intellectual efforts of a territory, is here called to be represented the war years’ impact on population. Curator is Antonio Gibelli, professor of Contemporary History at University of Genoa, WW1 period expert, in collaboration with professor Carlo Stiaccini and doctor Gian Luca Fruci, who conducted archival searches. We can look at different shots of a tragedy, beginning from the call-up of fighters, passing by citizens’ different activities to solve war requests (female workers role, hospitals, airport and flight schools). A wide section is fit in memory and celebrations of the fallen. This frame shows the people letters and postcards written at the front by Pisan soldiers. Each of these documents is full of home sickness and talks about great expectations to the end of the conflict. A sort of inner world rises at our sight, depicting the eternal, never explained contradictions of fighting, this alienate junction of human and unhuman through the being comrades and soldiers.

Info:

I segni della Grande Guerra ("The Signs of the Great War")

From 28 March to 5 July 2015

Palazzo Blu, Pisa

Free entrance

www.palazzoblu.it

info@palazzoblu.it

Honors Commitee:

Prefecture of Pisa

Province of Pisa

University, Normal School, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

Court of Pisa

Air Force, 46th Brigade

Ermanno Olmi's war in his last film "torneranno i prati" ("The Meadows Will Return")

The latest film by Ermanno Olmi, a dean among the Italian directors, was dedicated to the memory of his father and to the tales of the First World War experience he made when Olmi was a child. These tales resemble a kind of enlarging memory and legacy inside the director’s mind, who is not new to this kind of historical operations. torneranno i prati (“The Meadows Will Return”) is a short film all set in an extremely advanced outpost of the Italian lines. The place is the enchanting mountain plateau of Asiago (the place where Olmi lives now) and the time frame is tightened to the last moments of war, when there was no doubt around among soldiers about the real meaning of the carnage that was supposed to end soon (only to stop for a while). "I thought there was a task to fulfil: that of telling the great betrayal done to those people who have died and never knew why. And with the dead and children, as we know, we cannot cheat", Olmi said after the première and this declaration is enough to shape the real intent of this work. The story alternates hectic bombardments and quiet, silent and contemplative scenes but what the director prefers is for sure the reconstruction of inner views and subjective perceptions of his group of soldiers.

At a cinematographic level the continuous presence of the moonlight is remarkable, in contrast with the rockets making their contrail in the sky announcing the bombardment and the proximity of death. A great attention is paid on the parallel life of letters, correspondence, family photos and other personal belongings but also a great effort was done to rebuild the linguistic differences among comrades. An episode about the selection for a high dangerous patrolling action includes a suicide and in the short time of this film there is also space to depict the strange appearance of a new plague, namely the Spanish flu, also known as 1918 flu, that turned eventually into an additional tragedy and into a silent killer. Literary fathers of this latest work by Ermanno Olmi are probably the writer Mario Rigoni Stern and Emilio Lussu, and not only for geographical reasons: if the first spent his whole life in the Asiago plateau and dedicated to the post-war period a book (Le stagioni di Giacomo  - “Giacomo’s Seasons”), the second one is the author of probably the most important account that Italian literature brought to life after the war, Un anno sull'Altipiano ("A Year on the Plateau"). 

Finally it makes sense to remember that last year torneranno i prati was the only Italian film selected for the Gala section of the Berlinale, Berlin's International Film Festival. And a quick note and plaudit is almost required for the music, too: the trumpet and flugelhorn player Paolo Fresu is far from simply putting a kind of trademark to the soundtrack (like many other musicians do when asked to create the soundscape of a film) and surprisingly coexists with Olmi’s spirit. You cannot ask more to a music for such a film and to music for films in general.

A meeting with the archivist Jonathan Casey and the subsequent show in Villa Manin (Udine, Italy)

Villa Manin (Udine, Italy)

It's going to be a rich and stimulating Sunday the 12th of April in the wonderful location of Villa Manin (Passariano, Udine, Italy) whose huge park, all dotted with yellow narcissi in this month, shows the brightness of spring. At 5pm there will be a meeting with Jonathan Casey - chief curator and archivist del National World War One Museum at Liberty Memorial (U.S.A.). Casey's intervention, with the aid of previously unreleased images from the American museum's archive, is going to go deep inside the American experience of World War I. Later on, at 6.30pm, in the same venue, people can attend the performance entitled "Chiamate alla vita" (Calls to Life) written by Vincenzo Tosetto and Alessia Cacco. The show is based on letters and correspondence and tries to offer a wide view on the female side of the story (the protagonists are mothers, sisters, brides, lovers) on the background of the rapid depopulation of the Friuli region, on the border between Italy and Austria and Italy and Slovenia.

The First World War in music: "Lament" by Einstürzende Neubauten

Here the link to the page with the dates of the tour. We start by giving this information (and we close with the invitation to listen to the videos below) because there is no doubt that Lament, the recent studio album by the German band Einstürzende Neubauten, is first of all a live show and the whole calibration of his strength can be appreciated mainly in the live dimension. "The Guardian" wrote about this work as the "the weirdest First World War commemoration of all" and it's not hard to realize that when approaching this newest musical research we are light years away from the "machine" of commemoration which is hardly ever an intelligent one, notwithstanding which form of art we are talking about. The German combo is here able to combine the accuracy of the researches in the archives of Humboldt Universität and radio broadcasting of Frankfurt, a never tired and never boring thirty year experience, perfect surprising performances (for example of folk classics like "Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind") and an innovative view of the war in one of the richest artistic proposals about World War I. We hope to offer you a live report soon.

The poets and the World War: "This is no case of petty Right or Wrong" by Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917)

War poet, late poet. The meeting with poetry for the Welsh poet Edward Thomas happens only in 1914, three years before his death in action, during the Battle of Arras on the 9th of April. The poem we propose today is  a good example, a helpful start if we think of approaching the problem of patriotism before, during and even after the First World War. It seems Thomas wrote This is no case of petty Right or Wrong after a blazing altercation with his father, a person showing a strong yet common disdain of Germans. What is interesting today in these lines is the (modern) patriotism they are inspired by, without resembling a patriotic poem like many others we know. It seams there is a second new way of being patriotic without following the guidelines of politicians and newspapers. It is a new, personal, sincere patriotism far from populism. In our opinion this poem can be considered as a third way differentiated from intervention and neutrality in World War One (up to a point, we think there might some points of contact between this position and the one of Renato Serra). Before leaving you to this poem, we would like only to point out the remarkable metaphor of England as the phoenix.


THIS IS NO CASE OF PETTY RIGHT OR WRONG


This is no case of petty right or wrong
That politicians or philosophers
Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot
With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.
Beside my hate for one fat patriot
My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:–
A kind of god he is, banging a gong.
But I have not to choose between the two,
Or between justice and injustice. Dinned
With war and argument I read no more
Than in the storm smoking along the wind
Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar.
From one the weather shall rise clear and gay;
Out of the other an England beautiful
And like her mother that died yesterday.
Little I know or care if, being dull,
I shall miss something that historians
Can rake out of the ashes when perchance
The phoenix broods serene above their ken.
But with the best and meanest Englishmen
I am one in crying, God save England, lest
We lose what never slaves and cattle blessed.
The ages made her that made us from dust:
She is all we know and live by, and we trust
She is good and must endure, loving her so:
And as we love ourselves we hate her foe.

Novels of the Great War: "Contro-passato prossimo" ("Past Conditional: A Retrospective Hypothesis") by Guido Morselli

Today novel is one of the few Guido Morselli’s books that has been translated into English. People outside Italy cannot count on a full range of translations from this writer who lived between 1912 and 1973, the year when he committed suicide after many rejections of his manuscripts. Contro-passato prossimo. Un'ipotesi retrospettiva was first released by the Italian publisher Adelphi. An English translation by Hugh Shankland is available with the tiltle Past Conditional: A Retrospective Hypothesis. Incidentally we would like to inform our French readers that the novel was translated also into French (Le Passé à venir, translation by Dominique Hauser). This is an atypical World War I novel, so distant from the ones we wrote about in the past months. Why atypical? Before leaving you with some insights on the plot, we would like to list a series of key points that no other novel, as far as we know, can show. 1) It is a book generated decades after the end of the war and far from the anniversary mood that can distort the real artistic result of a work of fiction (still today we can think that some novels appearing in these years suffer from their fulsome "anniversary mood"); 2) like the subtitle states, it’s a “retrospective hypothesis”, that is like saying that is something extremely far from what happened in the reality of warfare (but not so far from what could have happened); 3) the counterfactual strategy is full of consequences and has a great impact on the study of history (it’s not true, like everybody here in Italy keeps on saying, that is not possible to approach history with a counterfactual narration; beside of that the new story starting with a strong and big “if” and by turning upside down the facts can be full of consequences for our reasoning); 4) what can the result of such strategy be in the hands (in the pen) of one of the 20th century highest talented Italian writers?

So, what happens if the war was won by the Central Empires and not by the Triple Entente plus the disloyal Italy? This is basically the plot of Past Conditional: A Retrospective Hypothesis. What is the masterpiece of engineer that allows the Austrians to flood rapidly the northern Italian valleys and the rest of the country changing forever the evolution of war and the future development of European politics? Where does this strategy come from? In other words, who is the author of this ingenious logistic plan called Edelweiss Expedition? And what comes later in a new European scenario where Walther Rathenau is the leader? And what about Russia and Lenin, Italy and Giolitti? As far as we know, this novel by Guido Morselli is an almost unique case of counterfactual history applied to the First World War years and able to enlarge its heuristic value to history itself. We can read it is as a totally renewed strategy and a deep revision of the historical novel which goes straight against fatalism, determinism and, at the end, against historicism.

The Great War on the big screen. An exhibition in Trento

We would like to thank Luca Giuliani, curator with Patrizia Marchesoni, Luca Caracristi and Roberta Tait, for sharing with us the main information related to this Italian exhibition dedicated to cinematographic representation of the Great War on the big screen. Visitors can walk and watch along the special layout developed in the 300 meter Black Gallery location in Trento. All this compelling project was feasible thanks to the cooperation among Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, Cineteca del Friuli, Cineteca Nazionale of Rome, Istituto Luce, Rai Storia and hosted in this very special location of Museo Storico del Trentino. More than 70 titles coming from Washington, Belgrade, Paris and Wien are here available (some previously unpublished). The introduction of the brochure states: "The years of the Great War (1914-1918) coincide with the birth of cinematographic language. To propose an exhibition that examines the relationship between World War I and cinematography also means to tackle the more disquieting aspects of modernity. This approach has generated authoritative historical interpretations of the last decades, and the layout of this exhibition illustrates the outcomes based on a set of comparisons. Different images, themes and points of view are set side by side in analogy or in contrast so as to highlight the areas of ambiguity and of contradiction typical of history and its representations. At the core of this tale the exhibition has left the protagonists, namely the men, the individuals who interacted with the masses and with other individuals, with the destruction and with the technology." 

More information and a precious overview on the titles can be found in the exhition's *.PDF leaflet that you can view and/or download here. 

INFO:

LA GRANDE GUERRA SUL GRANDE SCHERMO

Trento - Piedicastello, Spazio espositivo “Le Gallerie”
From July, 28 2014 to June 14, 2015
Tuesday to Sunday 9.00 - 18.00; closed on Monday
Free entrance 

Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino 

+39 0461 230482 | www.museostorico.it