European studies blog: Italy

11 June 2021

I libertini - Same-Sex Desire in Italian Baroque Literature

‘Italy is full of libertines and atheists’, records French scholar and librarian Gabriel Naudé in the early 17th century. The philosophy of libertinism involves the disregard of authority and convention, especially in religious or sexual matters. Libertine ideas in Italy survived the Counter Reformation and were still in circulation in Europe until the Enlightenment. Sexuality –including homosexuality – was considered in positive terms.

The multiple dynamics of sexual desire emerged in vernacular literature in Italy from the beginning, despite being overlooked by literary criticism. Homosexuality in ancient Rome is a popular subject of studies, with Petronius’s Satyricon considered as ‘the first gay novel’ (Byrne Fone, 1998). Neri Moscoli and Marino Ceccoli, contemporaries of Dante and Petrarch, were leading exponents of the homoerotic Perugian school, sodomiti perugini, but their genre was assimilated by the traditional critics to comic poetry. They were not alone. Numerous authors of the Italian canon celebrate same-sex love in their works: Boccaccio, Poliziano, Boiardo, Ariosto, just to mention some names influential or active around the historical period I am focussing on.

Even though the accusation of sodomy was broadly used against artists and writers, not many were actually charged. Goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) proudly proclaimed his love of men in his art, in his life and in front of a Florentine court, as he was condemned to prison in 1557. His wonderful autobiography was published in 1728 with a false imprint, i.e.: a fake foreign place of publication to escape censorship. The first English translation, by Thomas Nugent, appeared in 1771.

Cellini, Benvenuto. "Portrait of a bearded man" graphite, paper. Royal Library Turin, Public Domain

The two main centres of circulation for libertine ideas in the Italian peninsula at the time were Venice and Rome.

In papal Rome, despite theological condemnation of sodomy, homosexuality was popular behind closed doors. The son of Lorenzo ‘il Magnifico’ de’Medici, Giovanni, fosters a homoerotic and homosocial culture at his court when he becomes Pope, under the name of Leo X.

In Venice, the Accademia degli Incogniti was active in the mid-17th century and the most freethinking intellectuals of the period would meet under its name.

Antonio Rocco (1586-1652), a priest, philosopher and libertine, was a member of the Incogniti. Known for the L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola, (‘Alcibiades Schoolboy’), a bibliographic rarity, of which the British Library owns the first edition, once again, with false imprint. This was part of the Private Case collection, a collection of erotic printed books that were segregated from the main British Museum library in the 1850s on grounds of obscenity. L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola, published anonymously (it was initially attributed to Pietro Aretino), was censored for a long time for being an apology of pederasty and very few copies survived.

The book, in form of a Platonic dialogue, describes a schoolmaster’s efforts to seduce his young student, Alcibiades:

Sono naturali quelle opera a cui la natura ci inclina, de’ quali pretende il fine e l’effetto.
Those acts to which we are inclined by nature are natural, and she has seen to their end and their effects.

Front page of L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola, (Oranges [i.e. Geneva], 1652) P.C.23.a.12.

More political is the literary production of another member of the Incogniti, Ferrante Pallavicino. Pallavicino leaves his noble family in Piacenza to live a picaresque and, sadly, short life. He writes against the Pope and the Catholic Church, against the Jesuits, against the Spanish Inquisition and the Spanish domination. He was only safe in Venice, where he wrote his irreverent novels and satires. The Pope deceived him and had him beheaded in Avignon in 1644, aged 28. The anticlerical Il Divortio celeste ('The Celestial Divorce', Italy, Villafranca; 8005.a.47.(1.)) became incredibly popular in Italy and in Protestant countries.

Pallavicino also wrote Il principe hermafrodito, (‘The Hermaphrodite Prince’ Venice, 1656; 246.a.13.(3.)) a novel which explores the theme of transvestitism and cross-dressing, both common ingredients of the Baroque theatre and the Venetian opera, together with a more nuanced approach to issues of gender.

Portrait of Ferrante Pallavicino, from Le glorie degli Incogniti; overo, gli huomini illustri dell’Accademia de’Signori Incogniti di Venetia. (Venice, 1647) 132.b.3.

The Hermaphrodite Prince discovers that they are, in fact, a Princess. They take a male lover and dress as a woman to facilitate their encounters. The Prince will take the throne and govern as a Queen, with the lover on their side:

Io sono la Principessa e il Principe nel composto medesimo. Sara’ estinto il Principe, […] Rimarra’ la sola Principessa, per felicitarsi con quella maggior copia di piaceri […] Rinuncio a mentito nome e a mentite spoglie, per non piu’ mentire negli amori.
(I am the Princess and the Prince in the same body. The Prince will no longer exist […] only the Princess will remain; to enjoy abundant pleasures […] I surrender my name and my disguise, so that I will no longer lie to my love. [my translation]).

Valentina Mirabella, Curator Romance Collections

References/Further Reading:

Franco Mancini and Luigi M. Reale (eds.), Poeti Perugini del Trecento: Codice Vaticano Barberiniano Latino 4036 (Perugia, 1996) ZA.9.a.9677(2)

Marco Berisso, La Raccolta dei poeti Perugini del Vat. Barberiniano Lat. 4036: Storia della Tradizione e Cultura Poetica di una Scuola Trecentesca Studi (Accademia Toscana Di Scienze E Lettere “La Colombaria”; 189). (Florence, 2000) Ac.82/2[Vol.189]

Benvenuto Cellini, Vita di Benvenuto Cellini ... da lui medesimo scritta ... Tratta da un’ottimo Manoscritto (Colonia [i.e. Naples] 1728) 673.h.15.

Benvenuto Cellini, The Life of Benvenuto Cellini: A Florentine Artist ... Written by Himself ... and Translated from the Original by Thomas Nugent, (London, 1771) 786.g.4-5.

Giorgio Spini, Ricerca dei libertini: la teoria dell’impostura delle religioni nel seincento italiano. (Rome, 1950) 4606.m.4.

Gary P. Cestaro (ed.), Queer Italia: Same-sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film (New York, 2004) YC.2006.a.3655

Edward Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines, and Opera (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2007). YC.2007.a.13138

Maurette, Pablo. ‘Plato’s Hermaphrodite and a Vindication of the Sense of Touch in the Sixteenth Century.’ Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 3, 2015, pp. 872–898. 7356.866000 JSTOR [subscription only]

Posted by European Studies at 9:55 AM in Italy , LGBTQ+ , Romance languages | Permalink

04 June 2021

Translating the French Revolution: Italian printing culture during the revolutionary Triennio, 1796-1799

The British Library holds the largest collection of printed material on the French Revolution outside of France. As we know the French revolution was not limited to France but affected the historical trajectory of numerous countries in Europe and around the world. One of the first European areas where French revolutionary ideals found a fertile soil was the Italian peninsula. In 1796 the French Army, led by the young general Napoleon Bonaparte, defeated Austrian and Sardinian troops. On 15 May 1796 Bonaparte entered Milan, which rapidly became the most active political laboratory of the peninsula.

Giovanni Antonio Antolini, plans for the Foro Buonaparte in Milan, city side, c. 1801. Part of Napoleon’s ambitious but unfulfilled plan for remodelling the city of Milan (Image from Wikimedia Commons

During the revolutionary Triennio, the period between the arrival of the French troops led by Bonaparte and the French defeat in 1799, there was a veritable explosion of print culture: 40 new periodicals in Milan, ten newspapers printed in Venice in 1797 alone; 20 serial publications in Genoa, and smaller centres such as Brescia or Ferrara also produced their own revolutionary newspapers. The British Library holds two periodicals that are exemplary of this Italian revolutionary press: the Giornale della società degli amici della libertà e dell’eguaglianza (‘Journal of the Society of Friends of Liberty and Equality’) and the Osservator piemontese (‘Piedmont Observer’).

Giornale della società degli amici della libertà e dell’eguaglianza (Milan 23 May 1796) [PENP.NT309]

The first newspaper was the work of the physician Giovanni Rasori, a vocal supporter of a democratic republic. Rasori had travelled to Britain and France, and his newspaper reflected his familiarity with the two countries. Translations of French or English works appeared frequently, such as Volney’s Ruines or tracts by radicals, such as William Morgan’s Facts Addressed to the Serious Attention of the People of Great Britain Respecting the Expence [sic] of the War and the State of the National Debt (London, 1796; RB.23.b.7561). In a similar vein the Osservatore piemontese published long extracts from Joseph Priestley’s Lectures on History and General Policy (Birmingham, 1788; 580.h.16).

Both newspapers presented the Italian translations of British works through the intermediary of a recent French translation. Rasori translated Morgan’s work as it appeared on the columns of the Parisian Moniteur Universel (Gazette nationale, ou, le Moniteur universel France, Paris, 1789-1810; MFM.MF17), while the authors of the Piedmontese newspaper commented and published large excerpts of Priestley’s work which had been translated into French in 1798.

First issue of Osservator Piemontese (Turin 1798) P.P.4175

The arrival of the French armies in the Italian peninsula favoured the publication of works that were previously forbidden. The translations of these texts appeared in periodical publications thus making more difficult for researchers to find them. These texts were partially reprinted in periodical publications, as those presented above, or were collected in anthologies such as the Biblioteca dell’uomo repubblicano. The British Library holds the prospectus for this anthology published in 1797 in Venice (awaiting shelfmark). The ambitious plan was to print 15 volumes containing the main works of philosophers like Rousseau, Voltaire and Mably. However the Peace of Campo Formio (27 October 1797), when France ceded Venice to the Austrian Empire, put an end to this effort of creating a first comprehensive compilation of political thinkers crucial to understanding the political basis of the French revolution.

The brief interlude of the Italian republics was not an ephemeral season in the Italian history. On the contrary the last years of the 18th century served as the basis of the development of new kinds of Italian political thinking, rooted in a lively exchange with other European traditions such as the French Enlightenment and the British radical movement.

Niccolò Valmori, Postdoctoral research associate at King’s College, London, working on the AHRC funded project ‘Radical Translations: The Transfer of Revolutionary Culture between Britain, France and Italy (1789-1815)’

A radical duo and their Italian connection

Antonio Gramsci’s influence and legacy has been extraordinarily rich and vast, producing new ideas, interpretations and seeds all over the world. But how is Gramsci indirectly related to the current BL exhibition Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights?

Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960) was the only regular foreign correspondent for the Italian newspaper L’Ordine Nuovo (‘The New Order’), established by Gramsci and three other editors (Angelo Tasca, Palmiro Togliatti, and Umberto Terracini) on 1 May 1919 in Turin. Her monthly contribution entitled Lettere dall’Inghilterra (‘Letters from England’) was translated by Palmiro Togliatti (1893 –1964).

Front page of L’Ordine Nuovo, 11-18 December 1920, n. 22. Source: Wikipedia Commons

More than just a workers’ newspaper, L’Ordine Nuovo was the vibrant engine of the mass education policy set up by Gramsci in Italy’s vibrant ‘Motor City’. During the strikes of 1919-20 (the so-called Biennio Rosso), Turin became the ‘City of Factory Councils and Red Guards’, the ‘Mecca of Italian Communism, the ‘Italian Petrograd’, almost on the verge of a Bolshevik-style Italian revolution. At the heart of this revolutionary hive was L’Ordine Nuovo’s office, where all sorts of people flocked to visit Gramsci. Among the international visitors to Gramsci’s office, during the turbulent year of 1919, was Sylvia Pankhurst. The trait d’union, who arranged the meeting between two advocates of working-class interests, was Silvio Corio (1875-1954), Sylvia’s partner and interpreter during their clandestine journey across Italy (Turin, Milan and Bologna).

Sylvia Pankhurst and Silvio Corio. Source: Westminster Libraries

An anarchist printer and journalist, Corio joined the network of Italian radical activists in London in 1901. The elective affinity (of heart and mind) between Corio and Pankhurst blossomed in 1917 and produced the first and most influential duo of antifascists in Great Britain during the two World Wars. Corio worked shoulder to shoulder with Pankhurst at the London communist newspaper Workers' Dreadnought (1917-24), being a major source of influence and support in all her campaigns and activities, although he was keeping a low profile to avoid any trouble threatened by the Aliens’ Act of 1918.

The Workers' Dreadnought, 3 May 1919 (LOU.LON.702). Image from Spartacus Educational

Three years before Mussolini’s ascent to power, the contacts with Gramsci and the other leftist intellectuals ignited the spark of anti-fascism in Pankhurst. During her critical journey to Italy she experienced first hand the polarization of Italian society, and realised the risks arising from the fascist and colonialist propaganda on the international arena. Back in London, together with Corio and other activists, she was the first influential voice to ring alarm bells against Mussolini’s regime, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1935-1937) and the looming prospect of a second world war.

I picture Pankhurst, along with Corio, supporting the international campaign organised by the economist Piero Sraffa (1898-1983) at Cambridge University and Gramsci’s sister-in-law Tatiana Schucht (1887-1943) in order to demand Gramsci's release in 1934.

Thanks to this trio of visionary activists and thinkers the seeds for a modern civil society, such as we have and enjoy today, had been sown.

Ramona Ciucani, West European Languages Cataloguing team

References/ Further reading:

Rachel Holmes, Sylvia Pankhurst: natural born rebel (London, 2020). ELD.DS.553677

Maurizio Rodorigo, ‘Una storia di amore e di tenebra: mostra a Manchester sugli antifascisti italiani negli anni ’20 in Inghilterra’ in La Repubblica. Londra, 9 April 2019, available here

Alfio Bernabei, Esuli ed emigrati italiani nel Regno Unito, 1920-1940 (Milan, 1997). YA.2000.a.20751

Antonio Gramsci, Il giornalismo, il giornalista: scritti, articoli, lettere del fondatore de “l'Unità” a cura di Gian Luca Corradi (Florence, 2017). YF.2019.a.4541

Antonio Gramsci, L’Ordine Nuovo 1929-1920, in Opere, v. 9 (Turin, 1954). 12228.bb.4 and YA.1999.a.4692

Antonio Gramsci, Socialismo e Fascismo: L’Ordine Nuovo 1921-1922, in Opere, v. 11 (Turin, 1966). 12228.bb.4 and YA.1999.a.4692

M. Ledwith, ‘Antonio Gramsci and Feminism: The elusive nature of power’, Educational Philosophy and Theory (vol 41, number 6, 2009, pp. 684-697) 661.480000

Laura E Ruberto, Gramsci, migration, and the representation of women's work in Italy and the U.S. (Lanham, 2007). YK.2009.a.8920 and m07/.36400

Selections from political writings [of] Antonio Gramsci, selected and edited by Quintin Hoare (London, 1977). X.0700/1032

Video of Rachel Holmes in conversation with Shami Chakrabarti on latest biography “Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel” available on the British Library Player.

https://www.fondazionegramsci.org/archivi/archivio-antonio-gramsci/

www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/index.htm

Posted by European Studies at 10:00 AM in Italy , Romance languages , Unfinished Business , Women's histories | Permalink

22 January 2021

Antonio Gramsci: translator, storyteller and educator

Between 1926 and 1937 Antonio Gramsci was rotting away in Italian prisons, having been sentenced to 20 years by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime, in spite of his parliamentary immunity. Mussolini had got rid of the most revolutionary and influential opponent to Fascism in Italy and, in so doing, hoped to silence the rest of his opposition. Despite his precarious state of health, Gramsci would never ask for pardon and realised that he was condemned to a lengthy period of isolation.

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) in 1915. Source: Wikipedia Commons

How to survive annihilation and despair in prison? He turned to his singular willpower and fortitude, as he was used to doing since childhood, and plunged himself into an extensive programme of studies and critical writing. His antidote to death is collected in two major works entitled Lettere dal carcere (Letters from prison), and Quaderni del carcere (Prison notebooks).

The 33 notebooks (four of them dedicated to translations) are a compilation of all the intellectual activities undertaken by the prisoner Gramsci in order to keep his cool. Between 1929 and 1931, Gramsci perfected his knowledge of European languages through translating, starting with German and Russian, and continuing with French and English. Notebooks XV and XIX contain his exercises from the German, namely 24 fables translated from the classic Brothers Grimm collection. In 1932, thinking of a gift for his favourite sister’s young children (whom he would never meet), the author had the idea of copying his translations and posting them to his sister, Teresa Paulesu, as “my contribution to developing the little ones’ imagination” (from a letter dated 18 January 1932 [my translation]). A sketchbook, Album disegno, catalogued as notebook D (XXXI), remains as evidence of Gramsci’s intention.

Antonio Gramsci’s prison notebooks (1929-1935). Source: Wikipedia Commons

Unfortunately, the sketchbook never reached the children, due to the prison rules that prevented prisoners from sending anything outside. That is why the Album contains only the first half of fable number one, Rapunzel, in Gramsci’s final handwritten draft.

First page of the Album disegno from Favole di libertà (Florence, 1980) YL.1988.a.772

Gramsci’s translations, as well as his children’s stories, were neglected until 1980, when, finally, they were published for the first time in Favole di libertà. A second and more complete collection entitled Fiabe appeared in 2010, including letters to his two young sons, Delio and Giuliano.

Covers of Favole di libertà and Fiabe (Florence, 2010) YF.2011.a.21857

What these translations and the children’s stories show is Gramsci’s natural vocation as an educator. Whilst in prison, he never lost his ability to listen, to empathise and to be sensitive to the needs of his family, just as the intellectual had put his prodigious mind at the service of the ‘subaltern classes’ when he was a free man. Prison writings often reveal the man behind the author. Gramsci’s Fiabe reveals how he lived according to his theories and teachings, and what ‘organic intellectual’ meant in reality.

On the one hand, the philosopher deeply believed in the educational role of folklore, popular literature, and popular arts in the building of a national popular culture for the progressive society he dreamt of. Gramsci’s stress on literature and critical theory in the Prison notebooks is not accidental at all. On the contrary, his classic concepts and definitions in politics and philosophy originate from his approach and methodology as a historical linguist. He was fully aware of how language and literature are pivotal in shaping societies. As a result, his ‘pedagogy of praxis’ is a proactive call for the working class to be the protagonist of its own education and to produce its own culture. No wonder several Italian authors and educators in the 1950s-1960s followed in Gramsci’s footsteps, and one in particular, Gianni Rodari, established modern Italian children’s literature.

On the other hand, writing, translating and storytelling enabled Gramsci to shape a new relationship with his loved ones. The kindness and support that emerge from his letters and comic short stories to children and relatives testify to how much he was willing to be part of the life and education of his family beyond the bars. Writing and study became, at the same time, a way of caring for others and a way of human and intellectual resistance for the prisoner, a lifeline that lasted eleven years.

To be continued.

Ramona Ciucani, West European Languages Cataloguing team

References / Further reading:

Antonio Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere (last Italian version Palermo, 1996) YA.1998.a.1937. English translation by Raymond Rosenthal, Letters from prison (New York, 2011) 3v., YC.2012.a.2007 and YC.2012.a.1189

Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere (Turin, 1975) X.978/118. English translation by Joseph A. Buttigieg and Antonio Callari. Prison notebooks (New York, 2011) 2 v., YC.2011.a.8399-8401.

Ferial Ghazoul, “La prospettiva gramsciana sulla lingua e la letteratura” in Studi gramsciani nel mondo arabo: Gramsci nel mondo arabo, a cura di Patrizia Manduchi, Alessandra Marchi e Giuseppe Vacca (Bologna, 2017, pp. 157-84). YF.2018.a.9753

Chronology of Gramsci’s life and work

Derek Boothman, Traducibilità e processi traduttivi: un caso: A. Gramsci linguista (Perugia, 2004). YF.2005.a.5162

Alessandro Carlucci, Gramsci and languages: unification, diversity, hegemony (Leiden, 2013). YD.2013.a.3106

Antonio Gramsci: a pedagogy to change the world, Nicola Pizzolato and John D. Holst (editors) (Cham, Switzerland, 2017) ELD.DS.331125

Antonio Gramsci, Arte e folklore, a cura di Giuseppe Prestipino (Rome, 1976). X:972/303

Gramsci and educational thought, edited by Peter Mayo (Chichester, 2010). YC.2013.a.13402 and m10/.17512

Gramsci, language, and translation, edited by Peter Ives and Rocco Lacorte (Lanham, 2010). m10/.20216

Gramsci y la educación: pedagogía de la praxis y políticas culturales en América Latina, Flora Hillert ... [et al.] (Buenos Aires, 2011). YF.2013.a.18303

Deb J. Hill, Hegemony and education: Gramsci, post-Marxism, and radical democracy revisited (Lanham, 2007). m07/.35617

Peter Ives, Language and hegemony in Gramsci (London, 2004). ELD.DS.66257

Riccardo Pagano, Il pensiero pedagogico di Antonio Gramsci (Milan, 2013). YF.2013.a.21073

Posted by European Studies at 10:00 AM in Italy , Modern history , Romance languages , Translation | Permalink

08 December 2020

After Bodoni: Italian Typography in the 20th Century

The culture of hand printing, the neoclassical aesthetic, considering the typeset as an art form in dialogue with its times: these aspects of 18th-century typographer Giambattista Bodoni’s work are still meaningful and constitute the core of his legacy, inspiring generations of Italian designers and typographers. Here are four examples:

Giovanni Mardersteig

Like many printers of the olden days, Hans ‘Giovanni’ Mardersteig came from Germany and established his hand press in Italy. In 1922 the Italian government granted him permission to use Bodoni’s original matrices and Officina Bodoni started, operating in Verona until Mardersteig’s death, in 1977. Mardersteig’s extreme care for detail is shown in his re-edition of Bodoni’s Manuale Tipografico, 1788 and many more alphabets using his own typesets, like his Alphabetum Romanum.

Giovanni Bodoni and & Giovanni Mardersteig, Manuale tipografico, 1788. Facsimile a cura di Giovanni Mardersteig. (Verona, 1968) L.R.413.h.17.

Alberto and Enrico Tallone

Alberto Tallone and his son Enrico have worked since the 1930s to honour the book in its material and spiritual aspects. Engravers, typefounders, hand printers and publishers, the Tallone family takes from Bodoni the idea of manuals, describing in their four volumes of Manuale Tipografico centuries of typography, watermarks, original characters, frontispieces, inks used from the 18th to the 20th century. Tallone’s idea is to convey the spirit of the author by choosing size, characters, papers and spacing, in a dialogue between the text and the content, so that every book is unique.

Manuale Tipografico. 2, Dedicato All’impaginazione, Ai Caratteri Da Testo E Ai Formati.(Turin, 2008) Cup.937/992.

Tallone’s books are set by hand in traditional foundry types, which derive from hand-cut steel punches engraved with a burin by great artists. This video shows the process and it was filmed in their typographic studio in Turin:

Franco Maria Ricci

Born in Parma in 1937, bibliophile, publisher and designer Franco Maria Ricci grew up in an aesthetic and cultural background that stemmed directly from Bodoni’s tradition. Ricci studied and collected Bodoni’s works for his entire life, helping rediscover and promote Bodoni and making his types part of Italy’s everyday life. Ricci’s art magazine, FMR (in French it appears to read éphémère, transitory) had a reputation for being the world’s most beautiful magazine.

Ricci shares with his master the great respect for proportions, distance, and white spaces.

Cover of Franco Maria Ricci (ed.) Bodoni, 1740-1813.(Parma, 2013) LF.31.b.11849. The cover shows a photograph of Bodoni’s original books, from the Bodoni Museum in Parma. The title is set in a digital font by Franco Maria Ricci, which is true to Bodoni’s original typefaces.

Massimo Vignelli

Designer Massimo Vignelli takes from Giambattista Bodoni an interest for Italian letterforms. A modernist by choice, Vignelli became famous for creating the iconic New York City Subway Map in 1972 (using Helvetica), a landmark in graphic design. His preference was always for four typefaces that he considered perfect, including Helvetica and Bodoni. Vignelli says: “In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest.”

Vignelli Associates, Our Bodoni, from Archivio Grafica Italiana

In 1989 Vignelli revisited the Bodoni typeset creating Our Bodoni, commissioned to him by World Typeface Center (WTC) of New York: “When Bert Di Pamphilis (…) asked us to design a new typeface, we told him we do not believe in ‘new’ typefaces, but that there was room for improvement on existing, classic typeface designs. We consider the ratio between upper- and lower-case Helvetica letters to be the best there is. We wanted to redesign Bodoni using a similar ratio between the cases, with short ascenders and descenders, and articulate the type in four weights: light, regular, medium, bold.” (Massimo Vignelli).

Valentina Mirabella, Curator, Romance Collections

References/Further reading

Giovanni Mardersteig, The Officina Bodoni: an Account of the work of a Hand Press 1923-1977. Edited and translated by Hans Schmoller. (Verona, 1980) Cup.510.ee.50.

F. Feliciano and Giovanni Mardersteig, Alphabetum romanum. Edited by Giovanni Mardersteig (Verona, 1960) Cup.510.ee.58.

Alberto Tallone, Manuale Tipografico Dedicato Ai Frontespizi E Ai Tipi Maiuscoli Tondi & Corsivi (Alpignano, 2005) LF.31.b.1808.

Pablo Neruda and Alberto Tallone, La Copa De Sangre. (Alpignano, 1969) RF.2017.b.76

FMR (Milan, 1982-2009?) P.2000/1106

Michael Bierut,. ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface’. Design Observer.

Posted by European Studies at 2:45 PM in Italy , Publishing and printing , Romance languages , Writing | Permalink

17 November 2020

Feminism in Early Modern Venice: Lucrezia Marinella

In the light of the current exhibition Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights, I want to show a new acquisition, an Italian poem printed in Venice in 1618.

This religious, heroic and allegorical poem has an extraordinary feminist subtext and its title is Amore innamorato, et impazzato poema di Lucretia Marinella; con gli argomenti, & allegorie a ciascun canto. Alla serenissima [...] Caterina Medici, Gonzaga, duchessa di Mantova [...] – “Poem on enamoured and mad love by Lucretia Marinella, with topics and allegories before each canto. Dedicated to Catherine de’ Medici Gonzaga, Duchess of Mantua”.

References to the author’s intentions are already clear in the choice of the dedicatee, a female patron, Caterina Gonzaga, whom she actively encourage to read the poem.

Title-page of Amore innamorato, et impazzato (Venice, 1618). RB.23.a.39414

The poem tells the story of Cupid’s conversion to Christianity. The literary form is inspired by Ariosto, Boiardo, Tasso and the epic poems of the Counter-Reformation. The author’s aim is indeed to promote the values of the Church, through the allegory of Cupid’s religious journey and conversion. The poem at a first glance follows the religious constraints of its time, but its main female character, Ersilia, is an independent woman fully in charge of her destiny. She will reject Cupid’s love and the passive role of the ethereal donna angelicata provided by the Italian literary canon of Dante and Petrarch.

Ersilia is stronger than Cupid, and her resistance to his advances asserts her religious values, but is also imbued with feminism. Religion had to be used to validate work and ideas and to get published.

The author, The author, Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653), was the daughter of the writer and physician Giovanni Marinelli, and is usually known by the feminine form of her father's surname. Her father encouraged her to study poetry, music and philosophy. She became the most versatile, prolific, and learned woman writer of her generation. She was close to the Accademia Veneziana, but led a reclusive life of private study. She married a physician and had two children.

Lucrezia Marinella by Giacomo Piccini, 1652

Lucrezia Marinella’s fame as one of the very first feminist writers ever is mostly due to the treatise Le Nobilità et Eccellenze delle Donne, et i Diffetti, e Mancamenti de gli huomini.. (Venice, 1600; 1080.k.7.(2.)) ‘The nobility and excellence of women’, recognised as a landmark in the history of women’s contribution to the querelle des femmes.

Moderata Fonte, anonymous 16th-century engraving

Marinella’s work will sit alongside that of another Venetian author of the same period: Modesta Pozzo or Moderata Fonte (1555-1592). Although little known to modern criticism before around 1980, Fonte is recognised as one of the most accessible and appealing of 16th-century Italian women writers. Her best-known work is the posthumously-published dialogue Il merito delle donne ‘The Worth of Women’ (Venice, 1600; 721.f.17.), which is one of the most original contributions to early modern debate on sex roles, as well as one of the earliest to have been authored by a woman. Other women writers who preceded and inspired Marinella are Gaspara Stampa and Vittoria Colonna.

Amore innamorato, et impazzato has been purchased with the generous help of the British Library Collection Trust.

Valentina Mirabella, Curator Romance Collections

References/Further Reading:

P. Malpezzi Price, Lucrezia Marinella and the "querelle des femmes" in seventeenth-century Italy ( Madison, c2008.) YC.2009.a.11706

S. Kolsky, ‘The literary career of Lucrezia Marinella (1571-1653)’, in: F.W. Kent & Ch. Zika, eds. Rituals, images, and words: varieties of cultural expression in late medieval and early modern Europe (Turnhout, 2005) pp. 325-342. YC.2006.a.12963

A. Cagnolati, A portrait of a Renaissance feminist : Lucrezia Marinella's life and works ( Rome, 2013.) YD.2013.a.3057

Stephen Kolsky, ‘Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, Giuseppe Passi: an early seventeenth-century feminist controversy’, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 96, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 973-989. P.P.4970.ca.

Paola Malpezzi Price, ‘A Woman's Discourse in the Italian Renaissance: Moderata Fonte’s “Il merito delle donne”’ Annali d’Italianistica, Vol. 7 (1989), pp. 165-181. 1014.600000

Prudence Allen and Filippo Salvatore, ‘Lucrezia Marinelli and Woman’s Identity in Late Italian Renaissance’ Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, New Series / Nouvelle Série, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall / Automne 1992), pp. 5-39. 7356.865100

Posted by European Studies at 10:00 AM in Acquisitions , Italy , Printed books , Romance languages , Unfinished Business , Women's histories | Permalink

23 October 2020

Gianni Rodari, the logic of fantasy (part 2)

This is the second blog post in a two-part series to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Italian children’s writer Gianni Rodari (1920-1980). You can read part 1 here.

“Tutti gli usi della parola a tutti”: mi sembra un buon motto, dal bel suono democratico. Non perché tutti siano artisti, ma perché nessuno sia schiavo (G. Rodari, Grammatica della fantasia)

“Words are for everybody to use” seems a good motto to me, with a nice democratic sound. Not so that everyone might be a poet or an artist, but so that nobody might be a slave (author's translation)

Learning through playing with words is one of the most important techniques to foster a meaningful cognitive development of children’s linguistic ability, as many educational approaches have already demonstrated internationally. Gianni Rodari’s pioneering merit was to recognize and reinforce this technique through literature almost 50 years ago, when some Italian educators started to reinvent teaching using modern methodologies. “Power to imagination!” seems the right slogan to summarize Grammatica della fantasia. This captivating essay on imagination serves both as a theoretical exposition and as a textbook offering exercises on the art of storytelling ready to implement in classrooms.

Front cover of Grammatica della fantasia. Introduzione all’arte di inventare storie, illustrated by Bruno Munari (Turin, 1973) X.907/13373.

Passionate about the mechanisms of language, which deeply shape the human mind and imagination, Rodari had promoted creative writing ever since his first job as a school teacher. According to Rodari, fantastica or fantasy – i.e. the imaginative skill – is not in conflict with logic. On the contrary, it is the key to creatively mastering the logic of language. The power of fantasy lies in the possibility of breaking linguistic rules in order to invent a language that enables children to feel creative, to explore lateral thinking and, most importantly, to enjoy learning. In the logic of fantasy, then, mistakes are opportunities to enhance the children’s linguistic skills. Rodari’s attempt to theorize fantasy as an important cognitive ability in his Grammatica della fantasia aimed consequently to promote the children’s right to be protagonists of their education for the first time in the history of Italian pedagogy.

During the 1960s, Rodari’s dedication and commitment to children’s education increased exponentially. He took part in many collaborations and children’s workshops all over Italy. In the documentary Gianni Rodari, il profeta della fantasia, teachers and educators recall the pleasure and excitement of taking part in Rodari’s 1972 “fantastic” training workshop in Reggio Emilia. From the 1960s, Rodari worked hand in hand with teachers of the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa (MCE), a movement inspired by Célestin Freinet’s pédagogie populaire. The pillars of MCE education are cooperative learning and learning by doing, democratic and inclusive techniques based on a fair exchange of knowledge between teachers and students. This idea of reinventing education to reinvent society was the backbone of all Rodari’s intellectual activities.

Many conferences dedicated to Grammatica della fantasia have followed since 1973, proving it to be an inspiring milestone in education, still able to produce meaningful thought and criticism today. The British Library holds some of those proceedings that offer not only an insight into Rodari’s revolutionary approach to writing and education, but also some other of his critical writings.

Front cover of Il cane di Magonza (Rome, 1982; YA.1988.a.5756)

In his acceptance speech for the 1970 Hans Christian Andersen Award, Rodari disclosed his passion for fantasy three years before the publication of Grammatica della fantasia:

Occorre una grande fantasia, una forte immaginazione per essere un vero scienziato, per immaginare cose che non esistono ancora e scoprirle, per immaginare un mondo migliore di quello in cui viviamo e mettersi a lavorare per costruirlo.

A great deal of creativity, a strong imagination is necessary to be a true scientist, to imagine things that don’t yet exist and to discover them, to imagine a better world than that in which we live and to start working towards building it (author's translation).

As a summary of Rodari’s extensive advocacy of children’s creativity, Grammatica della fantasia represents his cutting-edge contribution not only to education, but also to creative writing by utterly reshaping the approach to children’s literature in Italy.

Ramona Ciucani, West European Languages Cataloguing Team

Gianni Rodari, the logic of fantasy (part 1)

Gianni Rodari. Source: Wikimedia Commons

This is the first blog post in a two-part series to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Italian children’s writer Gianni Rodari (1920-1980). You can read part 2 here.

Gianni Rodari (1920-1980) is regarded as the father of modern Italian children’s literature and we celebrate his fantastic contribution to literature and education in the year of his triple anniversary. 100 years since his birth, 40 years since his death, and 50 years since his “Little Nobel”, namely the Hans Christian Andersen Writing Award, his books are still inspiring all sorts of cultural events in Italy. Last March, for instance, his iconic Favole al telefono triggered “Pronto, chi favola?”, a free storytelling service on demand set up spontaneously by actors to uplift children at home during the COVID-19 lockdown: every day from 4 to 8 pm, an actor rings a child to read over the phone one of the 70 fables included in the book.

Front covers of Favole al telefono illustrated by Bruno Munari (Turin, 1962) F2/0682, and its English translation Telephone Tales (London, 1965) X.990/103

In Italy Gianni Rodari needs no introduction, but English translations of his books are few and readers in the UK are not familiar with his delicious children’s stories. Although the British Library’s acquisition policy for purchasing foreign material generally excludes children’s literature, the library fortunately holds 40 works by and about Rodari. This presence underlines the international recognition gained by the author and helps to track his legacy through translations, adaptations and critical writings. Half of our holdings, consisting of criticism on Rodari’s intellectual contribution, might serve teachers and educators as an inspiring toolkit. An interesting surprise is the existence of four musical scores inspired by Rodari’s texts, one in Italian and three in Russian. This illustrates his huge popularity in the Soviet Union, a country where his books met with massive success thanks to several translations and adaptations for schools, and that Rodari visited often between 1952 and 1979. He commented on the Soviet educational system in Giochi nell’URSS. Appunti di viaggio (Turin, 1984; YA.1990.a.3048). On the other hand, a report of his journey to China in the 1970s is available in Turista in Cina (Rome, 1974; X.709/25245).

In regard to Rodari’s fiction, the British Library holds some Italian and English first editions of nursery rhymes, fables and short stories. The most recent publication is a bilingual collection (Italian/English) Tales to change the world (Lincoln, 2008; YK.2010.a.169). Among the first editions there is also a Russian one, Chem pakhnut remesla? Kakogo tsveta remesla? (Moscow, 1954; 12843.p.54), including two poems translated by children’s writer Samuil Y. Marshak.

Gianni Rodari, Chem pakhnut remesla? Kakogo tsveta remesla? (Moscow, 1954) 12843.p.54

Before introducing three of Rodari’s cult stories, a brief remark on his style and preference for extremely short literary genres (aphorisms, limericks, nursery rhymes, poems, fables, etc). A supreme love of words (in sound, script and meaning), a musical ear and a witty irony are key elements in his writing, always aiming to select the exact word. His surrealist approach to linguistic invention has been compared to those of Raymond Queneau, J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll. Rodari’s graceful pen mastered nonsense, parody and puns to perfection. He also believed that the best literary form to educate children with courage and intelligence was the fable.

Front covers of Il pianeta degli alberi di Natale (Turin, 1962; F2/0681), C’era due volte il barone Lamberto (Turin, 1978; X.908/85349, illustrated by Bruno Munari), Mr Cat in Business (London, 1975; X.990/7133), and Tales told by a Machine (London, 1976; X.990/8338)

Cipollino

Italian and Russian children share a common literary hero in their childhood memories, Cipollino (‘Little Onion’), the vegetable protagonist fighting for social justice in Il romanzo di Cipollino (1951, retitled Le avventure di Cipollino in 1957) and its sequel Le avventure di Cipollino 2 – Cipollino e le bolle di sapone (1952). The book was an immediate success in the Soviet Union thanks to the Russian translation and various adaptations including a ballet (Chipollino; Moscow, 1977; g.1548.v), and a cartoon. Being published by communist publishing houses, it was no wonder that the book had difficulty circulating in 1950s Catholic Italy. The British Library holds one of the late anthologies Le storie (Rome, 1992; YA.1994.a.15779), where Cipollino’s story is in good company with five others (Piccoli vagabondi, La Freccia azzurra, Gelsomino nel paese dei bugiardi, Atalanta, Il giudice a dondolo).

La Freccia azzurra

Front cover of the English translation The Befana’s toyshop (London, 1970) X.990/2455.

Freccia azzurra is a toy, a blue train, that little Francesco wishes to have as a gift from the Befana. In Italian folklore the Befana is an old woman who rides a broomstick and delivers sweets or presents to good children and a lump of coal to bad ones, entering through the chimneys on the eve of Epiphany. This tradition is much loved by children and is the second most longed-for holiday after Christmas. The tale first appeared as a serial in the children’s magazine Il Pioniere, then was published as Il viaggio della Freccia azzurra (Florence, 1954) and later retitled La Freccia azzurra (Rome, 1964). In Rodari’s story, the toys come alive and escape from their toyshop in order to reach poor children’s houses. The book inspired an animated film carefully crafted by director Enzo d’Alò in 1996, with stellar contributors such as actor Lella Costa and the Nobel Laureate Dario Fo providing the voices, and Paolo Conte and Miriam Makeba the soundtrack.

A pie in the sky

Front cover of A pie in the sky (London, 1970; X.990/2913)

The phrase “pie in the sky”, meaning “an unrealistic enterprise or prospect of prosperity”, is borrowed by Rodari in a surrealistic and hilarious way: the image of the metaphor is transformed into an actual gigantic pie flying above Rome. That is why Rodari’s tale La torta in cielo (Turin, 1966) sounds better in its English translation. In one of the interviews in the documentary Gianni Rodari, il profeta della fantasia, teacher Maria Luisa Bigiaretti explained how Rodari worked with her pupils at a primary school in Rome in order to co-create this story starting from the title-metaphor. The chimeric pie, which suddenly appears in the sky, is actually an atomic bomb that only brave children will be able to deactivate. Written in the Sixties during the nuclear war fever years, this pacifist tale aimed to present a difficult problem to children in order to open up a debate in the classroom and prompt their alternative solution to war.

Rodari believed that every children’s author has a duty to be as close as possible to his little readers so as to write stories with which they can connect and have an enjoyable learning experience. Reading must be a personal enriching pleasure above all, as Rodari stated: “La lettura, o è un momento di vita, momento libero, pieno, disinteressato, o non è nulla” [Reading is either a moment of life, a free, full and disinterested moment, or it is nothing (my translation)].

In Omegna, Rodari’s birthplace, the town council is keeping alive his legacy with a literary festival and a theme park, the Parco della fantasia Gianni Rodari, where children and their families are able to meet Rodari’s tales and heroes at any age, getting involved in one of the most exciting adventures that is literature.

To be continued

Ramona Ciucani, West European Languages Cataloguing team

Translation and melancholy

Fray Manuel de Vega translated the biography of Ludovico Sforza from the Italian of Diego (i.e. Giacomo) Monti in 1699. It recounts Sforza’s life as a warning against overwhelming ambition. (The Library of Catalonia holds a digitised copy)

Fr.Manuel opens his Prologue to the reader with meditations on idleness, identified by authorities with the sin of sloth alias acedia and by the early moderns with melancholy. It is, he says, particularly pernicious for those who live in solitude. (He was a member of the Order of St Benedict.) ‘Virtue has no greater enemy than idleness’. It lets in the Devil through the gates of the Imaginativa.

Opening of the prologue to Manuel de Vega, El ambicioso politico infeliz: descrito y representado en la vida de Ludovico Esforcia (Barcelona, 1699) [Awaiting shelfmark]

This is familiar territory with an early Christian and medieval history, studied by Siegfried Wenzel and others.

While most translators devoted their prologues to flattering their patrons or potential patrons, Fr. Manuel gives his a twist by recommending translation as a cure for such melancholy. He made good use of his ‘descanso’ [leisure], which was caused by ‘un desengaño que me bolviò a mi retiro’, a ‘disappointment which returned me to my retreat’.

He is by nature opposed to translations (he lards his prologue with untranslated Latin quotes), as traduttore traditore. He uses a striking image of the Spanish language: ‘nunca un cuerpo estrangero, por galan que fuesse en su trage, pudo acomodarse al nuestro, sin que quite algo del espiritu a la gala y gentileza que a nuestra Nacion son tan propias’ (‘a foreign body, however splendidly arrayed, could never match the grace of ours’).

But the book is useful, he says, more useful than some because it is both history and morality, and deserves to be widely known. (I wonder if he is thinking of the large number of works of fiction such as Boccacesque novelle, which were translated into Spanish from Italian.) He attacks those critics who ‘lounging in the midden of idleness’ (‘repantigado en el estrecolar [read estercolar] del ocio’) satirized others’ efforts, accusing them of vanity.

He praises two translators whose work is so brilliant that one cannot tell which is the original: Cristóbal de Figueroa and Juan de Jáuregui, verse translators of Guarini’s Il pastor fido and Lucan’s Pharsalia respectively. He admits he is not in the same class. He comments that each language has its excellences which are hard to render, particularly puns (equívocos). (Remember this is the age of Góngora, Quevedo and the Metaphysicals.) He, like many a translator such as Alfred the Great, has followed a middle course between the spirit and the letter, where usage allows.

Engraving of Don Quixote in the printing shop. From Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Madrid, 1853-1854) Source: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes

Finally, he admits that Spaniards find it easy to understand and speak Italian, especially with the aid of Latin. But this does not mean that they can translate it so easily. Cervantes touches on this question in Don Quixote, II, lxii. Quixote visits a printing house in Barcelona where he has a discussion with a man who is translating from the Italian. There’s obviously some irony, as Quixote (who is a sophisticated man of letters if you keep him off the romances of chivalry) is delighted to hear that più has been translated as más and su as arriba.

In a final phrase, Fr Manuel says the translator is like an acrobat (bolteador): if he does it well he earns a pittance (medio real) and praise, and if he does it badly he falls from the tightrope and breaks his neck.

Barry Taylor, Curator Romance Collections

References:

Siegfried Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth: Acadia in Medieval Thought and Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967) X.950/9274.

Posted by European Studies at 11:29 AM in Italy , Printed books , Romance languages , Spain | Permalink

26 June 2020

Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month (Part 1)

Believed to have left India in the Middle Ages, the Romani people are one of the biggest ethnic minorities in Europe that has traditionally suffered from prosecution and discrimination. Since they often choose not to disclose their ethnic identity, the exact number of Roma in Europe is unknown and is estimated at about 10-14 million. On the occasion of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month, we present a few selections of publications written by or related to members of the Roma community in Europe.

Pieśni Papuszy — The songs of Papusza

Bronisława Wajs, Wikimedia Commons

Bronisława Wajs (1908 or 1910-1987), most widely known by her Romani name Papusza, was one of the most famous Romani poets of all time. She did not receive any schooling and, as a child, she paid non-Romani villagers with stolen goods in exchange for teaching her to read and write. At the age of 16 she got married off against her will to a man older than her by 24 years. Papusza survived the Second World War by hiding in the woods and became known as a poet in 1949, as a result of her acquaintance with Jerzy Ficowski, a poet and a translator from Romani to Polish. Her poetry, dealing with the subject of yearning and feeling lost, quickly gained her recognition in the Polish literary world.

Ficowski convinced Papusza that by having her poems translated from Romani and published, she would help improving the situation of the Romani community in Poland. However, Ficowski also authored a book about Roma beliefs and rituals, accompanied by a Romani-Polish dictionary of words, which he learned from Papusza. He also officially gave his support to forced settlement imposed on Roma by Polish authorities in 1953. As a result, Papusza was ostracised from the Roma community. Her knowledge sharing with Ficowski was perceived as a betrayal of Roma, breaking the taboo, and a collaboration with the anti-Romani government. Although Papusza claimed that Ficowski misinterpreted her words, she was declared ritually impure and banned from the Roma community. After an eight-month stay in a psychiatric hospital, Papusza spent the rest of her life isolated from her tribe. Ficowski, who genuinely had believed that the forced settlement of Romani people would better their life by eradicating poverty and illiteracy, later regretted endorsing the government’s policy, as the abandonment of nomadic life had profound implications on the Romani community.

Zuzanna Krzemien, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections

References:

Bronisława Wajs, Jerzy Ficowski, Pieśni Papuszy. Papušakre gila (Wrocław, 1956). 11588.p.45

Angelika Kuźniak, Papusza (Wołowiec, 2013). YF.2017.a.16135

Valentina Glajar and Domnica Radulescu (eds), “Gypsies” in European literature and culture (New York, 2008). YK.2009.a.21165

Tzigari: vita di un nomade

Giuseppe Levakovich and Giorgio Ausenda, Tzigari: vita di un nomade (Milano, Bompiani, 1975), X.709/23552

Tzigari: vita di un nomade is an autobiographical account telling about the persecutions of Roma and Sinti in Italy during the Second World War and about the Romani genocide, Porajmos. Tzigari is the nickname of Giuseppe Levakovich. Born in 1908 in Istria, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Levakovich became an Italian citizen after the First World War and joined the fascist army in the invasion of Abyssinia, in 1936. When the Italian racial laws were promulgated, he and his people became discriminated and prosecuted. His wife was sent to a concentration camp in Germany, and Tzigari joined the Italian resistance movement. There aren’t many written accounts shedding light on these events from a Roma perspective, and this book is certainly an early example, published in 1975.

Valentina Mirabella, Curator Romance Collections

Gypsies by Josef Koudelka

A photograph of a Roma man by Josef Koudelka from Gypsies (New York, 2011) LD.31.b.2995

Josef Koudelka’s Gypsies is an unprecedented documentary photography book on Romanies. Born in 1938 in Moravia, Koudelka is a Magnum photographer still active today. The original Cikáni (Czech for Gypsies) was first prepared by Koudelka and graphic designer Milan Kopriva, in Prague in 1968. The book was not published, because in 1970 Koudelka fled from Czechoslovakia to England to seek political asylum. However, the first edition of Gypsies was subsequently published in 1975 in the United States.

It was Roma music and culture that initially drew Koudelka to start taking photographs of the people. By immersing himself into their lives he managed to capture the intricacies of their everyday existence. Leading a nomadic life, they were like him in a way. “For 17 years I never paid any rent. Even gypsies were sorry for me because they thought I was poorer than them. At night they were in their caravans and I was a guy who was sleeping outside beneath the sky.”

Gypsies offers an unbiased and honest insight into Roma people’s lives. It consists of 109 black and white photographs, taken between 1962 and 1971 in what was then Czechoslovakia (Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia), Romania, Hungary and Spain. During this time, Koudelka lived, travelled with, and documented Europe’s Roma communities. His masterful storytelling is bursting with emotion and the realism of people caught up in everyday situations, from individuals and family portraits to suited musicians, funeral processions or weddings set in rural landscapes. The unfolding candid images draw the viewer in and make them feel as if they are there with them, experiencing their lives. This rich and inspiring source of Roma iconography and self-identity is a timeless document of the community in its heyday.

Lora Afrić, Languages Cataloguing Manager

References:

Koudelka Josef. Cikáni (Prague, 2011). LF.31.b.8497

Koudelka Josef. Gypsies (London, 1975). LB.37.b.367

Quote taken from: https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2014/01/30/street-photography-book-review-gypsies-by-josef-koudelka/

“Romani, read poems and keep your mother tongue”

O Devlikano Ramope (‘Gospel of Luke’) (Belgrade, 1938) W2/6259.

“Romani, read poems and keep your mother tongue” is a simple and powerful message attributed to Rade Uhlik, a great researcher of the Romani language and culture from Southeast Europe.

Rade Uhlik (1899-1991) was a Bosnian and Herzegovinian linguist and curator at the National Museum in Sarajevo. He was the first Romani scholar in the Balkans and a pioneer in Romani studies. His scholarship was varied and prolific in multiple disciplines: from language and linguistics to history and ethnography and culture in general.

Uhlik was noted for his scholarly study of the Romani language and its many dialects. Most of his research was done away from the office. He devoted his time mainly to fieldwork and to collecting stories, poems and customs of the Romani people from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, which was his greatest scholarly achievement. His first book published in Prijedor in 1937 was a collection of Romani poems (We hold another edition of his Ciganska poezija (‘Gypsy poetry’; Sarajevo, 1957; 011313.m.48).

Uhlik collected about 1200 Romani stories in 20 volumes of which four have been published, three outside Yugoslavia and only one in Sarajevo in 1957 as Ciganske priče (‘Gypsy stories’; 11397.dd.53). In 1938 Uhlik translated the Gospel of Luke into Romani as O Devlikano Ramope. His Srpskohrvatsko-ciganski rečnik. Romane alava (‘Serbo-Croatian-Gypsy dictionary’) was first published in three sequels in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, with whom Uhlik actively collaborated, and then as an independent edition in Sarajevo in 1947 (012977.b.33. Revised edition (Sarajevo, 1983) YA.1991.a.7953).

The beginning of the Gospel of Luke, printed in two columns. The printing of the Gospel of Luke in Romani in Belgrade in 1938 was supported by the Bible Society.

Uhlik as a non-Roma did great service to Romani language and culture, passionately committed to the cause, almost independently and with little or no support of the Yugoslav academy and society. To preserve the memory of a great scholar, the Serbian Academy is helping the establishment of an international “Rade Uhlik” institute for the Romani studies under the sponsorship of the European Centre for Peace and Development in Belgrade.

Milan Grba, Lead Curator South-East European Collections

Posted by European Studies at 10:00 AM in Bosnia and Hercegovina , Czech Republic , Italy , Poland , Romance languages , Slavonic | Permalink

European studies blog

93 posts categorized "Italy"

I libertini - Same-Sex Desire in Italian Baroque Literature

Translating the French Revolution: Italian printing culture during the revolutionary Triennio, 1796-1799

A radical duo and their Italian connection

Antonio Gramsci: translator, storyteller and educator

After Bodoni: Italian Typography in the 20th Century

Feminism in Early Modern Venice: Lucrezia Marinella

Gianni Rodari, the logic of fantasy (part 2)

Gianni Rodari, the logic of fantasy (part 1)

Cipollino

La Freccia azzurra

A pie in the sky

Translation and melancholy

Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month (Part 1)

Pieśni Papuszy — The songs of Papusza

Tzigari: vita di un nomade

Gypsies by Josef Koudelka

“Romani, read poems and keep your mother tongue”

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