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Italian literature: Federigo Tozzi

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Although his name is not very famous, Federigo Tozzi has been considered one of the most important writers of the 20th century by his contemporaries.  Born in Siena, he developed his love for reading since his youth. Reading his novels is not easy, since his style is complex and somehow tiring for the reader.

What comes out from his line is mostly the great sadness he had inside towards the whole world, and the uncapability to live.

Within his works, Con gli occhi chiusi (with closed eyes) is the most representative.

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Italian literature: Calvino’s “Il Barone rampante” (The Baron in the trees)

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

“Il Barone rampante” (The Baron in the trees) is a novel written by Italo Calvino in 1957. It’s a very funny and amusing story, where the adventures of an Italian rebel nobleman living up on the trees are told. Page after page, you will discover the strong personality of Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, the baron, told by his younger brother Biagio.

This masterpiece of the Italian literature can be analysed under many aspect: as a romance story, environmentally, narratologically, sociologically, and in questioning the role of the individual and the community.

The novel received the Viareggio Prize in 1957. However, Calvino “refused the prize on the grounds that its acceptance simply helped shore up an outmoded institution, the literary prize!”.

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Italian literature: Boccaccio’s Decameron

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

The Decameron is a collection of a hunred novellas, written by Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio around 1350. Mostly composed by bawdy tales of love in all its forms, this book played an important part in the history of novels. Its title comes from ancient Greek and means literally “ten days”.

The scene opens with a description of the plague, which was invading Florence in that years. Then, the author presents us the main characters, seven young women and three young men, who decide to escape from the plague refuging themselves in a villa outside the city walls. To let the time pass, each member of the group shall tell one story for every one of the ten nights spent at the villa.

One of the women, Pampinea, is elected Queen for the first day. Each day the company’s previous king/queen elects who shall succeed them and nominates the theme for the current day’s storytelling. Each day has a new theme assigned to it except for days 1 and 9: misfortunes that bring a person to a state of unexpected happiness; people who have achieved an object they greatly desired, or recovered a thing previously lost; love stories that ended unhappily; love that survived disaster; those who have avoided danger; tricks women have played on their husbands; tricks both men and women play on each other; those who have given very generously whether for love or another endeavor.

Boccaccio gives introductions and conclusions to each story which describe the days activities before and after the story-telling. These inserts frequently include transcriptions of Italian folk songs.

The work presents many interesting philosophical aspects. Above all, the medieval concept of Lady Fortune who can be good and bad for everyone, who lets people rise and fall continuously in her weel.  Many of the Decameron’s details have a medieval medieval sense of numerological and mystical significance; for example, the seven ladies are believed to represent the Four Cardinal Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude) and the Three Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity) and the three young men are the classical Greek tripartite division of the soul (Reason, Spirit, and Lust).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron

The masterpieces of the Italian litterature can be analysed and studied according to your wishes in our Italian language courses.

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Italian recipes: Easter egg bread!

Friday, March 26th, 2010

Many typical recipes are prepared in Italy for Easter; peaple are happy to go out and wellcome the sun back in the sky…try to make the easter egg bread and take it for your outdoor springtime lunches!

Ingredients:

1 package Rapid Rise yeast
1.25 cups scalded milk, cooled to room temperature
pinch of salt
1/3 cup butter, softened
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sugar

3.5 cups flour (approximate)
1 egg, beaten with 1 teaspoon of water
6 dyed Easter eggs
sprinkles

Indications:

In a large mixer bowl, combine yeast, warm (not hot) milk, salt, butter, eggs and sugar. Add about half the flour and beat until smooth with dough hook.   Slowly add the remaining flour to form a stiff dough. Don’t worry about how much flour it ends up being, just keep adding until the dough is not sticky anymore.  Knead until smooth with either dough hook attachment or turn out on floured board and knead. Place in a greased bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about an hour.

Punch dough down, divide into 12 pieces. Roll each piece to form a 1 inch thick rope about 14 inches long and, taking two pieces, twist to form a “braid”, pinching the ends,  and loop into a circle.

Place on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise until double, about an hour again. Brush each bread with beaten egg wash. Put on the sprinkles. In the middle of each bread ring, gently place an Easter egg, making an indentation with the egg.

Bake at 350 degrees until golden – about 20 – 25 minutes. Cool on rack.

(source: http://italiandish.squarespace.com/imported-20090913150324/2008/3/19/italian-easter-bread.html)

So what are you waiting for? Cook it and surprise everyone!

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Italian literature: Eugenio Montale

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Eugenio Montale was a poet, journalist and Italian critic who was awarded of the Nobel price in 1975.

Despite his technical studies, he always showed a special attraction to writing and reading; in his young ages, he used to spend the great part of his time between the many libraries of his town, Genova, and also used to follow the University’s philosophy lessons with his older sister.

Montale was a self-taught man; he took inspiration from many Italian previous writers, such as Dante Alighieri, and the places of his life (the Levante, eastern Liguria) were so important in his formation.  During the World War I, he asked to be sent to the front but came back just after one experience.

He didn’t write many works but all of them are very intense. Most of his writing life was devoted to the newspaper Corriere della Sera. He came in contact with some Hermetic poets, but wasn’t an Hermetist. The raise of the fascist regime higly influenced him, who felt detached from contemporary society and found refuge in the solitude of nature, a fact that can be easily recognised in his first poetry collection, Ossi di seppia (Cuttlefish bones). his later works were more dry and ironic. Following, one of his poems:

Bring Me the Sunflower

Bring me the sunflower so I can transplant it
here in my own field burned by salt-spray,
so it can show all day to the blue reflection of the sky
the anxiety of its golden face.

Darker things yearn for a clarity,
bodies fade and exhaust themselves in a flood
of colors, as colors do in music. To vanish,
therefore, is the best of all good luck.

Bring me the plant that leads us
where blond transparencies rise up
and life evaporates like an essence;
bring me the sunflower sent mad with light.

Montale became famous all over the world and gained honorary degrees by the University of Milan, Cambridge, Rome, and has also been Senator-of-life in the Italian senate.

Discover this and many other Italian writers with our Italian language courses – on request, we create special programs for Italian literature.

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Italian literature: Italo Calvino

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Italo Calvino is one of the most famous Italian writers, known all over the world for his short stories and novels. Whithin his numerous works, we can for sure remember the Cosmicomics, the Invisible Cities, Difficult Loves and If on a winter’s night a traveler. His clean and sincere style becomes a real companion for the reader from the first line of the book. Calvino was able to cope at his best with funny stories towards  with storic novels. It’s not a case that he’s considered one of the most important Italian writers: during his times, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer  and he was also candidated for the Nobel Prize Award.

It is really interesting  to find out how some of his tales, the best example could be taken from Difficult Loves, consist of a real witness of the Italian life during those times.

When talking about Italian modern literature, Calvino is never forgot. Then why not analysing him in a deep and accurate way? Have a look to our Italian language courses, where you will have the possibility to focus on the part of the language and on the subjects that you wish!

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Italian literature: Luigi Pirandello

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist and short story writer awarded of the Nobel Prize in 1934.

Born in an upper-class family in the curious village of Kaos (Chaos) in Sicily, he begun his career as a narrator. After meeting Luigi Capuana, o theorician of the literature current called Verismo, he started writing novels on the veristic model, which were published in a volume called Novelle per un anno. Among his novels, the most importat is of course The late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, in Italian), written in 1904. The story tells the life of a business man, who after winning a lot of money in a casinò, goes far from his wife and family and is believed dead. His fortune becomes tragedy when, after losing all his money and documents, he wants to have his old life back: in fact his wife, believing he was dead, has now another husband and not having any document the authorities tell to Mattia that he doesn’t exist. To whom asks him who actually he is, he can’t answer nothing but “I’m the late Mattia Pascal”.

The message of this masterpiece strongly shows Pirandello’s philosophy: nothing is sure in our lives, the reality is not absolute but relative, and so is the man, who should not think to have just one personality.

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Italian literature: The poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti

Friday, May 8th, 2009

Born in Alessandria d’Egitto from an italian family, he formed himself in France where he could  get in contact with the french avant-garde literature; he moved to Italy to participate at the first world war, and decided to stay in the beautiful country just until his death. He devoted his life to the art of writing: he was poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic, known all over the world as the major reprensentant of the experimental poetry current called ermetismo.

The war, the death of his 9-year old son and many other sad events confirmed his character as a “man of poetry and hurt”, who saw his dreams and his hopes flying away – without stopping to fight for them. The espression of his hurt and pain is one of the main features of his short and deep compositions.

Within his many works, he published various poetry volumes; probably the one called L’Allegria is the most representative one. In his verses, he uses the style of the french poets maudits (he was especially inspired by Apollinaire’s Calligrammes) connecting it with his experience of death and pain as a soldier at war. The hope of brotherhood between all the people is expressed strongly, together with the desire of searching for a renovated “harmony” with the universe, impressive on the famous verses of Mattina:

M’illumino
d’immenso

(I flood myself
with light of the immense)

(Santa Maria La Longa, il 26 gennaio 1917)

In the successive works he studied the importance of the poetic word, as the only way to save the humanity from the universal horror, and was searching for a new way to recuperate the roots of the Italian classical poetry. His last verses are on the poem l’Impietrito e il Velluto, about the memory of the bright universe eyed Dunja, an old woman that was house guest of his mother in the time of his childhood. Here’s the end:

Il velluto dello sguardo di Dunja
Fulmineo torna presente pietà

(The velvet in the bright gaze of Dunja
Rapid returns as present mercy)

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