Questo sito utilizza cookie tecnici, analytics e di terze parti.
Proseguendo nella navigazione accetti l'utilizzo dei cookie.

Preferenze cookies

The American Journey of Giorgio Bassani – In Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Giorgio Bassani’s Birth

The Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Washington, in collaboration with Georgetown University and the University of Mississippi, present a conference by Valerio Cappozzo in dialogue with Laura Benedetti in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Giorgio Bassani‘s birth.

Giorgio Bassani travelled several times to the United States, first as President of the association Italia Nostra, when he presented the exhibition “Italia da salvare”, then for the publication of the English translations of his novels, and finally as Visiting Professor of Italian at various universities in California, Illinois, and Indiana. Lezioni americane di Giorgio Bassani, recently edited  by Valerio Cappozzo (Ravenna: Giorgio Pozzi, 2016), focuses on this little-known chapter in Bassani’s life while celebrating the  100th anniversary of the author’s birth.

In a letter that he wrote in 1976 from Indiana, Bassani referred to these trips as some of the best moments of his life, that also inspired some  among the most successful poems of the collection In Gran Segreto (1978), which can be read as a poetic journal of his American journey.

This talk is dedicated to Bassani in America. While dealing about the author’s gifts to his students, it will also evoke the role that the United States played as a source of inspiration for the Italian author.

 


DOORS OPEN BETWEEN 6:00PM AND 6:55PM

PHOTO ID AND QR-CODE RESERVATION REQUIRED

PLEASE NOTE: RESERVATIONS ACCEPTED EXCLUSIVELY THROUGH EVENTBRITE. NO PHONE OR EMAIL RSVP AVAILABLE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING

RSVP available on September 16, 2016

VALERIO CAPPOZZO

Valerio Cappozzo is Assistant Professor and Director of the Italian Program at the University of Mississippi. His research focuses mainly on the manuscript tradition of dream sciences and their literary application in early Italian poetry. On this topic he has published several scholarly articles and his monograph, titled “Medieval Dream-Dictionary. The Somniale Danielis in Literary Manuscripts”, is forthcoming for the Leo S. Olschki publishing house. He has recently curated an exhibition devoted to the collector A. H. Reed in New Zealand: “European Treasure: A. H. Reed’s French and Italian Autograph Letters”, and authored its catalog which presents several unpublished letters from Garibaldi, Mazzini, Dumas, among many others. He edited the volume “Lezioni americane di Giorgio Bassani” (Giorgio Pozzi Editore 2016) and he is now editing a collection of essays on “Storia e storiografia di Carlo Michelstaedter” for Romance Monograph at the University of Mississippi.

LAURA BENEDETTI

Laura Benedetti is the Laura and Gaetano De Sole Professor of Contemporary Italian Culture at Georgetown University. Her publications include the volumes La sconfitta di Diana. Un percorso per la “Gerusalemme liberata”, The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in Twentieth-Century Italy, the edition and English translation of Lucrezia Marinella’s Esortazioni alle donne e agli altri and, most recently, the novel Un paese di carta. She was Guest of Honor at the annual meeting of the American Association of Italian Studies (2016), as well as the recipient of the Flaiano International Prize for Italian Studies, the “Wise Woman” award from the National Organization of Italian American Women and the Gold Medal from the Federazione Associazioni Abruzzesi/U.S.A. She is currently Associate Editor and Book Review Editor of Italian Culture, the journal of the American Association of Italian Studies.  

GIORGIO BASSANI

Giorgio Bassani, was born in 1916 in Bologna, Italy, and was brought up in a prosperous Jewish family in nearby Ferrara. He studied journalism at the University of Bologna. In 1938 he was studying literature in Bologna when racial laws were passed in Italy that restricted the activities of Jews, including banning them from universities. Bassani, who had to publish his early works under a pseudonym (Giacomo Marchi), became involved in the antifascist movement in the early 1940s and was briefly arrested in 1943. After World War II he settled in Rome, where he continued his writing career, while still maintaining a home in Ferrara. In addition to writing novels, poetry, screenplays, and essays, he also served as editor of the publication Botteghe Oscure from 1948 to 1960. He was coeditor of the literary and artistic periodical Paragone from 1953 to 1955.

The author’s Jewish heritage and the life of the Jewish community in Ferrara, Italy, are among his recurrent themes. The collection Cinque storie ferraresi (1956; Five Stories of Ferrara, also published as Prospect of Ferrara; reissued as Dentro le mura, 1973, “Inside the Walls”), describes the growth of fascism and anti-Semitism and was awarded the Strega Prize, given each year for the best Italian work. This success led Bassani to find work as an editor for Feltrinelli, one of the major Italian publishing houses. He also began teaching the history of theater at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome. Bassani was also briefly vice-president of the Italian national broadcasting service, RAI.

In 1955, together with other prominent intellectuals, he was a founder of “Italia Nostra”, the historic preservation and environmental protection association.

Bassani’s prestige grew with the appearance of another successful novel, Gli occhiali d’oro  (1958; The Gold-Rimmed Eyeglasses).

The Ferrara setting recurs in Bassani’s best-known book, the semiautobiographical Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1962; The Garden of the Finzi-Continis; adapted into a movie directed by Vittorio di Sica in 1971). The narrator of this work contrasts his own middle-class Jewish family with the aristocratic, decadent Finzi-Continis, also Jewish, whose sheltered lives end in annihilation by the Nazis.

Bassani’s later novels include L’airone (1968; The Heron), a portrait of a lonely Ferrarese landowner during a hunt, that received the Campiello Prize for the best Italian prose work, and L’odore del fieno (1972; The Smell of Hay). His collections of poetry include Rolls Royce and Other Poems (1982), which contains selections in English and Italian from earlier collections. Both works again describe his adopted city of Ferrara, with its inhabitants, streets, and landscapes.

Bassani died in 2000 in Rome and was buried in Ferrara.

  • Organizzato da: Istituto/ Ambasciata