'Li cunti' by a Cilento by Raffaele Scorziello, Edizioni Magna Graecia, presentation of the volume Friday 21 June 2019 at 18 pm at the IOCISTO bookshop in Piazza Fuga in Naples. Nunzia Gionfriddo (writer and Iplac representative for Campania) and Prospero Albertini (physicist) talk about it between readings by the actor Mario Mauro. Moderated by writer Luciano Galassi. The theme of “Li cunti' di un cilentano”, published posthumously and edited by Vanda Riccio Scorziello, a book divided into five parts by topic, draws inspiration from the customs and lifestyle of the Cilento population from the mid-30s to the early 60s of the last century. These are not fictional stories, therefore, but rather a snapshot of life lived, and of memory, in a period of time that includes the period of the Second World War and its post-war period. The author, Raffaele Scorziello of Cilento origin, born and raised in Roccadaspide, never broke the deep bond with his people and his territory despite having lived in Naples as an adult. “These stories, which the author would have liked to expand, were written by hand,” explains the curator of the work, “only a few had already been transcribed on the PC. It was up to me then to put the sheets in order, starting with the most autobiographical ones that concern the life of the young people of the time in those places, starting from his own experience; here is the initial section, Roccadaspide: the story of one from here that includes the first ten chapters of which the last, I bagni nel Calore, is about the boys who, now adolescents, try their first “contacts” with the opposite sex”. The second part concerns the habits and customs of the Cilento villages, especially in the adult world, such as marriage and everything concerning foreplay and engagement as they occurred in that context. Forgotten rituals, alien to the new generations and, in any case, to those who have always and only lived in metropolitan areas. “These are followed by slightly more technical narratives, relating to farm work and so-called pre-industrial work”, continues Vanda Riccio Scorziello. Faith and popular beliefs is the part in which faith is expressed collectively through the Tredicina of Sant'Antonio and the Companies on pilgrimage to the Sacred Mount of Novi Velia. “In difficult times like those of war,” explains Riccio Scorziello, “it was easy to move from faith to popular beliefs that one could “cling to,” so people believed in the so-called maare, benevolent sorcerers always ready to give reassuring information to those people who were waiting for news of their loved ones from the front from where it was very difficult to send letters.” Thus, as it begins with a birth in Roccadaspide, the volume ends with a Return to Roccadaspide for the death of a man, the Patriarch, the eldest of his district, who “had made work his faith”. “The usefulness of this book concerns all of us,” the curator of the collection is keen to point out. “The elderly will rediscover a bit of their childhood existence and will be able to relate it, for better or worse, to their current lives. Young people who know little about this life will be able to learn about their roots, the past history from which the present derives. Anyone who has always lived in the city will have the opportunity to learn the reality of a context that is partly or totally unknown." In schools, this book should certainly be read or simply "told" to provide food for thought on the differences and similarities between past and present.
Geologist and university professor of paleontology, Raffaele Scorziello also carried out water research in various territories together with his dear friend, the physicist Prospero Albertini, to whom, during the car ride, he told about life in a farming village in Cilento in the last century.
“It was he himself who first encouraged him to write these stories of real life, but only when Raffaele realized that even some young people were struck by what he was telling and that was almost completely unknown to them, did he decide to start writing in a language as close as possible to his way of speaking, making what he was telling “alive” and “visible”.
Before this, the author published “Rovistando nella memoria”, Grafica Letizia and Italgrafica, 2010, of the same tenor.
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