On Sunday 14th January at 18pm, in the spaces of the Provincial Art Gallery in via Mercanti, the meeting with Joanna DiMarco, author of “La sperta e la babba” and Agnes Silvestri, translator of “Leone Leoni”.
The two guests will talk with Barbara Cangiano.
Giuseppe Avigliano, bookseller and founder of the publishing house Cafèorchidea, will be present at the meeting for a final reflection on culture in the South.
THE BOOKS
The expert and the mother. The atlases say that Sicily is an island and it may be true, atlases are books of honor. One would be tempted to doubt it, however, when one thinks that the concept of island usually corresponds to a compact lump of race and customs, while here everything is odd, mixed, changeable, as in the most hybrid of continents. Thus begins a well-known book by Gesualdo Bufalino, “Cento Sicilie”. And continuing, among the many contradictions, he observes: There is a “babba” Sicily, that is, meek, to the point of seeming stupid; a “sperta” Sicily, that is, crafty, devoted to the most utilitarian practices of violence and fraud. This book, hybrid even in its structure, with two stories and two languages, two rhythms and two women, investigates two of a hundred Sicilies and in doing so, in the enchantment of the story, shows us the infinite stratifications of a land and its people. It shows us the hundred unattainable Sicilies and many others.
Leo Lions. What happens if it is a man rather than a woman who arouses an inexhaustible passion for a being with reprehensible morals, as was the case with Abbé Prévost's Manon Lescaut? It is this question that triggered in George Sand, then involved in the whirlwind of emotions of her troubled relationship with Alfred de Musset, the creative spark of Leone Leoni (1835).
Thus the characters of Juliette and Leone are born, she the enchanting daughter of a jeweler from Brussels, raised in the fatuity and frivolity reserved for girls from good families in the early decades of the nineteenth century; he a charming Venetian nobleman, addicted to gambling and fraud, full of debts but with a brilliant, grandiose and debauched social life. Juliette does not even notice him, meeting him for the first time on her path. But the naivety of her early youth, the fundamental immorality of an education that takes away, instead of ensuring, awareness of herself and the world, the good-natured superficiality of the heroine's family, which does not fail to cultivate ambitions of social advancement, precipitate her into a passion as ruinous as it is intoxicating. Dragged by Leone into a tormented wandering between different places and increasingly degrading situations, abysses of humiliation open up for Juliette, but also ambiguous spaces of freedom and revolt.
THE PROTAGONISTS
Joanna DiMarco, a professor of literature and art historian, has collaborated for years with associations for the protection and enhancement of cultural heritage. She is the author of several articles on artistic criticism and literature in scientific journals and of the cultural analysis column Come se fosse Antani in the online newspaper “ilSicilia.it”. Her stories have been published in several literary journals. For “Morel, voci dall'isola” she edits the column Nuvole, dedicated to ekphrastic literature.
Agnes Silvestri teaches French literature at the University of Salerno. His fields of study include, among others, the 19th century novel, with particular reference to Georg Sand and Balzac.
Article published on 10 January 2024 - 17:21
