The multi-part book (published by Metamorfosi) is promoted by the Pellegrini Cislaghi Foundation and the Meneghina Family-Society of the Garden. It contains lesser known texts by the Milanese poet
He was a Cyrano without a sword (and as for his nose, on the other hand, from his profile there is no resemblance to that, incomparable, of the French philosopher). Have one like this today, with his sharp and witty pen. Able to be on the side of the least. The real ones, though. Poor people who are not just poor people. The humiliated and the offended. The oppressed by the hypocrites, the false, the bullies. And in his Milan many have passed. Of the first and second types. Who knows if Carlo Porta has ever seen Giandomenico Tiepolo’s frescoes on Pulcinella. It is known that he “stayed” in Venice at the end of the eighteenth century. A move imposed by the change of political regime in Milan. Certainly the poet would have recognized his people in that Neapolitan mask as well, portrayed in the verses that took us through an era that seemed to be opening up towards a new, perhaps even better tomorrow.
The book tells us about that time, about that possible (probable?) Encounter The Pulcinella society. Carlo Porta, Giandomenico Tiepolo, promoted by the Pellegrini Cislaghi Foundation and by the Meneghina Family Library-Society of the Garden Cultural Association. With the presentation of Mauro Novelli; the prefaces by Giorgio Pellegrini Cislaghi and Alessandro Gerli; the texts by Gianni Rizzoni (also editor of the volume), Ugo Corsi, Alberto Craievich, Daniele D’Anza, Maria Teresa Donati, Adriano Mariuz, Mauro Novelli, Gianfranco Scotti.
A volume that makes us wrinkle our eyes with illustrations of Tiepolo’s works and rejoice in the spirit by reading the verses of the Porta. They are the poems of his political phase. Less known, and it’s a shame. Those of the transition from Austrian to French domination and then again of Vienna’s return to power in Milan. The poet who works for the Habsburg administration and then has to flee. And then it comes back. Who listens to the paeans for Napoleon of the same flatterers who will then be the first to trample on Bonaparte. Carlo Porta and Giandomenico Tiepolo keep their eyes attentive on a changing reality and on the characters of a theater that would also be farcical if it did not become tragic for those who suffer from its turnaround.
The people of Milan who “always command the same, even if they speak different languages” and in addition denigrate the city they came to conquer. And this really doesn’t go down to Carlo Porta and he doesn’t send them to say. So much so that he writes these verses dedicated to the French “liberators”: “El will be true perhaps quell ch’el dis lu, / that Milan is on the country that puts it ingossa, / that the air is unhealthy, damp, big, / and that nun Milanes semm turlurù. / Impunemanch however el mè sur Monsù / hin tredes ann that you observe dona cossa, / that when lor sciori pienten chì in this pit / quij benedetti verz no i spienten pù ». “Perhaps what you say will be true / that Milan is a country that makes you sick, / that the air is unhealthy, humid, thick / and that we Milanese are late in understanding. / Nevertheless, my Mr. Monsù, / I have been observing something for thirteen years / that when their gentlemen plant here, in this pit, / those blessed cabbages, they no longer pluck them ».
The Milan that dreams Porta resembles the one then passed into the collective imagination. A moral capital, populated by hardworking people. With the seeds of the Enlightenment inside without throwing away the beauty and the good of tradition. A Milan then represented by a new class. An embryonic bourgeoisie, which gave value to work and money without making it an idol. And alongside those who made do, the Giovannin Bongee who told their misfortunes. With the cunning of knowing how to get by, like the Pulcinella of another great Italian city, frescoed in the Tiepolo family’s house in Zianigo (Venice). The masks of the commedia dell’arte that fly and seem to announce a world that is falling apart. The Pulcinella of all times, the only ones capable of crossing the border between epochs that no longer speak to each other. Carlo Porta and Giandomenico Tiepolo were their charming and intelligent megaphones.
January 4, 2022 (change January 4, 2022 | 21:18)
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