The interview
noonApril 1, 2022 – 12:49 pm
The neuroscientist who lives in Milan gave “The guard post” to Neri Pozza who just published it: “So dad fell in love with mom, Dora Scarpetta, Eduardo’s nephew”
Of Natasha Festa
It remained in a drawer of Palazzo Scarpetta, in via Vittoria Colonna, for many years. Then Paolo Viviani, son of Vittorio and Dora Scarpetta – two great families that intertwine – took the five hundred pages of this surprising typescript and with the other father’s papers took them to Milan with him.
Neuroscientist expert in the nervous processes of vision, the heir to such theatrical lineages has lived abroad for many years. He retired, a couple of years ago he remembered the unpublished folder and, thanks to the help of a friend, Ena Marchi (Adelphi), he immediately found a publisher understandably seduced by “The guard post”, a novel by Vittorio Viviani who comes out posthumously today for Neri Pozza. A high, dense writing that re-proposes the all too shelved question of “style”, tells the story of the policeman Crescenzo Falarino who, having finished his night shift at the Pellegrini Hospital, begins his wandering in the city between memory and reality. And the nocturnal topography goes from Montesanto to Villa Lucia, Palazzo Donn’Anna, Parco Grifeo and Caffè Gambrinus. The formidable incipit sounds sharply contemporary: «That bombing of August 4, 1943, going mad in a blue full of sultry to throw bunches of death on a city torn to pieces, caused a collapse at the Pellegrini hospital. They were cursed roars of rubble, a terrified acrid and thick dust that with the massacre of the sick, doctors, nurses also destroyed that humanity that the founders of the hospital with the red sack had left in their sixteenth century, so that a social function, becoming the dogma of Charity, would remain monumental consecration “. Vittorio Viviani looks at Naples in the 1950s reborn from the rubble through the eyes of a “man without quality”.
It is a powerful novel with stratigraphic phrases, a very Neapolitan and universal story. Why did her father leave her in a drawer?
“It is possible that he was thinking of further modifications. The main reason, however, is that my father was completely absorbed in the writing of the History of the Neapolitan theater: this novel, whose writing began in the late sixties and continued until 1975, represents a parallel writing that has its genesis in poetic production. From 1943 until his death in 1979, Vittorio Viviani wrote verses partially edited in Rhymes for a diary (Guide)”.
Poems like his father, the great Raffaele, but his style is light years away. True?
“Yes: my father wrote sonnets in their classical form, hendecasyllables with rhymes and it was in the rule and in the metric that he found the freedom of his language”.
Families of words and families properly speaking. His rank unites two of theatrical blazons. Tell us about this graft.
«It’s simple: my maternal grandfather Vincenzo Scarpetta, Eduardo’s son, had a friendly relationship with Raffaele Viviani, they met and met on stage. Between the wings and audiences, my father and my mother, who were sons of the two, met. The meeting took place in 1936: the lovers sniffed each other for a long time and the marriage took place only in 1943. They chose September 1st as an unfortunate date and, since Vincenzo had bought a large house in Rome and Peppino and Eduardo were also there, they decided to get married and celebrate in the capital. With the Germans my parents were stuck until 6 June 1944 when the allies arrived. Only then, in an American armored vehicle, did we return to Naples: in the meantime I was born there. We lived in Palazzo Scarpetta, with Titina as a neighbor, where I lived until I graduated ».
Did he keep that house?
“No, after my parents died, my sister Corallina and I let the family nanny who had been room maid of my grandfather Vincenzo, he had raised my mother, me and regretted that I had no children (I only had one later, at 66 years old). Rosa Di Bari, known as Nina, came from Ceglie Messapico, a seventeen year old orphan because her family had been exterminated by the Spanish fever: in her novel the senator’s maid who speaks Apulian is inspired by her. She went to the service of a tailor at the Gradoni di Chiaia but discovered that he had a lover of hers: too much scandal for her, very Catholic. She quit her job and thought: I’m looking for a job at Eduardo Scarpetta because she’s a decent person and she doesn’t do these things ».
Poor. Was he looking for familiar rigor from Commendatore Scarpetta himself?
«Buffo no?».
Film stories point to his mother in two 1953 films: “Days of love”by Luigi Capuano e “A husband for Anna Zacchaeus” by Giuseppe De Santis.
«Dora Scarpetta for mere fun starred in these two films, but it was neither the beginning nor the end of a career. Speaking of cinema, I would like to point out that none of the two films that reconstructed the story of my great-grandfather Eduardo have told the truth about the relationship between Vincenzo Scarpetta and the three De Filippo. They were ungenerous with him. The contrast works dramaturgically but does not correspond to the truth: I keep many documents that testify that theirs was a fraternal relationship and that Vincenzo took charge of his brothers ».
Have you ever thought about doing theater?
«My father was not” sweet of salt “as they say. He told me “actors are not made, they are born”. And I don’t I born it. My sister, on the other hand, also acted with Eduardo. Talent is leaked from the other side, that of my cousin Mario Scarpetta, who is very good. Now his son too is showing that he is following in his footsteps ».
And his name is Eduardo like his great-grandfather.
“Who had made a great theatrical revolution by bringing to the Sancarlino even the ladies of the good bourgeoisie who previously did not arrive in Via Foria because it was too close to Borgo Sant’Antonio,”o Buvero. To see the commendatore but they would go there. Then, despite having won the case against D’Annunzio thanks to the expertise of Benedetto Croce, Scarpetta understood, as an extremely intelligent man, also what the philosopher was saying to him between the lines: you only write farces so you can parody yes, but D ‘ Annunzio remains the true poet. He understood then that his parable was over ».
You quoted the «Buvero» who tells us about the other grandfather, Raffaele Viviani.
«He moved there as soon as he arrived from Castellammare: I often go there with my camera on his trail».
April 1, 2022 | 12:49
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