A battle is a terrible thing, afterwards it makes you say, like some first-time mothers, never again, never again. Cos Beppe Fenoglio comments on the first firefight faced from the alter ego Johnny, partisan in the Langhe near its Alba in the years of the resistance struggle. a very intense comment because it compares the pain felt by a fighter with that of a woman in the first birth, creating a surprising short circuit that inserts wars and births, death and life, in a deep and precisely biological circle. The struggles that Beppe-Johnny faced were not only his own and can be used as an example of universal conditions.
This is the first reason why Fenoglio, over time, has conquered a prominent place in Italian literature of the twentieth century, despite having lived just over forty years (1922-1963) and despite having published few books in life, from the collection of short stories The twenty-three days of the city of Alba (1952) to the novel Beauty spring (1959), passing through The downfall (1954). Yet it had been enough to make him one of the most promising young writers from Italo Calvino, his supporter at Einaudithen also from Livio Garzanti, who published another volume immediately after his death, A day of firewhere a masterpiece such as A private matter. But already in the last years of his life Fenoglio had had to face various editorial problems, which for example had led him to give up the great project in which the remarkable section now known as The partisan Johnnyreleased only in 1968 and the subject of great praise but also controversy among critics and philologists.
This phase, fortunately, is now behind us and the latest editors of Phenoglian works, such as Luca Bufano and Gabriele Pedull, took advantage of all previous research to propose new and valid editions of short stories and novels, which on the occasion of this centenary will be republished with new introductions, as well as letters and other texts for the theater. From an overview of these works, and also of the translations from English (such as the majestic one of the Ballad of the old sailor by Coleridge), an author emerges who was faithful to a profound vocation, one of his primary reasons, as he said, which pushed him to write, convinced that men of letters, according to Thomas Carlyle, were heroes who grasped reality through a continuous revelation.
Telling immediately, with the very lively and joyful Partisan notes (from 1946, but published in 1994), his resistance experience, Beppe certainly did not ask himself the problem of ideological coherence, and least of all that of desecrating the values in which he strongly believed. The criticisms aroused by the heroic-comic or even low-realistic tones adopted in the stories of the Twenty three days they concerned a superficial reading of the contents, while now we identify them faithful and not only hagiographic accounts of the events, and above all a way of representing them marked by the strong search for meaning. These are the questions that Max asks himself in Another wall, when he is convinced that he will be shot and is then spared, like Dostoevsky, while his cellmate Lancia lies riddled on the ground. Life must go on, for death forever penetrating that young survivor.
But almost all of Fenoglio’s heroes are marked by powerful or even devastating feelings. His fellow partisans and the men of his Langhe perceive the evil of living, perhaps in the basic and archaic form of the malora: in the short novel of 1954 the protagonist Agostino has to face continuous suffering to get by, but a moment of panic pain, almost a I scream of Munch translated into words, emerges when he sees the body of another farmer who hanged himself in a grove. And the suicidal intentions of a father in the short and dramatic are unforgettable The whirlpoolthe upheaval of Superino when he learns that he is an illegitimate son, the extermination produced by Pietro Gallesio with a grotesque and tragic shooting in A day of fire. A world still linked to peasant rituals and participant in extraordinary events is revealed by the writer-hero, piece by piece, as if to compose a formidable and impressive mosaic.
Above all, Fenoglio leaves us a narrative that does not hide any aspect of the Resistance, made up of assaults and ambushes, of escapes at breakneck speed, of struggles to survive against enemies and against a nature that, from friend and protector, can become hostile. Any situation led to hyperbole, especially in the Partisan Johnny, where more than ever the awareness of having to die accompanies every undertaking and the style becomes very high, markedly epic. But in Beppe’s works there is not only space for these aspects, or for the ferocious disappointments of the postwar period (in the quasi-noir The pay on Saturday, at first rejected by the publishers but now re-evaluated by many), but also for the comic or ironic remarks, for the moments of rest, for the sweetness of an adolescent love. Except that, in his currently most read and loved text, A private matter, even that idealized love that could console the partisan Milton suddenly turns into an obsession. The irrepressible will to know if the splendid Fulvia is tied to the friend-enemy Giorgio, who has fallen a prisoner, pushes Milton to disregard his commitments by going in search of a fascist for an exchange: this qute incessant lets go through the whole reality of war, however it does not lead to a discovery but instead to a final, desperate escape and final collapse. Although a doubt about the actual outcome may remain, the meaning is clear: love and war, fundamental anthropological conditions, can overwhelm you to the point of madness. the task of the great writers, such as Beppe Fenoglio, to be able to look at and represent both with absolute clarity.
The celebration in four seasons
Beppe Fenoglio 22, the year of celebrations organized by the Author’s Study Center, will mark a year, from 1 March 2022 to 1 March 2023, in which literature will merge with theater, music, history and art to celebrate the 100 years of the writer. The Ministry of Economic Development has announced the issue of a postage stamp whose image will be unveiled on March 1st and the stamp cancellation for the day of issue.
Following the seasonality, typical of the peasant world narrated by the writer, the Fenogliano year will be divided into four chapters: Spring of Beauty, A day of fire, The twenty-three days of the city of Alba e A private matter.
On March 1st, the heart-pulse secret will leave Alba, a signal that will indicate the beginning of the celebrations with an artistic and emotional gesture. On the same evening at the Teatro Sociale in Alba there will be many names from culture and entertainment, led by Neri Marcor, to celebrate Beppe Fenoglio. The Fenogliano language will be the protagonist in an exhibition at Palazzo Banca d’Alba that I will tell A way of putting out the words proper to the author, an in-depth study to re-read its poetics and analyze its modernity. Among the first appointments, on 8 March at the Teatro Sociale in Alba, the theater company Tutti con Tell me how she was dressed, a show inspired by the writer’s works starting from the female figure. About the site: www.beppefenoglio22.it.
The new Einaudi editions
For the centenary of Beppe Fenoglio, Einaudi proposes again from 22 February with new author’s introductions: A private matter (introduction by Nicola Lagioia, pp. 208, euro 12); The partisan Johnny (introduction by Gabriele Pedull, pp. 576, euro 14); The twenty-three days of the city of Alba with introduction by Davide Longo (pp. 200, euro 11) the expanded edition of Letters edited by Luca Bufano (pp. 320, euro 13). The graphic design of the Uniform Edition entrusted to Andrea Serio. Finally, a new edition of Private matters by Piero Negri Scaglione, Fenoglio’s first biography (pp. 320, 12.50 euros).
February 11, 2022 (change February 11, 2022 | 21:38)
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