Acts and masks? A conspiracy of adults against children. The holidays, the cousin’s discarded costumes, the lost freedom in a text taken from the special issue of linus dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Viareggio Carnival
Nothing and no one can May convince me.
Not its ancient history, not the acute analysis of Mircea Eliade on the cyclical return of society to primordial chaos, to be reborn like the earth after winter and towards spring.
They won’t be able to make me believe that the Carnival parties organized for children are born from something other than sadism, the petty pleasure of adults in humiliating the little ones.
Indeed, in those parties there was no renewal, no rebirth, rather the new lives were offended with the first bites of shame. And I don’t know if it has been happening since ancient times, but it certainly happened in my childhood years. Which was free and bright, except in the deadly days of that annual senseless slaughter.
This was exactly what Carnival parties were like, and I fear they still are today: a slaughter. A net spread around the childrenhidden in the transparent sea of childhood, which suddenly squeezed to capture them.
Escape was not possible, ruthless and expert hands had lowered it, leaving no glimmers. Carnival parties in the parish, Mardi Gras parties at schooland if some child managed to pass through those shirts – perhaps the son of atheist parents or those who preferred to educate him at home – here are the parties organized by the Municipality, which passed through the streets of the town to round up the last free children.
Now, in fact, they weren’t free anymore. Indeed, it crushed them the most senseless impositionthe same burden that weighs on adults when New Year’s Eve looms up for them: the obligation to have fun.
Carnival for children, New Year’s Eve for adults, are one thing: a party organized by others, where we are forced to present ourselves simulating contentment in ridiculous costumes (for the children masks, cloaks and hats, for the big jackets, ties, tight evening dresses).
The same constraint, the same pain, relieved in adults by the use of alcohol, not by chance available New Year’s night more than ever. But with one huge difference: the adults could have chosen not to go, the children are slaves.
Little slaves to whom everything is imposed, often even the costume to wear on the skin and on the soul: cowboys or odalisques, warrior amazons or harlequins, when I was a child the choice came from the parents, based on cost and availability. So your costume said nothing about you, your tastes and tendencies, but only revealed your family situation: some had wealthy parents, some attentive, some really obsessed. Which ones, on the other hand, were too busy with work, with assorted problems, with the tearing apart of their relationship.
He stood out in my elementary school class my friend Donato, the only pupil to have divorced parents. At the time, in a small and bored village, it was a fact to be told in a whisper, together with a sign of the cross. I didn’t even fully understand what divorced parents were, but I knew that at Carnival their children could choose between only two costumes: ghost or Arab.
Which both consisted of a sheet on: two holes for the eyes in the case of the ghost, for the Arab an elastic band to wrap around the temples. That’s enough.
I was very fond of Donato, so I tried to compliment him, not to make him feel that his parents had only thrown a rag over him, like a sofa to keep it from getting dusty. But it was tough: at least they’d found a white sheet, instead of sending around a pink or blue sheik, or a checkered specter.
No, alleviate Donato’s sentence with the words was impossible. Only the sadness of my costume succeeded.
Because my parents were still together, I think, but they weren’t the problem, it was my cousin Riccardo.
Bit bigger than me, hugely megalomaniacal. He was one of those children, incomprehensible to me, who really love Carnival, and indeed Riccardo was eagerly awaiting him from the day after Christmas.
He chose the costume himself, it took him months to perfect it and load it with accessories, to win as always the title of School Mask. But after his triumph, that sumptuous garment certainly could not be thrown away, so every choice made by Riccardo the following year became an imposition on me.
That with my head down I had to present myself dressed as a ballet dancer, a flamenco dancer, gaucho of the Pampassultan in high ceremonial dress.
Until the last year of elementary school, when I thought I’d known the worst, instead the deadliest mask in the pantheon carnivalesque: Pierrot.
Incomprehensible, Pierrot unacceptable. A sort of pale Pulcinella, worn out, afflicted by some recent mourning.
It took my mother an hour to apply the white on my face and draw me the tear under the eye. A useless tear, however, because I really cried all the time.
But as often happens, so much pain was a lesson. So Donato and I understood this: Carnival parties, like dance and piano essaysjudo mini-tournaments, Christmas plays… all are born from a single, very black fire, which is the frustration of adults.
Raised badly, caging themselves in lazy and cowardly choices, letting themselves be carried away by conveniences and conventions, by other people’s expectations, by the rigid and lethal tracks of society. And so, in front of the boundless freedom of childrenwho shows him how easy it would be to live well, feel the urge to throttle her.
The adult a caged lion, laying out of anger bite a finch flew through the bars.
We are lions in suit and tiewe are lionesses in evening gowns and heels, tearing apart little finches dressed as ghosts or Pierrots.
Dream a time without time, without carnivals and New Years, without holy days and commandments, without masks or costumes. Just animals, wild animals that run and jump and splash and fly.
offers, lightfree, beautiful.
Linus magazine – the special issue
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the first edition of the Viareggio Carnival, the magazine linus (published by Baldini + Castoldi, directed by Igort) comes out with a special issue entirely dedicated to the event. In addition to the story by Fabio Genovesi (shown on this page), other texts in the magazine are signed by Franco Cordelli, Vittorio Sgarbi, Maria Lina Marcucci, Andrea Mazzi, Luca Ricci, and again Marcello Garofalo, Alberto Pezzotta, Luigi Sansone. On linus also the dialogues with the Nobel Prize for Physics Giorgio Parisi and Bruno Vespa, collector of the magazine. The Extraliscio, who sign the official song of the Carnival The mask laughs (text by Pacifico; music by Mirco Mariani and Moreno Conficconi), perform on February 21 in Piazza Mazzini, in Viareggio, at the opening of the Marted Grasso parade
The exhibitions in Viareggio and Reading – 150 years of the historic Tuscan fashion show
The exhibition
linus-All 690 issues from 1965 to 2023,
thematic itinerary between the covers of the periodical, set up from Thursday 9 to 23 February at the Modern Art Gallery of Viareggio (Lucca). The same Gallery also hosts the exhibition until 30 April
Let the party begin…
(edited by Roberta Martinelli, director of the Carnival Museum, catalog La nave di Teseo). The exhibition recalls the story of the Carnival celebrations highlighting its evolution from the 17th to the 20th century: commissioned by the Viareggio Carnival Foundation and the Tuscan municipality, it brings together more than 90 paintings, drawings and engravings. The unedited editing of period films and images will also be presented
The Carnival of Viareggio in the time 1925-2022
, edited by Eugenio Lio and Elisabetta Sgarbi, publisher of La nave di Teseo. In view of the Carnival celebrations (February 16th will be Fat Thursday, Fat Tuesday on 21st, the Ambrosian Carnival then continues until the 25th) the party also stars in the new issue of la Lettura, #584 on newsstands and in the App, with a text by the anthropologist Elisabetta Moro that traces the century and a half of history of the historic Viareggio fashion show which, from corrosive satire, today veers towards good intentions in the name of political correctness.
February 7, 2023 (change February 7, 2023 | 06:50)
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