Time.news – 100 years after their birth they go out in bookstores, for the types of Ares editions, the unpublished diaries of Eugenio Corti: Each is pressed by his providence. War and Peace Diaries 1940-1949. (pp. 664, 24 euros).
Corti, author of the monumental The red horse (34 editions, translated into 8 languages, over 400,000 copies sold), is one of the most important authors of Italian literature of the twentieth century. These diaries, interesting both from a literary and historical point of view, together with Most don’t come back e The last soldiers of the king represent Corti’s debut as a war reporter and narrator and reveal the genesis of many events present in the Red Horse.
“Since childhood, I can say, I’ve always had the desire to write something. It was an indefinite desire: but in recent years, it has acquired very specific characteristics “. (February 16, 1941)
«Start over! The will can start again, not the heart: it leaves its love and its ability to love along the way, like the flock of wool along the thorny paths, and no one looks at them “. (September 14, 1944)
A page of Diary
Between these two sentences the terrible experience that a young man had of war: the Don front, the withdrawal from Russia. And, after 8 September, the battle with the Allies against the Germans on the Adriatic front. In these pages of Corti we find the life of a soldier and above all the genesis of his vocation as a writer and his human maturation, the passage from youthful ideality to the seriousness of the commitment of one who has passed through fire.
In the invitation to read, his wife Vanda Corti – who is the editor of the book together with his nephew Mario Vismara and Carlo Crespi – writes: «Eugenio loved to tell stories and did so willingly when, on the occasion of traditional holidays, the large family gathered in the paternal house. He told of soldiers and wars, of people and distant lands. The children listened attentively to those stories as if they were fairy tales. Today Eugenio’s voice has died out. […] The events told that yesterday seemed like fairy tales, are the “lived history” of which the “Diaries” testify. […]».
Thanks to the publication of these Diary, which match to 17 previously unpublished notebooks, we can now know all the details of the author’s human and spiritual itinerary: the dreams of a twenty-year-old approaching life, the live experience of the war, his first writing workshop. But we will also know a surprising face: his fears, his ardent and inflexible character towards injustice, his crystalline faith.
Cesare Cavalleri – literary critic, editorial director of Ares, historical publisher of Eugenio Corti – writes in the preface: “These Diary, which have the original freshness of experience, lovingly guarded by Mrs. Vanda Corti and scrupulously transcribed by his nephew Mario Vismara with his friend Carlo Crespi, are divided into twenty-one chapters, divided into five sections, “From college to university”, “1942 : Russia “,” The return “,” Back in the army “,” Final leave ” […] The reader can get an idea of what awaits him in the pages of Diary. Chronicle? Literature? Reality, truth, offered in words “. The title of this book deserves some comment. Providence of Courts, theologically founded, is the plan that, from eternity, God has for each of us and that it is up to us to freely support and translate in practice of life, finding in this the full realization of our humanity and, therefore, our happiness. That drawing, for Corti, includes his vocation as a writer. On January 21, 1942, coming of age on his twenty-first birthday, “I had made “, he writes,” a solemn promise to myself: the purpose of my life will be to give glory to God with some great work of poetry “.”
L’The works by Eugenio Corti is published by Ares Editions: Most don’t come back, The last soldiers of the king, The red horse, The land of the Indian, The island of paradise, Cato the Ancient, The Middle Ages and other tales and for the theater Trial and death of Stalin.
They came out after effects: “I will return” – Letters from Russia 1942-1943 (edited by Alessandro Rivali), Memory becomes poetry – Dai Diari, 1940-1948 (edited by Vanda Corti and Giovanni Santambrogio), I want your love – Letters to Vanda, 1947-1951.
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