«Improvised men in power» The last interview by Alfonso Gatto

by time news

twelve o’clock, 8 March 2021 – 11:51

In the book by Marcello Napoli, curiosities and unpublished on the Salerno poet who died 45 years ago

of Gabriele Bojano

On March 8, 1976 Alfonso Gatto, one of the most significant voices of twentieth century poetry, died at the age of only 67, following the injuries sustained in a road accident in Orbetello, and to remember him Marcello Napoli, scholar and collector of “gattiani ”, He published a small volume, Sulle footsteps of the Cat (Edizioni dell’Ippogrifo). It is a collection of texts by Gatto and for Gatto which, as the author explains, underline how the definitions of poet with a suitcase and picaro of the South fit perfectly for him. Naples retraces the stages of the Giro della Vita, of the Tour de Force by the writer and journalist: Naples, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Trieste, Turin, Bologna, Liguria, Venice, the Marches, Puglia, Basilicata, Sardinia, Palermo and Sicily and then Paris, the France of the Tour , Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, between 1946 and ’48. And then there is Greece explored with the last partner in life, Maria Paola Minucci. And again: Salerno, Cilento, in particular Palinuro and the Amalfi Coast, a place that he often shared with his long-time friends, accomplices and interlocutors.

Four days before the accident

The meticulous excursus between reviews, photos, interviews, curiosities, unpublished, newspaper clippings, period news but also more recent, based on the constant rediscovery, for the benefit of the new generations, of the author of Il vaporetto, ends with a ‘real gem, Gatto’s last interview, released four days before the tragic death, to Giuliano Ferrieri, editor-in-chief of the weekly L’Europeo. There is the whole political and social vision of the left-wing intellectual who starts from Francesco Rosi’s film Corpses of excellence, in which he appears as an actor: I would say the reproduction of our society of fitting power. A society which has placed makeshift men in command posts, who have no history, no training, no sense of responsibility. Men whose power we only learn when they are going to jail. Names that have no proof: and one cannot be born as men of nothing in positions of power, where it is necessary to decide, to discriminate. Where values ​​should be created. Almost prophetic words, which still weigh today like boulders.

March 8, 2021 | 11:51

© Time.News


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