The German-speaking Italian writer who died in Brunico (Bolzano) after a fall at home. Author of L’italiana, he has always defended justice and tolerance
The South Tyrolean writer Joseph Zoderer86 years old, born in Merano, protagonist of the literary scene especially in German-speaking countries, died Wednesday 1st June in Brunico (Bolzano) after a fall at home preceded by an illness. The death occurred while doctors were deciding whether to operate or groped to relieve pain with morphine. He had been a heart patient for years and in recent months he had returned to live in the family farm in Terento with his wife Sandra.
His first novel dates back to 1976 but was released in Italy in 1987 with the title The happiness of washing your hands. Already known in the German-speaking literary milieu, he had made himself known in Italy in 1985, with the novel The Italian (the whale) – protagonists two young people (he Italian, she of German mother tongue) -, crowded with echoes on the conflicting relationships between Italians and South Tyroleans in Alto Adige, a multilingual land but still not polyglot today.
Last February Zoderer, together with mountaineer Reinhold Messner and journalist Lilli Gruber, received in Innsbruck the honor of the Austrian Land of Tyrol.
Born in Merano on November 25, 1935, he lived from 5 to 17 years in Austria and Switzerland, facing the tragedy of Options (his family opted for German citizenship in 1940 and moved to Graz), then completed his studies in South Tyrol and Vienna. He worked as a journalist for the Viennese newspapers and between 1971 and 1981 for the news of the Rai branch in Bolzano, almost always dawn shift.
In 2010 a party was organized in Brunico for his 75th birthday: among others there were present Peter Handke, Tim Parks and Nanni Balestrini, his friends and admirers. Among these, the figure of Claudio Magris stands out. The first to mourn the death of Zoderer were his publishing house Haymon Verlag in Innsbruck and Vienna (in his exceptional literary work he always defended justice and tolerance: for all) and the provincial council of Bolzano.
Joseph Zoderer – whose Bompiani then led by Elisabetta Sgarbi published the Italian version of The colors of cruelty (2015) – had been in Italian bookstores with the translation of The pain of changing skin (2005) and before that with the emblematic and raw The Italian. For some months he had given definitive consent to the publication of The deception of happiness (The ship of Theseus) with text translated by her friend Giovanna Agabio and with a glance projected on Tristan and Isolde by Wagner. A few weeks ago, the publishing house Haymon Verlag (engaged in the revival of the Zoderian omnia work) had printed the subtle poetic anthology Trees in the room.
Erzhler Poetthat is to say poet narratornot a poet and narrator (as he had wanted to say in the Lettura of 30 June 2019), Zoderer he wrote by hand with a black fountain pen. Then he placed hundreds of sheets on the walls of the villa-studio that he reached until recently every morning by bicycle. On foot only if it snows a lot, he specified.
The fires of his parables had settled into the words Love, Old Age, Death. Love in old age is now spoken of in many different places and occasions. We are still scandalized today – he told us in an interview – but in truth people cultivate an eternal youth more than ever. Love never ends when the children are grown up and then the old must … disappear.
Two summers ago he had shelved the project of a novel set on the Greek island of Lesbos, scene of many holidays in reality, with the two children still young. Lesbos has become a devastating refugee camp – he confided -: during my last vacation I had reached a beach at dawn. I witnessed the first landings. This migrant story is too much bigger and more intense than anything I could have written. So I give up.
In October 2017 the theatrical piece went on stage Mother’s house (The mother’s house), true Joseph Zoderer’s debut as a playwright after a canvas drawn up in high school: Working on this text was for me like writing a very long poem.
June 1, 2022 (change June 1, 2022 | 21:33)
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