Romagnolo, interpreter of one of his narrative theater: «I am secretly famous. Among my followers Morgan, but Ascanio Celestini doesn’t know who I am ». And now he goes on tour
Here, the laughter. Acute, contagious, in several stages: it is always there, under trace, like the stamp of authenticity of a thought mulled over for a moment. You don’t know when, at any moment that laugh will ring. “Because laughing is important, for me a sense of humor is really a sense.” Then the hands, which twirl like words (in fact they would already speak for themselves), and the Rasputin beard in continuity with the long gray hair that falls on an important body, suitable for occupying a scene. So myopic glasses with round and small lenses, which on a face like this could also have been those of a commissar of the revolution.
But no. Roberto Mercadini, 43 years old from Cesena, is a “Talking poet”. That is: recite the poem. The definition is yours. An interpreter of narrative theater. But also a popularizer, a writer, a scholar, a lover of Jewish culture, Dante, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Garibaldi and many others. Studying him in action on the web, live in theaters or even reading his books, one could say first of all that he is a Romagna. Let it be said without malice. Here it is a question of a category of the spirit.
On the other hand, it is he himself who is fulminating as only those from Imola down (up to the first offshoots of the Marche) can be. This is how he presents himself, with regard to a certain popularity of his in the squares or on the web, but not in the canonical mainstream channels: «I am secretly famous. Among my followers are Salmo and Morgan. But Ascanio Celestini doesn’t know who I am“. He adds that his readers are “those who don’t read books.” And speaking of his region, he describes the Emilians as “close relatives, they are well-educated people from Romagna”. Yet, really, it’s not just a genius loci. His is a story that mixes past and present.
Until a few years ago, there was a poetry writer and aspiring interpreter of stories, known only in the vicinity of the Malatesta Library. At most the echo reached Rimini and Ravenna. One who, as Antonello Venditti would sing, had burnt his engineering degree (“computer scientist and even with a good salary”) to live in a world of words. «Once, in Prato, there were six people to see one of my shows. In Milan 11. I had tried, tried, tried, tried to build a following. Every day I posted a video on YouTube with my stories. With method. For two years. But nothing, nothing happened. The usual small group followed me ».
Then, in 2018, various things happen. The astral combination exists. They ask him to write a book:Perfect story of the mistake (Rizzoli). “A national publisher calling me, I couldn’t believe it.” And a video of his replication to terrapiattisti, in those same months, goes viral. So it happens, a short time later, also for a video in which he discusses the apple: ten minutes to talk about all the unpublished sides of the fruit. Success calls success. A second book arrives and the chairs of the theaters, which continue to be Arci circles, associations, lawns or deconsecrated churches, are filled. “I saw the number of my followers on YouTube grow in real time. Like I used to go to the bathroom, come back and there were already more. Now I take my shows on tour all over Italy ».
The phenomenon of fame, small, medium or large, built on the web is in itself strange, yet it remains, in this frame, rather interesting. Mercadini, who is a meditative and does not seem to have the canonical times of the youtuber (perhaps less than many of his colleagues who grew up on the same platform and who also support him and treat him like an old sage) becomes popular. But “in a certain context: my audience is between 15 and 40 years old“. An audience looking for answers. And in large part it is not the canonical one of theaters, newspapers or bookstores.
“People need disclosure, stories, a different way of explaining things. I don’t invent anything, I’m going to look for what many don’t know. Or they don’t associate. Mine is the spirit of the gold digger. I find nuggets sometimes. I read the My fight to prepare my book on the atomic bomb and I discover that Hitler as a young corporal returning from the conflict had been sent to spy on the nascent Nazi party. Not many know. Or that the same Hitler e Wittgenstein they attended the same school in Lienz. They are suggestions, combinations, news that allow you to pick up the thread of the same story with a mixture that surprises you ». So it was also for the show for Dante. «My wife, who works with me, at one point said:“ You can’t not set up a show about Dante ”. But what can be done again? So I focused on the word. Dante is obsessed with the word, with the desire to shape the vernacular. The quotations in Latin, the pieces in the language d’oc, the Hebrew, the imagined languages, the “Pape Satàn, pape satàn aleppe”. I read the On the Common Eloquence and in the Divine Comedy
I have underlined all the points where Dante speaks of language. From there I left for my show ».
These are the stories that contain other stories, which contain other stories that Mercadini discusses so much. So perhaps he has conquered his own personal legend. Through prose “that does not hurt”. While poetry, yes, it is cursed. “It is uncontrollable. Because sometimes you stay up until two in the morning and nothing, it does not settle down. ” As Mercadini says quoting the Romagna poet Walter Galli: «If poetry existed I would rush to serenade it. Or to throttle her ».
September 18, 2021 (change September 19, 2021 | 19:17)
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