The writer, translator and literary critic Gianni Celati, one of the most representative voices of the cultural ferments that have crossed Italian society from the seventies onwards, died on the night of 2 to 3 January at the age of 84 in a nursing home in Hove, near Brighton, English city where he settled in 1989 with his wife Gillian Haley. The news of the disappearance was confirmed to the time.news by the writer friend Daniele Benati, in whose house in Reggio Emilia Celati was a guest every time he returned to Italy. Long ill, the writer had accidentally fallen last September, fracturing his femur and therefore requiring hospitalization.
“With pain I learn of the death of Gianni Celati, a great intellectual of the twentieth century, an author that is never banal, an extraordinary translator who masterfully studied the Italian language and its sounds. It is a sad day for literature and for our country that he also loses an attentive observer who was able to describe the lesser known Italy, the Italy elsewhere, with simplicity.
Born in Sondrio on 10 January 1937, Giovanni Celati, known as Gianni, after spending his childhood and adolescence in the province of Ferrara, graduated in Bologna with a thesis on James Joyce. He writes articles for numerous magazines such as “Lingua e stile”, “Il Verri”, “Il Caffè”. In 1971 he published his first novel for Einaudi, “Comiche”. Among his best known works published by Feltrinelli: “Narratori delle pianure” (1985, Cinque Scole and Grinzane Cavour awards), the trilogy “Parlamenti buffi” (1989, Mondello award 1990), “The band of sighs. Childhood novel. “(1976),” Lunario del paradiso “(1978),” Adventures in Africa “(1998, Comisso award),” Fata Morgana “(2005, Flaiano and Naples awards),” Vite di pascolanti “(2006, Viareggio award) , “Commuter children who got lost” (2011), “Acting by the actor Vecchiatto” (2013).
Concealed he also edited for Feltrinelli the translation of numerous works from English such as “Bartleby the scribe” by Melville (1991), “La Certosa di Parma” by Stendhal (1993), “Gulliver’s travels” by Swift (1997). He dealt with the prose transcription of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s poem, “Orlando in love told in prose” (Einaudi, 1994).
He has also dedicated himself to cinema and has made documentary films such as “Strada Provinciale delle anime”, “The world of Luigi Ghirri”, “Sparse houses. Visions of collapsing houses”. His narrative production is collected in the ‘Meridiano’ “Novels, chronicles and short stories” edited by Marco Belpoliti and Nunzia Palmieri (Mondadori, 2016).
(from Paolo Martini)