The jury chaired by Paolo Mieli chose the winners for fiction, non-fiction and verses. The writer won the victory with Il pane perduto (La nave di Teseo)
An autobiographical novel to convey the memory of the horrors of the Shoah through the eyes of a thirteen year old. A collection of poems that unites quantum physics with the multitude of humanity. An essay against the commitment that risks transforming literature into a propaganda tool.
They are the three winning books of the 92nd edition of the Prize Viareggio-Rpaci which, returning to ancient traditions and past splendors but with a look towards renewal and the future, was celebrated last night in front of the sea of Viareggio. And behind these three books, of course, there are three authors: Edith Bruck, born in Hungary and escaped the Nazi genocide, with The lost bread
(La nave di Teseo), a novel already winner of the Strega Giovani Prize this year and in the five-tier of the major prize, which has met with success in the approval of readers and in bookstore sales. Flavio Santi with the collection of poems How many (chips, wakes, waves 1999-2019) published by Industria & Letteratura. And Walter Siti, author of the essay Against commitment
(Rizzoli).
Three winners, but it would be better to say the winners among the winners (in Viareggio-Rpaci the nine finalists win the jury prize) who join the special awards for journalism (Annalena Benini), the international award (Igiaba Scego) and that for the first work (Alessandra Carati). In addition to the very special one assigned to Roberto Benigni who closed the literary event during the night of Viareggio.
It was a different evening from the others, yesterday’s. Do not
solo because it managed to fight the bad weather that raged for half a day on the capital of Carnival and Versilia, to then make way for a beautiful sunset and the starry sky, but because the dock in front of the sea and the glorious beaches of Viareggio, with its suggestions, evoked the atmosphere that Leonida Rpaci had predicted in August 1929 under his umbrella of the Lido baths when he invented the Prize that would cross the literary history of the twentieth century, arriving in the new millennium.
An evening of culture, of course, but also of entertainment. He conducted Monica Giandotti, the famous face of Rai, in front of an audience of 130 meters and on a stage overlooking the sea and with real-time transmission on a maxi screen on the quay.
Alongside the president of the award, Paolo Mieli, journalist and historian, who on the eve had promised greater rhythm, without downtime to bring people even closer to the prize, the books and who interviewed the protagonists. Investigating, for example, the urge to write in verse, as in the case of Santi – who is also an essayist, novelist and literary modernity, history, the future.
So as an enlightening state to enter the apparent provocation by the critic and novelist Walter Siti who challenged the tendency, which has become almost a fashion, to agitate a commitment (as the title of his essay) revealed to be Manichaean, which sets the good objectives to be treated and excludes those judged bad, using simple forms, to the reach of all, and slipping into propaganda. On the contrary, Siti argues, the mission of literature must not heal but rather help bring to the surface things that the author or society did not know they knew. In the Lettura # 489 of 25 April last, Alessandro Piperno wrote of the essay by Siti, concluding: Perhaps it will be a little more difficult to enter it but literature will continue to sing even when those who aim to destroy it and regiment it are no longer of this world.
Then when the spotlight turned on Edith Bruck, the ninety-year-old Hungarian naturalized Italian writer has collected a passionate, convinced standing ovation. Then accompanied by emotion when the writer recalled the terrible pilgrimages to the Nazi concentration camps. And that roundup from the house where he was born with his mother screaming for bread, bread, lost bread. And he could never have imagined, that desperate woman, that those words would one day become the title of a daughter’s novel. As was the emotion when Paolo Mieli asked her, a witness to the Shoah, for an opinion on the disaster and suffering in Afghanistan.
The Viareggio-Rpaci of the year 2021 showed the commitment of a municipal council and its mayor, Giorgio Del Ghingaro, to support and relaunch the Prize without upsetting it. Because the literary festival, together with the Puccini Carnival and Festival of Torre del Lago, remains one of the three wonders of Viareggio.
August 28, 2021 (change August 28, 2021 | 20:53)
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