FANO - The charm of inheriting a precious family library, the pleasure of sharing it.
Luigi Contu, journalist, director of the ANSA Agency, brought a national preview to the Passaggi Festival in Fano (Pesaro Urbino) some documents, including an unpublished by Ungaretti, among the thousands of volumes, correspondence, photographs, notes, left to him by the grandfather Rafaele, Sardinian from Tortolì, man passionate about science and poetry, director of the Fascist War Ministry, intellectual friend of Giuseppe Ungaretti, Paul Valery, Tommaso Marinetti, Eugenio Montale and many intellectuals of the twentieth century.
Thus was born, after two years of research, the exhibition "Books feel alone. Stories and history of a family library", created with the patronage of the French Embassy.
which will remain open until 7 August with free admission.
The start of the week of Passaggi Festival with 150 cultural proposals: book presentations, from morning until night, workshops for children, scientific aperitifs and other exhibitions.
The idea of the exhibition, explains Contu on the sidelines of the presentation, "was born while I was writing a book on this precious legacy. From Passaggi came a proposal to exhibit some documents and I said 'why not' ...".
The exhibition was inaugurated this afternoon in the former church of Sant'Arcangelo by Vittorio Sgarbi and by Contu himself.
Among the surprises on display an unpublished work by Ungaretti, which escaped the poet's most accredited bibliography and was found among the shelves.
"The Hymn", as it is called, had disappeared in its original version that nobody knew.
Only 50 copies published by Contu 'senior' for friends.
Now the poem is rematerialized together with the original manuscripts of Corrado Alvaro, with the dedications of Marinetti, with the correspondence with Umberto Saba, Eugenio Montale,
to the first edition of Joyce's Ulysses, re-emerged from an ancient wedding chest.
Precious fragments of a century.
History of a triangle of illustrious friendships: Contu who translates the works of Paul Valéry, Ungaretti who uses red pencil to correct poems and confesses his aversion to his friend Rafaele for the protagonists of the literary world of the time, for example Vincenzo Cardarelli .
An ocean of paper, in short, which is the story of a family, but at the same time a collective journey of national history of the twentieth century.
Which continues to the present day: the season of the massacres, the Moro kidnapping, entrusted to the writing of Sciascia, who questions the relationship between prisoner and kidnappers, the memories of Gemma Calabresi collected now in the last literary effort.
Generations pass, the library expands.
The love of books remains the family trait.
"Alone in our hands - wrote Rafaele - books begin to live and satisfy us".
Along with the exhibition, the family library also produced a book, of the same title, in which Contu describes his incredible cultural navigation.
Published for the types of the Nave di Teseo, the volume will be in bookstores on June 24 and on the same day it will be presented in the review of Passaggi Festival;
together with the author there will be the journalists Mario Calabresi and Alessandra Longo (Piazza XX Settembre, 10pm).
