Small People of the world ~ 'an ancient FELICITE MIXED RACE' ~ ~
Hofmannsthal and celebrate another SAVINIO ITALY ~
Let us not torment the writings in these months of chauvinistic Jubilee Risorgimento, Italy deserves better. I do not regret the lack of the Protestant Reformation, which would have been approved in other countries, such as the repeated mea culpa maniacs. A distant aristocratic Viennese Jewish origins, which boasted a "drop of blood Lombard, "Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the major writers of German in the twentieth century, can help us understand another Italy, the one forgotten by contemporary critics, all taken by the enthusiasm for the unique dimension, global, ashamed of the most eccentric of the beautiful country, a Catholic , universalist, drama, daring and mischievous. He denied the long-soaked baroque because the Counter (the recent discovery was of cross-border), but fearing any similarity with the art of Fascism, the offer is unfortunately also the classics of all time, avoided like the plague, let obscure the fact that the geniuses of the Renaissance coincided with the hated Papists by Luther and the Mannerist comeback were grown in culture post-Tridentine, which is why the 'secular' Roberto Longhi escaped with the great rebel who became Caravaggio found the key figure in the history of Italian art, going out in Thus the "black hole of Mannerism and the Baroque, a reflection of that damnatio desanctisiana Croce and then, the Catholic Reformation" (Gian Lorenzo Mellini).
Hofmannsthal that, exactly one hundred years ago, coupled with Richard Strauss, delighted the audience in Dresden with the opera Der Rosenkavalier (here is a secular birthday celebrated with due recognition should be), cheerful holiday di intrighi galanti, era l’autore ideale per rovesciare l’idea dell’Italia tramandata dai Piagnoni. E in un brevissimo testo del 1927 dedicato ai Promessi Sposi e al suo autore, provò a riassumere la nostra cultura in poche righe, facendo aggio appunto su quel romanzo manzoniano che «rappresenta l’Italia dinanzi al mondo, quella vera Italia che si perpetua costantemente sotto qualsiasi stato espressivo, in virtù della saldezza straordinariamente elastica di una antichissima razza felicemente mista» ( «I Promessi Sposi» di Alessandro Manzoni in Saggi italiani , a cura di Lea Ritter Santini, Oscar Mondadori). A scuola si è ormai tanto banali da ripetere che the protagonist looks like a santarellina, the tone is moralistic, in short, nothing to do with the novels of modern French and Anglo-Saxons, Hofmannsthal, Mighty Mighty novelist as well as a poet, had a different opinion.
"The noble and difficult concept of Italian," says the Viennese can be reconstructed from a novel that is considered 'romantic' but that has nothing to which they show the dreamy contemporaries across the Alps, "not encroaches ever in the dream and fancy, "not in the passion haunts solitary individual, the narrative being in fact Italian choral familistic with mothers, uncles, cousins \u200b\u200bof the first and second degree, neighbors, priests, monks, servants, schemers, legulei: a crib. In such a busy daily life there is "a knowledge of the world where no nation is equal to the Italian." In the land of realism, even during the Romantik, "any figure at all times act guided by self-interest at stake - nothing more opposite sign to the sentimental, the romantic in each pulse there is a consciousness of the limits (defined not as social barriers, but appointed by God), a joy even to the extent (and recognition is the fascination of reading) - the same time, however, every moment is given the opportunity to go beyond all boundaries and precipitated violently towards the infinite, even for God. " It's a novel "lay" as Tom Jones, "Jansenist" as taught us in high school with a taste for pedantry, "but at the same time - supports Hofmannsthal using words very demanding - is steeped in religion, Catholic Christianity of human post Tridentine-like no other book in world literature. " A Catholic Christianity in fact, very human, wise, tolerant, which makes its way between the romantic hallucinations, among the most brazen experiments that have already ended in silence and nihilism. In contrast, a "human old-fashioned, old e giovane insieme, impregnata fino al midollo dello spirito della cristianità cattolica; in questa sintesi verosimilmente imperfetta ci illumina il bagliore di una rivelazione, forse la più alta dell’ italianità . Con questa persuasione nel cuore si potrebbe parlare di questo libro come d’un libro quasi indistruttibile, finché almeno reggano le fibre stesse di quest’antico popolo». La attuale disattenzione verso l’opera manzoniana dovrebbe dunque preoccuparci non poco: forse siamo tanto vecchi da essere còlti da una specie di Alzheimer collettivo. E ripieghiamo nella lettura delle lezioncine impartite dai giornalisti stranieri in prose senza garbo e senza stile.
Hofmannsthal insiste sull’antiromanticismo the novel and the Italians, remember when we import mode d'everywhere, tearing down our roots. "Nothing is so far from the romantic style of this book listed among the masterpieces of the Romantic era. Even the famous 'sobriety' antiromantic Stendhal appears almost sliced \u200b\u200bwith respect to the immediate, natural simplicity of this narrative. " Dominates here the "naturalness" and "never a narrator was so wonderfully near and far, to the same extent, all the characters," then to tell the ideal life, where "every single creature has a very soft edge, never less '. Novel "a people whose greatness is based on a terrible realism and noble in the passion, "he always manages to avoid" the stubborn prejudice and contempt. "
Hofmannsthal In Milan he dedicated his masterpiece, Reitergeschichte (History of Cavalry), or the extraordinary images of the Italian Risorgimento seen from Vienna, a story that should be mandatory reading as an antidote to gloomy reflections Mazzini we require from all over to the anniversary of the state. This is a "ride of death" against a backdrop of beautiful Italy. The author, who was proud of his ancestry Lombard found in these pages on its south, the southern part, passionate, instinctive, which breaks the perfect Teutonic Order, the majesty of the white uniforms of blond soldiers on horseback. It is the Milan of the First War of Independence reflected in the eyes of the troopers Austrians are not the warrior virtues of the patriots who arouse admiration and respect but the Ambrosian city that echoes of the bells, its young people that move like gods on Olympus, the 'incomparable church art that appeals to the hearts of the soldiers, the kind that shows up in forms balanced and razor sharp.
In Milan, in these days, Savinio back to cheer the city that listens to the heart with an exhibition of his work in many forms. Thanks to him, the capital of Lombardy, which typically raises discount aesthetic judgments, had a book of loving praise. And in that book Savinio fun, like a mysterious echo of the words of Manzoni Hofmannsthal, to hit the dreamers in the mists of romantic melancholia by the followers of overwork, the everlasting dressed in black like some pathetic habit existentialist intellectuals Germans' ... Anglo-Saxons often lack the poetic realism, poetic values \u200b\u200bignore the present, and transfer them to a world so far, obscure and uncontrollable as death. [...] What else reveals that confidence in the poetic future of death, if not a lack of poetic present. [...] If it is empty of value, believe in death as a supreme value, and death that awaits that life has given him. For supreme sense of vulgarity, you want to be 'different' from what you are. Then comes the aesthetic get in this beautiful, this lively talk, this correct, and beautify their own reality. And what more radical change in Death? [...] Death is not for nothing that the teacher of aesthetics [...] André Suarès note that Italian literature has never taken seriously the pain and death. Our mental superiority over the Anglo-Saxons, our classic. " ( listen to your heart, city ).
WOMEN OF THE UNITED 
