The origins
To begin this literary story by following in the footsteps of a troubadour seems rather auspicious. Rambertino Buvalelli was born in Bologna at the end of the 12th century. He is also a politician who is in great demand, and has little time to invest in his poetic production, even though it is remarkable for the complexity of its metrics. A man of his time, he devoted himself to singing about courtly love, a theme that resonated perfectly for one of his fellow citizens, and not the least, Guido Guinizzelli (1230-1276). This poet did nothing less than initiate a literary trend that would flourish in Italy for centuries, Dolce stil novo, and inspire a leading figure, Dante, to make him his spiritual father.
This "new gentle style" advocates the elevation of the lover who wants to be virtuous, and portrays the beloved as an intermediary between him and God. In one verse, so beautiful in Italian, everything is said: Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore ("in noble heart love always takes shelter"). If Italians feel their heart beating, their head works very well too. The head of Giorgio Valla, who was born in 1447 in Piacenza, was fascinated by an Archimedes manuscript that accidentally fell into his hands. Touching on everything, he gathered his knowledge in the work De expetendis et fugiendis rebus (On what to look for and what to flee), which became the first encyclopaedia to be printed posthumously, but thanks to the good care of his son, in 1501 in Venice. His almost exact contemporary, the Bolognese Filippo Beroaldo (1453-1505), at the age of 19 considered that he had learned everything from his teachers and decided to open a school. He put his analytical mind at the service of the translation and commentary of august Latin authors, he also published poems, of love, of course. The quality of his teaching led him to travel to Paris, but he also stayed for a time in Parma, where he may have rubbed shoulders with the famous humanist librarian Taddeo Ugoleto and the no less famous Francesco Grapaldo, whose masterpiece is De partibus aedium, a treatise on ancient houses.
The 15th century also saw the birth of Ludovico Ariosto, known as L'Ariosto, in September 1474 in Reggio Emilia. Coming from a good family, but with no money, he worked for a cardinal and then a duke. After fulfilling his duties, he was granted a retreat in his house in Ferrara, which can still be admired today, and he devoted himself fully to his unquenchable passion for poetry. He published his masterpiece for the first time in 1512, although he never stopped coming back to it until his death in 1533. The Roland furieux is a classic of the genre, with 46 songs in its ultimate version. It was invented as a sequel to the Roland in love with Matteo Maria Boiardo, himself born in Emilia-Romagna. Set against the backdrop of the war between Charlemagne and the Saracens, not hesitating to include fantastic elements and, of course, a love story, this tale is considered the last great novel of chivalry and will meet with considerable success. Perhaps more confidential, and yet he was prolific, the Bolognese Giulio Cesare Croce (1550-1609) went to the markets, violin under his arm, to tell his stories. He gave to posterity more than 600 works, sometimes written in dialect, portraits and short stories, comedies and autobiographical fragments.
The eighteenth century, for its part, promises to be frankly poetic in the writings of Girlamo Baruffaldi, who ingeniously described his city in Dell'istoria di Ferrara (1700), and Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni, who blossomed happily in his career as a poet and librettist at the court of the Duchy of Parma. Giovanni Battara (1714-1789), for his part, excelled in writing sonnets in Romagna, while the eclectic Jacopo Landoni, born in Ravenna in 1772, also used the dialect, as the rare texts that have come down to us, signed by his pseudonym Pirett Tignazza canonich d'la Piazza, show.
More numerous, his other works show a definite taste for farce. The use of regional languages helps to forge an identity and to highlight its peculiarities, and a number of writers have done so, for example Olindo Guerrini, who grew up in Forlì and died in Bologna (1845-1916), but also, closer to us, Tonino Guerra of Santarcangelo del Romagna, a writer and playwright born at the beginning of the twentieth century. A prisoner in Germany during the Second World War, he began writing in dialect after the liberation: his first collection in Romagna, I scarabócc, was published in 1946 when he was only 26 years old. However, it was more for his activities as a screenwriter that his name became familiar, so he worked on the film L'Avventura in his early days.The rich contemporary era
Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) perfectly embodies the transition from the old to the new age, he who was so bold in form and so sensitive in substance. His childhood is in itself a novel, rather dark, which will leave a lasting impression on him, his best known text being Il Fanciullino (The Boy). Singer of melancholy, nourished by his great knowledge of Antiquity, he himself will become a source of inspiration for poets to come. More cheerful, Giovannino Guareschi was born on May 1, 1908 in Raccabianca. His name is relatively unknown, yet he is the father of a character whose every good word we have all savoured, Don Camillo, so well played by the late Fernandel. After studying law and a multitude of less severe jobs, Guareschi truly began his career as a journalist, first becoming a cartoonist for the satirical newspaper Bertoldo, then co-founding the humorous weekly Candido.
It was also through drawing that a prominent Riminian, Hugo Pratt, whose real name was Ugo Eugenio Prat (1927-1995), became famous. His cosmopolitan family, his eventful childhood, his commitments, his travels and his passion for comics converged to allow him to offer the world a beloved and admired hero, Corto Maltese, whose first adventure, La Ballade de la mer salée, in which he was still only a secondary character, appeared in the newspaper France-Soir from July 1973 to January 1974. Some twenty years and many tokens of recognition later, Hugo Pratt died in Switzerland, forever mourning the ninth art.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose mother was a schoolteacher and father a soldier, was born in Bologna in 1927, which explains their frequent moves. At a very young age, rather bright, the young man took an interest in literature, but the shadow of the Second World War soon enveloped him. Fascinated by poetry, the teenager that he still is dodges the forced enlistment of the fascists, then goes into exile in Versuta with his mother, a small village where they open a makeshift school, the place of his first love. The year 1945 is a turning point, marred by a massacre that costs his brother his life, but also illuminated by the first issue of a poetic publication he imagined with his friends. From then on, Pasolini never stopped writing. His whole life would be eminently political, he would be the subject of lawsuits, particularly for obscenities because he evoked male homosexuality, and his death itself remained troubled, his molested body was discovered on a beach in November 1975. But his talent survived him, he remains the author of a literary and cinematographic work, largely crowned with prizes, and so abundant that one can pick and choose according to one's desires, diving into his theatre with Babel, his poetry with Gallimard, his essay La Rage with the beautiful editions Nous, or in his novels, from Une vie violente with Buchet-Chastel to the now classic Les Regazzi with Points.
Today, Emilia-Romagna is still a region resolutely turned towards culture, as evidenced by Bologna, which for decades has hosted an internationally renowned children's book fair. Nor did the streets of the red city hesitate to host a club which, without being secretive, cultivated mystery, the Group 13, initiated in 1990 by four authors of detective novels: Carlo Lucarelli, Lorianno Macchiavelli, Marcello Fois and, all the same, a woman, Alda Teordorani, "the Queen of Horror". A beautiful association of writers, productive because it has undoubtedly promoted their fame. French readers are thus fortunate enough to be able to discover certain novels in translation, such as Le Temps des hyènes by Carlo Lucarelli (Métailié), an investigation into a wave of suicides and a murder in the Italian colony of Eritrea, or Lumière parfaite by Marcello Fois (Seuil) in which the author moves away from his predilection for black.
In a completely different register, Stefano Benni's Le Bar sous la mer (The Bar under the Sea), born in 1947 in Bologna, invites us to spend a night full of imagination in the company of the whimsical regulars. Science fiction lovers, for their part, will not hesitate to rush to the works of Valerio Evangelisti.
