Discover Apulia : Literature (Comics / News)

Magna Graecia

We know them as Italian, but the three regions that interest us will have known other destinies, notably that of having been attached to Greece when, long before the birth of Christ, the latter had decided to form colonies. From this heritage and the mixture of cultures that resulted, we have several names of poets, from the very enigmatic Leonidas of Taranto to the inescapable Horace. Of the life of the first, few elements remain, and although his epigrams remained confidential for a long time, it is said that they show such tenderness towards the little people that they are always worth reading.

Then came three Latin poets, Livius Andronicus, Ennius and Pacuvius, born successively around 280, 239 and 220 B.C., all three in what is now Apulia. History, or is it legend, says that Livius was taken prisoner as a child when, in 272 BC, the Romans seized Taranto. Freed by the master whose children he had educated, he would have put his bilingualism at the service of letters, translating Greek playwrights and writing Odusia, whose forty surviving fragments suggest that it is the first epic written in Latin. Ennius was also a passer-by, having mastered Oskorian, a language now extinct, as well as Greek and Latin. He is generally referred to as the father of Latin poetry because he was able to adapt the Greek hexameter to it, which was a real challenge, when other poets were still content with the insipid Saturnian verse. His nephew and disciple Pacuvius may not have possessed his stylistic vigour, but he nevertheless achieved fame with his tragedies, the best known being Paulus

. Horace was born in Basilicata, and more specifically in the town of Venouse. His father bled to bring him an education that he would perfect in Athens, but it was in this city that he would make a choice that could have cost him dear. When Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, he decided to enlist in Brutus' army. The battle of Philippi saw the defeat of the latter and Horace had to flee. The amnesty granted him a return ticket to Italy, his luck changed and his meeting with Virgil, who introduced him to Maecenas, confidant of Augustus, offered him the possibility of regaining the favour of the emperor, against whom he had fought, through his literature, which was initially political in the form of poems. His Satires and Epodes have survived, of course, but it was his Odes of which he was most proud. He also left two houses, one in his native town, the second - a gift from Maecenas - in Sabina, a villa that a Frenchman took it into his head to find in the 18th century. Bertrand Capmartin de Chaupy did indeed beat the Roman countryside, taking so many side roads that the account of his journey is no less than three volumes and, at the very least, at least a thousand digressions.

Denial and politics

During the centuries to come, the south of Italy will gradually be won by poverty and suffer from a certain abandonment, although Puglia knows a real golden age in the thirteenth century under the reign of Frederick II who is a great lover. Very cultured and curious about all influences, his court was said to have included many poets from the region, but history has not necessarily remembered their names. This decline was also felt in literature, even though Calabria was the setting for a grandiose chanson de geste in the previous century, which contains more than eleven thousand monotone decasyllables: Aspremont. The author, anonymous, tells the conflicts that will oppose Charlemagne to Agoulant, he also praises the youthful prowess of Roland, the hero of another famous epic poem. Finally, the heel of the boot inspired an English writer, Horace Walpole, to write the first Gothic novel. Published in 1764, The Castle of Otranto conjures up ghosts and curses with a talent that can still be appreciated

Could it be that destitution and near-ostracism encourage writers to take up politics and journalism? This seems to be the case for a whole line of authors, the leader of which could be Francesco Saverio Salfi, born in 1759 in Cosenza. He became a priest but remained a poet, eventually abandoning the ecclesiastical habit in favour of the costume of a man of the theatre before adopting, in French, that of a literary critic. The commitment of Vittorio Visalli (1859-1931) was all the more marked because some members of his family, including his father, had been imprisoned for having taken part in the People's Spring of 1848, and he became a lawyer. Passionate about history, the old one, that of the Risorgimento, but also the recent one which led him to collect testimonies following the earthquake of 1908, he remained throughout his life very attached to his native region, Calabria. And what can we say about Bruno Misefari, born in 1892 in the small town of Palizzi, whose fervent anarchist views led to a long exile in Switzerland and then in Germany, and to many problems with the justice system in his country? With his friend Antonio Malara, a railway worker, he created the newspaper L'Amico del popolo, which was published clandestinely from 1925. As for his poetry, it was not published until after his death in 1936. Finally, he was not only the co-founder of the Italian Communist Party, he was also the author of an abundant production of novels dedicated to Calabria. Unfortunately, none of his titles are available in French today, as the Saga of the Rupe Brothers has been out of print for far too long.

Thunderclap and rebirth

Indirectly, it is also politics that will give birth to one of the masterpieces of the 20th century. Thus, from the exile imposed on him by Fascism in Aliano in Basilicata, Carlo Levi returned with the material which, ten years later, he would use to write an incredible book, both in form and in content: Christ Stood in Eboli

. His story begins with the promise to return to this village forgotten by God, and he will end up keeping it since his last wishes will require that he be buried there. The story is so moving that it has been translated into more than 30 foreign languages and has put the "southern question" back on the agenda, an expression that first appeared in the mouth of a member of parliament in 1873 and that encompasses the concerns related to the strong economic disparities between the North and the South.

The literature extends this state of affairs in a current that is little known in France, "meridionalism", which nevertheless includes such important authors as Fortunato Seminara (L'Héritage de l'oncle, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg), Corrado Alvaro (La Fenêtre sur le canal, Desjonquères éditeur) or Saverio Strati in Calabria, but also Leonardo Sinisgalli (Poèmes d'hier, La Différence, Au pas inégal des jours, La Coopérative), Rocco Scotellaro, Mario Trufelli or Raffaele Nigro (Les Feux du Basento

, Verdier) in Basilicate. The "Mezzogiorno" then became a subject of interest but also of study, as suggested by some of the work of the ethnologist Ernesto De Martino, who investigated the tarantellas, codified traditional dances, which sometimes lead to trance, and which were supposed to cure tarentism, a disease that raged in the Middle Ages near Taranto and which was thought to be caused by the bite of a specific spider, the (perhaps) mythical tarantula.

A second generation, born in the second half of the twentieth century, will continue to dig into the societal vein, but tackling a delicate subject, that of the mafia, which in Calabria is known as the 'Ndrangheta. To do this, the detective story will become their favourite genre, like Mimmo Gangemi who, after having tried his hand at the historical novel and the financial thriller, will meet with success with the adventures of his "little judge" published in French by the Seuil publishing house. For his part, Giancario De Cataldo will be interested in Calabria in The Traitors, but it is the mafia of Rome, his adopted city for him who is originally from Puglia, that will occupy him in the diptych Suburra that he will write with Carlo Bonini. Both magistrates, Nicola Gratteri and Gianrico Carofiglio will draw on their professional experience in their work as writers. The former has been living under police escort ever since he began investigating the 'Ndrangheta (Sainte mafia, published by La Martinière), which the latter perhaps avoids by resorting to fiction in his series featuring the Bari lawyer Guido Guerrieri (Témoin involontaire, Rivages Noir). Finally, Griaco Gioacchino has been favourably noticed since Les Âmes noires, a novel translated by Métailié in 2011. The reader follows the steps of three kids from La Locride who adopt a life of crime to escape poverty but who are reluctant to join the Mafia organization. American taste followed in 2013 and then Silk and the Gun

in 2018, which takes place in the Aspromonte region. The latest arrivals on the literary scene do not seem ready to abandon the vein of the noir novel. For La Féroce (Folio), Nicola Lagioia, born in Bari in 1973, wins the highly regarded Strega Prize. His younger daughter, Antonella Lattanzi, was spotted with her first book, Devozione, published in 2010. Her second, A Dark Affair, has been translated by Actes Sud. Let's hope that her essay on the mysteries and legends of Puglia will also cross borders. Finally, the young Andrea Donaera is full of promise, as confirmed by his remarkable first novel Je suis la bête (published by Cambourakis), in which the darkness of this story, once again a Mafia affair, is matched only by the luminosity of a style that adapts perfectly to each of the protagonists.