Unitary language and dialect
As a reminder of the French Revolution, the idea of a unified homeland began to emerge in Italy at the end of the 18th century, and it was France again, in the guise of Napoleon Bonaparte, that reshuffled the deck by annexing certain northern states. From uprisings to tears, from insurrections to wars of independence, the political game between neighbouring nations eventually led in 1861 to an Italy similar to the one we are familiar with today. But it was still necessary to unite these peoples whose most notable difference lay in the multitude of dialects spoken. Until then, Tuscan had been favoured by writers; Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, the "three crowns", had already favoured it, and it seemed natural to retain it as the sole national language. However, in this nation in the making, where most of the people are illiterate, there is still a need to create a bridge between written and spoken language.
Alessandro Manzoni, born in Milan in 1785, published his masterpiece, The Betrothed, a tragic story of thwarted love, in 1825. But he was not satisfied with this first version, which he considered inaccessible, his Tuscan being too elitist. He then decided to confront the Florentino vivo, i.e. the language of Florence, in order to rework his text and to make it as close as possible to what he heard. To do this, with the help of two friends, he "rinsed his sheets in the Arno". A revised, simplified and definitive version appeared in 1840. Manzoni did not stop at this literary action; in 1868 he became politically and socially involved by chairing, at the request of the Minister of Public Education, a commission responsible for disseminating and promoting the renewed Tuscan language nationally, in particular by distributing school textbooks, because everything had to be invented and it was the new generation that would serve as a springboard. His novel would become one of the symbols of the unification that was underway and that was referred to as the Risorgimento, "rebirth": it was doubly so, both in terms of language and theme, because the Italians had found another point in common, their attraction to romanticism. His contemporary Andrea Maffei, born in Molina di Ledro in the province of Trento in 1798, also contributed to this momentum by translating some of the great Romantic authors, such as Lord Byron and Victor Hugo. He was also a librettist for Giuseppe Verdi, a famous composer who, to pay tribute to the memory of Manzoni who died in 1873, dedicated a Requiem
to him the following year.However, there is a gulf between choosing a common language and imposing it - it was only in 1999 that a decree made it clear that the official language of the Republic was Italian - and the question arises, for example, in the Val d'Aosta. The place already lends itself to divergences, as shown by the very lively debates between Canon Félix Orsières (1803-1870) and his peers, in particular his counterpart Léon-Clément Gérard, in the mid-19th century. The story had started well, however, since together they participated in the adventure of the first regional newspaper, La Feuille d'annonces d'Aoste, created in 1841. Félix was a well-educated man, with a law degree, who had travelled extensively and published his History of the Aosta Country in 1839, which was soon followed by a Theory of improvements to be introduced in this province. Convinced that it was necessary to fight against the isolation of the valley, to open roads, to promote economic and cultural development, while insisting on the role that the Church should play in these developments, his liberal views clashed violently with the conservative ideas of Léon-Clément, who decided to join the newly created opposing newspaper, L'Indépendant.
The battle of the steeples ended with the threat of excommunication for Félix, who had to keep a low profile, but it also inspired Léon-Clément, who left several thousand verses, some of which were very strong, at his death in 1876. This shows how tense the situation was already when the attachment to Turin was decided in 1861. The end of the 19th century was marked by a high level of emigration, a foreshadowing of the forced Italianisation undertaken by the Fascist state in the middle of the 20th century, which also had sombre repercussions. Italian and French now legally coexist in this bilingual region, which enjoys a special status confirming its autonomy.
However, it is a third language that has given birth to the most beautiful pages of Valle d'Aosta: Valdostan, a Franco-Provençal idiom. Jean-Baptiste Cerlogne, a priest and linguist who was also a prisoner during the first war of independence after having been a chimney sweep in Marseille, wrote a poem in dialect, L'Infran produggo, in 1855 at the age of 29. He did not yet know that he was beginning a work that would make him just as famous as his future work on a Valle dictionary and grammar. His song La Pastorala (1884) still resonates at Christmas masses in Valle d'Aosta, and his life has been the subject of a biography by René Willien (1916-1979), another renowned writer. The literature in dialect, although the territory has gone through dramatic events, has remained alive, we could mention Eugénie Martinet known as Nini (1896-1983) who blossomed in a language that was neither the one spoken in her family nor the one she was taught at school, André Ferré, born in Saint-Vincent in 1904, or - closer to us - Raymond Vautherin from La Thuile, and Marco Gal, who died in Aosta in 2015.The 20th century
The year 1902 marked the birth of Carlo Levi in Turin. After graduating from the University of Medicine, he preferred to devote himself to painting and above all to the fight against Fascism, which was gradually eating away at the country. Arrested in 1935, he was sentenced to exile in southern Italy and to house arrest in the small village of Aliano. From these two years, which marked him to the point that his last wish was to be buried there after his death in 1975, he brought back a book, one of the greatest and most beautiful classics of Italian literature, Le Christ s'est arrêté à Eboli( Christ Stopped at Eboli
), available from Folio. In this autobiography, published just after the Second World War, he recounts a neglected region and its inhabitants abandoned to their fate, and in an unprecedented style he becomes a singer of misery and desolation.Another testimony, published in 1947 by his almost homonymous Primo Levi, also born in Turin in 1919, also moved readers, although the first edition remained confidential and it was not until fifteen years later that his voice was finally heard. If He Is a Man describes the author's deportation to Auschwitz in February 1944 and survival inside the extermination camp. After his miraculous return, Primo Levi seems to restart a normal life, he writes this text with the support of Lucia, his future wife, whom he has just met, resumes work, becomes a father for the first time in 1948. However, it is impossible for him to forget, as the world around him seems ready to do, so he starts to militate. His first text was republished in 1958, translated into English and then into German, and he began writing La Trêve
, which recounts his journey to return to Italy, published in 1963. He was listened to and recognised, the press finally spoke of him but, despite everything, that year was marked by the signs of a depression from which he would never emerge. Primo Levi will continue to write, to travel, to give conferences, to make sure that the unthinkable and the insurmountable will not be forgotten. He lost his life in 1987 in a fall from a staircase that many believe was deliberate.Cesare Pavese's death, on 27 August 1950 in Turin, left no room for doubt: the man had committed suicide, as confirmed by the note he left in his room at the Hotel Roma, the last sentence of his last novel, Death Will Come and It Will Have Your Eyes, and a note in his diary that would be published two years later under the title The Business of Living. A short life, barely 42 years old, and yet an immense, dense work, as eternal as that of one of his contemporaries, Dino Buzzati, born in Veneto in 1906. It is tempting to compare Buzzati's literary research with that of Kafka, both in the question of the absurdity of life that it seems to raise and in the fantastic side of some of his short stories, but there is a detail that is too often overlooked, the unconditional passion that Buzzati had for the Dolomites. The writer travelled a lot through his mountains, praising their tranquillity and magnificence, and if they are perhaps the backdrop to his famous Desert of the Tartars, they are undoubtedly the setting for his first novel, Bàrnabo of the Mountains
. In 2010, a law was passed in Veneto allowing his ashes to be scattered in the wild, Buzzati is finally buried where he wanted to be. The landscape hypnotizes men, some want to confront it and become mountaineers, they bring back stories in their bags and a literature of climbing is born. For example, Cesare Maestri was born in 1929 in Trento and Reinhold Messner was born in 1944 in Bressanone in South Tyrol. Finally, Paolo Cognetti, a Milanese by birth, gave himself an escape to the Aosta Valley, which he recounts in Le Garçon sauvage, and won the Prix Médicis étranger for Les Huit montagnes in 2017. These two books, translated with talent and delicacy by Anita Rochedy, are available respectively from 10/18 and Livre de poche.
