Brentonico (TN) Italy, 20\/9\/2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n
excerpt from Fabio Mazzurana’s book<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the very early afternoon\u2014the hottest hours\u2014Pina used to shelter in a small shed, en st\u00f3l, to escape the sun and the flies. Knowing her habit, dad didn’t worry about not seeing her wandering around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fabio Mazzurana’s book\u00a0“Scrivere Memorie. I Mazzurana Bar\u00e8la” traces two parallel paths: the family story and that of the generations of the Brentonico community, which take their first steps at the end of a decade and still carry the painful years of World War II behind them. Fabio’s very personal, engaging, humorous, lively writing almost resembles a work of collective storytelling: it is the result of the desire to gather information, memories, and feelings from a generation\u2014his and that of his siblings\u2014that grew up around the late 1950s. The ‘writing’ of what was collected took more than a year to take shape; a year dedicated primarily to listening, then to reflection, and finally to rewriting what had been carefully preserved. It is, therefore, a ‘special’ book that Fabio dedicates to his family and to the community of Brentonico. In more than two hundred pages, including text and photographs, he manages to give voice to countless protagonists of that memorable era.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Just like Edgar Reitz’s extraordinary and epic film “Heimat” (1984), in the book the events unfold, and as we retrace the stories of the protagonists, we meet them one by one in their wanderings: these are real people, with their own names, with authentic and fragile identities\u2014people who live, suffer, and rejoice, side by side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fabio Mazzurana\u2019s deeply emotional writing takes us to places and atmospheres that many will recognize: living in an alpine community, closely connected with the natural environment from early childhood, marks the experience of growing up and becoming an adult; being in contact with nature, each moment becomes precious and offers intense, unique experiences. The narration takes place in courtyards, on streets, along lively alleys of the districts of Brentonico, the hamlets, but also in other places like Rovereto, Vallagarina, Trentino, and South Tyrol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some moments are particularly intense, perhaps even lyrical: those in which Fabio, together with his father Giuseppe, mother Ada, and his brothers, lives in \u2018communion\u2019 with the animals in the courtyard: Pina\u2014the family donkey\u2014Mirka, chickens, the goat, piglets. An immersion in an environment that makes ecology a virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An ecology of collective memory<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Names\u2014personal names, surnames, but also nicknames\u2014hold particular importance within Fabio Mazzurana’s book Scrivere Memorie<\/em>. I would like to discuss this by introducing a few lines from an autobiographical text by Elias Canetti, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981. In this autobiographical excerpt, the author speaks about a meeting that took place about ten years earlier in a city in Morocco\u2014an encounter not unlike what could have happened to any of us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStrinsi la mano di quell’uomo e lo guardai nei suoi occhi ridenti. Egli domand\u00f2 al figlio in arabo qual era il mio nome e da dove venivo. […] Fece il mio nome. […] \u00abE-li-as Ca-ne-ti? \u00bb ripet\u00e9 il padre con tono esitante e interrogativo. Disse il nome alcune volte tra s\u00e9 e s\u00e9, separando chiaramente le sillabe. In bocca sua il nome divent\u00f2 pi\u00f9 importante e pi\u00f9 bello. Dicendolo non mi guardava in faccia, e anzi teneva gli occhi fissi davanti a s\u00e9, come se il nome fosse pi\u00f9 vero di me, e come se esso, il nome, meritasse di essere indagato. Io lo ascoltavo sorpreso e perplesso. Avevo l\u2019impressione che nella sua cantilena il mio nome appartenesse ad una lingua speciale, che io ignoravo. Lo soppes\u00f2 con magnanimit\u00e0 quattro o cinque volte; mi sembr\u00f2 di udire il suono dei pesi. Non ero in apprensione, quell’uomo non era un giudice. Sapevo che avrebbe trovato il senso e il peso del mio nome; e quando ebbe finito, alz\u00f2 lo sguardo su di me e di nuovo mi rise negli occhi. Ora stava l\u00ec come a voler dire: il nome \u00e8 buono; ma non esisteva una sola lingua nella quale potesse dirmelo. Lo lessi sul suo volto e provai per lui un amore invincibile.<\/em>\u201d [Italian translation: Adelphi, Milano]<\/p>\n\n\n\n The invincible love <\/em>that Elias Canetti speaks of is certainly the love of gratitude, the love for having been “recognized,” the thankfulness because someone else acknowledges a story within you, and through this, you feel you belong to a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fabio starts from there, and asks himself: Who can tell me the stories of my family? Who are, deep down, the people I have loved? To whom should the task, the honor, of talking about them, of writing about them, belong? And finally, how do I write all this, how do I write these memories, this collective memory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The task of ‘writing memories’ belongs to all of us.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Along the path Fabio had to walk to find an answer to each of these questions, he was accompanied by many people: with some, the dialogue was continuous and unending. But it takes time to retrace one’s life, it takes time to “reconstruct” the emotions that have shaped you so intensely; feelings must find a home in the right words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is how the first part of Fabio’s book title, \u201cWriting Memories,\u201d can be explained: a daily effort, a daily dialogue with a community that is often indefinable beforehand, but which emerges and becomes clearer the more you write. Like in Canetti’s encounter, the names of the people and the words that identify them must be repeated several times so that their identity becomes clear in your mind. In this way, the images of each of them materialize before you, and those people come back to be real, to be present here with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How we think and what others think of us<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n From the observation that writing memoirs is writing about oneself and the community that welcomes you, another reflection arises. If those who attempt to write about themselves must necessarily confront also the collective memory, the memory of the community in which they are embedded, then writing is more related to anthropology \u2014 to ethnography, psychology, and cognitive sciences, as we would say today \u2014 and only incidentally to history. As anthropologist Marc Aug\u00e9 writes in his book \u201cStorie del presente\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “There is at least one difference between history and anthropology: the nature of the testimonies […]. The historian does not have the same ability as the anthropologist to go into the field and verify the validity and scope of their hypotheses”.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n From this perspective, Fabio’s book is situated right in the middle of a journey where many attitudes and disciplines dialogue with each other: primarily literature and poetry, but also psychology, anthropology, ethnography, sociology, and only at the very end, I would say, history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One last reflection. In Marc Aug\u00e9’s book, the author describes some populations of West Africa that over time have favored the matrilineal system of descent rather than the patrilineal one\u2014that is, the system of rules according to which children inherit social status and possessions from their mother rather than from their father. As I reflected on this point, I asked myself: “And if someone from among them were to come here\u2014curious or with an interest in anthropology\u2014what tools would they have to deepen their understanding of our behaviors and customs? I am convinced that the richness of Fabio’s book could help them unravel the complex web of feelings, thoughts, and actions that animate our behaviors\u2014those complexities that dwell within each of us and are expressed through our living.” Certainly, much more than a history book, much more than any manual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regarding matrilineality, if we then wanted to take a step further and look at our ancestry through the eyes of the newcomer, if we were to follow their genealogical perspective, the story of Fabio’s family could also be told in this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fabio<\/p>\n\n\n\n son of the late Ada Antonia Giacoma Mazzurana<\/p>\n\n\n\n of the late Maddalena Virginia Mazzurana<\/p>\n\n\n\n of the late Francesca Togni<\/p>\n\n\n\n of the late Innocenza Perenzoni<\/p>\n\n\n\n and so on… <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Stefano Giovanazzi Fabio Mazzurana, Scrivere Memorie [Writing Memoirs] Brentonico (TN) Italy, 20\/9\/2022 excerpt from Fabio Mazzurana’s book In the very early afternoon\u2014the hottest hours\u2014Pina used to shelter in a small shed, en st\u00f3l, to escape the sun and the flies. Knowing her habit, dad didn’t worry about not seeing her wandering around.However, when he went to … <\/p>\n
However, when he went to pick her up at her usual spot at the end of the day, Pina was no longer there; she had gone back home on her own. When she arrived in front of the stable, she lifted the latch with her nose that kept the door closed and went inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStefano Giovanazzi “Ecology of the Mind, Ecology of Communities”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Il volume \u00e8 stato curato da Stefano Giovanazzi.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Fabio Mazzurana nasce a Brentonico (TN) il 21 gennaio 1946. Con “Scrivere Memorie” Fabio \u00e8 alla sua prima esperienza narrativa.<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Info<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
t. 0039 0464 439936
Stefano m. 0039 329 4828149<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"