Among the adventurous lives of “Extraordinary travellers” narrated by Marco Valle in his latest book published for “Neri Pozza” there is also that of “a seaside Brianza area”: the Biassono area Gaetano Osculati.
Books: Gaetano Osculati, the biography reconstructed by Marco Valle
“Born in San Giorgio al Lambro on 25 October 1808 and graduated in Livorno as a long-time captain. A vocation that was intertwined with his restlessness but which not even the voice of the waves was able to calm. This is confirmed by the continuous embarking and disembarking from merchant ships where he served as a cadet to complete his training. Rigid on-board discipline wasn’t for him and so, thanks to his father’s money, he decided to travel the world on his own and dedicate himself to natural sciences, his true passion.”, he writes Valley.
Books: Gaetano Osculati and the Amazon River
Arrived on the banks of the Amazon River: “Gaetano carefully observed the various populations and collected materials of all kinds everywhere: ceramics, fabrics, plants, insects (including the beetle Boeoscelis Osculati). He conducted archaeological research in the area of the Omagua, a now semi-extinct tribe. Noting, drawing, measuring. It was the first professional description of the wildest heartland of South America” continues Valle, writer and author of “Il Giornale”.
“In 1880, the Brazilian emperor Dom Pedro II, visiting Italy, wanted to meet him to congratulate him on his now distant achievement and give him official recognition. The gesture struck the Italian press which for a few weeks remembered the deeds of that forgotten ‘Marco Polo of Brazil’ embraced by the Carioca monarch”, concludes the author.
Books: Gaetano Osculati, the role of explorers in society
Popular iconography tells of the exploits of men conquering unknown immensities, wearing colonial helmets and holding a map, a sextant or a rifle: an exceptional but naive portrait. In reality, the explorers were the expression of an era, with a precise social and political function: to inform contemporaries about the state of the world, search for resources, found colonies. At the same time, however, their diaries reveal restless men, uncomfortable if not in total rupture with the societies from which they come. In the “terra incognite” Osculati and the others sought not only fame and riches, but the meaning of their own existence.
