Three authors, a poet and an unfinished screenplay that bears his name, unpublished and forgotten. «A painful immobility» The life of Giovanni Pascoli in an interrupted script, the new FAAM volume (Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation) is presented in national preview by Marco Bellocchio at Casa Pascoli in San Mauro Pascoli, Friday 28 June at 9pm.
This morning at Casa Pascoli it was presented to the press the double initiative on June 28th in San Mauro Pascoli in the presence of the mayor of San Mauro Pascoli Moris Guidi, the President and director of Sammauroindustria Daniele Gasperini and Miro Gori, Paolo Verri general director of the Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation, Martina Tordi editor of the Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori Foundation and the curator of the volume Gianfranca Lavezzi.
The discovery of the unknown
They can be found in the FAAM Archives, in the Vincenzo Consolo Fund 129 typed sheets dating back to the early 1980s which contain a screenplay signed by Vincenzo Consolo, Marco Bellocchio and Vincenzo Cerami. The text is unfinished, forgotten, previously unpublished and tells the story of Giovanni Pascoli’s life. Born to become a RAI film on the life of the poet, directed by Bellocchio himself, the project was abandoned and the screenplay was only created in the first part.
The pen that can be seen is that of Vincenzo Consolo, in the drafting as in the corrections, but the work is the result of a work planned, discussed and elaborated in concert with Vincenzo Cerami and Marco Bellocchio; the authoritativeness of the authors and the quality and interest of the text led the editors, Gianfranca Lavezzi and Federica Massia, and the publisher to consider publication essential.
One screenplay, two editorial teams
Two distinct drafts of the script were found, one handwritten and one later typed: the second is reproduced in the text, while the first is traced in the Introduction, signed by Gianfranca Lavezziwhich reconstructs the history of the cinematographic project and the genetic and evolutionary story of the text, also going back to the sources, especially Lungo la vita di Giovanni Pascoli, the biography written by his sister Mariù.
The editorial teams are partial, they retrace a limited period of Pascoli’s life – relating to the youthful university and “scapigliati” years spent in Bologna – which is perhaps also the most interesting: full of tensions and torments, vitality and social openness, in an unresolved dissociation between political, family and literary commitment.
Not just a script
The ideas of the project and at the same time what the screenplay investigates are two questions: is the total renunciation of life necessary and inevitable for an artist? Or is art often a refuge, an alibi for beings who voluntarily withdraw from life out of fear, mystically living only artistic asceticism? The poet’s life is not particularly moved by external, “spectacular” events or by gestures and facts that have had an impact on Italian civil (apart from literary) and political history. But that of this poet is an entirely private, family life; lived intimately; consumed in the secrecy of intellectual speculation and artistic creation.
In addition to the film script, the volume offers the reader for the first time two unpublished works donated by Marco Bellocchio, also from the Pascoli area: the sketch of a subject for a short film, entitled Svanì and dated 2018 and a pen drawing for another unfinished “short”, entitled La gallina storna.
The presentation
«A painful immobility» The life of Giovanni Pascoli in an interrupted script will be presented for the first time in San Mauro Pascoli on Friday 28 June at 9.00 pm in the Casa Pascoli Museum, by Marco Bellocchio, by the curators Gianfranca Lavezzi and Federica Massia and by Paolo Verri, General Director of the Mondadori Foundation. Introduced and coordinated by Gianfranco Miro Gori, Director of Sammauroindustria, while the evening will be opened by greetings from Moris Guidi, Mayor of San Mauro Pascoli and Daniele Gasperini President of Sammauroindustria.
