“The Virgadavola collection and the ethno-anthropological heritage of the Ibleans”. The conference dedicated to the “storyteller” who died in September 2022 in Vittoria took place yesterday at the Municipal Theater of Vittoria.
Giovanni Virgadavola marked the history of the city. An expert in popular history and the Sicilian dialect, he had recovered and handed down most of the songs of the Sicilian tradition, those that, with the help of large posters, the storytellers brought to the Sicilian squares during the holidays. Those same stories were reproduced on the sides of Sicilian carts, true masterpieces of 19th century Sicilian craftsmanship.
He had set up a sort of small Sicilian cart museum and some of his carts had also been hosted at the Donnafugata Castle. Today there is a corner that is dedicated to the memory of Virgadavola inside the Donnafugata Farmusuem. the museum of peasant products born right in the Donnafugata castle.
As a scholar of the Sicilian dialect, they had recently obtained important recognition: they had been registered in the Register of Intangible Heritage of Sicily, the Book of Living Human Treasures.
The Giovanni Virgadavola cultural association is born
After his death, the family established a cultural association that bears his name and which aims to pass on his cultural heritage. It is chaired by Silvana Virgadavola, her brother Andrea is the vice president.
The objective is to catalog the great heritage left by Virgadavola, which in part had been arranged by the storyteller himself. A heritage that was studied a few years ago by Daniela Barbante, when writing her degree thesis
Yesterday morning, together with their children, on the stage of the municipal theater were the mayor Francesco Aiello, the councilors Paolo Monello and Giuseppe Nicastro, the regional deputy Nello Dipasquale, the superintendent of cultural heritage, Antonino De Marco, some scholars and university professors.
Mauro Geraci: “Giovanni Virgadavola is a universe”
The conference saw the presence of numerous scholars of local history and traditions, culminating in a round table. “Virgadavola is a universe” said, among others, the university professor from Messina, Mauro Geraci. In him several figures were added: the story teller, the ethnographer, the local history enthusiast, the painter, the poet, the anthropologist, the collector. He is a man who told Sicily and who loved the history of his land.
Geraci also underlined Virgadavola’s ability to analyze and systematise, to objectivise, almost estranging them from himself, numerous personal events and to narrate them. Drawing a parallel with Giovanni Verga or Ignazio Buttitta, who had described with a critical but participatory gaze the events that were happening around them and in which they were participants, making them become an important part of the history of Sicilian culture, which thanks to them has been understood and told also to future generations.
He was able, like true storytellers, to construct special imaginative stories, perhaps taken from small and apparently insignificant ones, also managing to give voice to the humble (poor farmers).
He was a lover of myth (Orlando and the paladins), but also more recent stories, which became an opportunity for him to reread Sicilian history. He talked about Colapesce, but also about Falcone and Borsellino.
Legend tells of Colapesce (or Nicola), from Messina, the son of a fisherman, and his great ability to get into the water. Colapesce’s fame reached the king of Sicily who three times threw his crown into the sea, each time in a deeper place, asking Colapesce to bring it back to him. Colapesce dives into the sea three times, bringing back the crown. But the last time he sees the three columns on which Sicily is supported (corresponding to the three ends of the island: Lilibeo (Trapani), Capo Passero and Peloro (Messina), he dives into the sea three times to bring back the crown and then a ring. But the third time, in Peloro, Colapesce sees the three columns on which Sicily is supported full of cracks and decides to stay in the water to hold the island on his shoulders. Colapesce thus managed to prevent Sicily from sinking in the sea, but when it moves tremors are generated and these are at the origin of earthquakes, especially in Messina.
In Virgadavola the legend becomes a revisitation of local history, of Sicilian pride also projected into the contemporary world with the story of the exploits of Falcone and Borsellino.
The conference has become the first moment of a journey that begins and will aim to enhance and raise awareness of the heritage, so far only partially known, that Virgadavola left to his family and his city.
