We interviewed Francesco De Nicola to gather his impressions about the republication of the book by Carlo Pastorino "The trial by fire" reissued by Francesca Zandonai Publisher, Rovereto, 2010.
After nearly a century after the end of the Great War, what's the recovery of a text like "The acid test" ?
Certainly this reissue of "The acid test" of Charles Pastorino, by the publishing house Zandonai Rovereto, is a very important. "The acid test" is one of the key texts of Italian literature on the First World War, a book that had the attention of generations of writers and readers. It is a work that has had a long gestation and a heavily revised edition in 1931, compared to the first edition of '26, a revival that has to be further amended by making it almost a documentary novel.
The very fact that it was written a good number of years after the end of the conflict allows the book to have a detachment from the events that other productions, especially in Italian, no. It is a book that tells exactly how the war was on the side of those who lived it and broke it suffered, in cui il conflitto è narrato in tutta la sua tragedia. Ci sono pagine intrise di dolore e sofferenza, anche macabre, in cui Pastorino usa un linguaggio asciutto ed essenziale, e ci sono pagine di denuncia verso coloro che della guerra si sono approfittati per accaparrarsi delle posizioni di prestigio, come gli episodi del funerale, in cui gli ufficiali ben vestiti fanno barriera davanti ai veri soldati, o le pagine iniziali, in cui i capi di stato brindano assieme alla vittoria, ma solo dopo un lungo e redditizio conflitto. E poi, di fianco alla “lezione di storia” che ci restituisce Pastorino, non di secondaria importanza è la “lezione di geografia” che ci fornisce l'autore, che narra la Vallarsa con accenti che solo un uomo of peasant can use, demonstrating a real and deep love for the places where he lived and fought for a whole year between the summer of '16 and the late spring of '17.
is a book written almost a century ago, but with a dry style and modern, in which no reader can not fail to feel directly involved. I am sure that readers of 2010 will have the same level of interest that had readers of '26 or '31.
"The acid test" was a great success just come out, why then was recalled less than other books devoted to the conflict?
If we think of the books written about World War in Italy, we realize now that are not really very many, and most of them are strongly affected by a bias due to the fact that they were written or too close to the end of hostilities or in full, and then exploited by the fascist regime. Then the fortune or misfortune of the book depends on many different factors and very often does not take into account the real value of these texts, but are dealt with commercial or simply "forgotten." Past examples include, apart from his book Pastorino, can be "The soldier Cola" by Puccini, another book very important and valid, also among other things written in '27, then a good number of years after war is completely forgotten and no longer on the market and that should be republished.
The First World War has left an indelible mark in the history of Italy, but even more in the personal history of those who fought. What may have meant fighting in the front line such as wearing a trench war, perhaps in a hostile environment like the mountains of Vallarsa?
For our soldiers must have been first experience of total disorientation: millions of young people from all Italian regions have suddenly found shoulder to shoulder in a completely alien place, as could be the Alpine front, as in Trentino Veneto or Friuli. It was first experience of total alienation, in which you were to live with people who had completely different lifestyle than their own, who spoke dialects never heard before. Meant for the soldiers gather together for the first time under the same flag of a country like Italy, who had just fifty years of history behind it and still had not been "made" as a nation. All of this displacement can be read clearly in the words of Pastorino, Fenoglio descriptions of soldiers as a boy in the slums of Turin, covered with tattoos and a criminal record or many other small episodes of the book, as tracers of the traumatic experience The Great War was the baptism of a united Italy. You can see the First World War as the last episode of the Risorgimento, as a kind of painful conclusion of the process of unification. A very sad episode, that everyone has suffered, but not all agreed: you can read, in fact, numerous reports of disobedience of orders often senseless and cruel as those described in Lussier's masterpiece "A year on the plateau."
Pastorino is a true storyteller and not a partisan process, stressing the difficulties that sank our soldiers feel the brothers in the trenches, and all the suspicions and prejudices that arose. And this is undoubtedly another great merit of this book.
There are many books devoted to the first guerra mondiale: in mezzo a tutti questi, che posto occupa il libro di Carlo Pastorino? Quali sono le sue peculiarità?
Per prima cosa si deve dire che a differenza della maggior parte degli altri libri sulla Grande Guerra, caratterizzati da una prosa molto datata, “La prova del fuoco” è scritto con un linguaggio e una narrazione moderni e attuali. È una prosa molto efficace nella sua brevità: ogni capitolo è una sorta di racconto breve di un episodio saliente dell’anno di guerra vissuto da Pastorino. È uno stile estremamente essenziale e diretto, in grado di comunicare all’istante quello che l’autore voleva dire, senza inutili giri di parole o ornamenti retorici. Sono le vicende narrate che parlano da sole.
E poi, altrettanto importante, c’è una grandissima onestà di fondo dell’autore, che non fa mai celebrazioni della guerra fini a sé stesse. C’è una denuncia costante delle atrocità della guerra, una denuncia portata con un grandissimo “quoziente di realtà” da Pastorino, un ufficiale che racconta le difficoltà incontrate nel vedere morire i suoi soldati in conseguenza di ordini ricevuti e impartiti anche da lui, ordini ricevuti dall’alto, che non potevano, da buon soldato, essere discussi, ma solamente eseguiti. Nel libro vengono costantemente Pastorino replicated the questions that arises as a man, your questions are also all potential readers of "The acid test".
The book alternates between moments of realism similar to the style of Lussier, where the armies belonging to the adverse effects are seen essentially as brothers forced to fight by elite obtuse, more rhetorical moments, focusing on love of country and need for sacrifice. The two live together in Pastorino moments, or the most rhetoric is more cosmetic?
Remember that Lussier wrote his book in exile, then in a situation completely different from Pastorino, and that his war experience was also very different, having played in a department characterized by a command very hard and that many incidents of sabotage occurred. A component of rhetoric was a bit 'in need of a book that was talking to young people then, a book that had to have a constant reminder of the feelings of patriotism.
More than a hint of patriotic character, however, the book may, however, feel a strong suggestion from the fact that Pastore was a deeply religious man, in which each situation was seen as proof that you was subjected There is an acceptance by God of a proof that man is subject and which one can not rebel, on which the firm mindset of an officer well aware that orders are not discussed, but they are running. But all this does not prevent the author to ask explicitly, after years of doubts and questions, which at the time of the war had only been able to think.
To my knowledge, Pastorino suggestions or has suffered from the pressures of the system (which was a stranger and eventually openly against) that have affected the composition of the work, a composition that is then framed age in which it was written in his "spirit of the times."
Carlo Pastorino That person should be? What you can tell him by his writings?
Pastorino grows and shape in a rural setting of the Ligurian, and alternating work in the forge for the manufacture of nails to the study, fail to graduate, is one of the rare cases of this type of 'Italy to start 900. What stands out about this training is its constant attention to nature, which constantly recurs in his work.
Nella vita dopo la guerra fu un professore di liceo a Genova, ma conserverà sempre un’attenzione particolare per Masone, il suo paese natale, di cui sarà il primo sindaco dopo la liberazione, dopo essere stato un partigiano. C’è sempre stata una fortissima attenzione per le sue origini e per il contesto naturale e sociale che viene raccontato anche in altri libri come “La prova della fame” e “A fuoco spento”, gli altri due volumi che costituiscono una “trilogia” di Pastorino sul primo conflitto mondiale, cosa che ha fatto apprezzare la sua opera anche ad altri grandi autori come, ad esempio, Mario Rigoni Stern, maestro nella descrizione naturale.
Francesco De Nicola will be at the festival "Among the rocks and the sky" Sunday, August 22, 2010 at 1645 at the Municipal Theatre of St. Anne at the launch of the new edition of the book by Carlo Pastorino "The test of fire."
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