Good news! Deenagh’s course has been extended with drawing lessons on the 1st and 22nd of August at the same place (Sala Ducci) Ponte a Serraglio and same time 6-7 pm.
PS Ink and nib pens supplied but please bring your own paper.
Another fascinating afternoon at our local village of San Cassiano:
And there was more happening last night: an unusual viola-organ recital by father and daughter Galanti, teachers of our own San Cassiano-born organist Enrico Barsanti, including Puccini’s Requiem for Verdi performed in the parish church.
it’s been another unforgettable evening in our little mountain village.
We had an al fresco supper with our long standing friend Annalisa,
We then went to Italy’s great jazz singer Michela Lombardi entertained us with songs ranging from Jobim to Taylor before the extraordinary Romanesque facade of San Cassiano.
A good way to cool down in the stiflingly hot weather continuing to afflict Bagni di Lucca (goodness knows how impossible it must be living in Lucca…) is to escape to the literary evenings held in the cool gardens of the Villa Webb in the oldest part of our town.
Yesterday we met up with Edgardo Franzosini, a writer from Valletta di Brianza in northern Italy and distinguished by his creative biographies of now largely forgotten characters who were once famous in their lifetime.
Franzosini made his debut in 1984, under the pseudonym of Edgar Lander, with ‘Bela Lugosi: biography of a metamorphosis’, about the Hungarian actor who first played Count Dracula in the 1931 film directed by Dod.
In 1989 Franzosini published ‘The Paper Eater’, the story of Johann Ernst Biren, a weird eighteenth-century character with the obsessive habit of devouring paper covered with ink.
In 1995 Edgardo published ‘Raymond Isidore and his Cathedral’, recallIng the story of Raymond Isidore, known as Picassiette, builder of a cathedral made of discarded debris. The book won the l’Inedito-Maria Bellonci Award, the Procida-Isola di Arturo-Elsa Morante Award and was a finalist in the Lucca Readers’ Award.
In 1998 Franzosini published a revised version of his book on Bela Lugosi, winning the Filmcritica-Umberto Barbaro Award.
In 2013 ‘Sotto il nome del Cardinale’, is about Giuseppe Ripamonti, remembered for his influence on the drafting of Manzoni’s ‘The Betrothed’
In 2014, Edgardo published ‘Sul Monte Verità’, recounting the life of the hermit Alceste Paleari, one of the characters of Monte Verità community in Ascona which continues to practise nudism, veganism and sexual liberty.
In 2015 the author published ‘This life however weighs me down’, in which he reconstructs the life of the sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti, who became famous at the beginning of the twentieth century for his bronzes of exotic animals. The book won the Dessì Prize and the Comisso Prize.
I was reminded of former university contemporary Charles Nicholl whose biographies ingeniously recreate through often intangible evidence mysterious lacunae in the lives of such famous persons as Leonardo da Vinci and Shakespeare. A really creative biography in fact. True Edgardo choses less famous, even forgotten characters for his subjects but in one respect he selected a person who attracted the attention of Nicholl: the avant-garde bohemian, dissolute French writer who had given up his poetical career by his twenties in favour of gun-running in the Horn of Africa.
We chatted with Edgardo after his interview organised by publishing house Tralerighe and found him a truly fascinating person. He said he’d become bored being an accountant and that was the main reason why he’d turned to authorship. But to choose some of the most insignificant, yet unusual characters of our history, is surely a tenuous dare and a bold stroke of genius!
Anyway I know what I will start reading tonight!
Franzosini lives in Milan. His books have been translated in Spanish, French German and English..
Here’s a list of his main works
(under the pseudonym Edgar Lander) Bela Lugosi: biography of a metamorphosis, presentation by Gianfranco Manfredi, Tranchida, Milan, 1984; new ed. revised Adelphi, Milan, 1998
The Paper Eater, SugarCo, Milan, 1989; new ed. revised, Sellerio, Palermo, 2017
Raymond Isidore and his Cathedral, Adelphi, Milan, 1995
Under the name of the Cardinal, Adelphi, Milan, 2013
On Monte Verità, Il Saggiatore, Milan, 2014; new edition, Il Saggiatore, Milan, 2021
However, this life weighs heavily on me, Adelphi, Milan, 2015
Rimbaud and the widow, Skira, Milan, 2018.
Villa Sardi is located on the Brancoleria hills 10 km from the historic center of Lucca.
The Sardi family was one of the most important families of Lucca, so much so that it influenced the political and social life of Lucca for several centuries. They were particularly active, from the 16th to the 19th century, for their social life trade abroad, their standard of living and their charitable activity.
The construction dates back to the end of the 15th century and was acquired by Count Sardi at the beginning of the 16th century. In the 18th century, Villa Sardi, which was the oldest property of the family, was partly modified through the insertion of an external staircase, a loggia, a turret with clock and a refined Italian garden.
Villa Sardi is currently owned, through female inheritance, by the Count of Nigra and is active as a luxury boutique hotel.
It’s Asalha Puja (Dharma) Day at Ponte a Moriano (and everywhere else) celebrating the Buddha’s first teaching on the full moon day of the 8th lunar month.
After a tasty lunch we got down to preparing the one hundred and fifty lotuses for the afternoon’s Puja.
Then came the presentation of the lotuses to the Gautama.
Rebab afternoon at Ponte a Serraglio’s Sala Ducci. Fine examples on show of this most ancient of bowed instruments made by local liutaio Ennio Manfredi and also including my own sample of a Mongolian Morin Khuur or horse-head fiddle which I found during my journey to the Gobi over ten years ago.
There’s just one week left on Deenagh Miller’s ink nib pen drawing course at Ponte a Serraglio’s Sala Duccio where our amazing new library and cultural centre run by volunteers is situated.
The free course runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 18.00 to 19.00 and all material is supplied. It’s been incredibly successful with only a few places left on Tuesdays.
If you are wilting in the heat of our Italian ‘saharan’ summer it’s a really cool place to be in ..in all senses of the word. So I do hope master artiste Deenagh will be able to continue the course and help us discover our artistic talent further.
OK Barbora Krejčíková may have won the coveted title in the final match of Wimbledon’s women’s singles yesterday. But Bagni di Lucca’s own Jasmine Paolini won all our hearts with an incredible very close-run performance. Watching this truly thrilling match we realized that it was here at the Mirafiori that Jasmine trained to become one of the finest tennis players of her generation!
What country has the world’s highest suicide rate? Could it be a place with a repressive regime that doesn’t allow free expression of one’s creative powers or one’s sexual orientation? Or perhaps somewhere wracked by wars, diseases and hunger? I can think of quite a few places that would fit the bill here: maybe North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan…
No none of them. It’s instead a country with fully democratic institutions, an excellent health system and substantial subsidies to prevent anyone from going hungry.
That country is Greenland with over one person in every thousand ending their own lives. That places it well above the next country with the highest suicide rate, South Korea in which only (!) one person in every four thousand commits suicide.
Indeed, suicide is a significant public health issue in Greenland. Posters that warn about suicide are even more common there than those that warn about smoking.
What is the most usual method used for ending one’s life in Greenland? It’s by using firearms, due to the widespread availability and cultural prevalence of guns, particularly for hunting purposes. Other methods, such as hanging and drowning, are also reported but are less common compared to firearms.
Why does Greenland have the world’s highest suicide rate? It’s been attributed to various factors, including socio-economic challenges, cultural dislocation, and substance abuse.
One might think that Italy has a far lower suicide rate than Greenland. After all, the country has a much more amenable climate, excellent home-grown food and wines, a rich cultural heritage, an ebullient social milieu and ..the sun doesn’t disappear for half the year as in Greenland!
Indeed Italy’s suicide rate is almost twenty times less than Greenland’s with only six people in every one hundred thousand doing themselves in.
Sadly, however, in our twenty years residence in the ‘Bel Paese’ and in one of its most attractive area, the province of Lucca, we have had to face more than a handful of suicides from persons that we knew. From the former pizza restaurant owner at Ponte d’Oro to the husband of our local estate agent to the latest encounter that happened last week when our local wood-cutter blew his brains out with the gun he normally used for hunting wild boars.
The awful thing is that it was G’s daughter who discovered her dead and disfigured father. A was also a wood cutter who often helped him.
Why, why, why?
We do know that behind so many suicides in these parts (like so many in other parts) there was a background of financial worries exacerbating a history of depression. G* had both of these backgrounds. In addition he and his wife had separated. We met his wife as she had been a student in the creative writing course we recently attended.
We first met G when he approached us to consult about cutting some trees which he had found on the maps were on our land. He, his mate and the daughter were doing a fine job clearing the local road of dangerously overhanging trees when two men from the local forestry commission turned up, somewhat brusquely told them that he had no permits to do what they were doing and issued them with a not inconsiderable fine.
Clearly we were all very shocked by this horrific occurrence but the Black Dog spares no-one. Strangely by coincidence we’d watched a 1932 film version of Hemingway’s touching novel ‘A Farewell to Arms’, an author who also blew his brains out.
We are all unwitting contributors to someone’s suicide although ultimately none of us are responsible for them. However, a kind word, just being there or a more sympathetic approach may help avert a suicide. Who knows? Perhaps our local forestry commission employees should receive further training in handling potential transgressors.
