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.