L’altra battaglia di Turbigo

Ricordo un viaggio al museo della battaglia di Spinetta di Marengo, vicino Alessandria, tanti anni fa, in compagnia dell’amico Alfonso Bianchini.

Era un posto mal tenuto e impolverato, pur essendo molto visitato dai turisti francesi, essendo quello il luogo d’una delle più fortunate vittorie di Napoleone Bonaparte, avvenuta il 14 giugno 1800. Non per nulla egli chiederà di venir seppellito a Sant’Elena con indosso il mantello turchino che portava a Marengo.
In quel museo scorsi una grande mappa appesa al muro che indicava gli scontri fra l’esercito francese e quello austriaco durante la II campagna d’Italia di Napoleone. Vi stava indicato anche Turbigo, con il nome del maresciallo Jean Lannes. Da allora mi è sempre rimasta la curiosità di approfondire quella vaga indicazione e, pur essendo pochi i documenti disponibili, dapprima pensai che fosse stata una scaramuccia, quattro schioppettate giusto per guadare il Ticino. In realtà fu uno scontro ancora più sanguinoso di quello del 4 giugno 1859, con assalti notturni, casa per casa e via per via, proprio nel centro di Turbigo.
Jean Lannes (1769-1809), Duca di Montebello e Principe di Siewirtz, fu un valoroso generale francese. Di lui Napoleone disse che lo aveva ‘trovato pigmeo e lasciato gigante’. Fu un suo amico personale e uno dei pochi ai quali concedeva di dargli del ‘tu’. E quando durante la battaglia di Essling una palla di cannone gli fracassò le gambe, che gli furono poi amputate, Napoleone gli parlò a lungo e poi pianse, abbracciandolo per un’ultima volta, prima che la gangrena se lo portasse via.
Il Primo Console Napoleone Bonaparte, dopo il colpo di Stato del 18 brumaio, mise Lannes a capo dell’armata destinata a riprendere l’Italia settentrionale, occupata dagli austriaci. Il 14 Aprile 1800 Lannes andò a Digione per preparare la spedizione e poi, dal 17 al 20 maggio, passò il Gran San Bernardo ancora innevato. Una rapidità prodigiosa, se pensiamo che si doveva trascinare dietro le artiglierie e le carrette con i viveri e le munizioni. Occupò Aosta e poi, ricevuto il via libera, scesero in Italia anche Napoleone, Murat e Berthier, con il resto dell’esercito. Mentre il generale Massena assediava Genova, il 27 maggio, Murat entrava a Vercelli e poi, il 30 maggio, occupava Novara.
Il generale Duhesme prese posizione sul Ticino con I suoi uomini appartenenti al ’72e régiment d’infanterie de ligne’ che a Marengo era stato guidato dallo stesso Napoleone. Gli austriaci nel ritirarsi avevano distrutto tutte le barche disponibili, ma alcuni cittadini galliatesi ne avevano nascoste 5 o 6 e le offrirono ai francesi. All’alba del 31 maggio alcune compagnie di granatieri le utilizzarono per traversare il fiume e occuparvi un’isola fluviale, dalla quale fecero sgombrare gli austriaci e poi, nel giro di 6 ore, riuscirono a far sbarcare sull’altra sponda 1500 soldati e due pezzi d’artiglieria.

Anche il generale Jean Charles Monnier salì su una delle barche e mise piede in Lombardia, nel territorio di Turbigo. Gli austriaci, sorpresi dall’attacco, ripiegarono verso il paese, dove verso sera giunsero alcuni generali austriaci per valutare la situazione, Ordinarono un attacco con la cavalleria che però non riuscì a far sloggiare i francesi, ben trincerati e ben condotti dall’aiutante di campo di Monnier, il generale Gizard.
Arrivò Napoleone che, dalla riva piemontese osservò l’attacco in corso e i movimenti di truppe nemiche e poi ordinò a Murat di bombardare con le artiglierie, per offrire supporto all’azione di Monnier.
Alle otto di sera, quando era già buio, Monnier ordinò ai propri uomini di contrattaccare, entrando nel centro abitato di Turbigo. Lo occuparono, piegando la ostinata resistenza austriaca e vi fecero 200 prigionieri.
Nel frattempo i francesi, muovendosi sul Naviglio Grande fecero arrivare dei soldati a Boffalora e, anche Gioacchino Murat, il futuro Re di Napoli, con il grosso dell’esercito passò il Ticino a Turbigo, dopo che i genieri ebbero teso un ponte, marciando poi su Milano, dove entrò il 2 giugno.
Il generale Monnier partecipò poi alla battaglia di Marengo, giocandovi un ruolo fondamentale agli ordini del generale Desaix, che invece vi trovò la morte.

Jean Charles Monnier (1758-1816), il vincitore di Turbigo, fu una figura controversa. Messo a riposo nel 1802 per contrasti con Napoleone fu poi ripescato dai Borboni nel 1814 e nell’agosto del 1815 macchiò il proprio onore, votando a favore della fucilazione del suo vecchio compagno d’armi, il Maresciallo Michel Ney e questo i francesi non glielo hanno mai perdonato.

Nunzia Sibilla. The Queen of the ‘Neapolitan Pastiera’

There is a sensorial shortcut to Resurrection…a sort of perfume & heavenly taste felt when we eat a slice of Pastiera Napoletana prepared by Nunzia Sibilla, with a glass of Prosecco white wine.

The Pastiera is a traditional Neapolitan cake made at home during Easter. According to some – and I am one of them – it should be declared a protected Unesco Heritage.

We have tasted it on Easter Day at Nunzia Sibilla’s home, a longtime Hong Kong resident and a true Neapolitan, who is known within the Italian community as the ‘Queen of the Pastiera’ for no one can match the quality of this particular and complicate cake which she bakes to perfection.

We have discussed with Nunzia about the possible origins of such culinary wonder, so little known outside Italy. Here is a short list of the current theories about the wondrous invention.

According to ancient legends a Siren set up her dwelling into a cave between Posillipo and the Vesuvius volcano and every spring she went ashore to enchant the local people with her songs. The grateful Neapolitans offered her what they had of more precious: flour; ricotta cheese; eggs and corn boiled in milk; orange flowers; cinnamon and sugar. The Siren, happy of the gift, dived to the bottom of the sea to show them to the gods who then decided to mix the ingredients and thus produced through their divine arts the first Pastiera. Since then this cake came to represent the return of Spring after winter.

The tradition of cooking the Pastiera was then adopted by the Roman emperor Constantine as a ritual offering to the new Christians being baptized during Easter’s night and, for a long time, the best Pastiera in Naples was baked by the nuns of the convent of San Gregorio Armeno, who then sold to the rich Neapolitan houses during Easter.

The existence of this wonderful cake is well documented during the XVII century, and there is even a literary composition by the great Giambattista Basile (1566-1632) in a comedy entitled “The Cat Cinderella” where the King is looking for a girl who had lost her small shoe. Yes, that’s is known as the first written version of the Cinderella’s myth, which is even older and common in most ancient cultures and well known even in China.

E’ venuto lo juorno destenato, oh bene mio: che mazzecatorio e che bazzara che se facette! Da dove vennero tante pastiere e casatielle? Dove li sottestate e le porpette? Dove li maccarune e graviuole? Tanto che nce poteva magnare n’asserceto formato.

There is another legend closed to us about this cake, which involves King of Naples Ferdinand II of Bourbon and his wife Maria Teresa of Augsburg, who was known in Naples as “The Queen who never smiles”.
But smile she did once when tasting the Pastiera during Easter. The King then quipped: “The Queen has smiled but now we have to wait until the next Easter to see her smile again!”

There is a poem in Neapolitan dialect describing such historical smile:

A Napule regnava Ferdinando
Ca passava e’ jurnate zompettiando;
Mentr’ invece a’ mugliera, ‘Onna Teresa,
Steva sempe arraggiata. A’ faccia appesa
O’ musso luongo, nun redeva maje,
Comm’avess passate tanta guaje.
Nù bellu juorno Amelia, a’ cammeriera
Le dicette: “Maestà, chest’è a’ Pastiera.
Piace e’ femmene, all’uommene e e’creature:
Uova, ricotta, grano, e acqua re ciure,
‘Mpastata insieme o’ zucchero e a’ farina
A può purtà nnanz o’Rre: e pur’ a Rigina”.
Maria Teresa facett a’ faccia brutta:
pò l’assaggiaje, e sa fernette tutta.
Mastecanno, riceva: “E’ o’Paraviso!”
E le scappava pure o’ pizz’a riso.
Allora o’ Rre dicette: “E che marina!
Pe fa ridere a tte, ce vò a Pastiera?
Moglie mia, vien’accà, damme n’abbraccio!
Chistu dolce te piace? E mò c’o saccio
Ordino al cuoco che, a partir d’adesso,
Stà Pastiera la faccia un pò più spesso.
Nun solo a Pasca, che altrimenti è un danno;
pe te fà ridere adda passà n’at’ anno!

Philip Eisenbeiss’ biography of Barbaja released in Italy

We wrote about the first release of this book, in English, three years ago:

 

 

 

http://beyondthirtynine.com/book-on-domenico-barbaja-presented-in-hong-kong-sicis-showroom-15-november-2013-at-7-pm/

 

 

But now there is an Italian translation, which has been release in Turin:

Here is a presentation I wrote for Dino Messina’s blog ‘La Nostra Storia’ on Corriere della Sera. The parallel between Domenico Barbaja and former Italian prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has added some spice to it.

Domenico Barbaja, un antenato di Silvio Berlusconi

Thirty-Four Forms of Madness. A book on Sardinia and much more.

 

Ciriaco Offeddu’s Thirty-Four Forms of Madness is a book full of verve and love for Sardinia. But love may take strange forms, as we, all grown up, have learnt to know with the passing of time. Love may become a reverie as well as chastising fury, whenever things don’t go in the right direction, or we discover injustices and bad faith hidden in our past, or waiting for us in the future.

The author of this book has been living most of his life outside his native city of Nuoro, in Sardinia and this may explains his nostalgic eye for a world which has since vanished. First, he lived in Turin, then in Milan and Singapore and now he calls home Discovery Bay, in Hong Kong. Ciriaco had been part of the legendary Olivetti team, which is being re-discovered in Italy in our days for having invented extraordinary machines – the modern computers just to mention one: by a team headed by a Chinese, Mario Chou – in term of hardware and design.
Then he went to work for several large companies as a consultant, but spending most of his free time reading and studying, thus keeping his literary flame lit into his heart.
Thirty-Fourt Forms of Madness, his newly published book, which I have read in three days, is something not easy to place into a standard literary category. It is a collection of short stories: part remembrance, part fiction as well as non-fiction, a sort of meditation on the author’s own youth during the Sixty.
As Robin Hemley writes in his introductory notes: “The book is filled with magic and mishap, tragic-comic to its core and consistently entertains as well as enlightens the reader to Sardinian history and lore. So Sardinia itself is a vivid character in the book, supported by a cast of colourful bandits, miscreants and fools that would have made Fellini proud.”
Right words, which summarise in a few lines the best points of Ciriaco’s book. I’ll close here with an unsolicited suggestion for Ciriaco: he should be the first to ‘vulgarise’ all this rich folklore, as Grazia Deledda did in her times,  and create a Sardinian version of  commissario Montalbano – had anybody ever created a Sardinian police commissar? No, I don’t think so, because Sardinians never created mafie or camorre – but then, in spite of the difficulty, I am pretty sure that Ciriaco’s future books will be best sellers all over the world.

Ciriaco Offeddu Thirty-Four Forms of Madness. Lascar Publishing, Hong Kong, 2016. 300 pages.
ISBN978-988-14198-2-8 USD 14.90

The Dew of Heaven – released in Summer.

The Dew of Heaven by Cactus Moon Publishers, Tempe, Arizona.

A work of Factual fiction by Angelo Paratico. It will be released in a few months.

It is based on true events and set in Hong Kong and Macau.

The story unfolds with the sudden reappearance of a mysterious ‘Holy Grail’ charged with an irresistible magic power.

In Mongolia during the late ‘20’s, Stalin’s henchmen razed lamaseries, burned libraries, and shot thousands of harmless lamas, smashing their precious artworks and sacred relics. They were seeking Genghis Khan’s spiritual banner – the Khara Sulde. A steel trident with silver rings carrying the black mane of his warhorse, a relic that disappeared from the Shankh lamasery of Ovorkhangai Aimag, in Western Mongolia.

The Japanese learned of Stalin’s failure to find the relic and unsuccessfully searched it during their botched attempt to invade Mongolia prior to WWII.

Adolf Hitler consulted Swedish explorer and Nazi enthusiast, Sven Hedin, in an effort to locate it. Despite Hitler’s success in stealing other ancient relics – such as Longinus’ spear which according to tradition pierced the heart of Jesus – he was unable to locate the Khara Sulde.

Why then, has the Khara Sulde surprisingly resurfaced today in contemporary Hong Kong, and right into the hands of a strange Italian mogul? A very mysterious man known to the few who have met him as half godfather and half mystic?

http://www.kal-ba.com/AngeloParatico.html

 

See on this argument also a documentary by CCTV dated 07/06/2001:



The “Khara Sulde” is a banner. To Mongolians, it is an object of worship. The name “Khara Sulde” means “Heaven-sent Warrior-God” , and was given by Genghis Khan. 70 years ago, the Japanese invaders hoped to subdue Mongolia by capturing the “Khara Sulde”. New Frontiers reveals how an audacious plan was hatched, to save this symbol of the Mongolian warrior spirit.

http://www.cctv.com/program/newfrontiers/20070703/105919.shtml

Lead Poisoning in Ancient Rome and Flint, Michigan

The Democratic Party circus made a stop in Flint, Michigan, yesterday. The two contenders first promised lead-free waters to all the citizens, then they started wrestling on the usual political problems.

In Flint  there is an heavy lead contamination, which was discovered in April 2014. It was made worse when Flint’s City Council changed sourcing drinking water from  Detroit water and Lake Huron, switching to the corrosive Flint River waters, which caused the lead contained in old pipes to leak into drinking waters. But the problem of lead contamination is as old as mankind.

Only if ingested in great quantity lead can cause ‘saturnism’ a term coming down from antiquity when planets were thought to cause diseases to mankind. It may cause multi-organ failure and damage to the nervous system. It is particularly harmful to children below six years of age, to pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers.

There is an old theory about the Roman Empire downfall’s having been caused by lead poisoning. It was first put forward in a scientific manner in 1983 by the geochemist Jerome Nriagu in a book entitled Lead and Lead poisoning in Antiquity. It was rightly met with skepticism and then refuted but the idea was so attractive that it keeps surfacing from time to time.

It is true that pipes distributing drinking water in ancient Rome were mostly made of pure lead but the quantity ingested by Roman citizens was far too low to cause saturnism. We should also consider the fact that carbonate deposits created a natural lining inside the pipes thus leading to clogging after a few years.

Lead (Pb) do not exist in an elemental state but it is normally a by-product of silver mining, extracted from galena ore which is then crushed and smelted. The advantage of lead over other metals lays in the low melting point and malleability which made it a favorite for plumbers who were producing pipes to be inserted into walls and underground. They produced them by hammering them out from rolled sheets.

The poisonous nature of the metal was not completely unknown to the Romans. Vitruvius, the great architect writing at the time of Augustus, knew it well and was advising the use of earthen pipes.

Jerome Nriagu was aware that his theory could not stand only mentioning water pipes and he rightly thought that a far bigger amount of lead was ingested through wine and cosmetics used by women.
In fact saturnism could have been caused by the use of cooking pots made of lead, where the combination of water or wine with temperature greatly increased the problem.

Lead pots were used to cook sapa and defrutum – juice of grapes, unfermented, boiled to concentrate the fructose – which was widely used to sweeten wines and fruits which otherwise would have taste bitter and sour. This was the main kind of sweetener used by the Romans, widely used in their kitchens, as we know from various authors like Apicius, Varrus, Plinius and Cato. Bronze was not used to prepare it because it could cause the formation of verdigris which would spoil the taste of the syrup. The smaller the cooking vessel the greatest the relative quantity of lead dissolved. Thus the lead was concentrated up to dangerous levels, and even if no one was going to drink the syrup in a concentrate form but always diluted mixed in wine and to preserve fruits. Roman author Columnella was advising to add one part of the defrutum into an amphora of pure wine, therefore the concentration would have been reduced to 60 milligrams per liter.

The assumption made by Jerome Nriagu was that the Roman aristocrats were drinking 2 liters of wine each day, that is three bottles a day with a total lead intake of about 180 micrograms per liter daily but, unfortunately, there are no basis to prove that. Three bottles of wine daily would have made them dyeing of cirrhosis before succumbing to saturnism!

However it should be mentioned that they normally diluted their wine with water and the Roman ruling class and rich merchants drunk only the best quality, were defrutum had not been added to correct the taste, the cheap wines corrected with defrutum were reserved to the poor and the middle classes. The poet Valerius Martial writes of a wine merchant from Marseille not willing to visit Rome after he had sold large quantity of his wine, afraid he’ll have to drink it himself (Epigrams, X, 36).

Old pipes should be checked and, if made with lead, should be replaced, the same should be done even when lead had been used solely for welding them together.

Angelo Paratico

Fred Trump Arrested in 1927 but not as a Fascist.

All newspapers and TV stations in the world, also the South China Morning Post (Donald busted at race riot, report says. March 1, 2016) quoted an article published by Boing Boing last September in which it was claimed that Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested on Memorial Day 1927, while brawls erupted in New York led by Italian fascists and the Ku Klux Klan.

His son, Donald Trump, had denied the arrest but new documents have emerged proving that in fact he was briefly detained and then released on bail.
During the Fascist brawl – which was no brawl at all – two Italians were murdered in Queens, while on the same day 1,000 white robed Klansmen marched through the Jamaica neighbourhood and a true brawl erupted.

We are all left wondering which was the reported brawl in which Fred Trump took part. The explanation seems simple: certainly not to the Fascists, because the murder of the two young Italians was just a cold blooded, Mafia-style, execution, perhaps carried out by anti-Fascists or, perhaps, by gangsters.

The two murdered Italian immigrants were Joseph Carisi, 39 and Nicholas Amoroso, 22, who were found stabbed and repeatedly shot, in New Yorks’ Times Square. They were indeed wearing black shirts and were thus apparently directed to take part, with others 400 Fascists, to the Manhattan’s Memorial Day Parade.
The then president of the Fascists League of North America, Count di Revel, playing down the nature of that crime called it “a simple murder.” But later Benito Mussolini put the blame of their death on “traitors of Italy and the Fascist revolution” using them for domestic propaganda purposes.

Clearly Fred Trump had nothing to do with the killing of the two Italian immigrants and, therefore, he should have been arrested at the KKK gathering for reasons which steel need to be investigated.

 

The Day of the Jackal, 45 Years Ago.

The idea to write The Day of the Jackal came to Frederick Forsyth while covering for Reuter an assassination attempt made on French President Charles de Gaulle on 22 August 1962 by a senior French army officer, Jean Bastien-Thiry. The officer was involved with a mysterious organization, known as Vieil État-Major, somehow connected with the Organisation de l’armee secrete (OAS), which led the armed opposition to de Gaulle’s policy in Algeria and against FLN terrorism.

On 22 August 1962, De Gaulle’s car, a Citroen DS and some shops were sprayed with machine gun fire. De Gaulle, his wife and entourage escaped uninjured but some policemen escorting them were killed. After the attempt, holes from fourteen bullets were found in the president’s vehicle, one of which barely missing the president’s head by a few centimetres; another twenty were found to have struck the nearby Cafe Trianon while an additional 187 spent shell casings were on the pavement.

Bastien-Thiry was arrested and brought to trial before a military tribunal on 28 January 1963. He had not been part of the commando but claimed that the death of De Gaulle would have been justified by the ‘genocide’ of the European population of newly independent Algeria and the killing of several tens of thousands of mostly pro-French Moslems by the FNL.

Bastien-Thiry, who had been certified ‘normal’ by psychiatrists in spite of a history of clinical depression, was convicted and sentenced to death, as were two of his associates: Lt de la Tocnaye and Prevost (a former volunteer in Korea and in Vietnam). The only would-be assassin to escape was OAS member Georges Watin (also known as “The Limp”), who died February 1994 at age 71. De Gaulle was close to the father of Bastien-Thiry and would have been inclined to pardon him, as he first announced to the press, but during the trial Bastien-Thiry mocked the President. People like De Gaulle may forgive a killing attempt but do not forgive mocking. The execution took place one week after the trial, by firing squad, on 11 March 1963. While clutching to his rosary, the 35 years old Bastien-Thiry refused to be blindfolded and bravely faced death.

The novel written by Forsyth starts at this point with the surviving French conspirators deciding to hire a British assassin to kill the President on the next 25 August, the day commemorating the Liberation of Paris during WWII. A French police superintendent suspecting what was going on started to investigate and at the end managed to kill the Jackal and save De Gaulle.

For two years – prior to write The Day of the Jackal – Frederick Forsyth covered the Biafran War in West Africa. Upon returning to Britain his first book, the non-fiction The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend described that brutal civil war during which Nigeria fought to prevent the secession of its eastern province. It was published as a paperback by Penguin Books in late 1969 but to Forsyth’s disappointment, the book sold only few hundred copies.

By 1970 the 31-year-old freelance journalist, international adventurer, MI6  spy and former fighter pilot in the RAF, found himself out of work and ‘flat broke’. To solve his financial problems he thus decided to try his hand at fiction, having in mind the millions made by Ian Fleming with his James Bond novels, as a way to clear his debts which had been piling up.

Forsyth wrote The Day of the Jackal in 35 days between January and February 1970, but then the manuscript remained unpublished for almost a year-and-a-half as he sought a publisher willing to accept it.

He had no literary agent and four publishing houses flatly rejected it because they believed a fictional account of the OAS hiring a British born assassin in 1963 to kill Charles de Gaulle would not be commercially successful, because De Gaulle was still alive and retired from public life! They opined that the readers would know since the beginning that the killing plot was not going to work. But then by sheer luck (Forsyth’s luck!) Charles de Gaulle died of natural causes in November 1970, perhaps was this that eventually persuaded London based publishers Hutchinson to give a try to it.

Before publication rumours of the content of the book created a craving for it. Hutchinson reacted by increasing the minimum numbers of copies: from the initial 8.000 to 100.000. They were all sold in a few weeks and an American publisher (Viking) bought the rights for 365,000 USD, a huge amount which could be compared to 2.000.000 USD in today’s money.It has since been translated in various languages and remains a sensational editorial success, being still in print.

A wonderful Anglo-French film was released in 1973, directed by Fred Zinnermann with Edward Fox impersonating the Jackal, a human chameleon who plans his mission meticulously, evading capture, mercilessly killing anyone who stands in his way and finally, being shot by the police superintendent, he is put to rest in an anonymous grave. This film went on to win the BAFTA Award for Best Film Editing (Ralph Kemplen), five additional BAFTA Award nominations, two Golden Globe Award nominations, and one Academy Award nomination. The film grossed $16,056,255 at the box office and earned an additional $8,525,000 in North American rentals.

 

Freddy Forsyth went on to write several other masterpieces, like The Fourth Protocol; The Dogs of War; The Odessa File; The Fist of God; The Devil’s Alternative; Icon; just to quote some and became a millionaire in the process, but lost most of it, getting back to being flat broke. As he declared on October 2009 in an interview to The Telegraph:
“My second mistake was trusting Roger Levitt. I saw him as a personal friend, but he turned out to be a con man. He wasn’t like Bernard Madoff — Levitt never promised ridiculous levels of return. His talent was to recommend a portfolio of about 20 shares and then suggest that, since there was a lot of paperwork and you would have to sign 20 cheques, why not let him do it for you? You just gave him one cheque payable to the Levitt Group and he promised to do all the hard work, but in fact I never saw the money again. At last count in 1988 my portfolio was worth around 2.2m. I know that because I parted with my wife that year and, because we didn’t want to quarrel, I gave her my properties while I took the shares. Then a few years later Levitt was arrested and my portfolio turned out to be worthless — so I went from having been worth 4.6m before my divorce to zero.” Honore de Balzac comes to mind but there is a long list if authors being world-savvy in their novels but easily duped in real life!

Forsyth had since gone back to work as a writer, a political commentator and journalist and he had since rebuilt, once more, his fortune.

 

Xenophon’s Hellenika. Not such a Landmark but a flawed interpretation..

The Landmark Xenophon’s Hellenika
Edited by Robert B. Strassler and Translated by John Marincola. 7 3/8 x 9 1/4, Hardcover, Pantheon and Anchor Book, 2009.

 

Xenophon’s Hellenika, the primary source for the events of the final seven years and aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, covers the period between 411 and 362 B.C.E.. It was a particularly dramatic period during which the alliances among Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Persia were shifting. Together with the volumes of Herodotus and Thucydides, it completes an ancient narrative of the military and political history of classical Greece.

Xenophon was an Athenian citizen who participated in the expedition of Cyrus the Younger against Cyrus’ brother the Persian King Artaxerxes II. Later he joined the Spartan army and hence was exiled from Athens. In addition to the Hellenika, a number of his essays have survived, including one on his memories of his teacher, Socrates.
This rich book is beautifully illustrated, heavily annotated and filled with detailed, clear maps.

According to the editors this edition gives us a new, authoritative, and completely accessible translation – carried out by John Marincola with a comprehensive introduction by David Thomas- with sixteen appendixes written by leading classics scholars (all British and Americans!) and an extensive timeline/chronology to clarify this otherwise confusing period. Unlike other editions of the Hellenika, it also includes the relevant texts of Diodorus Siculus and the Oxyrhynchus Historian, with explanatory footnotes and a table that correlates passages of the three works, which is perhaps crucial to an assessment of Xenophon’s and quality as a historian.

This is indeed a lavish edition but it is a pity that such a great occasion has been wasted making it not such a ‘Landmark’ as it is claimed, for there are two big flaws in it.

-The first is that there are no bibliographic notes about past editions; about the origins of the manuscripts, their collation and where and when they first went into print as incunables.

-The second is that Xenophon was not a Kentucky citizen but he was rather a classical Athenians positively biased towards Sparta. Fact is that this book is totally devoid of textual interpretations coming from French, Germans, Italians and Greeks historians.

This is evident looking at page 521 with the ‘Bibliography for the General Reader’. Where we find 2 and half pages long list of essays and books divided into 6 sub-sections. All the quoted works are British and American, save for a French essay on Diodorus Siculus by M. Bonnet, translated into English.

 

Invited to Present my book on Leonardo at the Italy & China Conference in Toronto. 7-9 April, 2016.

Italy and China, Europe and East Asia: Centuries of Dialogue / Italia e Cina, Europa e Asia orientale: Secoli di dialogo / 意大利与中国，欧洲与东亚：跨世纪对话

Organised by the Department of Italian Studies
University of Toronto
100 St Joseph Street
Toronto, ON M5S 1J4 

 

Here is a tentative list of the speakers:

 
Locations: Three locations at the St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto (see the program for details).

Father Madden Hall in Carr Hall: 100 St. Joseph Street
Charbonnel Lounge in Elmsley Hall: 81 St. Mary Street
Classroom 406 in Carr Hall: 4th floor, 100 St. Joseph Street
Organizers: Francesco Guardiani and Gaoheng Zhang, Department of Italian Studies, University of Toronto
Co-sponsors: Departments of Italian Studies, Cinema Studies Institute, Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, French, History, Islamic Studies, Language Studies (UTM), Language Studies – Italian Unit (UTM), Spanish and Portuguese, the Faculty of Music (Historical Performance), and the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto. The Italian Cultural Institute (Istituto Italiano di Cultura) in Toronto. The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

 

Website: italychinaconference.wordpress.com
Conference description and goals:

Increasing dialogue between China and Italy constitutes a significant issue in today’s world. Recently, several Italian and Chinese industries competed directly in the global market. The Chinese migrant entrepreneurship in fashion and garment industry in Prato was spotlighted in Italian and international media as emblematic of the tension between “Made in Italy” and “Made in China.”

Over the centuries, crossings between Italy and China have produced the most sustained strand of cultural texts on East-West borrowings. The work by the likes of Marco Polo, Li Madou (Matteo Ricci), Giacomo Puccini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Bernardo Bertolucci is among history’s most influential intercultural texts. More recently, Luca Bigazzi’s cinematography in Gianni Amelio’s La stella che non c’è/The Missing Star and in Andrea Segre’s Io sono Li/Shun Li and the Poet shows the influence of Chinese landscape painting.

Chinese perception of Italy has been equally textured and powerful. Liang Qichao formulated his influential nationalist thinking with explicit references to the Italian Unification. The “Sixth Generation” Chinese filmmakers extensively adapted Italian neorealism for their Chinese subject matter.

In recent years, English-language scholarship on Italy-China issues in particular have received renewed interest. What was at stake in Italian-Chinese, East Asian-European dialogue? How can we best examine the dialogical process in these crossings? What theoretical insights and policy advice can we yield from these intellectual endeavors? This conference will explore the contexts, ways, and reasons for which such exchanges took place. We will also examine the specific knowledge that was produced, interpreted, and negotiated when the two countries and the two continents communicated. The focus countries are Italy and China.

The goals of the conference are to pool together existing research strands on China-Italy issues in one place; to study these issues in comparative, cross-disciplinary, and cross-centuries contexts; to attract emerging and established scholars to this field and to create a network of them for long-term collaboration based at the University of Toronto; to set agenda for future research; and to reach out to the strong Italian and Chinese communities in Toronto.
Nightly special public events:
April 7, 18:00-19:30 (Father Madden Hall), lecture and Q/A with Marco Wong (Chinese-Italian entrepreneur in Italy and Director of the Board of Extrabanca, the first Italian bank focused on migrants).

April 8, 18:00-19:30 (Father Madden Hall), screening of the film Leonardo (Paolo De Falco 2008) and Q/A with De Falco (filmmaker, HYPERLINK “http://www.paolodefalco.it/” http://www.paolodefalco.it/).

April 9, 17:00-18:00 (Charbonnel Lounge), Music Recital of Teodorico Pedrini – Sonate per Violino Solo col basso, Opera Terza (introduced by Fabio G. Galeffi and Gabriele Tarsetti and performed by Michelle Odorico and David Henkelman).
Conference program
(for most recent updates, visit italychinaconference.wordpress.com):
April 7
9:00-9:15 (Father Madden Hall)

Light breakfast and coffee
9:15-9:30 (Father Madden Hall)

Opening remarks
9:30-11:00 (Father Madden Hall)

Confucius and Matteo Ricci’s On Friendship

John Meehan, S.J. (University of Regina), “Humanism East & West: Matteo Ricci, Neo-Confucians and Friendship as Dialogue”

Sebastiano Bazzichetto (University of Toronto), “The Celestial Amicizia: Classical Reasons for Matteo Ricci’s Book About Friendship”

Sheng Ping Guo (University of Toronto), “Lineage Patterns of Conversion in the Late Ming Dynasty: Matteo Ricci and His Colleagues’ Christian Faith Accommodating in a Confucian Land”
11:15-12:45 (Father Madden Hall)

Surprising Italian-Chinese Connections: The Press, Scholarship, and Colonial Architecture

Renata Vinci (Sapienza University of Rome), “The Contribution of the Shenbao to the Perception of the Italian Cultural Tradition in late-Qing China (1872-1911)

Angelo Paratico (Writer), “Leonardo Da Vinci: A Chinese Scholar Lost in
Renaissance Italy”

Nino Rico (Independent scholar and architect), “Dreams and Delusions of Benevolent Colonialism: The Italian Concession in Tianjin”
13:00-14:00 (Senior Common Room, 2nd Floor, Brennan Hall, 81 St Mary Street)

Lunch (provided free of charge to all presenters)
14:00-15:30 (Father Madden Hall)

The Italian Unification and Chinese Intellectuals and Travelers

Chair: Luca Somigli (University of Toronto)

Federica Casalin (Sapienza University of Rome), “A Chinese Investigator in Italy: Hong Xun and his Youli Yidali wenjian lu (1887)”

Federico Brusadelli (University of Napoli “L’Orientale”), “Catholicism and the Political Role of Religion in Kang Youwei’s Yidali Youji/Journey to Italy (1904)”

Donatella Guida (University of Napoli “L’Orientale”), “The Teaching of
Chinese in Naples in the Nineteenth Century: The Three Character Classic
Annotated and Translated by Guo Dongchen (1846-1923), alias Giuseppe
Maria Kuo”
15:45-17:15
(parallel sessions)

Italian Travel Literature on China during the 1950s and 1960s (Father Madden Hall)

Chair: Sylvia Gaspari (University of Toronto)

Linetto Basilone (University of Auckland), “Italian Intellectuals, Their Travelogues and the ‘New China’: Strategies of Discursive Production of People’s Republic of China in the 1950s”

Roberto Bertoni (Trinity College Dublin), “Italian Intellectuals as Travelers to China since the 1950s: Utopian Illusions, Realistic Perplexities, and Rebalancing of Perspectives”

Elisa Attanasio (University of Bologna), “Goffredo Parise and the Orient: A Continuous Fascination for Alterity”

Elisabetta Carraro (University of Toronto), “Goffredo Parise and Alberto Moravia Traveling in Mao’s China”

2. Jesuits between Catholicism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (Classroom 406)

Guo Wei (Sichuan University), “War on the Paper: The Debate between
Matteo Ricci and Late Ming Buddhism”

Lucilla Bonavita (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”), “Father Alessandro Valignano sj: An Example of Dialogue between East and West”

Stefano Benedetti (East China University of Political Science and Law), “Prospero Intorcetta (1625-1696), First Translator and Editor of Confucius in the West”
18:00-19:30 (Father Madden Hall)

Lecture and Q/A with Marco Wong (Chinese-Italian entrepreneur in Italy and Director of the Board of Extrabanca, the first Italian bank focused on migrants)

April 8
9:00-9:30 (Father Madden Hall)

Light breakfast and coffee
9:30-11:00 (Father Madden Hall)

Chinese Migration, Interracial Intimacy, and Films

Daniele Brigadoi Cologna (Insubria University), “Societal Perceptions of Chinese Migrants and Chinese-Italian Marriages in Fascist Italy”

Paolo Frascà (University of Toronto), “The Effective Interaction of Cinematic Genres and the Portrayal of Migration in Io sono Li by Andrea Segre”

Paolo De Falco (Filmmaker and director of the Liquid Archive of Identity), “Leonardo and Chinese Migration to Bari”
11:15-12:45 (Father Madden Hall)

Surprising Italian-Chinese Connections: Military Strategies, Noodles, and Toys

Chair: Sylvia Gaspari (University of Toronto)

Andrea Polegato (University of North Texas), “The Problem of Efficacy in Machiavelli and Sunzi”

Hong Li and Christine Ristaino (Emory University), “Noodle Narratives on the Silk Road: A Cultural Exploration of China and Italy Through Noodles”

Anthony Cristiano (University of Toronto), “China and Italy: A Look into the Meaning of the Exchange of Toys and Games”
13:00-14:00 (Senior Common Room, 2nd Floor, Brennan Hall, 81 St Mary Street)

Lunch (provided free of charge to all presenters)
14:00-15:30 (Father Madden Hall)

Traveling Arts

Chair: Benedetta Lamanna (University of Toronto)

Eiren Shea (University of Pennsylvania), “Weaving a Path from Beijing to
Venice in the Footsteps of Marco Polo: Chinese Textiles and the Italian
Renaissance”

Roslyn Lee Hammers (University of Hong Kong), “Asian and Italian Perspectives in Qing Court Painting: Making Space for Agrarian Labor Imagery”

Maria Teresa Gonzalez Linaje (University of Veracruz), “From Art to Literature: Italian Contributions to Knowledge of China in Colonial Mexico”
15:45-17:15
(parallel sessions)

1. Coffee Bars and Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurship: Threat or Integration? (Father Madden Hall)

Chair: Donna Gabaccia (University of Toronto)

Ting Deng (Harvard University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong),
“‘Invading’ Italian Coffee Bars: Business Choice and Family Entrepreneurship
of Chinese Migrants in Italy”

Chiara Giuliani (University of St. Andrews), “The ‘Chinese-Italian Threat’ to
Italian National Identity”

Sabrina Ardizzoni (University of Bologna), “The Integration of Students of
Chinese Cultural Background in the Town and Province of Bologna”
Jesuits and Scientific Knowledge in Texts (Classroom 406)

Chair: Francesco Guardiani (University of Toronto)

Oana Baboi (University of Toronto), “Saving the Jesuit Body: Francesco Brancati’s Medicinal Recipes in 17th-century China”

Rui Sang (University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès), “Alfonso Vagnoni and the
Female Saints in His Chinese Work: A Preliminary Study on the Last Two
Volumes of Tian Zhu Sheng Jiao Sheng Ren Xing Shi”

Francesco Guardiani (University of Toronto), “Li Madou (Matteo Ricci) and the Dawn of Typographic Modernity in Chinese Culture”
18:00-19:30 (Father Madden Hall)

Screening of the film Leonardo (Paolo De Falco 2008) and Q/A with De Falco (filmmaker, HYPERLINK “http://www.paolodefalco.it/” http://www.paolodefalco.it/)
April 9
9:00-9:30 (Charbonnel Lounge)

Light breakfast and coffee
9:30-11:00 (Charbonnel Lounge)

Chinese Migrants in Italian Documentary Films

Chair: Gaoheng Zhang (University of Toronto)

Valentina Pedone (University of Florence), “From a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Orientalism in Documentaries about Chinese in Italy”

Mary Ann McDonald Carolan (Fairfield University), “Documenting Chinese Youth in Miss Little China (2009)”

Gaoheng Zhang (University of Toronto), “Morality and Italian Documentary Films on Chinese Migrants”
11:15-12:45 (Charbonnel Lounge)

Translating Italian Classics for Chinese

Gang Zhou (Louisiana State University), “Marco Polo in China”

Zhou Ting (University of Language and Culture of Beijing and University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), “Chinese Translation of Italo Calvino’s Works in the 1950s”

Sheng-mei Ma (Michigan State University), “Turandot: The Chinese Box by Puccini, Zeffirelli, Zhang, and Chen”

Li Zeng (University of Louisville), “Jia Zhangke’s Film Xiao Wu: A Neorealist
View”
13:00-14:00 (Senior Common Room, 2nd Floor, Brennan Hall, 81 St Mary Street)

Lunch (provided free of charge to all presenters)
14:00-15:30 (Charbonnel Lounge)

Italian-Chinese Translation

Shiamin Kwa (Bryn Mawr College), “A Masked Ball: From Zhaoshi gu’er to L’Eroe Cinese”

Gabriele Tola (Sapienza University of Rome), “Primavera cinese: Carducci and the Unwitting Translation of a Chinese Poem”

Andrea Tullio Canobbio (University of Monastir), “Fra Li Po e Po Chu-i: Govoni e i poeti cinesi”

Giulia Falato (Sapienza University of Rome), “Introducing the Italian
Education System of the Renaissance into late Ming China: A Comparative
Analysis of Alfonso Vagnone S.J.’s Xixue (Western Learning, c. 1615) and
Giulio Aleni S.J.’s Xixue Fan (Summary of Western Learning, 1623)”
15:45-17:00
(parallel sessions)

Italian-Chinese International Relations, Journalism, and Films during the Cold War (Classroom 406)

Lorenzo M. Capisani (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore), “Telling the New from the Old: Commercial and Political Discourses for a Renewed Relationship between Italy and China during the Cold War”

Alberto Gelmi (City University of New York), “Crickets, Rugs, and Coffins: Tiziano Terzani’s China”

Stefano Bona (Flinders University), “From Behind the Great Wall (1957) to Marco Polo (1982): Italian cinematic bridges between the West and the People’s Republic of China”
Italian-Chinese Music and Sounds (Charbonnel Lounge)

Wong Tsz (University of Göttingen), “Matteo Ricci in East West Music
Exchange”

Sun Simin and Elisa Segnini (University of British Columbia), “From Italy to
China and Backwards: Audiovisual Translation as Renegotiation”

Fabio G. Galeffi and Gabriele Tarsetti (The Teodorico Pedrini Study Center),
“Teodorico Pedrini (1671-1746), missionary and musician at the Kangxi court:
a milestone in the development of the cultural relations between Italy and
China”
17:00-18:00 (Charbonnel Lounge)

Music Recital of Teodorico Pedrini – Sonate per Violino Solo col basso,
Opera Terza

Introduction by:

Fabio G. Galeffi and Gabriele Tarsetti

Performers:

Michelle Odorico, violin
David Henkelman, harpsichord

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