Is it really Shakespeare’s own dictionary?

We are reposting here below the blog written by  Michael Witmore and Heather Wolfe and published on 21 April 2014.

An Article on the Atlantic Monthly is also discussing such fortunate find, a precious book bough in ebay a few years ago.

( http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/has-shakespeares-own-dictionary-been-found/361019/#comments )

The buyers are publishing a book on it, claiming that is the original dictionary used by the bard of Avon, full with his hand-written notes. If it is true, it will be an extraordinary find which could finally solve the mystery about the real author of the immortal plays.

21 April 2014 by  and 

Shakespeare’s birthday week begins with a bang: two New York booksellers, George Koppelman and Daniel Wechsler, announced that they have found Shakespeare’s dictionary. In their new book, Shakespeare’s Beehive, Koppelman and Wechsler present their reasons for believing that William Shakespeare is the annotator of their copy of John Baret’s Alvearie, a 1580 dictionary that scholars have linked to Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Because Koppelman and Wechsler are claiming to have discovered something new about Shakespeare, their ideas will receive significant attention in the popular press. Adam Gopnik’s recent story in the New Yorker, “The Poet’s Hand,” provides eloquent testimony to the ongoing interest in discoveries about Shakespeare, an interest that led our founders, Henry and Emily Folger, to establish the Folger Shakespeare Library here in Washington.

Title page of Koppelman and Wechsler’s copy of Baret’s Alvearie. Used with permission of George Koppelman.

Even the most skeptical scholar would be thrilled to find a new piece of documentary evidence about William Shakespeare. Scholars, however, will only support the identification of Shakespeare as annotator if they feel it would be unreasonable to doubtthat identification. This is a fairly high evidentiary standard, since it requires one to treat skeptically the idea that this handwriting is Shakespeare’s and to seek out counterexamples that might prove it false.

As the library of record for Shakespeare and the leading documentary source for his works, the Folger will be one of the places where Koppelman and Wechsler’s claims are evaluated by scholars. Those unfamiliar with early modern books and manuscripts will be curious about the techniques that scholars at the Folger and elsewhere hope to use to explore the identity of the Alvearie annotator.

At this point, we as individual scholars feel that it is premature to join Koppelman and Wechsler in what they have described as their “leap of faith.” Having ourselves worked extensively with collection materials and digital corpora, we have written this blog post in order to highlight research methods that we expect will be used to evaluate Koppelman and Wechsler’s claims. Regardless of the identity of the annotator, the book that Koppelman and Wechsler (hereafter K&W) have turned up is fascinating. The person who annotated this copy of Baret was clearly interested in the poetic and associative possibilities of English, French, and other languages, an interest that reflects the more widespread humanist practice of “commonplacing” one’s reading. (Commonplacing refers to the practice of recording words or phrases that a reader feels can be saved for later use in composition.) The marks in this copy of the Alvearie are consistent with this collecting or “commonplacing” impulse; they could also be the marks of someone revising for another edition, adding words and cross-references to make the book more up-to-date and user-friendly.

What is new or controversial about K&W’s claim? They are not simply saying that Shakespeare consulted Baret’s Alvearie at some point in his life. As they note in their study, T. W. Baldwin made this argument some time ago, with real success.1 We know that Shakespeare and other early modern writers used source books like the Alvearie to fire the imagination. Shakespeare’s fascination with proverbs in his plays, for example, can be traced back to some of the printed proverb collections that were becoming popular in the sixteenth century. As the lexicographer John Considine has demonstrated, dictionaries were an important source of proverbs during this period, since they offered up proverbial sayings to illustrate the meanings of words.2We should not be surprised, then, to learn that Shakespeare read and perhaps was influenced by a book such as Baret’sAlvearie: it supplied him with a trove of sayings, associations, and conceits that many writers trained in the humanist tradition would have been keen to mine for their own texts.

What is new here is the idea that a particular copy of Baret was annotated by Shakespeare and that his annotations are distinctive enough to provide (1) a paleographic link with other known examples of Shakespeare’s handwriting and (2) a kind of associative map to verbal patterns in Shakespeare’s poems and plays. K&W focus on the character, content, and arrangement of the marks on the pages of this book, since they are claiming that this annotator, by highlighting certain words in the text or reacting to them in marginal annotations, gives us a unique pattern of associations that identify him as Shakespeare. That identification is possible on the basis of a number of similarities—of handwriting, of words, and of associations—which are assumed to link the marks in this book to published works or autograph manuscripts of Shakespeare. If scholars find these similarities compelling, they will be looking to provide good answers to the following questions.

1) Paleography. Can we reasonably exclude other, non-Shakespearean candidates for annotator based on the writing that appears in this book? Is there enough of a sample of William Shakespeare’s writing to exclude these other possibilities? As K&W note, it is notoriously difficult to draw conclusions about a writer’s style of handwriting based on marginalia alone. Further compounding the problem of identification is the fact that all surviving snippets of Shakespeare’s handwriting—his signatures and possibly a few pages from a collaboratively-written play manuscript—are in secretary hand, while the majority of annotations in the Alvearie are in an italic script. However, there are thousands of examples of books annotated in a mixture of italic and secretary scripts, and scholars will need to test the Alvearie against these.

2) Rare and peculiar words. How many of the words underlined or added in the margins of this copy of the Alvearie are used by Shakespeare and Shakespeare alone, as opposed to other early modern writers? Further, how many of the words that are not marked or underlined in this copy of Baret are nevertheless present in Shakespeare’s works? Are these proportions different, and to what degree?

3) Associations. K&W write of “textual proximity in Baret mirroring textual proximity in Shakespeare” (107). As we know from studies of other resources used by early modern writers, it is in the nature of a dictionary to list commonly associated words (including synonyms and words that co-occur in proverbs or adages). How likely is it that Baret’s Alvearie—as opposed to proverbial wisdom and common association—is the only possible source for Shakespearean associations? Again, following the line of questioning above, how often do spatially proximate combinations of words that are not underlined in Baret nevertheless co-occur in Shakespeare’s works? How often do the proximate marked words in Baret occur near one another in writers otherthan Shakespeare?

4) Marginalia. How typical or unique are the annotator’s use of slashes, circles, trefoils, and underlinings? Is the cross-referencing, translation, and supplementation suggestive of revision for a later edition or of creating a treasury of words for personal use? How do the annotations compare to those of well-known Elizabethan annotators such John Dee, whose marginalia is the subject of a major study by Bill Sherman, or Gabriel Harvey, whose marginalia has also been the subject of book-length studies and critical enquiry?3 Are there links between those annotations and those of other annotators whose books have not been introduced for comparison?

Many resources will be brought to bear on these questions, resources that are used daily in a research library like ours. Other annotated early modern dictionaries and other printed books will surely be consulted for comparison, as will digital databases that record uses of words in early modern books and manuscripts. The latter resource will allow for systematic proximity searches and comparisons of “nearby words” found both in Shakespeare and in texts by other early modern writers, including those who are not writing for the theater.

All scholars of early modern books and literate culture should be interested in Koppelman and Wechsler’s copy of Baret’s dictionary. The owners of this book have done the world a service by creating a website where these annotations can be studied. Whatever their source, the annotations in Koppelman and Wechsler’s copy of Baret’s Alvearie provide a rich picture of one person’s reaction to the formidable textual resources that were becoming available to English readers with the growth of printing and humanist culture. Everyone has a reason to celebrate the survival of this book, and indeed, all early modern books that have been preserved to illuminate this remarkable moment in our past.

  1. T. W. Baldwin, William Shakespeare’s small Latine & lesse Greeke (U Illinois P, 1944). [↩]
  2. John Considine, “Wisdom-literature in Early Modern England,” Renaissance Studies 13:3 (1999): 325-342. [↩]
  3. William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (U Massachusetts P, 1997); Virginia F. Stern,Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia, and Library (Clarendon P, 1979). [↩]

The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci in the first edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives.

 

 

Here we are presenting the  Life of Leonardo da Vinci  as it was printed by Torrentino in its first edition, dated 1550. The English translation is by Gaston De Vere, which he censored and edited.

Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) wrote  the lives of hundreds of artists  – some he commissioned and then he put under his name -which he published first in 1550, and then in a second revised edition in 1568. It is still a very important tool for studying artists of the Italian, or better say, Tuscan Renaissance. Modern art historians tend to think that he did not write all of them personally and a case in point might be this famous life of Leonardo Da Vinci (1452 – 1519). In it he presented Leonardo as a sort of heretic.  The second edition dated 1568 by the Giunti is a very much edited and tamed down biographical sketch. Giorgio Vasari never met Leonardo personally and several of the mistakes present in both editions can be seen as a proof that he was only collecting gossips, perhaps unable to check the facts.

 

 

 

 

LIFE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI: Painter and Sculptor of Florence

The greatest gifts are often seen, in the course of nature, rained by celestial influences on human creatures; and sometimes, in supernatural fashion, beauty, grace, and talent are united beyond measure in one single person, in a manner that to whatever such an one turns his attention, his every action is so divine, that, surpassing all other men, it makes itself clearly known as a thing bestowed by God (as it is), and not acquired by human art. This was seen by all mankind in Leonardo da Vinci, in whom, besides a beauty of body never sufficiently extolled, there was an infinite grace in all his actions; and so great was his genius, and such its growth, that to whatever difficulties he turned his mind, he solved them with ease. In him was great bodily strength, joined to dexterity, with a spirit and courage ever royal and magnanimous; and the fame of his name so increased, that not only in his lifetime was he held in esteem, but his reputation became even greater among posterity after his death.

Truly marvellous and celestial was Leonardo, the son of Ser Piero da Vinci; and in learning and in the rudiments of letters he would have made great proficience, if he had not been so variable and unstable, for he set himself to learn many things, and then, after having begun them, abandoned them. Thus, in arithmetic, during the few months that he studied it, he made so much progress, that, by continually suggesting doubts and difficulties to the master who was teaching him, he would very often bewilder him. He gave some little attention to music, and quickly resolved to learn to play the lyre, as one who had by nature a spirit most lofty and full of refinement: wherefore he sang divinely to that instrument, improvising upon it. Nevertheless, although he occupied himself with such a variety of things, he never ceased drawing and working in relief, pursuits which suited his fancy more than any other. Ser Piero, having observed this, and having considered the loftiness of his intellect, one day took some of his drawings and carried them to Andrea del Verrocchio, who was much his friend, and besought him straitly [sic] to tell him whether Leonardo, by devoting himself to drawing, would make any proficience. Andrea was astonished to see the extraordinary beginnings of Leonardo, and urged Ser Piero that he should make him study it; wherefore he arranged with Leonardo that he should enter the workshop of Andrea, which Leonardo did with the greatest willingness in the world. And he practised not one branch of art only, but all those in which drawing played a part; and having an intellect so divine and marvellous that he was also an excellent geometrician, he not only worked in sculpture, making in his youth, in clay, some heads of women that are smiling, of which plaster casts are still taken, and likewise some heads of boys which appeared to have issued from the hand of a master; but in architecture, also, he made many drawings both of ground-plans and of other designs of buildings; and he was the first, although but a youth, who suggested the plan of reducing the river Arno to a navigable canal from Pisa to Florence. He made designs of flour-mills, fullingmills, and engines, which might be driven by the force of water; and since he wished that his profession should be painting, he studied much in drawing after nature, and sometimes in making models of figures in clay, over which he would lay soft pieces of cloth dipped in clay, and then set himself patiently to draw them on a certain kind of very fine Rheims cloth, or prepared linen; and he executed them in black and white with the point of his brush, so that it was a marvel, as some of them by his hand, which I have in our book of drawings, still bear witness; besides which, he drew on paper with such diligence and so well, that there is no one who has ever equalled him in perfection of finish; and I have one, a head drawn with the style in chiaroscuro, which is divine.

And there was infused in that brain such grace from God, and a power of expression in such sublime accord with the intellect and memory that served it, and he knew so well how to express his conceptions by draughtmanship, that he vanquished with his discourse, and confuted with his reasoning, every valiant wit. And he was continually making models and designs to show men how to remove mountains with ease, and how to bore them in order to pass from one level to another; and by means of levers, windlasses, and screws, he showed the way to raise and draw great weights, together with methods for emptying harbours, and pumps for removing water from low places, things which his brain never ceased from devising.

It is clear that Leonardo, through his comprehension of art, began many things and never finished one of them, since it seemed to him that the hand was not able to attain to the perfection of art in carrying out the things which he imagined; for the reason that he conceived in idea difficulties so subtle and so marvellous, that they could never be expressed by the hands, be they ever so excellent. And so many were his caprices, that, philosophizing of natural things, he set himself to seek out the properties of herbs, going on even to observe the motions of the heavens, the path of the moon, and the courses of the sun.

***

He also painted in Milan, for the Friars of S. Dominic, at S. Maria dell Grazie, a Last Supper, a most beautiful and marvellous thing; and to the heads of the Apostles he gave such majesty and beauty, that he left the head of Christ unfinished, not believing that he was able to give it that divine air which is essential to the image of Christ. This work, remaining thus all but finished, has ever been held by the Milanese in the greatest veneration, and also by strangers as well; for Leonardo imagined and succeeded in expressing that anxiety which had seized the Apostles in wishing to know who should betray their Master. For which reason in all their faces are seen love, fear, and wrath, or rather, sorrow, at not being able to understand the meaning of Christ; which thing excites no less marvel than the sight, in contrast to it, of obstinacy, hatred, and treachery in Judas; not to mention that every least part of the work displays an incredible diligence, seeing that even in the tablecloth the texture of the stuff is counterfeited in such a manner that linen itself could not seem more real.

It is said that the Prior of that place kept pressing Leonardo, in a most importunate manner, to finish the work; for it seemed strange to him to see Leonardo sometimes stand half a day at a time, lost in contemplation, and he would have like him to go on like the labourers hoeing in his garden, without ever stopping his brush. And not content with this, he complained of it to the Duke, and that so warmly, that he was constrained to send for Leonardo and delicately urged him to work, contriving nevertheless to show him that he was doing all this because of the importunity of the Prior. Leonardo, knowing that the intellect of that Prince was acute and discerning, was pleased to discourse at large with the Duke on the subject, a thing which he had never done with the Prior: and he reasoned much with him about art, and made him understand that men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most wh en they work the least, seeking out inventions with the mind, and forming those perfect ideas which the hands afterwards express and reproduce from the images already conceived in the brain. And he added that two heads were still wanting for him to paint; that of Christ, which he did not wish to seek on earth; and he could not think that it was possible to conceive in the imagination that beauty and heavenly grace which should be the mark of God incarnate. Next, there was wanting that of Judas, which was also troubling him, not thinking himself capable of imagining features that should represent the countenance of him who, after so many benefits received, had a mind so cruel as to resolve to betray his Lord, the Creator of the world. However, he would seek out a model for the latter; but if in the end he could not find a better, he should not want that of the importunate and tactless Prior. This thing moved the Duke wondrously to laughter, and he said that Leonardo had a thousand reasons on his side. And so the poor Prior, in confusion, confined himself to urging on the work in the garden, and left Leonardo in peace, who finished only the head of Judas, which seems the very embodiment of treachery and inhumanity; but that of Christ, as has been said, remained unfinished.

Leonardo undertook to execute, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife; and after toiling over it for four years, he left it unfinished; and the work is now in the collection of King Frances of France, at Fontainebleau. In this head, whoever wished to see how closely art could imitate nature, was able to comprehend it with ease; for in it were counterfeited all the minutenesses that with subtlety are able to be painted, seeing that the eyes had that lustre and watery sheen which are always seen in life, and around them were all those rosy and pearly tints, as well as the lashes, which cannot be represented without the greatest subtlety. The eyebrows, through his having shown the manner in which the hairs spring from the flesh, here more close and here more scanty, and curve according to the pores of the skin, could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful nostrils, rosy and tender, appeared to be alive. The mouth, with its opening, and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh-tints of the face, seemed, in truth, to be not colours but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse. And, indeed, it may be said that it was painted in such a manner as to make every valiant craftsman, be he who he may, tremble and lose heart. He made use, also, of this device: Mona Lisa being very beautiful, he always employed, while he was painting her portrait, persons to play or sing, and jesters, who might make her remain merry, in order to take away that melancholy which painters are often wont to give to the portraits that they paint. And in this work of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to behold; and it was held to be something marvellous, since the reality was not more alive

***

There was very great disdain between Michelangelo Buonarroti and him, on account of which Michelangelo departed from Florence, with the excuse of Duke Giuliano, having been summoned by the Pope to the competition for the facade of S. Lorenzo. Leonardo, understanding this, departed and went into France, where the King, having had works by his hand, bore him great affection; and he desired that he should colour the cartoon of S. Anne, but Leonardo, according to his custom, put him off for a long time with words.

Finally, having grown old, he remained ill many months, and, feeling himself near to death, asked to have himself diligently informed of the teaching of the Catholic faith, and of the good way and holy Christian religion; and then, with many moans, he confessed and was penitent; and although he could not raise himself well on his feet, supporting himself on the arms of his friends and servants, he was pleased to take devoutly the most holy Sacrament, out of his bed. The King, who was wont often and lovingly to visit him, then came into the room; wherefore he, out of reverence, having raised himself to sit upon the bed, giving him an account of his sickness and the circumstances of it, showed withal how much he had offended God and mankind in not having worked at his art as he should have done. Thereupon he was seized by a paroxysm, the messenger of death; for which reason the King having risen and having taken his head, in order to assist him and show him favour, to then end that he might alleviate his pain, his spirit, which was divine, knowing that it could not have any greater honour, expired in the arms of the King, in the seventy fifth year of his age.

 

 

L’uomo che tradusse in cinese Dante e Beccaria

http://lanostrastoria.corriere.it/

Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli

di ANGELO PARATICO

Il 14 aprile scorso è stato presentato a Hong Kong il libro “Cinque Secoli di Italiani a Hong Kong e Macao” stampato a Milano dall’editore Brioschi. Questo è il frutto di una lodevole iniziativa presa dal Consolato d’Italia a Hong Kong e Macao, nella persona del Console generale, Alessandra Schiavo.
Si tratta di un’opera di 580 pagine, ricca di foto, suddivisa in tre distinte sezioni: una storica riservata ai laici e ai diplomatici, scritta dal sottoscritto e una dedicata ai religiosi, opera del padre Gianni Criveller, uno storico espulso dalla Cina popolare qualche anno fa e specializzato sull’intricata ‘Controversia sui Riti Cinesi’. Seguono le testimonianze di numerosi residenti, partendo dalla figura del missionario salesiano Gaetano Nicosia, ‘l’angelo dei lebbrosi cinesi’ – nato in provincia di Catania nel 1915 e ancora in grado di impressionare gli ascoltatori ogni volta che prende la parola – per poi giungere ai più giovani connazionali approdati qui da pochi anni. Le immagini fotografiche sono state scattate da Margot Errante. Si tratta delle vive testimonianze d’uomini, donne, suore, missionari e dei bambini della scuola Manzoni, che offrono al lettore le loro ingenue impressioni. In apertura troviamo l’introduzione del presidente della Repubblica italiana, Giorgio Napolitano, che ricorda il ‘metodo dell’amicizia’ nell’apprendimento della cultura cinese, un metodo inaugurato da grandi gesuiti come Matteo Ricci, Valignano, Intorcetta, Castiglione e poi, portando i suoi saluti alla comunità italiana che ha arricchito e arricchisce Hong Kong e Macao, ricorda la sua visita dell’ottobre 2010. Per quanto riguarda la parte storica è difficile scegliere un singolo personaggio italiano da approfondire, dato che sono molti. Mi sforzo di trovarne uno soltanto. Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli, che fu Console d’Italia a Hong Kong e Macao dal 1899 al 1919 e che è pressoché sconosciuto in Italia, forse perché come scrittore pubblicò pochissimo nella nostra lingua.
Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli nasce a Napoli nel 1856, vi studia fisica e matematica, dopodiché, sfruttando una borsa di studio, studia arabo e cinese presso la celebre università Orientale della città partenopea. Nel 1881 lo troviamo in Cina dove lavora come contabile, ma già dal 1884 le sue abilità linguistiche lo portano ad essere impiegato prima dall’Italia, durante la firma di un trattato commerciale con la Corea e, in seguito, non essendo sfuggito ai cinesi il suo talento diplomatico e linguistico, dal governo imperiale cinese come assistente del viceré Li Hunchang, che il Nostro affiancherà durante le trattative fra la Cina e il Vietnam.

Nel 1886 viaggia in Russia, apprendendovi la lingua. Frutto di quel viaggio è un libro in inglese, uscito a Londra, sulla guerra fra la Russia e la Cina, dove usa lo pseudonimo di ‘Vladimir.’ Lo troviamo negli anni successivi a Shanghai e vi pubblica nuovi testi, sia in lingua francese che in inglese. Nel 1897 torna nuovamente in Russia e pubblica un nuovo libro, sempre a Londra, intitolato “Russia on the Pacific and the Siberian Railway” con mappe e  foto, un testo ancora oggi utilizzabile a livello storico.
La sua sagacia non sfugge ai nostri rappresentanti consolari di Pechino, primo fra tutti il Marchese Salvago Raggi, che lo fa nominare nel 1899 console d’Italia a Hong e Macao. Nel 1900, durante la rivolta dei Boxer, sfruttando la sua amicizia con Li Hungchang, si prodiga per il mantenimento della pace nella Cina meridionale. Nel 1904, durante la guerra russo-nipponica, lo troviamo con la nostra nave Elba, fra i soccorritori dei marinai russi dell’incrociatore Varyag, che s’auto-affonda ad Incheon, in Corea. Conosce Sun Yatsen e Chan Kaishek e, durante quegli anni tumultuosi, diventa un punto fermo per tutti gli italiani che visitano l’estremo Oriente. Viene spesso consultato dai nostri giornalisti e dagli uomini d’affari che vi si recano. Luigi Barzini senior lo cita spesso nei suoi reportage. Fra il 1915 e il 1919 studia all’università di Hong Kong, dove si laurea a pieni voti in…ginecologia, e Dio solo sa perché lo ha fatto. Nel frattempo non rallenta la propria attività di scrittore, pubblica un testo in inglese sulla storia della guerra russo-giapponese, attingendo da fonti originali cinesi e nipponiche: questo suo saggio appare spesso citato in opere moderne che trattano l’argomento. Vegetariano, salutista sempre in marcia, traduce la “Divina Commedia” di Dante Alighieri in cinese e, fatto notevole, traduce in cinese il libro di Cesare Beccarla, “Dei delitti e delle pene”. Purtroppo non siamo ancora riusciti a rintracciarne una copia, anche se il nostro Ambasciatore a Pechino, Alberto Bradanini, la sta attivamente ricercando. Proprio quest’anno, infatti, cade il 250 anniversario della prima edizione dell’opera del Beccaria. Dopo aver lasciato la carica di Console a Hong Kong ed essere stato nominato Commendatore dell’ordine dei Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro, Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli parte per una ricerca mistica dell’aldilà. Visita vari templi buddisti che sorgono sui fiumi cinesi usando una sua piccola imbarcazione, che battezza ‘Procida’ e che, mancando acqua, carica in treno. Si accompagna, quando può, ai nostri missionari cattolici che incontra in Cina.
Ormai anziano abbandona Shanghai e si trasferisce in Giappone, a Nagasaki, dove muore nel 1936.

 La sua tomba viene frantumata dall’esplosione atomica del 9 agosto 1945, ma un suo vecchio amico cinese – non conosciamo il suo nome – che la trova a pezzi negli anni cinquanta, paga di tasca propria per restaurarla. Questa è ancora visibile in un angolo verde del cimitero per gli stranieri di Nagasaki.

Launching of the Italian Edition of the Book ‘Cinque Secoli di Italiani a Hong Kong e Macao’

The Italian edition of the book ‘Cinque Secoli di Italiani a Hong Kong e Macao’ was finally presented last night, the 14 of April, 2014 at Domani Restaurant, Hong Kong.

About 60 people attended and a speech, in Italian as it was right and proper, was delivered by the Consul General of Italy in Hong Kong and Macau, Dr. Alessandra Schiavo.

One of the guests standing close to me commented that as far as the cover of the book is concerned probably Caravaggio would have managed to create something better.  I explained to the young fellow that, yes, maybe it is true but the ‘baby’ had to be delivered in a hurry.

This book looks impressive and not only for its size. It contains several long contributions, including mine, which appeared to me unnaturally long. Later, at home, I discovered why: one page that should have been put only in the historical introduction was again reprinted into my poetic souvenirs. Never mind, I am sure that no one will notice. The opener is a short introduction written by the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, 

I was not supposed to speak at the presentation but in order not to be finding wanting  – for a last minute call on stage –  I jotted down some loose sentences which I have by now thrown into the dustbin. I’ll repost them below, in order not to deprive posterity of my blurbs.

Buy this book in Hong Kong – not in Italy where the copyrights were given  to the editor, Brioschi –  because your money will ends up in two worthy no-profit organizations: the Societa’ Dante Alighieri and the Scuola Manzoni.

Cheers!

 

Dear Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you for being here tonight,

Thank you, Consul General Dr. Alessandra Schiavo,

Thank you,  cavaliere Stefano Bassanese of Domani, for your usual & exquisite hospitality.

Thank you to the Dante Alighieri Society and its president, Bruno Feltracco, Elisa and the other teachers who helped with the editing.

Personally I have always been a fan of history, especially local history and I have collected books connected with places where I have lived, photos, documents, whatever.  When Alessandra told me about this project, I felt thrilled and honored to be part of it.

Hong Kong and Macau are places where everything shifts like quicksand. Once we move out from here, our names are forgotten. Now, because of this book, all the people who have contributed will not fade away completely. I am  convinced that this book will set the record straight about our history, a thing which in the end will be good for our Country.

Alessandra’s idea, at the very beginning, was a sort of photographic album with individual contributions provided by members of the Italian community and later was expanded to the present form. But to tell you the full story of this book we should write another book, because this work has been like the delivery of a baby, a sort of never-ending Work in Progress. We had no previous experience on something like this and we had to tackle problems one by one, as they came.

The editing work took more time than we initially expected. To write is a simple craft, like producing shoes or garments: but the more you write the better you write. In a world where emails and twits are the norm, not all the people can write in a clear and proper manner. After receiving the first individual contributions we though about inserting two introductions: one secular, which I wrote,  and one for the clergy, written by Fr. Gianni Criveller. A turning point was the discovery of a list of Italian Consuls in Hong Kong that emerged from the archives of the Foreign Affair Ministry in Rome. No one has ever seen such list before because it has never been published. We discovered that the first Italian Consul General in Hong Kong, starting from 1861, was John Dent of the firm Dent and Company. If you remember the 1986 movie Taipan, there is a Tyler Brock, the fictional bad guy, who was actually a clever rendition of John Dent’s uncle Lancelot Dent, an opium merchant. In the film we could see him and Taipan fighting with steel hooks during a typhoon. We are Lucky to have Alessandra as Consul, apparently not a so fierce character when coming to a fight with grippling hooks  but certainly  not less determined in achieving her goals.

This book will be a reference for the future, a keystone, even if it is not complete and contains mistakes and omissions, for which I do apologize. For sure several names and situations have been left out but, at least, now there there is a base on which to build something more accurate.

With it, in a way, we have all achieved immortality together or, well, a sort of it…

Good night!

 

 

 

 

First complete translation in English of Girolamo Cardano’s De Subtilitate published in Arizona.

 

The book De Subtilitate written by Girolamo Cardano (1501 – 1576?) – translated as On Subtlety – was published by three different printers in the same year, 1550. In Nuremberg by Johannes Petreius; in Paris, by Guillaume de Roville and by Michel Fezendat. This is a mark of popularity virtually unmatched during the Renaissance. In fact this book marked the apex of glory for Girolamo Cardano, the famous Milanese polymath, doctor, philosopher, astrologer. In 1552 Girolamo Cardano travelled to Scotland to cure John Hamilton (1512 – 1571) and on the way back, he did stop in London, where he had a private interview with King Edward VI (1537 – 1553). Several editions of  De Subtilitate will follow as it came to be seen a sort of encyclopaedia – albeit scientifically not critical – of all what was by then known to mankind.

Only five years earlier Cardano had published the Artis Magnae, also in Nuremberg, with Petreius – one of the greatest printers of the Renaissance – a revolutionary text of mathematics, marking the first advancement in the field of algebra since the Arabs.

The De Subtilitate was never translated into Italian – perhaps due to the fact that a book put together with the scraps left over from it and known as De Rerum Varietate of 1557 was placed in the Index of the Forbidden Books by the Catholic Church and in 1570 Cardano suffered the humiliation of being locked in prison for several months by the Holy Inquisition. De Subtilitate was translated into French in 1556 by Richard Le Blanc and several vernacular editions did follow,  an unusual practice for scholarly book at the time, when every learned person was expected to read in Latin but which clearly underline the strong popular appeal exerted by this work.

After the publication of Girolamo Cardano’s Opera Omnia in Lyon, 1663, in 10 thick folio volumes, also the De Subtilitate was forgotten. What remained in print was his De Vita Propria, a sort of autobiography or better say his Apologia. Today we normally stumble into the De Subtilitate when Leonardo Da Vinci’s engineering feats are described. Is Cardano who tells us that Leonardo tried to fly but failed. This is an extraordinary statement and an highly credible one  if we consider that Cardano almost certainly met the great Florentine while he had returned to Milan for a second time, following the downfall of Ludovico il Moro. Girolamo Cardano’s father, Fazio, is mentioned by Leonardo in the Codex Atlanticus.

The popularity of the De Subtilitate, as it was expected, attracted also strong criticism, the strongest being that raised of Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484 – 1558) a Veronese living in France. He built his reputation by unleashing rabid attacks against famous writers, like Erasmo of Rotterdam, to mention one, as he was a sort of literary bully, like Piero Aretino. He set to attack Cardano by publishing his Exotericarum Exercitationorum Liber XV de Subtilitate it was a pettifogging attack on Cardano’s book and which could be classified today as unreadable trash. Scaliger tried to demonstrate that Cardano did hundreds of mistakes in his book. But this attack comically backfired when Scaliger was told that on reading his book in Milan, Cardano had a stroke and died. He quickly went out with a new book overflowing with gall and hypocrisy in which he said that he felt sorry to have killed the poor chap with his criticism and that, after all, he was not so bad. We imagine that after a few months, downing on him that Cardano was still alive and kicking, he  tried to buy back all the copies on sale of his sleazy eulogia and have them burned at home.

The downfall of Cardano begun in 1560 with the execution of his son, Giambattista, accused of having poisoned his wife. It was then that he published the Neronis Encomium  which I had translated in English and printed in a limited edition of 250 copies two years ago, a book where classic historiography is seen with a cynic eye.

This first complete translation of De Subtilitate in English is a great scholarly achievement and the two editors and translators, John M. Forrester and John Henry deserve great praise. Their rendering into modern English of Cardano’s obscure Latin is impeccable and the great number of notes available to the readers is a clear proof of their deep research into several fields.

The resurrection of Girolamo Cardano into the Arizona desert, at Tempe, reminds me of Franz Werfel personal profecy, waking up  after ten thousand years of death wearing the tail coat he had been buried with…or another great encyclopaedist like Cardano, Denis Diderot, who argued that since he did not believe in Heavenly rewards for philosophers, the only hope left was that of being part of the collective memory of posterity as a substitution of Christian immortality of the soul.

 

THE SUBTILITATE of Girolamo Cardano

Edited by John M. Forrester, with an Introduction of John Henry and John M. Forrester

The Arizona Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Tempe, Arizona, 2013.

2 Vol. Hardback, p. 1058.

ISBN 978-0-86698-484-3

A Renaissance artist lost in Hong Kong: Stefano Tordiglione.

Good news: Stefano Tordiglione Design has been awarded a new prize, the Golden Bund Award – For best Commercial Design (Excellence) for the L’Aurora Fashion Boutique in China!

大家好!

我們很高興與您分享一個好稍息: L’Aurora北極光時裝店榮獲了” 金外灘獎 – 最佳商業設計獎(優秀)”!

謝謝各位一直以來的支持, 我們會繼續提供優質的的設計服務!

I met Stefano Tordiglione, just a few years back, at dinner in the house of common friends and after exchanging a few words, I understood that the local Italian community – having gained this man – was richer and fuller than before. Stefano’s culture, bon-ton, wit and deep humanity were indeed impressive. The impression he made on all those he met during the following months was equally deep. That was not solely bare blossoming of flowers: heretofore plenty of fruits have ripen on the branches. In a couple of years he has turned into one of the brightest designer, architect and interior decorator available in South China, with his impeccable Italian taste blending harmoniously into the local lore.

 

Stefano was born in Napoli, Italy, then studied and worked for over 10 years in New York and London.
His first design experiences were in London during the fabulous early ’90s. Since then he has worked for internationally acclaimed Italian studios specialized in retail, luxury hotel and resorts, residential development and private yachts. His private Studio was founded after a stint as Director of a famous architectural and design studio. The art directions of Stefano Tordiglione can be described as East meets West, where every details is the result of deep research following intuition. With his ‘Mind in Italy’ approach, Stefano strives to integrate local culture and traditions .

Like the masters of the Italian Renaissance he is also creating as a solo artist, with his works now part of several international contemporary art collections. Last but not least he is a consultant for UNICEF as Project and Art Director for several international events.

Stefano Tordiglione through his company ‘Stefano Tordiglione Design’ is able to provide a very much needed multi-disciplinary professional approach to interior design and architectural services, such as: Hospitality, Residential, Office, Urban Planning, Restaurants & Bars.

STEFANO TORDIGLIONE DESIGN LTD
3/F, 37 STAUNTON STREET
SOHO, CENTRAL
HONG KONG TEL: (852) 2840 1100
FAX: (852) 2840 1198 email: info@tordiglione.com

 

A very negative view on the Euro’s future by an independent economist.

The euro’s failed experiment.

Policy making under the euro has failed because balancing the needs of stronger economies with weaker ones has been an impossible task.

David Brown From the South China Morning Post of 7 April 2014.

The euro-zone experiment is over. European Monetary Union should have carved out a brave new world for Europe. But it has all gone horribly wrong.

The fault lines have been in evidence for years. It is just a matter of time before the cracks turn into deeper fissures and weaker nations fall over the edge and crash out of the single currency. The writing is on the wall for EMU and the euro. It could happen within the next two years.

Critically, EMU has failed to deliver on the promised land of sustainable growth and job creation. The recovery is flagging and deflation threatens. Unemployment has soared to 12 per cent. Many weaker euro-zone nations remain saddled with crippling debts with little chance of repaying them. Euro zone policymakers remain paralysed with fear about what to do next.

The one-size-fits-all European Central Bank monetary policy … has been a complete myth

Policy-making under the euro has failed spectacularly. The root cause has always been managing the euro zone’s economic diversity. Two-tiered Europe has never worked under the euro. The one-size-fits-all European Central Bank monetary policy that supposedly works for the euro zone’s 18 separate business cycles has been a complete myth.

Trying to balance the policy needs of Germany, Finland and the Netherlands on one side of EMU with Greece, Cyprus and Portugal at the other extreme has been an impossible task.

ECB thinking has always been dominated by Germany’s inflation-obsessed Bundesbank, with the needs of weaker euro-zone nations taking a poor second place. Hopes for a change had risen with the arrival of Italian Mario Draghi at the ECB’s helm.

But inertia to change still dominates. Last week’s ECB policy meeting failed to deliver the vital breakthrough expected for the next tranche of monetary stimulus. Policy was left on hold.

A shift to negative interest rates, the introduction of quantitative easing and the need for a weaker euro had all been hinted at. Critically, with deflation fears deepening, even Germany seemed to have thrown its hat into the ring for easing.

The ECB’s reluctance to adopt these radical new steps is because it knows they will cause even more economic distortions. Negative interest rates, QE and a weaker euro will be biased in favour of strong economies like Germany at the expense of the weaker ones like Italy and Spain.

German banks will be in a stronger market position to lend easy QE money to borrowers, boosting domestic growth. On the external front, German exporters have a strong competitive edge. A weaker euro will boost that export advantage even more.

The gravitational pull of Germany’s success means capital and resources will continue to be drawn towards the euro zone’s epicentre and away from the beleaguered southern countries.

A fully functioning fiscal union is now needed to bridge the gap. Resources from the wealthier northern nations need to be marshalled into helping development in the weaker euro-zone economies. In other words, channelling transfer payments to southern Europe, financed by higher taxes in Germany.

This would be complete anathema for the average German voter and Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel knows it. Germany has been prepared to lend just enough bail-out cash to keep the euro zone afloat, but no more. Agreeing to euro zone fiscal union is a political non-starter for Germany.

As long as national prejudices and self-interest persist in the euro zone, fuller economic integration is doomed to failure.

Countries will do what they can to survive. Some euro-zone economies are already looking to take the easy way out on budget reform and deficit reduction.

France is looking to ditch its austerity targets thanks to slower growth. Political pressures are mounting on the government to ease up on deficit cutting. Voter dissatisfaction is playing a strong part in the U-turn. Stronger growth and job creation are the new imperatives.

Italy remains on the brink, weighed down by a yawning budget deficit and mountainous public sector debt. There is no mandate for getting Italian public finances and the economy back on track.

Five euro zone nations – Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus – almost went to the wall during the contagion crisis. They were only spared financial Armageddon thanks to massive government rescues. The cost of paying these bail-outs back over the future is huge. Tax-payers in these countries will face tough austerity for decades.

The danger is that popular dissent is starting to fill the vacuum. Anti-austerity opposition parties are tapping into rising voter anger, especially in countries like Greece and Italy where unemployment is high.

There is an alternative. Countries can always junk the euro and leave EMU. As the groundswell of anti-austerity and euro scepticism builds to critical levels, the risks of a euro exit will escalate. The economic rationale would be irresistible. Economies would be free to exploit a full armoury of reflation tools.

The conjunct of easy money, easy fiscal policy and an easy currency could revitalise recovery prospects at a stroke. These policies have lifted the US and Britain into strong recoveries. They would work equally well for any country exiting the euro. If Europe has had enough of austerity it is time to bid the euro farewell.

David Brown is the chief executive of New View Economic

I falsi occhiali da sole di Benito Mussolini

Alberto Botta, già sindaco di Sant’Abbondio Acquaseria, è uno storico dilettante e un appassionato collezionista di cimeli mussoliniani. Qualche anno fa il quotidiano La Provincia di Como e il Corriere di Como pubblicarono la notizia della sua acquisizione degli occhiali da sole che Benito Mussolini avrebbe indossato, travestito da soldato tedesco, quando fu fermato a Musso e poi portato a Dongo. La giornalista Barbara Daverio cosi’ commentava sul quotidiano La Provincia di Como del 18 marzo 2010:

Oggetti altamente evocativi, ma gli occhiali sono forse il reperto storicamente più significativo dell’intera collezione, perché vanno a integrare un piccolo tassello della controversa ricostruzione di quelle drammatiche giornate dell’aprile 1945.

L’ex partigiano Pierino Maffia avrebbe ricevuto il cappotto e gli occhiali in dono da Mussolini. Proprio quelli che, secondo la vulgata resistenziale sarebbero stati parte del suo travestimento – assieme  all’elmetto tedesco e al cappotto  – organizzato dal tenente delle SS Fritz Birzer prima di convincerlo a salire sul camion dei militi della contraerea tedesca.

 

 

 

Pierino Maffia era presente a Dongo, ma come tutti i partecipanti a quella drammatica vicenda racconta solo delle mezze verità. Mettendo da parte tutta la querelle del travestimento di Mussolini e del tipo di cappotto che indossava, riportiamo qui sotto cosa racconta Guido Buffelli, un finanziere presente a Dongo e un testimone altamente credibile che terrà Mussolini in custodia nella caserma di Germasino, raccogliendone gli ultimi commenti, proprio la sera del 27 Aprile 1945:

Il Negri salì sul camion e scorse, immediatamente dietro alla cabina di guida, un individuo in gran parte occultato con una coperta tedesca. Chiesto ai soldati tedeschi chi era, questi risposero: “Camerata tedesco ubriaco”, facendo contemporaneamente il gesto con la mano di chi porta il bicchiere verso la bocca. Ma il garibaldino non si accontentò della spiegazione e tirò un lembo della coperta scoprendo la testa del signor Mussolini che riconobbe.Vinto dalla sorpresa e dall’emozione il Negri ammutolì, scese e si mise alla ricerca del suo comandante, trovato Bill confidò la scoperta. Mentre la notizia si diffondeva rapidamente fra i presenti, Bill, salito sul camion e tolta completamente la coperta invitava il signor Mussolini a scendere dichiarandolo prigioniero della 52ma Brigata Garibaldi. Presente anche il maresciallo della guardia di finanza Nanci Francesco, giunto da Germasino per offrire la sua opera ai volontari. Mussolini, che vestiva la divisa della milizia fascista sotto un pastrano militare tedesco e che era armato di mitra, una pistola automatica “Glisenti” infilata nel cinturone e della pistola d’ordinanza degli ufficiali, scese senza motto saettando sguardi smarriti tutt’intorno dove ormai si era ammassata una folla numerosa che inveiva e imprecava all’indirizzo dell’ex duce.

Dunque nessun elmetto e nessun paio d’occhiali da sole.

Renato Maffia, figlio di Pierino Maffia, così ebbe a dichiarare, dopo la scomparsa del padre:

Gli occhiali, nel 1983, vennero donati da mio padre all’amico Gaetano Poncia di Dongo che li passò, nel 1986, ad Alberto Botta, che stava realizzando una raccolta di cimeli su Mussolini e le sue ultime ore. Il cappotto invece era già stato ceduto, intorno agli anni ’60, a un giornalista di Milano che lo ottenne soltanto per via della sua oppressiva insistenza. Non è mai più ricomparso.

Alberto Botta invece, sentito dal giornalista che aveva scritto il pezzo, così sbotta:

Ma quale giornalista! Il cappotto venne venduto da Pierino, per 5mila Lire, a un ufficiale polacco pochi giorni dopo la cattura.

Dunque Alberto Botta, che acquistò poi gli occhiali da Gaetano Poncia, sa bene che di Pierino non c’era da fidarsi e, infatti, siamo convinti che quegli occhiali siano falsi e non abbiano nulla a che vedere con Benito Mussolini.

Si tratta infatti di un paio di occhiali da sole pieghevoli, con cerniere sia sulle stanghette che in mezzo alla montatura, di colore marrone. Questo è un modello inventato negli anni ’60 dalla Persol, azienda fondata a Torino nel 1917 da Giuseppe Ratti e oggi di proprietà della Luxottica.

Questo tipo di occhiali erano prima sconosciuti, salvo certi primitivi modelli americani che paiono fatti con il fil di ferro. La Persol li lanciò alla fine degli anni ’60, sotto al nome “Persol Ratti 714/T”. Incontrarono subito una grande successo tanto che furono imitati da altre marche – come la RayBan – e molte altre occhialerie italiane che li riprodussero anonimamente. Sono ancora in produzione e sono soprattutto noti per il fatto che divennero i favoriti dall’attore Steve McQueen, anche quando non recitava. Gli occhiali da sole non erano comuni in quegli anni, essendo associati agli aviatori ma  Benito Mussolini ne aveva sempre fatto uso.  Il loro impiego non era però comune fra gli ufficiali germanici, che non li avevano in dotazione standard. I primi occhiali da sole per aviatori, i ‘Protector Cicogna’ vennero creati dalla ditta Persol di Torino negli anni ’20, e furono poi adottati da varie aviazioni militari di tutto il mondo.

In conclusione pensiamo che Pierino Moffa – se davvero entrò in possesso del pastrano e degli inesistenti occhiali portati da Benito Mussolini – forse li cedette entrambi al fantomatico ufficiale polacco e poi, trovati un paio di occhiali anonimi da sole negli anni ’70, li abbia ceduti – con tanto di dichiarazione giurata – all’amico Poncia, il quale poi, in buona fede, li passò al Botta.

 

 

The movie ‘Cenere’ with Eleonora Duse shown for the first time in Hong Kong.

The movie ‘Cenere’ with Eleonora Duse was inspired by Grazia Deledda’s book having the same title. It has been shown for the first time in Hong Kong on 2nd of April, 2014.

This was the second ‘Deleddian’ event after  the presentation at the Ferrari’s showroom in January. The next step  is scheduled for the end of May, with two experts from Sardinia coming to Hong Kong and Macau. There will be also the staging of a play written by Juan Morales. Finally, at the beginning of October, a delegation of professors and students from Hong Kong City University will travel to Sardinia for a writing retreat, there they will visit places appearing in Grazia Deledda’s novels.

Cenere was shot in 1916 with the script freely adapted by Duse and Febo Mari. This film is often quoted in the history of silent movies, because of Eleonara Duse’s extraordinary performance. At the inception of silent movies history, all actors tended to over-emphasize their actions and expressions to compensate the fact that they could not speak and there was no music.

This trend became exaggerated until a new wave of restrained gestures took old. Duse was credited with the invention of the elimination of self on theatrical stage, this concept of transforming yourself into the character was not the case before her. She then took her technique into this film. Eleonora Duse’s performance was one of the first steps in the right direction, and her acting style was followed by Janet Gaynor, Priscilla Dean and Greta Garbo. This film deserves to be digitally cleaned and mended, well knowing that about 80% of silent movies are lost and the remaining 20% are in bad condition, Cenere, unfortunately, is no exception to this sad rule.

Grazia Deledda – the author of the book ‘Cenere’ – was born on 27 September 1871, in Nuoro, Sardinia and lived there until she was 29. She received only an elementary school education, class 4, because her family barred her from going to high school and university being a girl she built her impressive writing skill by reading, writing and taking sort of private tuition in Nuoro, given by a teacher. Deledda by the age of 14 begun writing for several ladies magazines. Deledda’s mother was a pious lady of Spanish descent. Her father was well off but died when she was only 16.Her favorite authors were Victor Hugo, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Balzac. Deledda married in 1900 Palmiro Madesani, a civil servant from Lombardy, she had met him in Cagliari and then they moved to Rome. Will power and hard work were Deledda’s strong points. Deledda wrote every day, 2/3 hours in the afternoon, seven days a week, always by hand. She always thought in the Nuorese dialect and had to translate it into Italian while writing.

 

Unlike other writers she was not looking for linguistic and fashionable effects, perhaps this explains why her writings remain fresh and clear. She only wanted to convey meaning, colours and emotions. They described her as the Italian George Sand. Her fame became well established internationally with the Nobel Prize which she won in 1926.  The second woman after the Swedish Selma Lagerlof receiving the Nobel for Literature; the second Italian after the poet Giosuè Carducci. All her books can be called long love letters to her native land. At the end of her life she had written 35 novels and hundreds of short stories.  She died of breast cancer in Rome on 15 august 1936 at 65.

The book ‘Cenere’ was first printed in 1903 (the same year of Elias Portolu) in 3 installments on the magazine NUOVA ANTOLOGIA by Maggiorino Ferraris and the following year, in 1904, it came out in book form. It was one of her most successful books and was soon translated into several languages. It is a very dramatic story where we feel the influence of Nietzsche and Victor Hugo.

 

 

A married man from Nuoro deceives and then abandons a young girl he had taken as his lover. The girl is called Rosalia. When Rosalia gets pregnant she is thrown out by her family and abandoned by her lover. With the newly born boy, called Anania, first she goes to stay with the wife of a bandit in the village of Fonni, after a few years she is forced to abandon him and leave Sardinia. Before sending him out at around 5 she put on his neck a rezetta, a talisman. A wealthy benefactor will take care of the boy’s upbringing and the man’s daughter, Margherita, will fall in love of him. Anania will be successful in the legal profession but he is obsessed by the idea of finding his lost mother. He found her in Rome, working as a prostitute, surrounded by thieves and beggars. Margherita, his fiancée, could not accept such a mother in law and Rosalia, realizing that public knowledge of her life will jeopardize her son’s impending marriage and professional success, makes the ultimate maternal sacrifice to ensure his future.  She suicides. After her death, Anania opens the amulet her mother gave him, and found that it contained only ashes, a presage of what life is.

 

There is a lot of crude bitterness in this book, reminding of Gorki but also a wonderful psychological interpretation of the characters as well as deep description of the Sardinian landscape. It created a storm of criticism because of his crudity.

Eleonora Duse was born in Vigevano in 1858. Her parents were professional actors but they went hungry several times. Her first success in Verona when she was 14 and did play Juliet.

She had been one of  the most famous actresses of her time with Sarah Bernhard. Chekov, George Bernard Show, Joyce, Rilke, John Barrymore, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo all adored her.

They thought she was a saint being so deeply moved by her magic, supernatural way of acting. In fact  she never used complicated costumes, or jewels or even make up. She was able not only to cry and smile but also to blush and pale by will command.

She was famous for her voice, deep and full of passion, but we don’t have a record.

 

 

Duse became famous for her passions and affairs, she toured America several times. Between 1887 and 1894 she was the lover of the poet Arrrigo Boito, who had written several librettos for Verdi. In 1895 she met Gabriele D’Annunzio, 5 years younger than her and they become lovers.

In 1896 Edison convinced her to record her voice, the last ACT of Dumas’s ‘The Lady of the Camellias.’ Such recording was unfortunately burn with most of Edison recordings so we do not know how her famed voice was. There are no other recordings or other moving images apart from this film. She was so popular that in 1923 was the first woman on the cover of TIME magazine. When she toured the USA  president of President Cleveland’s wife threw a party in her honour at the White House, never done before for an actress. It was a scandal. Duse loved the book Cenere, like the character she was made pregnant, like Rosalia when young by a Neapolitan journalist who later abandoned her. Duse married an actor had a daughter but they separated because Duse did fall in love of another man.

This movie was not well received and had negative criticism. Critics said that the book was not well suited to be transformed in a movie but Duse felt the character so much that several times had to stop to let her stop crying. The film was assembled in Turin. She was pushing the director with these words: “Keep me in the shadows and don’t, don’t show my hands, because hands reveal the face…’

This film was shot in Val di Lanzo, near Turin, not in Sardinia or in Versilia, or Lazio as some said. Duse decided not to shoot other movies after ‘Cenere’ also because she had a car crash few months after the release of the film, in Alassio, injuring her face. The script was written by Duse and by Febo Mari (a Sicilian greatly appreciated by D’Annunzio) ho also plays the part of the grown up son of Rosalia and was also the film director. 1921, and in 1923 Duse toured London, Vienna, United States, dyeing of tuberculosis in Pittsburgh, in a hotel room in 1926, like Violetta Valery, in the Opera La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi.

 

 

Germany’s selfishness hangs over its partners. Perhaps it is time to consider radical changes within the EC.

This wonderfully clear article has been taken from the South China Morning Post. It is a problem that could only grow bigger and worst.   

Germany’s massive exports to the euro zone comes at the expense of its weaker partners and urgent change is needed to help bridge the gap

PUBLISHED : Monday, 24 March, 2014, 4:45am

David Brown

Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen

The euro zone reads to some like a classic tale of two economies.

Germany has the heroic plot, while the rest of the euro zone has all the makings of a horror story.

The truth is that heroic Germany is deeply flawed, and its selfishness leaves the spectre of recession haunting the weaker euro-zone countries.

Germany’s post-war economic model is built on thrift, productivity and enterprise. German consumers save rather than spend. German industry exports its goods ruthlessly inside the single market, at the expense of its euro-zone partners.

As German trade surpluses swelled, deficits in France, Italy and Spain ballooned. Germany’s current account surplus probably hit a new record in 2013, about US$250 billion, even greater than that of China.

Before the creation of the single currency, the weaker countries now inside it competed against German exports by using currency devaluations to boost trade competitiveness. Since the advent of the euro zone, that is no longer possible.

The adoption of the single currency has only accelerated the pull of capital and productive capacity towards Germany. The car industry provides a clear example. Car producers in Germany enjoy growing success, while the motor industries in France, Italy and Spain slide into decline.

At some stage, this trend must be addressed. Germany’s massive export engine gives it an unfair advantage over its euro-zone partners.

Without a radical change – including a change in consumer behaviour that stimulates the purchase of imports – Germany’s trade surpluses will only get bigger.

Meanwhile zombies, in the form of the mass unemployed, stalk the likes of Spain and Greece. A quarter of the labour force is jobless in both countries.

The young are particularly at risk – youth unemployment rates are as high as 50 per cent. The risks of decay in social cohesion and political stability are clear.

Recovery in the five euro-zone countries bailed out by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund – Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus – has been torturous. Deep fiscal austerity cuts, deleveraging and debt deflation have weighed heavily on confidence.

That vital energy has been sapped from the wider euro-zone recovery is also evident in Germany. While growth looks good on the surface, it should be doing much better, considering the scale of stimulus pumped into it in recent years.

Germany’s current account surplus probably hit a new record in 2013, about US$250 billion, even greater than that of China

The massive injection of easy money into the ailing euro-zone economy should have been a policy turbo-charge for Germany. Growth should have gone into overdrive. But it has fired on only three cylinders.

European Commission forecasts recently upgraded German growth expectations to 1.8 per cent this year and 2 per cent for next year. This is not exactly explosive performance compared with the US and Britain, where trend growth rates for both countries are rising above 3 per cent.

The US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England were both much quicker off the mark with dramatic rate cuts. And they both fanned the fires of recovery with quantitative easing – an option the ECB still needs to consider.

Germany could have helped itself to stronger growth if it had shared more of its success with its euro-zone partners.

The euro zone’s economic future should not be determined by the supremacy of comparative advantage and industrial success in one country alone.

Economic prosperity must be spread throughout the 340 million-member market. The euro zone is crying out for fundamental change.

A move to European fiscal union is the next inevitable step.

The single market for goods and monetary union are only two legs of the policy equation. It now needs an extra leg for stability.

Fiscal union and more effective regional redistribution of resources will help to bridge the gap between Germany and the weaker euro-zone countries.

Using German taxpayers’ money to fund social transfers and income support to Greece may be a step too far for German sensibilities.

But without it, the euro zone might not survive in the long run.

David Brown is chief executive of New View Economics