Intervista di Vatican Insider al nostro Gianni Criveller

Il missionario teologo intervistato da Credere sul gesuita vicino agli altari: «Grande uomo di cultura, gli stava a cuore l’evangelizzazione della Cina. Il miracolo? Non ancora».

Domenico Agasso Jr, Torino:

«Un uomo, un missionario e uno scienziato di assoluto rilievo: un personaggio che andrebbe studiato a fondo a scuola, così come si fa con i grandi del passato, e come avviene tutt’oggi in Cina e nel mondo. Quando si pensa alla Cina del passato, a tutti viene in mente Marco Polo. Ma, per molti aspetti, Matteo Ricci è assai più importante: nella storia della Chiesa ma, più in generale, in quella della cultura». Lo afferma padre Gianni Criveller, missionario del Pime, teologo e saggista, in un’intervista rilasciata al settimanale Credere, in edicola domani. Criveller è «da anni attivo nella “grande Cina” (Hong Kong, Pechino, Macao)», spiega l’autore dell’articolo Gerolamo Fazzini, «a lui, infatti, la diocesi di Macerata-Tolentino-Recanati-Cingoli-Treia aveva affidato il compito di guidare la commissione storica su Ricci».

«La documentazione relativa alla causa di beatificazione del grande missionario marchigiano – ricorda Fazzini – è giunta a Roma dopo che, nel maggio scorso a Macerata, si è chiusa la fase diocesana del processo. E c’è chi scommette che, visto il precedente di Favre, il gesuita Bergoglio conceda una corsia preferenziale verso gli altari a quello che non è solo uno dei nomi di maggior spicco della Compagnia di Gesù, ma, in generale, uno dei protagonisti assoluti della storia missionaria della Chiesa universale».

Criveller aggiorna la situazione dell’indagine storica sul personaggio-Ricci: «È difficile fare scoperte nuove su Ricci, in quanto è un personaggio studiato da decine di validi studiosi in tutto il mondo. Il compito della commissione storica è stato quello di interpretare la figura di Ricci; verificare l’esistenza della fama di santità, provare la santità di vita come emerge dai suoi scritti, e risolvere storicamente i dubbi e i giudizi negativi talvolta pronunciati nei suoi confronti. Crediamo di esserci riusciti».

Sulla fama di santità «si è talvolta scritto che non c’era attorno a padre Matteo Ricci. Ma, studiando le fonti cinesi, trascurate in precedenti ricerche, abbiamo stabilito che a soli 12 anni dalla morte di Ricci la comunità cristiana cinese lo considerava un santo e lo invocava come tale. Negli anni Trenta del secolo scorso questa fama era ancora viva tra le comunità cattoliche».

Dal punto di vista spirituale, il missionario teologo dice: «Ricci aveva un diario spirituale, andato distrutto. Ma fonti cinesi e resoconti a lui contemporanei mostrano l’eroico impegno – spirituale, missionario e culturale – che l’ha portato alla morte per stanchezza. Ricci, infatti, fu un vero e proprio “martire dell’amicizia”: si è letteralmente consumato per i proprio amici. Ancora: nel lavoro di ricostruzione storica, abbiamo sottolineato la centralità di un sogno del giugno 1595; in esso Gesù, consolandolo in un momento di grave crisi, promette a Matteo che un giorno avrebbe raggiunto Pechino. Il sogno è certamente autentico (Ricci lo racconta ben sei anni prima che la profezia si realizzi) e mostra come Ricci viva tutta la sua esperienza missionaria sotto il segno della Provvidenza, che lo guida e lo conforta». E «la categoria del “sogno”, come indicazione divina, accomuna Ricci ad almeno altri tre significativi santi della Chiesa: san Paolo, sant’Ignazio di Loyola e san Giovanni Bosco».

Criveller dichiara che non c’è un miracolo riconosciuto per intercessione di Ricci: «C’è stata una guarigione certamente straordinaria, proposta all’attenzione di una commissione medica, ma non ha superato il vaglio della totale impossibilità secondo le conoscenze mediche. Occorre, dunque, proporre Ricci alla devozione dei fedeli».

«Ricci non fu solo – lo descrive – o forse neanche principalmente, un missionario-scienziato e uomo

di cultura; fu un uomo di Dio che credeva nel potere della grazia, della provvidenza, della parola, dei segni e delle immagini sacre. Nelle sue lettere descrisse episodi di miracoli, meraviglie ed esempi edificanti tra i suoi convertiti, che vengono quasi sempre omessi nelle ricostruzioni dell’opera missionaria di Ricci. Stando alle lettere e resoconti di Ricci e dei missionari suoi contemporanei, le conversioni erano dovute in gran parte alla potenza di eventi prodigiosi o alla vita edificante di cristiani estremamente devoti».

E poi, sull’apprezzamento espresso in varie occasioni da Papa Francesco, dice: «Le parole di Bergoglio su Ricci sono molto efficaci. Giovanni XXIII fu il primo Papa, nel 1959, a menzionare in modo positivo Ricci, togliendolo dall’ombra di condanna che pesava su di lui dopo il drammatico esito della controversia dei Riti cinesi, che tanto ha danneggiato la missione in Cina. Paolo VI e Giovanni Paolo II avevano pienamente riabilitato Ricci, mentre Benedetto XVI fu senz’altro il Papa che l’ha studiato e conosciuto meglio, e che ne ha parlato con grande competenza e convinto apprezzamento».

500 years of Italians in Macau and Hong Kong

 

 

Personally I have always been a fan of history, especially local history and I have collected books connected to the places where I live.

My contribution to this book was limited to its secular section. My interest in history. Perhaps this is due to the

fact that we have, as modern men, the feeling of living inside an atomic explosion, where everything is accelerating – as a famous physicist once said – and Hong Kong and Macau in particular are places where everything shifts like quicksand. Once we move out from here, our names are quickly gone and forgotten.

In 1513, according to some authors, the first European to set foot on China – after the 1368 fall of the Yuan Dynasty and the Mongols occupation of China – could have been Raffaele Perestrello with Jorge Alvarez. Technically Perestrello was a Portuguese but he had Italian roots: his grandfather had emigrated from Piacenza to Portugal and his cou

sin, also a Perestrello, was the wife of Columbus, the Genoese that prompted by the Florentine Pozzo Toscanelli sailed West looking for China.

Perestrello and Alvarez landed on Lintin Island, known today as Nei Lintin – visible from Castle Peak, very close to Hong Kong but part of Zhuhai

During a presentation at the Asia Society at the end of last year I concentrated on Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli, a Neapolitan consular representative here for 20 years (he retired to Canton in 1919 and then went to Yokohama in Japan, where he died in 1936)
He was a great sinologist and

a scholar. I have presented him in a more complete way at the Asia Society and an article about him will be published on an historical magazine going to be launched in Macau next month by my friend Ricardo Pinto.

We recently discovered that he had translated in Chinese the 1764 book by Cesare Beccaria On Crimes and Punishments (Dei Delitti e delle Pene) a milestone for the Illuminist movement.

This year will mark the 250 anniversary of its publication, there are celebrations coming in Italy and Beijing. We have been unable to locate a copy in China of the translation made by Zanoni Volpicelli.

This book was first printed anonymous in Leghorn in 1764 when Beccaria was only 26 years old. He was not only advocating the abolishment of the dead

penalty but also that of torture which in France was still in force (abolished in Sweden, Austria, Prussia, Switzerland).

He was also against life imprisonment and against considering suicide a crime which, at that time, was a punishable on the dead body or on the relatives. In 1766 was put in the index of forbidden books by the Catholic Church. Beccaria died at 59.

Volpicelli wrote several other books, but not in Italian, always French, English, Chinese and Japanese.

 

 

 

FRANCESCO GEMELLI CARERI

He was born in Taurianova, Calabria, South Italy in 1651 – died in Naples in 1725. Studied at the Jesuits college and took the judiciary, he became a magistrate. Took up travelling and was wounded by Turks at Budapest. Returning to Naples wrote Campaign of Hungary (1689) and Travelled in Europe (1693).

  1. He left Sat 13 june 1693, went to say farewell to his brother, an Abbot, wrote his will with everybody trying to stop him and left for Egypt. He told everybody that he was going to the Holy Land and then would return.

He got a boat to Macau, where he expressed admiration for Portuguese courage and industry, ‘people will stop at nothing, they push forward at risk of their lives and their accumulated riches’

He wrote: ‘In no other place I had such good meals as in Macau!’

 

‘Having arrived at the time of such disturbances (the Rites controversy with Bishop De Tournon put in jail in Macau only a few years later) they all believed that I was an envoy of His Holiness to get secret information. One suspected I was a Friar, another a Priest and, even if I always told them the truth That is that I was a Neapolitan magistrate and I was travelling for my pleasure, adding that the Pope had not given me even a coin for my trip, and I did not care for their Missions, but they seemed unconvinced adding that since the time of their first mission they had never seen a Neapolitan there who was not a missionary.’

He met emperor Kangxi together Fr. Grimaldi s.j. who was working on the new Kalandar of 1696. They enter the room of the throne where Kangxi sits, books close and ink and pen. He was wearing a vest in gold colour with 2 dragoons embroidered, on his left and right were eunuchs.

The book ends with a letter he found in Naples, written from China in French by Jean Basset, 25 March 1697.

He tells him that several father in China though wonderful the fact that he could make to Beijing alone. he recommended that no others should follow his example ‘plusers curioux vous imiter’ there he announced the dead of some old missionaries, Fr. Prospero Intorcetta s.j. author of the  Sinarum Scientia Politicus Moralis with most of the Confucian corpus. Updated him about the latest war in Tartary organized by Kangxi.

 

 

 

 

 

Gianni Criveller, su Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Teologo protestante, martire del nazismo Breslau, Germania (oggi Wroclaw, Polonia), 4 febbraio 1906 – Flossenburg, 9 aprile 1945

Non tutti i tedeschi condividevano le politiche naziste, alcuni furono in aperta contrapposizione pagando con il carcere, le torture, i lavori forzati, la vita stessa. Alcuni presero parte ad un tentativo di uccidere Hitler per salvare la nazione tedesca dalla catastrofe e l’Europa dalla tirannia nazista. Fra loro il teologo e pastore protestante Dietrich Bonhoeffer, uno dei maggiori e più aperti oppositori dell’ideologia nazista. Bonhoeffer maturò la sua forte opposizione al nazismo a contatto con Gerhard Leibholz di origine ebrea e marito della sua gemella Sabine. Si schierò con la “Chiesa confessante”, una minoranza della chiesa evangelica che resisteva al regime nazista. Impossibilitato a insegnare in patria, lavorò lunghi anni all’estero. Ma allo scoppio della guerra decise di tornare in patria, per condividere il destino del suo popolo e unirsi alla resistenza tedesca. Arrestato dalla Gestapo, dal carcere scrisse le celebri lettere e appunti, raccolte in “Resistenza e Resa”. Fu condannato a morte e impiccato il 9 aprile 1945, a 49 anni, per espresso ordine di Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, viene considerato uno dei dieci “testimoni” delle cristianità del secolo scorso. La sua statua nella facciata dell’abbazia di Westminster (Inghilterra) è in compagnia, fra gli altri, di Martin Luther King, di Oscar Romero e di san Massimiliano Kolbe. La sua teologia in brevi pensieri “La religiosità umana rinvia l’uomo nella sua tribolazione alla potenza di Dio nel mondo: Dio è il deus ex machina, che risponde ai nostri bisogni. La Bibbia invece rinvia l’uomo all’impotenza e alla sofferenza di Dio; solo il Dio sofferente può aiutare. Non è l’atto religioso a fare il cristiano, ma il prender parte alla sofferenza di Dio nella vita del mondo. Non dobbiamo attribuire a Dio il ruolo di tappabuchi nei confronti dell’incompletezza delle nostre conoscenze. Dio vuole esser colto da noi non nelle questioni irrisolte, ma in quelle risolte. Dio non deve essere riconosciuto dove finiscono le nostre capacità, ma esattamente al centro della nostra vita. Dio vuole essere riconosciuto nella vita, e non solamente nel morire; nella salute e nella forza, e non solamente nella sofferenza; nell’agire, e non solamente nel peccato. È così che Dio si rivela in Gesù Cristo. Egli è il centro della vita, e non è affatto “venuto apposta” per rispondere alle nostre questioni irrisolte.”

Una poesia scritta in carcere (da Resistenza e Resa). Uomini vanno a Dio nella loro tribolazione piangono per aiuto, chiedono felicità e pane, salvezza dalla malattia, dalla colpa, dalla morte. Così fanno tutti, tutti, cristiani e pagani. Uomini vanno a Dio nella sua tribolazione, lo trovano povero, oltraggiato, senza tetto né pane, lo vedono consunto da peccati, debolezza e morte. I cristiani stanno vicino a Dio nella sua sofferenza. A tutti gli uomini va Dio nella loro tribolazione sazia il corpo e l’anima con il suo pane muore di morte in croce per cristiani e pagani e ad ambedue perdona. Pensieri dal carcere “Quando si è rinunciato del tutto a fare qualcosa di se stessi: un santo, un peccatore convertito o un uomo di Chiesa, un giusto o un ingiusto, un malato o un sano, allora ci si getta interamente nelle braccia di Dio, allora si prendono finalmente sul serio non le proprie, ma le sofferenze di Dio nel mondo, allora si veglia con Cristo nei Getsemani e, io penso, questa è fede; e così diventiamo uomini, diventiamo cristiani”. “È buio dentro di me, ma presso di te c’è luce; sono solo, ma tu non mi abbandoni, sono impaurito, ma presso di te c’è aiuto; sono inquieto, ma presso di te c’è pace; in me c’è amarezza, ma presso di te c’è pazienza, non comprendo le tue vie, ma tu conosci la mia vita” (Natale 1943).

Gianni Criveller

 

 

 

 

Pavel Florenskij visto da Gianni Criveller

Pavel Florenskij

(di Gianni Criveller, gennaio 2014)

Benedetto XVI ha citato il martire, pensatore e sacerdote russo Pavel Florenskij almeno due volte. Il 13 febbraio 2013, due giorni dopo l’annuncio delle sue dimissioni, Benedetto ricorda tre figure di convertiti e testimoni del nostro tempo: Etty Hillesum, Dorothy Day e Pavel Florenskij. Dice papa Benedetto

Dopo un`educazione completamente agnostica, tanto da provare vera e propria ostilità verso gli insegnamenti religiosi impartiti a scuola, lo scienziato Florenskij si trova ad esclamare: “no, non si può vivere senza Dio!’, e a cambiare completamente la sua vita, tanto da farsi monaco“.

Pavel Florenskij (1882-1937), martire della chiesa ortodossa russa, fu un geniale matematico e scienziato; poeta di talento, musicista e storico dell’arte; linguista ed etimologo versato in molte lingue; originale pensatore, teologo e filosofo. Fu una personalità rara e ricca, su cui c’e’ ancora molto da scoprire e conoscere. Fu fucilato nel 1937, dopo anni di prigionia nei Gulag sovietici.

Papa Benedetto aveva citato Pavel Florenskij nel corso del Regina Coeli del 16 maggio 2010, solennità dell’Ascensione (le parole riportate dal papa sono in grassetto).

Figlioli miei carissimi… abituatevi, imparate a fare tutto quel che fate con passione, ad avere il gusto del bello, dell’ordine; non disperdetevi, non fate niente senza gusto, a qualche maniera. Ricordatevi che nel “pressapochismo” si può perdere tutta la vita, e al contrario, nel compiere in maniera ordinata, armoniosa, anche cose e opere di secondaria importanza si possono fare tante scoperte, che poi vi serviranno come sorgenti profondissime di nuova creatività… E non solo. Chi fa “a qualche maniera”, impara a parlare nello stesso modo, e la parola trascurata implica poi di conseguenza anche un pensiero confuso. Figlioli miei carissimi, non permettete a voi stessi di pensare in maniera trascurata. Il pensiero è un dono di Dio, richiede che ce ne prendiamo cura. Essere chiari e responsabili nel proprio pensiero è il pegno della libertà spirituale e della gioia del pensiero.

Era tanto che volevo scrivervelo: “Osservate più spesso le stelle. Quando avrete un peso nell’animo, guardate le stelle o l’azzurro del cielo. Quando vi sentirete tristi, quando vi offenderanno, quando non vi riesce qualcosa oppure vi sopraffà la tempesta interiore, uscite fuori e rimanete a tu per tu con il cielo. E allora la vostra anima si placherà.”

Non rattristatevi e non datevi pena per me. Se sarete lieti e coraggiosi, ne sarò confortato anch’io. Sarò sempre con voi nell’anima, e se il Signore lo permetterà verrò a voi di frequente per vegliare su di voi. La cosa più importante che vi chiedo è che facciate sempre memoria del Signore e camminiate al Suo cospetto. Con questo, vi ho detto tutto quello che ero in grado di dirvi. Il resto non sono che particolari secondari. Ma questo non dimenticatevelo mai.”

La vera bellezza

Uscendo da una profonda depressione giovanile, Pavel sviluppò una specie di rivolta interiore contro l’ipocrisia nella chiesa e nel mondo. Detestava le norme prescritte che fossero determinate dal modo in cui il mondo pensa. Attratto dal misticismo e dalla vita monastica, il suo pensiero scopre nella “bellezza spirituale” l’ideale della vita cristiana. La bellezza abbagliante di una personalità radiosa e luminosa, che gli uomini carnali, appesantiti dal mondo non riescono a ottenere. Il suo modello erano gli Anziani monaci, marginalizzati dal mondo in quanto rozzi ed ignoranti, ma che vivevano l’ideale cristiano meglio di chiunque altro. Il cristianesimo vissuto produce “non tanto una personalità buona, quanto una personalità bella. La caratteristica particolare dei grandi santi non è tanto la bontà di cuore, che hanno anche gli uomini carnali e persino i grandi peccatori, ma la bellezza dello spirito”.

Florenskij detestava dunque tutte le forme di simulazione, soprattutto quella degli uomini di chiesa. Se ne ha riprova nel seguente episodio, riportato Alexander Elchaninov (più tardi anche lui si fece sacerdote) nel suo diario. I due giovani amici stavano discutendo circa un certo vescovo Gabriel.

Il giorno prima, scrive Elchaninov, il vescovo Gabriel aveva celebrato da noi, e io rimasi affascinato dalla solennità e dalla particolarità con cui celebrava. Ne parlai con Pavel.

Conosci la mia opinione di lui, iniziò a dirmi con irritazione. Tutto suona falso e teatrale. Egli pronuncia le parole, e si sente che il tono e la dizione sono preparati in partenza, e che si guarda intorno per vedere che tipo di impressione quelle parole creano negli altri. Io lo conosco, e non posso liberarmi da questa sensazione. Per me, al contrario, il servizio della chiesa è amato proprio quando viene condotto come in ogni parte della Russia, dove è goffo, caotico, e via dicendo. Amo l’aspetto degli schiavi, mentre tu vorresti che perfino gli stracci sembrino irreali e abbiano i bordi di seta. Ciò che sto dicendo è evangelico, non solo ortodosso. Perché Cristo amava tanto la compagnia delle prostitute e dei pubblicani? Immaginale: erano vere puttane che litigavano, parlavano in modo indecente, imprecavano… e Cristo preferiva la loro compagnia a quella dei farisei. Pensaci, perché si dice, ‘Il potere di Dio si vede nella povertà’? La povertà non è solo debolezza, non è qualche malattia poetica come la tubercolosi, ma peccaminosità, corruzione. Cristo stava con i peccatori non solo perché ne avevano più bisogno, ma perché per Lui era più piacevole stare con loro; li amava per la loro semplicità e umiltà.

Gianni Criveller

 

Gianni Criveller’s “The inner transformation of Etty Hillesum” from the Catholic Sunday Examiner – HK

The inner transformation of Etty Hillesum

by Gianni Criveller

Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman from Amsterdam, who was killed on 30 November 1943 in Auschwitz, has left behind her a diary and letters that are capturing an increasing number of readers worldwide.

Many emphasise words or phrases that are particularly significant for them, or they open a page at random, to find words that give light or comfort. She herself, in crucial moments, used to do the same with the bible.

Life is really beautiful

In the first pages of the diary, Etty natters her inner confusion. She searches for emotional security in men and clutches at Julius Spier, founder of psychochirology (psychological counseling based on hand analysis) and her therapist; she falls in love with him and becomes his lover.

She reads a lot—Jung, Dostoevsky (especially The Idiot) and Rainer Maria Rilke, the most beloved German poet. She also reads the bible and she especially mentions the psalms, the gospels and St. Paul. She knows other Christian authors, including St. Augustine and St. Francis.

From the window of her room she looks at the night sky, at the horizon and the flowers. She lives in an alternative world to the Nazi madness. Experiencing other realities is the conscientious objection by Etty against the barbarism that surrounds her:

In all this chaos and misery I follow my own rhythm, so much so that at any given moment between typing letters I can immerse myself in the things that matter to me. It is not that I am cutting myself off from all the suffering around me, nor is it a dulling of the senses. I take everything in and store it away, but I go my own way (191).

There is a tree that looks at her, a silent witness of a stupefying transformation we are going to describe in this paper:

The tree is still there, the tree that could write my life story. But it is no longer the same tree, or is it I who am no longer the same? (198).

Her inner world is nourished by the beauty of nature (the tree, the red-pink cyclamen, the roses), by her favorite authors, her poetry and her writing. Etty professes a faith that is particularly disconcerting in the beauty of life:

If I should survive and keep saying, ‘Life is beautiful and meaningful,’ then they will have to believe me! If all this suffering does not help us to broaden our horizon, to attain a greater humanity by shedding all trifling and irrelevant issues, then it will all have been for nothing (191).

This morning I said to Jopie, ‘It still all comes down to the same thing: life is beautiful. And I believe in God. And I want to be there right in the thick of what people call ‘horror’ and still be able to say: life is beautiful’ (226).

The same impressive statement is reiterated in the deportation camp of Westerbork (Holland), where Jews were herded before being deported to Auschwitz:

The misery that is here is quite terrible; and yet, late at night when the day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire. And then time and again, it soars straight from my heart—I can’t help it, that’s just the way it is, like some elementary force—the feeling that life is glorious and wonderful (294).

On 2 September 1943, three months before her death, Etty wrote her last letter:

How terribly young we were only a year ago on this heath, Maria! Now we’ve grown a little older. We hardly realised it ourselves: we have been marked by suffering for a whole lifetime. And yet life in its unfathomable depths is so wonderfully good, Maria—I have to come to that time and again (358-359).

You taught me to speak the name of God

The diary begins (9 March 1941) when Etty meets the love of her life, Julius Spier. It was exactly the irregular affair with Spier, who was separated from his wife, but with a girlfriend in London, which marked a radical turning point in the life of the lost girl from Amsterdam.

Etty loved very much “the man she shall always long for” (174-175); and affirmed that “out of my love for him I must draw strength and love to everyone who needs it” (167).

Etty was a woman sexually liberated and even reckless. She had to co-opt her inner forces “to fight against my appetite for adventure and my far-reaching erotic curiosity” (17) and emotionally free herself from her master and lover.

“God knows how ‘terribly’ I have become ‘used’ to him,” she wrote on 7 July 1942 (167).

Only two months later, sitting at the side of Spier’s corpse (who died on the very same day he was to be deported to Westerbork), she realised that such a titanic process of emotional emancipation was fully accomplished.

On 16 September 1942, Etty, she writes:

I am not really sad, am I? I would like to fold my hands and say: Friends, I am happy and grateful, and I find life very beautiful and meaningful. Yes, even as I stand here by my dead companion, one who died much too soon, and just when I may be deported to some unknown destination. And yet, God, I am grateful for everything (203).

It was the love affair with Julius Spier that gave Etty the emotional toll and language that allowed her to meet and talk to God (we shall return to this surprising outcome of the inner experience of Etty):

You taught me to speak the name of God without embarrassment. You were the mediator between God and me, and now that you, the mediator, have gone, and my path leads straight to God. And I shall be the mediator for any other soul I can reach (200).

I feel the need to be a little voice

Spier asked Etty to write a diary for therapeutic purposes. The transformation that writing caused in Etty was radical indeed, disclosing to her a moral and historical mission. On 6 August 1941, a few months after beginning her diary, Etty expressed the awareness of the need to write and the enormous effort that this exercise required:

I want to become the chronicler of the things that are happening now (…) Oh yes, a chronicler (…) I have stopped crying. But my head still throbs. It is sheer hell here. I would have to be quite a writer to describe it properly (…) I am sometimes so distracted by all the appalling happenings round me that it’s far from easy to find the way back to myself. And yet that’s what I must do. I mustn’t let myself be ground down by the misery outside (41).

Her diary, on 9 March 1941, begins with words of great uncertainty, hesitation and frustration.

The exercise of writing was an adversary that needed to be put under control:

Here goes, then. This is a painful and well-nigh insuperable step for me: yielding up so much that has been suppressed to a blank sheet of lined paper (…) Deep down something like a tightly wound ball of twine binds me relentlessly, and at times I am nothing more or less than a miserable, frightened creature, despite the clarity with which I can express myself (3).

Etty puts into practice the directive of her therapist in an excellent way: by writing she becomes aware of herself and of her talents:

The only fulfillment for me now is to lose myself in a piece of prose or in a poem with each word of which I have to wrestle (70).

Last night when I was walking home to mull over the latest news, I thought to myself: I could write a book… I hope I shall remember everything that happens to us so that one day I’ll be able to retell it all. It is so different from everything you read in books, altogether different. (…) I approach things like an artist and expect that later, when I feel the need to tell everything, I shall have what talent it takes to do so (168-169).

Time will come when writing would be really an agonising and excruciating exercise. Every Monday, from the camp of Westerbork, thousands of Jews were loaded into trains and deported to Auschwitz. The following scene is to take place at the deportation camp of Westerbork on the night of 23 August 1943. Etty is still in shock, and claims that narrating what has happened is impossible, as she still cannot believe what she has just seen:

There was a moment when I felt in all seriousness that after this night it would be a sin ever to laugh again. (…) I sank to my knees with the words that preside over human life: and God made man after His likeness. That passage spent a difficult morning with me. I have told you often enough that no words and images are adequate to describe nights like these. But still I must try to convey something of it for you. One always has that feeling here of being the ears and the eyes of a piece of Jewish history, but there is also the need sometimes to be a still, small voice (…).

But the babies, those tiny piercing screams of the babies, dragged from their cots in the middle of the night to be transported away. I have to put it all down quickly, in a muddle, because if I leave it until later I probably won’t be able to go on believing that it really happened. (…) “God Almighty, what are You doing to us?” The words just escape me (…).

A Russian woman asks me with her strange accent in the voice of a child that begs for forgiveness: “Surely God will be able to understand my doubts in a world like this, won’t He?” (…). I ask my companion: “Could one ever hope to convey to the outside world what has happened here today?” (…).

My God, are the doors really being shut now? Yes, they are. Shut on the herded, densely packed mass of people inside. Through small openings at the top we can see heads and hands, hands that will wave to us later when the train leaves (…).

We know nothing of their fate. It is only a short while, perhaps before we find out, each one of us in his own time. For we are all marked down to share that fate, of that I have not a moment’s doubt (340-354).

Etty feels called to be the “thinking heart of the barracks” (199, 225) and “a balm for all wounds” (231). Writing is not only for expressing herself, but for being transformed, and finally for becoming herself in her fullness:

Oh God, the last one and a half years! And the last two months, which were a whole life in themselves. But have I not had hours of which I could said: “This one hour is like a whole life, and if I should suddenly die, it would still have been worth it?” And there have been many such hours (199).

There is in me a little piece of God that grows into poetry

To accomplish the task of writing what seems impossible, she needs to continuously access her extraordinary inner resources:

Oh God, I thank you for having created me as I am. I thank you for the sense of fulfillment I sometimes have; that fulfillment that is after all nothing but being filled with you. I promise you to strive my whole life long for beauty and harmony and also humility and true love, whispers of which I hear inside me during my best moments (73-74).

Through me course wide rivers and in me rise tall mountains. And beyond the thickets of my agitation and confusion there stretch the wide plains of my peace and surrender. All landscapes are within me. And there is room for everything. The earth is in me, and the sky. And I well know that something like hell can also be in one, though I no longer experience it in myself, but I can still feel it in others with great intensity (The Letters and Diaries, 546).

Etty encounters God by the way of writing; and the experience of God is again transformed in new writing, or rather in poetry:

Why did You not make me a poet, oh God? But perhaps You did, and so I shall wait patiently until the words have grown inside me, the words that proclaim how good and how beautiful it is to live in Your world, oh God, despite everything we human beings do to one another (199).

The writing is transformed: it becomes a practice of caring for self; a spiritual practice and a dedication to others. And, inevitably, it becomes poetry.

If I have one duty in these times, it is to bear witness. I think I have learned to take it all in, to read life in one long stretch. And in my youthful arrogance I am often sure that I can remember every least thing I see and that I shall be able to relate it all one day. Still, I must try to put it down now (219).

There is no hidden poet in me, just a little piece of God that might grow into poetry. And a camp needs a poet, one who experiences life there, even there, as a bard is able to sing about it (225).

From Westerbork, Etty writes letters poignant and dramatic to the extreme:

With sudden inspiration I said: “One ought to write a chronicle of Westerbork.” An older man to my left—also eating red cabbage—answered: “Yes, but to do that you’d have to be a great poet.” He is right, it would take great poet. Little journalistic pieces won’t do. The whole of Europe is gradually being turned into one big prison camp (243).

Dear God, I shall help You, as You cannot help us

Writing is the place where Etty meets, talks, defends and stays with God:

Dear God, these are anxious times. Tonight for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me. I shall promise you one thing, God, just one very small thing: I shall never burden my today with cares about my tomorrow.

Each day is sufficient unto itself. I shall try to help You, God, to stop my strength ebbing away. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that you cannot help us, that we must help you to help ourselves. And this is all we can manage these days, and also all that really matters: that we safeguard a little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in other as well.

Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last (…). I am beginning to feel a little more peaceful, God, thanks to this conversation with you.

I shall have many more conversations with you. You are sure to go through lean times with me now and then, when my faith weakens a little, but believe me, I shall always labor for You and remain faithful to You and I shall never drive You from my presence. (178)

The singular purpose of helping God has become the mission of Etty in the world. This concept has become a peculiar characteristic of her life vision, and it is spelled out quite clearly and frequently in her diary:

I don’t fool myself about the real state of affairs, and I’ve even dropped the pretension that I’m out to help others. I shall merely try to help God as best I can, and if I succeed in doing that, then I shall be of use to others as well. But I mustn’t have heroic illusions about that either (174).

Etty sees herself as a missionary who passes the national boundaries, a prophet that speaks with a soft yet eloquent voice, made credible by her capacity for compassion:

One day, I would love to travel through all the world, oh God; I feel drawn right across all frontiers and feel a bound with all your warring creatures. And I would like to proclaim that bond in a small, still voice but also compellingly and without pause. But first I must be present on every battlefront and at the center of all human suffering, and then I will have the right to speak, won’t I?

Every time is like a little heat wave, even after the most difficult moments: Life is really beautiful. (…) Give me a small line of verse from time to time, oh God, and if I cannot write it down for lack of paper or light, then let me address it softly in the evening to Your great Heaven. But please give me a small line of verse now and then. (A Life Interrupted, 214-215)

The girl who could not kneel

Etty experiences not being able not to pray. She finds herself suddenly kneeling, almost unwittingly, almost against her will. The kneeling girl’ is a progressively recurring expression in her diary.

Still a lot of false shame to get rid of. And there is God. The girl who could not kneel but learned to do so on the rough coconut matting in an untidy bathroom. Such things are often more intimate even than sex. The story of the girl who gradually learned to kneel is something I would love to write in the fullest possible way (60-61).

Last night, shortly before going to bed, I suddenly went down on my knees… Almost automatically. Forced to the ground by something stronger than myself. Some time ago I said to myself, “I am a kneeler in training.” I was still embarrassed by this act, as intimate as gestures of love that cannot be put into words… you need courage to put that into words, except by a poet. (…)

“I sometimes have the feeling that God is right inside me”. (…) This phrase has been ringing in my hear for several weeks: you need courage to put that into words. The courage to speak God’s name (74).

As I walked down those overcrowded corridors today, I suddenly felt the urge to kneel down right there, on the stone floor, among all those people. The only adequate gesture left to us in these times: kneeling down before You. Each day I learn something new about people and realise more and more that the only strength comes, not from others, ‘but from within’ (188).

Sometimes, when I least expect it, someone suddenly kneels down in some corner in my being. When I’m out walking or just talking to people. And that someone, the one who kneels down, is myself (203).

What a strange story really is, my story: the girl who could not kneel. Or its variation: the girl who learned to pray (228).

By kneeling, Etty feels in the arms of God, and therefore she does not feel the need to escape the tragedy that has befallen on her people:

Many accuse me of indifference and passivity when I refuse to go into hiding; they say that I have given up. They say everyone who can must try to stay out of their clutches, its our bounden duty to try. But that argument is specious. For while everyone tries to save himself, vast numbers are nevertheless disappearing. And the funny thing is that I don’t feel I’m in their clutches anyway, whether I stay here, or I am sent away. (…)

I don’t feel in anybody’s clutches; I feel safe in God’s arms, to put it rhetorically, and no matter I am sitting at this beloved old desk now, or in a bare room in the Jewish district, or perhaps in a labor camp under the SS guards, in a month’s time, I shall always feel safe in God’s arm (176).

Being with God is the source of an exceptional psychological and emotional strength, so necessary to overcoming the horror she witnesses everyday:

Had all of this happened to me only a year ago, I should certainly have collapsed within three days, committed suicide, or pretended to a false kind of cheerfulness. But now I am filled with such equanimity, endurance, and calmness that I can see things very clearly and have an inkling of how they fit together. I don’t know what it is, but despite everything I am very well, dear God (The Letters and Diaries, 501).

If there were only one decent German

Julius Spier has introduced Etty not only to the experience of God, but also into the (then) unpopular notion that hatred should be won over by love. She narrates, in one of the earlier pages of her diary, a conversation with the master.

And when we came to the words, “If there were only one human being worthy of the name of ‘man,’ then we should be justified in believing in men and in humanity,” I threw my arms round him on a sudden impulse. It is the problem of our age: hatred of Germans poisons everyone’s mind. “Let the bastards drown, the lot of them”—such sentiments have become part and parcel of our daily speech and sometimes make one feel that life these days has grown impossible.

Until suddenly, a few weeks ago, I had a liberating thought that surfaced in me like a hesitant, tender young blade of grass thrusting its way through a wilderness of weeds: if there were only one decent German, then he should be cherished despite that whole barbaric gang, and because of that one decent German it is wrong to pour hatred over an entire people.

That doesn’t mean you have to be halfhearted; on the contrary, you must make a stand, wax indignant at times, try to get to the bottom of things. But indiscriminate hatred is the worst thing there is. It is a sickness of the soul. Hatred does not lie in my nature. If things were to come to such a pass that I began to hate people, then I would know that my soul was sick and I should have to look for a cure as quickly as possible (11)

The world falls apart, the persecution increases destroying her life, yet Etty remains convinced that the root of evil is inside of each one of us:

I see no other solution, I really see no other solution than to turn inward and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from this war. That we must look into ourselves and nowhere else (84).

On 8 December 1942 Etty still proclaimed her belief in love over hatred, even after being at the concentration camp of Westerbork, a living hell made of mud and cold; sickness and overcrowding; noise and fear; misery and depression; violence and desperation.

Yes, it is true, our ultimate human values are being put to the test. (…) But rebellion born only when distress begins to affect one personally is no real rebellion and can never bear fruit. And the absence of hatred in no way implies the absence of moral indignation. I know that those who hate have good reason to do so. But why should we always have to choose the cheapest and easiest way?

It has been brought home forcibly to me here how every atom of hatred added to the world makes it an even more inhospitable place. And I also believe, childishly perhaps but stubbornly, that the earth will become more habitable again only through the love that the Jew Paul described to the citizens of Corinth in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter (255-256).

Klaas Smelik, the close friend to whom Etty gave her diary notebooks, disagrees. They have different opinions on many things, including on how to react to Nazi persecution. Here follow the description of their umpteenth clash:

Klaas, all I really wanted to say is this: we have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies. (…) And I repeat with the same old passion, although I am gradually beginning to think that I am being tiresome, “It is the only thing we can do, Klaas, I see no alternative, each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others.” And you, Klaas, dogged old class fighter that you have always been, dismayed and astonished at the same time, say, “But that-that is nothing but Christianity!” And I, amused by your confusion, retort quite coolly, “Yes, Christianity, and why ever not?” (212).

In fact, Etty was quite familiar; one might dare say even at ease with Christianity. She quotes St. Francis of Assisi’s best-known prayer in her diary at least twice:

Oh, Master, let me not yearn so much To be consoled… but long to console; To be understood… but long to understand; To be loved… but long to love (The Letters and Diaries, 102).

Lord, make me less eager to be understood by others but make me understand them (227).

I want to share the fate of my people

By writing, knowing herself and conversing with God, Etty comes to experience an infinite compassion for the suffering of her people, to the point that she cannot subtract herself from sharing their fate.

Klaas Smelik recounts his last, dramatic and vain attempt to persuade Etty to go into hiding with him and save herself. An emotionally and physical quarrel took place between the two good friends and former lovers, narrated by Klaas as follows:

She wormed herself free and stood at a distance of about five feet from me. She looked at me very strangely and said: “You don’t understand me”. I replied: “No, I don’t understand what on earth you are up to. Why don’t you stay here, you fool!” Then she said: “I want to share the destiny of my people.” When she said that, I knew there was no hope. She would never come to us (Coetsier, 41).

Etty had made that dramatic determination already for some time, as reported in her diary on 10 July 1942:

Anyone who seeks to save himself must surely realise that if he does not go another must take his place. As if it really mattered which of us goes. Our is now a common destiny (172).

Only 16 months after starting her diary, Etty is ready to share to the ultimate the fate of her people. The insecure girl has turned into a 28-year-old woman who, voluntarily and in full awareness, chooses martyrdom:

People often get worked up when I say it doesn’t really matter whether I go or somebody else does, the main thing is that so many thousands have to go. It is not as if I want to fall into the arms of destruction with a resigned smile—far from it. I am only bowing to the inevitable, and even as I do so I am sustained by the certain knowledge that ultimately they cannot rob us of anything that matters. But I don’t think I would feel be happy if I were exempted from what so many others have to suffer.

They keep telling me that someone like me has a duty to go into hiding, because I have so many things to do in life, so much to give. But I know that whatever I may have to give to others, I can give it no matter where I am, here in the circle of my friends or over there, in a concentration camp.

And it is sheer arrogance to think oneself too good to share the fate of the masses. And if God Himself should feel that I still have a great deal to do, well then, I shall do it after I have suffered what all the others have to suffer” (177).

A determination reiterated in a letter to her friend Osias Kormann (4 November 1942):

I believe we can extract something positive from life under any circumstances, but we have the right to say that only if we do nothing to escape, even from the worst conditions. I often think we should shoulder our rucksacks, join others and go on deportation with them (Anna Brown, 68).

Etty accepts her fate, before history and before Europe, with lucid awareness and a sense of mission, a moral and historical mission that she has taken on herself. She is ready to offer herself in holocaust:

If we were to save only our bodies and nothing more from the camps all over the world, that would not be enough. (…) If we have nothing to offer a desolate postwar world but our bodies saved at any cost, if we fail to draw new meaning from the deep wells of our distress and despair, then it would not be enough (250).

Her self-giving, in solidarity with her people, is expressed in the last lines of her diary, with words exceptionally evocative:

I have broken my body like bread and shared it out among men. And why not, they were hungry and had gone without for so long (230).

The dark eyes with a gentle look

I conclude reporting a moving self-portrait by Etty. A passage that I find at the same time strikingly feminine and romantic; humorous and poignant:

How shall I really feel and act, I keep wondering, if I receive an order to leave in a week’s time? I wouldn’t tell a soul at first but retire in the quietest spot in the house, withdraw into myself and gather what strength to every corner of the body and soul. I would have my hair cut short and throw my lipstick away. I would try to finish reading the Rilke letter before the week was out. And I’d have a pair of trousers and a jacket made out of that heavy winter coat material I’ve got left over.

I would try to see my parents, of course, and do my best to reassure them, and every spare minute I would want to write to him, the man I shall always long for, I now know that for certain. Yes, when I think about having to leave him and never being able to know what is happening to him, I feel like as if I were dying already.

In a few days’ time I shall go to the dentist and have lots and lots of holes in my teeth filled. For that really would be bizarre: suffering from toothache out there! I shall try to get hold of a rucksack and pack only what is absolutely essential, though everything must be of good quality. I shall take a Bible along and that slim volume Letters to a Young Poet, and surely I’ll be able to find some corner for the Book of Hours.

I won’t take along any photograph of those I love; I’ll just take all the faces and familiar gestures I have collected and hang them along the walls of my inner space so that they will always be with me.

And these two hands will go along with me, their expressive fingers like strong young twigs. And these hands will keep protecting me in prayer, and will not leave me till the end. And these dark eyes will go with me, with their benign, gentle, questioning look (The Letters and Diaries, 486).

Bibliography

Occasionally Etty’s material from other secondary sources is quoted:

MEINS G. S. COETSIER, Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis. (Kansas City: University of Missouri, 2008);

ANNA J. BROWN, “The Language of the Incandescent Heart: Daniel Berrigan’s and Etty Hillesum’s Responses to a Culture of Death”. In (edited by)

JAMES L. MARSH and ANNA BROWN, Faith, Resistance, and the Future. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012).

 

Original article: http://sundayex.catholic.org.hk/node/1819

Disturbed Life,  a monument in memory of Etty Hillesum, who died with a pen in her hand at Auschwitz, by Dutch artist, Arno Kramer. 

On Nancy Kissel

 

Updated on 28 July 2016

A new writ has been presented at HK High Court asserting special circumstances in her case.
Nancy Kissel is serving a life sentence at the Tai Lam Centre for women.
In a writ presented on the 27 of July her lawyers argued that her mental state and distress were not taken into consideration at the time of the sentencing. They are asking to deport her to an American prison, it is rightly said in the writ that “She presents no danger to society and is high unlikely ever to offend.”

Her late defence counsel Alexander King SC claimed Kissel had been subject for five years of forceful anal sex and physical assault by her ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ husband who used cocaine and was watching child pornography in internet.

I discuss her case in my next book:

 

WE DO HOPE THAT NANCY KISSEL WILL FINALLY FIND JUSTICE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Updated on 26 January 2014.

Again bad news for Nancy Kissel. Yesterday there was another ruling stating that she cannot take her appeal up to the Court of Final Appeal, Hong Kong Top Court.

Is the US Consul General in Hong Kong going to step in and try to help one of her citizens or just keep quiet?

Kissel, 49,  could not even walk alone into the dock denying to her the chance that here we have a case of manslaughter not murder.

She should be allowed, at least, to serve her sentence in the US, closer to her children. Why is Hong Kong insisting on keeping her here?

The Court of Appeal on the last 3nd of December has ruled that a nine-member jury guilty verdict in the murder trial of Nancy Kissel was “neither unsafe nor unsatisfactory” and therefore she should spend the remaining years of her life behind bars. Her murder date to 2003 and a retrial was held in 2011. I disagree with the harshness of her treatment, even if I cannot base on facts and details but rather on principles. The nine-member jury findings has forced the Court to reject her plea of a diminished responsibility which, in my view, would have been proper and just. This was decided in spite of the medical evidence presented by Nancy Kissel’s defense team of three psychiatrists and one psychologist, being sane of mind it is not clear why between divorce and assassination she chose the latter and not the former.

I believe that this 49 years old mother of three is the victim of a kind of soft bigotry, of creeping anti-feminism and racial characterization, visible in Hong Kong. Even the South China Morning Post choose to offer the front page to William Kissel, the father of the murdered, who expressed his relief that this ruling will be the end of Nancy Kissel’s “litany of lies and character slander of my son to justify her evil actions.” In doing this even this paper seems to endorse a very partial view of the case.

While sympathizing with William Kissel and for his sufferings caused by the grisly circumstances of his son’s murder, I do believe that justice should be taken out of the hands of the victims and raised above their heads.

Two books were written on this story and there were rumors that a movie was planned. The Kissels were a couple of high-flyers, a type common within the expatriate community in Hong Kong and yet, in November 2003, she killed him, smashing his skull after having laced his milk shake with a powerful cocktail of sleeping pills. Then she wrapped his body in a carpet, hiding it in a storage room. Once discovered she was arrested, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. During the trial all the local newspapers published the filthy details of their daily ménage. She told the jury that he was beating and sodomized her. There was cocaine, the boredom of daily life, the easy money of an investment banker with little scruples and a perverse sexual appetite. All Hong Kong citizens were smitten, mesmerized as we were all following the trial.

She had obtained a retrial in 2011, but the public opinion and the media were against her. She was still portrayed as a sort of killer with eyes of ice, the milkshake murderess, even if in fact she was only a wretched woman who felt lost and lonely in Hong Kong. I agree that this does not constitute a justification for killing a man but I am also convinced that by keeping her locked up for life will not change anything, and it will not improve our society. She has already paid a very heavy price.

Nancy Kissel did not want to live in Hong Kong but her husband, Robert Kissel, received an offer from Merrill Lynch that – as we say – could not be refused. So he decided to quit Goldman Sachs and scrap his plans for a return to the United States, in spite of the promise he had made to Nancy. I have spoken with several people who came in contact with Rober Kissel and I have yet to find one capable of defining him a nice or even an agreeable person, quite the contrary! Even if this, I repeat, doesn’t constitute a sufficient case for murder, otherwise I myself would be dead a long time ago.

But wrapping his body in a carpet, what kind of plan was that, was that really planned murder as the jury had ruled once more on the 3nd of December?

Quite the contrary, that in my view is a sufficient proof that it was not a planned murder but just the act of a desperate woman and she couldn’t hope to get away with it.

The so-called planning of the murder could have started while they saw a movie together, Unfaithful with Diane Lane and Richard Gere. A fine example of how an adulterous relationship can destroy the lives of ordinary people. A woman, whom Nancy must have identified herself with, bored with life, had sex with another man and could finally disentangle herself only by smashing the man’s skull.

I am also surprised by the fact that no one seems to question why Hong Kong taxpayers should foot the bill for keeping this American citizen locked up in Hong Kong forever. Sending her back to the USA will also help her children to stay closer to her mother. She indeed is the killer of their father but she is, and will always be, their mother, no matter what the HK jury will rule.

Grazia Deledda at the Ferrari – Maserati Showroom of Repulse Bay, Hong Kong.

Auto-Italia  Hong Kong offered a splendid venue to the Dante Alighieri Society of Hong Kong which created a futuristic contrast, mixing modernity, speed, beauty and tradition, aptly represented by the books of Grazia Deledda.

Atsuko, Tracy, Elisa of Dante Alighieri worked hard to make sure that everything was properly organized, down to the smallest details, offering their usual expertise, making sure that all worked like clock-work.

About 70 spectators travelled from Central and Kowloon putting aside their working engagements. The nuorese Ciriaco Offeddu had been the motor behind this event and will be for those which will follow.

Grazia Deledda was born in 1871 in Nuoro, Sardiania, where she spent the first part of her life, then 36 years in Rome and in Cervia (her summer retreat). She died in 1936. She had only elementary school education, since her family barred her to go to high school and university (as her brothers did)  but she built her writing skill by reading, writing and taking a sort of private tuition given by a teacher. The society in which she was born was still very backward looking like most the Italian province, but this just make her achievements more remarkable.

Ciriaco Offeddu when a child met old people in Nuoro who still remembered Grazia Deledda (some of those people are visible in Youtube). Their remembrance of Grazia Deledda was somehow shaded by a slight bias due to the fact that most of the characters she had portrayed had really existed. Just imagine Edgar Lee Masters the author of The Spoon River Anthology going back to his folks and to his village!

The name of Grazia Deledda is tied to Sardegna Island, and there is a reason for that, as most of her books speak of her native land. Deledda wrote every day, two to three hours in the afternoon, seven days a week, and always by hand. She did not use a typewriters which were already available, like some other authors, like some contemporary authors, like Jeffrey Archer to quote one.

Deledda’s father died when she was only 16 and she lost her elder sister when she was 25 by abortion.

Deledda dreamt, since she was a small child, to move to Rome and live there, finally realizing her goal and meeting her husband (who was coming from Lombardy) and moving straight away to the newly created capital of the kingdom of Italy.

Grazia Deledda always thought in the Nuorese dialect and had to translate it into Italian while writing. Perhaps this explain why her writings, even today, look so fresh and clear, contrary to other writers who were looking for linguistic effects. Deledda only wanted to convey meaning and emotions. She is the author of 35 novels and hundreds of short stories.She was also an accomplished translator from French.Italy had 6 Nobel prizes for literature, Carducci (1906), Deledda (1926), Pirandello (1934), Quasimodo (59), Montale (76), Fo (1997).Her fame was finally established internationally with the Nobel (but assigned in 1927). This is the official motivation for the prize, the second women after the Swedish Selma Lagerlhof:For the Idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life of her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general. 

And here is how Giuseppe Prezzolini, in a 100 pages condensed story of Italian literature define her:

There is truth in her characters, sometimes too folkloristic but heroic, passionate, simple, silent which made her dear to Scandinavians. She deserves to be read even today for the fabulous level of her prose.

Part of the money she received she donated to poor writers anonymously, like Sibilla Aleramo and Dino Campana. Three months after the Nobel she checked in a hospital to have her left breast removed, that disease will kill her in 7 years time. She refused all requests to give talks.

She did not follow the fashions of her times (she was not even a feminist in the suffragette sense but she joined the Women Congress of 1909 and 1923, Turkish stamps) but she delved on the classics, like Victor Hugo, Puskin and Tolstoj. Dostojevsky, Gogol, Balzac.

Like D’Annunzio was put on a world stage by the choice of a right translator, Georges Herelle who masterfully translated her works in French.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

-In March there will be a show with a silent movie with Eleonora Duse, inspired by her book Cenere. Perhaps this could be staged at the Macau arts festival.

-In May there will be the staging of a theatrical piece written by our friend Juan Morales taken from some of her most successful books and we will try to get an expert from Italy that could give a lecture on her. Then the play by Juan will be translated in Italian and presented in Nuoro, Italy.

-In October there will be a delegation of professors and students from City University to Nuoro, for a writing retreat, Ciriaco and Hong Kong writer Xuxi will travel there.

Cowra in Italian sul blog La Nostra Storia

Una storia poco conosciuta della seconda guerra mondiale. Una storia di vinti segnalata e scritta da Angelo Paratico.

Cowra è una bella cittadina traversata dal fiume Lachlan, a 350 chilometri da Sydney. In lingua aborigena significa roccia e gli italiani che vi si sono stabiliti l’hanno resa celebre per la qualità del vino che vi producono. Il nome di Cowra è passato alla storia per via del campo di prigionia dove accadde la più grande fuga in massa di tutta la seconda Guerra mondiale. La gran parte dei detenuti che vi stavano rinchiusi erano giapponesi ma c’erano pure 2.000 italiani, quasi tutti reduci di El Alamein. Nella sezione A e C del campo di Cowra erano sistemati i nostri soldati, mentre nella sezione D stavano gli ufficiali giapponesi con coreani e taiwanesi che avevano combattuto inquadrati nel loro esercito. Nella sezione B stava la truppa giapponese, con i loro sergenti e caporali. Il trattamento che vi ricevevano era,tutto sommato, molto buono e il cibo abbondava.

Il 4 agosto 1944 il comandante australiano del campo convocò il sergente Kanazawa, responsabile della sezione B e gli comunicò che il giorno successivo tutti i soldati semplici sarebbero stati trasferiti altrove. Questa era una precauzione decisa dopo che le autorità erano venuti a sapere, da un coreano, che si stava preparando una rivolta. Presi alla sprovvista gli australiani si erano resi conto che il campo di Cowra non era ben attrezzato per reggere a una rivolta. Da Sydney, quella mattina, avevano ricevuto delle nuove mitragliatrici Vickers e un carico di munizioni.
Il sottufficiale giapponese, tornato alle baracche, riferì quanto gli era stato comunicato e, a mezzanotte, dopo una concitata votazione
segnata da urla e da scambi di accuse di codardia, i sottufficiali
decisero di immolarsi davanti ai reticolati, per salvare il proprio onore e quello della Patria.
All’una e cinquanta del mattino del 5 agosto le guardie udirono dei rumori e poi scorsero centinaia di ombre muoversi nella notte e poi correre loro incontro, urlando: “Banzai, banzai!”. Qualcuno era armato con mazze e rudimentali coltelli. Si lanciarono dritti sui nidi di mitragliatrici che, dopo una scarica d’avvertimento, presero a spararare ad altezza d’uomo.
Chi non era in grado di correre s’impiccò nelle baracche, alle quali avevano dato fuoco. Non tutti quei mille e duecento prigionieri della sezione B vollero morire: centinaia di loro si calarono in un fossato, dove attesero l’alba, per poi arrendersi. Coloro che riuscirono a superare i reticolati corsero via. Durante i nove giorni successivi vennero riacciuffati 334 uomini, alcuni a cinquanta chilometri di distanza. 25 i cadaveri trovati, qualcuno s’era impiccato, in due si erano buttati sotto a un treno. In totale i morti giapponesi furono 231 e 180 i feriti, gli australiani ebbero 4 soldati morti. Molti dei caduti giapponesi si erano suicidati. Quelli che evasero non fecero del male ai civili che incontrarono.
A guerra finita quel campo fu demolito anche perché tutti volevano dimenticare quel triste episodio. Questa storia riaffiorò solo nel 1978 quando lo scrittore australiano Harry Gordon pubblicò un libro per raccontarla, era intitolato “Die like a carp.”
Anche in Giappone non conoscevano quella storia, ma l’ambasciatore del Giappone in Australia, dopo averlo letto letto, ne fu colpito al punto da commissionare all’architetto Shigeru Yura la trasformazione delle rovine del campo in un sacrario con un bel giardino pieno di fiori e di alberi.
Cyril Treasure, veterano della guerra ed ex sindaco di Cowra, disse: «La gran parte di quei morti erano dei ragazzi che fecero ciò che pensavano fosse giusto fare. Farsi ammazzare per loro era la cosa giusta. Quando parleranno di questa rivolta, fra 500 anni, la vedranno come una storia eroica e romantica, ma in quel momento non lo fu per niente. Fu solo un bagno di sangue».

Angelo Paratico

 

Grazia Deledda at RTHK3 Morning Brew on 14.01.2014 with Angelo Paratico and Ciriaco Offeddu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here was today’s program: together.

Welcome to Tuesday’s Morning Brew. A slight change around this week as tomorrow’s program has been pinched by the C.E…how very dare he…as we broadcast the 2014 policy address, live. We kick off today at 10.10 with best selling author and MB commentator, Tracy Quan, on the phone from New York. It’s Golden Globes all the way, dahhhling! Hopefully, Harvey Stockwin will be joinin…g us later this week, as today is not possible for him. After 11, we’ll find out about “Private Peaceful”, the stage version Michael Morpurgo’s novel for older children, which recalls the (1st world) wartime memories of Private Tommo Peaceful. Its a very powerful anti-war statement, and we will meet the performers. After 11.30, author and classics scholar, Angelo Paratico (with Ciriaco Offeddu) returns with one of his fascinating historical “bits”. Today; why we need to find out about Italian Nobel Prize winner, Grazia Deledda (1871-1936). It’s only logical we follow that, after 12, with the Hip Hop magic of Mr. J-Hoon. One of Asia’s absolute top gentleman rhymers joins us in the studio with his latest tracks.

Angelo Paratico speaks about the literary value of the Sardianian Nobel prize Grazia Deledda, drawing on her modernity and closeness to the Chinese mind, and Ciriaco Offeddu speaks about the noble history and realities of Sardinia.

Click here for the interview.

http://programme.rthk.org.hk/channel/radio/programme.php?name=radio3/morning_brew&p=2505&pid=95211&m=photo&e=247429

The Chinese Rites Controversy, explained by Fr. Gianni Criveller

 

 

Public Lectures on“Chinese Christians in Retrospect”

「回顧基督徒在中國」講座系列

A Narrative of the Chinese Rites Controversy.

Bitter exchanges were traded for years between the Kangxi Emperor and the Pope about the Confucian tradition of honouring the ancestors. The Roman misunderstanding on the meaning of the Chinese rites lead to the final demise of Roman Catholicism in China and the expulsion and persecution of priests and nuns. This, after all, remains one of the greatest missed opportunities in human history, a ‘what if?’ case-study.  Come to learn more about it.

 

On the 23rd of January 2014

All are welcome – Free of charge.

Speaker 講者: 

Fr. Gianni Criveller柯毅霖

Professor at Holy Spirit Seminary, College of Theology 

and Philosophy, Historian and Orientalist.

 

Chairperson主席: 

Fr. Patrick TAVEIRNE譚永亮

Director, Centre for Catholic Studies, CUHK

Language語言: English 英文

 

時間Time7:00pm –9:00pm

地點VenueRm507, Wu Ho Man Yuen Building 

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

(5min. walk from MTRUniversity Station)

香港中文大學伍何曼原樓507室

(從港鐵大學站步行大約5分鐘)

Tel :39434277

email : catholic@cuhk.edu.hk ..

Website : www.cuhk.edu.hk /crs/catholic