S ettecento broken pages and several appendices and indexes full-bodied. "The papyrus Dongo (Adelphi), latest and recent work by Luciano Canfora , is a big book. A big book that tells the story of Italian Papyrology during the Fascist period and until the early '50s.
very specialized topic, no? Stuff closely reserved for philologists, it would seem. Yet I who knew nothing of Papyrology, philology almost same, I read it quickly and with satisfaction (nor are culturally masochist, at least in this case). Why? I have asked him.
Canfora's book is a history book in every respect, the report of a detailed and meticulous historical research, with detailed comparison of the sources and all the other trappings. Yet it is also a great story: without conceding the anecdotal or narrative aspect, Canfora traces the events business, political and - in part - of the greatest philologists personal Italians of that period, work on papyri (transcriptions and translations) , contacts international archaeological excavations, the struggles and meanness aimed at staff and management of prestigious academic positions and professorships.
"The papyrus of Dongo" consider only those events. However, it is exciting. Why?
The answer I give is not only the narrative capacity of Luciano Canfora (which in popular works and has written many), no, I think the answer is obvious but rarely mentioned that the history is narrative, it is news; is the story. The scientific rigor and objectivity does not necessarily exclude this aspect: history is narrative, and can be even when it is done well (not only, that is, when it is hoax ideological).
Certainly, the events narrated in this case, they carry a certain richness: mainly the fact that they fit into Fascism, in the administration of the University by the regime in power to manipulate to obtain funds, promotion, tenure, publications . No coincidence that the characters constantly on the background of the events recounted are kind and Bottai, that the philosopher closer to Mussolini's regime and the Minister of Fascist culture.
In the foreground, however, there are philologists: Medea Norsa, Girolamo Vitelli (until his death in 1932), Godfrey Coppola, Achille want. In the stories of these internationally renowned scholars, there are also two different ways of dealing with the regime: that of trying to approach it as much as possible and draw from personal benefits (Coppola, want) and to those who accept him closing his eyes and trying not to have disadvantages (but without enthusiasm). The sample of opportunism, of meanness, of impropriety and ambition is Achilles Vogliano: After reading the 'managed' During the two decades, is really impressive to see how, after 25 April '45, try to defend themselves from 'purge and recycle in a memorial that looks ruthlessly Canfora (for other people want that so many other Italian academics deeply compromised with the fascist regime can go out in the end largely untouched by the change of regime). Among
those who stayed away from fascism, while not oppose it, there are Girolamo Vitelli (doyen of Italian papyrologists, former senator and Giolittian 73enne time of the March on Rome) and his student and collaborator Norsa Medea, the latter is a figure that comes from really gigantic reconstruction of Camphor, and yet, after the death of calves will be continually humiliated and ostracized (although the greatest scholar in his field, will never have a chair and eventually expelled for no reason even when Florence Institute papyrological had worked all his life), and this will only happen in small part because the origin of the Jewish father (the adventures that the bureaucratic Norsa tackles to go out free of the racial laws of '39 have the grotesque: a pearl is the request by the Ministry of Bottai, the mother's birth certificate to establish the 'Italian': except that the mother of Norsa, Trieste, was born and died in Habsburg territory still 'unredeemed'!)
The last character of the historic split of camphor and Godfrey Coppola. It 's a case of its own: careerist and ambitious but also genuinely excited to be in politics than in philological work, Coppola has worked many years with his teacher and Vitelli Norsa. But it is also increasingly linked to Fascism, and from '37-'38 his political rise in the system is constant, not only as the cursive "People of Italy (where he published articles so violently anti-Semitic to embarrass Goering) as well as cynical and ruthless political leader, especially after the September 8, 1943 and in the parable of CSR. In fact, Coppola, now considered a blind fanatic also all ' inside of the Fascist Party, dies at Dongo was shot along with the surviving leaders of the Social Republic (but also for him not fail an attempt at posthumous rehabilitation - political and non-professional in the early postwar years). And 'course, adding that his friendship and cooperation with the Norsa into hostility from '37-38.
And as part of this friendship became hostility that finally runs the story of the last protagonist of the book Canfora: papyrus giving the title to the work. In fact, these fragments of the "Hellenic" is more of a casus belli, both on the academic and on that of personal relationships: I leave the story, from discoveries in the '33 war, any player, just as freely, if I leave works in the university comparison between the pettiness of those years and the current situation is asked to give rather dispassionate guide.
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