Festivaletteratura Mantova 2022
Since the dawn of time, Mantova seems to have had a special relationship with poets and writers (Virgilio was born here, and Dante and Petrarca passed through here in the footsteps of the Mantuan). These narrators have helped Italians reach infinite plains at heights of imagination. It is indeed its rich history intertwined with art that attracted literati who have, over centuries, made us dream: reliving ancient adventures, identifying with knights and crusaders, and pursuing the Baroque virtuosity of poems and fairy tales.
For this special occasion, Sali e Tabacchi Journal and Corneliani come together to celebrate Mantova’s Literary Festival, featuring interviews with some of the up-and-coming and well-known names that have participated in this year’s edition with some special surprises in-store.
Giulia Cavaliere
What do you see as the fil-rouge between literature and music?
I have always approached music writing with a more literary and less journalistic perspective. I am interested in telling more than witnessing an incident, I am interested in generating a narrative of the lyrical and experiential dimension of this art and thus dwelling on how music intercepts everyone's life, from the artists who create it to those who enjoy it
What does Mantova mean to you, or what is your favorite thing about the city?
I love the sincere elegance of Mantua in the poise of its provincial dimension. Not to be missed are the natural wines and the kindness of the historic Caravatti bar, the downtown bookstores every few meters, of art I remain silent, for here I would need at least the space of a pamphlet.
What is the one literary work that has truly left a mark on you?
Time makes the reader, then:
Giacomo Leopardi’s Canti when I was 13.
Pier Paolo Pasolini's Scritti Corsari when I was 21 Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem when I was 26.
John Cheever’s diaries when I was 28.
What does it mean to you / why is it important to have your voice thoughts published, heard and received by the public?
Essentially experiencing every day the privilege of sharing and listening, the practice of a continuous attempt in the making: to bring something to someone that will, in some way, do them good.
How do you see yourself growing as a writer in the coming years?
Some things I do not know how to see. I just want to finish the new book I've started writing, and I hope my editor doesn't kill me for the delay in getting it to her and what, after that delay, she will read. Besides the thought of collaborating with inspiring people, I think that's what it's all about: keep wanting to write, keep wanting.
Many famous writers, like Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, and Joan Didion, were known for their eclectic yet elegant style. How do you express your writing style through clothing?
I like clothes, but they aren’t what my life is about, let's say it's a bit like the fact that I love classic cars even though I don't drive. The writers mentioned are fundamental to my education as a reader and an observant writer. Still, I don't think their style came through their clothes, but instead through the thought embodied in their bodies, that is, not the form but the life of their bodies, even though they certainly wore interesting or beautiful clothes. I love to wear the shoes of the tennis players of the 1970s, and at the same time, I always wanted to dress like Virginia Woolf. I wear a pair of glasses designed by Linda Farrow that I feel are very much my own. Otherwise, I love the understated who knows nothing against the eccentric.
Nicolò Porcelluzzi
What do you see as the fil rouge between literature and the world of science?
Literature is intertwined with the climate crisis because it interrogates our contradictions, arrogant needs, and naive hopes we try to live with every day. The crucial role of stories in constructing societies, beliefs, and habits cannot be ignored: but asking literature to save us may prove disappointing because its purpose is always something else.
What does Mantova mean to you, or what is your favorite thing about the city?
Mantua played an essential role in my apprenticeship. I used to come in my high school years to "volunteer," peel off tickets and set up chairs. Slipping in on the side, listening to people write (I remember two confusing words with Merini and Arbasino), I realized that the couple of books I had read in my room, all alone, were not dead things. Going back there as an author a few years ago was strange.
What is the one literary work that has truly left a mark on you?
I would say there are several, depending on the period. Reading Luigi Meneghello, I learned that poetry is hidden in every language; reading Virginia Woolf that you can tell thoughts because they are sensations. The two of them came to mind, but if I had to choose a book, The Cognition of Pain. In a few years, it will be another one.
What does it mean to you / why is it important to have your voice thoughts published, heard and received by the public?
Just as one cannot live without relationships, there can be no writing that can reject an audience out of hand. I never considered writing, however an amplifier that could serve me to pass a message. I don't have the proper credentials, the aptitude. Writing is thinking and therefore being in the world, making sense of things: you get distracted for a moment, and some message eventually gets through anyway.
How do you see yourself growing as a writer in the coming years?
Since I started, there hasn’t been a year in which I do not go through transformations, various realizations, and strange looks; so much so that, trivially, to review what one has done, the embarrassment is directly proportional to the distance in time. I hope to become less and less embarrassed, but to stop doing so would be the end. I would like to keep writing straightforward for work and complicated for myself.
Many famous writers, like Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, and Joan Didion, were known for their eclectic yet elegant style. How do you express your writing style through clothing?
I am afraid that to call my choices on the subject eclectic would be going too far. It seems to me that style, on the surface, is that series of gestures and accouterments (it also happens in the animal world) in which an individual manifests himself in culture: the fact is that style serves us above all to recognize ourselves before ourselves. These fine premises can be developed beyond fetishes. That said, Beckett had very good taste.
Sonia Aggio
How do you think real life informs fiction and fiction informs real life?
Indeed, the two dimensions are closely intertwined, but I'll be honest: the connections are so many, so diverse, and changing that to try to define them would be reductive.
As a writer of novels set in the past, I can speak for myself, and I will say that all real-life enter fiction, from the big event to the small gesture of a character, and so everything that happens is in one way or another true.
What does Mantua mean to you, or what is your favorite thing about the city?
Beyond its undeniable beauty, Mantua was the destination of my first school trip. I was six years old, and it was love at first sight! I remember falling in love with everything from the churches to the frescoes to the gardens, so much so that I think my passion for history was born on that occasion.
What is the literary work that marked you?
Memoirs of Hadrian. I don't consider it my favorite book, but it was a revelation: a contemporary, immersive, non-didactic historical novel. When I read it, I got into a Roman emperor's mind. With its confession of Yourcenar's felt obsession with that history, the Notebooks moved me significantly.
What does it mean to you/why is it vital to have your voice and your thoughts published, heard, and received by the public?
When I write, I hope to create something beautiful, but to find that out, it is necessary for the novel to come out, to be read and evaluated by others. On the one hand, there is definitely the fear of not being liked, of failing, of seeing your convictions crumble in front of public scrutiny, and that can be a break, but writing is and remains a source of pleasure and the thing I think I do best, and I want to challenge myself.
Part of me, then, wants to reach out to that very person (who exists, I'm sure!) who is looking for just my story and hasn't found it yet.
How do you see yourself growing as a writer in the coming years?
Even now, I sense a change in my approach to writing. I think practice is important, and the process of publishing Magnificat has taught me a lot. I am also treasuring the feedback from readers.
I hope to continue writing and publishing at regular intervals. I have several ideas going in different directions that I would like to turn into novels, and I would like to be able to build a loyal readership. I aim to become a writer to whom the reader returns with confidence, with a desire to be taken to a new time and place.
Many famous writers, such as Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, and Joan Didion, were known for their eclectic but elegant style. How do you express your writing style through clothing?
In writing, as in clothing, I tend toward simplicity and linearity. Accumulation makes me tired and clumsy.
I am fond of soft fabrics, stripes, and cool colors (especially blue, light blue, and pink). I dislike black, which seems to me to lack imagination and life. I don't wear makeup.
Perhaps my choices are an attempt to enhance my face, but as Maupassant writes: "You, madam, who have blue eyes, cannot consider existence, judge things and events as if you had black eyes. The color of your gaze must fatally correspond to the color of your thought."
Aleksandar Hemon
As an accomplished fiction writer who learned English as an adult, what would you say is your interaction/relationship with languages?
Language undoubtedly constitutes a vehicle for the transmission of a sense of identity but also for its interruption: just as my parents were forced to study a new language (English) at the age of 50, often with great difficulty, so too for me, taking on English as a new language - a literary one at that - implies the creation of a new set-up: "During my first years in the United States, I taught English, mostly to migrants of Slavic origin. As a student, I had a space engineer who, unable to learn English, was forced into much less skilled jobs."
What does Mantua's Literary Festival mean to you? Is it your first time attending, and if not, what were other experiences like?
This is my second visit to Mantua, I had already come in 2014 for The Book of My Lives, and I am very happy to have been invited again. Festivals and conferences like the one that kept me busy in Berkeley the weekend after Festivaletteratura are opportunities for discussion, exchange, and new knowledge or opportunities...
What is the one literary work that has indeed left a mark on you?
There are so many many books that have shaped me, but on this occasion, I would like to name an Italian author. Primo Levi and his If This is a Man.
What does it mean to you / why is it important to you to have your voice thoughts to be published, and heard and received by the public?
I need to meet the public around the world, it is an opportunity to give my testimony or to talk about issues that are close to my heart, such as our future.
Many famous writers, like Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, and Joan Didion, were known for their eclectic yet elegant style. How do you express your writing style through clothing?
I'm not as eclectic as them, and I don't spend too much time choosing my look. I'm a casual guy, but the experience in the Corneliani atelier was one of my best birthdays.
Mantova
Corneliani, Sali e Tabacchi Journal, and Mantova’s Festival Letteratura all have a topic very dear to their hearts: the relationship between sustainability and literature. It was not by chance that this year’s festival saw professor and writer extraordinaire Stefano Mancuso lead a discussion inside the newly inaugurated Valletta Valsecchi Urban Oasis, to which the festival has contributed by donating twenty new plants, adding to the already existing 1,300 trees planted this spring in Dosolo, partially offsetting the climate-changing emissions generated by the Festival.
Other talks that we enjoyed and highly recommend are:
L’Altro Animale, Paolo Pecere’s conversation with Helen McDonald about the merits and limits of anthropomorphism, the origin of the mind, different forms of consciousness, and how these reflections can condition our relationship with animals such as octopuses, pigs, hawks, and gorillas, in whom we find a familiar other than ourselves, sometimes comforting, sometimes disturbing that amazes and engages us. Their discussion will soon be available in a podcast out in October.
Per Un Pianeta Verde, which explored Stefano Mancuso’s theory (The Plant of the World, The Plant Nation), trees can be our most extraordinary allies in the fight against climate change, partly because of the exceptional adaptive capacity that plant species demonstrate concerning changes in their environment.
Oasi!, a journey into the contradictions with which our time confronts nature, partly fearing it, dreaming of it, between ecology and beauty, fear and hope, control and eros, enchantment and dismay, recounted by Fabio Deotto, author of The Other World, journalist Simone d'Antonio, and podcast editor Annalisa Metta. Their discussion will soon be available in a podcast out in October.