OTTAVIANO AND FLEMISH BRESCIA
The book by journalist describes a city of bright colors, sweet and melancholy
A tip of the compass on Pallata, where an old woman sells to his banquet three lemons for ten pounds, while the other trace a circle that includes square Rovetta, San Faustino, the Carmine and Peace. This magic circle of childhood Alberto Octavian, who is also a childhood of Brescia who still in the years 1948-1957 was largely in the circle of the ancient walls, as Dante would say. Those revived through the experience indelibly fixed in the memory and in the heart of the child, then a teenager, became a journalist and writer, are also the years when the city poor post-war boom of the omens are felt, for a breakthrough but also economic and social and anthropological moral. Still circulate the van warns that with the trumpet the arrival of the ice sticks, and the ice cream that presses on the pedals of his cart, but the holiday is no longer made at the acquaintances of Cain but in Romagna, where you can try the first heartbeat for a little German, while "double or nothing" fills the bars and cinemas. The axis on which turns this world is circumscribed course Mameli, where the author lives in a house around the corner from Pallata. Another focus of the narrative is the tailoring of the military father in the district of Carmel, with a thousand drawers full of stars and insignia for uniforms of order and out of order.
These stories of a lost home, published by Ladolfi, are first and foremost an act of love for the loved ones and the many other more or less well-known that there are no more; and also an act of generosity to the readers who see gray-haired resurface in their memory places and figures similar to those painted by Ottaviano. I told paintings because writing a simple and lively time of this book reminds a Flemish painting, in which the precision of the design is combined with the color of affection still vibrant, between sweetness and melancholy. Gathered in various thematic chapters, memories bring out in the round shapes of the Neapolitan father, who settled in Brescia after fighting in the Great War, the mother valance that makes pasta at home, singing and quotes proverbs, and his uncle upset that perhaps was serving the traumas of war and captivity.
The private memories - the roommates of course Mameli, Saint Lucia, the readings childhood, the first approaches to the policy at the time of the clash between Democrats and Communists - is the background scenery choir - the oratory of Peace Father Bevilacqua, the Mille Miglia the gym of the Force and Constance, the average Romanino - a framework that stimulates reflections, interspersed and distinguished by italics, leading to Brescia's speech today, to emphasize the strong changes. Arriving at the end we realize that Octavian made us relive his story with the flavor of the truth, but also a part of our. Back in the childhood that seemed boundless, as we discover that he is tiny; like him resend the burning of a spanking inflicted for an oversight, like him we regret not having talked more with our father, that he had asked for more things to our mother, overcome by shyness, from the reserve, by distraction.
Pietro Gibellini