"The Newspaper of Calabria" Sunday, August 30, 2009
Editor of the Corriere della Sera blog dedicated to poetry, his reviews are coveted by Italian and foreign authors, but he does not forget the Calabria.
Calabrese-born Milan for business, Ottavio Rossi is one of the most prestigious Italian names. Corriere della Sera journalist, poet, essayist, painter, and author of certain royal theater, in his way of expressing the eclectic art of feelings, Calabria has not been forgotten, not only with the "return" to Soverato, but also by collaborating with "The Newspaper of Calabria," which is a columnist. Some of his recent articles are very controversial in relation to Berlusconi, the League, the rules on safety, "rounds", the crime of illegal immigration and economic policy.
Rossi, in his life has interviewed thousands of people, now it's up to you to answer questions. As he likes to be presented?
honestly do not know. I never thought of. I can tell you what I like to do: write. I write poetry and I'm also writing a novel, I write essays, I paint and I'm preparing an exhibition; I like my royal theater on texts and other people and I like to be a journalist, my professional life with nearly 40 years of loyalty to a head, historical example in today's world where journalists come and go like the players. I've always done, I began at sixteen to a newspaper that was made in Soverato, and always continue to do so (for ever, like the priests!).
Too much? No, are basically different ways of writing.
'Locked in this box / have a point of light / shadows of restless wandering / ... / I want the courage of gioia. / Let me out of the box! /'.
His poems contain the anxieties of minds and not only Ottavio Rossi. But poetry is the only universal language that can "save the world?
poetry will not save the world. But it certainly has the power to change man, there is always the availability of man to change. Poetry is not prayer, is not philosophy, not science: everything and anything about it. Its essence is the imagination and its forms are endless. Lighting, a concept, a flash can change the emotional lives of people who are available to be molded by an idea. But who is not able to "receive" the gift of speech, does not understand and reject the poem as a useless waste of time, as highbrow nonsense.
course, poetry can be elusive, reality can be strongly influenced or even retrain Democracy (Democracy We read of Joseph Conte, for example). I, too, in my little, I wrote and I write poetry calendar: "false boundaries" of 1989 is all a complaint about the social disintegration of the seventies / eighties. Poetry calendar today is increasingly necessary, especially in our South, the cultural shows too refractory to stimuli not only poets, but by every intellectual.
His life is the continuous pursuit of knowledge. From his words, oozing the disappointment about is leading the world while trying to give hints of hope. What can you still do?
all make mistakes and we all should do more, with honesty and conviction, in their own role and its activities. Trivial? Maybe, but there is no progress in work and study, there is no positive result, without humility and honesty. Of course, the dishonest, the arruffone, the mafia, the bully, and very soon it can be enriched by exercising its power illegally. The people notice and was unable to block the behavior because in the end each person is alone with itself and with its correctness. These distortions and violence, they feel more in the South, To the north is greater awareness among citizens: quality that is polluting the League haranguing egoism, individualism, racism. There is a falsification of fundamental values, but honesty can not be traded for anything else. But in Italy stuff themselves fraudsters, pimps, and mobsters. Should I be satisfied? I have traveled the world, known powerful and poor people: I learned that there are decent people who live with little in their dignity and people who transgressed (even killing) on \u200b\u200blow-enriched, without dignity is worthless. But victims of the oppressors and criminals do not always have the strength to rise up and defend themselves. What saddens me More precisely these forms of forced allegiance in the world that exist in almost all countries, including the U.S. and Italy. Do not just talk about democracy, if those who should enforce the laws is the first to violate human rights and undermined.
His "Interview abduction" to the magistrate Ferdinando Pomarici, one of the most sought after books by scholars of contemporary history who wonder about the mystery of the crime and other Moro ambiguous and bloody events of those years, is still relevant today 's analysis of the political-judicial-crime 30 years ago that she anticipated. May not have changed almost nothing?
not true, things have changed, but worse. Sure, it ended the phenomenon of kidnapping for ransom and criminal gangs, both political and subversive groups, which in the seventies were a daily scourge. But they have thickened the textures and collusion between the powers of the state diverted: the various gangs do not just work in the South but have beautiful glass and steel offices in Milan, Genoa, Rome and other cities, where illegal money launderers, and bloodshed in shares and financial stocks short, in legal activities. Not to mention the luxury shops and restaurants, which are simple shell (but profitable) for the various illegal activities.
There was a time when one could hope that things go rather, that people were more aware of their rights and duties, in Italy?
After the avalanche of Tangentopoli (1992 onwards) we all hoped that the less the policy could be renewed and remain clean. Hope disappointed. The distortions of the judiciary that he often used the arrest to force people to confess (other than the suicides were in and out of prison), the Defenestration of almost the entire political class of that time, including those who had not committed any crime as it was found with time (the survivors in Parliament are very few, and those who came later is not the situation, with some exceptions), the disappearance of the traditional parties, as DC e PSI, l’irruzione nella politica di Berlusconi e Di Pietro, la lotta intestina tra D’Alema e Veltroni prima nel PCI, poi PDS, ora PD, il frastagliamento delle formazioni di sinistra che da sempre trovano motivi di contrasto e non di unione, hanno portato alla situazione attuale di cinismo dei politicanti e di incredulità e scarsa fiducia negli uomini politici.
Mentre criminalità e corruzione continuano a predominare, senza che qualcuno possa alzare una diga. In questo quadro, l’unico partito vero rimasto, e cioè la Lega, come si legge ogni giorno sui giornali e si ascolta in radio e tv, intorbida le acque con le sue proposte razziste, discriminatorie, disgregatrici. Negli ultimi quindici anni ci si è inventati precariousness and flexibility, words that were used to dismantle the welfare state, which was built in one hundred years of battles. And while Barak Obama in the U.S. attempts to introduce public health care for all (for now blocked by the pharmaceutical and hospital lobbies), and in Italy continue to raise ticket so that many people, especially pensioners and indeed precarious, even if they are sick, give even to do analysis and inspection. One nation, one state, which loses the sense of solidarity, opening the way to oppression and injustice. But the speech was too long, even if things are obvious.
Rossi, in his book "State, society and robbers nel Risorgimento italiano” e “La parola dei pentiti. Il processo Mancini, i pentiti, la magistratura, la politica” ha parlato di Sud con tono criticamente duro. Che rapporto ha con la Calabria?
D’amore, contrastato e incompreso. Non è il solito luogo comune di “amore e odio”. Io non odio. Ma so ciò che funziona e quello che no. La Calabria è forse la regione più bella d’Italia, avrebbe le risorse naturali e intellettive per risolvere, da sola, la sua “questione meridionale”. Basterebbe buttarsi a capofitto nel turismo, che è la più grande e redditizia industria italiana, e riuscire a far affluire persone da tutto il mondo tramite pacchetti concordati con agencies and tour operators. But it is not easy. Calabrian I do not have such expertise. There are four (or five?) Institutes hospitality / tourism in the region already for 40 years, but have not been able to create excellence in the field. We all know that if you enter a hotel in Calabria, but two or three, there is a lack of services and attention to customers. It is not enough to apologize to the tourists as it did (well, second) president Loiero another year. The political representatives have not been able to make agreements with the airlines nor Italian nor with foreign arrivals to facilitate tourists. And anyway, even if they arrive by the millions, how could a company of amateurs, concerned only to cash, to meet the claims of who pays? Why should people come to Calabria if they are regularly bled on the ground and already starting to bring into account travel expensive? But no one could imitate Spain in less than 20 years has transformed its economy from tourism to approximate almost perfect?
When I say these things, I am considered one of Sparla Calabria. It is in these cases a great sadness that overwhelms me, a great bitterness. After all, I've seen things in the world! Something I can tell. At least I can do comparisons. But my partners, politicians and ordinary citizens, are deaf. The truth is that nobody is interested in the Calabria evolve, will get richer and culturally. Neither of Calabria or not to Calabria.
Where there is culture, it is difficult to rip off the Mafia. May you continue to criminal activity, but it will never prevail. Where, however, dominates the ignorance, arrogance, presumption, the approximation, then the mafia becomes the employer recommends and then ask for the bill. I know that everything is complicated. But we must continue to have hope. Waking up from the torpor and desire. I feel that my Calabria is a land where the desire is dispersed, dried. And this, as in Calabria, is my greatest sorrow.
you in 32 years, Senigallia after winning the award for best columnist of the year, was a finalist for the Premio Viareggio with his first work of poetry "deformations" (1976). It is currently in the library with a novel in verse "The unknown battle" (Rubbettino, 2005), a metaphor of discomfort in which man lives in the contemporary world. But today, that so little is written and reads, Ottavio Rossi as an authoritative council gives to those who claim to be made as authors featured in the windows of bookshops?
not think I have the authority to give advice like that. I can only express my experience, that is certainly not that of a writer of best-seller. I wrote libri di poesie, saggi e un romanzo, che ho pubblicato sempre con piccoli editori. Tranne uno: “L’industria dei sequestri” edito da Longanesi nel 1978, in cui ho fatto la storia dei sequestri di persona in Italia. Non c’era nulla di scientifico sulla materia, tranne una storia dei sequestri in Sardegna. Nel mio libro ho cercato di dare l’avvio agli studi sociologici sul fenomeno dei rapimenti, che per la sistematicità con cui avvenivano in quegli anni era diventato una delle tante anomalie italiane. Metodi, numeri, comportamenti criminali, sistemi investigativi: ho esaminato e “storicizzato” tutto. Da quel momento la Criminalpol ha cominciato a comporre il suo data base sul fenomeno. La grande soddisfazione che I have had for many years has been hearing from colleagues who followed the crime and in particular the seizure: "You know, I have your book on your desk on seizures ...."
I say this not for vainglory, but because it is news. They are facts. Today, I have not really matter. But part of my experience as a journalist and writer. So I can only suggest to the writer: first of all be aware that we have something important to say then, and again, always check the sources, not just write about history or current events, journalistic or goods, but also when you write poetry, novels and essays, literary or otherwise. What often happens now is that we start reading a book - any - and there are typos, inaccuracies, approximations, and even fake data and it is thrown away. So if you are not sure of what you want to say and if you can not check the news, data, historical references, literary, scientific, it would be better not write at all. And finally, when it is safe to write, without thinking of the library windows, if the book will sell, if you can please this or that, especially if it is powerful. Otherwise you are not writers, but simply spokesman. It would do better then other, less tiring and even more profitable.
returned to his first true love. Signals of life, poetry, color, "" stops and transit "are not titles of poems but a few exhibitions of his paintings full of poetry. Is it a dream in color for a write in black and white?
I would say that both things are possible. Writing for me was and is life. The first poem I wrote 14 years ago in a melancholy while studying. Sounded the death knell. A fatal news I learned later. And I have pinned the verses as "death, I feel, I fear, is next door." A kind of exorcism. Then I threw that text can not remember more. Since then every day I have ever written a reflection, an image, a concept, an invocation, short something. Each time he left there to settle, and after some time I take those tests and reworks them slowly comes a book. At some point in my life, I felt the need to draw the lines that process. I've always drawn, but threw away the jobs when I had finished. Then in 1989 I made a trip to Turkey. In Istanbul I saw the Blue Mosque and was fascinated by the designs on those tiles that form mosaics of exceptional beauty. After one month, during the holidays I spent in Soverato, I painted a series of paintings with motifs blue, red, ocher, orange, bright colors, short poems around. Gilberto Finzi critic called them "visions of scripture." The collapse of the Berlin Wall has influenced my need to paint, as if the Wall was an important signal of victory of freedom, as if they had open doors before I had seen and promised that in addition there was a better reality to be discovered . And slowly I got drawn from poetry to paint the mind. My paintings are explosions of color. They are not nature, are not landscapes: for them is photography. I can not define my paintings, but what I wish is to lay on the canvas an image that flows from the mind and I hope it remains a testimony of a thought, maybe just sketched, but true, strong, provocative.
The complex personality, but at the same time easily comprensibile, di Ottavio Rossani è un tesoro da “scoprire” all’interno dei suoi scritti e da “leggere” tra i colori dei suoi quadri. Un intellettuale che offre alla cultura italiana uno spaccato di storia ed una forte componente passionale per riuscire a vedere, o intravvedere, il futuro che nasce da ognuno di noi. E che patisce sognando una Calabria più moderna, più ricca, più corretta, più libera, più autentica.
Giulia Fresca
