Il labirinto

Frase del giorno

Per essere veramente un grand'uomo bisogna saper resistere anche al buon senso (Dostojevskij)

Scrittori dimenticati:Johannes Mario Simmel

The writer Johannes Mario Simmel wrote 35 novels whose serious themes – the Third Reich, the Cold War, the drug trade, racism, his fervent pacifism – did not impede their progress on to the best-seller lists. His books sold 73 million copies and were translated into 33 languages, making him one of the most successful of all German-language writers. He was also responsible for 22 film scripts which included Es geschehen noch Wunder (1951, Miracles Still Happen), a comedy with Hildegard Knef, and Robinson soll nicht sterben (1957, The Legend of Robinson Crusoe) with Horst Buchholz.

Simmel was born in Vienna in 1924, the son of a German chemist. His father, who was Jewish, fled to Britain after Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, but, after spending some time in England, Simmel and his mother, an editor for a film company, spent the war years in Austria. After matriculation, Simmel trained as a chemical engineer and was employed on war work. In 1945, Simmel gave up his job in industry, becoming an interpreter for the occupying U S Army.

However, Simmel soon turned to journalism, writing reviews and stories for the Vienna newspaper Welt am Abend. From 1950, he worked as a reporter for the Munich illustrated weekly magazine Quick in Europe and America, and began to establish himself as an author. Simmel's Begegnungen im Nebel (1947, "Encounters in the Fog"), a collection of stories, brought him praise for his originality, flowing style and poetic language.

But he was soon to be criticised for sacrificing literary style for popularity with Das geheime Brot (1950, "The secret bread"), Ich gestehe alles (1953, "I confess everything") and Gott schützt die Liebenden (1956, "God protects lovers"). However, the book which brought him his breakthrough into the best-seller lists was Es muss nicht immer Kaviar sein (1960, It Can't Always Be Caviar), a spy novel set in the Second World War.

There followed Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein (1965, Dear Fatherland, 1969, also appearing as Double Agent – Triple Cross), a Cold War drama, which was made into a prize-winning film in 1976, and Und Jimmy ging zum Regenbogen (1970, The Caesar Code), adapted as a film (1971) and for television (2008). With a Polish-German love story, Simmel turned his attention to the mis-use of genetic engineering in Doch mit den Clowns kamen die Tränen (1987, "With the clowns came tears"). His influences included Hans Fallada, Graham Greene and Georges Simenon.

In his later years he clashed with the Austrian politician Jörg Haider, whose right-wing views Simmel abhorred. He was awarded many prizes in Germany and Austria, and was also honoured by the UN for his work opposing racism. His last novel was Liebe ist die letzte Brücke ("Love is the last bridge"). His manuscripts and letters have been collected by Boston University.

The weekly newspaper Der Spiegel called Simmel "a keen-eyed chronicler of our times", and the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki said that, "more than almost any other contemporary author, Simmel has a fabulous eye for themes, problems and motives".

Scrittori dimenticati:Heinz Konsalik

Heinz G. Konsalik (Colonia 1921). È considerato, per i quarantasette milioni di copie vendute nel mondo, uno degli scrittori tedeschi più letti del dopoguerra. Il suo maggiore successo è Il medico di Stalingrado. Tra i suoi romanzi Lo zar e la ballerina (Es blieb nur ein rotes Segel, 1980) dove viene ricostruita la passata amicizia tra lo zar Nicola II e la ballerina Matilda Feliksovna in un arco di tempo che va soprattutto dal Lago dei cigni (1895) alla Rivoluzione d'ottobre (1917). Tra i personaggi storici presenti nel romanzo il coreografo Marius Petipa ed Enrico Cecchetti. I balletti via via rappresentati (con la Feliksovna protagonista) sono Coppelia, La bella addormentata, La bajadère, Raymonda, Le corsaire, La silfide e ovviamente Il lago dei cigni di cui va in scena la prima. Memorabile, nelle pagine iniziali, la frase che motiva il passaggio di Tamara Jegorovna da étoile a direttrice della Scuola imperiale di ballo di Pietroburgo: «Mi sembra che le mie piroette diventino più lente e che i mie salti siano sempre meno alti. Ho ormai quarantasei anni. Bisogna sapere smettere».
E' morto nel 1999.

Scrittrici dimenticate:Mary Hays

Mary Hays is the last of the women in this first group and often the least celebrated by Unitarians today. This is to our detriment as in this figure we can see a fine intellect, someone who was determined to find ways to become educated and to pass that knowledge on to other women in as accessible form as was possible.

She was born into a Baptist family, losing her father when she was only young. A double loss came when she fell in love with another Baptist, John Eccles, overcoming parental opposition only to lose him when she was twenty-one. She was stricken with grief. After recovering a little from this she vowed to turn her mind to educating herself but this was no easy matter. On hearing the visiting Robert Robertson preach she initiated an introduction and for the next eight years, until his death, he became her mentor. Exchanges were all done by correspondence and this was a pattern that she would turn to throughout her life. Robert Robertson was a Baptist having much in common with the rational dissenters and being welcome in Unitarian pulpits. We should remember the fluidity of rational dissent at this time with Unitarianism becoming more clearly defined as a denomination at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. Robertson died whilst on a preaching trip in Birmingham and Joseph Priestley presided at his funeral held at New Meeting Chapel. In his sermon Priestley praised him for educating his daughters equally with his sons saying that: "the minds of women are capable of the same improvement and the same furniture as that of men". What we see demonstrated throughout Mary Hays's life is the part that Unitarian men played in her education but also the part they played in bringing the subject of gender and education into their reformist agenda. Robert Robertson had introduced Mary Hays to theology, philosophy and history. She became what was possibly the first feminist theologian in interpreting the Bible from a feminist perspective, wanting to learn how gender and religion informed each other and how it then informed her own life.

Losing her mentor was a great blow to Hays but on hearing that Joseph Priestley had moved to the pioneering Dissenting New College, Hackney, in 1791, she found a way of becoming introduced to him. An old student of Robert Robertson acted as a go-between so that Hays could read Priestley's lectures, listen to the sermons at the college and meet and talk with the tutors and their wives. It is at this time Hays decides that she is in fact a Unitarian. For the next three years Priestley was the biggest influence in her life as she extended her academic learning, which now addressed science, theology, history and geography. Before A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published, Hays was already writing her Appeal to the Men of Great Britain on Behalf of Women but didn't publish this until six years later in1798. The first publication that drew attention to her was written in response to Gilbert Wakefield's attack on the religious rituals of "the Dissenters of our time." Hays as "Eusabia" enters the debate pointing out that it is through the pulpit that congregations and especially women can hear religious addresses that are biblically, socially and politically informed. She is complimented by men such as Theophilus Lindsey and the tutors of New College, Hackney, which at this time was considered a centre of radicalism by the establishment. By this time Hays was part of the Unitarian network, writing sermons that were preached at Essex Chapel by Dr John Disney, Assistant Minister at Essex Street Chapel.

In 1793 Hays, along with her sister, publishes Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous. Instead of the more usual conduct books of the time Hays outlines a system of learning for young women along the lines advocated and instituted by Joseph Priestley and others at New College. Whilst male Rational Dissenters addressed the lack of education for girls and young women agreeing that it was right that they should be educated, nevertheless the end goal was to help them become educated mothers and wives who could converse on the same level as their husbands. Education for young women at that time was carried out by ministers and teachers to visiting relatives and good women through the network of family relationships. Few recognised the radicalism which Hays was beginning to advocate. She knew from bitter experience how difficult it was for many middle-class women, not part of the network of rational dissent, to access higher education.

Tutor, William Frend had been but one who had responded to Hays' defence of dissenting worship and as Priestley left New College, appropriately fitted into the vacated space in her life as mentor. However, she sadly misread the messages he sent out and became romantically attracted to him and her letters to him made open avowals of that love only to be rejected. Following the publication of Letter and Essays, Hays moved out of the maternal home and took rooms closer to William Frend and also William Godwin, the leading radical political philosopher, to whom she had written requesting a copy of his new book, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. It is in William Godwin she confides and who suggests she uses her letters to Frend as a basis for a novel. In 1796 Memoirs of Emma Courtney is published and is immediately attacked by conservative critics. This wasn't a time to be writing radical literature of any sort but yet in 1798 Hays publishes An Appeal to the Men of Great Britain, anonymously this time. It can be no coincidence that it had been during the previous few years that Hays and Wollstonecraft had become close friends until the latter died in 1797, confiding in each other about their failed relationships. It is Hays who re-introduces Wollstonecraft to William Godwin following an unsuccessful encounter some years before. When Godwin had wanted to talk to Tom Paine over dinner at publisher Joseph Johnson, Wollstonecraft had imposed herself on the conversation. It is Hays who later helps to nurse her friend through childbirth, who some days later lost her fight for life.

The next decade witnessed Hays' solid contribution to historical writing grounded in research. In 1803 Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries, is published in six volumes. This was written "for the benefit of my own sex. For their improvement, and to their entertainment…they require pleasure to be mingled with instruction…I have at heart the happiness of my sex, and their advancement in the grand scale of rational and social existence." (Preface) Priestley, amongst other Unitarians, was known to welcome this work. It ran to several editions and was read through the nineteenth century. The women included were meant as role models for what women could achieve.

Once more she turned to Unitarian men who could forward her historical research and began corresponding with William Tooke the Younger and Elder, the latter being a recognised historian with an extensive library. She began writing for the growing, lucrative children's market publishing Historical Dialogues for Young Persons 1806-8.

Moving around at this time to be nearer to her family, she became a subscriber and attendant at the Unitarian Chapel in Bristol where Dr Estlin was minister and with whom "she was well pleased". To the end of her life she was part of the Unitarian network encouraging the next generation of influential women such as Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell.

Hays continued to write short stories for publication until 1821 when she caught the nation's mood in Memoirs of Queens, Illustrious and Celebrated, galvanizing women's reaction to George IVth's behaviour in "the Queen Caroline Affair".

To the end of her life she never forgot her debt to Robert Robertson, writing in what could be her last letter: "This Great and good man was the awakener of my mind…" (Dr Williams' Library) She died in February 1843 and in The Christian Reformer of September 1844 a 'Memoir of Mary Hays' was published.

Scrittrici dimenticate:Angela Veronese

"l'animatrice di ogni scrittore. (...)

Ti ammirai in altrui e ti difesi in me stessa (...) offri un asilo sicuro alle notizie sulla vita di Aglaja Anassilide".

Che la giovane poetessa sentisse il bisogno, a neppure trent’anni, di mettersi al riparo dalla diffamazione è un ulteriore segnale della sua posizione trasgressiva nella società in cui visse.

Fra i primi ricordi Angela colloca lo stampatore Bassanini di Venezia, che possedeva una casa di campagna vicina a quella in cui il padre di lei prestava servizio, e che era uso regalare libri alla famiglia.

Quando Angela ha tre anni, i Veronese si trasferiscono a S. Bona (altra villa di Treviso), al servizio di Casa Zenobio, i cui signori seguiranno a Venezia tre anni dopo.

La figura paterna è vista come mite e generosa, amante della natura e degli animali (Angela ricorda ad esempio che cane e gatta domestici li hanno seguiti in tutti i loro spostamenti; la micia morirà serenamente di vecchiaia in Venezia e, sepolta in giardino, sul suo tumulo verrà piantato un roseto che darà le rose della gatta); più severe, ma ugualmente amabili le figure della madre e della nonna, che appaiono maggiormente preoccupate, però, dall'ardimento e dal precoce ingegno della bambina.

Il padre asseconda il desiderio di sapere di Angela, anche perché ella è l'unica figlia sopravvissuta ai molti nati (solo quando la fanciulla conterà tredici anni, una sorellina riuscirà a sopravvivere).

A Venezia Angela si ammala di vaiolo; ricorda di esser stata cieca per sei giorni e di aver molto sofferto per la perdita dei capelli che erano di color "castagno oscuro", "folti e inanellati".

All'età di undici anni impara a scrivere, vincendo l'ostilità materna a tal progetto (per una fanciulla leggere era commendevole, ma scrivere no...) da un falegname prima e da un coetaneo, figlio del fattore della villa, poi.

A tale fanciullo chiede in dono le Opere di Metastasio e ricorda di averlo fatto con tale ardore da rendere impossibile all'altro un diniego.
Due anni dopo, quando il padre è passato al servizio di Donna Alba Zenobio (sorella del conte Alvise e maritata Albrizzi), Angela scrive i primi versi:

Già sorta era la rosea
diva, che il ciel colora,
che gli astri rende pallidi,
che l'orizzonte indora...

nonché un sonetto per il conte Alessandro Pepoli (paragonato ad Apollo su aureo cocchio) che lei vede passare, appunto, in carrozza scoperta sul Terraglio.

Angela briga per far giungere il sonetto al destinatario, rivelando qui la sua vera ambizione di donna di lettere, e sebbene il sonetto rischi (per incuria dell'intermediario) di finire ad accendere una pipa, Francesco Bragadin, nobiluomo presente al tentato scempio, lo previene e consegna i versi al Pepoli.

Ginevra Canonici Facchini, nel Prospetto biografico delle donne italiane rinomate in letteratura, dal sec. decimoquarto sino ai giorni nostri, edito nel 1824, lodò la "gentilezza d'immagini e sceltezza di stile" della poetessa, auspicando che un mecenate la innalzasse al posto che, secondo Ginevra, ella meritava. Né mancò di sottolineare la presunta umiltà di Angela che "paga di se stessa nulla chiede, e trae gli onorati suoi giorni nella ristrettezza e nella oscurità senza lagnarsi delle ingiurie della fortuna nemica".

Eppure, Aglaja Anassilide tentò invece con tenacia di farsi conoscere ed apprezzare, scrivendo incessantemente sonetti e composizioni sui fatti più banali accaduti a coloro i quali i versi erano indirizzati (e molto spesso si trattava di personaggi "potenti" di cui Angela cercava l'approvazione ed il favore: curiosamente, quasi tutti questi personaggi erano donne!).

Particolarmente vero è questo quando Aglaja canta le donne celebrandone la bellezza e l'onore (alle sue edizioni, spesso antepone un detto del Cigno Ferrarese, ovvero l'Ariosto: "Le donne son venute in eccellenza in ciascun'arte ov'hanno posto cura") e testimoniando un sincero amore per il proprio sesso; all'egregia dama Margherita Contessa de Belgrado, ella offre una rosa non ancora colta, e che rifiuta di farsi spiccare in quanto destinata appunto "alla più bella", e conclude rivolgendosi al bocciolo che immagina ormai in seno alla dama:

"Va', di tua sorte altero

s'aggradirà, lo spero

la donatrice e il don";

altrove, si rivolge a Barbara (che ribadisce tale di nome ma non di fatto) la quale, in grazia delle virtù possedute, è fonte di "delizia" per la poetessa e nel chiedere perdono alla citata "Fillide" per il ritardo con cui le spedisce i propri versi, chiede alla bellezza dell'amica, per la quale immagina l'invidia di dee, di trovare in se' ragione di misericordia (Cerca nei tuoi occhi la ragione del mio smarrimento, afferma più o meno il verso finale del sonetto).

"Citerea gridava: aita,

perché Amor l'avea ferita;

Imeneo che il grido udì

pronto accorse e Amor svanì".

Ovvero: Venere, la donna, è innamorata; si sposa ed ecco l'amore sparire d'incanto...

A poco più di vent'anni, Angela Veronese comincia ad essere conosciuta, i suoi versi viaggiano fra una cerchia d'eruditi, né la poetessa manca d'inviarli a sempre nuovi soggetti che potrebbero accrescere la sua fama.

Il che, nel mentre i versi sottoriportati coniugano umiltà di fronte alla grande (Saffo) e riconoscimento del proprio valore, era il fine ultimo della vita di Angela:

Sognai sul far dell'alba
d'essere un dì volata
all'isola beata
sacra alla Dea d'amor.

Mirai d'un mirto all'ombra
la stessa Citerea:
che a lato il figlio avea
con l'arco feritor.

Al sacro mirto appesa
vidi una cetra bella
ed in ascrea favella
vi si leggea così:

io fui di Saffo un giorno;
or me non brami invano;
stendere osai la mano
ma il sogno disparì.

 

Ad un antico platano

Cetra, t'appendo, addio.
Ignota al biondo Dio
I giorni miei vivrò!

Fra cento pastorelle
Per te mi ornai di fiori;
E m'invidiò Licori,
Filen m'accarezzò.

Or t'abbandono; e l'aura
Passando a te d'appresso
Ne desti un suon dimesso
Appena noto al cor.

Un suon che lento e placido
Lusinghi l'alma mia,
Un suon che dolce sia,
Ma che non sia d'Amor [1]