United States – “A Man of Letters”: Giorgio Bassani in North America
On the occasion of the publishing of the new edition of Giorgio Bassani's Complete Poems (Feltrinelli 2021), the Italian Cultural Institute in New York and the Giorgio Bassani Foundation celebrate the writer from Ferrara, and in particular his poetic works, with the symposium "A Man of Letters": Giorgio Bassani in North America, taking place on January 19 (06:00 pm) a the Italian Cultural Institute.
The introductory remarks are by prof. Fabio Finotti, IIC Director, and by Paola Bassani, president of the Giorgio Bassani Foundation.
Anna Dolfi, curator of the volume, presents the entire corpus of poems ranging from 1945 to 1982, from which emerges -unlike the narrative- an intimate, autobiographical Bassani with a watchful eye and a severe look at post-war Italy.
In the 1970s Bassani arrived in America as a visiting professor at the universities of Indiana, California, and Canada. During this time, he re-worked on his Romanzo di Ferrara, and wrote the new poems of In great secret, some of which he himself considered as his "American Poems".
Alain Elkann talks about his meetings in New York with Giorgio Bassani, the writer's impressions on the United States and American literature.
Valerio Cappozzo illustrates the unpublished material of the correspondence between Bassani and «The New York Times» and other magazines published in New York, the city in which Bassani's work has been, and continues to be, published.
Companion to the symposium an exhibition, curated by Cappozzo with the collaboration of Gaia Litrico and Francesco Franchella, showing documents made available by the Giorgio Bassani Foundation.
Originals Bassani's handwritten letters and poems will be on display and, for the first time, the translation of Hemingway's Farewell to Arms that Bassani did in 1943, considered lost until now: a work that opens up new perspectives of investigation on the relationship between the writer from Ferrara and American literature.