Literary invention has given a strong impulse to contemporary Italian civil society. Such invention is realised along the paths of writing, as attested to by the autographs held at the Centro Manoscritti. Literary works are not static objects, but stem from a long process that knows secret byways, full of surprises for those who do not passively place their trust in the customary canons. Writers’ archives are a cultural legacy of great interest to a wide audience, in particular the young. It is precisely for young people that this project is intended, through the construction of an online digital platform allowing access to the Centre’s documentary heritage.

Aims

Literary archives of the twentieth century are delicate and perishable because of the quality of the paper and the writing instruments that were used. As part of a wider project to ensure the gradual digitization of the entire patrimony held at the Centre, its working group, in this first phase, intends to set up a Digital Library platform to introduce the documents of some of the most famous classic authors of the twentieth century, including Eugenio Montale, Umberto Saba and Vittorio Sereni. It also seems appropriate for us to deal with more recent experiences such as those of Amelia Rosselli and of other authors who are still active, such as Franco Buffoni and Jolanda Insana, who over the years have contributed to the Centre even through public readings. Eye contact with the creative processes of great authors above all engages us emotionally and, when accompanied by appropriate comments, helps to reverse the current trend of youth disaffection with reading. At the same time it offers concrete suggestions to those wishing to devote themselves to writing.

Method of presentation

Manuscripts are only seemingly mute. If questioned, they reveal many aspects regarding the processes of their creation, the state of mind of the writer, the circumstances in which he found himself working, and the difficulties he had to face even with publishers.

Different testimonies of creative work and preservation of personal archives will be presented. Two examples. From a patrimony consisting of the drafts of poems, letters, drawings and even the Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter that Montale used for decades, we shall choose autographs of well-known texts, from I limoni to most caustic poems of Satura. Unpublished sketches and drawings by the poet will appear alongside the comparison of handwritten drafts and printed texts. The platform will show, let’s say, how the Nobel prize winner preferred to write on meagre or makeshift materials, just as when he dabbled in painting with coffee grounds or lipstick remnants. Moreover, he rarely went back to his works once they had been printed. Saba, on the contrary, infinitely reworked the physiognomy of his Canzoniere, even to the extent of pasting handwritten drafts over the printed pages.

Technical aspects

The digital library platform will be set up by bringing together reproductions of documents that complement each other: autographs, letters, declarations by authors, graphics and photographs, all accompanied by appropriate brief comments. In essence, it is necessary to launch a programme of high-resolution digitization, divided into successive stages, that guarantees the long-term preservation of the precious documents as well as their relative usability. The realization of the project requires a technological infrastructure that ensures the storage of digital content, and the compilation of the xml settings of administrative, managerial and structural metadata for the relative preservation, porting and utilization. By interfacing the platform to a module for an educational programme that is suitably linked to such content, student access to authoritative manuscript sources that are otherwise difficult to retrieve will be encouraged.

In order to achieve this, we also need you, your help, your support. Your contribution!

LINK

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