ROBERTO BENIGNI, THE HOLOCAUST IN 'LA VITA È BELLA'

La Vita è Bella / Life is Beautiful

Today, The Grandma wants to talk about Mauthausen, one of the first massive concentration camp complexes in Nazi Germany, and the last to be liberated by a squad of US Army Soldiers of the 41st Reconnaissance Squadron of the US 11th Armoured Division, 3rd US Army on a day like today in 1945.

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany, aided by local collaborators, systematically murdered some six million European Jews, around two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, between 1941 and 1945.

Jews were targeted for extermination as part of a larger event during the Holocaust era, in which Germany and its collaborators persecuted and murdered other groups, including Slavs (chiefly ethnic Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and Soviet citizens), the Roma, the incurably sick, political and religious dissenters such as communists and Jehovah's Witnesses, and gay men. 

Taking into account all the victims of Nazi persecution, the death toll rises to 17 million.

More information: BBC

Nowadays, we can see astonished how the right-wing is rising unstoppably in Europe and economic, social and moral crisis seem to help in this increasing. We must learn from our recent past to not do the same mistakes.

The Grandma and her friends are in Tuscany and they want to talk, in a special day like today, about Roberto Benigni, the great Tuscan artist well-known by his role in the film La vita è bella, a film that talks about fascism and WWII in Italy.

Roberto Remigio Benigni, born 27 October 1952, is a Tuscan actor, comedian, screenwriter and director. He co-wrote, directed and acted in the 1997 film Life is Beautiful, which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 71st Oscars Ceremony.

He also portrayed Inspector Clouseau's son in Son of the Pink Panther (1993) and has collaborated with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch in three of his films: Down by Law (1986), Night on Earth (1991) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2003).

Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) in La Vita è Bella

Benigni was born in Manciano La Misericordia, Castiglion Fiorentino, a small, walled city in eastern Tuscany, in the province of Arezzo, between the cities of Arezzo and Cortona. The son of Isolina Papini, a fabric maker, and Luigi Benigni, a bricklayer, carpenter, and farmer. 

His first experiences as a theatre actor took place in 1971, in Prato. During that autumn he moved to Rome where he took part in some experimental theatre shows, some of which he also directed. In 1975, Benigni had his first theatrical success with Cioni Mario di Gaspare fu Giulia, written by Giuseppe Bertolucci.

Benigni became famous in Italy in the 1970s for a television series called Onda Libera, on RAI2, produced by Renzo Arbore, in which he interpreted the satirical piece The L'inno del corpo sciolto, a scatological song about the joys of defecation. A great scandal for the time, the series was suspended due to censorship. His first film was 1977's Berlinguer, Ti voglio bene, also by Bertolucci.

More information: Life is Beautiful

His popularity increased with L'altra domenica (1976-1979), another TV show of Arbore's in which Benigni portrayed a lazy film critic who never watches the films he's asked to review.

In 1980 he met Cesenate actress Nicoletta Braschi, who was to become his wife and who has starred in most of the films he has directed.

In June 1983 he appeared during a public political demonstration by the Italian Communist Party, with which he was a sympathiser, and on this occasion he lifted and cradled the party's national leader Enrico Berlinguer. It was an unprecedented act, given that until that moment Italian politicians were proverbially serious and formal. 

Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) in La Vita è Bella

Benigni was censored again in the 1980s for calling Pope John Paul II something impolite during an important live TV show Wojtylaccio, meaning Bad Wojtyla in Italian, but with a friendly meaning in Tuscan dialect.

Benigni's first film as director was Tu mi turbi in 1983.

In 1984, he played in Non ci resta che piangere with comic actor Massimo Troisi. Beginning in 1986, Benigni starred in three films by American director Jim Jarmusch. 

In 1993, he starred in Son of the Pink Panther, directed by veteran Blake Edwards. Benigni played Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau's illegitimate son who is assigned to save the Princess of Lugash.

Benigni is perhaps best known outside Italy for his 1997 tragicomedy La vita è bella, filmed in Arezzo, also written by Cerami. The film is about an Italian Jewish man who tries to protect his son's innocence during his internment at a Nazi concentration camp, by telling him that the Holocaust is an elaborate game and he must adhere very carefully to the rules to win.

More information: The Guardian

Benigni's father had spent three years in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, and La vita è bella is based in part on his father's experiences. Benigni was also inspired by the story of Holocaust survivor Rubino Romeo Salmonì.

More favourable critics praised Benigni's artistic daring and skill to create a sensitive comedy involving the tragedy, a challenge that Charlie Chaplin confessed he would not have done with The Great Dictator had he been aware of the horrors of the Holocaust.

'Forbidden access to Jews and dogs'

In 1998, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

At the 1999 ceremony, the film was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, which Benigni accepted as the film's director, Best Original Dramatic Score, and Benigni received the award for Best Actor, the first for a male performer in a non-English-speaking role, and only the third overall acting Oscar for non-English-speaking roles.

Famously, giddy with delight after Life Is Beautiful was announced as the Best Foreign Language Film, Benigni climbed over and then stood on the backs of the seats in front of him and applauded the audience before proceeding to the stage.

After winning his Best Actor Oscar later in the evening, he said in his acceptance speech, This is a terrible mistake because I used up all my English! To close his speech, Benigni quoted the closing lines of Dante's Divine Comedy, referencing the love that moves the sun and all the stars.

More information: Oscars

Benigni is an improvisatory poet. Poesia estemporanea is a form of art popularly followed and practiced in Tuscany, appreciated for his explanation and recitations of Dante's Divina Commedia from memory.

During 2006 and 2007, Benigni had a lot of success touring Italy with his 90-minute one man show TuttoDante. Combining current events and memories of his past narrated with an ironic tone, Benigni then begins a journey of poetry and passion through the world of the Divina Commedia.

Roberto Benigni is also a singer-songwriter. Among his recorded performances are versions of Paolo Conte's songs.

More information: The New York Times

In Italy, the country where fascism was born, 

we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, 

but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. 

It is a part of humanity.

Roberto Benigni

FRANCESCO PETRARCA, LAURA & 'IL CANZIONERE'

Francesco Petrarca

Today, Jordi Santanyí and his friends are still in Arezzo. They want to visit the Francesco Petrarca's house, where this genius, father of Renaissance, was born and where the artistic and literary heritage of the Petrarchan Academy is kept in. Nowadays, this building is owned by the Accademia Petrarca di Lettere Arti e Scienze di Arezzo, established in 1623. It dates back to the XVI century and was built on top of a previous building of the XIII-XIV centuries.

The library has got about 20.000 books and incunabula, some of which date back to the XVI, XVII, XVIII and XIX centuries. Among them there are valuable editions of some Petrarchan works and some antique books, including some works by F. Redi, a doctor, literary man and naturalist from Arezzo, who lived in the XVII century (1626-1697).

All the books dating back to the XV-XVIII centuries were collected by F.Redi himself and his successors until 1820 when they were inherited by the Petrachan Academy.

As well as the Redi Library, the Academy owns important collections of books including G. L. Passerini’s Dante’s Library and  valuable collection of letters, about 8000, belonging to the most well-known literary representatives of the Italian culture of the first three decades of the XX century.

Jordi and The Grandma love Literature and visiting Petrarca's home is an unforgettable experience for them. Jordi wants to know more things about Petrarca's life and The Grandma is interested in the mysterious figure of Laura, the secret love of the Tuscan writer.

Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304-July 18/19, 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch was a scholar and poet of Renaissance who was one of the earliest humanists. His rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with inventing the 14th-century Renaissance.

Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri.

Jordi visits La Casa di Petrarca, Arezzo

Petrarch would be later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca.

Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the Dark Ages.

Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city of Arezzo in 1304. He was the son of Ser Petracco and his wife Eletta Canigiani. His given name was Francesco Petracco. The name was Latinized to Petrarca. Petrarch's younger brother was born in Incisa in Val d'Arno in 1307. Dante was a friend of his father.

Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. He spent much of his early life at Avignon and nearby Carpentras, where his family moved to follow Pope Clement V who moved there in 1309 to begin the Avignon Papacy. He studied law at the University of Montpellier (1316–20) and Bologna (1320–23) with a lifelong friend and schoolmate called Guido Sette. Because his father was in the legal profession, a notary, he insisted that Petrarch and his brother study law also.

More information: Ibelcasentino

Petrarch however, was primarily interested in writing and Latin literature and considered these seven years wasted. Additionally, he proclaimed that through legal manipulation his guardians robbed him of his small property inheritance in Florence, which only reinforced his dislike for the legal system. He protested, I couldn't face making a merchandise of my mind, as he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice.

Petrarch was a prolific letter writer and counted Boccaccio among his notable friends to whom he wrote often. After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in 1326, where he worked in numerous clerical offices. This work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large-scale work, Africa, an epic in Latin about the great Roman general Scipio Africanus, Petrarch emerged as a European celebrity.

On April 8, 1341, he became the second poet laureate since antiquity and was crowned by Roman Senatori Giordano Orsini and Orso dell'Anguillara on the holy grounds of Rome's Capitol.

The Grandma & Claire inside La Casa di Petrarca

He traveled widely in Europe, served as an ambassador, and has been called the first tourist because he traveled just for pleasure, and the reason he climbed Mont Ventoux. During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts and was a prime mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome and Greece.

Disdaining what he believed to be the ignorance of the centuries preceding the era in which he lived, Petrarch is credited or charged with creating the concept of a historical Dark Ages.

Petrarch spent the later part of his life journeying through northern Italy as an international scholar and poet-diplomat. His career in the Church did not allow him to marry, but he is believed to have fathered two children by a woman or women unknown to posterity.

About 1368 Petrarch moved to the small town of Arquà in the Euganean Hills near Padua, where he passed his remaining years in religious contemplation. He died in his house in Arquà early on July 20, 1374 -his seventieth birthday. The house hosts now a permanent exhibition of Petrarchian works and curiosities; among others you find the famous tomb of Petrarch's beloved cat who was embalmed.

More information: The New York Times

Petrarch is best known for his Italian poetry, notably the Canzoniere and the Trionfi. However, Petrarch was an enthusiastic Latin scholar and did most of his writing in this language. His Latin writings include scholarly works, introspective essays, letters, and more poetry.

Among them are Secretum Meum, an intensely personal, guilt-ridden imaginary dialogue with Augustine of Hippo; De Viris Illustribus, a series of moral biographies; Rerum Memorandarum Libri, an incomplete treatise on the cardinal virtues; De Otio Religiosorum and De Vita Solitaria, which praise the contemplative life; De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae, a self-help book which remained popular for hundreds of years; Itinerarium; invectives against opponents such as doctors, scholastics, and the French; the Carmen Bucolicum, a collection of 12 pastoral poems; and the unfinished epic Africa. He translated seven psalms, a collection known as the Penitential Psalms.

Joseph visits La Casa di Petrarca, Arezzo

Petrarch also published many volumes of his letters, including a few written to his long-dead friends from history such as Cicero and Virgil. Cicero, Virgil, and Seneca were his literary models. Most of his Latin writings are difficult to find today, but several of his works are available in English translations.

Petrarch collected his letters into two major sets of books called Epistolae familiares and Seniles, both of which are available in English translation. The plan for his letters was suggested to him by knowledge of Cicero's letters. These were published without names to protect the recipients, all of whom had close relationships to Petrarch. 

His Letter to Posterity gives an autobiography and a synopsis of his philosophy in life. It was originally written in Latin and was completed in 1371 or 1372 -the first such autobiography in a thousand years, since Saint Augustine.

While Petrarch's poetry was set to music frequently after his death, especially by Italian madrigal composers of the Renaissance in the 16th century, only one musical setting composed during Petrarch's lifetime survives. This is Non al suo amante by Jacopo da Bologna, written around 1350.

More information: BBC

On April 6, 1327, after Petrarch gave up his vocation as a priest, the sight of a woman called Laura in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rime sparse. Later, Renaissance poets who copied Petrarch's style named this collection of 366 poems Il Canzoniere.

Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade, an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade. There is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing.

Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. According to his Secretum, she refused him because she was already married. He channeled his feelings into love poems that were exclamatory rather than persuasive, and wrote prose that showed his contempt for men who pursue women. Upon her death in 1348, the poet found that his grief was as difficult to live with as was his former despair.

In his Letter to Posterity, Petrarch wrote: In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair -my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.

Francesco & Laura

While it is possible she was an idealized or pseudonymous character -particularly since the name Laura has a linguistic connection to the poetic laurels Petrarch coveted- Petrarch himself always denied it.

His frequent use of l'aura is also remarkable: for example, the line Erano i capei d'oro a l'aura sparsi may both mean her hair was all over Laura's body, and the wind l'aura blew through her hair.

There is psychological realism in the description of Laura, although Petrarch draws heavily on conventionalised descriptions of love and lovers from troubadour songs and other literature of courtly love. Her presence causes him unspeakable joy, but his unrequited love creates unendurable desires, inner conflicts between the ardent lover and the mystic Christian, making it impossible to reconcile the two.

Petrarch's quest for love leads to hopelessness and irreconcilable anguish, as he expresses in the series of paradoxes in Rima 134 Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra;/e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio: I find no peace, and yet I make no war:/and fear, and hope: and burn, and I am ice.

More information: Poetry in Transation-The Canzoniere

Laura is unreachable -the few physical descriptions of her are vague, almost impalpable as the love he pines for, and such is perhaps the power of his verse, which lives off the melodies it evokes against the fading, diaphanous image that is no more consistent than a ghost.

In addition, some today consider Laura to be a representation of an ideal Renaissance woman, based on her nature and definitive characteristics.

Petrarch is traditionally called the father of Humanism and considered by many to be the father of the Renaissance. In his work Secretum meum he points out that secular achievements did not necessarily preclude an authentic relationship with God.

Petrarch argued instead that God had given humans their vast intellectual and creative potential to be used to their fullest. He inspired humanist philosophy which led to the intellectual flowering of the Renaissance.

He believed in the immense moral and practical value of the study of ancient history and literature -that is, the study of human thought and action. Petrarch was a devout Catholic and did not see a conflict between realizing humanity's potential and having religious faith.

More information: The Guardian

How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation 

from the rocks of ignorance.

Petrarch