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The article aims at offering a new interpretation of some photographs of Luigi Ghirri’s Il profilo delle nuvole. Once separated from the linear sequence in which they are arranged in the book and recomposed in a panel inspired by Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, these images reveal a hidden genealogy that, taking into account both Luigi Ghirri’s suggestions and readings of his work by Marco Belpoliti and Gianni Celati, traces the figure of the columns back to 15th- and 16th-century motifs, in particular to the columns of Hercules in the Age of Discovery. It is then possible to create a connection between Il profilo delle nuvole and a text which is apparently distant from it, namely Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, a poem that just like Ghirri’s photo-text feature two crucial elements of landscape in the Po Valley such as the columns and the embankment. By establishing what Carlo Ginzburg would call an intentionally anachronistic and asymmetric dialogue between these texts, a new hypothesis is made about Luigi Ghirri’s understanding of the relationship between the columns and the embankments, a relationship that is entrusted with the task of showing that it is possible to take care of reality by taking care of its representation.

The essay investigates Gianni Celati’s relationship with two different authors such as William Blake and Henri Michaux. Starting from the reproposal of soome excerpts of their works on «Il semplice», it is exposed how Celati’s interest in these writers is linked to themes such as vision and liberation from social constraints - two topics variously treated by Celati in his works.

The following paper aims to identify a genealogy of the ‘almanac of prose’ «Il semplice», a six volumes journal by Feltrinelli publishing house (1995-1997). The idea first took shape in a series of public readings (known under the name «Viva Voce») held in Modena in 1992, and the journal was conceived as a permanent literary workshop since the very beginning. The first part of the article is mainly focused on an unpublished journal called «Astolfo dei narratori»: an in-depth study of some related archival documents has shown its strong connection with both «Il semplice» and Narratori delle riserve, a literary column run by Gianni Celati from 1988 to 1989. Forms and themes of the almanac «Il semplice» have been instead investigated in the second part of this study, using the homonymous archive: the purpose of this section is therefore to highlight the elements of continuity with the previous projects and to define its innovative nature.

My essay examines the connection between translation and tradition in Daniele Benati and Gianni Celati’s work (with a special attention to Celati’s figure). The starting point is a selection of translations originally published in the magazine «Il Semplice» (1995-1997) then collected in their four-handed anthology Storie di solitari americani (2006).

This essay focuses on the fantasy ethnographic short stories published in the second issue of the literary review «Il semplice» and written by Gianni Celati, Ginevra Bompiani, Ugo Cornia, Jean Talon, Stefano Benni and Henri Michaux. After a brief discussion of the role of ethnography and fantasy ethnography in the publication, I considered their relationship with travel writing. I then focused on the key role of Gulliver’s Travels, pointing out the possible Swiftian origin of the different kinds of estrangement adopted in the short stories collected in the review. In the last section, I compared and contrasted Michaux’s Gli Hiviniziki with the other short stories, and I stressed the similarities in the representation of the relationship between imaginary populations and the natural environment.

The introduction to the thematic section of volume 22 issue 1 (Il semplice. Vite e voci di una rivista) explains the origin, methods, aims and news of the most recent research dedicated to the journal «Il semplice. Almanacco delle prose» (1995-1997), one of the most interesting workshops of the Italian panorama at the end of the millennium. This introduction introduces some fundamental questions, addressed in the individual essays, which concern the ideas and suggestions that Gianni Celati has transmitted to the magazine. «Semplice» was an inexhaustible forge of short narratives of which the archive of the papers, kept in the Library of the Fondazione Collegio San Carlo di Modena and presented in this issue for the first time, will offer the scientific community new opportunities for study and research.

La riscrittura in forma di graphic novel dell’Orlando innamorato, iniziata nel 2021 su impulso del Centro Studi Matteo Maria Boiardo, raccoglie la sfida di avvicinare al poema un pubblico – quello dei giovani degli anni Duemilaventi – non avvezzo alla lettura della letteratura cavalleresca rinascimentale, ma pronto a riscoprire l’emozione, la sorpresa e la meraviglia nascoste nelle gesta dei paladini. Un tentativo che, guardando alle riscritture a fumetti dei grandi poemi epici e al lavoro di Gianni Celati, ha richiesto un’immersione nel testo boiardesco al fine di sciogliere, vagliare e intrecciare nuovamente i fili della narrazione per raccontare la «bella istoria» di Orlando a un nuovo pubblico.

Don Quixote as a Hypermodern Paradigm. Comparison Between the Ingenioso Hidalgo and the Imaginary of the Early 20th Century Through Gianni Celati’s Writings. In the light of Gianni Celati’s analysis of Don Quixote, this paper searches for the similarities between the novel by Cervantes and two cultural conditions of Western society: Modernity and Postmodernity. The exam of the limits of these comparisons, then, will reveal how the model of the Quijote is best suited to describe a third world-view, namely the hypermodern one. Finally, a brief look at the latest ways to approach the virtual world will suggest a fundamental change in our visual culture, while demonstrating the usefulness of Don Quixote as a hypermodern paradigm. In fact, this rupture will be made visible by showing the differences between what happens in the pages of the novel and on our everyday displays, which will be described more akin to collections of novellas

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The article aims to show how, in the Italian cultural setting transitioning from the 1960s through the '70s, Viktor Šklovskij's theory of estrangement was read together with the works of an expert of popular culture such as Mikhail Bakhtin. Particular attention was given to tracing the role of this "cross-reading" in the project of the never-realized magazine Alì Babà (which had Italo Calvino and Gianni Celati as main promoters), based on the idea of Carnival as necessary estrangement of the cultural objects of an era. By re-proposing this cross-reading, we can identify in a specific literary device the meeting point of the two Russian critics: enumeration. While Celati and Calvino evoked as an actual condition the immense accumulation of objects, they never definitely turned their interest towards this rhetorical figure that conveys such an accumulation in verbal form. This essay intends, therefore, to lay the foundations of a research process to come about carnivalesque enumerations in Italian literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines the reception of the concept of estrangement elaborated by Šklovskij in the poetics of Gianni Celati. The Italian writer resumes this concept in his analyses dedicated to Swift and Stendhal, linked to key themes of his work, starting from the deconstruction of logocentric thinking systems. From the pages of Celati, a dialogue also emerges explicitly. It is a dialogue with the genealogy of estrangement reconstructed by C. Ginzburg. A dialogue that moves from epistemological assumptions different from those of the writer, and comes to a different posture towards the knowledge of the real.

L'articolo si propone di mostrare come, nella transizione tra gli anni Sessanta e Settanta, nella cultura italiana la teoria dello straniamento di Viktor Šklovskij sia stata letta insieme alle opere di un esperto di cultura popolare come Michail Bachtin, evidenziando in particolare il ruolo di questa "lettura incrociata" nel progetto della rivista mai realizzata Alì Babà (di cui Italo Calvino e Gianni Celati furono i principali promotori), basata sull'idea del Carnevale come necessario straniamento degli oggetti culturali di un'epoca. Riproponendo questa lettura incrociata, possiamo individuare un dispositivo letterario che costituisce il punto d'incontro dei due critici russi: l'enumerazione. Mentre Celati e Calvino evocavano come condizione attuale l'accumulo smisurato di oggetti, essi non hanno però mai rivolto definitamente il loro interesse verso questa figura retorica che veicola tale accumulo in forma verbale; il saggio intende quindi porre le basi di una ricerca a venire sulle enumerazioni carnevalesche nella letteratura italiana.

En proposant une relecture des dernières pages de l’essai de Gianni Celati « Collezione di spazi » dans lesquelles l’écrivain vise à une lecture des sculptures d’Alberto Giacometti et de Rachel Whiteread, nous abordons le thème du négatif du visible et des espaces d’absence que les œuvres de ces artistes offrent au regard. En parallèle avec la pensée de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, notre analyse montre que Celati développe une expérience personnelle de la vision qui naît du rapport entre le visible et l’invisible des œuvres.

Malgré leur nature fragmentaire et souvent inachevée, les textes de Celati consacrés aux arts visuels témoignent d’une étonnante cohérence et d’une non moins étonnante concordance avec la pensée esthétique de leur auteur, tant dans leurs lignes générales que dans leurs évolutions. L’article offre un survol des principaux écrits théoriques que Celati a consacré, depuis les années 1970, au problème de l’art et de la peinture : par l’analyse de ces textes, on tente de montrer comment les liens entre image et écriture littéraire sont indissociables chez cet auteur.

Cet article porte sur la réflexion de Celati à la photographie. Plus particulièrement, nous nous intéressons à la fonction générative que les œuvres de Luigi Ghirri et de Carlo Gajani ont eue pour Celati, dans son approche du paysage pendant les années 1980 et dans sa réflexion sur son écriture littéraire. À partir des documents d’archives du « Fondo Celati » et du « Fondo Gajani » et en nous appuyant tant sur les textes édités que sur les matériaux préparatoires de Verso la foce, nous souhaitons montrer que cette réflexion est une partie essentielle du parcours intellectuel de Celati sur l’image.

Notre intervention porte sur le tournant visuel dans l’œuvre de Gianni Celati à partir de la moitié des années 1980. Celati décrit ce tournant en utilisant un vocabulaire spécifique (seuil, ligne, horizon…) qui renvoie à une tradition située dans l’histoire artistique italienne. Cette tradition va jusqu’à la peinture de Giorgio Morandi, mais trouve son origine dans la perspective métaphysique que l’on rencontre dans l’analyse de la peinture de Piero della Francesca menée par Roberto Longhi. Dans cette étude, l’historien de l’art examine en effet le rapport entre la ligne et la couleur et les effets de perception produits. Or, sur cette voie, la photographie de Luigi Ghirri représente l’aboutissement d’une longue tradition visuelle comprenant aussi la pensée de Leopardi sur l’imagination, explicitement mentionnée par Celati dans le journal Verso la foce. Le tournant visuel chez Celati s’avère ainsi une archéologie du regard occidental, de ses conditions, de ses effets, de ses modalités d’ouverture au monde.

Le texte compare les lectures que Gianni Celati et Luigi Ghirri ont données de leurs travaux réciproques pendant les années 1980, au moment de la publication de Narratori delle pianure. Il se concentre sur certains mots-clés tels qu’« apparences », « monde extérieur », pour tenter d’expliquer les influences mutuelles. Tout en considérant la photographie et l’art de raconter des histoires comme deux réalités expressives différentes, ce texte tente de rendre compréhensibles les influences réciproques spécifiques.

Le concept de double framing est lié à celui de champ (visuel, cinématographique ou narratif). Il s’agit d’un cadre qui n’est pas nécessairement physique, mais qui touche autant l’auteur que le spectateur/lecteur d’une œuvre et qui l’oblige à se positionner selon une dialectique du dedans/dehors. Dans l’essai, nous suggérons une définition du phénomène de double framing et nous comparons trois grands artistes (Antonioni, Celati et Ghirri), qui ont fait usage de cet élément dans la composition de leurs œuvres et qui ont proposé une réflexion similaire sur le concept de seuil.

Peu de temps avant la publication de Narratori delle pianure, dans un épisode hilarant de Lunario del paradiso (1978), Gianni Celati décrit le caractère insoutenable d’une vision imposée et spectaculaire. L’épisode peut être lu en tant que pars destruens d’une réflexion sur le voir qui amènera l’auteur à concevoir la forme toute particulière de ses récits d’observation. À la lumière de remarquables affinités visuelles, l’article propose de relire ces pages en tant que parodie d’une célèbre séquence du film 2001 : L’Odyssée de l’espace de Stanley Kubrick (1968).

Entre 1992 et 1997, Gianni Celati et John Berger ont entretenu un important échange épistolaire. Née autour de quelques projets éditoriaux, cette correspondance a ensuite touché des thèmes plus amples, tels le rôle de l’écriture, la relation entre le mot et l’image, l’expérience de la dépression. L’écriture manuscrite des deux écrivains est également surprenante. C’est Berger qui souligne leur similitude: « Suddenly, looking at your letter and at this page I’m writing, I’m struck by how similar our handwritings are ». La convergence de la pensée entre les deux auteurs trouve une confirmation inattendue dans les formes graphiques de leur écriture.

Entre 1974 et 1977, Gianni Celati, en collaboration avec le photographe Carlo Gajani et le mime Lino Gabellone, a publié deux volumes illustrés, Il chiodo in testa et La bottega dei mimi. Deux vrais phototextes, dans lesquels le mot écrit et l’image photographique se soutiennent mutuellement, selon une recherche sur la relation entre texte et performance, que Celati a menée dans les années 1970. À l’origine de cela, le besoin d’« échapper » à la fixité du texte écrit : ce même besoin qui conduira Celati à la collaboration avec Luigi Ghirri et, des années plus tard, au cinéma proprement dit.

In chasing the perfect moment—the Barthesian punctum—some photographers seem to harbor a silent desire of possession, a ravenous attitude towards their objects. Luigi Ghirri, on the contrary, imagined his photographs as a sort of “caress” given to ordinary and forgotten places. His research on the landscape drew up an “atlas of the gaze” which was at the same time a narrative “catalogue of perceptual habits”. His work reveals many affinities with writers such as John Berger, Gianni Celati and Peter Handke, and filmmakers such as Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog. They were all looking for new ways to rethink and represent the relationship between “landscape” and “inscape”, against the contemporary “destruction of experience”, in Giorgio Agamben’s terms. Ghirri, Berger and Celati, in particular, decided to follow, in their texts and photographs, feeble “traces” and “appearances” of a possible re-enchantment of the world. “Perhaps in the end all the places, objects, things, and faces we met by chance”, Ghirri wrote, “are simply waiting for someone to look at them, to recognise them and not to deprecate them”.

This paper claims to reflect upon some critical essays in which Gianni Celati deals with the issues of vision, perception, and literary description of the space. Through the analysis of some texts where Celati refers to painting and sculpture (particularly Alberto Giacometti's works), it will emerge the author's thought about art and the characteristics of his non-fiction writing will be highlighted as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attraverso l’analisi della corrispondenza tra Gianni Celati e l’Einaudi, il presente saggio mostra come negli anni della collaborazione tra lo scrittore e l’editore torinese, tra 1966 e 1979, si assista nel tempo ad un progressivo deterioramento dei rapporti con la casa editrice, causato dalla distanza tra la politica editoriale di Einaudi e l’idea di letteratura di Celati, fondata su quello che lo scrittore chiama ‘un altro italiano’. Il carteggio permette inoltre di ricostruire, con sempre maggiore precisione, il vasto sfondo teorico all’interno del quale Celati mosse i suoi primi passi, il vivace scambio intellettuale con i redattori Einaudi e le posizioni dello scrittore rispetto alla scena letteraria italiana a lui coeva. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article retreads our geographic and literary performance in March 2015, following, almost 30 years later, the traces of Gianni Celati’s travel diaries Verso la foce (‘Towards the River Mouth’) through the Po River Delta, in Northeastern Italy. In our reading of Celati’s text and during our 2-days performance, we decided to ‘go along’ the Po River, considered as a ‘liquid chronotope’ that discloses and shapes a geographic and narrative ‘liquid landscape’. We moved ‘from text to action’ and, interpreting literary maps ‘as always mappings’, we performed the ‘implicit map’ that emerges from Celati’s travel diaries. The purpose of the article is to re-activate the geographic understandings of Po River Delta’s waterscape: through our performance, we aimed to re-read Celati’s literary/geographical observations for interpreting the transformations of this peculiar Italian landscape. Moreover, the perspective of a photographer enhances the narration of the performance to open up the readers to further ‘visions’ of the Po River Delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]