Two complementary languages: the prose of Elio Vittorini and the neorealist painting of Renato Guttuso. Two Sicilians, two friends, two intellectuals. United by the idea that as a writer and as a painter they had a civil responsibility that went beyond their art. Professor Enzo Papa, a great scholar of Vittorini, reconstructs in great detail the planned illustrated edition of «Conversation in Sicily», entrusted to the drawings of Renato Guttuso and which remained unfinished during the war years. With the tools of those who love to reconstruct the historical truth, and therefore through documentary research, between letters, testimonies, archive materials, Papa manages to tell the story of two protagonists of the twentieth century capable of giving life to an editorial project between word and image.
The preview presentation of Enzo Papa’s essay «Vittorini, Guttuso and “Conversazione Illustrata”» opened the Vittorini Week yesterday, which will end on Saturday evening with the award ceremony at the Antico Mercato of Ortigia. Competing for the final victory of the twenty-fifth edition of the Elio Vittorini National Literary Prize will be Erica Donzella from Catania with «Non offendere» (Kalòs), Rosa Matteucci with «Cartagloria» (Adelphi) and Nadeesha Uyangoda with «Acqua rossa» (Einaudi). The winner for the First Work section is the journalist from Stretti Anna Mallamo, author of the novel “Col cuore me la vedo io” (Einaudi). The Arnaldo Lombardi Prize for independent publishing, dedicated to the memory of one of the “fathers” of the Vittorini Prize, went instead to the Calabrian publishing house Rubbettino.
First appointment yesterday evening, in the LiBer literary salon in Ortigia, with the presentation of Papa’s essay, who wanted to pay a fitting tribute on the 60th anniversary of Elio Vittorini’s death. Conceived in the early 1940s, the project did not come to fruition immediately and the drawings remained locked in a drawer for decades. In 1953, Vittorini published the illustrated version of «Conversazione in Sicilia» for Bompiani, with 188 photographs, of which 169 were taken by the photographer Luigi Crocenzi. In 1973, a new edition appeared on behalf of Olivetti, illustrated by Giorgio Soavi and photographic apparatus by the architect and photographer Enzo Ragazzini. But in 1986 Rizzoli published a new edition of «Conversazione in Sicilia» with an introduction and notes by Giovanni Falaschi, notes on the text by Sergio Pautasso and with Guttuso’s tables, which remained unpublished for over 40 years.
«Prof. Sergio Pautasso had told me about these drawings by Guttuso that he had found after 40 years. I think that if Guttuso had completed the illustration of the entire work, it would have been extraordinary”, explained Papa. Today, at the Elio Vittorini library museum, the artistic-documentary exhibition “The restless freedom will be inaugurated. Traveling with Elio Vittorini and Rosa Quasimodo between escapes and border stays”, curated by Livio Caruso. Tomorrow inauguration of the philatelic exhibition dedicated to the 60th anniversary of Vittorini’s death in collaboration with the Sicilian Collectors Union which, in addition to setting up the exhibition dedicated to Sicilian authors of the twentieth century, will take care of the issue, on Friday, of the special philatelic postmark «Homage to Elio Vittorini». This will be followed by the talk show «From Americana to the Polytechnic to Illustrated Conversation» with Salvo Sequenza, Teresella Celesti, Annalisa Stancanelli, Carmelo Maiorca, Aldo Mantineo.