Don Camillo and Peppone: two great teachers! Guareschi has explicitly defined at the beginning of his work, Don Camillo and Peppone like two people "united on the essentials": what does it mean?
The characters of Guareschi's books are real people, most of the characters of the film (which in fact Guareschi had expressed some misgivings). They are characters that depart from their desire for truth and justice, from a living faith in a human way, by a communist ideal, which seeks to address the need for justice. So that people can not meet. Guareschi ago with his books, that Italy which, while having very different ideas in it, has built a profound unity in the welfare of our country. It is the people of our nation, which has been much more united because of the ideological divide they have split, and this is why these people are met.
You speak of a people remained together, which means that the issue is not nostalgically evoke a world, the "small world", which now no longer ...
The people are united by an event that generates a 'units, and the people of Guareschi joined from occurring in the life of a country living from the desire for truth. The people of Guareschi were people for whom faith was the answer to the desire for truth, and that communism was a response to the desire for justice. This is not a thing of the past: each position brings with it a human response to a need.
So what's the point of Guareschi's news?
The point of relevance is the deep desire for truth, without which faith is dead, and without which the ideal becomes ideology is that people need without which our country is not going anywhere, whatever the type of government that will. I think especially after what he said Giussani Nasiriyah, "if there was an education of the people, all would be better off." In Guareschi's books that education is understood that there was indeed, and it was the determining factor.
What does it mean that education is a key factor in the world narrated by Guareschi?
means that Don Camillo, beyond the caricatures of the film, is a character who never fails to educate and educate. The Education of Don Camillo comes back on the continued discussion after each error: not a character with no errors, is a passionate, deeply believes that, with faith, that humanity, that believes in the people around him, but understands make mistakes. This continued to admit the mistake and start is the education that you submit and which bring the people of the country. Peppone itself is one that, although it was in a period of total ideology (one that bubbles with Guareschi Candido's), fighting this ideology in the name of the true desire for justice. So we understand why, when there is a strike for not milking cows to milk Peppone be secretly with Don Camillo, once it reaches the ideology that creates hatred in the country, is opposed, when they replace with the young priest Don Camillo cattocomunista young, he's with Don Camillo. It is continuing education, from Don Camillo and Peppone, the people who have around, and around them are growing all the other characters.
you opposed to the young priest Don Camillo cattocomunista, yet many say that the friendship between Don Camillo and Peppone is the archetype of the agreement between Catholics Communists and
tell you a story that makes clear the inadequacy of that cattocomunismo, and all cattocomunismi. The young priest who replaces Don Camillo pontificate from the pulpit against the old man who works, and causes to be brought to the hospice, the day after the same old man is found dead under the wall of the hospice, because he tried to climb over to return to live and work, and do things without which there could be. This is the point: the young priest is the ideology of a Christianity that does not serve even those who practice it, because it becomes a justicialism like what we see today is not for real people. The position of Don Camillo instead is multifaceted, is meeting with people, listening to the people, and is, in the name of faith that responds to human, the ability to perceive the needs, one by one. The young priest, however, is the standardization of needs.
The incident just narrated brings to mind the importance of work in the stories of Guareschi
Peppone Not for nothing is above all a great mechanic. Even Peppone, party chief and mayor, is exempt from this. Because the work is part of the people, the common people working, eating, partying, family does. These are all things together. They are united only in the analysis of intellectuals, columnists who write on the major newspapers. In speeches, that is, all those who have never understood the people, and which in fact have always considered Guareschi a lesser writer.
Indeed Guareschi's work, rather than criticized, was snubbed by critics, in fact considered "minor" Why?
inform you one thing: less is considered by critics who, just to have semipornografici acclaimed novels by Alberto Moravia. They are the ones that give value to a culture is not left, but radical, which made the charts entirely ideological ignored Manzoni, Bacchelli, have decreased by Rebora, have forgotten Ada Negri. Those, then, that in the end they preferred that the Nobel went to Dario For instead of Mario Luzi. It is critical to the exertion, the "culturame" that has ruined post-war Italy and has entertained in the papers that are all the rage. This is the worst part of Italian history. Guareschi instead is a great writer, is one of the greatest representatives of Italian fiction, especially in the vein of Manzoni, and shares with the great ability to read and faceted person to person. It is the great tradition of Catholic literature. And that's why he had a popular success and critical acclaim in the world.
A great Catholic tradition in the stories of Guareschi This is made even by the figure of Christ speaking. What does this?
Christ who speaks to you is, is the true faith in which Christ is a You. At the beginning of the Little World, to get rid of false Orthodox Guareschi says if you take it with the fact that I talk about Christ, know that Christ is the Christ of whom I speak my conscience. What does it mean? What is you who is in reality and that is within you. This Christ is the objective that speaks to you in Christ, and the you with the "t" capital "with which everyone has to do.
Finally, another essential element in the stories of Guareschi is its land, Lower, without which his characters almost could not exist ...
Don Camillo could not be written either in Brianza, either in Varese, either in Sicily or in the Ciociaria, or anywhere else. It is the fruit of that world is talking about at the beginning of Lower Small World, that world of fog that can appear one day to talk to the ghost of a dead friend, when the earth is alive, that somehow the landscape , environment, nature, animals are at one with the man. A quiet world: the land around the river, so little rhetoric, so little arrogant and presumptuous, whose beauty is a woman who does not show, but so deeply human. It is a land shaped by man over the centuries, a nature that is totally in his own image and at the same time has been characterized by that I do not know that wild, which is not primitive, but it is precisely not tamed. So the characters are the characters of the Lower Gianni Brera are the characters in a few years later, the characters in the Mulino del Po, characters such as Mother Cabrini, Giussani, St Richard Pampuri. These saints subdued, but in the long run are like wine from this area, with the aftertaste that comes out, without having imposed early in a violent way.
Interview Giorgio Vittadini by his
