Bizzarrie fantascientifiche nelle Note di Carlo Dossi

 

Le Note Azzurre, forse l’opera più rappresentativa dello scapigliato Carlo Dossi, sono da sempre al centro dell’attenzione di studiosi e appassionati. Alcuni appunti, tuttavia, sono stati studiati poco o nulla: si tratta di frammenti che si concentrano su questioni e ossessioni estremamente moderne, come per esempio l’impatto della tecnologia sulla società e appaiono ancora oggi futuristici, quasi fantascientifici. In questa sede si vuole individuare ed esaminare queste note neglette nel tentativo di offrire una panoramica inedita di un Dossi anticipatore di tendenze e fenomeni sociali oggi decisivi.

The Note Azzurre (Blue Notes), arguably the most representative work of the Scapigliato Carlo Dossi, have always been the focus of attention of scholars and enthusiasts. A few notes, however, have been studied little or not at all: these fragments revolve around extremely modern matters and obsessions, such as the impact of technology on society, and sound futuristic, almost science-fictional, even today. The purpose of this essay is to identify and investigate these neglected notes in order to provide an unprecedented overview of Dossi as a pioneer of social trends and issues which are pivotal today. 

 

Leggi il saggio/Read the essay (text only in Italian)

 

 

Opening Lines of "Vita di Alberto Pisani" by Carlo Dossi (Translation from the Italian by Maurizio Brancaleoni)

*All rights reserved. No part of the following translation may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior authorization. For information, send an e-mail to mbmbrancaleoni@gmail.com.*

Worthy of Paracelsus! It is the study of the studies. It smells like tobacco, ink and Latin quotations. It's on the boreal side, ground floor; it has a vault, from whence damp came out. It has walls, all shelved, on which are appalling volumes in wire meshes  like the breath of cats. Here are the ten backplates with golden arabesques of the very rare work “de numero atomorum”; nearby is the complete voluminous series of the grammars (grammar, to wit, how you learn to ride a horse by walking); then, a collection of the most bulky disputations…that on the word culex, and the other concerning the letter  e considereth as copula, and the archfierce one “on the nature of the aureola of Mount Tabor”. And here, in a stretch of the last ledge, the famous treatise “de nuce beneventana”, forty octavo tomes  dressed in parchment, which, due to the lack of one, look like dentures bereft of an eyetooth; here – to cut it short – an endless horde of big bad books, and in the rack outside… specula, theatra, convivia, thesauri… of astrology, theology, etimology, and other sciences ending in  -gy – all witchery.

 

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