Fausto Cercignani is an Italian scholar, essayist and poet.

Biography

Born to Tuscan parents, Fausto Cercignani studied in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, where he graduated in foreign languages and literatures with a dissertation dealing with English at Shakespeare’s time. His career as a university professor was at first characterized by philological investigations in the fields of English studies

English studies

English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...

 and Germanic studies

Germanic studies

Germanic studies is the field of study of the Germanic languages and the history of the Germanic peoples.Subfields*English studies*German studies*Dutch studies*Scandinavian studies*Runology*comparative linguistics Founding figures...

. In 1983, after teaching at the universities of Bergamo

Bergamo

Bergamo is a town and comune in Lombardy, Italy, about 40 km northeast of Milan. The comune is home to over 120,000 inhabitants. It is served by the Orio al Serio Airport, which also serves the Province of Bergamo, and to a lesser extent the metropolitan area of Milan...

 (1971-1974), Parma

Parma

Parma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its ham, its cheese, its architecture and the fine countryside around it. This is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....

 (1974-1975), and Pisa

Pisa

Pisa is a city in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the River Arno on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...

 (1975-1983), he returned to Milan and carried on his activity at the University of Milan

University of Milan

The University of Milan is a higher education institution in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with about 62,801 students, a teaching and research staff of 2,455 and a non-teaching staff of 2,200....

, where he intensified his researches on German literature

German literature

German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...

, a field that he had been cultivating for years.

The student of English

Cercignani’s philological interests have been mainly directed towards the history of the English language

History of the English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the...

, with especial regard to the Elizabethan period. His articles on English pronunciation at Shakespeare’s time (published in “Studia Neophilologica”, “English Studies” and other specialized journals) anticipate his major work Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation (Oxford, 1981), which has been cited as «the best work available» on the subject.

As «the foremost authority» on Elizabethan pronunciation, Cercignani is often cited on puns, rhymes, and spellings in the more recent editions of Shakespeare’s works, in most reference works on Shakespeare, and in various publications dealing with linguistic and literary questions from a historical point of view.

The student of Germanic

Cercignani’s philological interests have also been directed towards the historical phonology

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 of the Germanic languages

Germanic languages

The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...

 and other aspects of historical linguistics

Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...

. Specialized journals like “Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung”, “Indogermanische Forschungen”, “Journal of English and Germanic Philology”, “Language”, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur”, and “The Journal of Indo-European Studies” have published his articles on Proto-Germanic, Gothic

Gothic language

Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...

, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 and German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

.

Some of these studies – e.g. Early 'umlaut' phenomena in the Germanic languages, in “Language”, 56/1, 1980 – are frequently cited for alternative views on early linguistic changes (e.g. Germanic a-mutation).

Cercignani’s notable work on The Consonants of German: Synchrony and Diachrony (Milan, 1979) «offers both an original contribution to German phonology and a first-rate account of the state of the art».

The student of German

Cercignani’s literary interests have at first been directed towards the poetry of Karl Krolow, with essays published in “Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift”, “Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch”, and other journals (1984–1986). His study of Christa Wolf

Christa Wolf

Christa Wolf was a German literary critic, novelist, and essayist. She is one of the best-known writers to have emerged from the former East Germany.-Biography:...

’s earlier novels (Existenz und Heldentum bei Christa Wolf. «Der geteilte Himmel» und «Kassandra», Würzburg, 1988) and subsequent essays on her later works have contributed to promote an awareness of the true essence of the narrative production of the East German writer, irrespective of her political and personal ups and downs. The emphasis placed by Cercignani on Christa Wolf’s heroism has opened the way to subsequent studies in this direction.

The numerous other writers whose works Cercignani has subsequently studied include Jens Peter Jacobsen

Jens Peter Jacobsen

Jens Peter Jacobsen was a Danish novelist, poet, and scientist, in Denmark often just written as "J. P. Jacobsen" and pronounced "I. P. Jacobsen"...

, Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.- Life and work :Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg, Austria...

, Georg Büchner

Georg Büchner

Karl Georg Büchner was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose. He was the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büchner. Büchner's talent is generally held in great esteem in Germany...

, Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler

Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...

, Wolfgang Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...

, Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder was a German jurist and writer. With Ludwig Tieck, he was a co-founder of German Romanticism....

, Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal ; , was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.-Early life:...

, Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...

, Alban Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

, E.T.A. Hoffmann

E.T.A. Hoffmann

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...

, Robert Musil

Robert Musil

Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...

, Novalis

Novalis

Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg , an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.-Biography:...

, Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...

, Richard Beer-Hofmann

Richard Beer-Hofmann

Richard Beer-Hofmann was an Austrian dramatist and poet.After the early death of his mother, Beer-Hofmann was raised by his aunt's family in Brno and Vienna. In the 1880s he studied law in Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1890...

, Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus

Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...

, Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

, Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

, August Stramm

August Stramm

August Stramm was a German poet and playwright who is considered one of the first of the expressionists. He also served in the German Army and was killed in action during World War I....

, Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann

Gerhart Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.-Life and work:...

, Reinhard Jirgl, Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

 ...

Since 1992 Cercignani has been editor of the international periodical “Studia austriaca” (ISSN: 1593-2508), a publication devoted to the culture and to the literature of Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, past and present. This yearbook is published in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum in Milan (Österreichisches Kulturforum Mailand).
Since 1994 he has been editor also of “Studia theodisca” (ISSN: 1593-2478), a periodical that accepts international essays on the literature of German-speaking countries.

The poet

Cercignani’s poetry is collected in seven booklets and includes also poems published in the “Almanacco dello Specchio”, “Anterem”, and other periodicals. Discussing his production, one critic speaks of orphic poetry, but «hard and shiny like steel» and another remarks that Cercignani’s poems «achieve a maximum of concentration thanks to an acceleration of the thought or feeling which reconstructs physicality by means of abstraction».

Fausto Cercignani has also experimented with the self-translation

Self-translation

Self-translation is a translation of a source text into a target text by the writer of the source text. Self-translation occurs in various writing situations...

 of his poems.

An adagio

Adagio (2004)

If you talk to the shadows,

at least you know them well

and the words, all of them,

unfold themselves with ease

on muddled walls and streets,

when dusk comes on.

They do not speak of boundless skies,

of passing loves like silver clouds.

They speak of cheerless towns, unwound:

on hazy moors of muffled music.

And if you talk to them,

you’ll find yourself

rocked in a stream of notes,

as if the town were truly

a shrubby land of music sheets.

Which rustle,

while fingered by the breeze,

in the sluggish progression of the adagio.

English Studies

• Shakespeare's Works and Elizabethan Pronunciation, Oxford, University Press (Clarendon Press), 1981.
• English Rhymes and Pronunciation in the Mid-Seventeenth Century, in “English Studies”, 56/6, 1975, pp. 513–518.
• The Development of */k/ and */sk/ in Old English, in “Journal of English and Germanic Philology”, 82/3, 1983, pp. 313–323.

Germanic Studies

• The Consonants of German: Synchrony and Diachrony. Milano, Cisalpino, 1979.
• The Development of the Gothic Short/Lax Subsystem, in “Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung”, 93/2, 1979, pp. 272–278.
• Early «Umlaut» Phenomena in the Germanic Languages, in “Language”, 56/1, 1980, pp. 126–136.
• Zum hochdeutschen Konsonantismus. Phonologische Analyse und phonologischer Wandel (On High German Consonantism. Phonological Analysis and Phonological Change), in “Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur”, 105/1, 1983, pp. 1–13.
• The Elaboration of the Gothic Alphabet and Orthography, in “Indogermanische Forschungen”, 93, 1988, pp. 168–185.
• Saggi linguistici e filologici. Germanico, gotico, inglese e tedesco (Linguistic and Philological Essays. Germanic, Gothic, English, and German), Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso, 1992.

Books

• F. Cercignani, Existenz und Heldentum bei Christa Wolf. «Der geteilte Himmel» und «Kassandra» (Existence and Heroism in Christa Wolf. «Divided Heaven» and «Cassandra»), Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1988.
• F. Cercignani, Memoria e reminiscenze. Nietzsche, Büchner, Hölderlin e i poemetti in prosa di Trakl (Memory and Reminiscences. Nietzsche, Büchner, Hölderlin and Trakl's Prose Poems), Torino, Genesi Editrice, 1989.
• F. Cercignani (editor), Studia trakliana. Georg Trakl 1887-1987, Milano, Cisalpino, 1989.
• F. Cercignani (editor), Studia büchneriana. Georg Büchner 1988, Milano, Cisalpino, 1990.
• F. Cercignani (editor), Studia schnitzleriana (Arthur Schnitzler 1991), Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso, 1991.
• F. Cercignani - E. Mariano (editors), Vincenzo Errante. La traduzione di poesia ieri e oggi (Vincenzo Errante. On Translatimg Poetry, in the Past and in the Present), Milano, Cisalpino, 1993.
• F. Cercignani (editor), Novalis, Milano, CUEM, 2002.

Essays

• Dunkel, Grün und Paradies. Karl Krolows lyrische Anfänge in «Hochgelobtes gutes Leben» (Dark, Green, and Paradise. Karl Krolow's Lyrical Beginnings in «Highly Praised Good Life»), in “Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift”, 36/1, 1986, pp. 59–78.
• Zwischen irdischem Nichts und machtlosem Himmel. Karl Krolows «Gedichte» 1948: Enttäuschung und Verwirrung (Between Earthly Nought and a Powerless Heaven. Karl Krolow's «Poems» 1948: Disappointment and Bewilderment), in “Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch”, 27, 1986, pp. 197–217.
• Il «Faust» goethiano. Forma e sostanza (Goethe's «Faust». Form and Substance), in Il «Faust» di Goethe. Antologia critica (Goethe's «Faust». A Critical Anthology), edited by F. Cercignani and E. Ganni, Milano, Led, 1993, pp. 21–38.
• «Nathan il saggio» e il Settecento tedesco («Nathan the Wise» and the German Eighteenth Century), in “ACME”, 47/1, 1994, pp. 107–124.
• Sul «Wozzeck» di Alban Berg (On Alban Berg's «Wozzeck»), in Studia austriaca V, Milano, Edizioni Minute, 1997, pp. 169–190.
• E. T. A. Hoffmann, Italien und die romantische Auffassung der Musik (E. T. A. Hoffmann, Italy and the Romantic Conception of Music), in Das Land der Sehnsucht. E. T. A. Hoffmann und Italien (The Land of Yearning. E. T. A. Hoffmann and Italy), edited by S. M. Moraldo, Heidelberg, Winter, 2002, pp. 191–201.
• Per una rilettura di «Salomè». Il dramma di Oscar Wilde e il libretto di Richard Strauss (For a Reappraisal of «Salome». Oscar Wilde's Drama and Richard Strauss's Libretto), in Studia theodisca IX, Milano, CUEM, 2002, pp. 171–192.
• Georg Büchner. Empatia e prospettivismo (Georg Büchner. Empathy and Perspectivism), in Il cacciatore di silenzi. Studi dedicati a Ferruccio Masini (The Hunter of Silences. Studies in Honour of Ferruccio Masini), vol. II, edited by P. Chiarini, Roma, Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, 2003, pp. 237–258.
• ‘Poesia filosofica’ o ‘filosofia poetica’? Con alcune osservazioni su Schiller (‘Philosophical Poetry’ or ‘Poetical Philosophy’? With some remarks on Schiller), in La poesia filosofica (Philosophical Poetry), edited by A. Costazza, Milano, Cisalpino, 2007, pp. 163–170.
• Inganno e autoinganno. Il campagnolo di Kafka (Deception and Self-Deception. Kafka's Landman), in Studia austriaca XVIII, Milano, PGreco, 2010, pp. 51–64.
• Hofmannsthal fra teatro e filosofia. Con particolare riguardo a «L’uomo difficile» (Hofmannsthal between Theatre and Philosophy. With special regard to «The Difficult Man»), in La filosofia a teatro (Philosophy in the Theatre), edited by A. Costazza, Milano, Cisalpino, 2010, pp. 369–385.

Poetry

• Fiore siglato (Initialled Flower), Firenze 1988.
• Fisicità svanite (Vanished Physicalities), Torino 1988 - First Prize "Città di Moncalieri 1989".
• Omaggio a Shakespeare (Homage to Shakespeare), Ten Poems, introduced by R. Mussapi, in “Almanacco dello Specchio”, n. 13 (1989).
• Various texts in “Anterem”, nn. 40 (1989), 42 (1991), 44 (1992), 46 (1993) e 47 (1993).
• Vene di trasparenza (Veins of Transparence), Verona 1990.
• Nella grafia di un’ombra (In the Graphs of a Shadow), Alessandria 1991.
• Pulviscoli rigati (Scars on Dust Clouds), Napoli 1992.
• Stelle di brina (Stars of White Frost), Milano 1993.
• Reticoli svagati (Dreamy Reticles), Milano 1996.

Awards

Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst I. Klasse
(Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class)
Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, 1996

External links

• http://users.unimi.it/austheod/austheod.htm (“Studia austriaca” and “Studia theodisca”)
• http://en.scientificcommons.org/fausto_cercignani (complete list of publications)